This woman saw an opportunity to pick up some Twitter followers, knowing that at least one or two people would be upset by her embellished explanation of what happened. In the process she took away someone's livelihood, which is despicable in my opinion. She would have simply asked them to be quiet if she were truly offended. Instead she smiled, photographed them, and let them continue their <i>private</i> conversation. It's pretty clear that she wanted publicity - nothing more.
#FameWhore
All things being equal, working together with women puts you at risk (they might get accidentally offended, go ballistic and ruin your life), working with men much less so (harrassment claims much less likely). Conclusion: it is prerferrable to not work with women. Just saying how it is, rationally. To be honest, it sometimes felt weird to work at places with 100% guys as developers. But at the end of the day, I just want to get my job done then get home to wife+ kids. Exactly why should I care about getting more women into IT?<p>Honest question - I see the appeal of lower wages for employers (more devs- they get cheaper). That would lower my wages, too. As for nicer atmosphere at work - flirting and being nice is too dangerous, so having women around would actually make things worse.<p>Note: I don't really have a problem with women in IT, just wondering about the future.
So, making a joke about a "dongle" with your friend is a firable offense, but taking a photo of someone without their permission and publicly calling them an "ass clown" is okay?<p>Because she was offended at crudeness directed at no one and merely overheard, that means crude insults directed at people are appropriate? And in a way that's meant to harm them publicly?<p>What a damn strange time we live in.
Is this about sexism again? The culture has lost when political correctness is taken too far. Perhaps the guy behaved like an a<i></i><i></i>*e for disturbing other people, but this is not how you handle it. You turn around, and tell them to STFU. But perhaps she was offended by the nature of the jokes.<p>Possibly off topic, because I didn't follow the incident at all. But I just thought of Derek Sivers' summary [1] of PG's "Hackers and Painters" (which I haven't read yet) and there he writes:<p>"What exactly is "hate speech?" This sounds like a phrase out of 1984. Labels like that are probably the biggest external clue. If a statement is false, that's the worst thing you can say about it. You don't need to say that it's heretical. And if it isn't false, it shouldn't be suppressed. So when you see statements being attacked as x-ist or y-ic (substitute your current values of x and y), whether in 1630 or 2030, that's a sure sign that something is wrong."<p>[1] <a href="http://sivers.org/book/HackersPainters" rel="nofollow">http://sivers.org/book/HackersPainters</a><p>For what it's worth, he shouldn't be too upset for not working there anymore.
I think many people - even smart ones - still don't realize how big the possible consequences are when publicly bullying someone.<p>My thoughts on this: don't do it. You might feel like venting right now, and you might have good reason to do so, but do it in your immediate vicinity, not on the Internet. You might find out later that you overreacted, and you won't be able to take it back.<p>Also, I find it ugly to put someone in the pillory who has a lot less clout than you do, no matter how justified it seems to you. It seems like applying mob law to me, which I have an aversion to.
Wow, that's pretty tough isn't it?<p>I mean, imagine going to a conference, joking around with a friend and the next day you get fired for it!<p>I wouldn't even go so far to call this (yet another) discussion about women in tech. I mean there are many topics not gender-related that could potentially offend people.
The thing that I don't get is: Why did she decide to take a picture of them an put it on Twitter?<p>If she really didn't want to talk to them in person, which I wouldn't blame her for if she was offended by ther attitude, why didn't she just report them to the staff and get them escorted out?<p>Does anyone know if the people involved here ever talked to each other?
There's a couple of things that really suck about this. One, the misogynistic reaction from the masked avengers of the internet is shameful, and has actually made the situation <i>much</i> worse now. The second being, how did we end up here at all? I get that someone might feel uncomfortable about dick jokes, but given dick and fart jokes have been staples of low brow humour for a pretty long time it's pretty petty to name and shame over it.<p>We all should be concerned about sexism in the industry, in this case it seems like it's been taken too far and Playhaven should be ashamed to have not had some faith in their member of staff. The last time a discussion on sexism came out I made a comment about how we need to have responsible disclosure about these issues, for this exact reason. It's turned into a witchhunt, and it's turned nasty and vicious.
