4 ms·

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 i

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.
  - overgryphon 14y ago
    Nobody deserves death threats. But that issue has nothing to do with PyCon, women in tech, or software development. It is simply current reality that whenever anyone posts things online, other people are able to respond by anonymously sending death threats. The fact that there are people who choose to do so sucks, and is a problem, but this is a well-known fact. You, right now, could click reply on my comment and send me a death threat. I would have no recourse. Richards knew that people who didn't like what she posted publicly may respond in that manner, and she decided to take that risk when she posted a photo of other developers to twitter. If she did not want to deal with anonymous death threats, she could (and did) handle the situation in a less public manner. She chose to make the situation public. The developers she posted a picture of had no way of consenting to that publicity.
    - andrewdupont 14y ago
      > "But that issue has nothing to do with PyCon, women in tech, or software development." I disagree. The shitheads in our community who would stoop to death threats do not threaten everyone equally. The way I know that is that a woman who complained about a joke got a bunch of abuse, yet the company who fired the joke-teller — by all accounts, an overreaction — got nearly none. Also, it's not just death threats; it's harassment, too. Jesse Noller, who ran PyCon, commits the sin of "having a Code of Conduct and enforcing it," and ends up getting hate mail and harassing phone calls (https://twitter.com/jessenoller/status/314417532842950656 https://twitter.com/jessenoller/status/314417532842950656). Internet geeks have weird and sadistic ways of dispensing "justice." That's unfortunate, but even worse is what they decide to point their magnifying glass at.
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.

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.
- overgryphon 14y ago
  Nobody deserves death threats. But that issue has nothing to do with PyCon, women in tech, or software development. It is simply current reality that whenever anyone posts things online, other people are able to respond by anonymously sending death threats. The fact that there are people who choose to do so sucks, and is a problem, but this is a well-known fact. You, right now, could click reply on my comment and send me a death threat. I would have no recourse. Richards knew that people who didn't like what she posted publicly may respond in that manner, and she decided to take that risk when she posted a photo of other developers to twitter. If she did not want to deal with anonymous death threats, she could (and did) handle the situation in a less public manner. She chose to make the situation public. The developers she posted a picture of had no way of consenting to that publicity.
  - andrewdupont 14y ago
    > "But that issue has nothing to do with PyCon, women in tech, or software development." I disagree. The shitheads in our community who would stoop to death threats do not threaten everyone equally. The way I know that is that a woman who complained about a joke got a bunch of abuse, yet the company who fired the joke-teller — by all accounts, an overreaction — got nearly none. Also, it's not just death threats; it's harassment, too. Jesse Noller, who ran PyCon, commits the sin of "having a Code of Conduct and enforcing it," and ends up getting hate mail and harassing phone calls (https://twitter.com/jessenoller/status/314417532842950656 https://twitter.com/jessenoller/status/314417532842950656). Internet geeks have weird and sadistic ways of dispensing "justice." That's unfortunate, but even worse is what they decide to point their magnifying glass at.

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.