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I agree with you—she wasn’t an outsider trying to join the group. She’s a real nerd, culturally. But this is exactly what I (and many nerds) don't care about. I

I agree with you—she wasn’t an outsider trying to join the group. She’s a real nerd, culturally. But this is exactly what I (and many nerds) don't care about. I don't care whether Adria Richards is in the in-group or the out-group. I care about her ideas. I care about her code. So far I’ve only seen her ideas, and her ideas include feeling like her life was threatened because of a “dongle” joke. That’s not a scathing review of her as a person—I’m not reviewing her as a person. I’m reviewing her idea. Her idea is just wrong. Everyone has a few wrong ideas—it’s not a big deal. At the core of the issue of women in tech is a belief that women’s ideas are as good as men’s ideas—on average, women produce as high a percentage of good ideas (and bad ideas) as men. So we want to include women because of their ideas, because we care about their ideas and not who they are. I don’t know the solution to this problem. But the solution being proposed in the Adria Richards debate is that Adria Richards was threatened because of who she was. But she wasn’t threatened, she just felt threatened. People are saying we should listen to these feelings and include people like Adria Richards who feel threatened when they aren’t being threatened. It’s an attempt to place her within the group based on who she is, in direct opposition to the fact that her idea, in this case, is wrong. THE ENTIRE POINT of including women is THEIR IDEAS. Holding up someone whose idea was wrong as the poster child for gender equality in tech is diametrically in opposition to why anyone in tech wants to include women in tech. Not only is this not a solution to the first problem, it directly breaks the ideology that makes tech culture something worth joining. If we’re going to treat women’s ideas as equal to men’s, that includes treating women’s bad ideas as equal to men’s bad ideas. I think if you talk to any of the women I’ve worked with, they would describe me as an ally. I’ve called out coworkers on saying sexist things, in front of other people. But I want to solve the problem of there not being many women in tech, not create spaces where people can’t validate ideas because of who said them. If we do that, we’ll just be creating terrible tech companies where women work but ideas can’t be validated, and all the real technologists will move to real tech companies that have no women. A false solution is no solution.

ZeroGravitas 12y ago
Talking of "false", you know that you just made up the bit about Adria feeling her life was threatened by the dongle jokes, right? She tweeted that it was " not cool" and against the code of conduct. To be clear, she was literally, actually, threatened with death (amongst other things) after it blew up in the media. I'm kind of intrigued what the next, easily disproved lie is going to be on this topic.
- hsod 12y ago
  "“You felt fear?” I asked. “Danger,” she said. “Clearly my body was telling me, ‘You are unsafe.’” [...] “You talked about danger,” I said. “What were you imagining might…?” “Have you ever heard that thing, men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them?” she replied. “So. Yeah.” from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/21/internet-shaming-lindsey-stone-jon-ronson http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/21/internet-s...
  - ZeroGravitas 12y ago
    Quoting a witty Margaret Atwood line two years after the fact is not the same as saying "my life was threatened by someone". She's clearly describing a physical reaction to anxiety, hair standing up on her neck at the thought of a confrontation, which reminded her of school. If not she could have answered the simple question "You felt fear?" with "Yes, I feared for my life".
    - hsod 12y ago
      That seems an excessively charitable interpretation.
      - ZeroGravitas 12y ago
        You can read her own blog post, that she wrote immediately after the incident, but before all the media hullabaloo started up: http://butyoureagirl.com/2013/03/18/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at-tech-conferences/ http://butyoureagirl.com/2013/03/18/forking-and-dongle-jokes... Who's interpretation fits better? The "I was literally threatened with death" version or the "I was anxious because I was confronting people who were behaving boorishly"? At best you can claim that 2 years after the fact she suddenly decided that she was threatened with death, and just happened to announce this new interpretation in an article that she is on record (in the article I previously linked to in another comment) as feeling misrepresented by the author of. "What could be worse than someone taking what you've told them and portraying you as the aggressor? It was a sucker-punch to the gut. This is what Jon Roson's article in the NYTimes did. I simply become an agitator affecting the man's life, no more, no less." So, no, I don't think I'm being very charitable in my interpretation.
wpietri 12y ago
This is pretty warped. If we want all people to turn up with their ideas, we have to create an environment where all people feel comfortable being present and expressing their ideas. We have mainly done that for white dudes with reasonable levels of social capital. I'd like to do it for everybody. The feeling of being a visibly different minority in a crowd can be unsettling. (As a white guy I experience it rarely, but when it happens, I notice the difference acutely.) This is true regardless of actual risk. But women are currently at higher risk of all sorts of predatory behavior: creeps, stalkers, harassers, sexual assaulters, rapists. I personally expect that a sexualized environment will increase those risks. But even if they don't, suddenly having your context shifted from, "professional who likes to code thinking about code" to "fuckable prey for the predators in the crowd around you" is problematic. Our choices are either to give up and have those people mainly stay away or to work on creating a safe space so that everybody can attend. There is no middle path here. Pycon explicitly chose the latter. Does this exclude ideas? I guess, in a sad and limited sense of the term "ideas". Pycon's limited the acceptable content thusly: "All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks." Does this mean you can't talk about your favorite masturbation techniques on stage? Sure. But seriously, why would you? What sort of incredible idea exchange are we missing out on here by saying that a Python conference has to be about Python? If you also want to talk about sex, there are conferences about that. There's even a well-established conference about sex and technology. [1] What you're refusing to connect here is what happened to Adria before and after she posted a tweet about a Code of Conduct violation. She was harassed and threatened; her employer was attacked, harming their business. These are all crimes, and they're crimes for a reason. You might not see the connection, but to me (and I'm sure to any woman in tech) it's pretty obvious: men willing to attack women are part of the tech community. They could be anybody. [2] She surely knew that there could well be predators in that crowd. And the moment the context is sexualized is the moment that she has to start paying attention to that rather than the content. This is true for anybody, but it is especially true for people who have been traumatized in the past. And given the stats on sexual assault, there are guaranteed to be women like that at any significant conference. So I'm firmly on the side of codes of conduct because I don't want a random grab-bag of ideas at a conference. I want a specific curated set of good ideas. And if that means people have to save their weak sex jokes and their pictures of porn stars for a few hours until they're somewhere else, I'm fine with that. [1] http://www.monochrom.at/arse-elektronika/ http://www.monochrom.at/arse-elektronika/ [2] This basically makes you and me and any dude in a crowd Schroedinger's Rapist: http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger%E2%80%99s-rapist-or-a-guy%E2%80%99s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/ http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-sch... http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_Rapist http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_Rapi...

