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That's not clear at all. I highly recommend reading this essay for a more careful look at what Richards has actually done by way of promoting gender equality ra

That's not clear at all. I highly recommend reading this essay for a more careful look at what Richards has actually done by way of promoting gender equality rather than what her detractors (both civil and hateful) are saying about her: http://www.technologywoman.com/2013/03/24/digging-beneath-the-surface-that-amanda-blum-article-on-adria-richards-is-not-what-it-seems/ http://www.technologywoman.com/2013/03/24/digging-beneath-th... What is clear is that a huge number of people who thought it was totally unacceptable for Richards to identify inappropriate behaviour at a conference in the manner she did (or, according to some people, at all) have been silent or supportive about the massive and sustained outpouring of hatred, rage, vulgar insults and detailed threats of rape, bodily harm and murder that Richards has faced since then. Indeed, the GP comment actually equated what Richards did with what has since been done to her (the word "equally" has since been edited out), and an earlier posted reply by the same user (reply since deleted) suggested that since no one has actually raped or murdered anyone, there is no harm other than the firing. I really don't know what to say to someone who doesn't see the harm in a full-spectrum blizzard of abuse, hatred and threats - not only to the direct target but also to any other woman who is unsure how to respond when she sees or experiences something inappropriate. More perspectives: Courtney Stanton, A Woman Walks Into A Tech Conference http://www.buzzfeed.com/courtneystanton/a-woman-walks-into-a-tech-conference http://www.buzzfeed.com/courtneystanton/a-woman-walks-into-a... Sarah Milstein, I Have a Few Things to Say About Adria http://www.dogsandshoes.com/2013/03/adria.html http://www.dogsandshoes.com/2013/03/adria.html Matt LeMay, On PyCon http://mattlemay.tumblr.com/post/46004653389/on-pycon http://mattlemay.tumblr.com/post/46004653389/on-pycon

