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> I really don't see how hearing two guys in a crowd of 800+ people talk about big dongles would make one feel threatened enough for a comment like To her it's

> I really don't see how hearing two guys in a crowd of 800+ people talk about big dongles would make one feel threatened enough for a comment like To her it's not 800+ people, it's 800+ men where you are one of the few women. That's not something I can say I've ever experienced. Personally I can't see how the joke is threatening, but I can't dismiss her feelings over this just because I find it tough — or even impossible — to imagine. I've tried to read this article as Hank and Adria explaining their honest feelings. If Adria is being honest about her feelings, then I can see how her reaction came about. Even if I don't agree with it. Like I said, I don't think the joke itself — or Hank himself — was the target of her anger. It was the environment, the culture, and the system which allowed Hank to make such a joke in earshot, comfortably, making her feel utterly excluded and even threatened. You claim it's histrionics, but it might be real things she is feeling. What if she really felt this way? Shouldn't we try to understand Adria as well as we understand Hank? By dismissing her so easily we make our field more exclusive. We say, "I can't imagine that so you mustn't have experienced it. It's not a problem because I can't see it." > Still, the complete and utter lack of empathy Perhaps you are right in perceiving a lack of empathy. I don't think it's because she hates Hank and wishes bad things on him. I think it's because she is viewing Hank as an oblivious part of a system which puts her at a significant disadvantage.

