> But I've been trying very hard to imagine what it's like to go to PyCon as a minority, and to have someone sitting in earshot comfortably make jokes that make

> But I've been trying very hard to imagine what it's like to go to PyCon as a minority, and to have someone sitting in earshot comfortably make jokes that make me feel threatened all while watching a talk on inclusiveness. There are tons of cases where people have been made to feel uncomfortable by their peers in the software industry because of their race and/or sex. Racism and sexism are definitely problems in the software industry. But this specific case is just ridiculous. Look at the actual jokes involved. "That hardware has a really big dongle"? "I would fork that guy's repo"? The butts of these jokes were a fictional piece of hardware and a (probably white) male, respectively. There's nothing in those jokes that could logically lead a woman to believe that the jokers would cause her harm. Just because a joke is sexual doesn't mean it's sexist. This wasn't even an overreaction: it was a reaction to something that wasn't sexist. Internet feminism is a particularly poor representation of modern feminist thought. Most modern feminists say that women are just as sexual as men, and that women don't express their sexuality because of social pressure--an assertion which is gaining some scientific evidence. Ironically, Adria is enforcing a stereotype that anything sexual is anti-female. From that perspective, Adria's actions are the sexist ones, not Hank's. I agree that both Adria and Hank got worse than they deserved in this situation. Certainly losing their jobs is too much, and nobody should ever have to experience death threats. But I find it a lot harder to be sympathetic to Adria in this case. If I were her employer I'd definitely be having doubts. If my engineers are making sexist comments I will fire them, but someone who accuses people of making sexist comments when they aren't making sexist comments is a liability. Of course, there may be more to this story we don't know. Maybe Hank made some other jokes that were actually sexist.