Let me get this out of the way: I don’t like Adria Richards. I think I have good reason to not like Adria Richards. So I should be feeling some major Schadenfreude right now. Instead, though, I think what’s unfolded in the developer community in recent days has been a tragedy. Here’s why.
- Adria Richards was an attendee at PyCon, a tech conference, as part of her job as a developer evangelist at Sendgrid, a tech company that manages emails.
- She took offense to a conversation two men, also developers for a company called Play Haven, were having behind her during the conference, in which they referenced “dongles” and “forking”. Both of these are tech terms, they were construed to be used sexually on Adria’s part.
- Without ever mentioning her offense to the men, she took their picture, posted it to twitter and asked PyCon to do something about it.
- Play Haven fired one of the developers.
- Then the internet blew up.
An Established Pattern of Action
Why don’t I enjoy Adria? I met her in New York some years ago at a conference and invited her to speak at a conference I was organizing in Boston. She was a very good speaker and I wanted her to help our beginners. She’s not an easy person- she didn’t like the title of her talk, she didn’t like her time slot, etc. Two weeks before the conference, we got a few emails from attendees that she had just threatened on her podcast to boycott our conference because one of our speakers, Danielle Morrill was giving a lightning talk about how to use screencasting software called “Getting the Money Shot”.
She’d never told us she was offended, she’d never told Danielle- she told her podcasting audience and blog readers that we were promoting porn. In the end, after great drama, she attended and deep sixed her talk, instead lecturing the attendees about how porn wasn’t acceptable at conferences. The beginners in her class were less than amused and ultimately, deprived of the opportunity to learn from her.
At the time I was really angry and frustrated. We were unpaid volunteers organizing this event, and she never gave us the opportunity to try and solve the problem and was about to leave us in the lurch. By the time it blew up (an explosion created entirely by her) we felt cornered and blackmailed.
The following year, she took offense to a t shirt created for WordCamp SF, pictured below.
XKCD generously allowed their comic to be used. Instead of contacting Jane Wells , who was in charge of the project and is easily reachable, she made the situation immediately public and rallied her troops.
To be clear, I believe the tech industry, of which I am a part, is rampantly sexist. It runs so deep and so organic to the industry that even men who would see it in other places don’t recognize it in our insulated world. So rampant, often females don’t even see it-it usually happens quietly- a lack of female speakers, a male praised for something a female said earlier, unnoticed. 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), there were multiple women (including myself) on the organizing committee. Jane Wells has long sought to inject opportunities for women into WordCamps and the tech community at large. Danielle Morrill was a highly regarded female in the startup arena, at the time the first employee at Twilio who spoke frequently at conferences. Unequivocally, each of us would have been very receptive to Adria if she’d just approached us instead of attacked us.
What We Can Learn from Overreaction
There is some small part of me that appreciated the backlash she received this week, something I’m ashamed to admit, because I’ve long viewed her as a bully who uses these instances to her personal gain, driving traffic to her blog. But people were missing the point.
Within 24 hours, Adria was being attacked with the vile words people use only when attacking women. They called her a man hater (this was the nicest thing they said) who robbed a father of three of his livelihood. Then the threats began- on twitter, on her blog, on facebook. She should get raped, she should be fired, she should be killed, she should kill herself. A petition was started and people threatened SendGrid’s business. The company itself suffered a DDOS attack. All this ridiculousness made Adria look reasonable in comparison.
She didn’t get the developer in question fired… Play Haven did that and there are probably details of that transaction we aren’t privy to. It is a tragedy, but one that isn’t her fault. She committed one single offense: not approaching the men like an adult and saying “hey. guys- cmon, that’s offensive to me.”. On her own blog, she states “it only takes three words: ‘That’s not cool‘”, which I agree with. She should have said them to the developers in question. If she was that uncomfortable doing so in a full room, she could have contacted PyCon officials privately, there were certainly channels to do so. Its important to note Adria’s entire job was conversing with developers. There were multiple steps she could have taken before she once again dropped a public bomb on twitter and her blog. In her own take on the situation, Adria claims to have considered many things like the size of the room and the audience. All she had to consider was “what outcome am I looking for?”. If the outcome is “change the way these men are speaking” she’d have taken a different route. If “make as big a deal of this as humanly possible with no thought to consequence” was her outcome, she chose right.
I emailed SendGrid via friends who worked there to inform them of the pattern: when Adria is offended, she doesn’t work within the community to resolve the problem, and how ultimately,it actually harms female developers because it forms the perception that we are to be feared, we are humorless, that we are hard to work with. I suggested that SendGrid had the resources to retrain her and teach her better techniques and that I hoped they would choose that path instead of penalty to her. This morning, they went the other way, SendGrid posted that she was no longer with the company.
How did we lose?
The last 24 hours have been some of the ugliest on the internet. The tech community, especially the Open Source community is built on respect for others. There’s a gentleman’s code for privacy (taking a picture w/o permission is not ok; spamming someone a virtual crime) and procedure dictates even security leaks to be reported privately. 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.
SendGrid lost – they had an opportunity to build toward a positive resolution and they instead lost business, lost a good employee (Adria is a smart, educated teacher and speaker) and lost respect first for doing nothing and then doing too much. They couldn’t seem to win this one. They didn’t respond fast enough yesterday, when they should have insisted that Adria apologize for not dealing with her offense in a more mature manner. They could have immediately seized control of the situation and turned it into a productive conversation about men and women in this space. SendGrid is a fabulous company turning out a great product, employing many great people, some of whom I know, and its gotta be a very hard day there.
Adria didn’t win. I’m not sure she’s employable as a Dev Evangelist, which has been her role. Those who know her in the way I do believe she’ll use this as a platform, but I hope instead she learns from it. This wasn’t about feminism, and she shouldn’t be allowed to sit her perch on the issue. This was about the way humans relate to each other. Either way, the past 24 hours must have been terrifying for her and for that, I’m sad.
The developer in question didn’t win. He posted a very classy apology very early in this situation, surprisingly supportive of Adria and asking what most reasonable people are: why didn’t she handle it differently? Based exclusively on the conference code of conduct he was in the wrong and he admits that. Was there a less caustic way for him to reach the same realization?
Most importantly, women didn’t win. The ugliness I’ve seen in the last week shocks me, I didn’t know it could sink to such depths. Adria reinforced the idea of us as threats to men, as unreasonable, as hard to work with… as bitches. Her firing in some way sanctifies the ugly things said to her as effective- the social terrorism won. It doesn’t heal the divide, it slices it deeper.
By that default, men lost too.
How it Could Have Gone
I am surrounded by great geeky men in my life, and they are smart and sensitive and protective and funny. Many are far, far more sensitive than I am. And as with all communities, a fraction of them are douches. When women in this industry are hurt, we’re all hurt. We have issues to be worked on, but I see the women and men around me working on them. At every happy hour, conference, event, roundtable, lunch.. we have rational and intelligent discussions about the topic. Many more are to be had, and they all start with one simple action: talk to eachother. Assume people are reasonable until they are not.
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.
In that future, we all won.
Thank you all for your (mostly) incredibly lucid, thought out, rational responses. For the internet, this was a particularly kind and supportive group both of myself and each other, and for that, you all win the internet today. Comments, as promised, have been closed. I’d hoped to have a conclusion of some kind to post right now, and I don’t, but I am working on it with the help of many other diverse voices. That post will likely be the last one this blog ever has. Until then, and hopefully after, continue the conversation, and I mean, conversation. Talk to eachother, respecting everyone’s right to an opinion while being open to listening. Good luck and best wishes.
Thank you for saying exactly what I’ve been feeling since I first heard about this, this morning. Everybody lost today. The whole thing feels like dropping a bomb to stop a small squabble. It stopped the fight, but the number of casualties is too huge to justify. We took about twenty steps back today. Hope tomorrow is a better day.
Do you honestly believe a male wouldn’t have gotten backlash from the internet if he did the same? Think about a male being offended by something, passive aggressively going straight to authorities and posting a picture on his well-followed twitter without permission, and then getting guys who supposedly weren’t even making sexual jokes.. fired?
You don’t have enough faith in anon or the internet if you seriously think that.
She didn’t get rape and death threats because she’s a female. She got them because the internet hates the hyper-politically correct nature of America. You missed the point. Maybe the hypothetically male version of Adria wouldn’t have been called a bitch, or had anonymous rape threats. You’re right that those are specifically Female vile obscenities. However, he would have received plenty of equally vile obscenities reserved for Males. You do know that there are things Males deal with that Females don’t have to, right?
Roberts DIDN’T get rape and death threats.
If she got such threats they would have been reported to police, IPs tracked, charges filed, people behind bars. None of that has happened, because there WERE no rape or death threats, just Adria’s own lies (and perhaps a few sock puppet accounts).
Channers hit her, remember that. see 888chan’s invasion board
Ugh. Will you just go away Ethan Farber? I don’t know what your issue is, but you’re calling Adria Richards a liar. You’re calling Amanda a liar. You’re insinuating that Jesse Noller is a liar. You’re actually insinuating that dozens of women who claim to get death and rape threats over the Internet are liars. And elsewhere you’re claiming that people NEVER have the right to tell other people when the other people are creating an uncomfortable environment with their inappropriate language. I don’t know whether you know you’re trolling, but you are. Your opinions are way out there in some alternate universe shared by no other commenter on this blog. I have no interest in “standing up” for Adria Richards. I think that she’s caused herself and the community a huge issue. But you have not said a single thing that moves the conversation forward *at all*.
Hey, Paul – Can YOU show where any of these people have received death threats, or rape threats? If you can, I would be very interested in verification. Otherwise – I think Ethan is probably the only honest person posting here.
I get death and rape threats over the internet. I’m not a girl. The internet is a horrible cesspool of idiots and racists and homophobes and all the worst that humanity has to offer. You have to learn to tune out the white noise that is the slavering masses or you will never get anything done.
Oh, fuck that. Look, I was watching SendGrid’s announcement scroll by on Facebook, and — what d’you know, there were plenty of rape and death threats coming by. She didn’t deserve any of that shit. She deserved something — to get fired, I’m not sure — but ignoring that that’s a ubiquitous part of being a Woman On The Internet is not helpful whatsoever.
And you know this because you have access to all police records everywhere, and access to all her social media, including private messages, so you are sure absolutely sure of this…
>You don’t have enough faith in anon or the internet if you seriously think that.
Given how white americans are behind a computer, welll…….
>. She got them because the internet hates the hyper-politically correct nature of America.
what better way then to call her a nigger and kike!
Oh, and I actually sympathize with the people who went off the handle and internet armied her.
“…posting a picture on his…” A man would have been kicked out of the conference immediately he did that to a group of women. And then banned. And then fired. There would be nothing done to the victim females he was obviously harassing.
Does anyone remember creepshots? It’s okay if a woman does it to a man though, but reverse the situation and instantly it becomes not okay.
You making some of the same mistakes being made continously. “then getting guys (snip) … fired?”
She didn’t get them fired. She took a picture and tweeted it, She isn’t their employer and didn’t even know who their employer was. The guy’s employer fired him. And interestingly enough, both guys in the picture are from the same company, and only one got fired. Which means there could be a lot more to the firing than we have details for. I’m a male and I can’t of anything specifically male that could be worse than death or rape threats. Even if it were the case that response to a male would be the same, that in no way makes it ok, or somehow redeems the people who made those threats. It just means there are going to be horrendous jerks when you point out problems regardless of your gender and that’s not a pretty picture at all. It seems that you’re advocating for her to have not said absolutely anything at all, and that solves absolutely nothing, unless of course, you want to keep the status quo, because you aren’t bothered by it.
This is ridiculous. She got rape threats because she is a woman. When’s the last time you ever saw a man in tech get sent rape threats? Yep. Never. It’s ridiculous that you would imply that it is acceptable to send rape threats because of a reaction to “political correctness.” That’s just vile and ignorant. There is no excuse for threatening anyone with rape and murder!
I’m embarrassed for you.
Not agreeing with GP at all, but I *have* seen such rape threats being made against men (eg online), often tangentially, by suggesting that they should be sent to a drop-the-soap prison, or occasionally more bluntly and directly than that. It does happen. It shouldn’t to anyone in any form.
Rgds
Damon
You also missed his point. Yes, the rape threats were because Adria is a woman, but had she been a man she would have received threats as well, just probably more about beatings, castration and other pleasantries usually reserved for males. Anon got pissed and did its usual over-the-top mob lynching on Adria because she acted like a tool and a hypocrite, and her gender influenced how that played out, but that’s not the cause of the lynching.
Whether or not such lynchings are a reaction to the PC-ness of America is something I have no opinion about, since I don’t live there. I’d rather put it on the Internet Fuckwad Theory, but that’s just me.
I’m a man. I’m married. I’m in my late 40’s. I’ve been working in computer science since the mid-1980’s. I’m 100% certain that if the genders were changed, a man would NOT have gotten the same backslash from the internet.
When will white men start realizing that it’s not AMERICA that doesn’t like political correctness, it’s WHITE MEN that don’t like it. Once again a white man assumes his experience is everybody’s experience… which was precisely the problem in this case in the first place.
I have black people tell me they don’t care about white rights and just want to use groups to gain more power for themselves. That is why I can’t support these types of movements. Feminism is not needed. Equality is what should be needed. However if the non privileged want to just be rank and screw everyone else why should you bother to help them?
Anything that starts “Why do women think getting death threats and being called names is bad?” is almost guaranteed to be the stupidest thing on the internet that day. Your prize is in the mail Mr Byron
Seriously? It’s as if you think someone is going to act on that stuff. It’s as if we all have to pretend its serious because it was sent to a woman. It’s just name calling. No different than what you just did to me. You have a better vocabulary and more wit than they do. You’re not any different from them morally.
Here’s how we’re choosing to be constructive: it’s a tool to help at the next PyCon. The same kinds of cards that worked so well at Defcon can help at PyCon: http://thecowgirlcoder.com/2013/03/21/pycon-code-of-conduct-warning-cards/
I think those cards are absolutely ridiculous and serve to only put people on the offensive.
I seem to recall those cards were at one point gamified, negating their entire purpose.
Those cards are incredibly offensive. Anyone using them really ought to be ejected from the conference if the Code of Conduct means anything (which it doesn’t).
Those cards are just a method of upping the ante and socially shaming the target – even the supposedly positive story about this in the link has a person actually have to leave the event due to being shamed. And given that it’s publicly shaming, it’s against the PyCon CoC which is against harassment or making people feel uncomfortable. If you gave this card to me, I would either lecture you on the underhandedness of it, or (less likely) report you to the staff of the conference.
Thing is, if you’re assertive and talk to me directly, or if you get a staff member to talk on your behalf, I get to say my side of the story. It may be that you were in the wrong and misheard (for example, Richards’ mishearing of the ‘forking’ comment). What these cards do is effectively cut off the recipient’s right of reply. And unless the conference organisers themselves distribute them, they undermine the authority of the staff.
The cards only ended up becoming an incitement to even worse behaviour as Asher Wolf explains:
http://asherwolf.net/dear-hacker-community-we-need-to-talk/101/
Truly, the cards smack of elementary school and demerits. It’s just not effective. Have a code of conduct and decide how to adjudicate it through complaints to the organizers.
Are you serious? I can’t tell if you’re serious or not. Handing out cards when you get offended?
What is this, second grade?
Those cards didn’t and don’t work. They are universally reviled by both the hacker and congoing community. There are certainly people out there right now printing up their own variations to outright mock and belittle those cards.
Here’s why: The cards are pointless. What they have written on them can easily be said, in a less bollocks manner, directly to the person causing the purported offense, without the public shaming and belittling that being given a colour-coded card implies. Want to shame the person who has offended you? Then you are just as bad as they are, and you should get a card just like it yourself.
This is real life, not bloody kindergarten. Sometimes, people will offend you. Sometimes, something out there will “trigger” you. As a veteran and a rape victim myself, you know how I handle it?
I get over it, and don’t require others to live up to my ideals.