cjbprime 12y ago
Thanks for writing these comments. I think you're doing a better job of attempting empathy than the people criticizing Adria for not showing enough. :)
adl 12y ago
> Personally I can't see how the joke is threatening, but I can't dismiss her feelings over this just because I find it tough — or even impossible — to imagine. The same Adria who herself made penis jokes on twitter a few days earlier and who was playing Cards Against Humanity at the same PyCon conference? What happened to her is shameful and can't be condoned in any way, shape or form, but she engaged in the same (or some would say worse) behavior that she was criticizing Hank for. Double standards much? >Perhaps you are right in perceiving a lack of empathy.... I think it's because she is viewing Hank as an oblivious part of a system which puts her at a significant disadvantage. That's the definition of lack of empathy, Hank clearly expressed empathy for her, she didn't even consider the possibility that her public shaming could have serious consequences. By the way, I believe she was in her right to complain about the joke to the organizers in private, it's the public tweet with the photo that crossed the line.
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  Twitter isn't a professional setting like a conference session, and anyone joining in a game of CAH is deliberately opting-in to a situation where offensively funny combinations are the entire point of the game.
  - adl 12y ago
    Twitter is way worse, it is a public forum, with thousands of followers and she used her account as an official representative of her company. (in a PR kind of capacity even.) The dongle comment was a conversation between two people, it was not private, but it's audience was intended to be limited to two individuals. The CAH game could offend someone that passed by (it was played in a hallway), what would have happened if someone took a picture of her playing CAH and tweeted "Not Cool Guys/Gals"and made a blog post about feeling treated at PyCon? https://instagram.com/p/W_A1xlAacg/ https://instagram.com/p/W_A1xlAacg/
  - rdtsc 12y ago
    On the other hand they can't go around claiming to have a deep seating sensitivity to offenses -- the image she was trying to portray. That she was just shaking in fear of being murdered because of a dongle joke. She is misrepresenting her character and manipulates the public image of herself to stir controversy, drama, and in turns she actually hurting the cause she claims to champion. If anything that is the thing I don't like about what she did the most.
    - ceejayoz 12y ago
      > On the other hand they can't go around claiming to have a deep seating sensitivity to offenses. Why not? I can be scared of ax-wielding murderers while still enjoying a haunted house where people in an ax-murderer costume jump out at me. You expect offensive stuff in a CAH game. You don't expect it being mumbled behind you during a keynote.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
Goronmon 12y ago
You claim it's histrionics, but it might be real things she is feeling. What if she really felt this way? Her feelings being real don't make them acceptable or reasonable. Take the below example. http://reason.com/blog/2015/02/19/male-student-banned-from-campus-because http://reason.com/blog/2015/02/19/male-student-banned-from-c...
byuu 12y ago
I just want to say that, although I don't fully agree with you, I really appreciate you chiming in with your thoughts on this. It's given me plenty to think about. In the event that you are right, and she's really being sincere, then I hope she gets help to work through her issues. Especially over the parts about her childhood at the end. > I think it's because she is viewing Hank as an oblivious part of a system which puts her at a significant disadvantage Yes, but the "system" isn't in any way Hank's doing, nor Hank's fault, and is no justification for a dismissal of empathy.
- interpol_p 12y ago
  Thank you, I appreciate this discussion with you too. I often wonder what my reaction to these sorts of articles would be if the genders were reversed. And I find that I more quickly and easily empathise with males, which makes me wary that perhaps my feelings when reading these articles are not completely rational. I believe both parties did something thoughtless, Adria more so than Hank, but the anger here and how we vilify Adria is so different to how we talk about Hank. It's almost like she's not even human, just some delusional sociopath filled with hatred. I imagine if I were a woman reading this thread I would feel very excluded.
  - cpncrunch 12y ago
    There are a lot of idiot trolls on the internet saying all sorts of ridiculous things. Usually it's better to just ignore them.
copsarebastards 12y ago
> To her it's not 800+ people, it's 800+ men where you are one of the few women. That's not something I can say I've ever experienced. Personally I can't see how the joke is threatening, but I can't dismiss her feelings over this just because I find it tough — or even impossible — to imagine. I think there's a reality here outside of anyone's feelings, which is that the jokes mentioned in the article are neither sexist nor threatening. If she feels attacked or threatened, well, that's her problem. To be clear, I do believe there is plenty of sexism in the software industry. If there's a joke that we don't know about that Hank made which was actually sexist, then I'm happy he got fired, and I don't think Adria was overreacting. But if the jokes in the article are the full story, then she wasn't even overreacting--she was reacting to something which she shouldn't have reacted to at all. The jokes aren't sexist. > You claim it's histrionics, but it might be real things she is feeling. What if she really felt this way? Shouldn't we try to understand Adria as well as we understand Hank? By dismissing her so easily we make our field more exclusive. We say, "I can't imagine that so you mustn't have experienced it. It's not a problem because I can't see it." She probably does feel that way. I have no reason to doubt that she feels the way she says she feels. But just because someone feels threatened doesn't mean their feelings are right. Certainly there are people who would be threatened by a black woman at a conference: and those people can go fuck themselves. It takes more than someone feeling threatened to justify firing someone. I'd have to see some joke that they made which was actually sexist or threatening.
- interpol_p 12y ago
  > I think there's a reality here outside of anyone's feelings, which is that the jokes mentioned in the article are neither sexist nor threatening. If she feels attacked or threatened, well, that's her problem. I think that's a bad attitude and it puts people off who might want to join us. If she feels threatened by an innocuous joke, which seems to be the case, then we need to take a serious look at why that is. What is it about PyCon that can make a woman feel like this, and how can we help? In my mind she and Hank are both fairly intelligent, rational people. It's not normal for her to have felt this way and I don't blame her for experiencing that. > doesn't mean their feelings are right But she's not a crazy person, she was a developer evangelist for a well known company. She was well spoken and calm. Her response to Hank's original Hacker News comment was quite pleasant and seemed to acknowledge that bad situations can happen even though Hank is a good guy. Yet she felt threatened by an innocuous joke because of the atmosphere of the conference, because she was vastly outnumbered, and because we are unwilling to address this. We are unwilling even to take her feelings seriously, even for a moment. Almost everyone here dismisses them out-of-hand, how is that attractive or inclusive?
worklogin 12y ago
Once she said she had no regret for him getting fired, and that it was ok because he was a white male, any sympathy that could have been had was gone. She's like the white man who shot the black kids in Florida because he was threatened by their loud music.
- huu 12y ago
  I don't think your analogy applies here. I'd liken the situation more to stealing a CD from a record store. The CD's are easily replaced, but you were caught and now you're serving life in prison. Even though we know that stealing is wrong, would you feel bad for the record store?
  - worklogin 12y ago
    I'm saying she's borderline mentally ill, perceiving threats that don't exist from offense she takes from immature comments.
cyxxon 12y ago
> I think it's because she is viewing Hank as an oblivious part of a system which puts her at a significant disadvantage. Isn't that the definition of empathy? She sees Hank not as a person, but just as a part of a system, never thinks of the consequences her actions have on him, never even considers that he is going through some rough times, and that he (as a person, a human being) sometimes makes a mistake and then apologizes...

