
Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost - hexis
https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/
======
onemorepassword
So what we know now is that Adria Richards' issues are not just with sexism,
offensive behavior in general or gender equality, but that she has an
ideological agenda that goes well beyond that.

Her issues with pornography are ideological, in that they aren't shared by
many men and women who would take issue with sexist behavior or gender based
discrimination. However, like many ideologues, _she_ doesn't make that
distinction herself.

And what is also typical for ideologues, she doesn't have any issues with
saying or doing things that disproportionately harm people who disagree with
her, because they are "the enemy". They're not interested in change, they are
interested in _winning_.

These kind of people will do more harm than good when it comes to fighting
sexism in tech. They will actually alienate a lot of women.

(I do however find it inappropriate and borderline sexist to call her a prude.
Being against pornography doesn't make you a prude, just like enjoying
pornography doesn't make you a sexist pig.)

~~~
manicdee
These kind of people will alienate a lot of men too.

"Oh no! There's a woman in this conference room! I better just shut up and not
say anything just in case she takes offense at my talking about my dislike for
DRM dongles. Too bad that this means we'll be shipping a DRM-encumbered
product, but my job and reputation are more important to risk being fired over
perceived sexist comments, even if it saves the company from financial ruin in
the long run."

When every perceived slight ends up triggering thermonuclear war, people will
stop interacting with each other.

~~~
tadfisher
While you do have a point, the hyperbole isn't helpful.

------
redthrowaway
I think the most interesting part of this post was a simple observation that
I, for one, hadn't seen elsewhere:

We don't know why PlayHaven fired the dev in the first place.

Sure, the controversy undoubtedly played a role. But we don't know if the dev
was on the ropes, if he wasn't pulling his weight, or if his boss simply
didn't like him. This may have been a gross overreaction, or it may have been
the straw that broke the camel's back.

As story-driven creatures, we constantly seek to form narratives around
events. As sensation-seekers, we inherently care more about emotional impact
than veracity when we craft the mental stories that tie events together and
give them meaning. This is not to say that we are incapable of detached,
rational thought, but rather that our brains don't default to that mode.

One of my biggest personal takeaways from this sordid tale is just a
reaffirmation of that fact: that even smart, rational people, who get paid to
be smart and rational, will blindly abandon reason in pursuit of a good story.
This incident blew up into a tabloid-like frenzy because smart people
abandoned reason in favour of sensation. Moreover, this is not due to some
personal flaw on their parts: it's simply how we, as human beings, are built.

If anything positive comes from this, I hope it's simply a greater recognition
on the parts of all concerned of our propensity to engage in this kind of
behaviour, and the mental processes that lead to it. Maybe we can be a little
more measured in our appraisal of future incidents like this.

~~~
xoail
I doubt if there was any other case than the controversy. I doubt that the dev
was any where incompetent. I say this simply because of the dev's interest in
attending a conference and his company sponsoring it to him using forking and
dongles in a sentence... those are simply good signals of a good developer and
he being happy at his job. I feel that Pay Haven responded in a most defensive
way by simply firing him and getting it out of their shoulders.

~~~
niggler
" him using forking and dongles in a sentence... those are simply good signals
of a good developer"

Pray tell, how does a plebeian joke about dongles signal that a developer is
good?

"dev's interest in attending a conference and his company sponsoring it"

And as for his presence, it's not uncommon for a company to send a key
developer _and a friendly coworker_ to conferences, especially when it is far
away (so he may just have been a friendly coworker of Andy Reid)

~~~
rdtsc
> Pray tell

I will testify, brother. ;-)

It think what the gp post was saying is that usually (in most companies)
developers who are not very good or are not pulling their weight, are not sent
to conferences. What is the freaking reason to send someone to a conference to
learn and bring new ideas if they are about to be sent out of the door?

I don't know about friendly coworkers. Maybe other companies do that, we
don't. In my experience it is not about friendliness but about who deserves to
go and who is passionate about programming.

And, yeah, I agree, I don't see any correlation between him making dongle
jokes or being or not being a good programmer.

------
ramblerman
Without tumbling deep into a flame war, I'd like to ask a sincere question. I
have trouble understanding the sexism behind the remarks, and why the
instigator needs to apologize (for sexism).

People get offended for all kinds of things, nobody can claim a monopoloy on
that. (<http://imgur.com/EX5v4> stephen fry quote)

\- If they would both have been gay and talking about a homosexual topic,
someone in that room would be offended.

\- If they were creationists dismissing darwin, someone would be offended

\- 2 women discussing ‘shades of grey’, someone would be offended.

\- A dongle and forking, and Adria is offended.

To me it seems she is offended by the sexual overtones. A pruder man might be
offended by that too, or many a religious man. I just don’t see the link to
sexism.

I get it's lowbrow humor. It's not professional. It's probably not suited for
a public event like that. The dongle joke was men comparing their 'dongles'
and the suggesting they wanted to "fork" the male speaker.

How are women being put down or belittled at all here. How is it sexist?

~~~
cglee
Discussions like this seem to always come back to a sense of "fairness". It's
not about being fair, but about how situations make people feel.

Majority-group members tend to brush away the sensitivities of minority-group
members. If you're straight, you can walk hand-in-hand with your spouse
without issue. You may even be able to embrace publicly, and kiss, hug and
display all kinds of PDA. Gay couples can't do that without fear of reprisal,
sometimes violently.

