

Are We An Unjust People? - alexholehouse
http://braythwayt.com/2013/03/21/unjust.html

======
IsaacSchlueter
In short, yes, we are, and it's shitty. Reg, everything you wrote here is
pretty spot-on.

Adria Richards' behavior was definitely a tactical misstep. With the benefit
of hindsight, she should have reported the inappropriate behavior to the
conference staff more discretely. Or, even, turned around and told them to
show some respect. (And, if they didn't cut the crap, THEN get them kicked
from the conference.)

I don't believe that what she did was inappropriate/unacceptable in any kind
of moral sense, and I would gladly hire Adria if I was hiring for that kind of
role. If a person is making jokes with sexual innuendoes during a talk, they
shouldn't be at that conference, and shouldn't be surprised that there are
consequences, no matter _how_ many kids they have. Behavior in public is
_already_ public; putting it on the internet may make it more so, but it's not
as if they had any expectation of privacy in the first place.

At the root, I'm glad she stuck up for herself _somehow_ , rather than just
kept quiet. She did so in a clumsy way, and has been castigated for it far
more harshly than is useful.

Furthermore, this is a clear incident of sexism in our community. If I had
done the exact same thing, there's no way that /r/mensrights would DDoS Joyent
into firing me. This is why women feel unsafe and mistreated in our
communities: _because they are._ If they stick up for themselves, they're
going to face an onslaught of trolling, and even the ostensible "good guys"
are quick to point out that yes, yes, we don't condone this sort of thing, but
come on, She Was Asking For It.

As I said, her reaction was a tactical misstep. At a higher level, there's a
strategic point about preventing these sorts of things from happening in the
first place. How do we ensure that the next Adria feels empowered enough to
tell the boys behind her to cut it out, where they realize their
inappropriateness for the environment and apologize and the world moves on
with dignity? How do we build communities that are compassionate, without so
many pikes looking for heads?

Every time some shitstorm like this happens, we all lose a chunk of our
humanity, no matter what side we're on, or who does or doesn't get fired.

I feel like a parent of a 14-year-old child, reading a news story about a
16-year-old dying in some horrible car wreck on prom night, knowing that mine
will be that age soon enough.

Node is SO nice right now. As technology communities go, it's astounding how
compassionate and friendly we've managed to keep things. Even in the face of
some strongly held religious feelings about CoffeeScript or async or promises
etc, we still talk to one another, like human beings. Our IRC channel and
mailing list has a zero-tolerance policy for rude conduct. Our meetups are
small and there are enough regulars to keep up a culture of "We don't do that
sort of thing here" with respect to lewd jokes, homophobia, sexism, ableism,
etc.

What happens when Node is as big as Python? How do we keep this going?

~~~
felix
I don't believe this was a Python problem or an issue of the Python community,
it's a general issue plaguing technology. We're all trying to figure our way
through it as best we can - and when things like this happen we need to do our
best to stay calm and rational and keep everything in proportion. I think no
matter who's "side" you were on in this debate, everyone can agree that most
reactions were overblown for the actual events that occurred.

So I think as long as the Node community remains aware of the gender issues
and goes to lengths to promote a friendly and tolerant environment that's the
key. But to put it in perspective, I think that everyone should be doing that
no matter your language of choice. :)

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
True, despite my joking tweet earlier, I don't think that this is at all a
Python problem, except insofar as the "python community" is a huge community
of people who (by virtue of its size) mostly are strangers to one another.

You're right that it's not about the language of choice. But a community is
made of people. I think that the Node community's niceness has little to do
with JavaScript, and more to do with the fact that there were folks like you,
mikeal, maxogden, nexxy, polotek, ryah, substack, janl, etc, who imprinted the
community with your sense of values and a culture of kindness early on.

But keeping that ball rolling, as the community gets bigger, is very
challenging, and it does stress me out a bit. It takes such a little match to
set the whole thing on fire!

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
(I'm assuming that "felix" is Felix Geisendorfer. If not, sorry for the
confusion :)

~~~
felix
Sorry to disappoint! But different felix. :) I'm still nice, though.

