
There are Ladies Present - phinze
http://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2013/03/22/There-are-ladies-present.html
======
antihero
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fucking fuck.

Women are humans. Some of us (humans) find toilet humour funny and a great way
to escape situations, some of us dislike it and find it unprofessional, some
of us just don't give a fuck.

Just talk like you talk, be aware of alienating people you care about, fuck
those you don't, and do cool shit.

I like toilet humour. It is silly and fun and stupid. It is ironic and
whatever fucking poops. Fuck off telling me and other humans how to be.

Immature people can appear sensible and be totally professional in their
language. Some of the most interesting, awesome, intelligent and mature people
I know are fans of toilet humour.

Shut the fuck up, don't alienate awesome people (by putting tits in slide
shows, duh), and keep making awesome code.

~~~
newnewnew
Men, and especially white and Asian men, are afraid and confused because other
people have this powerful weapon they can use against them called "getting
offended". The rules for how it works are fuzzy and not printed anywhere and
anyways they vary from place to place. So men, and especially highly logical
men, are scared, curious, and very motivated to try to figure out the rules.

In recent cases of sexual harassment at conferences, the rules were very
clear-cut. The lesson was "don't touch a woman that doesn't want to be touched
by you" or "don't put porn in a presentation", for those few men dense enough
not to know that in the first place. Conferences learned a lot and got serious
about being safer places for women. Pycon was a leader in that.

But this time everything is scary and confusing. People don't know what lesson
to take. So they're blindly groping for an answer.

~~~
tptacek
This is what an /r/MensRights commenter looks like, right? The weird, totally
irrelevant racial tinge the comment has is a signal too, right?

~~~
newnewnew
There are people that have the "I'm offended" weapon and people that don't. As
far as I can tell offending a woman or a non-Asian racial minority is
considered to be a Very Bad Thing. It might even get you fired. And there are
no rules. Every person is different and you don't know who you will offend and
who you won't. Adria was spotted playing "Cards Against Humanity" at the
conference and I would assume that I would be safe making almost any joke in
conversation with someone that played CAH. But I would be wrong and she would
kill my job with her special weapon.

There's good reason these groups have these weapons. They have historically
gotten the shit end of the stick from everybody else and we are sensitive to
any potential bias compensate for that. But with power comes responsibility
and we can't go using our weapons unreasonably if we are all going to get
along.

I don't mean to have a "irrelevant racial tinge" and you can correct me if you
think I'm wrong, but my read is that white and Asian men don't have this
weapon, unless they are disadvantaged in some other obvious way. For example,
if a handicapped white man got offended at someone making some statement
related to that handicapp it might be treated with the same gravity. But most
don't have the weapon, so they are scared and confused and grope for
understanding (like the OP).

I've never been to /r/MensRights. I guess I'm not supposed to say things like
this. I could just think forbidden thoughts to myself, but I would rather
engage in dialog with others to learn more.

~~~
jodrellblank
_Adria was spotted playing "Cards Against Humanity" at the conference and I
would assume that I would be safe making almost any joke in conversation with
someone that played CAH. /But I would be wrong and she would kill my job with
her special weapon/_

Evidence for this claim?

~~~
tptacek
Please tell me you don't really care.

~~~
newnewnew
Do you know what Cards Against Humanity is? The moderator puts out a prompt
card like "Santa ran out of coal, so this Christmas he is stuffing bad kid's
stockings with __________". And then other players anonymously submit cards to
fill in the blank with words on them like "AIDS", "A starving African child",
"Michael Jackson", "White Privilege", "Anal Beads", "the Holocaust" and etc.
The idea is to hit every awful thing you could possibly say. People find this
funny because it has all the jokes you can't make in it because they are so
horrible. Sort of like dead baby jokes.