Minority-group members are only "safe" in certain places.

At a tech conference, women are in the minority, and so crass comments
about/towards women are not perceived in a safe way. It's not your buddy
making a funny joke, it's the majority-group members expressing oppression.

Whether you personally agree with that is not the point; it's how minority-
group members feel.

Be aware of that.

~~~
kefka
And I've always found that self-proclaimed feminists are _always_ offended and
loud about it when they are. A few I know go to the point by saying females
are better and that all masculine references should be eliminated. They need
to vote with their pocketbooks: don't pay for a ticket, and don't attend.

I went to a 'con recently: The Midwest RepRap festival. I heard no references
to sex, sexuality, race, or anything of the sort. One sales person came
around, got argumentative once we said we were not interested, and started to
try to argue religion. That was perhaps, 10 minutes tops. Everybody else
stayed absolutely professional about everything.

Now, the last thing I want to hear at a tech conference is another tiring sex
joke. It may be funny, but that's not why I'm here.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Feminists are people who believe men and women should be treated equally.
Nothing more, nothing less. Classifying fanatics as "feminists" and acting
like all feminists acts that way is ... well... pretty damn stupid.

~~~
nbouscal
That's actually really not accurate at all. If feminism were that simple of a
concept, discussing it would be a hell of a lot easier. First off you have the
whole "wave" notion, where feminism has changed dramatically over time.
Second, most contemporary feminists are talking less about equality and more
about diversity, and the value of alternate perspectives. As for whether
fanatics get to be classified as feminists or not, it sounds like a classic No
True Scotsman scenario to me.

~~~
kefka
I try to avoid the no true Scotsman fallacy. If you say you are a feminist, I
accept. But what I say stands: every self proclaimed feminist I've met always
get offended at the stupidest things. One I know even had a diatribe towards
Carlin about the "personhole cover" because of his insensitivity. The usual
stance many in this category take is equality regarded in Animal Farm: they
are just "More Equal"

<added> I live in Indiana, and had this haopen to me: I went into a car
dealership, looking for a used car. Dealer walks up asking if I wanted to test
drive or ask questions. Later on in negotiations, he went hardcore slimy.
Along with that, said ,"You can trust me, I'm a good Christian."

That was enough to get me to leave on the spot. Usually people with self-
proclaimed titles are to be distrusted, or t least listened to with a very
critical ear. It's also similar if I run around calling myself "Ub3r Haxx0r".
Most of you would justly call BS.</added>

Then, I have also met many who fight for women to be equal with men. They
usually aren't much for the labels, yet will fight ferociously for the rights
to be equal. Equal pay is the big one right now, considering pay parity is
apart by 20%.

Best said by a friend: when a woman hits a man, and the man hits back, and
nobody gasps in astonishment, we shall be equal.

~~~
nbouscal
Interesting how well this aligns with <http://paulgraham.com/identity.html>.
You basically seem to be saying that you are more trusting of people who
follow pg's advice in that essay, and I'm inclined to agree with you on that
particular point.

------
obviouslygreen
This is a great article from a far more neutral and informed point of view
than most of us have managed (or could, given what little has actually been
said by first-hand sources). Thanks to the author for treating this issue both
critically and realistically, and for attempting to make a difference in
SendGrid's reaction, whether it worked or not.

~~~
Terretta
The link to the WordCamp XKCD comic, and Adria's reaction to it, told me more
than all the rest of the comments and articles over the past day.

I perceived the comic as two women:

Allegedly offensive comic: [http://jenmylo.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/screen-
shot-2011-...](http://jenmylo.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/screen-
shot-2011-08-03-at-12-36-47-pm.png)

Deep link to Adria's comment: [http://jenmylo.com/2011/08/03/wcsf-
shirt/comment-page-1/#com...](http://jenmylo.com/2011/08/03/wcsf-
shirt/comment-page-1/#comment-326)

I would be curious to learn Adria's rationale for the presumption of gender
she made. Seems as though she'd find Rorschach tests offensive too.

------
scarmig
Amanda Blum apparently has a history of animosity with Adria Richards, while
at the same time she also isn't one of those who would stick their fingers in
their ears and say there isn't sexism in tech. That makes this post pretty
interesting.

~~~
sergiotapia
I think a lot of people (myself included) spoke out against Adria Richards
because of her bullshit - not because she was a woman.