This is a terrible idea. STOP thinking like this.These cards only serve to divide people and make them feel isolated. This is exactly why I can understand why some men find women hard to work with (Believe me this apply s to men too). We don’t need cards. this whole situation is an example of people needing to TALK to each other. Was what they did unprofessional? Yes. Everyone lost in this situation, adding these cards would not solve the problem it is avoiding it. I find it sad that whoever made those cards isn’t even considering what caused the problem in the first place, lack of COMMUNICATION. I don’t find what they did professional, But you need to be able to let stuff roll off your shoulders, take it with a grain of salt. COMMUNICATION works alot better then handing someone a colored card. It is very bewildering that people don’t understand COMMUNICATION would have solved this problem before it came to be an issue. We are human beings, dirty jokes, off colored jokes, are never going to go away, no matter how professional your going to be. Its also sad that sexuality is frowned upon and repressed. I’m all for the ” Right time, right place”, But denying that we are sexual beings is a non-human thing to do. Communication needs to be the leading resolve for these types of issues. I find it sick that some “white knights” (Can i use that term in the workplace or is that sexist?) take advantage of this situation and spew garbage like these cards. I feel bad, this is a huge step back for women in the work place.
I’d like to perhaps offer some constructive criticism. These cards portray the situation like a game. If you behave nicely, you get a gold star (green card). If you misbehave you’ll get a frowney face (yellow card), and if you’re really bad you get a storm cloud (red card). We really need to get away from this kind of thing as a community, and treat the situation like adults. If someone is offensive to you, they should be confronted with their offense. If the offended person feels threatened, then report the behavior to the organizer. Those are the proper channels.
If I were handed a card that told me to “check” myself, it would immediately lose the attention and respect it deserved.
Considering I have almost no experience with bigger conferences, this might seem like a ‘dumb’ question to some: Are these cards really used to settle conflicts? So, say, if I feel offended by someone I just give them this card instead of just _talking_ to them about the matter? I might have misinterpreted the use of these cards but if they’re really intended to be used in that way, they seem rather ridiculous to me. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here.
Really sounds to me like Adria was trolling for a fight. People say inappropriate things all the time, in the supermarket, at the movie theater, at work, and nearly all the time they are not comments meant for the public at large. Just because a person is in earshot of a comment does not mean it has anything to do with them. The problem would be different if the person tapped Adria on the shoulder and said “hey, I’m got this dongle joke…”, but it does not read like the comment was directed to/at/about her or women specifically. How does this Adria get through life, does she wear ear plugs all the time?
Adria needs to grow up, get a spine, learn to deal with people… that said, everyone is special, just like everyone else…
Was she really “trolling” or just tired of having to deal with bigotry? Have you had to deal with prejudice personally? It takes a toll. Some people just lose patience and go on the offense.
how is that prejudice or bigotry
If she’s been exposed to bigotry, that doesn’t give her free reign to lash out at people who aren’t being bigoted. The two men shared a sexual – not sexist – joke. That’s not unreasonable behaviour. Adria herself made a similarly sexual joke shortly beforehand – on Twitter, which is a considerably more public venue than a conversation between people sitting in adjacent seats in a theatre.
Adria’s actions are the kind of thing that sets back the entry of women into the field of tech. As long as a man can be publicly vilified, and occasionally fired, for doing something perfectly reasonable – which would be acknowledged as such, if it came from a woman – then he’ll be resentful and suspicious of women, in case they do the same thing that she did. Not that she cares. She’s had her fifteen minutes of fame – and she might get more, if she can keep up the antagonism between men and women.
“It takes a toll. Some people just lose patience and go on the offense.”
Like Hitler?
What was bigoted about what they said? If anything, Adria is the one who’s said the most bigoted things on her twitter. How ‘White male is the lowest difficulty setting’ and that blacks can’t be racist against whites. That’s a bigoted remark. ‘My dongle is big’ is not. You have to REALLY bend over backwards to construe anything they said as bigoted.
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The one disturbing, repeated aspect of these comments is the “death and rape threats happen, don’t make a big deal about it.” I honestly hope that I never give up the idea that every time they happen, we should make a big deal about it. A woman or man should never be told it is her/his fault for feeling threatened. It is the fault of the one who threatens.
The guys at the con, including the guy who got fired, didn’t make death and rape comments. Please stop equating “that’s a big dongle” with threats and aggravated hopes for violence.
I did not, do not, equate penis references with threats. I was referencing the comments *here*, above, on this post … in which people dismissed the *actual* threats are just part of internet life and no big deal. And the mention of them as whining.
I have yet to see any screenshots or any actual evidence of *any* rape threats/death threats or whatever. I even spent some time looking at Twitter and Facebook. Are they just being deleted?
maybe… i’ve seen them on Adria’s FB page and blog. Not enough time to go noodling, nor would i post screenshots of them anyways. Feeding the trolls, you know?
Calling people trolls is an ad hominem and the mark of a dishonest argument. There were no threats and you clearly know it.
For goodness sake, the guy at PyCon who handled the matter in a professional, low key way started getting threatening phone calls (just look at @jessenoller’s twitter stream). Pull your head out of the sand.
Professional? He enabled a bully to harass people to the point one got fired. He broke the Code of Conduct himself (if it was him that handled Adria’s complaint). If it hadn’t been for the crappy and sexist handling by PyCon none of this would have happened. They could have said to her, “Firstly take down that photo or we will kick you out of the conference. Secondly a “big dongle” joke is NOT offensive, so quit being a trouble maker.” THAT would have been professional.
Twitter deleted them after they were reported. It is against Twitter’s terms of service to make threats (it’s also against U.S. federal law). Hopefully, the scumbags who made the threats will find themselves receiving a knock on the door from the police.
There were no threats. No proof, no charges filed. Just a lot of histrionics and accusations from Roberts.
There certainly were threats, you can check for yourself if you doubt it, but the rest of us aren’t going to research this for you.
Charges are rarely filed for threats over the internet, or in truth, threats in real life. Until the person making the threats actually does something, the police can’t really do anything about it. So lack of charges isn’t proof that threat weren’t made. And its Richards not Roberts.
Her last name is Richards. You can remember that because the short form of Richards is ‘DICK’.
I don’t really think gender plays a role in the responses Adria received. Sure there were sexist responses, but when someone is angry and lashing out, they go for the jugular, no holds barred. If a woman called another woman a b*tch, they would not be accused of being sexist. So why does a man who says that have to be a sexist? The same goes for racial issue.
Don’t get me wrong. I think the people who lashed out like this are childish (does that make me agist?). And yeah, sexism absolutely exists. But to immediately say that using a gender specific slur makes on a sexist is just another form of stereotyping.
Agree, the sexists angle is pushing it. I wouldn’t consider a female calling me a d1ck to be sexist against male.
Good read Amanda!
I can’t comment on if any actual threats happened in this case, because I’m not really interested in wading through gunk, but gender *does* play a very real factor in the way people respond to something they disagree with; A man who says something that people in the tech/internet/gaming community disagree with will get called names, yelled at, bitched at, and at the extreme, get some half-assed death threats. When’s the last time you saw a response on a guy’s thread say “You should be taken out back and raped until you are dead!!”? A woman who points out a problem, the backlash almost immediately turns to sexual violence. It doesn’t matter if what she said had any validity or not, the responses will be to threaten rape, violation, death. There won’t be a whole lot of “I disagree with you, and here’s why…”. And if you think that implied violence against women who speak out against the way women are portrayed and treated isn’t happening in the tech/internet/gaming industry, you haven’t been paying a whole lot of attention this last year.
You’re kidding, right? Do you not spend a lot of time on the internet? Just go to YouTube and start scrolling through the comments on some random videos. You’ll see some of the most vile comments you’d never want to see directed at men, women…donkeys?! They don’t care. They’re equal opportunity offenders. I was once told to stick my (exploitive deleted) in my mouth because the angle would allow himto get his (exploitive deleted) in my (exploitive deleted) and still be able to smack his (exploitive deleted) against my face. ..all because I disagreed with his choice of phones.Now that sounds a lot like a violent rape threat to me but of course, I’m not a woman and he didn’t actually say the word “rape” so I guess it doesn’t count.
Actually, if a woman calls another woman a “bitch”, she gets accused of being a fool and having internalized sexism. That’s just a fancy way of calling her sexist in a passive-aggressive way, sometimes with a side of concern trolling.
One, I think Adria was not very adult in her handling of the matter, or previous similar situations. Her life seems to be all about her and getting attention.
Two, I think reporting/leaking/tattling on social faux pauxs to ones employer, regardless of gender, is a low blow. I have had stuff that was posted to a private e-list forwarded to an employer before. Taken out of context, it looked like I was an ass, and got canned. I left that group, and won’t go back, because people there don’t respect list privacy. I also only post under a pseudonym, because there are people who will take offense to the way they think you said hello, and will stalk you, dox you and get you canned.
Three, I think that the companies involved need to get a sense of perspective. I’ve made “fork” and “dongle” jokes with my friends for decades. The only part that’s gendered is “dongle”, so it’s not like it has a damn thing to do with women (unless you subscribe to heteronormative biases…) The only thing is I don’t tend to do it around “tender” ears – children and people with the sensitivities of children (read unknown people or hypersensitive women.)
Four, I really hate to say it, but some women are excessively sensitive to any swearing or mentions of sex in any form, either hetero or not. If I crack a joke about a liquor license, some prickly gal is likely to get all bent out of shape, and call HR, report it as “harassment”, or otherwise pitch a hissy. Never mind that the joke is being made by a woman, and has nothing to do with doing anything to her. I have repeated gone into groups as the only woman there, and watched guys try so hard to play choirboy that they don’t even talk lest they get reported. Usually someone stumbles, and when I don’t flip out, but make a crack in a similar vein, communication starts to happen.
If something someone says offends you, but not directly about you, just say something, okay? Don’t play drama llama, don’t play “let’s get the person fired”, just say something quietly. Yes, if they are *personally* insulting *you*, flag it, but otherwise deal with it like an adult.
I think you meant to say that some people are easily offended. I have made guys uncomfortable before because I made a sex joke. There are people of both genders who are more sensitive than the norm.
I would pay for your writing. You are a sick writer – has anyone ever told you that? You need to write more.
that is overly kind, but appreciated nonetheless.
its not overly kind. superb article.
No I agree, this is an incredible piece. And I don’t just say that to pile on the praise. I know for a fact that it is extremely difficult to navigate these muddy waters in writing. Being able to come up with such a cogent and even handed piece on this debacle is astounding. This is the kind of piece I’m always looking for when these things happen. Sometimes I can’t find it and go on a failure mission to write one myself. I’m gonna share this one with as many people as possible. Thank you.
Well it does make sense that she was fired. The reason being is that her title is “developer evangelist” is pretty much a PR position. So she is one of the leading spokespeople of the firm she works for. By doing what she did she alienated the very people that she is supposed to woo in order to sign on to use her firms products. The coder community is rather small in respect to other occupations. Many of those people most likely knew this person from various dealings in the industry. By that forced alienation of the community she has put her firm in a very awkward position. Support an employee and lose business, or terminate said employee who’s job is PR. The firm in which she was employed deals almost without exception with developers and not the general public.
Furthermore the comment in question was a Junior high/Middle school level joke equating dongle to genitals, which is sexual not sexist, and her joke earlier that week that she herself tweeted using the hashtag of the event in the comment about stuffing a sock down your pants to make your Junk bigger to screw with the TSA employee is far more lewd than a dongle play on words joke.
She is a bully plain and simple, I for one, am in the tech business and i welcome women in my field with open arms. They have different ways of seeing things and inventive solutions that are outstanding.
I’m a Scoutmaster and I talk to middle school aged boys about bullying all the time. What she did absolutely falls under the category of cyber bullying.
I’ll take exception to one thing Amanda Blum said above – the problem is not that Richards reacted poorly to being offended. The problem is that Richards walks around looking to be offended in the first place. She surely wasn’t offended by dongle jokes given her own public bawdy jokes, but she – as the old saying goes – has a chip on her shoulder. She wasn’t there looking to make friends, build relationships, and contribute to the community. She was there looking for a reason to call attention to herself. And as soon as she found the flimsiest excuse, she did it. Sounds like it’s not the first time either.
Who wants to be around someone like that?
According to Twitter the incident took place on March 17. The conference organizers stepped in quickly the same day and then it should’ve been considered resolved. However, Richards puts a blog post AFTER that, on March 18, reposting a snapshot with the same photo (blowing off their privacy) and shaming the same people again. Then she added more stuff on March 19. It’s a long writeup rationalizing this incident as sexism and harassment and even mentioning “deindividuation” (the very luxury of privacy her victims “shoudn’t” have). She added a FB post on March 19, with the link to her blog. Someone (like the guys’ employer) doesn’t have to be a genius to find her post and figure out where it leads… So, how much of this should be considered overreaction? And how much is consistent bullying?
Sounds like she’s a real pain in the ass.
Have you ever actually called someone out for doing something inappropriate at a convention? I have. They don’t respond with, “Oh, sorry.” Confronting individuals in front of their bros in a place they feel is theirs (and thus they can behave however they want) rarely makes them feel embarrassed to have been doing what they were doing. More often it makes them angry that they were called out by a woman in front of their friends at a place they are ~cool~. They often feel the need to get back at her in some way because she DARED~* call him out.
You also write here about how she should have reached out to you, but did you reach out to her and let her know she has allies that can help make changes? Or did you just wait for a moment to make a passive aggressive blog post about why you don’t like her? I would not have bothered with the tech industry hierarchy, either. When a system is so misogynistic and broken that it betrays you repeatedly by failing to take action against misogynistic bullshit, public shaming is the only way to get results.
I know misogyny is pretty contagious and easy to catch in male-dominated fields, but fuck your internalized misogyny.
I have indeed told people at a convention, in a room, in public, and elsewhere that I found their words offensive. Infact, I have, for the past 15 years been yelling at any dude that does that “hocking a lugey” thing “NO ONE WILL EVER MARRY YOU!” (I mean really, soooooo fucking disgusting).
its all about the delivery.
And for the record, she didn’t HAVE to do that. She could have just alerted the organizers privately.
I have indeed reached out to Adria, before, after, etc. Adria has made a goal of avoiding me, and that’s her prerogative.
It is not all about delivery. Me thinks you don’t understand why certain men will respond with vitriol towards you no matter how you approach them (jokingly, sweetly, aggressively, subtly) to stop doing something, which is really really fortunate for you. It’s just terribly unfortunate that you’re perpetuating bullshit because you’ve had the luck of not calling out the wrong kinds of people.
She did have to do it publicly if she wanted to see results that matter. The tech industry is incredibly dismissive of complaints made by women, which probably has something to do with how the industry is dismissive of women in general.
I’m not saying that i’ve never been disagreed with, but when I approach them reasonably, I have yet to have anyone be unreasonable in return. Well, in reference to this kind of behavior. I’m really sorry you have. If its an experience you’ve had over and over, I’d suggest finding a different microcommunity or maybe looking at your delivery?
It’s like I’m reading a comment from a woman who’s mansplaining to another woman how the second woman hates women.
I need popcorn.
Do you realize how much stereotyping you’re doing in this post? You are lumping all men together and assuming the worst before you know the first thing about the individual. As stated by many other comments here, the problem was communication. Clearly both parties after the fact were reasonable and apologetic, but you see the whole thing spiralled out of control by the internet lynch mob because there was no communication. Saying that passive aggressive public shaming is not “the only way to get results”, it’s the way to polarize people and force them to dig in to stronger positions. I certainly don’t see any positive results for *anyone* out of this whole debacle.
@fartface, 22nd@1:10am: no, you’re utterly wrong. As a woman who’s been working in tech for almost 20 years, you seem to have completely misunderstood how the male mind works. Perhaps if you didn’t approach them with barred teeth and a pending airstrike, they wouldn’t respond in that way.
Also, classy move telling someone they’re “perpetuating bullshit” while you spread your own. Our industry is NOT dismissive of women in general. Not unless you’re still living 15-20 years ago, when I started. As the gender gap ever so slowly closes, the men are slowly coming out of their tribal mentalities, much like female nurses are accepting male nurses.
I honestly just wish you luck if you’re going to be so naive, pessimistic, and wholly dismissive of the reality, just because you want to get your rage on. Adria and her kind aren’t helping the cause, and neither are you. The Internet will ALWAYS encourage bad behavior because of anonymity. You are proving that right now.
> Infact, I have, for the past 15 years been yelling at any dude that does that “hocking a lugey” thing “NO ONE WILL EVER MARRY YOU!” (I mean really, soooooo fucking
> disgusting).
That’s worth a beer (or beverage of your choice) should we ever meet in person 🙂
Its a soft threat, often lobbed from the open window of a moving car, but I believe it really moves the male/female equality conversation along 😉
You must also believe in the Easter Bunny.
Nah, I’m Jewish. but i DO believe in Unicorns. Because they are freaking UNICORNS:)
I think its impossible to read about this story without a lot of mixed feelings, which I feel you acknowledge.
