But You're A Girl

It seems that Adria's personal blog is having similar problems.. http://butyoureagirl.com/

Maybe its my social group but something like that would even cause any of us (more women in tech) to even bat an eye. My sense is that she herself didn't bat much of an eye until she decided that it was a problem. If you read her account, she acted in order to protect a photograph: I saw a photo on main stage of a little girl who had been in the Young Coders workshop. I realized I had to do something or she would never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so. The details in her account are very interesting, given the putative motivators behind her actions. http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at…

She references that she was twice a victim of domestic violence in this post: http://butyoureagirl.com/13871/success-against-the-odds-filling-my-tec… Obviously a horrible thing to go through, perhaps it has colored her perceptions somewhat? I do agree that the reaction greatly outweighed the incident.

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-belo… 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.

> How could I possibly find a quote that doesn't exist? In any other circumstance, that might be OK. In this case though, she has written just ONE blog post about this incident. Obviously it makes sense to start there. She has given many interviews too about it, and commented on other websites. You could have left that for later. Source http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at… <blockquote> Women in technology need consistant messaging from birth through retirement they are welcome, competent and valued in the industry. Let’s unify the message to our daughters and to the women developers we work with: “We want you to be here and we will do our best to welcome you into the world of programming.” What has to change is that everyone must take personal accountability and speak up when they hear something that isn’t ok. It takes three words to make a difference: “That’s not cool.” </blockquote> I am given to understand that katherineparker does not believe that she's one of these women who need to be massaged from birth to retirement, and katherineparker wishes Adria, being some kind of evangelist, had stopped "representing" women in general in this manner. That's cool. I absolutely refuse to massage anyone. > You have made a false claim about what Adria Richards said. False claim. > You keep repeating that she represents all women. Odd. KP said the opposite. There is definitely more matter for me to go on about. Just…

It's worth reading the original blogpost: http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at… I hope this developer will be able to find another job. But consider that conference rooms are different. You can't make a joke about fire or a bomb there without potentially threatening public safety. By a similar logic, if you say things which negatively affect my state of being in the conference, then you are potentially at fault. So is it possible to make a private joke in a conference room while someone is giving a presentation? I would argue that it is possible in some situations, but not in all situations. So before everyone rushes to judgement, consider whether this particular venue and setup does make the context for this joke different. I think the employer overreacted. But while I think everyone has a right to tell whatever joke they want in private, in conference rooms, there are different rules for conversation being private.

We don't really need to speculate why she did it. She details it quite articulately on her blog http://butyoureagirl.com/2013/03/18/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belo… <lots of context snipped> > I decided to do things differently this time and didn’t say anything to them directly. I was a guest in the Python community and as such, I wanted to give PyCon the opportunity to address this. <more context snipped> So if "personal agenda" includes being fed up with tech industry sexism, then yeah it was very obviously because of a personal agenda. PR? Sure, she was trying to manage how her story was received by the public. Wouldn't you?

Did she? I just read the entire post, and I disagree. http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at… It certainly exists within the context of gender issues at a tech conference, but she didn't even go so far as to label the jokes sexist -- just something that would make some women uncomfortable. (Which is obviously true, given her response!)

An established pattern of action, indeed! That Adria would object publicly[1] to a fun little talk by Danielle Morrill on Getting the Money Shot[2] is what we need to know to understand this case. [1]http://butyoureagirl.com/5004/wordcamp-boston%E2%80%99s-ignite-session… [1 cached]http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qahkOwfNZtoJ:buty… [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V6vNEDMzgw#t=3m5s

"Because of my experiences growing up, I have triggers. This means that I’m always scanning for danger; for situations that seem like something from the past that could hurt me. When I recognize something that matches, I can overreact and feel intense fear, anger or anxiety. This is something I’ve worked on a lot. It’s much better now than 10 years ago but there are some things that send me over the edge." http://butyoureagirl.com/13871/success-against-the-odds-filling-my-tec… (site is currently down, may need to view cache) I'm surprised nobody has picked up on this yet.

From Adria's post: http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at… I stood up slowly, turned around and took three, clear photos. I said back down, did another gut check and started composing a tweet. Three things came to me: act, speak and confront in the moment. I decided to do things differently this time and didn’t say anything to them directly. The true "forking" meaning was described in the HN post by the one who was fired.

It went further than that, though. http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at…

This write up is ridiculously biased. If you read Adria's write up, which includes the photo, you can see that there's absolutely nothing private about the conversation. Look at the photos in http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at… You can see that the two guys are in very crowded presentation room surrounded by other people. Their conversation, unless whispered, would be clearly audible by many people around them. Given that context, I think the outrage in this (bravely) anonymous pastebin posting is way over the top. Maybe Adria could've handled this better, but her disgust and frustration are entirely reasonable.