One can argue against what she did and not be a "mysoginist man-privelaged
pig". (<\--- I've seen women write that against people who spoke against Adria
Richards)

~~~
danielweber
Well, some of the people arguing against her _were_ that. But definitely not
all.

There were and are a lot of people who see this issue through exactly one
lens: is the man right or is the woman right? They caught hold of this issue
and made it part of their long battle. This issue got reposted to those
various blogs and subreddits that represent those armies. (And they each
monitor the other so summoning either army summons both.) I suspect that, had
those armies never been involved, neither person would be fired today. Not
that those armies care. The two people who got fired were acceptable
casualties in their war on The Other.

Ugh, this comment turned into pop-psychology, sorry.

------
biot
Well said. The last paragraph sums it all up perfectly:

    
    
      "I imagine in an alternate future, Adria just turned around,
       smiled and whispered, “Hey.  No offense, but I’m not all that
       interested in hearing about your dongle, you know?’. The men
       would have become momentarily embarrassed, and then reflexively
       defensive before letting their rational neurons fire in that
       crowded room and say, “yeah, dude, no problem”.  Maybe one of
       them would have approached Adria later in the day and pulled her
       aside to say “hey, I really didn’t mean to offend you, I’m
       sorry. Hope there’s no hard feelings.” In this alternate future,
       at a future conference that developer quietly steers a
       conversation amongst friends away from this territory, without
       making a big deal of it."

------
sammyd56
"Because of my experiences growing up, I have triggers. This means that I’m
always scanning for danger; for situations that seem like something from the
past that could hurt me. When I recognize something that matches, I can
overreact and feel intense fear, anger or anxiety. This is something I’ve
worked on a lot. It’s much better now than 10 years ago but there are some
things that send me over the edge."

[http://butyoureagirl.com/13871/success-against-the-odds-
fill...](http://butyoureagirl.com/13871/success-against-the-odds-filling-my-
technology-knapsack-from-scratch/)

(site is currently down, may need to view cache)

I'm surprised nobody has picked up on this yet.

~~~
pyre
I've tried to keep a pretty neutral opinion of her. It just seemed like she
made a misjudgement. This is the first post (Amanda Blum post) to reasonably
say something that makes me question that a bit.

Now, combine Amanda's post with this info and it's just possible that Adria
hasn't suffered enough of a negative response to her past actions (and maybe
even benefited from them a bit in blog traffic, etc), so she didn't really
'learn her lesson'[1] on the way she should approach these situations.
Unfortunately this time the negative reaction was extreme.

[1] This doesn't imply that her reactions were malicious or self-serving. Just
that there was never a reaction that caused her to question her way of
responding to these things.

~~~
azov
She is a PR person.

When the dust settles, SendGrid, PlayHaven, affected developers, women in tech
as a group, and our industry as a whole will end up with some reputation
damage and setbacks in the struggles on equality front.

But Adria personally will probably benefit from her newfound celebrity status
in one way or another. There's no such thing as bad publicity, that's the most
likely lesson to be learned [again].

~~~
pyre

      | no such thing as bad publicity
    

If someone follows through with death/rape threats, I wouldn't peg that as
'good' or 'coming out on top.'

------
anankastic
So Adria Richards has pulled shit like this before? Seems like she just does
most of this stuff for attention... too bad she took it too far this time and
bit off more than she could chew.

~~~
Udo
There is definitely a pattern recognizable from her writing style down to her
topic choices and views on these things. Some of these actions also look in no
small way hypocritical. However, this discussion is already so extremely
loaded with such an insane amount of subtext and misplaced projections done by
people who feel reminded of their own traumas, it's hugely unhelpful to launch
into a character critique of Richards at this point. It's become an overloaded
topic as it is.

~~~
raganwald
This is exactly how rape trials used to be conducted. The victim would be put
on the stand and critiqued about every single relationship she had ever had,
with the defence bringing all of her skeletons out in a manner carefully
calculated to seem reasonable, fair, and balanced.

I'm fifty. I could put together two blog posts about myself, one of which
would make me seem like a saint, the other a demon, and both would be
factually correct. Which one you read right after I got into some hot water
could seriously skew your feelings about my role in events.

~~~
Udo
This line of rhetorics is _exactly_ the reason why I said that a character
critique is unhelpful here, so I'm not sure what your point is but I'm
choosing to interpret this as agreeing with me. ;)

~~~
raganwald
That's how I interpret my remarks too :-)

------
Nursie
Good article.

I agree there is rampant sexism in tech, and in society in general. I've seen
it, lots. I'm not convinced a couple of guys chuckling at "Big Dongles" is
sexism, though it is inappropriate for a professional event.

But now we get the picture of Adria Richards and it does seem to be one of
someone looking out for ways to be offended and publicise herself with them.

And then there's the DDoS and the threats. Utterly un-fucking-acceptable.

There's not really anyone that comes out of this looking good.

~~~
takluyver
> There's not really anyone that comes out of this looking good.

In my opinion, the PyCon organisers handled things well. They acted on the
complaint, explained to the jokers why it was inappropriate, got an apology,
and left it there, without publishing names.

Unfortunately for them, popular perception of PyCon is probably somewhat
tainted by this whole messy incident anyway.

~~~
Nursie
Yes, actually, of all the actors in this weird online play they did seem to
behave reasonably and decently throughout.

------
dccoolgai
I am just gobsmacked...I can't believe I just read something so thoughtful and
well-reasoned...this whole thing should end with this article marked "End Of
Thread".

~~~
davidmr
Very much agreed. Whether or not I agree with it, it's very nuanced and avoids
the kind of "laying blame for the purpose of laying blame"-type of argument
that has dominated any discussion of this absurd series of events.

This is a great article with which to start a discussion, not end one.
Hopefully the tolerance for less nuanced and more reactionary discussion will
abate. I wouldn't put money on it, but I can hope.

~~~
dccoolgai
I would say it's worth reading even completely outside of this whole circus;
"Assume people will be reasonable until they are not." is very wise.