To operate successfully in tech as a woman, you need to be constantly projecting this aura of “I’m cool.” As in “I’m cool with your fratty humor, I’m not one of those stuck up feminists,” even if you’re dealing with that bullshit all the time and just can’t say anything. While I think you did a great job contextualizing the whole story, it’s an intelligent take and much I agree with, there were just a few notes in the end where you seem to be underscoring the point of “I’m cool w/the guys,” and Adria’s not. Sometimes when you make a stand for something (rightly or wrongly) people don’t like you or support you particularly. Women are so pressed in our culture to be accommodating and to be liked. I dream of a day when women can also be assholes that shit can just blow over or whatever and not have a hundred internet trolls calling for their violent death, you know what I mean?
I don’t have the answer, and I don’t think that I would have done the same thing as Adria — like you I think there are better ways to have handled it. But she didn’t get the guy fired (as you also point out). The amount of vitriol that’s been piled on her speaks volumes about how much latent hostility there is out there against women, ‘specially when they get uppity.
“Infact, I have, for the past 15 years been yelling at any dude that does that “hocking a lugey” thing “NO ONE WILL EVER MARRY YOU!” (I mean really, soooooo fucking disgusting). ”
+1
This is hillarious!
* To clarify: referring to calling someone out for their behavior face-to-face.
From experience; calling someone out by yourself is not recommended. Travel in packs if you want to call people out.
This makes you nothing but a coward that will chose to do what Adria did and attack instead of resolve in a manner with which will benefit everyone. This scenario did not benefit anyone obviously and it has been proven that this is Adria’s M.O. It is all about how it will benefit her. I am one of five girls and our father taught us to be strong independent women with a voice of our own. This does not mean to act like a “bitch”. Yes, I said it… “BITCH” She is an embarrassment to all women that truly struggle in a world of men. Thank you for your truth Amanda.
“She did have to do it publicly if she wanted to see results that matter.”
The fact that she thought she’d be getting a ton of sweet traffic, not to mention accolades for her Joan of Arc savior behavior, didn’t hurt either. Everything about her actions (have you read her blog post where she basically calls herself the savior of women in programming?) points to a motivation for attention and self-promotion.
“The tech industry is incredibly dismissive of complaints made by women….”
….precisely because of people like Adria Richards. Those of us with valid complaints will be taken less seriously in the future thanks to this self-promoting, crying-wolf-er.
Wonderfully put
“Those of us with valid complaints will be taken less seriously in the future thanks to this self-promoting, crying-wolf-er.”
This. So much this.
So you won’t confront someone if you are alone? Definition of coward.
People have been knifed in broad daylight for less. I have been physically threatened in situations where someone needed to be asked to button it, so I could not sensibly intervene; just last night for me was a borderline example. So please understand the difference between “cowardice” and “stupidity” and understand that whatever you or I think of the rest of AR’s behaviour she may have felt direct intervention then and there was not possible.
Rgds
Damon
ok. now wait. yes, some situations have risk. but THIS situation did not. No one was going to get knifed in a huge room packed full of highly educated people.
Hi,
I agree that literal knifing was not likely there, but the sort of responses that I’ve had in some parallel situations have made me want to curl up and die inside; some people are just bullies and sh*ts and know that the more repellent they are the more fun they can have watching their victim recoil, and you don’t know whether the person you are about to chide is a bad’un. I’m *not* excusing AR but I *can* imagine being paralysed at the thought of a direct response (though if she managed to smile and photograph I suspect that she could have tried a little harder).
But going straight to the nuke option when she was in no immediate physical danger was just asking for things to spiral out of control. That was arguably the BigMistake(TM). We’re all entitled to be imperfect and human and get hot under the collar and irrational from time to time; we are not entitled to try to do someone lasting public damage on the basis of a mild annoyance, possibly mis-/over- interpreted.
Rgds
Damon
“It’s just terribly unfortunate that you’re perpetuating bullshit because you’ve had the luck of not calling out the wrong kinds of people.”
If your argument rests on “luck” then how do you know you just haven’t been particularly unlucky and that your experiences are not the norm? Well, wait, by your own words you admit luck. So Amanda’s “luck” with her way of handling things may very well be the norm. But no, she’s probably just a misogynist, too. Please. The other day I got yelled at by a woman in a theater to keep it down, because I was rustling popcorn out of the box, too, loudly. She seemed to be unreasonable at the time. She then proceeded to hem, haw, and chortle her way through the movie, jingling around the chain on her purse to boot. I never said anything because hey, I’m reasonable. Maybe you want to check on how reasonable you’re being.
And yes, I very much got from the tone of her piece that Amanda reached out to Adria. Fuck your misogyny.
“Have you ever actually called someone out for doing something inappropriate at a convention? I have.”
That’s your problem right there. Live and let live. You don’t have the right to invade others’ freedom and insist they censor themselves because you don’t agree with their opinions or attitudes.
No one wants to hire someone who is easily offended of any gender or background. People like you are the real enemies of women trying to break into IT.
You seem to be a bit confused about what “freedom” is. Freedom of speech refers to freedom from *government interference* with your speech. If someone decides to be a jackass, it’s their right to do so, but it’s that same freedom of speech that allows other people to call them out on being a jackass.
Furthermore, seeing as how she’s not acting as an agent of the government, she can’t really “invade others’ freedom” as you put it. She’s perfectly free to ask people to censor themselves, much as you’re perfectly free to ask her to do the same. The difference, of course, is that your double standard (I can criticize you, but you can’t criticize others) makes you look like a complete jackass.
If you find yourself in a situation where calling them out doesn’t help, then you contact con staff/goons, and let them deal with it. Some people never get better, and ought be dealt with
Going public about an off-colour joke isn’t civil.
Oh God thank you so much for this. I read this and could picture Amanda practically leaping around gleefully that someone she didn’t like got fired because a bunch of pissed-off dudes decided to ruin her. And of course it’s all Richards’ fault that “everyone lost”. Bitch should’ve kept her mouth shut and not rocked the boat.
You will simply have to trust that i am infact, not gleeful at all. We did all lose here, and I have a lot of respect for Adria. Therein lies the rub. You can not enjoy someone personally but still respect them as a person or professional. Which may be the takeaway from the whole damn thing.
Amanda. In my books you just won the internet with this. Thank you. I am nearly out of wi-fi and can’t adequately respond, but for some appreciative words. And I contest those who associate feminism with Adria. Early individualist feminists – the ones who won these battle – were not of this sort. And many stalwart warriors for equality of opportunity in society use the term and rightfully so.
Great read. I hope more people read this.
Calm, nuance, thoughtfullness, and clarity don’t sell or spread anywhere near as easily as they should, but I’m damn glad there are people like you, Amanda, to add a better voice to the storm.
Amanda, thank you for writing this up, and also for calling out what the main problem is: Tech, whether you’re a man or woman, has (as I will put it in the German vernacular), an ‘Arschloch’ problem. To put it bluntly, folks like Adria Richards.
All bluster aside about gender & anything else, I have something to get off my chest: In all the drama about ‘death threats’ and the like, a number of us did, indeed, take the person who doxed Adria Richards VERY seriously, as (in a previous life) some of us were trained to do. Work in Network Abuse for an ASP/ISP, this will become natural. Even if you hate the guts of the victim (no quotes), NOBODY deserves that. Ever.
So: Why are you bent out of shape, Leo? Because the /b/tard who threatened Adria, *also* appeared to be engaging in THIS activity via twitter:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/rat-breeders-meet-the-men-who-spy-on-women-through-their-webcams/
He was nice enough to leave his gmail address in the stream with what looked to me like a blackmail threat to a teenaged girl. Is it actionable? Only Twitter & Google know, and they’ll probably sweep it other the rug. All I can do is report it. As an old(er) white male, my hands are tied.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, Tech has an ‘Arschloch’ problem. If you let these people into your orgs, not only will you be cleaning up after them, but when a real issue presents itself, you won’t have the bandwidth…and will miss it. And ‘injustice’ will be served.
-Leo (getting too old for this, sorry for this whole other can of worms)
One of my trusted friends is the great Jack Daniels of B-Sides (I just had the good grace to live nearby in the bumblefuck region of Cape Cod). I’m curious about his opinion here because he speaks with a similar affectation, technologically speaking:)
The blog author referenced the fact that younger generations of women are reclaiming the word “slut”. That made me realize why I’m especially disappointed at the mob of anonymous people calling for Richards’ rape and murder. It wasn’t so long ago that “nerd” and “geek” were hurtful, hateful things to call someone (although maybe not anywhere near the same level.) To those of you who are very young this may sound absurd, but it was painful, at the time, for those of us who lived through these taunts.
It’s sad to me that the same group (software developers) who reclaimed words like “nerd” and “geek” and made them into terms of honor would turn around and wish awful things on someone, and mix that person’s gender and race up in it. We should know better, and do better, as a group.
rs
Calling someone a slut is a valid insult. That young women are “reclaiming” it shows just how troubled and amoral they are.
And over-insulated from the consequences of their own behavior.
A slut is someone who uses their sexuality to gain power over others. Someone who has no shame and no dignity. That this is considered socially acceptable behavior is despicable. Being a slut is bad. Period.
Amen to that.
What’s the male version of that term?
From a non-native english perspective, the male version of slut is slut.
Wow. In this case, buddy, you’re waaaay off base. Get off your morality high horse – in this case, you sound like a scorned 7th grader.
Calling someone a slut is a valid insult, but calling you a troll is an ad hominem. Basically your way of saying its ok to call women names, but not men.
This is discrimination against women for choosing to have sex with whomever they choose and rejecting the concept that government, society, or religion may judge or control one’s personal liberties. We have the right to control our own sexuality.regardless of whatever social pressures or conventions people like you prop up to get us to conform to a straight-laced sexual lifestyle. I really hope anyone thinking of doing business with you gets to read your comment here and thinks twice about it.
“This is discrimination against women for choosing to have sex with whomever they choose …”
Then great. It’s discrimination. So what?
Do you ever reexamine any of the underlying assumptions your worldview operates on?
Most of the commentary on this makes me slightly ashamed to be human.
Sexually suggestive jokes are unprofessional and expose people, in a professional context, to corporate and personal liability. They’re NEVER acceptable under any circumstances.
I’m a gay guy and if I hear them in a public venue, I’ll typically have a pithy response to them — whether they’re from women or men, about anybody. (And yes, I’ve overheard sexual comments about guys from women a couple of times at events as well).
Had Adria simply spoken to the gents, the issue would have been settled and the gents in question might have evolved. More importantly, arguably, all the people around them would have seen that unprofessional behavior might have consequences.
Instead, she abused her very significant social media presence to directly shame the two gents in question, without their consent and without offering them an opportunity to tell their side of the story (something that a responsible person with a large audience should do). Someone with 9,000+ followers, in an industry as small as ours, has an obligation to be a bit more responsible IMHO, especially given the tenuous nature of social media.
And, of course, the “backlash” is appalling, and not really representative of most of us who found the conduct of all three people questionable. It makes me ashamed to share a species with them.
At the end of the day, Amanda’s post is absolutely right. I’m very sad about the whole thing.
If we grew a thick enough skin to realize that a dick joke is just a dick joke, and not meant as a personal insult, then this problem wouldn’t exist. There is a really major difference between chuckling about your dongle and what geeks and nerds and women have had to suffer. Conflating the two is myopic and borderline insulting to all the work that people have put into these problems. We don’t hang people for stealing a loaf of bread, and we shouldn’t fire people for a casual joke that wasn’t broadcast with the intent to offend. Pretending this joke was offensive is ludicrous, and only managed to get Adria the actual kind of vitriol we have to fight against.
I don’t think the men in question were in an appropriate venue to be telling such jokes. They were, after all, surrounded by strangers, and they knew she could hear them–she’d just interacted with them. OTOH, I think her action–publicly shaming in front of 9K strangers–is wrong, too. The tweet was fine if she’d left off the photo. In these sort of things, everyone loses. PyCon, by being dragged through the Internet; the men; Adria; and women developers everywhere. Interestingly, the science fiction community is going through similar upheavals.
Yes. This exactly -> “Instead, she abused her very significant social media presence to directly shame the two gents in question, without their consent and without offering them an opportunity to tell their side of the story (something that a responsible person with a large audience should do). Someone with 9,000+ followers, in an industry as small as ours, has an obligation to be a bit more responsible IMHO, especially given the tenuous nature of social media.”
Amanda, I appreciate you being upfront about your history with Adria. Her past, and apparently present, professional conduct needs to be held accountable, the same as any man’s conduct would be. I don’t agree she should be threatened, attacked, etc. But I do think there is a lesson in this for her and she might not have learned it (if she ever will) had she not been fired. What concerns me are the number of men feeling Adria has done nothing wrong. She handled this badly once she chose the public shaming route BEFORE trying the route of professional conflict resolution. Adria has set both women and men back decades in professional work settings and privately for that matter. Just because she’s a woman does not preclude her responsibility to conduct herself professionally to the same high standard everyone expects of men.
I’m especially disheartened about this entire situation because I’ve been sexually harassed in a male dominated profession and it went on 2 years. I lost both my career, high paying job, and my health. I know what i’m talking about and the repercussions women face for speaking up is what happened to me. i didn’t shame anyone but i was still not supported or protected. Adria has an industry trying to be supportive of women, writing codes of conduct at conferences, many men in that same industry being supportive, and while everyone is trying to move forward professionally, Adria failed to see that standard applies to her as well. She messed up. I hope she finally learns from it. From your history of her conduct, it’s apparent she’s needed to learn this for many years now. Unfortunately she’s nearly taken a large group of good people with her.
“I’m a gay guy and if I hear them in a public venue, I’ll typically have a pithy response to them ”
Then you are a bully. You don’t have the right to tell others to stop sexualizing as they please any more than they have the right to tell you to be less gay.
He does have the right to call them out in public, and they do have the right to tell him to be less gay. Yes this might make him overly sensitive, and it almost certainly would make them jerks, but it is his right to be overly sensitive or not as he chooses, and their right to be jerks.
Hey, gay guy – I don’t care to hear what your sexual preferences are. I don’t care if you are gay or not. Got it?
Agreed.
This is what I posted to her Facebook:
I have to say, I might have been inclined to sympathize or agree with your position – had I not read your twitter and Facebook history. Instead, you come across as a hypocrite and another reckless blogger whom doesn’t think about their actions before posting things. There was absolutely no need for you to post what you did to Twitter. You had several options available to you. You could have turned around and asked them to stop (which, if approached in a non confrontational manner, I’m willing to bet would have resulted in laugh between all of you). If not that, you could have gone and gotten the event staff to handle the situation. While I’ll admit that the joke is one that can be seen by some people as tasteless or even offensive, you made as poor a choice as they did. And thats the key here – we all make choices every second of every day. Sometimes they’re the wrong choices, and we all have to deal with their consequences. They made a choice to tell “tasteless” jokes in public, and you made a choice to handle it in a (seemingly) vindictive and thoughtless way. So, I guess you both reap what you sew – he gets fired and you get a tainted reputation on the internet (and people calling you all kinds of crap). If you truly are a feminist, you should publicly apologize to all women out there – because you validated the notion of the “uptight priss” the moment you sent that tweet. Just my two cents – “Let he (she) who is without sin cast the first stone……”
Given that you have a common male first name, does anyone think she’s going to listen to a word of that? Anyone? Anyone….?
*crickets*
I have dealt with a woman in the technical field similar to Adria. She went around with a chip on her shoulder the size of a blimp, bullying and alienating people left and right unless they agreed 100% with her particular view of the world and social issues… Making wildly bigoted remarks herself while condemning every perceived microaggression against her. Trust me, you will get farther trying to run through a brick wall than you will trying to reason with these kinds of people.
(It did make me greatly appreciate the reasonable, level-headed women, though, so I guess that’s a silver lining…)
I am an “MRHA”. I want you and others to understand my personal position on this whole Adria Richards thing. I do not speak for the community however.
Richards came across as a bully. She used her social clout to libel the men. She took their pictures. And then, she abdicated her responsibility as an agent (a person with responsibilities to herself and others) and asked others to act as her proxy.
Everything from that point on, much like a person soliciting a crime, was her responsibility, imo. She asked others to take care of the problem. Consider: Why didn’t she take care of the problem? This is something we both agree on yes? She abdicated her role in addressing the issue in a measured and reasonable way. Where I think we might diverge is in believing Richards is responsible for the ensuing shit-storm and the firing of the developer. She chose to enlist the help of others in dealing with the problem in the broadest sense, using a very public platform that exposed the developer’s employer to financial risk. How can she not be held responsible? Could there have been any other outcome given how she proceeded?
