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Adria Richards' Story Shows How Sexual Harassment Endures in Tech Community

10 points by jellicle 14y ago

jellicle 14y ago
An excerpt from the linked article: "The attacks weren't coming from just the darker corners of the Internet, places where people trade "creepshots" of 14-year-old girls. This time, many of the threats came from places like Hacker News, a respected computer news discussion site run by Paul Graham's venture capital company, YCombinator. Ambitious computer professionals post on Hacker News under their real names to boost their careers—and felt comfortable posting vicious abuse under those same names."
- DanBC 14y ago
  Do they mention the supporters of that woman? Or the people who disagree strongly with the tweeting of the photo but who agreed with the rest of what she said? Do they mention that most[1] of the worst aggressive offensive posts were made by new accounts? [1] Most, but not all. Some posts made by established HN accounts was pretty vile.
- danielweber 14y ago
  If someone posted threats under their real name, I hope the police are involved.
- pifflesnort 14y ago
  This seems to run counter to reality. I saw critiques and criticism from regular commenters, but no "vicious abuse", outside of what appeared to be new/anonymous accounts. The HN threads themselves were linked to from elsewhere and drew in a lot of anonymous/new commenters. [edit] Also, this article is written by Valerie Aurora, the same person responsible for the censorship disaster at Security BSides: http://violetblue.tumblr.com/post/44107008572/what-happened-with-my-security-bsides-talk http://violetblue.tumblr.com/post/44107008572/what-happened-... Hardly an unbiased source. Perhaps its time to stop propagating the noise from this particular echo chamber.
- illuminate 14y ago
  "many of the threats came from places like Hacker News" Wait, when did she receive threats from here? Verbal abuse, certainly. But ~threats~?
xcasex 14y ago
talk about setting up a story with a false premise.
jerrya 14y ago
If I have this right (I may not) Valerie Aurora's article is interesting in how it ignores some of the charges made that it was the zero tolerance characteristics of her Ada Initiative's code of conduct (adopted by PyCon) that exacerbated the situation.
- DanBC 14y ago
  No. The problem started after tweeting a photo of a bunch of men and accusing 2 of those men of unacceptable sexist behaviour, but without being clear which 2 men in particular. The code of conduct was working well until the Internet pile-on after that tweeted photo.
- jellicle 14y ago
  She complained about someone's behavior; PyCon staff talked to everyone involved for a few minutes in the hall; everyone went back to their seats and watched the rest of the presentation. No one was expelled or punished in any way whatsoever. In what way is that some sort of "zero tolerance" punishment that "exacerbated" the situation? Isn't that pretty much what any conference on any subject would do anywhere in the world if they received a complaint about attendee behavior?
- gte910h 14y ago
  Ada Initiative has its own problems, but PyCon seems to be one of the few "clean" parties in this whole snafu.
yarrel 14y ago
"It's up to us to change the culture of consequence-free online harassment." It wasn't consequence free. Richards got someone fired. Oh, wait...
- RyanMcGreal 14y ago
  > Richards got someone fired. No she absolutely did not. It was the employer who fired the employee, good or bad, right or wrong, not Richards. Maybe the employer had good reason and maybe they didn't, but Richards did not make that decision and is not responsible for it.
  - olgeni 14y ago
    "See, I just pushed the guy right into traffic, but I didn't actually run over him with the truck."
gonvaled 14y ago
"Shortly thereafter, one of the men was fired by his employer, who hinted at multiple contributing factors beyond the jokes" Isn't this completely wrong? Wasn't the engineer fired long before Adria was fired? Wasn't the vitriol towards Adria not caused by the fact that the engineer was fired? Not that the vitriol was right. Just getting the facts straight before getting to conclusions.
- pmelendez 14y ago
  I guess the author meant shortly after the pics were posted on Twitter.
  - gonvaled 14y ago