------
Shenglong
Respectably, I disagree with the OP on this entire subject. Yes, the Adria
scandal was not constructive to any party involved - but the way it's being
analyzed is dead wrong:

 _When women in this industry are hurt, we’re all hurt._

No. No. It's _exactly_ this kind of thinking that got us here in the first
place. It's this kind of thinking that perpetuates the very dissonance
inherent in stereotypes. There is _so much_ anti-racism/anti-sexism/anti-
everything-slightly-inappropriate recently that some days I don't want to get
out of bed. I _don't want_ to watch what I say at every turn. I don't want to
limit my vocabulary when there are so few English words in the first place. I
don't want to change what I find funny because society has all of a sudden
deemed it possibly inappropriate under certain situations. So what's the
solution?

People need to start recognizing others as individuals--people need to start
recognizing _themselves_ as individuals. I'll admit it: I make inappropriate
jokes _all_ the time around my friends: every sort of inappropriate joke you
can imagine. Why? Because the whole concept of shock humor is poking at things
that are obviously not true. Why would people laugh if women actually were bad
drivers (I am a terrible driver)? Why would they laugh if Asians could
actually all do backflips (I broke a finger trying). If forking someone's repo
was _actually_ sexual, why would it be funny? "I'm going to fuck her" surely
isn't funny.

The moment we all recognize that people are individuals, and not just subsets
of classes, is the moment where all this ridiculousness will go away. Thinking
that a blow to one woman hurts _all women_ is as ridiculous as thinking a blow
to one Asian hurts all Asians - or a blow to one person in tech who has large
muscles is a blow to all people in tech who have large muscles. The
association is ridiculous.

I don't know any women in tech. I know people in tech, and some of them just
happen to be women.

------
HiroProtaganist
You guys realize, all this shit (all if it, Adria, the "post-mortem" blog
posts, etc), is just a land grab for page views right?

[http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-
Manipulator...](http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-
Manipulator/dp/159184553X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363902289&sr=8-1&keywords=trust+me+im+lying)

~~~
jere
Wait, you're saying Adria traded her job for a few page views and death
threats?

~~~
HiroProtaganist
Do I think that was her intention? No, I think that part spiraled out of
control. Do I think this spawned from a PR person looking for the page views?
Yes.

------
Zikes
> Trolls aside, if you don’t believe there is misogyny in the tech world, this
> will absolve you of that belief. There was little reasonable chatter,
> instead she was attacked not as a person or developer but as a female- a
> bitch.

For what it's worth, I've seen and partaken of a great deal of reasonable
chatter here on HN. I don't doubt a fair amount of "unreasonable" chatter has
taken place elsewhere, but for the life of me I can't find a single example of
it coming from any person that could be said to be reasonably representative
of the community as a whole.

I mean, if all it took was one penis joke for one man to be fired, one would
think that there would be industry-wide layoffs every time one of these
incidents occur.

------
sergiotapia
After reading this article, it really has painted a picture that this person
really does belong in the extreme feminist camp. She would fit right in at
/r/shitredditsays.

------
mercurial
This was a great post. And I think it does a pretty good job at illustrating
the absurdity of the situation: one sex joke and three people are out of a
job, with one potentially unemployable in the same capacity.

Now, guys will feel compelled to check themselves every time they are in
public. When being victim of actual harassment, girls will think twice about
denouncing it.

And the worst part is that all the actually sexist guys will be able to point
to this incident as a justification for why sexism in the tech industry is
"not a problem".

Thanks, Adria. Thanks, Internet. You all did a terrific job.

------
nilkn
Some of the reactions to her have really gotten way out of hand. Seriously.

I was just browsing through her YouTube account and it's now spammed with tons
of overtly racial and sexist slurs against her. These aren't "dongle" jokes.
They're the real deal.

This is really just a tragedy. Adria Richards is not the only one who is
showing her sensitive, human side here. I think she made a mistake, a big one,
and I agree with the decision of SendGrid. But, oddly enough, I think some of
the reactions are showing that maybe she was right all along. Her example of
sexism and racism in the developer community was a terrible one, but
ironically it has led to lots of legitimate examples.

------
lignuist
Two people fired. Wow. what happened to just saying sorry to each other and
accepting it?

~~~
escaped_hn
Nah. That would be to logical a conclusion.

~~~
lopatin
Exactly. If I've learned anything from my time using templating libraries,
it's that logic-less is the answer!

------
shirro
Extremists play a role. Where do you draw the line on sexualisation at a tech
conference? Perhaps we need unpopular people like Adria to create debate on
what is acceptable and what isn't. I don't always agree with RMS but I think
the world is a better place for having him around influencing opinion one way
or another. At least these people aren't flying planes into buildings though
shaming people with photos is clearly heading towards the dark side. The
bigger issue is the unfair dismissals that resulted.

~~~
niggler
"Where do you draw the line on sexualisation at a tech conference?"

I hope that this discussion helps us get closer to a good answer to that
question.

