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Without tumbling deep into a flame war, I'd like to ask a sincere question. I have trouble understanding the sexism behind the remarks, and why the instigator n

Without tumbling deep into a flame war, I'd like to ask a sincere question. I have trouble understanding the sexism behind the remarks, and why the instigator needs to apologize (for sexism). People get offended for all kinds of things, nobody can claim a monopoloy on that. (http://imgur.com/EX5v4 http://imgur.com/EX5v4 stephen fry quote) - If they would both have been gay and talking about a homosexual topic, someone in that room would be offended. - If they were creationists dismissing darwin, someone would be offended - 2 women discussing ‘shades of grey’, someone would be offended. - A dongle and forking, and Adria is offended. To me it seems she is offended by the sexual overtones. A pruder man might be offended by that too, or many a religious man. I just don’t see the link to sexism. I get it's lowbrow humor. It's not professional. It's probably not suited for a public event like that. The dongle joke was men comparing their 'dongles' and the suggesting they wanted to "fork" the male speaker. How are women being put down or belittled at all here. How is it sexist?

deleted 14y ago
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johnward 14y ago
It's not sexist. It was just a childish joke. Probably inappropriate in the setting, but it got blown way out of proportion.
cglee 14y ago
Discussions like this seem to always come back to a sense of "fairness". It's not about being fair, but about how situations make people feel. Majority-group members tend to brush away the sensitivities of minority-group members. If you're straight, you can walk hand-in-hand with your spouse without issue. You may even be able to embrace publicly, and kiss, hug and display all kinds of PDA. Gay couples can't do that without fear of reprisal, sometimes violently. Minority-group members are only "safe" in certain places. At a tech conference, women are in the minority, and so crass comments about/towards women are not perceived in a safe way. It's not your buddy making a funny joke, it's the majority-group members expressing oppression. Whether you personally agree with that is not the point; it's how minority-group members feel. Be aware of that.
- dictum 14y ago
  I've seen the same underlying assumption (that people should avoid accidentally offending other people even with things that aren't offensive) before. It was when a bigot tried to explain why gay people shouldn't make public displays of their sexuality because they made him uncomfortable.
- IvyMike 14y ago
  > crass comments about/towards women I think the original comment is raising the point that the comments were crass, but did not appear to be about or towards women in the slightest.
- nawitus 14y ago
  "At a tech conference, women are in the minority, and so crass comments about/towards women are not perceived in a safe way." Which didn't happen in this case.
- scotty79 14y ago
  My country has a law about offending religion. Almost whole population is to some degree religious. So not only minorities get offended. Recently local pop star was tried and sentenced because she said that Bible was written by heavily pissed and baked blokes and some people got offended. Protecting the offended can be a tool for bullying people that speak their mind or behave true to themselves. One might think that in this age of intense communication people would grow thinker skin. But Americans got more fragile instead.
- kefka 14y ago
  And I've always found that self-proclaimed feminists are _always_ offended and loud about it when they are. A few I know go to the point by saying females are better and that all masculine references should be eliminated. They need to vote with their pocketbooks: don't pay for a ticket, and don't attend. I went to a 'con recently: The Midwest RepRap festival. I heard no references to sex, sexuality, race, or anything of the sort. One sales person came around, got argumentative once we said we were not interested, and started to try to argue religion. That was perhaps, 10 minutes tops. Everybody else stayed absolutely professional about everything. Now, the last thing I want to hear at a tech conference is another tiring sex joke. It may be funny, but that's not why I'm here.
Maxious 14y ago
"Sexism" does not appear once in the blog post. So uhh there's that. The concern with "offensive" discussions/jokes at developer conventions is it can give the sense that some people are not welcome there - if you don't like it, go somewhere else.
IvyMike 14y ago
If you assume that all women are Victorian-era pearl-clutching girls for whom anything remotely sexual is scandalous, it makes a lot more sense. The subtext is "women must be shielded from the world". On the other hand, for people who have actually met women raised, say, post-1940, it's pretty bizarre.
- nbouscal 14y ago
  This is exactly why I feel like the only person actually guilty of sexism here is Adria herself. She's belittling her own gender by acting as though women cannot be around sexual humor.
WalterSear 14y ago
She's not offended by sexual overtones, and neither is her employer. She published this joke about sexual humiliation from the same conference: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 And the company she was envangelising for on that twitter feed thinks that a visual joke about photocopying your genitals is not inappropriate for their jobs pages: http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png I understand that speaker and context make all the difference, but she made a joke about sexual humiliation, and then, at the same conference, got offended by a joke conflating dongles to genitals.
qdog 14y ago
Adria stated they had been talking for a while, indicating there were previous comments. PyCon determined the guys had said something offensive. So, either PyCon lives in fear of Adria, or other people also found the comments to be overtly sexist/sexual. Unless PyCon publishes an investigative report, I doubt we will get the entire story. If you personally don't find the things they said offensive, that's fine, but they were there in a professional representation, not a personal one. If PyCon and their employer both felt the guys said something clearly outside the guidelines represented to them by PyCon, that's the issue. Whether it was about dongles or donkeys doesn't matter. EDIT: Originally I stated PyCon removed them from the conference, as a followup pointed out this was incorrect.