ZeroGravitas 12y ago

Talking of "false", you know that you just made up the bit about Adria feeling her life was threatened by the dongle jokes, right? She tweeted that it was " not cool" and against the code of conduct. To be clear, she was literally, actually, threatened with death (amongst other things) after it blew up in the media. I'm kind of intrigued what the next, easily disproved lie is going to be on this topic.

hsod 12y ago
"“You felt fear?” I asked. “Danger,” she said. “Clearly my body was telling me, ‘You are unsafe.’” [...] “You talked about danger,” I said. “What were you imagining might…?” “Have you ever heard that thing, men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them?” she replied. “So. Yeah.” from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/21/internet-shaming-lindsey-stone-jon-ronson http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/21/internet-s...
- ZeroGravitas 12y ago
  Quoting a witty Margaret Atwood line two years after the fact is not the same as saying "my life was threatened by someone". She's clearly describing a physical reaction to anxiety, hair standing up on her neck at the thought of a confrontation, which reminded her of school. If not she could have answered the simple question "You felt fear?" with "Yes, I feared for my life".
  - hsod 12y ago
    That seems an excessively charitable interpretation.
    - ZeroGravitas 12y ago
      You can read her own blog post, that she wrote immediately after the incident, but before all the media hullabaloo started up: http://butyoureagirl.com/2013/03/18/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at-tech-conferences/ http://butyoureagirl.com/2013/03/18/forking-and-dongle-jokes... Who's interpretation fits better? The "I was literally threatened with death" version or the "I was anxious because I was confronting people who were behaving boorishly"? At best you can claim that 2 years after the fact she suddenly decided that she was threatened with death, and just happened to announce this new interpretation in an article that she is on record (in the article I previously linked to in another comment) as feeling misrepresented by the author of. "What could be worse than someone taking what you've told them and portraying you as the aggressor? It was a sucker-punch to the gut. This is what Jon Roson's article in the NYTimes did. I simply become an agitator affecting the man's life, no more, no less." So, no, I don't think I'm being very charitable in my interpretation.

wpietri 12y ago

This is pretty warped. If we want all people to turn up with their ideas, we have to create an environment where all people feel comfortable being present and expressing their ideas. We have mainly done that for white dudes with reasonable levels of social capital. I'd like to do it for everybody. The feeling of being a visibly different minority in a crowd can be unsettling. (As a white guy I experience it rarely, but when it happens, I notice the difference acutely.) This is true regardless of actual risk. But women are currently at higher risk of all sorts of predatory behavior: creeps, stalkers, harassers, sexual assaulters, rapists. I personally expect that a sexualized environment will increase those risks. But even if they don't, suddenly having your context shifted from, "professional who likes to code thinking about code" to "fuckable prey for the predators in the crowd around you" is problematic. Our choices are either to give up and have those people mainly stay away or to work on creating a safe space so that everybody can attend. There is no middle path here. Pycon explicitly chose the latter. Does this exclude ideas? I guess, in a sad and limited sense of the term "ideas". Pycon's limited the acceptable content thusly: "All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks." Does this mean you can't talk about your favorite masturbation techniques on stage? Sure. But seriously, why would you? What sort of incredible idea exchange are we missing out on here by saying that a Python conference has to be about Python? If you also want to talk about sex, there are conferences about that. There's even a well-established conference about sex and technology. [1] What you're refusing to connect here is what happened to Adria before and after she posted a tweet about a Code of Conduct violation. She was harassed and threatened; her employer was attacked, harming their business. These are all crimes, and they're crimes for a reason. You might not see the connection, but to me (and I'm sure to any woman in tech) it's pretty obvious: men willing to attack women are part of the tech community. They could be anybody. [2] She surely knew that there could well be predators in that crowd. And the moment the context is sexualized is the moment that she has to start paying attention to that rather than the content. This is true for anybody, but it is especially true for people who have been traumatized in the past. And given the stats on sexual assault, there are guaranteed to be women like that at any significant conference. So I'm firmly on the side of codes of conduct because I don't want a random grab-bag of ideas at a conference. I want a specific curated set of good ideas. And if that means people have to save their weak sex jokes and their pictures of porn stars for a few hours until they're somewhere else, I'm fine with that. [1] http://www.monochrom.at/arse-elektronika/ http://www.monochrom.at/arse-elektronika/ [2] This basically makes you and me and any dude in a crowd Schroedinger's Rapist: http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger%E2%80%99s-rapist-or-a-guy%E2%80%99s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/ http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-sch... http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_Rapist http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_Rapi...