    Mmmm. Nonononono! This is the relevant part: "Yet only last week a woman of color, Adria Richards, was publicly fired from her job at technology company SendGrid, following a massive online campaign of rape and death threats, racial slurs, and computer hacking. Her crime? Tweeting a picture of the two men making sexual jokes behind her at a computer conference. (Shortly thereafter, one of the men was fired by his employer, who hinted at multiple contributing factors beyond the jokes.)" For anybody not familiar with the story, this reads: 0) Men make sexual jokes 1) Adria tweets 2) Massive online campaign against Adria 3) Adria is fired 4) One engineer is fired In any case, it does not make the explicit connection that people were upset because Adria tweeted and that tweet caused the engineer to be fired. And that Adria did not let the engineer the chance to apologize, or PyCon to correct privately the issue, or, or, or ... Without getting into details of freedom or expression and other related issues. The article is also using the skin-color card to make this issue even more political: not only a woman, but a woman of color was fired! (as if she was not employed beforehand). Mean engineers!
    - Garoof 14y ago
      It's a reading comprehension thing. We're obviously going back in time, to some kind of cause, at "Her crime?". And then "Shortly thereafter" follows the sentence about the tweet and there is no reason to assume it refers to some earlier sentence.
Cabal 14y ago
Nonsense. Agenda Adria is a bully with a history of doing these things.
pmelendez 14y ago
I still don't understand why authors keep addressing this as a sexual harassment, to the best of my knowledge the jokes weren't referring to her. How can you harass a person with a joke that wasn't directed to her?
- danielweber 14y ago
  You can make a harrasing environment even without directly addressing someone.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- mpyne 14y ago
  There is a concept in law and HR of a "hostile work environment", which is why the original joke would have been unacceptable per the PyCon conference guidelines that attendees agreed to. It's not necessarily harassment of her in particular, but that doesn't make a backdrop of sexual innuendo and double entendre appropriate for a professional conference either. The actual joke wasn't really that bad (certainly not to the point of warranting termination of employment), but I can understand why Adria would be uncomfortable. I certainly wouldn't feel welcome at a music festival where an audience was talking about all the geeks they'd be giving wedgies to, even if they weren't talking to or about me specifically. The issue with Adria was what in particular she chose to complain about (mere sex jokes are indeed not harrassment of her in particular, and make her look hypocritical), and especially how she went about it.
- DanBC 14y ago
  There are 2 points here. 1) Is it sexism? 2) This wasn't aimed at her 1) It's a recent-historical thing. Ignore for a moment this situation. Imagine a hypothetical situation. There is an engineer, Ann. Behind Ann at a conference are Bob and Chris tell a joke about penises. Plenty of cases exist that show Bob and Chris are creating an environment that is hostile to Ann; and this has traditionally been handled under sexual discrimination laws. You're right in that plenty of women enjoy telling penis jokes and that plenty of men are just as offended at penis jokes and that we shouldn't be treating women as delicate flowers that will curl up when hearing a penis joke. But all of that is missing the point. Don't tell dick jokes around people that you don't know well. Especially do not tell dick jokes while wearing a shirt with your employer's logo on, with a conference pass around your neck, at a professional conference, while surrounded by a bunch of people who you don't know. It might not meet some strict definition of sexism, but it will meet definitions of harassment. 2) Imagine Ann walks into the workplace. Bob has topless calenders up in his cubicle. These are not aimed at Ann. There are plenty of cases to show that Bob is creating a hostile work environment for Ann, and again these have been handled under sex discrimination law. You don't have to do something to Ann for it to be sexism that affects Ann.
syncerr 14y ago
> Yet only last week a woman of color, Adria Richards ... WTF. How did this become about race?
general_failure 14y ago
"The attacks weren't coming from just the darker corners of the Internet, places where people trade "creepshots" of 14-year-old girls. This time, many of the threats came from places like Hacker News, a respected computer news discussion site run by Paul Graham's venture capital company, YCombinator." Terrible journalism. This makes me sad. Why put in the phrase about creep shots of teens ? Written only to provoke and not to reason.