I would assume I could joke about a dongle with such a person.

~~~
jodrellblank
This is basically arguing the same as saying that because she would discuss
her breasts in one context with a doctor, you should be able to discuss them
with her in any context.

It's such a stupid claim on your part that "context doesn't matter" and you're
still not doing anything to back up your claim that she would "get people
fired" for playing CAH - _especially_ when she _did_ play it and _did not_
raise any complaints about it.

------
rayiner
I feel that to an extent the above article misses the point. It strains to
draw this distinction of "remember that women want to be treated like people
in a work context but also that women are different than men and you should
remember that too." Its exhausting and puts the emphasis on the wrong place.

You know why people like Adria Richards are hypersensitive about dick jokes?
Because women are a minority in programming and being a minority sucks. If
there were as many female CEOs as male CEOs in tech and we knew as little
about Marissa Mayer's child-care situation as we do about Jeff Bezos's, nobody
would give a fuck about dick jokes. Women aren't the minority in tech because
men make dick jokes--(some) women are sensitive about men making dick jokes
because they are in the minority. When people don't feel awkwardly self
conscious about their place in the power dynamic, they are free to laugh at
jokes like a normal person.

Fix the representation problem and all of this will take care of itself.

~~~
azov
I still don't understand your logic. What is it about being a minority that
makes one sensitive to dick jokes?

~~~
nilkn
I think he's saying that being a minority and feeling like a minority makes
you sensitive to basically everything. Dick jokes just happen to get included
in that.

Not sure I agree, but that is how I interpreted his post anyway.

~~~
azov
There are many other minority groups who seem to be perfectly ok with locker
room humor.

------
47uF
The worst thing to come out of the pycon event is that reasonable people like
the OP are trying to "get" why this was a case of sexism. The answer is that
it wasn't, and many posters, including women, have pointed out why. It's an
issue of professionalism, not sexism. This kind of post of is exactly the
reason why some have remarked that Adria may have set back her cause.

------
zem
i disagree. he seems to be saying that the industry needs women because of the
new and different, "grown-up, nurturing, ..." perspective they can bring to
the table. i think the industry needs women because, well, when you
arbitrarily exclude half the human race from contributing, you are
unquestionably losing something of significant value.

the thing is this: women have _already_ gotten a raw deal by being socialised
to find sex uncomfortable, and by living in cultures where sex has been linked
to aggression. the problem with the pycon incident was not that anything was
intrinsically wrong with dick jokes, but that it was creating a hostile
environment in the context of a playing field that was already tilted.

the critically important thing to take away, in my opinion, is not that "women
are different" (because that lumps women into one group and men into another,
and posits that there is less variance within the groups than across them), it
is that women live in a different environment than men do, and that while men
are unaffected when they forget this, women are reminded of it every single
day. (look up microaggression theory for a lot more about this.)

~~~
illuminate
"women have already gotten a raw deal by being socialised to find sex
uncomfortable"

The counter to this is that they should be made more comfortable by not
~forcing~ them to pretend to be comfortable with awkward conversations in
professional situations. Some things aren't as progressive as you imagine.

~~~
zem
How is that a counter? It follows directly!

~~~
illuminate
Right, but plenty are attempting to sidestep this comfort level and any
contextualization, demanding that women enjoy lame dick jokes for the comfort
of the men around them.

~~~
zem
that's exactly what i was trying to say. the thing to do is notice the context
that leads women to disproportionately find sex jokes uncomfortable, not to
conclude that "women are different from men and therefore..."

------
jerrya
Article is of the form:

1\. States known facts incorrectly showing poor research (Alex Reid was not
the PlayHaven developer fired and so this statement is almost certainly not
what he wanted to be saying _The event I'm referring to is the fiasco at PyCon
involving Adria Richards, Alex Reid, Playhaven, and SendGrid._
(<http://blog.playhaven.com/addressing-pycon/>)

2\. Recommends placing women on pedestal

3\. Recommends taking women off pedestal

4\. Ends by recommending women be placed back on pedestal _Perhaps the reason
we've had so much trouble maturing is that we don't have enough women to help
us make the transition from child to adult. Their attitudes, their ways of
thinking, different from ours, may be the very things we need to complete us
as an industry, and a profession, and as a craft. It seems to me we need these
women in order for our profession to become a profession._

------
eplanit
Lordy, we seem to live in hyper-sensitive times where everyone parses simple
humor through a filter of scrutiny looking for some reason to be offended
(often to be offended on behalf of some other group). The wisdom I have mostly
heard, and agree with, is to be sensitive and respectful when making a joke --
but if they can't handle humor that was intended to elicit fun, then f__k 'em.

