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SendGrid Fires Employee After Firestorm Over Inappropriate Jokes
tsamsoniw writes "Hoping to strike a blow against sexism in the tech industry , developer and tech evangelist Adria Richards took to Twitter to complain about two male developers swapping purportedly offensive jokes at PyCon. The decision has set into motion a chain of events that illustrate the impact a tweet or two can make in this age of social networking: One the developers and Richards have since lost their jobs, and even the chair of PyCon has been harassed for his minor role in the incident."
I think we nerds need to get more facetime access to the rest of the world. All these "stranger danger" kids are now stranger danger adults.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I am pretty sure being a developer evangelist doesn't involve you alienating more than half of developers with your tweeting.
This is what happens in a culture where anything is offensive. Even a silly dick joke will get the hypocritical opportunists to raise a stink, and then everyone loses their jobs, and the companies get to hire younger staff at cheaper wages while hiding behind policies to be "wholesome" and "unoffensive". It's a wonderful game until you're the one who accidentally sneezes something that sounds a little like "penis" and end up on the cutting room floor.
Two men being immature at a conference and they lose their livelihood because someone quasi-famous tweeted about it? I'm sure many people would disagree but the tons of triumph in the reporting that they lost their jobs is very distasteful to me especially in this job market. I don't want to live in a society where everyone is so uptight that they don't say anything without 5 levels of mental filtering because other some random stranger can completely screw them over.
We should all just stay at home and not speak to anyone.
I think that he's right. In the time that it took to turn around and take that picture, she could just as easily have said "Hey, cut it out! Those kinds of comments are inappropriate, and I'm offended, okay?" This is a point where saying "don't make a federal case out of it" may be apropos. Does she want them to walk around wearing big "L" for losers on their foreheads, or "D" for "dicks" for what offensive things they said? Maybe she needs to reread that Scarlet Letter book.
The guys made jokes about 'big dongles' and 'forking a guys repo'. The jokes were stupid but not sexist at all.
*Joke about dongle*
*drama*
*Rocks fall, everyone gets fired*
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
It seems to me the real problem here is not the purportedly offensive jokes or the public tweet, but that people can actually get fired over a simple joke or tweet (and the law actually allows this).
...considered posting a comment in this, then stopped and deleted it just in case *your* employer takes offense?
Since the jokes were in reference to "big dongles" and forking a man's repo and made no references to women or female anatomy, it seems like Richards is actually being homophobic.
If sexism were to be defeated, it would mean hearts and minds would change and it would become a non-issue.
This is something very different. This is a chilling effect and a one-way weapon against males. The same would never happen if the roles were opposite. This is no different than the mentality we generally maintain that it's funny for women to hurt men but tragic and horrific for men to hurt women.
This doesn't "fight" sexism, it defines it. The worst thing is all of this harm is done without the benefit of a trial, a warning or any sense of fairness.
My hat's off to SendGrid for having the fortitude to fire Adria Richards. The self-centered blowhard got precisely what she deserved. A strong dose of her own medicine.
Isn't the irony delicious, Adria?
period... or absolute lack of humor
and George Carlin saw it comin'
pc culture makes me shiver now... how bad will it be in 10 years?
This post is provided without warranty as to reliability, accuracy or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose.
...attempting to make me feel bad for being male, for being a geek, and for being a male geek. Not going to fly, Ms. Richards. You want to make it "us" vs "them"? Well, OK, but given the relative numbers I don't think you're going to win that one.
Good for her. She stood up for herself when she was threatened (triggered). What was the trigger? She saw a photo on main stage of a little girl who had been in the Young Coders workshop. She realized immediately that she had to do something or that little girl would never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ass clowns behind her would make it impossible for the little girl to do so. What did these ass clowns do? They began making sexual forking jokes. What happened after the forking joke? A dongle joke. Incredible. Just like Popeye, she "couldn't stands it no more" and took action.
What did she do? She did what any hero would have done in her situation. She took a photo of the offending hipster males and posted it for the whole world to see. This was an outstanding, very brave effort for a woman who had just been triggered. She was applauded by the feminist blogosphere, and in the end was fired by a man in a position of power. The fucking patriarchy. Fuck them. Don't believe me, read the entire blog entry she wrote. It is all totally supported by the ideology that rules our campuses today. To quote her:
Classic. Who can read that without a tear? Can anyone provide a place that I can donate to her legal defense fund?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
then the conduct should be professional.