- konstruktor 14y ago
  Wrong. http://pycon.blogspot.co.at/2013/03/pycon-response-to-inappropriate.html http://pycon.blogspot.co.at/2013/03/pycon-response-to-inappr... " The comments that were made were in poor taste, and individuals involved agreed, apologized and no further actions were taken by the staff of PyCon 2013. No individuals were removed from the conference, no sanctions were levied."
  - qdog 14y ago
    Indeed. Corrected. Whether "what happens at PyCon stays at PyCon" is the right approach, I'm not so sure, but that seems to be their new guidelines.
Steuard 14y ago
Stealing something I wrote on another thread here: Dick jokes are perceived to be almost exclusively a part of "guy culture". Want proof? Watch how fast a group of guys making those jokes suddenly clams up and changes the topic the moment an unfamiliar woman walks up. (And when a woman joins in and shows that she's comfortable making those jokes, too, watch how glad everyone is that she can be "just one of the guys".) So when guys at a conference routinely make dick jokes in public, that contributes to a sense that the conference is a male space. It's not a conscious thing, but it's a real thing, and it would be good for it to change. I don't know that the public shaming in this case was the right way to go about that, but I'm not sure that I have a better alternative to offer, either. (Women are all too aware that quietly saying "Please don't act that way" tends to have no impact at all, apart from the guys thinking she's a humorless busybody.)
- cameronh90 14y ago
  The reason a group of men clams up when a woman walks past is because they're worried she'll take offense like Adria did. Evidence it's not exclusively part of men's culture is that when a women shows herself not to be offended, most groups of men will actively include her in those jokes. It doesn't mean we actually think it's offensive or understand why anyone would be offended.. honestly I find it kind of baffling, but nevertheless, I will watch my tongue around unfamiliar women just in case. The other thing is that the potential outcome from offending a woman is much worse than offending a man. I would hate for what I said to be misconstrued as sexual harassment, and it could potentially lose me my job if it was (as it has done for an unfortunate developer in this case). As far as "one of the guys" goes.. I think that's a perhaps unfortunate way of phrasing a well intentioned message: you are someone we are happy to relax around. My girlfriend is a female developer and quite happily refers to herself as one of the guys and doesn't see it as a problem or sexist. What she does find a little annoying is having to reassure men that she won't be offended by their non-harassing sexual innuendos in order for them to relax around her. There's probably not really an absolute solution to this.. people take offense at different things. It's nearly impossible to offend me, but other people are offended by the colour of the sky.
  - 14y ago
aliguori 14y ago
There's a feminist belief that all forms of "pornography" are inherently discriminatory toward women with pornography being a very broad concept--basically any form of sexuality not associated with love. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem#Pornography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem#Pornography Any crude comment relating to sexuality would fall into this category. I am not attempting to justify the response here, just explaining the rationale.
mlent 14y ago
According to the article I read, which could be wrong, the phrase was "I'd fork that repo." In and of itself, harmless, but said in the proper tone (don't know if it was), it would remind me of things that have been said about me. I.e. People talking about how they would do 'x' to me. Totally creepy and disturbing, right? A phrase like that is called a 'trigger'. The same reason you don't say the n-word around a person of color, because you don't know what kind of experiences that person has associated with that. Same for rape, because you could have a victim or a rapist nearby and you don't know how it will affect them (harming or reinforcing them, respectively). Gender, race, sexuality, and many other topics make people feel very strongly, and sometimes can cause people to dwell on those bad experiences and have the same feelings of angry/inadequacy/self-loathing/whatever that they did at first. My perspective is: I don't know how this really charged term has affected the lives of the people around me, so...maybe I'll wait to make the joke? Or I won't make it? The dongle thing is silly to me, and the "forking" thing was immature. But that's how I could take offense at that statement. Hope that clears it up? Just my perspective. I don't know if that's how Richards felt...if she didn't, I don't know what the sexist overtones could be either.
- cameronh90 14y ago
  But how can you know what someone will find to be a trigger? Someone can find almost anything offensive for some reason, or have it remind them of a bad experience. If they were being particularly graphic, of course, that would be inappropriate, but even if this was a wiggley-eyebrows wink wink nudge nudge sexual innuendo, it still seems pretty harmless (other than going against PyCon's rules which is bad). I could get offended, as a vegetarian, by someone saying they're so hungry they could eat a horse - or if I were anorexic, maybe that would be a trigger? The alternative seems to be that we all become humourless drones, just in case any of our humour offends someone. Maybe I'm biased though, as a Brit: if we didn't have sexual innuendo, we couldn't get up in the morning (wink wink nudge nudge). It's as essential as our morning breakfast tea.
  - mlent 14y ago
    Nah, you can't know. It's just a consideration. Obviously some things are more blatant than others. I'm just offering one possible way what was said could've been taken offensively -- not saying that I personally agree.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

johnward 14y ago

It's not sexist. It was just a childish joke. Probably inappropriate in the setting, but it got blown way out of proportion.