------
morpher
Do a lot of guys approach coding with a conquest mentality? I found this
sentiment particularly interesting. I've always had a more creative /
constructive mindset while coding and curious / scientific mindset while
debugging. As a male programmer, I'm curious if I live out in the tails of the
distribution, or if Uncle Bob is less average than he assumes.

~~~
fusiongyro
I came here to talk about this, because I also _really don't_ feel that way. I
feel more like I'm struggling to say something, and bugs are manifestations of
my inability to be terse and precise. When everything comes together, it feels
like I've communicated perfectly and eloquently. I get exactly the same
feeling from programming as from debate, but my goal in both cases is simply
to acquire the right understanding and be properly understood.

------
runewell
Quiet Amy Poehler, no dongle jokes, there are ladies present!
<http://youtu.be/KgmhhVCLgM8>

I'm sorry but I disagree with your opinion. Women are welcome in the tech
industry but many parents (not all) simply don't encourage their daughters to
be programmers because in truth it can be a very unsocial introverted career
path. Who really wants their kid to sit in a chair for 14 hours a day staring
at a dull light. At first everyone loves the idea of little genius engineers
until their kid is on the machine for a whole week and turns into a techno-
zombie. If my kid has a passion for it then fine, if not then I am secretly
relieved.

Sales, finance, construction, military, agriculture and religion (if you
consider that an industry) could learn more from this lecture than the tech
industry. I grew up working in construction and farming, interned for sales
reps, and created tools for the finance industry. The tech industry is a
woman's best friend compared to those work environments. At least in tech you
can commit code and be solely judged by the quality of your work and not your
sex, age, race, or physical abilities.

------
dizzystar
I went to school for a female-dominated profession (yes, there are quite a few
out there where the balance goes the other way). I can assure you that if you
find the things men say offensive, you haven't heard anything...

I want to add the caveat that I am NOT attempting to appeal to hypocrisy.

While I agree that there is a limit, I don't see how calling languages
"estrogen" is offensive and I don't understand how calling a hat "cute" is
offensive.

Maybe its because I grew up in the 90s, when the world starting embracing the
insanity that is the PC revolution. We've (and I mean "White Men") made it a
point to relabel and rename everything to be non-offensive. Blacks are no
longer African Americans. Indians are now Native Americans. The guy cleaning
your toilet is not a Janitor, but a Maintenance Technician. The Secretary is
now a Front Office Assistant. Parents started raising their children on Barney
the Dinosaur and that is pretty much when it all fell apart.

For golly, people. We've created a purely insane world, where even mild jokes
have become Purely Offensive and Crude. We have to bite our tongues and be
careful of everything we say, and I hope you can see how that this attitude
has created an unhealthy ecosystem for everyone involved, including the well-
meaning welcomers and the curious, ultimately destroying any ability to
progress past 2001.

I really don't want to believe that the programming world is so pent up about
sexuality. I want to believe the industry as a whole is highly intelligent and
mature, and if a women goes on stage and says something silly about a Cute
Cowboy Hat some dude is wearing, we don't see it something offensive or
threatening to men.

I can't imagine that other industries go through this so much. Certain
branches of marketing, spas, hair cutting, anything to do with writing,
fashion, among many other professions are female-dominated. The men who enter
simply enter and understand that they are entering into a world where yes,
they will be told in no uncertain terms that she is not feeling well and just
started her period. He will be told in no uncertain terms that size does
matter. He will be told things he cares to never hear about again, but he
joined into that smallish arena so he has to accept it.

It's all an illusion, people. Men and women both talk smack and say gross
stuff. We can't whitewash everything and pretend that we will never say
something stupid but if it isn't something that would be offensive on Ellen
Degenerous or The Voice -- which say way worse things than you'd hear at a
conference -- then it should be fair game to say in your presentation: the
trash those people say on those TV shows are more offensive than anything any
presenter would consider saying. I'm not saying the PyCon should be Married
with Children the Sequel. I'm just saying to let small stupid words go by and
don't hang onto every small word as an offense. You can create drama anywhere,
and it just so happens that programming is an easy target to fuss up and
create drama because the men are so convinced that they are wrong that they've
allowed themselves to be put on the defense at all times, and there is really
no logical or good reason for it, no matter how much you write about the
justifications of this attitude.

Vanilla jokes are exactly that: Vanilla jokes.

~~~
logjam
No.

Ellen Degeneres or The Voice or any of the other false equivalences you're
desperately reaching to make is not the professional technical workplace.