~~~
ghaff
For example, take this pic from LinuxCon last year:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/bitmason/7987595846/> (To be clear, I took this
pic because I found it funny, not offensive. I suspect some might find it
offensive.)

~~~
niggler
I don't understand that ad TBH. If they are trying to get males to purchase
tee-shirts, wouldnt you want to show a male wearing the tee-shirt? I
understand the idea of selling for sexuality, but most retail companies
advertise men's clothes with men.

------
return0
There's a lesson to be learned here, that a gender war leads nowhere. While
sensational, this event has little substance. It's all about conferences
(shows) and appearances. None of the two was fired because of their work.
There's barely anything useful that can be taken away from this story and
added to a company's moral code. The real gender issues have little to do with
these high profile tech soap operas.

------
steven2012
This is the most intelligently written and most insightful article on this
topic, and I hope we can close the entire thing up and move on.

------
josephlord
If your job is evangelism and you get to the point where you are claiming in a
tweet that your employer "supports" you there is a real risk that you are
asking them to evangelise you rather than the other way round and then your
position is likely to be precarious.

When you are employed, particularly in a PR or role or any other where you
speak for your employer your speech is not fully free. Even when in your own
time on private accounts if you claim views and opinions as your own rather
than your employer's it can still have an impact. Anonymity is valuable if you
have something that you want to say without bringing your employer into the
issue.

This is not to deny that there may be sexism or that it may be right to
publicly stand against it but when in controversial territory speak for
yourself and let PR or the CEO back you publicly if they want to and do
consider the affect on ability to fulfil role and then balance the need to
make a societal impact against that (or quit and speak freely).

------
niggler
I for one am very glad that this happened. It's unfortunate that two people
were fired, but I haven't seen such fervent discussion of gender issues,
social media, and social norms in a very long time.

------
WalterSear
That this kind of blog post is a response to the situation is a small glimmer
of how eventually we can all 'win' from this.

------
smsm42
I didn't even know "money shot" has a porn meaning until reading this article.
I thought it's something to do with dice games or marksmanship or something.
You learn something new every day.

As for the matter of the loss, I think the article is spot on. I personally
would be horrified if I learned that somebody who made a silly joke I didn't
like lost his/her job when if I just handled it a bit differently everything
could be fine and nobody would be hurt. Now two people are out of jobs and
amount of misery and bad feelings in the tech world is clearly increasing. And
that's in open source where the thing that brings people together supposed to
be helping each other and making the world better together. Everybody lost
here, big time.

------
SeanLuke
I'm interested in a different aspect here than the discussion of sexism and
who fired whom at this point. If you're running a blog as a public evangelist
for a company, and twitter is part of that public presence, and you emit a
tweet which includes a picture of people and criticism of them without their
permission, surely this constitutes a violation of commercial use-of-likeness
laws in most states, doesn't it?

------
ceol
Aside from the personal stuff between her and Adria, I think she has a good
grasp of the situation. (i.e. I agree with her) However, I find one thing
troubling:

 _> Adria reinforced the idea of us as threats to men, as unreasonable, as
hard to work with… as bitches._

(From here addressed to Amanda, should she be unlucky enough to stumble upon
this thread) I don't believe you should be worrying about whether what you do
reinforces someone else's preconceived notion of your gender. Do you really
think someone who already sees women as uppity b-tches would suddenly change
their tone just because you don't adhere to their stereotype? No, they're
going to write you off as an exception. "No no, you're not like _them!_ You're
one of the _good ones!_ " But as soon as you do something they don't like?
"What a fucking b-tch. This just proves women don't belong in tech. etc etc"

However, I'm a guy. I don't really have the right to tell you how you should
think about your own oppression, much like how no one has the right to tell
Adria how she should have handled calling those two guys out— aside from doing
something illegal, which posting a photo on Twitter most certainly is not.

I guess what I'm saying is that I agree everyone lost, but one person lost a
hell of a lot more than anyone else. That guy whose name we still don't know?
He's gotten job offers. Play Haven, the place that actually fired him?
Unscathed. Adria? _Constant_ harassment, rape and death threats, and now
presumably fired from her job while her former employer is being DDoS'd. All
because she posted a picture of some guys on Twitter.

Think about that the next time a thread comes up about the sexism women face
in the programming community. You can't write it off as a bunch of trolls this
time, because a lot of the backlash was directly from HN.

~~~
cheald
First of all, I want to say that in absolutely no way are the rape/death
threats in any way acceptable or excusable. There are lots of ways to
criticize someone without threatening physical violence. Shame on anyone who
chooses that route.

That said, I don't think that Adria is making off worse here because she's a
woman, or because of inherent sexism in the community - she's making off worse
because she was the aggressor, and because she decided to pick a fight and
decided to go all-in on it. She's a bully, and if there's anything that the
nerdosphere hates with a burning passion, it's a bully.