cglee 14y ago

Discussions like this seem to always come back to a sense of "fairness". It's not about being fair, but about how situations make people feel. Majority-group members tend to brush away the sensitivities of minority-group members. If you're straight, you can walk hand-in-hand with your spouse without issue. You may even be able to embrace publicly, and kiss, hug and display all kinds of PDA. Gay couples can't do that without fear of reprisal, sometimes violently. Minority-group members are only "safe" in certain places. At a tech conference, women are in the minority, and so crass comments about/towards women are not perceived in a safe way. It's not your buddy making a funny joke, it's the majority-group members expressing oppression. Whether you personally agree with that is not the point; it's how minority-group members feel. Be aware of that.

dictum 14y ago
I've seen the same underlying assumption (that people should avoid accidentally offending other people even with things that aren't offensive) before. It was when a bigot tried to explain why gay people shouldn't make public displays of their sexuality because they made him uncomfortable.
IvyMike 14y ago
> crass comments about/towards women I think the original comment is raising the point that the comments were crass, but did not appear to be about or towards women in the slightest.
nawitus 14y ago
"At a tech conference, women are in the minority, and so crass comments about/towards women are not perceived in a safe way." Which didn't happen in this case.
scotty79 14y ago
My country has a law about offending religion. Almost whole population is to some degree religious. So not only minorities get offended. Recently local pop star was tried and sentenced because she said that Bible was written by heavily pissed and baked blokes and some people got offended. Protecting the offended can be a tool for bullying people that speak their mind or behave true to themselves. One might think that in this age of intense communication people would grow thinker skin. But Americans got more fragile instead.
kefka 14y ago
And I've always found that self-proclaimed feminists are _always_ offended and loud about it when they are. A few I know go to the point by saying females are better and that all masculine references should be eliminated. They need to vote with their pocketbooks: don't pay for a ticket, and don't attend. I went to a 'con recently: The Midwest RepRap festival. I heard no references to sex, sexuality, race, or anything of the sort. One sales person came around, got argumentative once we said we were not interested, and started to try to argue religion. That was perhaps, 10 minutes tops. Everybody else stayed absolutely professional about everything. Now, the last thing I want to hear at a tech conference is another tiring sex joke. It may be funny, but that's not why I'm here.

Maxious 14y ago

"Sexism" does not appear once in the blog post. So uhh there's that. The concern with "offensive" discussions/jokes at developer conventions is it can give the sense that some people are not welcome there - if you don't like it, go somewhere else.

IvyMike 14y ago

If you assume that all women are Victorian-era pearl-clutching girls for whom anything remotely sexual is scandalous, it makes a lot more sense. The subtext is "women must be shielded from the world". On the other hand, for people who have actually met women raised, say, post-1940, it's pretty bizarre.

nbouscal 14y ago
This is exactly why I feel like the only person actually guilty of sexism here is Adria herself. She's belittling her own gender by acting as though women cannot be around sexual humor.

WalterSear 14y ago

She's not offended by sexual overtones, and neither is her employer. She published this joke about sexual humiliation from the same conference: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 And the company she was envangelising for on that twitter feed thinks that a visual joke about photocopying your genitals is not inappropriate for their jobs pages: http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png I understand that speaker and context make all the difference, but she made a joke about sexual humiliation, and then, at the same conference, got offended by a joke conflating dongles to genitals.

qdog 14y ago

Adria stated they had been talking for a while, indicating there were previous comments. PyCon determined the guys had said something offensive. So, either PyCon lives in fear of Adria, or other people also found the comments to be overtly sexist/sexual. Unless PyCon publishes an investigative report, I doubt we will get the entire story. If you personally don't find the things they said offensive, that's fine, but they were there in a professional representation, not a personal one. If PyCon and their employer both felt the guys said something clearly outside the guidelines represented to them by PyCon, that's the issue. Whether it was about dongles or donkeys doesn't matter. EDIT: Originally I stated PyCon removed them from the conference, as a followup pointed out this was incorrect.

konstruktor 14y ago
Wrong. http://pycon.blogspot.co.at/2013/03/pycon-response-to-inappropriate.html http://pycon.blogspot.co.at/2013/03/pycon-response-to-inappr... " The comments that were made were in poor taste, and individuals involved agreed, apologized and no further actions were taken by the staff of PyCon 2013. No individuals were removed from the conference, no sanctions were levied."
- qdog 14y ago
  Indeed. Corrected. Whether "what happens at PyCon stays at PyCon" is the right approach, I'm not so sure, but that seems to be their new guidelines.