10 points by jellicle 14y ago

An excerpt from the linked article: "The attacks weren't coming from just the darker corners of the Internet, places where people trade "creepshots" of 14-year-old girls. This time, many of the threats came from places like Hacker News, a respected computer news discussion site run by Paul Graham's venture capital company, YCombinator. Ambitious computer professionals post on Hacker News under their real names to boost their careers—and felt comfortable posting vicious abuse under those same names."

DanBC 14y ago
Do they mention the supporters of that woman? Or the people who disagree strongly with the tweeting of the photo but who agreed with the rest of what she said? Do they mention that most[1] of the worst aggressive offensive posts were made by new accounts? [1] Most, but not all. Some posts made by established HN accounts was pretty vile.
danielweber 14y ago
If someone posted threats under their real name, I hope the police are involved.
pifflesnort 14y ago
This seems to run counter to reality. I saw critiques and criticism from regular commenters, but no "vicious abuse", outside of what appeared to be new/anonymous accounts. The HN threads themselves were linked to from elsewhere and drew in a lot of anonymous/new commenters. [edit] Also, this article is written by Valerie Aurora, the same person responsible for the censorship disaster at Security BSides: http://violetblue.tumblr.com/post/44107008572/what-happened-with-my-security-bsides-talk http://violetblue.tumblr.com/post/44107008572/what-happened-... Hardly an unbiased source. Perhaps its time to stop propagating the noise from this particular echo chamber.
illuminate 14y ago
"many of the threats came from places like Hacker News" Wait, when did she receive threats from here? Verbal abuse, certainly. But ~threats~?

xcasex 14y ago

talk about setting up a story with a false premise.

jerrya 14y ago

If I have this right (I may not) Valerie Aurora's article is interesting in how it ignores some of the charges made that it was the zero tolerance characteristics of her Ada Initiative's code of conduct (adopted by PyCon) that exacerbated the situation.

DanBC 14y ago
No. The problem started after tweeting a photo of a bunch of men and accusing 2 of those men of unacceptable sexist behaviour, but without being clear which 2 men in particular. The code of conduct was working well until the Internet pile-on after that tweeted photo.
jellicle 14y ago
She complained about someone's behavior; PyCon staff talked to everyone involved for a few minutes in the hall; everyone went back to their seats and watched the rest of the presentation. No one was expelled or punished in any way whatsoever. In what way is that some sort of "zero tolerance" punishment that "exacerbated" the situation? Isn't that pretty much what any conference on any subject would do anywhere in the world if they received a complaint about attendee behavior?
gte910h 14y ago
Ada Initiative has its own problems, but PyCon seems to be one of the few "clean" parties in this whole snafu.

yarrel 14y ago

"It's up to us to change the culture of consequence-free online harassment." It wasn't consequence free. Richards got someone fired. Oh, wait...

RyanMcGreal 14y ago
> Richards got someone fired. No she absolutely did not. It was the employer who fired the employee, good or bad, right or wrong, not Richards. Maybe the employer had good reason and maybe they didn't, but Richards did not make that decision and is not responsible for it.
- olgeni 14y ago
  "See, I just pushed the guy right into traffic, but I didn't actually run over him with the truck."

gonvaled 14y ago

"Shortly thereafter, one of the men was fired by his employer, who hinted at multiple contributing factors beyond the jokes" Isn't this completely wrong? Wasn't the engineer fired long before Adria was fired? Wasn't the vitriol towards Adria not caused by the fact that the engineer was fired? Not that the vitriol was right. Just getting the facts straight before getting to conclusions.