The guy she photographed privately apologized and then publicly published an
apology _defending Adria_. He's done his make-good on this. Adria, on the
other hand, has apparently determined she's going down with this ship, and is
riding it all the way to the bottom. If she's not willing to compromise and is
instead determined to be a martyr, it's difficult to dredge up sympathy that
she's getting a harder bargain than the guy she decided to pick on.

~~~
ceol
Like I said in another reply, and like the author of this submission said in
her post, many of the threats and harassing statements were very much specific
to her gender (and some of her race.) Why is it that when a woman does
something wrong, the hacker/tech community's first reaction is to throw around
gendered slurs? Don't give me this crap about how every other community does
it. That's not an excuse. We have to start somewhere, and we should be better
than this, but we're not.

WRT her not apologizing for posting his photograph: What do you think would
happen if she did? She's been fired, she's been threatened with rape and with
death, she's been harassed on a constant basis since this began. Do you think
her apology will have any effect? Look at how her (rather benign and polite)
comment was received: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047> Scroll
down and look at all those dead comments. Do you think her coming out now and
saying, "I'm so sorry for publishing your photograph" would do anything?

I'd like to add, where is the lynch mob against these guys that their
photograph was supposed to cause? I see a lot of people saying "you're
publicly shaming them!" and "you tried to get a witch hunt going!" but...
there wasn't one. She was just posting their photograph, and nothing in the
public sphere happened to them. Only one guy was fired, and no one knew about
that until he went and made an account on HN himself and said it.

------
Shank
This is, by far, one of the bests posts I've seen about the Adria situation,
because it isn't entirely biased to one side. Amanda (the post author) notes
that "[nobody] won," which is the signifying action as to why this is so
important. Adria was threatened and hated upon over an overreaction. While she
definitely didn't do the right thing initially, the best move would have been
to mitigate damage, both from Play Haven & SendGrid. If both companies had
apologized, they would both be better off for it, and it wouldn't have
resulted in any DDoSing or threats. I'm disappointed at all of the reactions
attacking Adria, because they're the exact thing she was trying to prevent in
the first place (sexism, hatred), because it wasn't constructive. It does
nothing but burn bridges, and undermines the original problem (the dev being
fired) in the first place. If the community instead rallied around the dev &
asked him to get reinstated, rather than attacked Adria, it would have ended
differently.

------
parad0x1
This conversation took place between the two guys. Why the hell does she have
the right to be offended on a conversation he overheard? And further, what
gives her the right to take pictures of people without telling them anything.
You can't even argue the public place rule, because the the guys would be able
to talk about whatever they want. If she really was offended, and not in it
for personal gain, pseudo-women's rights, and just plain selfishness then she
would just go to the conference organizers and told them about the incident.
But she decides to be a huge hypocrite, post his picture on Twitter and get
attention to herself. She succeeded, but it never turned out the way that she
thought it would be. I am pro women's rights, but this isn't an argument of
sexism, this is a hypocritical narcissistic feminazi who wants the center of
attention. The guy who got fired didn't deserve it, while she really did. She
doesn't deserve the attention she is getting.

------
klrr
I know many other communities and industries these actions Adra did would made
her banned (forever) for much less things.

------
smrtinsert
I honestly believe we had no social tool to soothe the viral effects of this
story. Without a downvote or obscure button in twitter, hacker news, facebook,
reddit, the only thing you can do is promote. In this case, the agents of
sensationalism completely swept the story out of the publics hands, and we're
left with remorse at an unfortunate incident that was made way worse though
the internet.

both parties have had time to inspect their actions, both appear to be sorry,
i believe that adria owes the developer an apology for an internet level
attack - because thats what it is. she does not owe an apology for objecting
to the comment and mr hank has made it clear he's seen his error.

i hope we all learn from this, and move on. our profession might be younger
than most white collared professions, but have to be better than this, we all
have to be.

------
tmsh
One thing I will say though, ironically, is that this may be actually a good
experience for the million or so male and female technology people reading
about this.

If programming teaches anything, it's that common sense is not something that
actually comes easily. The better term perhaps is 'good sense'. And with
changing environments, it's easy to lose sight of what is good sense, in
different situations. Anyway, if the net result will be that a lot of people
will be talking to people first if they have issues, and being more careful
about their conversations, and more sensitive generally, then there might
actually be a kind of hidden, but great, good outcome to it all.

------
nawitus
"But at the Boston conference, great strides were made to have a strong female
presence. Almost 40% of attendees at Boston were female, almost 40% of
speakers (at the time these numbers were VERY high),"

That's not gender equality though, that's positive discrimination. I think
conferences should try to get the best speakers available regardless of their
gender.

"She didn’t get the developer in question fired"

She is clearly partly responsive for the company's reaction to the "incident".

"How it Could Have Gone"

The best alternative future is of course clear: act like an adult in a
conference. If you think an overheard joke about "dongles" is not to your
liking, then too bad. It's rude trying to control other people.

------
brunolazzaro
The internet is a weird place. I will never understand why Adria did what she
did, from all i read she is an intelligent person yet she chose to do the most
childish thing in the world... tattle the kid that said "penis" in class. I'm
not saying that what the kid is wrong, but don't tattle on him flat-out...
just tell him to stop before you go to the teacher and the whole class finds
out and the kid gets expelled. But then, the whole class got mad at her. With
reason, or not. It do... But the point is that this feels like kindergarden.
JUST BE NICE TO EACH OTHERS. DON'T BE PENISES.

------
creativityhurts
I think nor Adria or PlayHeaven should use Github anymore
<http://shop.github.com/products/fork-you-shirt-mens-medium>

------
nilved
"In attempting to unveil casual misogyny in the tech field, Adria has
accidentally revealed the actual misogyny that lies in our industry, and
there's nothing casual about it."

~~~
LargeWu
I think even "casual misogyny" is hyperbole, given the original comment that
sparked this whole mess. I think the worst you can say about it is that it was
crude and unprofessional.

The hateful aftermath, though, clearly should not be tolerated.

------
foohbarbaz
I said it once and will say again: these off color jokes between _some_ males
tend not to happen when there's not a woman in earshot.

So, yes, I suspect strongly there was a good reason for Adria Richards to be
offended.

