6 ms·

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

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.
  - andrewdupont 14y ago
    > "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 reasoning bothers me. Let's stipulate that Adria's post to Twitter was a mistake. You seem to say that the abuse is her fault, because if she hadn't made that mistake, she wouldn't have received any abuse. But shouldn't punishments be proportional to crimes? We all seem to agree that it's barbaric to cut off a shoplifter's hand, or to hand out the death penalty for petty crimes (as was once common in England, for instance). People say this sort of thing all the time — "If you didn't want Y, you shouldn't have done X." I feel like it shuts down the conversation. Yes, X was wrong, but Y was also wrong, and it's ridiculous that something as wrong as Y resulted from X. That's a discussion worth having. The point is that nobody deserves death threats. It need not feel like a defense of Adria Richards to say that.
- monksy 14y ago
  > every single time a woman speaks up about inappropriate behaviour, she ends up paying a terrible price in harassment, abuse, threats, and hatred. Are you sure about that? That sounds a bit of an extreme statement. Most disputes in life are handled privately and quietly. There is very little need to sensationalize everything.
king_jester 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. I do not agree that public naming and shaming is unrelated to this incident. You have to keep in mind that it is not unreasonable to see the penis jokes as a sexist microaggression [1], esp. if you are a woman of color working in a field where those kinds of jokes and microaggerssions happen a lot. To that end, sexism is reenforced and made more prevalent by those microaggressions. Sexism and misogyny in society does directly translate to outright physical violence and murder of women. So for a woman of color to confront that microaggression and then receive threats on her physical safety and life isn't just some idle trolling, it reflects a reality that this person may very well experience. Keep in mind that 1 in 5 women in the US will be sexually assaulted in their life time and that people of color, esp. black women, face a variety of forms of institutionally backed violence. Public naming and shaming is a valid form of defense against those conditions and kinds of violence. > The whole thing was and is a ridiculous mess, and it all was avoidable by behaving like responsible adults. I agree and it should be noted that being a responsible adult means avoiding penis jokes when representing your company at a conference they sponsored, esp. when said conference is working very hard on including women. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression
- pifflesnort 14y ago
  'Microaggression' is, in this context, simply being misused as another device to justify disproportionate behavior. You've done further rhetorical gymnastics to tie together immature 'dongle' jokes with sexual and racial violence, ultimately with the seeming intent of redefining the entire event to absolve one party of their responsibility to act with maturity and responsibility, solely in furtherance of a culturally damaging, distracting, and virulent ideology. Olivia Wilde also received some similarly horrid threats after insulting Justin Bieber on Twitter, but I can only hope and assume that you won't be attempting to tie that event to sexism in technology, and instead recognize that it reflects a real, but very different problem.
  - 14y ago

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.
- andrewdupont 14y ago
  > "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 reasoning bothers me. Let's stipulate that Adria's post to Twitter was a mistake. You seem to say that the abuse is her fault, because if she hadn't made that mistake, she wouldn't have received any abuse. But shouldn't punishments be proportional to crimes? We all seem to agree that it's barbaric to cut off a shoplifter's hand, or to hand out the death penalty for petty crimes (as was once common in England, for instance). People say this sort of thing all the time — "If you didn't want Y, you shouldn't have done X." I feel like it shuts down the conversation. Yes, X was wrong, but Y was also wrong, and it's ridiculous that something as wrong as Y resulted from X. That's a discussion worth having. The point is that nobody deserves death threats. It need not feel like a defense of Adria Richards to say that.
monksy 14y ago
> every single time a woman speaks up about inappropriate behaviour, she ends up paying a terrible price in harassment, abuse, threats, and hatred. Are you sure about that? That sounds a bit of an extreme statement. Most disputes in life are handled privately and quietly. There is very little need to sensationalize everything.

king_jester 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. I do not agree that public naming and shaming is unrelated to this incident. You have to keep in mind that it is not unreasonable to see the penis jokes as a sexist microaggression [1], esp. if you are a woman of color working in a field where those kinds of jokes and microaggerssions happen a lot. To that end, sexism is reenforced and made more prevalent by those microaggressions. Sexism and misogyny in society does directly translate to outright physical violence and murder of women. So for a woman of color to confront that microaggression and then receive threats on her physical safety and life isn't just some idle trolling, it reflects a reality that this person may very well experience. Keep in mind that 1 in 5 women in the US will be sexually assaulted in their life time and that people of color, esp. black women, face a variety of forms of institutionally backed violence. Public naming and shaming is a valid form of defense against those conditions and kinds of violence. > The whole thing was and is a ridiculous mess, and it all was avoidable by behaving like responsible adults. I agree and it should be noted that being a responsible adult means avoiding penis jokes when representing your company at a conference they sponsored, esp. when said conference is working very hard on including women. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression

pifflesnort 14y ago
'Microaggression' is, in this context, simply being misused as another device to justify disproportionate behavior. You've done further rhetorical gymnastics to tie together immature 'dongle' jokes with sexual and racial violence, ultimately with the seeming intent of redefining the entire event to absolve one party of their responsibility to act with maturity and responsibility, solely in furtherance of a culturally damaging, distracting, and virulent ideology. Olivia Wilde also received some similarly horrid threats after insulting Justin Bieber on Twitter, but I can only hope and assume that you won't be attempting to tie that event to sexism in technology, and instead recognize that it reflects a real, but very different problem.
- 14y ago