pmelendez 14y ago
I guess the author meant shortly after the pics were posted on Twitter.
- gonvaled 14y ago
  Mmmm. Nonononono! This is the relevant part: "Yet only last week a woman of color, Adria Richards, was publicly fired from her job at technology company SendGrid, following a massive online campaign of rape and death threats, racial slurs, and computer hacking. Her crime? Tweeting a picture of the two men making sexual jokes behind her at a computer conference. (Shortly thereafter, one of the men was fired by his employer, who hinted at multiple contributing factors beyond the jokes.)" For anybody not familiar with the story, this reads: 0) Men make sexual jokes 1) Adria tweets 2) Massive online campaign against Adria 3) Adria is fired 4) One engineer is fired In any case, it does not make the explicit connection that people were upset because Adria tweeted and that tweet caused the engineer to be fired. And that Adria did not let the engineer the chance to apologize, or PyCon to correct privately the issue, or, or, or ... Without getting into details of freedom or expression and other related issues. The article is also using the skin-color card to make this issue even more political: not only a woman, but a woman of color was fired! (as if she was not employed beforehand). Mean engineers!
  - Garoof 14y ago
    It's a reading comprehension thing. We're obviously going back in time, to some kind of cause, at "Her crime?". And then "Shortly thereafter" follows the sentence about the tweet and there is no reason to assume it refers to some earlier sentence.

Cabal 14y ago

Nonsense. Agenda Adria is a bully with a history of doing these things.

pmelendez 14y ago

I still don't understand why authors keep addressing this as a sexual harassment, to the best of my knowledge the jokes weren't referring to her. How can you harass a person with a joke that wasn't directed to her?

danielweber 14y ago
You can make a harrasing environment even without directly addressing someone.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
mpyne 14y ago
There is a concept in law and HR of a "hostile work environment", which is why the original joke would have been unacceptable per the PyCon conference guidelines that attendees agreed to. It's not necessarily harassment of her in particular, but that doesn't make a backdrop of sexual innuendo and double entendre appropriate for a professional conference either. The actual joke wasn't really that bad (certainly not to the point of warranting termination of employment), but I can understand why Adria would be uncomfortable. I certainly wouldn't feel welcome at a music festival where an audience was talking about all the geeks they'd be giving wedgies to, even if they weren't talking to or about me specifically. The issue with Adria was what in particular she chose to complain about (mere sex jokes are indeed not harrassment of her in particular, and make her look hypocritical), and especially how she went about it.
DanBC 14y ago
There are 2 points here. 1) Is it sexism? 2) This wasn't aimed at her 1) It's a recent-historical thing. Ignore for a moment this situation. Imagine a hypothetical situation. There is an engineer, Ann. Behind Ann at a conference are Bob and Chris tell a joke about penises. Plenty of cases exist that show Bob and Chris are creating an environment that is hostile to Ann; and this has traditionally been handled under sexual discrimination laws. You're right in that plenty of women enjoy telling penis jokes and that plenty of men are just as offended at penis jokes and that we shouldn't be treating women as delicate flowers that will curl up when hearing a penis joke. But all of that is missing the point. Don't tell dick jokes around people that you don't know well. Especially do not tell dick jokes while wearing a shirt with your employer's logo on, with a conference pass around your neck, at a professional conference, while surrounded by a bunch of people who you don't know. It might not meet some strict definition of sexism, but it will meet definitions of harassment. 2) Imagine Ann walks into the workplace. Bob has topless calenders up in his cubicle. These are not aimed at Ann. There are plenty of cases to show that Bob is creating a hostile work environment for Ann, and again these have been handled under sex discrimination law. You don't have to do something to Ann for it to be sexism that affects Ann.

syncerr 14y ago

> Yet only last week a woman of color, Adria Richards ... WTF. How did this become about race?

general_failure 14y ago

"The attacks weren't coming from just the darker corners of the Internet, places where people trade "creepshots" of 14-year-old girls. This time, many of the threats came from places like Hacker News, a respected computer news discussion site run by Paul Graham's venture capital company, YCombinator." Terrible journalism. This makes me sad. Why put in the phrase about creep shots of teens ? Written only to provoke and not to reason.