Yeah, this is passive aggressive stuff. The guy said you even smiled at him as you took the picture. I actually read more of Adria's site and I read http://butyoureagirl.com/13871/success-against-the-odds-filling-my-tec… "Because of my experiences growing up, I have triggers. This means that I’m always scanning for danger; for situations that seem like something from the past that could hurt me. When I recognize something that matches, I can overreact and feel intense fear, anger or anxiety." Which explains a lot. I am shocked to read about Adria's experiences as a child, and would urge everyone to go a little easier on her.

http://butyoureagirl.com/2009/01/28/did-norm-coleman-fake-his-own-webs… Apparently the 'crash' left rather a lot of data sitting out in the open.

Well, mr-hank said it had something to do with "a big dongle joke about a fictional piece hardware that identified as male", and Adria corroborates that less specifically with it being a joke about a "big" dongle. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681 http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at… However, if that description isn't enough (it is for me), I'd much rather accept Adria's oversensitivity and injustice-seeking behavior as applicable character flaws. As opposed to her hypocrisy, those things really do make her a bad judge of what is and isn't sexist, because they generate false positives. Her hypocrisy is also galling because of her response to the events, but that still doesn't affect her claim that she took appropriate action, because it's a generic claim about any woman in that situation, and doesn't rely on any of her character flaws. Okay, that is as refined as it gets for me, I think. I did come to see how I was implicitly accepting an ad hominem argument without realizing it (the one about oversensitivity), so thanks again.

> Since when is Twitter the same thing as a professional conference? First, she mentioned PyCon in that Twitter conversation[1]. If she had hashtagged it, there would be a stronger argument, but either way we might say she's having an "inappropriate conversation" in the "vicinity" of the conference. People searching about conference might see this, just like people at the conference might have heard the same inappropriate joke. If we look deeper I think "but she made similar jokes" has other merit. What's the point of having "professionalism" rules at a conference? Because everyone is there publicly representing a company, and because they don't want distractions from the purposes of the conference. Adria is a public representative of her company, and apparently uses her Twitter account in connection with that. Why does she get to mix her personal life into a public-facing account, complete with "overhearable" unprofessional jokes, but two friends in the same room with her can't do the same? The only good reason I can think of is "because the conference rules say so, and they all agreed to them." Any other reason for her getting to be offended about a joke quietly exchanged between two well-acquainted professionals but overhearable in public, is hypocritical, because she set up the exact same situation on Twitter. When you consider her inappropriate, overreacting, passive-aggressive response, and calling them "ass clowns" on her blog[2] (it's at least partially…

From the FAQ If you turn it on, you'll see all the submissions and comments that have been killed by the editors. They're mostly spam and duplicates. Along with unverified information [Facebook/Twitter are not legitimate sources this early on] I am not surprised at all that these stories were 'deleted'. I come to Hacker News for the reason that pg and the mods built and maintain it. Your speak of censorship is sensationalism. [which coincides with this whole story] This post is on the front page and I predict will get many points, not deleted and contain valuable discussion. I am all up for discussion on this story - after reading her blog post [1] and the fact she posted here [2] - [which I wasn't even aware of until I came to this thread - thanks to the user down votes she received] her aim was not to get somebody fired, nor as it appears to me was trying to get herself fired. She was taking a stand - it had unintended consequences. The key part of her blog: Have you ever had a group of men sitting right behind you making joke that caused you to feel uncomfortable? Every single conference I have been to in the 'tech' industry the delegates have been 90%+ males [very often the number of women facilitating was more than the number of men facilitating] I have rarely felt 'uncomfortable' by a group of men making a joke - if they were drunk would more people have felt uncomfortable? Probably. Is that acceptable at a python conference? No. Another quote from the blog…

While incidents like this are common at Ruby conferences, this is actually exceedingly rare to see within the Python community. The Python community is generally much more like the C++, Java and .NET communities, where professionalism and a lack of drama are the norm. My suspicion is that at least some of the people involved here may not really be part of the Python community in any sense, but were merely just attendees at one of the largest and most prominent Python conferences. The "About" page[1] of the blog of one of the individuals involved doesn't currently mention Python once, but does list "Build a Ruby App for something I’m passionate about" as a "Life Goal", and lists "RailsConf" under the "Speaking Events" section. There's also a video entitled "I’m ready to start programming Ruby on Rails" shown on the "Videos" page[2], but none about Python. The "Speaking" page[3] lists "Instructor for RailsBridge Outreach Workshop For Women" at "SFRuby", but again I don't see anything having to do with Python. All of this indicates a much closer relationship with the Ruby community, and essentially none with the Python community. I think that the Python community, and PyCon, may be the real victims here. They've been unjustly dragged into an incident involving at least one person who does not seem to be part of the Python community, and have suffered undeserved reputation damage as a result of this incident. [1] http://butyoureagirl.com/about/ [2]…