If you run in any of my technical circles, put on a technical presentation, or
otherwise represent at a technical conference, and you make "jokes" that are
sexual innuendos of any kind or are otherwise unprofessional....

You will be gone. _Gone._

Count on it.

The tech world created these shitty circumstances for women and this shitty
little drama because we males in that world have behaved _abominably_. Over
decades.

Guess what? Now we're going to start demonstrating that we can be
professional, or heads are going to roll. Continually.

Count on it.

~~~
mindcrime
"sexual joke" are not necessarily "sexist jokes" and there is no particular
reason to say that women are somehow traumitized by the mere mention of
sexuality. Is making sexual jokes at a conference unprofessional? Yes, but
it's unprofessional regardless of the gender of anyone or everyone in earshot.
Whether it's unprofessional _enough_ to justify:

"You will be gone. Gone."

"Count on it."

is quite clearly a subjective matter. All I can say is, don't invite me to
represent at any event you put on. Being professional is one matter, catering
to PC bullshit in the misguided belief that you can avoid even the remotest
possibility of offending someone, is quite something else.

~~~
jodrellblank
It's not about "the remotest possibility of offending people", it's about the
cultural background that a large penis is pushed as a dominating, masculine
thing, and being in a room of 80% male attendees and someone makes a "big
dongle" comment (for example) skews the environment in a male-friendly-
masculine-dominance way and a female-unfriendly way.

In the same way that being around a group of really rich people and saying you
missed an appointment because your car broke down and they say "didn't want to
get the weekend car wet, eh? Why didn't you hire one for the day you
cheapskate! Hahaha!".

It's not the mention of money that matters, it's the automatic dismissal of
your life situation as something that doesn't happen to real people - it isn't
even a concept - to all the other people in the group, and how alienating that
scenario is to be on the 'wrong' side of. The implicit pushing of the idea
"everybody" is rich and because you aren't, well, you aren't really a person.
Not really.

And you say "hey, I couldn't afford one, I missed whatever it was and that
sucked for me" and they say "what do you want me to do, pretend I'm a pauper
forever and never talk about money? That's just political correctness GONE
MAD!".

But the request is not "they should pretend to be poor", it's more like "they
should consider your situation as a real person and then not say something
that sounds like a clueless bozo said it".

~~~
ciupicri
Since you've started this analogy what am I doing in that group of rich people
if I don't belong there? Also, do I really want to be there or am I doing it
just because it's cool or whatever?

~~~
jodrellblank
I hadn't decided, but it ought to be something basically irrelevant to the
point, so not a country club or a networking event with potential investors.
Maybe you were pushed by family obligation into visiting your spouse's rich
relative at their lakeside property and all got invited next door to a
barbecue. How's that?

They're all rich and friendly, they're basically "nice" people, and you're not
rich in their league. They're "trying" to help you fit in, but somehow
everything they say just helps to heighten the feeling that you aren't equal
and don't belong. You roll with the punches, you aren't offended, but you are
alienated. You'll make the best of the night, but next time you'll try harder
to avoid going.

Which is fine for an informal night with strangers, but it's not the feeling a
trying-to-be-inclusive professional event wants to invoke in significant
fractions of the population. It's the difference between them "trying" to be
friendly (in quotes - meaning acting how they would act to each other to be
friendly) and _actually being friendly_ in the _all you have to do is whatever
it takes_ sense.

------
auctiontheory
I'm curious how these situations are handled in Germany or France or anyplace
where sexuality is not as much of a cultural taboo as in the US, though the
tech industry may be just as gender-unbalanced.

------
derefr
> Men, can you imagine how hard it would be if all the women were constantly,
> and openly, talking about tampons, cramps, yeast infections, cheating, being
> cheated on, Trichomoniasis, faking-it, etc? I don't know about you, but It
> would make me feel out of place.

You're right--you _don't_ know about me. I fully wish this were the case!

The place I want to work is the place where people are _people_ , not
separately "men" and "women": and _people_ like fart jokes, dick jokes,
cramping jokes, faking-it jokes, what have you. They also like pictures of
cats!

...or, at least, when you ask them by themselves, they do. But something
strange happens when you ask them in a _sufficiently large group_ : suddenly
they'll say there are certain things that are _horribly offensive_ , even
though they're not "personally" offended!