Massively discussed not 11 hours ago <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5410515" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5410515</a>
C'mon! Jokes about sex are just as common between girls, maybe even more so. Sorry but why the hell fire somebody with humor?<p>I actually miss the github message "hardcore forking action" when i fork a repo. That was humor!
I don't get the point.<p>1. A said something to B (doesn't matter what he said)<p>2. C overheard and found it offensive.<p>3. Honestly, why should A & B care? (that wasn't intended for C!)<p>I shudder to think of a society where I must consider every word I say, just to avoid offending someone. Doing this will lead us to the kind of world described in Fahrenheit 451, where nobody can really write about anything or anyone because their opinions might offend someone.<p>Also, I guess someone doesn't understand the difference between `sexual` and `sexist`.
PyCon must have been pretty boring, to have to create controversies such as this.<p>Unrelated, but I would definitely fork this guys repo: <a href="https://github.com/snsn/dongle" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/snsn/dongle</a>
Well if i was the little girl on the photo in the slides..
I guess I would rather work in an industry with occasional sexual jokes
then in an industry where the reaction to hearing something you don't want to hear, even though it is not directed at you,
is snapping a picture of someone without their permission, posting it online without their permission and proceeding to insult them,
instead of just asking them to stop or minding your own business..
This entire situation makes me upset, and frankly, makes me feel I should watch my toungue when joking with mates and someone could overheard me.<p>That doesn't advance the fight against sexism. In fact, it makes it more adversarial.<p>Besides, offended != sexism. I hope she's happy.
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with that woman? She could've turned around and told them to stop making these kind of jokes. That she made a similar joke before is even weirder.
We, male developers, actually benefit from her actions. One guy may have lost his job, not a big deal, gonna get another, after all this publicity he got quite famous, but the main thing is that less woman will want to take the job of software development, less employers will want to hire woman because of the possible problems like this and so less concurrency for us and bigger salary.
With which right did she anyway take picture of the guys and posted them on the internet without permit? Hypothetically she could just have built up the entire story. What scares me the most is how having a wide (social) audience can give you a position of power: the followers become your minions and you can easily start your personal battles.
Managers at Playheaven rushed too much, IMO.
I believe if you're a human being of any gender, if you cannot handle innuendo (whether intended or unintended) then you shouldn't be in a job. And if you're not a party in that conversation you have no right to complain to other non-parties. just ask the people you are uncomfortable with directly if you must. learn humour.
Stunning that the outrage over this over-reactive firing is made manifest by rage--expressed as professional disrespect, name-calling, and sexually violent attacks--at the woman who called him out, with nary a peep about his over-reactive employer. <---- <i></i>This<i></i> is evidence of deep and corrosive sexism.
This is a case of everyone behaving badly and it turning into an ulgy fight. Who's side do you choose?<p>None of the above. Watch, learn, but stay the hell out of it.
Woman complains of feeling uncomfortable in a tech conference due to juvenile jokes. Hacker News commenters ranging from indifferent to hostile to that notion. Number of people surprised by this outcome: miniscule.
Why people are mad at Adria? She just reported something that disturbed her.<p>I'd be rather angry at PyCon organizers for kicking out people for something that was neither sexual language, nor sexist joke. Unless sexual innuendo jokes count as sexual language? They should really clear that up in their code of conduct.<p>Of course top idiots here is Playhaven who kicked out dev for making sexual innuendo immature joke to his friends bit too loud.
I was searching for what sexual language is. I found this <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/elderhealth/9356287/Crude-sexual-language-is-commonplace-in-care-homes-panel-rules.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/elderhealth/9356287/Crude-...</a>
Not sure what to think about this so I'll just leave it here.
This is not about men or women. Some people are just twats. Without exactly knowing the context in which this happened we don't know who the twat was in this case. I probably wouldn't want to work with either of them.
Another thread of soapboxing. It's rare that I come this close to using the flag button, but the story does have some details I missed, so it has some value.
Take a look at the world and all the shitty stuff happening every single day again. Then, think about a joke referencing a penis.<p>Do you really feel the need to be offended? Do you really think it is worth to tell the world someone touched a broken braincell in your head because of a penis joke? Clearly, you have your priorities wrong miss Richards. Same goes for the company firing the guy, why would you care about a crazy woman with penis issues?