cjbprime 12y ago

Thanks for writing these comments. I think you're doing a better job of attempting empathy than the people criticizing Adria for not showing enough. :)

adl 12y ago

> Personally I can't see how the joke is threatening, but I can't dismiss her feelings over this just because I find it tough — or even impossible — to imagine. The same Adria who herself made penis jokes on twitter a few days earlier and who was playing Cards Against Humanity at the same PyCon conference? What happened to her is shameful and can't be condoned in any way, shape or form, but she engaged in the same (or some would say worse) behavior that she was criticizing Hank for. Double standards much? >Perhaps you are right in perceiving a lack of empathy.... I think it's because she is viewing Hank as an oblivious part of a system which puts her at a significant disadvantage. That's the definition of lack of empathy, Hank clearly expressed empathy for her, she didn't even consider the possibility that her public shaming could have serious consequences. By the way, I believe she was in her right to complain about the joke to the organizers in private, it's the public tweet with the photo that crossed the line.

ceejayoz 12y ago
Twitter isn't a professional setting like a conference session, and anyone joining in a game of CAH is deliberately opting-in to a situation where offensively funny combinations are the entire point of the game.
- adl 12y ago
  Twitter is way worse, it is a public forum, with thousands of followers and she used her account as an official representative of her company. (in a PR kind of capacity even.) The dongle comment was a conversation between two people, it was not private, but it's audience was intended to be limited to two individuals. The CAH game could offend someone that passed by (it was played in a hallway), what would have happened if someone took a picture of her playing CAH and tweeted "Not Cool Guys/Gals"and made a blog post about feeling treated at PyCon? https://instagram.com/p/W_A1xlAacg/ https://instagram.com/p/W_A1xlAacg/
- rdtsc 12y ago
  On the other hand they can't go around claiming to have a deep seating sensitivity to offenses -- the image she was trying to portray. That she was just shaking in fear of being murdered because of a dongle joke. She is misrepresenting her character and manipulates the public image of herself to stir controversy, drama, and in turns she actually hurting the cause she claims to champion. If anything that is the thing I don't like about what she did the most.
  - ceejayoz 12y ago
    > On the other hand they can't go around claiming to have a deep seating sensitivity to offenses. Why not? I can be scared of ax-wielding murderers while still enjoying a haunted house where people in an ax-murderer costume jump out at me. You expect offensive stuff in a CAH game. You don't expect it being mumbled behind you during a keynote.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]

Goronmon 12y ago

You claim it's histrionics, but it might be real things she is feeling. What if she really felt this way? Her feelings being real don't make them acceptable or reasonable. Take the below example. http://reason.com/blog/2015/02/19/male-student-banned-from-campus-because http://reason.com/blog/2015/02/19/male-student-banned-from-c...

byuu 12y ago

I just want to say that, although I don't fully agree with you, I really appreciate you chiming in with your thoughts on this. It's given me plenty to think about. In the event that you are right, and she's really being sincere, then I hope she gets help to work through her issues. Especially over the parts about her childhood at the end. > I think it's because she is viewing Hank as an oblivious part of a system which puts her at a significant disadvantage Yes, but the "system" isn't in any way Hank's doing, nor Hank's fault, and is no justification for a dismissal of empathy.