------
luigi
There are two really interesting, and frankly devastating, double standards at
work here:

(1) We all know Adria Richards's name. We know all about her. Her personal
address has been spread. Things she wrote in the past have been used against
her. __But we don't really know anything about those guys. __We know who they
work for and what they look like, but there's been no widespread effort to
expose them in the same manner that Adria's been exposed.

(2) When that guy lost his job, everyone thought it was a great injustice, and
that Adria should make a heartfelt apology to him. But when Adria lost her job
this morning, there were no such pronouncements going the other way. No one
declared, __"That dude really needs to apologize to Adria for making the dick
joke that eventually led to her getting let go." __That's not an argument
that's being made anywhere.

Ask yourself why these things are happening in one direction. In an equal
world -- a balanced world -- things should cut both ways. These tactics should
be used by people on both "sides". But in this instance, that's decidedly not
happening.

~~~
deepinside
(1) She publicised herself widely, posted the picture on Twitter, wrote a long
blog post on her blog, named her employer directly, claimed her employer
backed her actions, has all her contact details and photos on her blog and
Twitter. She made herself public.

You don't know much about the guys as they didn't make public claims or
announcements.

You appear to be saying they should be identified, named and shamed... which
is exactly what Adria tried to do, and look where that ended up

(2) The guy in question apologised almost immediately on HN, a very well
written, and seemingly honest and heartfelt apology for making a mistake.

The PyCon organisers took the guys and Adria into a room and discussed the
matter at the time, and all were said to have apologised and agreed the matter
was over.

If "everyone" thought it was an injustice that the guy lost his job, but felt
it was fair and reasonable that she did, perhaps this tells you something.
Perhaps it tells you that "everyone" thought her actions were wrong (as the
instigator of this affair), and the guy did little wrong

The "reason these things are happening in one direction" is that Adria behaved
like a jerk. Quite simple really.

Not a woman jerk, not a black jerk, not a Jewish jerk ... just a jerk.

~~~
flaviusb
Regarding point (2), you are completely wrong. You are saying that because
lots of people harassed Adria, therefore she was a jerk and deserved it. That
is trivially disproved by noting that ethics as such exists, and is not simply
whatever a group of people does. The reason this is happening is because
people like you are shitheads who are doing bad things or enabling other
shitheads to do bad things.

------
Pent
I think that when responding to these events, we should keep in mind that we
all make mistakes. At this point I feel that Adria made a mistake, sometimes
mistakes cause bad things to happen and I hope she moves forward and learns
from her actions. Everyone is human and she didn't deserve all the snap
judgements leading to hatred.

------
metaphorm
so the moral of the story, according to raganwald, is that Adria Richards
worst mistake is that she trolled somebody candidly instead of anonymously?

indeed Reggie, what can be done about anonymous trolling on the internet? this
is an honest question to which nobody knows the answer.

do we all need to admit that we are powerless to stop anonymous dickheads from
making death threats on the internet? I admit it. We all would admit it. We
are powerless. We don't like to see that. But the world is ugly. Adria
Richards did something ugly and got something much much uglier in response.
She didn't deserve the death threats, but she did deserve the firing.

~~~
raganwald
I don't think we're powerless, and the first step to you not thinking we're
powerless is to stop and ask yourself, what would it take for things like this
to be reduced to a few weird cranks and outliers instead of a flood?

I would be very surprised indeed if your response is, "There is nothing we can
do to change human behaviour around this."

~~~
mattvanhorn
Personally, I'd like to see some of the smart folks in the community assist
the police in identifying the source of the threats and helping to ensure that
those miscreants get jail time.

------
jerrya
Hmm, I couldn't read your entire essay because your choice of font size and
font color and background color makes for very difficult reading, and probably
for many people.