As for whether or not this is a mens right’s issue. The salient points are the use of proxy force against men, largely by men, for the express gain of a woman (she attempted to gain notoriety from a man being humiliated, demeaned, objectified and possible disposed of knowing full well others would act for her), while maintaining a level of deniability with regard to her own culpability. She chose an action path and quickly hid behind others (the firing) and roared when it benefited her (Joan of Arc). The men were instantly regarded as being in the wrong, playing into the Feminist narrative that men are abusers and women must fight the patriarchy. Men knighted (defended her) for Richards without asking reasonable questions. A man was instantly disposed of because he displeased a woman but that act had to be tied to his wife and kids for it to be considered a bad thing. The damage Richards has done to the plight of women in tech, and the larger community is being overlooked (but you mentioned it – thank you). Richards continues to push the negative stereotype that women are children in need for protection.
I think we both agree rape threats and death threats are unreasonable and purposely vitriolic. However, it seems this is the currency of disagreement online. Men are subjected to it as much or more than most women. Spend 10 minutes playing Halo online and you quickly find out your mother has had sex with every 13-year-old boy in the world. The language is deliberately offensive, not because of our genitals, but because the internet is dehumanizing and quickly polarizes groups of people in slobbering hoards of idiots. I would argue, if you look at past publications and even graphiti over the last 5000 years you will find the most common type of discourse is also the most vulgar, without being tied directly to sex, but displeasure and an unsated need to inflict harm on another’s psyche.
The one thing I hate about the whole affair is the mob justice mentality. I don’t think her employer should have been pressured into firing her. I think they should have fired her for breaking PyCon rules, the informal rules of the community and for being an unapologetic bully. I can only hope organizers such as yourself no longer invite Richards to speak and that Richards is no longer accepted within the community she abused. I don’t think her gender should be an excuse for her bullying as both her genitals and colour are acting as an aegis in regard to the criticism that she is an abusive person with an abusive past.
Regards
Finally someone who speaks an unbiased opinion and see’s it reasonably. Definitely need more people like you in the world.
What the hell is an ‘unbiased opinion’?!?
Amanda, your post is so well written and _reasoneble_, I wish everybody were like you when resolving conflicts… This way we would make that alternate future our own future.
I meant reasonAble, of course. 🙂
As you said, a fraction of the techy males that you know are douches. Well, that works both ways. Meaning, a fraction of techy females are bound to be douches as well and based on your previous observations of her behaviour, I’d have to say that Adria could easily be classified in the douche camp herself.
Very well written and wish everyone involved had been able to just talk to one another. 😦 A win-win situation turned into a lose-lose. Didn’t know that Adria had a history/pattern like that. Sad. The tech sector benefits when everyone works, communicates, and resolves issues in a productive manner.
I just want to say that this post is awesome. God knows I’ve blown up more publicly than I should have a time or two, but I wasn’t an evangelist, either.
How ridiculous can you be? Even if every word Richards claimed was true, it is not evidence of misogyny. Poor taste, yeah. Bad manners, sure. But HATE? That kind of sentiment, so easily tossed around is in worse taste than what those two men demonstrated by far. Give it a rest, already. The victim ideology is not going to pay off for women in the long run.
This is the first thing I’ve ever read from you and instead of just lurking, I’d like to say that I am very impressed.
I’ve followed this story pretty closely and there is a ton of noise on the issue. Most accounts of the situation tend to be hugely biased towards one side or the other. Yet this, from someone who has actually worked with her is the most reasonable, clear and objective analysis I’ve read so far. I found your personal insights into Adria’s history and working relationship with others very illuminating.
The fact that you managed to do this, while still complimenting her professional aptitude is remarkable.
You’re a class act.
I can clearly see one winner in this terrible situation: the Ada Initiative, which drafted the conduct rules for the conference. As an organization, they’ve utterly failed at their stated goal of making tech culture more welcoming for women… more than once. Less than a month ago Violet Blue’s Security B-Sides talk was cancelled as too “triggery”, on account that its content included date-rape prevention. Here, they have enabled the actions of a bully and made people more wary of women at tech conferences. Yet, as a non-profit, they increase donations every time something like this happens. The outcome of their policies is a perverse effect: they achieve the opposite of what they hope to achieve, and whether intentional or not, it’s to their benefit.
Oh, I wouldn’t say that. The Red Cross donations increase every time there’s a disaster, as they should. Quite specifically (because I can hear ADA backchatter) I wrote this post because I didn’t want ADA to anoint Adria as a Joan of Arc.
She already did that to herself, prior to her being burnt at the stake.
Thank you Amanda for what seems to be an excellent summary of the situation. I will, however, take exception to one of your comments towards the end of this post:
“The ugliness I’ve seen in the last week shocks me, I didn’t know it could sink to such depths. Adria reinforced the idea of us as threats to men, as unreasonable, as hard to work with… as bitches.”
If one woman makes an unreasonable complaint, it is not a reasonable response to assume or infer from that that all women are unreasonable, either explicitly or implicitly – directing gendered abuse towards the individual being an example of the latter. As such, I don’t think it’s fair to blame Adria for any misogyny that was awakened in the wake of her actions.
The blame for that lies squarely with the people who were using ‘the vile words people use only when attacking women’. Their misogyny was obviously pre-existing. If anything, I’d say she enabled it to be exposed, rather than reinforced it.
I really hope you’re right.
As a female in tech, I was, of all places, posting about this on 4chan’s /r9k/ board last evening and early this morning. The thread ended up having some very even-handed and literate comments about this situation in the mix. Oddly, I’ve seen more misogynistic and racist bile in normally more measured outlets like Twitter and Facebook since…very odd.
I want to thank you for writing such a perceptive and thoughtful post. I feel strongly that none of this should have ever happened, and I’m terribly disappointed both of these people lost their livelihoods. PlayHaven and SendGrid now have damaged reputations as well, and countless other people have been goaded into acts of anger and stupidity. Utterly ridiculous, a senseless waste.
I feel that, in the end, Richards played ‘I can top that’ until the game reached its logical conclusion: Everyone lost.
Around this same time last year, we were arguing about semicolons. Yeah, back in day. Simpler times.
This was an excellent and logical post. You are spot on in every way. I do think this, over time, is recoverable as there are far less “Adria” types out there that can hold the torch for other women/people in tech.
I personally like your “what could have been” because it also would’ve meant my husband (the chair at the conference) would be getting far less hate mail and likely no violent and harassing phone calls.
I have organized many conferences. As your husband already knows, there is literally no way, regardless of how amazing a conference you organize, to make everyone happy. You will ALWAYS have people complaining. That said, I’m sorry to hear.
Bless you, dnoller. I’m sorry your husband is getting flack for this 😦
I have many reactions to reading about this incident at the PyCon conference. I am an older woman. I can’t count the number of times I have been in situations when I’ve told myself “pick your battles.” The number of times in a day or week that a woman in tech has to deal with garbage is a mystery to many people … because we pick our battles and keep our mouths shut.
How, then, do we encourage positive change within our tech community? Is it possible with social media, or is it better through face-to-face discussion as people on this blog have suggested? Should Adria have turned around and talked directly to the folks behind her — without using social media?
What, then, SHOULD the role of social media be in a situation like this? How can/should it be used to encourage a less sexist environment at a conference, for example. Or does social media have its limits in changing people’s behaviors ….
Frankly, until she offered the parties involved a way to resolve this privately, it should not have been made public or social.
Exactly. And because she did make it public, she brought the Internet down on herself. Hoist by her own petard.
Amanda
I feel better already.
I was going to write something along these lines, but you said everything so well, and generated such good insight, and interwove subtleties and experiences so deftly that I have nothing more to add on the subject or situation, and feel no need to even express myself, as your piece speaks much louder, clearer, and authoritatively than mine would, given everything you wrote AND your standing in the tech community.
I will make mention of something in extension of what you discussed as to how people wish it could have been different. While this is a “terrible conflagration”, and there many poor decisions made, and there were serious consequences for those involved based on those decision, The enormity and rawness of it all laid to bare CAN jolt people, and serve as a community-wide TEACHING and LEARNING moment. I must admit when I first started reading the narrative on TC a few minutes ago, I felt that queasiness one gets when you know things will end poorly, and I’m sitting here typing but thinking of what I want to take away from this, a 30 year tech veteran, having seen the worst and the best. So hopefully, the compressed time frame and ferocity of the events will serve as that jolt, and hopefully there will be much positive takeaway.
As we say in the “flying” business: “Learn from the mistakes of others because you’ll never live if you make all of them yourself”…
Thanks again.
Great insight, too bad it didn’t work out for everyone involved winning. Instead, two companies have had their reputation harmed and two people are out of jobs, including Adria herself.
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oh dear a woman who uses words like sexism to her advantage to force through change she wants and bullies people with the power of her gender finally got burned.
too bad so sad I wont cry about it. I have had my work attacked and been abused and threatened because of similar bullshit a woman complaining on the behalf of someone else (the girl I was joking with) and I was treated like a leper because it was a woman accusing me.
I’ve been called a cunt a prick a dick a faggot a whore a bitch and had death threats for things I have said. it happens it isn’t right but it happens. the fact its somehow more serious because it happens to a woman is disgusting.
she attempted to humiliate someone and crush their career by labelling him with one of the ism’s that are a kiss of death to person. something people will see and remember.
it was a private conversation. hardly the same as being abused for your gender. she should have just asked them to stop or make the jokes somewhere she couldn’t hear them. instead she did this…..
she wont learn from this the firing will just reinforce her martyr complex that she was fired by a male dominated system et etc etc
As a professional woman from a different perspective/industry (attorney), I’ve been pretty riveted by this discussion today and by the conduct of all the actors involved. This is the first time I’ve commented, and it’s largely because I found this to be one of the more level-headed forums. Apart from being amazed and saddened at the drama that’s going on, it’s also an insight into how wildly different industry practice can be. Ironically, I don’t believe this situation would have escalated to the point it did had lawyers been involved and now a law suit seems almost imminent.
Just a few observations:
– A lot commenters are conflating Adria’s accusation of of sexual vs sexists jokes. On the one hand, it’s true there is a difference and she never did say the jokes were more than sexual. On the other, you wouldn’t find lawyers or representatives from most corporate jobs trying to make a case that sexual jokes, told in a public professional space, are anything but wildly inappropriate. They can be the basis for a hostile work environment law suit. To the extent that techies believe this sort of humor okay- that making lame sexual jokes at the workplace is fine so long as it was all in good fun, not at any present woman’s expense and not with malevolent intent and be above reproach? Well, that’s just wrong. And if that’s the culture of your (collective) workplace, maybe it’s time for some massive re-education, because it is prime for law suits. I mean, maybe this does fall on the side of one innocuous joke that “everyone” would be fine with. But does everyone get to tell one? And who wants to be part of a work environment where everyone’s tittering about dongles Work is not a place for sex talk. And to be honest? That actually seems like where a lot of this rage is coming from. Too many programmers are hearing these facts and indignantly thinking of the last time they told a nerdy sex joke. “Shit, that could’ve been me if she’d just been sitting somewhere else in the auditorium. And I’m no sexist” If true, that’s a pretty damning indictment of your working culture and what passes for ok.
– I guess I’m a little bemused by the reaction to Adria’s conduct. I completely agree that it was in poor taste. I hope I wouldn’t do the same. But these men made a joke in a public sphere. And what is the internet about these days except reacting to things publicly? If someone goes to a restaurant and finds the food inedible, he’ll instantly tweet a picture of the disgusting food, write a negative Yelp review, broadcast the fact that he swears he’s coming down with food poisoning on his blog, and well, exercise his influence wherever possible. He could even do all this while at a business lunch. They have no obligation to take the cook aside and whisper to him first “Dude. Not edible.” We review every product, every place of business, every service worker, with impunity. We take “anonymous” pictures of random strangers on the bus, yesterday I learned what “whale tail” was when I stumbled onto a picture of one one someone’s tumblr. We record police officers who approach us on the street and it’s all fair game. We post things when they’re good and even moreso when they’re not. I’d just like to ask what makes Adria’s conduct so reprehensible here? She made a public post about what people were doing in a public space. She didn’t even name the offenders, and hey– its even appears she was right. So really, what is different here? Is it because it was one of yours? And if so, is that boundary really something defensible if everyone else’s public behavior is subject to scrutiny?
– This seems, as is the case with 95% of litigation, to be a case where one sane actor de-escalating the situation could have fixed all this. But of course, that’s not what was had, at any juncture. And I do believe that Adria now has at least a colorable law suit for a variety of reasons. I’d agree, given your analysis and backstory, that it’s likely she pursues these suits, or at least the morning news shows that blow up around all this. I also do wonder about your motives a little. Maybe schadenfreude really was at play? Otherwise, couldn’t you, like Adria’s employers, have waited to alert them to her previous conduct until that information could have been calmly processed and acted on? Who knows what the thought process at her company really was, but I don’t see how the content of your contact could have been anything but inflammatory. Not trying to be an ass here. But really, I’m amazed at how little understanding/empathy any party had here for any other.
– From the outside, the scariest part of all this is the hive mentality, which really is shockingly vitriolic. I’ve seen these sorts of incredibly violent, vulgar posts before, but I always attribute them to 14 year olds on 4chan. It really is highly embarrassing. And intimidating. The repercussions of this for women seem significant. Maybe the result of this is that people will think before they make an off-color joke (Maybe not. After all, the internet “won” and everyone universally agrees Adria was the bad guy. Maybe people will be emboldened and even cruder.) But it will definitely make people think before reporting harrassment. If the telling of a sexual joke isn’t enough to create a hostile work environment, worrying that you’ll be “another Adria” and ridiculed, threatened, harrassed, lose your job if you report something too innocuous or too loudly… well, talk about your textbook hostile work environment.
I worry that this just set everyone back.
Thank you very much for the perspective. Its very helpful to see it from the outside in the way you’ve presented it. I’ll address a few things, briefly:
Thanks for your response. But I wasn’t questioning your motives about posting this. She’s fired now, I don’t know what other harm can be done. But you mentioned that you contacted her work and informed them that, in your opinion, this was a patterned behavior. It removed a lot of my sympathy for her. I don’t know, but can only imagine it did at her workplace as well. I was just wondering what incentive you had to inform them of that besides jeopardizing her job at a time when masses of people were calling out for her to lose it. If you really wanted re-education, this could have been considered when things died down as opposed to now, where it was merely incendiary and further ammunition for her firing.
Thanks again though, for the rest of the feedback.
I wrote it after talking to a few employees at SendGrid who are friends, and at their suggestion. I main point was NOT the pattern, but pointing out that there was an option out there: retraining. I was quite careful to make that the point over and over and had others read it to ensure that was the impression given.
I wonder how this conversation would have gone if it had been a joke about PHP’s security lapses, or complete and total lack of language design, and how only dweebs programmed in PHP? What if the person in front of them was a PHP programmer trying to get into Python, and took severe offense at their remarks?
I’m not sure that offense gives license. And I’m not sure that offense should be legally actionable. Maybe it is, when it’s sexual offense? What’s so special about sexual offense? Doesn’t dissing PHP programmers create a “hostile work environment” because it’s “harassment”?
So …. I was accused of sexual harassment because, when at a hackathon, we were trying to pack cars, and I suggested that a person of one gender could sit on the lap of another person of the same gender. Also, at a noisy restaurant, I moved closer to her to hear what she was saying. Later on, without saying anything to me, she went to the head of the department and complained about this. It seems to me that A LOT of this reporting of harassment goes on without treating the other person like a normal person and dealing with the situation on the spot. And it seems like all too often, it’s women complaining about men. I *do* know that I treat the women I work with in a very different manner than I do the men, *precisely* because I know that they have the power to accuse me of offending them even where no offense was intended.
Yeah, and we all lose because of this.
I appreciate your thoughts, and I agree with a lot of what you said. This is also the first time I’ve chimed in on the event, even though I’ve followed it closely.
After sifting through all the noise, I’ve got some of my own opinions that I feel may answer some of the questions you pose, but like I said, they are my opinions.
>> She didn’t even name the offenders, and hey– its even appears she was right. So really, what is different here? Is it because it was one of yours?
I don’t think this is a 1st amendment issue, even though a lot of the kicking and screaming you hear is because she tweeted these guys’ photos and publicly defamed them at the conference.