pifflesnort 14y ago
This is a rhetorical device, intended to use an emotional argument ("hatred, rage, vulgar insults and detailed threads of rape, bodily harm, and murder!!!") to justify totally unrelated behavior of public naming and shaming for a mild offense. This is exactly the sort of virulent emotionally-driven argumentative behavior that I don't want to have become a standard fixture in the technology community. Issues like this should never rise to this level of heated unprofessionalism and immaturity such that we become a target or amusement for the trolls of the internet at large. The whole thing was and is a ridiculous mess, and it all was avoidable by behaving like responsible adults. No amount of bad behavior from teeming hoards of anonymous teenage internet commentators justifies the behaviors that preceded the public circus.
- RyanMcGreal 14y ago
  It's not a freaking rhetorical device to point out that every single time a woman speaks up about inappropriate behaviour, she ends up paying a terrible price in harassment, abuse, threats, and hatred. It is theoretically possible to have a civil discussion about whether Richards went about reporting the inappropriate behaviour in the right way (and it is 100% clear that the PyCon organizers agreed the behaviour was inappropriate). However, if you continue to evaluate what Richards did in denial of the abundant reality of insults, abuse, threats, hatred, contempt, ridicule, disdain, disregard that women in tech routinely face - and further, if you continue to ignore the fact that women are routinely punished with huge storms of abuse for speaking up about it - then you will remain oblivious to the fact that there is nothing "rhetorical" or "emotional" about pointing these facts out. You will, in effect, continue to be a part of the problem.
  - pifflesnort 14y ago
    > It's not a freaking rhetorical device to point out that every single time a woman speaks up about inappropriate behaviour, she ends up paying a terrible price in harassment, abuse, threats, and hatred. There was a code of conduct, a means to report issues, and the issue was addressed appropriately through it. End of story. The fact that the internet trolls became involved is totally unrelated to the behavior of the offending parties at PyCon, and is the simple consequence of using an editorial platform in ways that can anger anonymous commentators of dubious maturity and judgement: http://hollywoodlife.com/2013/03/14/olivia-wilde-justin-bieber-feud-twitter-diss/ http://hollywoodlife.com/2013/03/14/olivia-wilde-justin-bieb... > It is theoretically possible to have a civil discussion about whether Richards went about reporting the inappropriate behaviour in the right way (and it is 100% clear that the PyCon organizers agreed the behaviour was inappropriate). They simply enforced the basic human courtesy of taking reasonable steps to avoid offending the people around you.
  - overgryphon 14y ago
    I am a woman, and I work in software development, so I'm assuming I fit in your group called "women in tech". I have no idea what insults, abuse, threats, contempt, ridicule, disdain, and disregard I apparently have been routinely facing. If "women in tech" did suffer so severely on a daily basis, it would not be relevant to Richards. Her job description seems to be "Developer Evangelist". I'm not sure what that specifically means, but I do know it isn't technical, and thus she isn't a "woman in tech". Even if you do consider her a "woman in tech", the abuse Richards suffered while wrong is not something routinely faced by "women in tech". I understand that genitalia aren't generally supposed to be discussed at professional conferences, but am finding it very hard to see why this is an issue of harassment towards "women in tech" when no women were in the conversation at all. Since Richards felt it was, she was entitled to follow up with the conference leaders, and ask that they handle the situation appropriately, which she did. At this point in time, she could have enjoyed the rest of PyCon and gone home without suffering any abuse at all, happy that she spoke up about the conversation that she took offense to. Instead she publicly posted the photos of the men who dared discuss genitalia amongst themselves in her presence in order to shame them. This is when she opened her self to (and received) abuse. She had already had the situation handled by the conference organizers, and thus had already spoken up about it without any abuse at all. It is unfortunate that Richards received the huge storms of abuse that she did. But she chose to handle the situation in a way that invited that abuse, when there were clear ways to "speak up" that would not have resulted in such abuse. This has everything to do with reacting to situations in a professional manner, and nothing to do with "women in tech" being able to speak up about legitimate sexual harassment.
smsm42 14y ago
>>>> for a more careful look at what Richards has actually done by way of promoting gender equality I've looked into the essay and I don't see what Richards has actually done to promote gender equality. What I see is justification of why what Richards was doing is actually good because it promoted right causes - e.g. fighting porn which is evil (note that in 99% of texts, "some" and "many" are first-person pronouns) and opposing jokes that feature women (which implied that women can be dumb, which is verboten). I think it is OK to support people that you ideologically agree with and that support causes that you like. That does not change the fact that Richards was a crusader for these causes and took the slightest opportunity to blow it up into @-ism case. This is not a case of common person being offended. This is a case of a crusader looking for an opportunity to be offended to promote her agenda and finding it. Consider this - suppose the XKCD comics would feature men and not women. Would somebody say "this implies all men are dumb?" Not likely. Would somebody say "even jokes imply there are no women in tech - everybody assumes even dumb characters still are men, women just do not exist"? Much more likely. That's the distorted lens crusader sees the world through. You can find offense in anything if you look hard enough. Does it really make the world better if you look that hard? I do not think so.
pekk 14y ago
I don't think anyone deserved to be fired or receive hate mail and I don't think it is wrong to address potty jokes in a proportionate way. But I can't say that 24 hours a day, there's not even any point. The incident belongs to Adria because she is the one who chose to prematurely go public. And the way she played the incident was no service to feminists or women in tech, as this thread makes quite clear. Actually a lot of people beyond Adria are suffering on account of her lack of restraint. I really don't care about idiot men who are enraged by Adria except that I have to be associated with them and backstop blowback from their stupid actions.

pifflesnort 14y ago

This is a rhetorical device, intended to use an emotional argument ("hatred, rage, vulgar insults and detailed threads of rape, bodily harm, and murder!!!") to justify totally unrelated behavior of public naming and shaming for a mild offense. This is exactly the sort of virulent emotionally-driven argumentative behavior that I don't want to have become a standard fixture in the technology community. Issues like this should never rise to this level of heated unprofessionalism and immaturity such that we become a target or amusement for the trolls of the internet at large. The whole thing was and is a ridiculous mess, and it all was avoidable by behaving like responsible adults. No amount of bad behavior from teeming hoards of anonymous teenage internet commentators justifies the behaviors that preceded the public circus.