Now, someone with some evolutionary-biology experience can probably give you
the full low-down as to why, but here's my (limited) understanding: when we're
in a group of people large enough, and who don't know one-another particularly
well, we start to think we might have the opportunity to mate with someone
else in the group without that becoming a "sore point" for the group later on
(especially if the group isn't closed to new people entering/leaving.) So, we
start to enforce these "global social norms" on one another, even if we don't
agree with them ourselves. We do it so we can show we can "do the dance" of
mating, that we're clever enough to avoid slipping up in the complex social
machinery we've instantiated, and thus we sort ourselves into rankings of
social ability. Both the people in higher and lower rankings subliminally know
their position, and so the people in lower rankings are subconsciously
proscribed to submit to those of higher rankings when a rivalry springs up for
the affection of a potential mate. Thus, the people best at the dance have the
most choice, and we call that something like "charisma."

We drop the whole dance when we end up in groups of "just friends." If nobody
around us is a potential mate, why bother? Around friends, we tell all the
fart jokes we like, and nobody gets offended. But take those same friends and
sit them at a fancy banquet--where _strangers_ can _hear_ them--and suddenly
they'll be shushing one another to prevent those jokes from slipping out!

Now, in my opinion, the whole etiquette game _is_ a game--and you shouldn't be
playing games at work. It's easy enough to avoid when everyone at your
workplace _are_ friends--and this seems to be the real goal that employers are
trying to foster through "team-building": the ability for everyone to see one-
another as someone to goof off with and tell silly jokes, not a potential mate
(and especially not a potential rival for mates!) But it rarely succeeds,
precisely because humans _are_ intelligent and observant social animals, who
notice when, despite the trappings of "friendship", nobody _really_ cares
about what anyone else did on the weekend, nobody will _actually_ keep in
touch with anyone else after they move on to another job, etc.

I don't know how to solve the problem, other than to form companies solely
from people who are already friends (like YC tends to do!) and then not grow
them at all beyond that :)

~~~
mindcrime
> Men, can you imagine how hard it would be if all the women were constantly,
> and openly, talking about tampons, cramps, yeast infections, cheating, being
> cheated on, Trichomoniasis, faking-it, etc? I don't know about you, but It
> would make me feel out of place.

I've been the only male in a female dominated IT department before, and you
know what... it _does_ feel a bit awkward being a minority. It's not fun, and
you always feel like something of an outsider in a sense, even when the other
people are friendly and accept you. But at the end of the day, being offended
is a choice... you can choose to take offense, or not take offense. And
there's a huge gap between something that's merely offensive and actual
"abuse" or "sexual harassment". When I worked with all those women, I just
went in, did my thing, treated them like equals and did my work. We weren't
ever really "friends" and I never hung out with any of them outside of work or
anything, but that never mattered. The money they paid me to work there spent
just as well, regardless of any of that shit, why should I worry about getting
worked up over gender differences and the occasional joke about premature
ejaculation or penis size.

~~~
mgkimsal
Not in an IT dept, but when I was going to school, I worked in a restaurant
where I was the only male most of the time. Well, I was a shift manager, and
all the shift managers and store manager were females except me (4-5 others).
I got the crap shifts, had my schedule changed on a whim by others, and was
often given crap tasks - moving/unloading stuff "because you're the man - I
can't lift that!" It was funny for about a week, but never got any better.
Regional manager gave me no support - he didn't want to be seen as
disciplining any of the female staff for fear of some sexism/discrimination
lawsuit. Eventually I left, but not soon enough.

~~~
numo16
Funny you mention this, as I was told by the hiring manager at a wendy's that
I worked at that she was hiring me to "do the man work", which meant unloading
and putting away truck, working grill,taking out the trash, etc... Never
really thought about that until now...

~~~
mgkimsal
Things never change, do they. :)

IIRC, the issue started because one of the shift managers was pregnant, and
couldn't do some things - fair enough - it doesn't last forever, and I'm fine
with helping out now and then, but not being taken advantage of. And really,
most of this stuff really wasn't heavy - boxes of up to 25 pounds on occasion,
but rarely ever more than that, and there was trollies and carts and stuff to
move heavy stuff around (and usually delivery drivers would unload stuff to a
fridge or freezer for you anyway. Give them a nice cup of coffee and they'd
handle some of the shifting in the freezer too :)

------
vpeters25
On this kind of situations I usually follow the "vulcan" philosophy described
by Wayne D. Dyer in "Your Erroneous Zones".