I think the real core of the issue it was just a really shitty thing to do to someone, anyone. In this case it was done with utter hypocrisy and thinly veiled false-legitimacy by hiding behind what many see as a hot-button issue. The internet is very fickle and in most communities there is huge backlash when you are caught lying or faking anything, especially when it results in someone going to jail or losing their job. In this situation, the phony outrage and huge over-reaction by nearly everyone involved, except perhaps the guy that lost his job was perfect fodder for anyone that had been even slightly victimized in this way to get behind.
Instant shit-show.
The fact of the matter is, dongle is a relatively funny sounding word and I rarely see anyone refer to this piece of hardware without at least a smirk. The joke in question really is borderline on the offense scale. A pun that would likely have been acceptable on US Primetime television in the 1970s. If Adria Richards was genuinely offended by something like this, I think it would be virtually impossible for her to operate within the scope of normal everyday society, let alone evangelize developers, part of her job title. My god, what if she actually stumbled upon modern-day network television in a sports bar or something? Her head would likely explode.
To create a huge deal about it is ridiculous. To personalize the comments and make an anatomical joke into a ‘sexist’ remark is self-centered. To gloat about it and claim that you’re feeling like Joan of Arc for your heroic actions is surreal and finally, for a man to actually lose his job over this is downright unbelievable. Now, I realize that last part wasn’t her fault… but she definitely had a part to play in it so, in-turn became the lightning rod for an issue that is already a powder keg.
I’m not sure what kind of attorney you are, but I am sure you’re used to hearing complete and utter bullshit spoken with a straight face. “Your honor, my client wore this defective gym sock and may never walk again. Compensation of $51,000,000 is what we’re looking for.” We all know it’s bullshit, but legally we have to treat it seriously and pretend it’s not, right?
I think you were right on the money when you said people were reflecting on the last nerdy sex joke they heard and indignantly reacting to it. The differentiator here is, I think a lot of people saw bullshit and were more than happy to jump on the chance get out their phones and call it.
I am very sorry to hear your opinion, especially since you are a lawyer. Based on what you wrote, we should have politically correct, dry, all gray work environments – NO THANK YOU! Everyone has a different taste, level of acceptance and idea of what’s funny. We need to test those, understand each other and adjust as we go. When one is offended, he/she needs to let others know so they can adjust next time. But we should not accept the approach that you suggest where we can’t joke about sex, god, race, physical appearance or IQ. And those laws that you mentioned – we need to work on getting rid of them. Unfortunately it may mean a bit less work for you and other lawyers but did you know that Australia and New Zealand have half the lawyers than California?
Isn’t it interesting that those in the tech sector are busy trying to retain some humanity in the workplace while those in the corporate sector seem to be trying very hard to seem no more human than the machines we techies deal with every day? I wonder how far the disconnect will reach. If someday, people of every gender, race, creed, etc in the tech community will be able to laugh off jokes about each other and themselves while the suits speak only in binary for fear that anything other than a 0 or a 1 might offend someone.
This is a very enlightening comment. To hear an attorney’s perspective about how we don’t have the right to our informal private work & social environment (which we love at our office) helps me a lot. If there are two equally qualified candidates why would an employer ever hire a woman over a man? (Safe to say a woman is more likely to be offended than a man). I really thought my peers were out of line when talking like that but I’m beginning to understand. Why risk it? This shows that a woman with a little Twitter following can set off an absolute bomb and that some hardcore feminists don’t understand the difference between sexual and sexist (or consider both equally offensive to their delicate sensibilities).
Yeah, sue me – blah blah, no one will be able to prove the reason a woman wasn’t hired here. It’s amazing that the most strident advocates for women are the ones that do the most damage. Sadly, thanks for this comment.
As someone who isn’t an attorney, I’d like to say that I found your first observation profoundly depressing. I’ve seen sexual jokes at my workplace, from both men and women, met with appreciative laughter from everybody present. If my country adopts the litigious practices of the U.S., and this is lost, we will all be the poorer for it. Why do you believe that your preconceptions about acceptable workplace culture are superior to ours?
Thanks for this. I too was shocked, and honestly a bit frightened by the vitriol, hatred and violence of the response. I am sad that this exists and particularly so in my community. One of the commenters said that people might be defensive to confrontation “in a place they feel is theirs”. And that’s really it. We’ve all lost because this incident has made so many people feel like this place – tech, opensource, HN or reddit communities – are not theirs too. People will continue to feel excluded or unsafe long after this has settled down.
Thank you very much for the reasonable and constructive perspective on this tragic and avoidable blow-up.
Best Regards,
Rick Moen
Thank you for explaining the situation and for taking a professional but yet personal stand in this case. Thank you again.
Thank you for helping to provide the voice of reason from our gender, rather than conveniently providing ammunition for true misogynists everywhere like a certain plausible misandrist who claims to be fighting for equality.
I do agree with a majority of what you said in this article, but it seems like you’re giving her too much leeway. Many of the people who were attacking her were vigorous defenders of free speech and whom viewed the internet as an open place of freedom of expression. They also support the notion that people on the internet should not be used as your personal army. I’m a part of this group of people. I didn’t ddos her site or sendgrid, but it’s a fire vs. fire solution. She was a coward- never addressed the men behind her, only took a picture of them without their permission. She then got the men fired. Its the equivalent of me and my friend walking down the street after a hard day of work complaining about our boss when some random coworker walking slightly behind us sucker punches us in the head and runs away. Sorry, but Adria got a well-needed dose of reality; if you attack somebody without giving them the chance to defend themselves, you won’t get away with it in the long run.
My favorite part is how Adria never directly quoted any of the men’s comments. She posted nearly two thousand words on her blog about the whole affair, yet we never heard a single thing more specific than that they make “jokes” about “forking” and “dongles”.
“Forking” and “big dongles” as sexual double entendres *could* be offensive, but that depends on the context. In fact whether or not they were entendres AT ALL depends on the context, which Adria didn’t bother to provide at all. She just insisted that they were and left it at that.
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“She committed one single offense: not approaching the men like an adult and saying”
I’m actually very surprised by what you’ve said in your article. You seem to believe that what Adria did was not such a big deal, did not result in the firing of the victim.
Au contraire, there is a clear correlation between placing him in the public light and his firing from his company.
Due to her strenuous claims, I think that, honestly, Adria Richards has been committing _libel_ against this man and whomever else she was blaming.
I believe that in a civil suit, she would be found at fault.
I do not think you can say it is so light, or that responsibility does not lie with her. She published statements with a _reckless disregard_ for their truth or falsity, not knowing if everything they said was truly sexual or sexist in nature.
Yes, responsibility _does_ lie with her for publicly smearing the reputation of a man so much so that his livelihood is in danger.
He lost his current employer’s valued trust, and in addition because he is know publicly smeared, may find it difficult to find work in the future.
I think she’s responsible for _a lot_ more than what you seem to imply.
This is all my opinion and only that. Really, only a judge and jury can make the leap you’re trying to.
Well said. Thanks for putting your thoughts on this out in public. They have confirmed what I suspected. All in all a sad day for the Internet and the tech industry. I hope it helps to raise awareness for groups and people like yourself who actually care about helping women get into and stay in tech.
I just wanted to say, thank you for providing some of the background about previous events (which I had not heard elsewhere) and most of all, thank you for writing this up in a reasoned, fair way. I am most disturbed by, among the actors in this scene and the bloggers, tweeters, and others who have commented, how many have NOT shown sensitivity or even plain reason.
Thanks for taking the time to write this. I agree that it could have been handled much more professionally and that we ALL SUFFER when things like this happen.
All I can say is I’ve known Adria personally for years and this is insanity. These developers are showing their true colors and it ain’t pretty. I hope something good comes out of all of this
I really hope it does as well.
‘these’ developers? which developers?
Thank you for posting this, Amanda. Yours is the the calmest, most balanced and most informative take on this whole situation so far. It’s really sad that two people lost their jobs over something like this. I believe that both firings were entirely avoidable and the fact that they were allowed to occur shows just how much we, as a society, are fixated on punishments as a way of correcting inappropriate behavior. Any parent can attest that although punishment is a necessary component of correcting undesirable behavior, it’s never enough: you need to keep the big picture in mind and you need empathy. Without these things, all you succeed at is creating a culture of fear. I’ve already written about that on my blog, so I won’t repeat myself here. Instead, I’ll just invite anyone interested to go read it if they want to: http://beardseye.blogspot.com/2013/03/off-with-their-heads-pycon-incident-and.html
Rational creative discussion is impossible in a PC environment. Adriana deserved to be fired and will hopefully spend sometime in self reflection.
The OP is dishonest and cowardly.
The central fact of this blog post is, this person knew what sort of a creature Adria was, and associated with her anyway. Now that she’s become persona non grata, the OP is throwing her to the wolves. Fair weather friend, indeed.
Halfway through the topic shifts to the OP repeating all Adria’s discredited arguments about female victimization. The OP talks about how she got 40% attendance at some conference, increased female representation in the field. AT THE COST OF MEN. All justified because men say things she doesn’t like! Hmm.
This is a blog post by a typical unprincipled, self-interested feminist who will say and do anything – steal from men, sexist favoritism, even eat her own – to build a base of power.
Yeah… I don’t think you read the post? To be clear, Adria and I are *not* friends. When programming a conference, I am very specific. I consider the topics that I think should be covered (We did this as a committee), and then I go find the BEST SPEAKER on that topic. I don’t even look at submissions, I go find the best speakers. Many times, they’re women. No men were harmed in the process of this speaker grid. I’m not sure what power this will build to, I’ve rallied no one to a cause. I tried to be very open and honest about my feelings towards Adria, I’m not entirely sure what else I could have done to be clearer.
First off, patronizing the other party by opening with “Yeah…” then questioning their literacy, is bad form. That your first impulse in replying to me is an ad hominem speaks volumes about your own credibility.
You opened your blog post with an ad hominem, too. You began with how you don’t like this unpopular person. As if your audience would respond negatively. You try to court a positive reaction by offering one of your own on the altar. Would you have opened an opinion piece about this person a week ago in such a way?
You sure seem comfortable kicking Roberts when she’s down.
What could you have done? Simple. Terminate the relationship. Don’t invite her, don’t talk to her, and CERTAINLY don’t defend the ideology of hate she advocates. You did none of that. You took no stand and continued to work with this person despite knowing what sort of creature she was, and you turned on her ONLY after her reputation was blackened.
You do not understand the concept of ad hominem properly. It is to discredit the argument of another by attacking their character, which is not what happened here. The beginning of this post is providing context that works against the writer of the post and by extension, benefits Adria. To follow your line of reasoning, you would never be able to say anything unpleasant about someone.
I read the post. I agree with Farber. I sense condescension in your response “No men were harmed in the process of this speaker grid” which reinforces my agreement with Farber’s opinion.
Fair enough. It was indeed, meant as a joke, not a condescention, but hey! I’m known to make both!
” I don’t even look at submissions, I go find the best speakers. Many times, they’re women. ”
This is also untrue. You didn’t say you made an amazing lineup, you said you made a lineup that’s 40% female. Given gender representation – men vastly outnumber women – in the tech field, if you are making a lineup that is 40% female then you are basing your selection not on merit but on sexism.
What you say in your post and subsequent responses tries to sound reasonable, but it isn’t. What you say is untruthful, self-apologetic, and only serves to destroy your credibility and those of women who are honestly trying to break into the field on their own merits.
I think its really unfair to try and surmise my process. Infact, it was true. After we arrived at the speaker grid, it was infact, 40% female. it was not 40% female because we had a goal to hit. My concerns when programming a conference, and my community will stand behind me when telling you I program a pretty damn fine conference or two, is who will give the best talk.
But allow me to be clearer… what exactly is your point? You seem to disagree with my motivation, my process and my credibility. And for that matter, Adria’s as well. If we allow you all of that, is there anything else you’d like to contribute to the conversation?
You said in your blog post that your conference over-represented women and that this was a good thing. Clearly it entered your mind. And clearly if you are getting a result that is statistically grossly anomalous then talking about it, it is because that is your intent.
If I walk into an office where a bunch of Whites are talking about how they organized a conference that over-represented Whites, as if that’s inherently good thing, I don’t need to guess at their disposition or motivations.
“If we allow you all of that”
There is no “we”. There is “you”. You are trying to puff up your own personal viewpoint by presuming to speak for some unspecified multitude. It’s a form of bullying, and it proves you cut from the same cloth as Richards.
And yes I do disagree with your “motivations, process, and credibility”. You affect incredibility – your credibility is not enhanced by your resorting to ridicule and being patronizing.
I disagree with any process that is clearly bias-driven. And I question the motives of someone who turns on their former associates in their dark hours. Someone who ridicules their opponent’s views rather than engage them equivocally.
It is clear you are motivated simply by a desire for power and credibility, and will say and do anything to get them.
That makes you as bad as Richards, in my book.
Well, its Richards, not Roberts. And if we call this kicking, which to be fair, I wouldn’t, I’ve “kicked” her in the past while she entertained wild popularity. I had a similar discourse on Adria and her “feminism” many years ago on a now defunt posterous. I’m pretty even keeled about it. You’re clearly literate, I questioned whether you actually read what I wrote since you seemed to infer we were friends and that I was seeking personal gain in a kiiiinda unfriendly manner.But I admit, I’m getting tired and there are hundreds of comments to read through (I’m trying, really!) and I’m trying to be fair in my responses. if I seem short, I apologize. I don’t want to close off any dialogue.
Thank you for the wonderful article. I suggest saving yourself a lot of frustration by ignoring those who have proven themselves to be trolls, and focusing instead on the people who care about the issues in the article instead of just their own entertainment.
You had a professional relationship and were of similar radical ideological views. That much is clear from your blog post.
You had a mixed history, but you kept up this professional relationship, then tried to make yourself look better after she was disgraced. That is also clear from your blog post.
Yes, you are “kicking” her. You’re publicly stating “I don’t like Richards!” then airing a lot of dirty laundry about your shared past. You are saying one thing (you wouldn’t/aren’t shaming her) then doing something else (shaming her), and now you are making an excuse and absenting yourself when called on it.
It is people like you who are the REAL enemies of women in IT. Your lack of integrity in presuming to “advocate” for them establishes an atmosphere of suspicion, distrust and intrigue that is anathema to tolerance.
Saying you are “trying to be fair” is also self-serving. Duct-taping a halo to your head is as revolting as when religious fundamentalists do it. If you want to be fair, be fair. You presume to help no one but yourself when you tell everyone how fair you’re trying to be.
So you saw what I saw, and thank you for pointing it out. This is just a “yes, she sucked, but when I promote myself, you are supposed to see me as being “cool”. Why a 40% line up of women speakers if 40% doesn’t represent the group norm?
You sure are trolling un-be-lievably hard, my friend, despite the fact that few people are biting. It seems…almost…effortless. Impressive.
Please, Please, Please, Please stop feeding this troll.
Calling someone a troll is itself a form of trolling. To call someone a troll is to declare that you have opted out of rational discourse and resorted to ad hominem.
If you really believed I was a troll, you would simply ignore me. You don’t, because that’s not what you really believe, you just don’t like my views.
That’s not necessarily true. I replied to you a couple times and I’m pretty certain you’re a troll. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s still necessary to provide a counterpoint to bad ideas even if the person spewing them is clearly so far gone they’ll never be convinced.
There’s no danger of there actually being rational discourse with you. Or to put it more clearly, obvious troll is obvious.
Trolololololololololollllllll
Your oversensitivity and attempt to demonise the author on minor points consistently even after she tried to engage with you has made my mind up about you. I’m vehemently anti-feminist and an MRA btw. You made some good points earlier, but then went way of the reservation with some of your criticism which wasn’t even relevant. Your attempt at calling the word ‘Yeah..’ an ad hominem attack was in itself an insurgent attempt to make an argument by emotion – ‘Look she’s attacking me, ergo she has no credibility’.
Weak.
Yes, this is either a troll or someone with extremely bad reading comprehension skills. Doesn’t make much difference. The main article is quite good, and I’m sad to see that so many of the comments are the usual trolling and hate-filled drivel.
Great post Amanda – just ignore this Ethan guy. He’s off his rocker as much as Adria and looking for a fight.
Dude, seek professional help. You seem troubled with gender issues as Adria
Uh, are you reading the same thing I did? You are clearly hallucinating.
I’m not sure at what point in the article Amanda claims that she continued working with Adria following the first time at the conference she was organizing. The second instance of Adria being offended with a t-shirt makes no reference that they were working together, simply that it was something that Adria was offended with.
The entire central premise of your argument is that Amanda disagreed with Adria’s views but continued to work with her anyway, but nothing in this article infers that.