Steuard 14y ago

Stealing something I wrote on another thread here: Dick jokes are perceived to be almost exclusively a part of "guy culture". Want proof? Watch how fast a group of guys making those jokes suddenly clams up and changes the topic the moment an unfamiliar woman walks up. (And when a woman joins in and shows that she's comfortable making those jokes, too, watch how glad everyone is that she can be "just one of the guys".) So when guys at a conference routinely make dick jokes in public, that contributes to a sense that the conference is a male space. It's not a conscious thing, but it's a real thing, and it would be good for it to change. I don't know that the public shaming in this case was the right way to go about that, but I'm not sure that I have a better alternative to offer, either. (Women are all too aware that quietly saying "Please don't act that way" tends to have no impact at all, apart from the guys thinking she's a humorless busybody.)

cameronh90 14y ago
The reason a group of men clams up when a woman walks past is because they're worried she'll take offense like Adria did. Evidence it's not exclusively part of men's culture is that when a women shows herself not to be offended, most groups of men will actively include her in those jokes. It doesn't mean we actually think it's offensive or understand why anyone would be offended.. honestly I find it kind of baffling, but nevertheless, I will watch my tongue around unfamiliar women just in case. The other thing is that the potential outcome from offending a woman is much worse than offending a man. I would hate for what I said to be misconstrued as sexual harassment, and it could potentially lose me my job if it was (as it has done for an unfortunate developer in this case). As far as "one of the guys" goes.. I think that's a perhaps unfortunate way of phrasing a well intentioned message: you are someone we are happy to relax around. My girlfriend is a female developer and quite happily refers to herself as one of the guys and doesn't see it as a problem or sexist. What she does find a little annoying is having to reassure men that she won't be offended by their non-harassing sexual innuendos in order for them to relax around her. There's probably not really an absolute solution to this.. people take offense at different things. It's nearly impossible to offend me, but other people are offended by the colour of the sky.
- 14y ago

aliguori 14y ago

There's a feminist belief that all forms of "pornography" are inherently discriminatory toward women with pornography being a very broad concept--basically any form of sexuality not associated with love. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem#Pornography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem#Pornography Any crude comment relating to sexuality would fall into this category. I am not attempting to justify the response here, just explaining the rationale.

mlent 14y ago

According to the article I read, which could be wrong, the phrase was "I'd fork that repo." In and of itself, harmless, but said in the proper tone (don't know if it was), it would remind me of things that have been said about me. I.e. People talking about how they would do 'x' to me. Totally creepy and disturbing, right? A phrase like that is called a 'trigger'. The same reason you don't say the n-word around a person of color, because you don't know what kind of experiences that person has associated with that. Same for rape, because you could have a victim or a rapist nearby and you don't know how it will affect them (harming or reinforcing them, respectively). Gender, race, sexuality, and many other topics make people feel very strongly, and sometimes can cause people to dwell on those bad experiences and have the same feelings of angry/inadequacy/self-loathing/whatever that they did at first. My perspective is: I don't know how this really charged term has affected the lives of the people around me, so...maybe I'll wait to make the joke? Or I won't make it? The dongle thing is silly to me, and the "forking" thing was immature. But that's how I could take offense at that statement. Hope that clears it up? Just my perspective. I don't know if that's how Richards felt...if she didn't, I don't know what the sexist overtones could be either.

cameronh90 14y ago
But how can you know what someone will find to be a trigger? Someone can find almost anything offensive for some reason, or have it remind them of a bad experience. If they were being particularly graphic, of course, that would be inappropriate, but even if this was a wiggley-eyebrows wink wink nudge nudge sexual innuendo, it still seems pretty harmless (other than going against PyCon's rules which is bad). I could get offended, as a vegetarian, by someone saying they're so hungry they could eat a horse - or if I were anorexic, maybe that would be a trigger? The alternative seems to be that we all become humourless drones, just in case any of our humour offends someone. Maybe I'm biased though, as a Brit: if we didn't have sexual innuendo, we couldn't get up in the morning (wink wink nudge nudge). It's as essential as our morning breakfast tea.
- mlent 14y ago
  Nah, you can't know. It's just a consideration. Obviously some things are more blatant than others. I'm just offering one possible way what was said could've been taken offensively -- not saying that I personally agree.