interpol_p 12y ago
Thank you, I appreciate this discussion with you too. I often wonder what my reaction to these sorts of articles would be if the genders were reversed. And I find that I more quickly and easily empathise with males, which makes me wary that perhaps my feelings when reading these articles are not completely rational. I believe both parties did something thoughtless, Adria more so than Hank, but the anger here and how we vilify Adria is so different to how we talk about Hank. It's almost like she's not even human, just some delusional sociopath filled with hatred. I imagine if I were a woman reading this thread I would feel very excluded.
- cpncrunch 12y ago
  There are a lot of idiot trolls on the internet saying all sorts of ridiculous things. Usually it's better to just ignore them.

copsarebastards 12y ago

> To her it's not 800+ people, it's 800+ men where you are one of the few women. That's not something I can say I've ever experienced. Personally I can't see how the joke is threatening, but I can't dismiss her feelings over this just because I find it tough — or even impossible — to imagine. I think there's a reality here outside of anyone's feelings, which is that the jokes mentioned in the article are neither sexist nor threatening. If she feels attacked or threatened, well, that's her problem. To be clear, I do believe there is plenty of sexism in the software industry. If there's a joke that we don't know about that Hank made which was actually sexist, then I'm happy he got fired, and I don't think Adria was overreacting. But if the jokes in the article are the full story, then she wasn't even overreacting--she was reacting to something which she shouldn't have reacted to at all. The jokes aren't sexist. > You claim it's histrionics, but it might be real things she is feeling. What if she really felt this way? Shouldn't we try to understand Adria as well as we understand Hank? By dismissing her so easily we make our field more exclusive. We say, "I can't imagine that so you mustn't have experienced it. It's not a problem because I can't see it." She probably does feel that way. I have no reason to doubt that she feels the way she says she feels. But just because someone feels threatened doesn't mean their feelings are right. Certainly there are people who would be threatened by a black woman at a conference: and those people can go fuck themselves. It takes more than someone feeling threatened to justify firing someone. I'd have to see some joke that they made which was actually sexist or threatening.

interpol_p 12y ago
> I think there's a reality here outside of anyone's feelings, which is that the jokes mentioned in the article are neither sexist nor threatening. If she feels attacked or threatened, well, that's her problem. I think that's a bad attitude and it puts people off who might want to join us. If she feels threatened by an innocuous joke, which seems to be the case, then we need to take a serious look at why that is. What is it about PyCon that can make a woman feel like this, and how can we help? In my mind she and Hank are both fairly intelligent, rational people. It's not normal for her to have felt this way and I don't blame her for experiencing that. > doesn't mean their feelings are right But she's not a crazy person, she was a developer evangelist for a well known company. She was well spoken and calm. Her response to Hank's original Hacker News comment was quite pleasant and seemed to acknowledge that bad situations can happen even though Hank is a good guy. Yet she felt threatened by an innocuous joke because of the atmosphere of the conference, because she was vastly outnumbered, and because we are unwilling to address this. We are unwilling even to take her feelings seriously, even for a moment. Almost everyone here dismisses them out-of-hand, how is that attractive or inclusive?

worklogin 12y ago

Once she said she had no regret for him getting fired, and that it was ok because he was a white male, any sympathy that could have been had was gone. She's like the white man who shot the black kids in Florida because he was threatened by their loud music.

huu 12y ago
I don't think your analogy applies here. I'd liken the situation more to stealing a CD from a record store. The CD's are easily replaced, but you were caught and now you're serving life in prison. Even though we know that stealing is wrong, would you feel bad for the record store?
- worklogin 12y ago
  I'm saying she's borderline mentally ill, perceiving threats that don't exist from offense she takes from immature comments.

cyxxon 12y ago

> I think it's because she is viewing Hank as an oblivious part of a system which puts her at a significant disadvantage. Isn't that the definition of empathy? She sees Hank not as a person, but just as a part of a system, never thinks of the consequences her actions have on him, never even considers that he is going through some rough times, and that he (as a person, a human being) sometimes makes a mistake and then apologizes...