Umm. You yourself just said they did. She was invited to a second conference despite behaving like a jerk at the first.
You are trying to prop up your contrary-to-truth claim through rhetorical affectation. But what you are saying is simply a lie.
Patronizing the other party by opening with “Umm.” is bad form, Ethan Farber. You should know better.
She *wasn’t* invited, she took issue with a t-shirt that was made for the conference. I never said she was invited. You can have an issue with a T-shirt even if you’re not speaking at the conference.
Clearly you can read, but I believe you’re reading INTO things that haven’t been said.
How do you see a conference T-shirt if you’re not there?
You say “I said”. Not “it said”, or “as it happened”. It’s about what YOU SAID. So we’re not arguing about reality here, we’re arguing about a set of circumstances of your own invention. Yours is an argument from fantasy and bias.
Ethan,
she was not a speaker at the second event, she had at that time been banned from speaking at this series of events. I believe she was, at best, an attendee. I did not and do not have a professional relationship with Adria, I tried hard to smooth things over w her at the original conference and we never found time to talk, and when we finally did much later, it was in a loud, crowded club and was very quick.
I appreciate your comments, and have given them fair play. You have a very clear opinion, and I appreciate and hear it. We just respectfully disagree and I don’t believe further discourse would change that. You are welcome to email me offline if you’d like to continue an actual dialogue.
I just want to say, you seem like an awesome and intelligent person. This is the first article I’ve read from you, but you got skills, keep it up and I’ll keep reading!
When I read the tweet.. it just read to me like a random vent. Some guys made a joke, she didn’t like it..so she vented. Also when I look at the picture I see nothing but a sea of white male faces. As a black person who has worked 20 years in tech…. I get it. Maybe she wanted to say something, but she turned around and saw all those white men.. you know what I’d think “Ugh.. never mind it’s not worth the hassle.” So she sent out a random tweet as a vent… Ok, that’s was probably in bad taste. In her position, I wouldn’t have done that. But I understand WHY she did it.. and maybe how she could’ve felt. The part that astounds me is how out of proportion the reaction to her actions have been. People lost jobs, others are sending rape and death threats. If she’d been a White or Asian guy who tweeted the same thing… would things have gone this far? I don’t think they would’ve. But because of Woman (and a woman of color at that) said something everyone reacted to the most extreme level possible. No jobs should’ve been lost over this. Maybe a reprimand.. and a stern warning about conduct. But firing..over what amounts to a schoolyard disagreement? Silliness.
I think the problem with her tweet is the picture. Once you take a photo of the guys you’re venting about, it’s no longer about venting – it’s about public shaming. That’s just not a legitimate way of handling things.
She got this reaction not for being a woman, but for playing the “you’re a sexist” card – which couldn’t have been played had it been a man in her situation – she played the card in a situation that is fairly universally agreed to be a poor call on her part – offence is not sexism, and calling it sexism just demeans women (or men) who suffer real sexism at work or at conferences. She cheapened the word and undermined other women in doing so.
The reaction was out of proportion, you say? The same could be said of her (though not to the same degree). Do you honestly believe it would’ve happened any other way? Looking at her twitter, facebook, and blog, it’s fairly obvious just how much of a self righteous hypocrite she is. She has openly said black people can’t be racist against white people. She was upset about dongles, but then goes on to tweet jokes about them. She could have been a Man (and a man of no color at that) and people still would’ve been outraged by how for her head was up her rear. The fact that she lives in glass house and cast stones only incensed people more. Don’t go making this a race or gender thing, that neither excuses her nor does it detract from what the the level headed people are saying. Yes, of course there are those who will take things farther than they should go (the anonymity of the internet tends to have that effect) , and I’m in no way saying that it’s okay. However, her need to be a “Joan of Arc” for the “future of programming” cost someone who actually has a family their job. She wanted to live by her sword, so she died by it. She got what she deserves and it has been a long time coming. Because let’s be honest, who is going to have the balls to commit professional suicide and call this Woman (and a woman of color at that) out on her hypocrisy. Nobody. Why? Because as much as people say the tech world is dominated by men, there is no surer way to cause a storm of bad publicity than to be seen as sexist or racist in the public’s eye. Then, there would have been a reaction like this one, only from people like Richards, who would get to go on her merry way and continue her bully tactics with the added bonus of being the Rosa Parks of tech.
Knowing why does not justify her action either case or lighten it any as you are trying to do. I am a female minority but I wouldn’t go up and say I felt the 2 guys were insulting me because I am female and non white. Come on.. color has nothing to do with this(merely because you have revealed that you are black and thus I shall revealed that I am a colored minority as well). So you still want to zoom in on the because she is a woman as a sexist thing but really just emphasized that she did so because she felt overly shadowed in being a woman. Either way.. when 2 kids fight in a classroom, they both have to stand in the corner.
Honestly, I don’t think things would have blown up to the extent they have absent Adria’s blog post. It was self-serving, overly dramatic and obscured her completely valid points about sexism and bad jokes. I don’t think she should have been fired, but neither should the guy.
You’re probably right that if a guy had tweeted the same thing, things wouldn’t have gone this way. But if a woman had made those jokes, would she have taken the picture? I doubt it.
Thanks for bringing your level headed, honest, and thoughtful observations to us all on this matter.
The way I see it, SendGrid had no real reason to use resources to retrain her because there’s at least 20 other people who would gladly take her job at any given moment. We live in an overcrowded world, and the downside to that is there is always someone new willing to fill your position if you make a big enough mistake. Her mistake is she acts like a child when her feelings are hurt. Easiest solution would have been for her to just say, “shhh, I can’t hear the speaker.” She never needed to say she was offended, she only needed to tell the two guys to keep the chatter volume down.
My wife shared this with me. We were blown away. Thank you for this post. You bring refreshing sanity to this conversation and as far as I’m concerned this is the definitive record of the incident.
Men, including myself, fail to empathize with women all the time. As you pointed out, men have made things harder for women in tech. Despite this you readily extend empathy to men that you believe can be reasoned with. Men who truly wish to treat women with decency and respect appreciate this graciousness.
I’d like to help make that better future you describe. Thanks for the inspiration.
I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment here; that we’re better off learning from each other than going to war over every little issue. The best outcome for most problems is reconciliation.
The only part I disagree on is that I think this essay falls into a trap that many other essays do: not seeing the wider picture.
Is the tech industry sexist? I don’t know since I’m not in it, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me. Do I think that what happened here could have also happened in _any_ industry? Definitely. I’ve been seeing this exact same pattern for quite a while now: 1. Humorless woman who thinks censorship is the go-to option for all situations uses social media to whine. 2. The internet responds predictably, with a lot of reasoned discussion which doesn’t get noticed, and a lot of ugly troll comments about rape and death which *do*. 3. Woeful articles are written about the internet’s terrible misogyny. In almost all of these cases, I tend to ask myself if there might be a little more to the issue than just gender.
Yes, women are called gendered insults online all the time. Because if you express an opinion on the internet for long enough, Inevitably Someone Is Going To Be A Jerk To You. And the use of gender-specific insults doesn’t prove that someone is being insulted *because* of their gender. Otherwise, every instance of someone being called a dick or a prick would be proof of how much the internet hates men.
Also, I am confident that if you could somehow compare all the uses of a particular word on YouTube, ‘bitch’ ‘whore’ and ‘cunt’ would pale in comparison to the uses of ‘faggot’, ‘fag’ and ‘faget’.
Why is there a greater outcry over women being insulted? Is telling a woman ‘lol y dont yuo kill yourself?’ worse than telling the same thing to someone because they’re a man, a homosexual, a different race or have different beliefs? If there was any proof that these types of comments happen *disproportionally* to women, then I would have no problem believing this is a gendered issue. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone provide any kind of statistics like that. Usually, the fact that a woman was insulted is presented as proof that women being insulted is an epidemic problem, instead of merely one facet of a larger issue.
This is not a tech industry problem. This is not a women’s problem.
This is what will _always_ happen when people have free speech. Some of them will use it to be as cruel as their stupid little minds can fathom.
And you know what? I think it’s worth it. The internet has given us 4chan, I admit, but it’s also given us the first true marketplace of ideas. Along with the rude, horrible ones, we also have vitally important ones. People on opposite ends of the earth are able to collaborate on problems that none one of them could have solved on their own. And from everything I’ve seen, ignoring all the technology-fearmongering, I honestly think the internet’s done far more good than harm. The harm makes the news, yes. But think of all the petitions and Kickstarters. Think of the viewpoints you’d have never heard if not for blogs or YouTube. The internet has great potential to be an echo chamber or an angry mob. But it has more potential to be a test chamber for ideas, where they are attacked from all perspectives and the truth gradually surfaces like a form of natural selection.
I think that we have to tolerate incidents like this one. I’m not excusing them though. We can always work towards preventing them, and we should never give up trying. But like you said, we should treat each other as human beings when we do it. Be more ready to forgive; be less quick to assume the most offensive interpretation of something we’ve read; don’t feed the trolls; seek a peaceful resolution instead of giving into the gut instinct of wanting to punish everyone who makes you mad. We should accept that greater freedom will always result in people using that freedom in ways we don’t like. We can be a hypocrite about it and say that everyone else’s right to freedom of expression is less important than ours. Or we can do the adult thing and learn to accept that we can never stop people from saying things that hurt us, but we *can* change how we react to such talk.
Anytime anyone writes something about how viciously juvenile the internet can be, I always remember one important fact: One night my friend in the military called me up from South Korea where he’d been deployed. He’d been working through PTSD, and he told me that he had a bottle of sleeping pills in his hand and was thinking of swallowing them all. I talked with him for hours and helped him feel better. Now, years later, he’s home and married to an awesome boyfriend. If it wasn’t for the internet, we would never have known each other. If it wasn’t for Skype, he might have taken those pills. That’s why I believe that the ugliest comments online are an acceptable tradeoff for free speech. Because most comments aren’t like that. And some comments can bring people together and make their lives better.
(Sorry this was such a rant. I’ve heard a lot about this incident and haven’t been able to reply to it, so this is a response to not only your essay but the whole kit and caboodle.)
And the cost of free speech is dealing with all that rather than making a big show of being offended and ranting about how it should all change. Much smoke, little fire. Next.
The right of free speech belongs to both parties. Ie. you have the right to offend me, and I have the right to say that I’m offended. This isn’t a discussion about whether she had the right to be offended, or even whether she had the right to post a picture of the person who offender her, and state what they did to offend her. (She did) It isn’t a discussion about whether he had the right to make an offensive joke (he did). Its a discussion about better ways in which this could have been handled. Yes the cost of free speech is speech we don’t like is protected as well as speech we do like. The point of the conversation though, is that there are many ways this could have been handled, and the particular way in which Adria chose to handle this, did not have beneficial results for anyone. For instance had she chosen to handle this privately rather than publicly, we would all be missing out on your inability to remember her last name, and your constant accusals of everyone using ad hominem attacks on you.
Free speech means you are free to say what you want, provided it doesn’t impact the rights of others and you will be free from government involvement. This is why hate speech is considered illegal. So you can say something completely stupid (which, by the way, you have the market cornered on), and you can’t be arrested for it.
Likewise, my freedom of speech allows me to call you an idiot in response to what you are saying. This isn’t really that complicated, I don’t see why you are having so much difficulty with it.
It’s true that “bad” speech is one of the consequences of freedom of speech, but that doesn’t mean that bad speech is a good thing, or that we shouldn’t call people out on it or question it. Just because having free speech (warts and all) is better than not having it, it doesn’t necessarily follow that those warts are a necessary thing, or that we ought to ignore them. “Freedom of speech” means being able to speak your mind without *government* interference. What it doesn’t mean is that you can say whatever horrible things you want without being called out or criticized for it, and it doesn’t mean that people who say horrible things should be shielded from that criticism.
Secondly, while the mob itself may be pretty predictable, that doesn’t mean that what the individual members of the mob do is at all justified. In dealing with obnoxious people on the internet, their reasoning seems to follow this path: 1) There are a lot of bad people on the internet, therefore 2) you should expect there to be bad people on the internet, therefore 3) it’s okay if I’m nasty to people on the internet and you should put up with it. Every member of the internet mob that attacked Adria (not to mention the more subtle internet mob that likely contacted the man’s employer and pushed them to fire him over his silly remarks) is personally responsible for their own actions. The fact that we can’t identify them doesn’t mean that we should excuse them for the way they acted.
To Bart K:
>It’s true that “bad” speech is one of the consequences of freedom of speech, but that doesn’t mean that bad speech is a good thing, or that we shouldn’t call people out on it or question it.
Did you not read my comment to the part where I made that exact point?
>What it doesn’t mean is that you can say whatever horrible things you want without being called out or criticized for it, and it doesn’t mean that people who say horrible things should be shielded from that criticism.
You’re arguing against a position I didn’t take. At most I said that jerks should ideally be ignored. To make it crystal clear, me giving you my opinion means you have just as much right to give me your opinion on my opinion. I’m fine with people being criticized for their speech, just not censored (not unless we’re talking actual threats of violence).
>The fact that we can’t identify them doesn’t mean that we should excuse them for the way they acted.
I’m not excusing their behavior, I’m just saying that behavior like theirs is an inevitability and we have to face that fact. This is an uncommon concept, I know. Essentially I’m saying that you can put effort into fighting cases of rude behavior without acting as if it’s possible to one day wipe out rude behavior entirely. I’m saying that utopian ideas aren’t helpful. Some things are eradicable, like diseases, but so long as human beings have opinions and morals that differ from one another, we will have rudeness and crime. I see a hell of a lot of people who’ll look at a rare or isolated incident of something really bad happening and lament that the whole society’s corrupted and these are the end times and worry, worry, worry. If you look at statistics that show actual comparisons of really bad things happening over time, you’ll come to the conclusion that Life Has Literally Never Been Better For Humanity. That’s not to say that we still can’t work hard to improve it; sure we can! But we should also have some perspective. We should take a moment sometimes to marvel at how mindbogglingly grateful we should be at the fact that right now you and I are worried about rude comments on the internet instead of smallpox, for instance.
I spent my younger life surrounded by men in male-dominated fields (mainly factory work and construction), and my adult, post-college life working in fields dominated by women (and am currently an academic librarian). Those who think that there is a difference in the sexual nature of discussion between men and women are sheltered or willfully blind.
The difference is, when men don’t wish to participate, they move on and mind their own business. When women don’t wish to participate, they raise holy hell.
There’s no doubt that many, many men in the tech industry have a problem seeing women as equals. Unfortunately, Adria — with her self-serving actions and lack of maturity — have just told them that they’re right.
If you’re a MAN and you’re posting on here telling WOMEN how to feel, act or behave when confronted with misogyny or sexism, I have news for you: YOU’RE THE PROBLEM! Stop telling women how to react to situations and tell your friends to stop making dick jokes, especially in public places at an event that has a clearly defined code of conduct that warns against such behavior.
mr-hank says on hacker news “She gave me no warning, she smiled while she snapped the pic and sealed my fate.” No mr-hank, you sealed your own fate when you made that joke, you’re just upset because you had to pay the piper. Sorry that you have kids, because they’re being raised by a sexist. Hopefully they’ll learn how not to be a degrading misogynist due to your firing.
What about WOMEN who tell MEN how to feel, act or behave?
Hypocritical nonsense. Men have the right to think, say and do as they please – same as women.
I don’t know if it is even worth a reply, but I will try.
So. Women telling men how to feel or act or behave is not feminism/sexism, but men telling women how to feel/act/behave is misogynistic. Congratulations.
Homework for you: How is telling a stupid joke to your friend in a PRIVATE conversation – a joke that has nothing to do with this particular woman (or women in general) – misogynistic.
Enlighten us, please.
won’t even answer except to say, in a room of 1000 people, no conversation is private.
Private as in meant for/directed to his friend, not private = secret. As opposed to Twitter messages which are INTENDED to be as public as they get,
I take commuter train to work every day and go to the movies quite often. If I were to report people based on the private (yes, private, because they are not directed to me) conversations that I sometimes overhear, roughly half of the train commuters should be fired from work immediately, because they say stupid things.
Freedom of speech – if you don;t like what they say, either move away or ask them to lower their voices – but you have no right to judge the topic of their conversation – it is none of your business.
Apparently Adria has a history of psychotic behavior and she should seek help. I am sorry she had traumatic childhood and has “triggers”, but that’s no reason to have someone fired.
That’s a dangerous and incredibly damaging line of thought, and it encourages sexism, racism, and harassment (and the dismissal thereof).