The firing by her company and the reaction of the community just left me
speechless. Just plain sad. Why the dev in question needed to be fired is also
questionable to me.

Ashamed to belong to this crowd. Unfortunately.

------
D_Alex
Or perhaps... in fact...in the end... we all won?!

The situation resolved itself in a way that demonstrated that the community is
tolerant of political correctness slip ups, and intolerant of those that blow
them up out of proportion. But please, y'all... don't take it as a license to
make puerile jokes. A little bit of extra sensitivity may be appropriate for a
while.

------
monksy
What I'm not seeing is the amount of flack that Playhaven got from Ms
Richard's supporters. I suspect that it was contacted heavily [if the
reactions from the SendMail site are any indication].

------
Jun8
This is by far the best post I read about this whole sordid affair. As
suspected, Richards, did indeed exhibit this pattern of overreacting before.
The balance of this article was amazing!

------
seivan
We got an unstable, hypocritical, oversensitive jaded person out of our way. I
think this was a win.

I feel sorry for mr-hank though, I hope he does better than a shitty startup
like Play Haven.

------
likeclockwork
I didn't see this drama. I usually try to avoid the dramas, but, wow she took
their pictures and posted them on Twitter? She thinks of herself as 'being a
hero'?

What a cowardly overreaction.

------
mkr-hn
This is the most level-headed thing I've seen on the situation.

------
frozenport
Mentioned this to my 80 year old grandmother, who has a PhD in Aerospace, said
the inability to work problems out by talking was a common stereotype for
women.

------
chris_mahan
All I know is that as a python developer I'm fairly disgusted by what
happened. My son is 7 and this is the sort of thing that happen in second
grade.

------
Havoc
Some people are just surrounded by constant drama...mostly drama created out
of thin air. Its a useful trait to have if your surname is "Kardashian".

------
crapshoot101
This is a truly well-written piece. Props to Amanda.

------
jack-r-abbit
> _There’s a gentleman’s code for privacy_

Wait... what? is that sexist? or ironic? I can't tell anymore these days.
Should I be offended by that?

------
TheCondor
So twitter has nothing in this as people create anonymous accounts and
threaten users with rape?

------
patrickgzill
ForkingDongleClub.com is available for purchase as a domain name, at the time
of this writing.

------
qaz_plm
At the end of the day, they both did it to themselves and they only have
themselves to blame.

------
laichzeit0
"No one has the right to spend their life without being offended." - Philip
Pullman

------
ghostnappa
Now I don't wanna play cards against humanity with any of my co-workers
ever...

------
ramses
"[...] talk to eachother. Assume people are reasonable until they are not."

As simple as that.

------
bjeanes
Exactly the article I was contemplating writing. Thank you!

------
tehwalrus
A very thoughtful article on a very horrible mess.

------
polarix
This is so accurate. Let us mourn.

------
michaelochurch
Let's simplify the rules to basic decency. Don't Be a Dick. Oh wait, I guess I
can't say that now. Well, fuck me. Whoops, can't say that either.

I hope mr-hank gets a huge severance out of PlayHaven. (At-will employment is
not as simple as employers like to say it is.) At this point, he has position
for something substantial, given that they discussed the termination in the
public (disclosing an opinion that he is guilty) when he is a non-public
employee. He should not just focus on termination (long odds) but also
defamation of character and, unless they give the best of references, tortious
interference. He ought to play hardball. Oh, whoops. Not sure I can say that
either.

This nonsense about "offensive jokes" is ridiculous and distracts people away
from the real sexism. I think we should care more about women earning 77 cents
on the dollar and having an unfairly hard time recovering their career
progress after maternity than about an occasional _dongle joke_. There are
real problems and whatever Adria just tripped on is not one of them.

~~~
samiur1204
Agreed. Even though I'm sure Adria has been putting up with tons of real
sexism over the years in the tech industry, and that this may have been the
figurative straw on the camel's back, this is definitely the wrong thing to
focus on. Sex jokes are definitely not necessarily sexist. These guys were
perhaps a little crude, and their puns maybe horrible, but they were
essentially harmless and at worst, just annoying.

What we should focus on is the terrible response from the tech community
towards Adria. There is horrifying sexism in the comments that have been
posted over the past 24 hours, and it just brings to light the pervasive
sexism in our industry. Let's focus on that and denigrate those comments, not
some random crude comments a couple guys said in private.

~~~
WalterSear
Not puns - just one pun.

The repo forking was, though informal, a thoroughly unpurient and non-sexual
comment that she read meaning into.

~~~
samiur1204
She's allowed to be offended with those comments (or single pun), but the
method of communicating her offense was definitely not called for.

And honestly, even if it were sexual, it isn't sexist. I think that's a
distinction that certainly needs to be made. Calling Adria a c*nt and other
horrible things online definitely is sexist though.

~~~
Draco6slayer
Is insulting a female inherently sexist? I wouldn't call someone a sexist if
they called me a d _ck or a son of a b_ tch. Obviously the response here is
sexist, but calling somebody bad names is not sexist, regardless of their
gender.

~~~
WalterSear
IMHO, sexualized epithets are sexual.

It's more productive not to muddy the waters though: it's not like there are
only a handful of ways to insult someone.