It comes down to "you choose how you feel". There is nothing I can do to make
you choose a different feeling so I dont' need to bother trying.

Needless to say, you gotta be smart and avoid or apologize if you can help it,
but in my opinion, the whole pycon situation would not be a big deal if
everybody understood that concept.

------
broc
I didn't like the premise of the article because it made out women to be some
kind of foreign entity in the industry, in the author's words, "our industry".

> I do not want the women in our industry to feel unwelcome.

I know it's completely good-natured, but these kind of statements make it seem
like males single-handedly have the power to make women feel unwelcome or
welcome... which causes a divide even further. The phrase "there are ladies
present" is just strange to me, like males should be hyper-aware of the
foreign entity that is present. Gives the same effect as "there are elephants
present" in the room. No matter - we should be aware that /people/ are present
and dick jokes, etc. have no place in a professional setting.

I do agree that the locker talk happens. On numerous occasions, the males
around me have talked about seeing breasts and other (straight) male oriented
topics.

------
Glyptodon
I think you're actually pretty close to hitting the nail on the head. Of
course I'm not even female and I find some of the things you're talking about
tiresome... (Perhaps the issue is not exactly sexism, but infantilism?)

Even more draining is the 'treat the customers like sheep' sneering Wall
street trader attitude that some of my coworkers seem to have, and which seems
to be subtly propagated via attitudes about using analytics and machine
learning. We can herd our customers through subtle cues established through
artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques. Nearly every day
there's discussion about manipulating process and appearance and verbiage to
get a 1 or 3 or 2.5% higher conversion ratio, or cultivating a community via
social media through keeping up appearances - schedule your tweets, re-tweet
funny things, know your audience, etc. Analytic your customers 'till the cows
come home to understand which navigation items to put where and see 'how' your
customers user the 'product.' Create your own market. Etc. But it's all so
artificial. I can't remember the last time anybody seriously posted anything
looking at fulfilling an actual meaningful need, or their customers as actual
people.

Even for employees I think it's very disconcerting to have a public pitch
about how you care about customers and are part of a community, then behind
closed doors stereotype them like they're some sort of bovine herd who can't
tell alfalfa from the compost bin and joke about it. (Maybe this isn't normal?
But it feels normal in my experience. To a certain extent I can't even help
but participate. What can you do but joke about people still using IE 6 or 7
or who think the Internet's 'Turned Off' or whatever the random point of tech
ignorance is for the day? When so much of the world relies and depends on the
Internet without understanding it or having a clue or realizing how they're
tracked or what legal protections they don't have for their Facebook posts and
more, it's really hard to have respect even if you can pay it lip service.)

Quite frankly, I think things might be so bad that plenty of men find things
off-putting. But it does fit in pretty well with a narrative of
slavery/conquest versus nurture.

(If you're going to downvote maybe say why you think differently? I hate it
when it's left as a mystery.)

------
rachelbythebay
A question for the guys of HN who know their movies: what would your reaction
be to a service called Treehorn with a client program called LogJammer?

I only found out where those names came from much later.

~~~
gruseom
Do you mean, what would their reaction would be upon recognizing where those
names came from? My reaction, in order, was (1) ugh, gross; (2) whoever named
the service were being douchey idiots; (3) how much I dislike this aspect of
the porn generation; (4) I would not feel comfortable using that software.

~~~
rachelbythebay
It was a logging service at Google back when I was working as a pager monkey.
There were some people who _really_ wanted me to get it integrated with one of
our tools.

I didn't know anything about the movie at the time and so didn't get the
reference.