First off, there’s no question that the dick jokes were crude, but there was nothing *sexist* or misogynist about them. Therefore, no one is telling Adria how to feel about being confronted with misogyny and sexism, because she *was not confronted with any* in this case. Secondly, Adria herself made a similar PG-rated penis innuendo, *publicly*, with one of her friends on twitter a day later. If she’s offended by mild dick jokes, she sure as hell doesn’t act like it.
The piper owes mr-hank his job back.
Hey look! Another man telling a woman what she is or isn’t experiencing. Shocking. You say that no one is telling Adria how to feel and then follow it up by saying that she didn’t experience what she experienced. Are you for real?
You’re like the mirror image of that Ethan Farber guy.
If we are *ever* going to be able to solve any of these issues like adults, we need to be able to call a spade a spade, and stop ruining any reasonable discussion about it with assinine arguments about who is “more victimer”. The fact that sometimes women are accused of overreacting in order to shut down legitimate discussions about misogyny does not somehow preclude the existence of genuine overreaction, and Adria *overreacted*, and what *you* are doing is using slimy language and implying that I’m a misogynist in order to shut down any reasonable criticism of the way she acted.
I don’t think you realize that “calling a spade a spade” is now considered incredibly racist. I’m not even black and I know never to use that phrase in any public setting.
I did not realize that. I’m sorry I used that phrase and I’ll make a mental note not to use it again.
It’s actually not. http://sprachgefuhl.blogspot.com/2009/09/is-phrase-to-call-spade-spade-racist.html
However, enough people believe it is, that it, like “niggardly,” should probably be avoided, just because it’s too fraught.
(See what I did there? Whether or not I agree with the people who are offended by the term, I suggested avoiding it, to avoid offense. Was that difficult?)
Thanks, I appreciate that. That being said, I it’s probably prudent to avoid using a phrase that people might perceive as racist.
Exactly.
So if we can agree that it’s probably prudent to avoid using a phrase that people might perceive as racist, is it that much of a stretch to say it’s probably prudent to avoid using phrases that might offend people for having sexual connotations? Yes, yes, we can argue that “dongle” and “fork” are the technical terms til the cows come home, but is it so difficult to use them in their technical sense at the conference, and keep from giggling about it til we’re out of the professional setting?
Notice how I didn’t say, “Well, I’m a writer, and that’s how writers talk, and people should just get used to that if they want to hang around writers.” I didn’t say that people who found those terms racist were just being too darn sensitive and should get over themselves. I just *don’t use the words*.
I think that’s reasonable. The way they acted was unprofessional, and in all honesty I kind of find myself picturing them like sitting in front of Beavis and Butthead at a movie theater.
“Heheheh… he said ‘dongle’. Ehehehe. Dongle. Hey Beavis! I’d ‘fork’ your repo. Heheheheh.”
It’s annoying, and it’s inappropriate in a professional setting. And yes, some people are offended by sexual comments.
On the other hand, this whole fiasco has been marked with one overreaction after another. While it’s fair to say that those two guys acted inappropriately, it’s also fair to say that Richards acted inappropriately in dealing with it. The internet mobs that ensued (who ultimately got two people fired over what should have been a minor incident, not to mention harassing and threatening Richards) acted *criminally*, which is far beyond just inappropriate. While the actions of the mob somewhat *overshadow* Richards’ actions, they do not *excuse* them. What she did — posting their image to her twitter and then to her blog — was essentially calling in an internet mob against these two guys, and it got one of them fired.
She has every right to be offended by what she heard, of course. Even then, her public tweets from the following day (on an account where she clearly represented her employer) would seem to indicate that she’s not particularly offended by dick jokes to begin with, as long as they’re coming from her, which is a bit of context that leads one to question whether she was truly offended or just looking for something to be offended *about*. She didn’t think her own juvenile dick jokes were misogynist.
This is public discourse, and she entered it when she posted those guys’ picture on her blog and called them out publicly. In no way were the death and rape threats warranted, but if she’s going to be making public statements about these people (particularly ones that ultimately result in one of them being fired), she should at the very least be prepared for criticism, and that includes analyzing things that she said in order to speculate about her real motives.
Also, to further illustrate my original point, what PolioLio did was politely point out that I said something that someone might take offense to, at which point I apologized and modified my behavior (incidentally, this is also what happened when the PyCon staff took the men involved aside and spoke with them privately). He did not tweet my photo to hundreds of people and blog that “Bart K is a racist”.
A guy is a “degrading misogynist” for making dick jokes? You’re off the reservation friend and misapplying those words. Women (and men) have the right to feel or be offended at whatever they want. But I don’t have to treat it as valid. I don’t have to treat it as legitimate and value it to gain greater understanding. I can choose to dismiss them as a nutcase if they are too easily offended.
You don’t see a distinction between making a joke on her personal Twitter account with one of her own friends that only people who follow her on Twitter see, and having a couple of strangers behind her telling jokes like that at a professional conference?
Sure I see a difference. The difference is that in her case thousands of people saw the joke, whereas in theirs maybe 15 or 20 people who were nearby heard it. Regardless, it’s hardly relevant. Neither joke was particularly offensive, and in her case it only serves to illustrate that she seems to think it’s okay when she does it.
At the very worst, Mr. Hank made the kind of joke you would expect from a 12 year old. That’s not her being confronted with misogyny or sexism. That’s her eavesdropping on a private conversation. In his apology to her (which she never accepted), he says that she misinterpreted him, and I’m inclined to believe that. Additionally, he was okay with her being offended and even reporting him, but he maintains she handled it wrong. She did not say “that’s not cool’ or try to address the issue herself. The thought never even crossed her mind that maybe she had misread the situation. Instead, she violated the very same rules that she beat them over the head with by taking a picture of them and tweeting it without their consent (PyCon has even made a change in their code of conduct to clarify that you cannot do that) and then wining about them over twitter. That’s how a child would handle it. She is supposed to be an adult here.
Someone else already addressed you’re blatant hypocrisy, so this I’ll just leave that be.
Also, if the dick jokes are so offensive, why did she make similar jokes on twitter? Are you just upset because she had to pay the piper? Hopefully she’ll learn how to not be thin-skinned hypocrite due to her firing.
Horsepuckey. I’m a woman, always have been, and I make dick (and boob) jokes. It isn’t about you. It’s just bathroom humor. I don’t point at a guy and tell him he has a small one, or threaten to cut it off. Someone making puns about dongles and forking is not an insult to women. Really. [Forking can be done in either the X or Y axis…] This hypersensitivity to stuff about basic biology is nuts.
The best punchline to a half hour sequence of computer/sex/genitalia puns I was involved in was “Hard? Where?” The person I was joking with was another girl.
> [Forking can be done in either the X or Y axis…]
It took me a moment to get it … then it made my day. 🙂
(Just to stay on topic: note that my response didn’t involve getting the jokester fired. Not even a little bit!)
“Sorry that you have kids, because they’re being raised by a sexist.”
Someone making a “dongle” or other immature male anatomy joke to a friend means he or she is *sexist*? In that case, pretty much every engineer parent out there, male or female, has kids being raised by sexists because I guarantee you they have done it at some time. I can see immature, crude, or lacking a sense of propriety if they do it in an inappropriate setting. But automatically a sexist, wow…
I’m sure you’ve never made a stupid off-color joke, though, right Saint Brown? Good for you. 🙂
Thanks for your incredibly lucid and balanced take on this sad and upsetting story. I’d like to think that your thoughts might help other employers come to a more reasonable resolution should something like this happen again.
Don’t know Adria, but given the her history I have been reading of late, I don’t believe I would care to know her either, especially as she has this thing of thinking everything is about her and not about the possibilities she can create around her… no empathy, no gain…
like I said, no one is all good or bad. adria’s got a lot going for her and there are many ways in which I respect her.
If you respect her, you wouldn’t so hastely throw her under the bus as others have said. Adria has brought her own demise with past history has shown. It certainly is no one time incident.
When I first heard about this incident and got a short summary, I felt pretty bad for her.
Then I actually took time to read some of her blog posts and tweets directly on her site and account. Moving beyond her inappropriate “direct-to-the-internet masses” handling of the original situation, she came across to me as a grandiose, rage-filled hypocrite with poor professionalism herself. Making sock-in-the-pants phallus jokes on a Twitter account listing HER JOB TITLE AND EMPLOYER as the main byline right underneath her name?! (Oh, the irony.) Tweeting on that same account that “Black people CANNOT be racist against White people” (https://twitter.com/adriarichards/statuses/6039856858) ? Yeah, that’s great PR and developer outreach. Very unifying and constructive. Or not.)
I do not respect her. I don’t care if she can code, give speeches, or juggle 20 bowling pins while simultaneously running a four-minute mile. Someone who promotes resentment and division along racial and gender lines while professing to fight for equality is unworthy of respect. She does not deserve threats, but I’ll reserve my heartfelt sympathy for people who suffer injustice and actually appear to be decent human beings.
I do not respect the subgroup of those who disagree with her who voice it by sending threats to her and making ridiculous sexist rants, either. (I don’t see those people getting lionized by semi-mainstream media, though, unlike Richards. And well they shouldn’t.)
Amanda, you paint a picture with beautiful diplomacy
you’re words are very refreshing for such a notoriously blunt ratbastard like myself.
haha. that’s AWESOME.
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This is quite possibly the most rational write up of the situation I’ve seen. Very nice work.
Your calm, reasonable attitude shocks me a bit. I was getting used to the insanity. Isn’t that funny, insanity is normal.
Kudos to you for being a voice of reason. It’s hard to stand up for the middle ground, but it needs to be done. Thank you!
As sorry as I feel for Mr. Hank for losing his job, and now for Adria, suffering the same fate, I think there’s yet another casualty here. After seeing the ugly threats and insults, as well, many women may be even MORE hesitant to speak up and tell offenders “That’s enough!”
One step forward, three steps back.
Liked the article, loved the alternate universe =)
I’ll be honest… too many adults need to hurry up and have some damn birthdays. Nobody can make me a different me, and I know for some people, that drives them crazy. Our population is a massive mixed bag of elbows and cigar butts, and no matter how much some people want things a certain way, they can’t have it.
Adria seems to be the type of self-righteous social engineer that has made authentic conversation impossible. Amanda, you are correct, some days, there is nothing more tenuous than being a white male. My every look, word, action, and though has to fit the rubric of every over-sensitive souls’ precious little bag of needs and biases. The story of Adria’s actions here remind me of how many people of inherent respect and thoughtfulness get wrenched into ignorant beasts. The vast majority of ALL of us are respectful and aware of other’s right to dignity and respect… but now I’m twice as hesitant as ever to be myself in a crowd.
But I’m going to be. And so should you.
I will FORCE you to have to come to me and tell ME that I may have over stepped. But people like Adria wont do that… why? because if someone offers facts that don’t line up with her way of seeing things, it will ruine her story. And what is a victim without a story???
Then I suspect, jeremie, that you won’t be working for too much longer. I once thought as a senior nuclear scientist I could also be myself. After 6 years with the job, I was put into ‘probation’ for a 6-month trial, for the ‘tone’ of my e-mails. The “tone” offended a womyn. I wasn’t all touchy-feely enough. During the probation I sensed they were working on firing me. The management harassment and demands were increasing. I complained to several co-workers (females) that I couldn’t stand what they were doing. They obediently reported this to management. Things got worse.
As the six-month deadline approached, I told a co-worker I was sure I was going to be fired, as the manager had announced he was leaving the company and gave the date as the exact deadline I was under. When indeed I was fired, a reason given to me was that I had ‘guessed’ that I was going to be fired. Everything that was done to me was due to the female cadre at my workplace, and their tattle-tale behaviors that management was too frightened to stop. Don’t _ever_ let women have that sort of power in your field – it will destroy you.
I’m not sure how aware you are of this, but a lot of the outrage stemmed from Adria’s hypocrisy – her Twitter is full of racist, sexist comments, and ironically even has a few penis jokes and innuendo itself.
Regardless of how smart or educated Adria may be, this kind of attitude is appalling and reason enough to not hire/fire such a person.
Outrage would be fine, if it were represented rationally, but outrage from men towards women almost always starts with threats of violence (both sexual and not), and occasionally ends with actual violence. The problem isn’t that there was outrage, the problem is the form that the outrage took.
Why smile at the guys and take their pic? Seems psychotic. TBH they should sue her and SendGrid for defamation of character. Seeing as though she was under SendGrid’s employ and wholly under duty, I think they would have a pretty open-and-close case for legal remedy. Simply appalling. Disappointed in Adria.
Thanks Amanda. Yours is the best post I’ve yet to read on the situation.
There’s only small thing I’d disagree with: she actually committed two offences. You mentioned the first–not turning around and saying, “c’mon, guys”–but the other was posting that tweet with the photo.
And though I may disagree with that one small part of the post, in every other regard, I think you have the situation down pat. I’d a discussion with my co-workers earlier today, and you stated exactly my opinion much better than I could’ve.
Men get to be assholes all the time. No one DDOSed Jumpstart Labs because Steve Klabnik was a jerk on Twitter. The idea that women must be held to some higher standard lest the rage of a million internet sexists descend on them and their companies is ludicrous.
Exactly! No one is send mr hank rape and death threats, those have been reserved for Adria. Sad fraking world we live in.
Excuse me? I’m a male and I’ve received rape and death threats for failing to use correct punctuation. Claiming that these are somehow exclusive to women is moronic.
Why do I have a suspicion based on some of your other comments, that in your perfect world, if Adria gets threats then it would be even better if both of them got rape and death threats because then it would be “even”?
No one should be getting rape and death threats, and I hope you agree.
At least mr-hank publicly apologized for his inappropriate joke. It’s amazing what taking ownership and responsibility for your actions will do to make you sound (and more importantly BE) reasonable.
Who lost their job when Klabnik was a jerk on Twitter? Did he tweet a photo of the dev? And didn’t Steve apologize? (because ya, he was being a real ass). Did the woman apologize in this instance? Of course not. I hope you understand these distinctions. If not, play the victim and whine all you want but it does more to hurt woman then help them.
Thanks for the post, good that you raised your thoughts based on personal experience and importantly, with extended explanation.
I’ve just added your post into a collection of both side stories here (http://www.credibility.cc/topic/8) if anyone is interested.
I think that there is a professional and proper way of dealing with these issues without making them public. Usually there is management to file a complaint with instead of taking the vigilante route of naming and shaming all over the Internet.
When I blog about an issue I don’t use real names just examples of bad behavior and bad actions. It seems to be the unwritten code of conduct of bloggers. If I make a mistake or offend people I make a public apology to them and try not to do it again.
Close your eyes and imagine everything Adria Richards did wrong at PyCon. Then, imagine she’s Robert Scoble.
Still have the same opinion?
You’re right. We’ve been taking it way too easy on Robert Scoble.
Seems like Adria is yet another “positive” discrimination hire making life hard for the people who do actual useful work. I hope she stops being a parasite and finds another line of work.
This is going to sound like a dongle thing to say (see what I did there?), but I disagree with your last point about “men losing”. I actually think the fact that Adria got fired was the HAPPY ending to this whole ordeal. It shows that companies like SendGrid *WILL* standup to antagonistic bullying, even when it’s from one of their own. It shows that overreactionary bullshit does not stand in our community. That makes me happy. It feels like justice for me, even though it might not have been complete justice for the guy who lost his job.
You say Adria will get another job in developer evangelism– unfortunately, this is the problem. Given all the things you’ve said about her, and given all that we’ve seen, she’s the LAST person that should be working as a developer evangelist in tech. This has NOTHING to do with her gender, and everything to do with her attitude. I don’t want an evangelist, male or female, acting like an entitled brat and threatening to cancel talks or tweet about developers because of what they say or how they act. I mean, she’s a FREAKING DEVELOPER EVANGELIST, and she doesn’t even have the ability to TALK TO DEVELOPERS. Seriously? I appreciate that you think she is “smart”, but honestly, those compliments sound a little hollow from this side. To me she just sounds like a dumbass who clearly does not belong in PR. I personally hope she’s made unhireable in the tech community.
And I would say the exact same thing about any guy who behaved, and had a history of behaving, the same way.
I didn’t say she’d get another job as a dev evangelist. Actually I dont know how she would. She’s a very good teacher. I expect she’ll go back to that in some capacity and would be very, very good at it. Whatever she does, I wish her luck.
Ahahaha, what? SendGrid caved to Anonymous. Beginning and end of the story.