~~~
Draco6slayer
I don't know. Some words are just attached to each sex, and that's just a part
of language. We don't say waitperson over waiter or waitress. Something that
is both attached to a gender and insulting is by no means insulting someone
for their gender or insulting a gender overall.

English is definitely one of the least sexualizing languages of the Romance
Languages. In French or Spanish, everything would be attached to a gender, but
that doesn't mean that the words define the gender themselves. Nobody in Spain
thinks that chairs are 'where women belong' or anything like that.

~~~
geoelectric
Well, no, we say server, because server is gender-neutral. Compare
steward/stewardess with flight attendant. And some servers will get mighty
angry if you call them a waitress.

I don't necessarily think that response is justified when no offense is
actually meant. But the point is that there has been an identifiable trend in
our language towards moving away from gender-specific terms for roles that
shouldn't otherwise have a relevance to gender.

I'd argue this movement is overdue for epithets. I think "asshole," "asshat,"
"assclown," really anything in the venerable ass family, makes for an ideal
gender-neutral epithet. We should use these more often!

Edit: typo

~~~
gdwatson
That's always seemed an odd quirk of the restaurant industry to me. _Server_
to refer to a person sounds stilted to my ear; a server is a computer to me,
but a waiter or a waitress is a person.

So a sincere question: _Why_ would someone be offended to be described as a
waitress?

------
cooldeal
For the life of me I cannot fathom why PlayHaven went to the extreme step of
firing the dev in question.

What he did was certainly wrong, but certainly not a firable offense. A stern
warning from HR would've sufficed.

Also, I don't understand the hate and DDoS directed towards SendGrid. I think
if any, PlayHaven should've been subject of it and pressured to reinstate the
dev in question.

SendGrid should've been pressured to warn her, not fire her like it happened.

We commit mistakes every once in a while, and losing your job is a big
punishment. It's like getting your car seized by the government for speeding
10% over the speed limit.

Unfortunately the outcome is that a message is sent that DDoS works to get
people that the internet mob doesn't like fired, and that a part of the male
tech community is wielding that power.

What if parts of the female tech community retaliate with a DDoS against
SendGrid now?

Looks like the male privilege extends to having the resources to perform DDoS.

~~~
btilly
_For the life of me cannot fathom why PlayHaven went to the extreme step of
firing the dev in question._

They had 2 devs involved that incident. One they fired. One they publicly said
was a valued employee.

We will never know why they did what they did, why those devs were treated
differently, and whether they had cause for their action. I personally find it
hard to believe that this event would be enough cause by itself for a
reasonable employer to fire an employee in good standing. Which means that
some combination of these three are wrong: my belief, the claim that the
employer is reasonable, the claim that the employee was in good standing.

Guess whatever combination you want - we are unlikely to ever know the truth.
(Though your comment is perfectly in line with my belief.)

~~~
scarmig
But it's a terrible tactical move.

They fired one dev out of two, presumably as a value proposition: this was
just the one thing to break the camel's back. Which is reasonable, but the
issue is that it looks like they fired him entirely for the comment, which
obviously has the potential to create a PR fiasco. Lo and behold...

~~~
jrs235
Perhaps the one that was fired was on probation or already on a performance
plan for other issues. This may have been the "not gonna work here" moment.

------
martinced
Do you people realize that women, when between women, can be just as gross as
men? They talk about guys as "food" and "expendable" things. They really do.
Also they typically give way more details about their sexual life to their
women friends than man do to their men friends.

The difference is that in the coding world it's something like 90% men. So of
course you won't have enough women "teaming up" to make gravvy jokes about
men's short appendages or whatever.

What about we stop it?

I was playing tennis with a friend the other day: two men. On the court next
to our were four women. My friend was making a few jokes during pauses and
being "gross". I can tell you that the four women were doing exactly the same:
you can't hear it but they look at you and laugh and you know they're talking
about you as meat they're going to eat or something. Because that's what women
do when they look at men and laugh between them. Just ask them ffs. They can
be _really_ gross too.

Now I try not to make these jokes and sexual remarks: not because somehow I'd
try not to offend the other person (honestly women can laugh as much as they
want when talking about me, I don't give a frak). No, the reason I don't do
this is because I've got a girlfriend and I don't want to be disrespectful to
her by making sexual jokes about "wanting to fork other women's little hidden
repo" or something.

It would be great if people stopped doing these lame remarks but it would be
great too if women stopped playing 16 years old virgins who are never saying
anything gravvy about men when between them.

------
WayneDB
Hey, sex jokes are not always about women. Big dongles and forking could
totally describe male-male sex! Also, why get so upset about sex jokes? Is
there something wrong with sex? You wouldn't even be here without it!

I think that people who complain or argue quickly have some unresolved
problem. I think this because I am one of those people and I KNOW that I have
unresolved mento-emotional issues :) I know that I should be cool and appear
to be agreeable all the time, but sometimes (more frequently, mornings or
certain topics) it's very challenging. The payoff is so much better than
bickering though.

The important thing is to realize you're being a righteous asshole. Then you
can start changing.

------
CyberDroiD
All I saw was some smart ass jack asses getting busted since everyone has a
camera nowadays. Get used to everyone having cameras to capture your jackass
behavior.

Funny that these trolls are so defensive after they got busted and
photographed. They can dish it out, but they sure can't take it.