------
cjdrake
I am getting so sick of this story. How many millions of man-hours were wasted
this week by people being offended that Adria Richards was offended? I saw
this story on the BBC and CBS today. Before long, one (or both) of the fired
employee victims will hire Gloria Allred to file a wrongful termination
lawsuit and we'll be subjected to this circus for months.

~~~
zem
this story just set the stage to have the conversation about why women have a
hard time in tech, and things like the difference between direct harassment
(which everyone agrees is bad) and creating a hostile atmosphere (which lots
of people don't get).

------
phinze
IMHO this is one of the few thoughtful, productive pieces I've read on the
PyCon debacle. I appreciated his last line:

> Of course I'm just Tim Taylor, talking over the fence to Wilson. Women, do I
> have this right?

I too would love to hear reactions from both male and female members of the
community on his thoughts.

------
shmidley
This is very simple. Women have an instinctive revulsion of anything that
could be construed as sexual. This is no doubt a relic of our early days as a
species, where a sexual context that a woman had not pre-approved could mean a
costly nine month pregnancy. This is why its not just dick jokes that women
consider offensive, but even something as simple as calling a hat cute. If it
can be construed from your words that you are a male who sexually desires
females, then the words will result in women taking offense. It doesn't matter
if its not directed at any woman present, or if the idea of a presenter
sexually assaulting a conference-goer is inherently absurd. These are our
instincts, and you can't change them.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine why this is your problem
to solve.

~~~
summerdown2
> Women have an instinctive revulsion of anything that could be construed as
> sexual.

Do you have a source for this information, or is it, as it appears, complete
rubbish?

~~~
illuminate
All pop (and most academic) evo-psych is absolute rubbish.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_stories>

~~~
shmidley
The "probably" part is definitely a "just-so" story. It is unfalsifiable. As
for the hypothesis that the revulsion is instinctive, well, the only other
possibility is that it is learned. But if its learned, then this conversation
wouldn't be happening in the first place. It wouldn't be a big deal. The only
reason this conversation is even capable of happening is because everyone
already implicitly believes that women and only women are instinctively
repulsed by direct or subtle sexuality that isn't pre-approved, that is, it is
a violation of their core values and therefore we have a problem to be solved.

If men will admit to themselves what they already know and believe, they will
be better prepared to handle themselves to avoid conflict with their female
counterparts.

------
drucken
Is it really that hard? Just talk as if you had your mother, sister,
girlfriend, wife ... _all_ in the audience. Maybe one day you will have!

~~~
bowyakka
No good, that would make me more offensive

------
summerdown2
Isn't the solution to the whole thing just Postel's law?

Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.

------
iamtherockstar
I agree with this, fully and unequivocally. I have to wonder if "there are
ladies present" might also be construed as sexist. Maybe we just shouldn't use
toilet humor in situations where we're not absolutely sure everyone will find
it appropriate.

Warning: offensive, but to demonstrate a point...

I once interviewed a guy who decided to wear a t-shirt to the interview that
read "Thousands of my potential children died on your daughter's face last
night". There were no women there. I was not really even offended (toilet
humor is really hard not to giggle at, if for no other reason than I'm still
15 in my head somewhere). I was, however, careful not to let on that I noticed
it at all. On the way out, he asked for a tour (he thought he was getting the
job). When another coworker commented on his shirt he said "Yeah, I got
another one that says 'Swallow it or it goes in your eye'." It was a 5 person
company at the time, and none of them were female. Still, he wasn't getting
the job; anyone with that much disregard (dare I say arrogance) for other's
feelings isn't getting the job.

It's not about having men or ladies or kids present; it's about having a
mutual respect for others, and being conservative about what setting they
think toilet humor (or any humor) is appropriate.

~~~
illuminate
Serious question, and I don't mean this disrespectfully to you, but why did
you not turn him away immediately and proceed to waste everyone's time?

~~~
iamtherockstar
At the time, I was young developer being asked to interview a somebody. If I'm
honest, I was a little prideful that _I_ was interviewing him, and not one of
the other, more mature developers, so I took him through the process.

I think, knowing what I know now, and feeling confident in who I am as a
developer, I'd probably at least ask about it in the interview. I'd say "Why
did you choose to wear that shirt today?" Serious question. I'd be interested.
Maybe the answer is "Because I don't really want this job" and then it's
clear. Maybe it's "Because I don't want to work at a place that gets offended
easily" or maybe it's "Because I didn't have any other clean laundry." I
cannot think of a valid reason to wear that shirt to an interview, but I'd at
least be interested in his reasoning (though he's still not getting the job).

~~~
illuminate
Thanks! I've contributed to an interview or two, but I haven't yet been tasked
with the responsibility to cut one short if a serious red flag like that came
up.

------
foohbarbaz
Like