1, i have compared playhaven and sendgrid
playhaven’s bussiness seems more common user orient while sendgrid is really geeker orient
so both companys made a same decision: fire the employee that made the customers angry
2, as a male developer, of course this would made me have very negative impression to female technical people,
*NOT* female developer, i have some female ex-workmates who showed me very good developing skills and study
interest.
but when i turn the eye to other side of the social, i think people acts like Adria is not strange, if you are in US, just trying
to play some jokes on negro or just use the word *negro* itself. i refer this sample to show that Adria is not that nervously
in normal social, but please dont forget developer social at least in normal people’s eye, is still specific , what Adria’s wrong
is when she is trying to entry the specific social in deep(which is her job at sendgrid) while not trying to obey the specific
rules(obvious one or not obvious one).
3, fortunately our female developer and other female tenical worker in china is forgive, otherwise i might be fired many times
for daily talking or joking.
i am sorry for my poor english, hope you could got my meaning
None of this bullshit ever happens at a Perl conference.
Throws down the mike, walks out. GOODNIGHT!
These are so first world problems. Insane. If she is real then should try to solve some real problems. At least write some real code. Who is a developer-evangelist anyways? Some sort of condescending character?
Google Nayana Pujari for an example of extreme cases of real problems women in IT faces. She was gang raped and murdered while returning from work in a company cab. Without any doubt women engineers working for Indian IT companies (8 million around), including my wife, face some harsher problems than twitter posts can solve.
It’s a common trope to compare the problems of women/gays/blacks in one country to another where they have it much worse. It doesn’t help or illuminate anything. Oh that poor woman who was gang raped in India? What about countries where sex slavery is common and women go years of being raped and gang-raped? We can usually find someone worse off than ourselves. That doesn’t mean that we should stop trying to improve our own situations and cultures.
A very, very (really, can’t overexagerate the very here) woman in my world has said repeatedly “misery is not comparative”. Its true. It doesn’t help us to belittle issues because there are worse issues. Its perspective, sure, but better to just
SOLVE THE PROBLEM.
Firstly, Ethan Farber: Get a life, man. It’s sunny outside, try a little fresh air.
Your “intellectual” trolling of this article was, at best, tepid.
Adria got exactly what was coming to her, re: her termination.
In fact, inb4 she pulls the “race/sex card” and sues, screaming that she’s been “defamed”.
Ho, hum. Another Internet drama queen bites the dust. Maybe Oprah is hiring.
When someone (male or female) with a notable, hypocritical history like hers wants to start an incident maybe this will discourage them, and that would benefit both sexes, equally.
This was a great article, well-written and certainly more “fair” than it needed to be.
A lesson learned, let’s hope for no repeats.
The problem with labeling the backlash against Adria as gender-based is that she herself framed the dialogue in gender-based terms on the outset by attacking people over her taking offense at a penis joke, and a tired and juvenile one at that. If someone opens with a salvo that specifically attacks one gender/race/religion/etc., to then claim that the return fire is terrible hate speech is downright disingenuous. And had she been a he, the end result would have been identical. The exact words would have been different, but the venom behind them would have been precisely the same, and she/he would still have been the target of a unified campaign to bring about her/his firing. Because she/he is an asshole who is clearly not professional enough to hold any sort of job with more responsibility than flipping burgers.
Men are getting sick of this shit. Good.
Women are getting sick of this shit too. Perhaps we can put all the radical feminists and the misogynist assholes on an island somewhere, and the rest of us can live together in equality and happiness.
The problem is she acted like an asshole, and was attacked as an asshole… Sadly this quickly becomes gender specific, and she is as likely as anyone to capitalise on this and make it about gender.
It’s not about gender it’s about acting like a dick… (Is that misandrist? I’d love to know.)
The fact is its not the world, or the developer world that’s sexist, it’s not, it’s that idiots make confirmation bias really easy to achieve.
Idiots are sexist, idiots also cause storms in teacups and seek global Internet attention….
I’d propose taking a stand against idiots, because it is they who cause all the world’s problems
The reaction and blowup to Adria’s actions isn’t something that happened due to any unique aspects of the situation at hand – the number of people who have been fired or lost their jobs for making misunderstood jokes is in the hundreds at least. The blowup over this specific incident is a reaction to much broader societal trends and a deep undercurrent of resentment in society today, and simply cannot be understood without looking at those trends. If you want to be able to understand exactly what made the blowup regarding Adria’s actions at all possible, then you really need to look at the discussion community focused around Roissy/Heartiste’s blog(http://heartiste.wordpress.com/).
If you can actually read and grasp the concepts outlined there without turning your brain off because you see something “sexist” then you can understand exactly why what happened did.
Perhaps this is just due to the abstracted nature of what I’m hearing, but having not heard what was even said in the first place, other than how it involved “dongles” and “forking” I have to wonder why it was immediately assumed this had to do with women? Last time I checked homosexual men still have the alluded-to organs, and I am led to believe that they participate in the alluded to activity. Perhaps the jokes were more specific than all that, and it did imply women, but nothing I’ve read so far guarantees that. Would it still have been the wrong joke in the wrong place? Sure, but I have to wonder if assumptions were made here, and bias revealed.
Interesting scenario. If they had turned out to be gay, Richards would have eaten shrapnel as she would have automatically been out PC’ed by the gay developer couple. Like Richard’s own theory dictates ‘black people can’t be racist’. Her race and gender card automatically trumped. She would have immediately brushed the incident under the carpet and deleted the photo.
Good write-up of the situation, along with some valuable context.
It would appear this has all had more to do with someone trying to stand on in a bid of self-promotion, and I’m sure there’ll be Adria Richards / Rosa Parks memes shortly. I really hope your thoughts on this weight out over time, as opposed to people mentally backflipping to defend her actions out of a misguided belief that to do otherwise is endangering the cause somehow.
Worst part? I know this girl’s name now, whereas I didn’t before, so I’m expecting a misguided angel investor will be setting her up with a non-profit aimed at getting girls in tech or something.
Best part? After the last few weird stories like this, I’ve decided to always have a buffer of 6 to 7 feet between myself and a woman in tech which means I don’t have to worry so much about not farting.
The obvious solution here is to use Perl instead.
What?
I don’t share Amanda’s rosy view of the open source movement, both because of its rampantly authoritarian methods and culture, and because of its misogyny — which is common to the geek world in general. So part of me was glad that this woman Adria, whom I don’t know, was able to publicize the awfulness of the misogyny and nastiness that make it so hard for women to be in tech, or even for women bloggers on tech to comment on the obvious.
But a common function of the open source/social media cult is this “gotcha” game and these Saul Alinsky/Leninist methods of harassment, stalking, heckling, smearing, etc. And Twitter gives you a big amplification tool for that purpose. These two men made their sexist remarks to each other, in a private conversation that constituted backchat to what was going on, on stage, if I have understood correctly. Adria overheard their backchat, decided it was offensive, and then aggressively took a picture of those men, and then put them on Twitter. This led to public vilification of them for their private remarks, it led to one of them getting fired after a scandal was attached to their firm’s name in public, and it led to Adria getting fired for the same thing.
Don’t people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their remarks made not in public but to each other sotto voce while a conference is in session. Those men after all didn’t tweet their sexist jokes. So rightly or wrongly in terms of content, their speech has a reasonable expectation of privacy as it is not made publicly for public consumption. Yet Adria overrode that with this nasty authoritarian gambit of her own, which was basically to say “We will forcibly reform you according to our feminist notions even for what you say in private, just to make a point”. And that’s just not on — it’s more imbalance and more authoritarianism.
When you put it all into context as Amanda Blum has here, you feel like you’re in an episode of Portlandia:
I can’t help thinking that had Adria returned to her blog that day and wrote a post on this incident, about the men — even naming them — about their hurtful remarks and how it made her feel — even with a picture showing that this conference, like so many dev and geek type conferences, was basically a sausage fest — well, that might have been more tolerable. It’s that real-time that really makes companies freak out. But on a blog post, she could have taken time to frame it, and they might have had an opportunity to response in a length longer than a tweet. I do wonder if she or they would have been fired, had this been a blog post — and had it been one without naming names, it would have ensured no one got fired, but maybe the cause of women’s right got advanced.
I think Ashera Wolf took this approach — and she described the awfulness of the misogyny at conferences, and she even named some names, but I think her method — not getting into people’s faces and taking pictures to instantly tweet and not shaming them on Twitter in real-time — probably was more effective.
http://asherwolf.net/dear-hacker-community-we-need-to-talk/101/
As a man in the high tech industry for the past 20+ years I am offended by this: “Adria reinforced the idea of us as threats to men, as unreasonable, as hard to work with… as bitches.”
Most men do not see women as threats, unreasonable, hard to work with, or bitches. If you think you are viewed that way by a significant number of males you are wrong.
Also, who on earth thinks a talk entitled “Getting the Money Shot” is ok? That simply makes a stereo-type as well. Even if I was interested in the topic and the speaker I would not attend a talk with that title, likely because I simply wouldn’t read anything past the title assuming the speaker is a moron.
You realize that money shot is a long used term for the most essential shot of the film/print/movie/etc… ? Are we going to start striking out all terms that have an alternate definition at urban dictionary?
I thought the same way that you did at first, but then I looked a couple of lines below the word “money shot” to the description of the talk: “Think like a porn director…”.
You can decide for yourself whether porn references belong at tech conferences (I’d rather be safe than sorry, myself), but it was explicitly a porn reference.
Your article is obviously biased and I appreciate your acknowledgement of that. However, I am curious why no one is talking about the guy who still has job that was involved in the incident. Am I mistaken that one of the developers was not fired? Was it not two guys having a conversation? Could the man from PlayHaven have been a repeat offender? I mean it seems like a logical jump when you say the industry is deeply rooted in sexism. I don’t think this is a situation where we all lose.
Neil Degrasse Tyson once said, and I am paraphrasing: we have to publicly shame people with science in order to overcome archaic beliefs. Do you feel that Adria’s public shaming of the offenders will not have an effect on men’s behavior towards women at technology conferences? Or do you feel that effect will be purely negative? And come on men, we learned public shaming from you, and it has been highly effective and much more historically brutal, (clucking stool and scolds bridle anyone? slut shaming more recently?) in the oppression of women. So don’t get your boxers in a wad when a woman or man publicly calls you out for something, and it’s not in the gentle fashion you feel that you have earned.
Now that being said, SendGrid had the right to fire her, but they probably should have done it in a more tactful manner. Did she make a good move for her career? Probably not, but she made a move for women in a male dominated field and for that, I don’t think we all lose.
The guy who made the joke got fired, and you want the friend that he made the joke to fired as well? Does that seem like a reasonable reaction? Would you like to be responsible for the jokes your friends and co-workers may make around you?
“come on men, we learned public shaming from you …. So don’t get your boxers in a wad …”
Roxanne: your comment reeks of collective revenge for historical wrongs. There is so much wrong with those line of thinking that I don’t even know where to start…
I also notice that you went for gendered insults even though I thought that the consensus here is that that is one of the problems with the reaction to Adria. (not the biggest problem, but one of them)
Your mother probably taught you that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” That goes double when you’re talking about a collective as big as 49% of the world population.
Freedom of speech cannot by definition be free if you have to censor your thoughts for any reason. The comments were not direct at her. What you are suggesting is a the precursor to thought crime. If people have to censor their thoughts everyone loses. If they comments were directed at her she has a clear case. I leave you with this, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bwGsOBTlhE
You’re contradicting yourself: “Freedom of speech cannot by definition be free if you have to censor your thoughts for any reason… If they comments were directed at her she has a clear case.”
Make up your mind. By the way, hundreds of years of legal and ethical precedent strongly disagree with you that ethical people should NEVER censor their speech “for any reason”. I do not believe that there is a legal jurisdiction in the world where freedom of speech is considered absolute or else useless. Certainly not the United States.
I have to say, you sure are more charitable than I am. The idea that people who are capable of seeing sexism in other places, but can’t see it in tech… the idea of that as something that is comprehensible or even reasonable… That is just not a sentiment that I could echo with a straight face. The only possible reason that (straight white male and otherwise privileged) people in tech could fail to see the inherent sexism is because it is much tougher to smell the sewage that you’ve been living in for your entire life.
(Speaking as a straight(ish) white male otherwise-privileged person who has worked in tech for 20 years.)
I agree that there is absolutely nothing that is un-screwed-up coming out of this episode. Even the ‘discussion’ it has engendered (usually the consolation prize that you get when you got nothing you wanted) does not, judging by the comments both here and elsewhere, seem to be much of a prize.
Ugh. I usually say ‘computers would work really well if it weren’t for people’, and, it appears, so would interpersonal communication.
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I think there is at least one big loser here that didn’t deserve it, and that is the developer that was fired by Play Haven. Frankly, I hope Play Haven too loses – a company that is so disloyal to its employees that it fires them for cracking sexual jokes to a friend at a conference that is then overheard by someone else who gets unreasonably offended really should consider their internal scaredy-cat policies. I sincerely hope they have real issues with finding new employees, that’s the least they deserve. I know there’s no amount of money that would let them hire me, anyway.
SendGrid firing Richards makes a great deal more sense – her job was to be an Evangelist, and her ability to do that after having been outed as a hypocritical publicity-hound is highly in question. It was literally the same day as this blew up or some such that she posted a dick joke of her own – widebanded from her Twitter account. So not only extremely bad at handling having her lily-white ears be offended by something she literally overheard that wasn’t aimed at her, a hypocrite to boot. After that, she’s useless as an Evangelist for SendGrid or just about anyone else.
Jokes between friends isn’t a firing offense. Being hyper-PC isn’t a good thing. If I want to talk to a buddy in the way men often do and crack jokes about forking or dongles – or for that matter, fucking and dongs – that’s my bloody right in a free society. Sure, it may be somewhat socially insensitive if others overhear, but it sure isn’t a firing offense, nor is it automatically anti-women – men just frequently like low-brow humor and these guys weren’t talking to Richards. They were talking amongst themselves.
“Frankly, I hope Play Haven too loses – a company that is so disloyal to its employees that it fires them for cracking sexual jokes to a friend at a conference that is then overheard by someone else who gets unreasonably offended really should consider their internal scaredy-cat policies. I sincerely hope they have real issues with finding new employees, that’s the least they deserve.”
THIS so much. (Except I say anyone has the right to be offended all they want… it’s how they handle that offense that matters.)
I’m sure morale at PH is absolutely awesome since the employees know they have great job security and management won’t drop them like a hot potato if… oh wait.
“She didn’t get the developer in question fired… Play Haven did that and there are probably details of that transaction we aren’t privy to. It is a tragedy, but one that isn’t her fault.” -I agree with most of this post except with this above line. I believe it IS her fault. If she solved it like a (wo)man and did not post their pictures online without their permission and made them look criminal… i don’t believe play haven would’ve let them go.
She had no control over Playhaven’s decision. She tweeted a photo. Playhaven could have given the guy a slap on the wrist, they didn’t they fired him, she had no control over that. To say that it was her fault is flat out wrong,
She didn’t control PlayHaven’s decision. But anyone with a brain should know that tweeting a picture of people to your 9,000+ followers and writing a huge diatribe basically accusing them of killing programming for every future girl is going to cause a firestorm. Companies don’t like to deal with firestorms, as PlayHaven and SendGrid illustrated. Most people know that, too.
I’ll agree some other form of disciplinary action would have been more appropriate than firing… for the PH guy anyway. Given Adria’s position as essentially a PR person for developers, there is no way in heck she can effectively do her job after this. If the PH guy’s job was to conduct Workplace Sensitivity training (or whatever they call it now) I’d say he should probably be canned, too, since he wouldn’t really be able to do his job effectively either. But it’s not.
“She had no control over Playhaven’s decision. She tweeted a photo. Playhaven could have given the guy a slap on the wrist, they didn’t they fired him, she had no control over that. To say that it was her fault is flat out wrong,”
Her company didn’t have to fire her yadayadayada
“Most importantly, women didn’t win. ”
Really? Is that what you want to say as the most important thing? that a gender has to win over another gender?
This is why I hate feminists. We should aim for egalitarinism NOT FEMINISM
If by “egalitarianism” you mean that women and men should be treated roughly equal, then, congratulations, you are a feminist.
@edward
> Really? Is that what you want to say as the most important thing? that a gender has to win over another gender?
Reread her post. She’s not playing the zero-sum game you are saying is being played. Her game is MEN + WOMEN = US. So what’s the score if WOMEN didn’t win? She then goes on to say that MEN didn’t win either. While this is the same 0 found in MEN = WOMEN it’s not the same game.