RyanMcGreal 14y ago
It's not a freaking rhetorical device to point out that every single time a woman speaks up about inappropriate behaviour, she ends up paying a terrible price in harassment, abuse, threats, and hatred. It is theoretically possible to have a civil discussion about whether Richards went about reporting the inappropriate behaviour in the right way (and it is 100% clear that the PyCon organizers agreed the behaviour was inappropriate). However, if you continue to evaluate what Richards did in denial of the abundant reality of insults, abuse, threats, hatred, contempt, ridicule, disdain, disregard that women in tech routinely face - and further, if you continue to ignore the fact that women are routinely punished with huge storms of abuse for speaking up about it - then you will remain oblivious to the fact that there is nothing "rhetorical" or "emotional" about pointing these facts out. You will, in effect, continue to be a part of the problem.
- pifflesnort 14y ago
  > It's not a freaking rhetorical device to point out that every single time a woman speaks up about inappropriate behaviour, she ends up paying a terrible price in harassment, abuse, threats, and hatred. There was a code of conduct, a means to report issues, and the issue was addressed appropriately through it. End of story. The fact that the internet trolls became involved is totally unrelated to the behavior of the offending parties at PyCon, and is the simple consequence of using an editorial platform in ways that can anger anonymous commentators of dubious maturity and judgement: http://hollywoodlife.com/2013/03/14/olivia-wilde-justin-bieber-feud-twitter-diss/ http://hollywoodlife.com/2013/03/14/olivia-wilde-justin-bieb... > It is theoretically possible to have a civil discussion about whether Richards went about reporting the inappropriate behaviour in the right way (and it is 100% clear that the PyCon organizers agreed the behaviour was inappropriate). They simply enforced the basic human courtesy of taking reasonable steps to avoid offending the people around you.
- overgryphon 14y ago
  I am a woman, and I work in software development, so I'm assuming I fit in your group called "women in tech". I have no idea what insults, abuse, threats, contempt, ridicule, disdain, and disregard I apparently have been routinely facing. If "women in tech" did suffer so severely on a daily basis, it would not be relevant to Richards. Her job description seems to be "Developer Evangelist". I'm not sure what that specifically means, but I do know it isn't technical, and thus she isn't a "woman in tech". Even if you do consider her a "woman in tech", the abuse Richards suffered while wrong is not something routinely faced by "women in tech". I understand that genitalia aren't generally supposed to be discussed at professional conferences, but am finding it very hard to see why this is an issue of harassment towards "women in tech" when no women were in the conversation at all. Since Richards felt it was, she was entitled to follow up with the conference leaders, and ask that they handle the situation appropriately, which she did. At this point in time, she could have enjoyed the rest of PyCon and gone home without suffering any abuse at all, happy that she spoke up about the conversation that she took offense to. Instead she publicly posted the photos of the men who dared discuss genitalia amongst themselves in her presence in order to shame them. This is when she opened her self to (and received) abuse. She had already had the situation handled by the conference organizers, and thus had already spoken up about it without any abuse at all. It is unfortunate that Richards received the huge storms of abuse that she did. But she chose to handle the situation in a way that invited that abuse, when there were clear ways to "speak up" that would not have resulted in such abuse. This has everything to do with reacting to situations in a professional manner, and nothing to do with "women in tech" being able to speak up about legitimate sexual harassment.

smsm42 14y ago

>>>> for a more careful look at what Richards has actually done by way of promoting gender equality I've looked into the essay and I don't see what Richards has actually done to promote gender equality. What I see is justification of why what Richards was doing is actually good because it promoted right causes - e.g. fighting porn which is evil (note that in 99% of texts, "some" and "many" are first-person pronouns) and opposing jokes that feature women (which implied that women can be dumb, which is verboten). I think it is OK to support people that you ideologically agree with and that support causes that you like. That does not change the fact that Richards was a crusader for these causes and took the slightest opportunity to blow it up into @-ism case. This is not a case of common person being offended. This is a case of a crusader looking for an opportunity to be offended to promote her agenda and finding it. Consider this - suppose the XKCD comics would feature men and not women. Would somebody say "this implies all men are dumb?" Not likely. Would somebody say "even jokes imply there are no women in tech - everybody assumes even dumb characters still are men, women just do not exist"? Much more likely. That's the distorted lens crusader sees the world through. You can find offense in anything if you look hard enough. Does it really make the world better if you look that hard? I do not think so.

pekk 14y ago

I don't think anyone deserved to be fired or receive hate mail and I don't think it is wrong to address potty jokes in a proportionate way. But I can't say that 24 hours a day, there's not even any point. The incident belongs to Adria because she is the one who chose to prematurely go public. And the way she played the incident was no service to feminists or women in tech, as this thread makes quite clear. Actually a lot of people beyond Adria are suffering on account of her lack of restraint. I really don't care about idiot men who are enraged by Adria except that I have to be associated with them and backstop blowback from their stupid actions.