And a lot of things that should in the abstract be harmless are not in reality. And yet, that's an abstract statement in itself. In reality, was this harmful? More specifically, was "the future of programming was on the line"? Were the comments "crushing a little kid’s dream"?[1] Adria, PyCon, and the man's employer can draw their lines where they like, and take the actions that they see fit, but there is no reason to assume that any of them got it exactly right in some objective sense. Pretending otherwise is just silly -- or defensive, in the case of a lot of folk in this thread. I'm sorry, but that's wrong. Reasonable people can disagree without any of them being "silly" or "defensive"[2]. Being dismissed with those kinds of labels for not subscribing to a dogmatic interpretation of sexism drives more men into outright misogyny than away from it. [1] http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at… [2] Or prone to "sloppy, biased thinking" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5412004

This was a private conversation between two friends, none of whom referenced her or even knew she was listening. Are you sure? How do you know? If my reading of her article is correct, and she was telling the truth, then she did not think so. That does not mean that she was correct. And with a he said, she said situation there is no chance of sorting things out. But your unsupported assertion of fact is not necessarily true. Her article is at http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at… if you want to read it to decide for yourself whether I am reading correctly. Here is the scenario that I read from her description. She's sitting one in front. 3 guys are behind and (if she is turned) to her right. Guy #1 who is behind is talking about a presentation, she turns and agrees with him, and during their discussion he talks about forking a repository. Guy #2 is to #1's left (on the right from her view), and begins making sexual jokes about forking with #3 riffing off of that. Then shortly after they riff off of a comment from the speaker and joke, "You can thank me" then start talking about big dongles. Therefore their sexual jokes were based off of their overhearing HER conversation, and so they had every expectation that SHE would hear THEM in turn. Furthermore I get the impression that even though she was not looking at them, she believed that they were implicitly ADDRESSING HER. (I am not saying that this belief is…

Based on just this pastebin, I'd be inclined toward crucifying her. However, after reading her longer blog post (http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at… it seems pretty clear that the guys were in the wrong for a professional setting (as were several others at the conference). Ideally, another person who was less personally offended would have said something (such as a coworker -- if I heard a coworker making potentially EOE/etc. offensive comments, I'd just say "hey, not appropriate, we could get in trouble for that".) and it would have gotten resolved politely. She has some elements of "concern troll" going on, but not unjustifiably. I have no real problem with people being offensive at social events if they want to be, or at a conference on their own dime (although it's stupid, and if the consequences are their professional reputation, that's their own fault), but if you're identified as an employee of a company or representing another organization, you have to abide by that organization's code of contact. (Which is why my car has no identifying marks beyond a license plate, and why I never wear corporate logo-wear; I like being able to be an asshole when necessary or appropriate without representing anything but myself.)

Hey, Thanks for speaking up, contributing your viewpoint on HN and not attacking me. I'm sorry to hear your employer deciding to not to work with you on this and I hope they reconsider, bring you back on and dealing with it constructively. For context, I'm a developer evangelist. That means I'm an advocate for developers, male and female. While I hear abou demanding bosses with impossible deadlines for product launches, I also hear about the experiences of women working at startups. In both cases I offer suggestions, ideas and mentoring to help the developers become problems solvers. Sometimes the answer is our API or not answering email after 7pm while other times it about being assertive and shedding impostor syndrome. The forking joke set the stage for the dongle joke. Yes, this time I decided I didn't want to argue my perspective. I decided instead to accept it bothered me and took action based on the PyCon Code of Conduct. It sounds like if I'd said something about the forking you would have denied it having a sexual association. Not sure if I smiled but I'm also unsure what facial expression you would have expected. I just got done writing my blog post you can read here: http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at… See you next year.

The quote from Adria Richards is breathtaking [1]: "The guy he had on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC, he’s known for several years…and he basically called him a clown. Clarence Wooten sold his company, ImageCafe, for $23 million to Network Solutions in 1999, that’s over 10 years before Arrington sold TechCrunch to AOL for the same amount. I’ve now likened it to Southern White male slave owner saying he has no idea why there are mixed babies cropping up on this plantation even though he damn well knows he’s been creeping down to the sheds at night.". So Arrington being clueless about the structural causes of racial differences in the valley is just like rape? No one has accused him of being personally discriminatory. There must be some other way to interpret her statement because Violet included it as well without comment... [1] http://butyoureagirl.com/12611/arrington-and-cnn-problem-or-symptom-of…