IMO she deserved it. This was a matter for reprimands by the conference and if needed by their employers, NOT but the public at large. She breached the two mens privacy in a serious way and if I was her employer I'd be worried about blow back from what she did now and what she'll do in the future.
IMO it's never OK to "twitter shame" someone, it's the pinnacle of passive-aggressive behavior where you take a complaint public and ask for mob justice. What happens next time where she calls for the pitchforks and torches and someone actually is harmed by some mentally ill person that got fired up by her?
Correct.
- If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat? - Steven Wright
Two people at a conference telling jokes you find offensive? Ok, say something to them. Her taking it to Twitter is no different than the faceless drones threatening her via twitter - too coward to confront someone face to face - instead attacking someone via the Internet.
She is a self described activist, who is too afraid to confront two nerds?
A bit of human decency, on both parties (aka: talking to another human being) would have mitigated this entire situation and two people would still have their jobs.
A woman complains about two adult males making sexist jokes near her and SHE gets fired?
How is "big dongles" sexist? In what way does it discriminate or is prejudicial against someone based on their sex? Sexual != sexist. Also, she was fired because her actions were alienating the very community of people she was supposed to be an evangelist for.
Shouldn't it be the other way around?
She did get the person fired by making a huge stink over it by publicly shaming them.
Come on you puritan sods! Grow a pair of balls.
Now if the developers made a sexual joke about that Adria woman , than I would consider this sexual harassment. But some wordplay? On Forking? And big dongles? What's next; "Oh no's, he said that we should go 'finger' the cullprit who broke into our unix account. Let's put tar and feathers on him and carry him around on a metal bar!"
I am goddamn happy I live on the ole' Continent where you can swear profanely on the workfloor when you break your skull underneath your desk while searching for that loose USB cable or make funny comebacks to loose the tension like that female developer who shouted "that's what he said" after the frantic cry of the assistant server-admin "i can't get it up!".
You are creating a generation of scared, stressed, puritan bastards. One visit to a Scottish , Flemish or Basque pub and they probably faint upon hearing the "feck this pissbeer" or "my, those are big jugs. No offense lady!"
These guys lost their jobs because of joking about the word dongle, something that every geek on the face of the planet has joked about. Forking and dongle are funny sounding stupid IT words, every profession has stupid words people joke about. If you are a female and you don't get invited to the after hours hang out where people goof around, make jokes, and talk serious business this is the kind of person you have to blame. What a horrible humorless human.
Don't think men with families they struggle to pay to feed their kids, and keep medical insurance don't secretly wonder if the female next to one of these females, and leave them out of the loop because of it. This is what causes the truly nasty life changing, paycheck shrinking discrimination, not stupid jokes.
Congratulations to her on the petty, bitter, shallow victory. and dinner alone. I wouldn't hire this wretch in a million years, I don't care if she is the most brilliant python developer in the world. No organization needs her poison in it.
a) A conference is a public place. Taking photos there is no crime and reporting what you could hear by natural hearing neither.
b) If you have twitter followers for some reason, what you write will be observed
c) If you are somewhere representing a company on social media, and you use this channel for other things, no matter if you did it for the best and the worst, and these other things start to interfere with your capability to efficiently represent the company in a solely positive way, you will be fired. And rightly so. A company does not judge if you are right or wrong in doing something. They see somebody who can create a positive image for them. If you have such a job, then you have to know that creating unwanted attention which prevents you from doing the job gets you fired. Sorry thatâ(TM)s life. If you have a Job behind a desk, programming, you can do whatever you want on twitter.
As a owner of a tech company I can say with all honesty that I don't discriminate at all when I hire. All I see when I am hiring is how much money you can make me. That is it. My employees are nothing more then an investment. That being said it is bullshit like this that makes me think twice about hiring women. When I hire a women I have to take into account the risk of a sexual harassment charge that does not really exist if I hire a male.
They got fired to and the jokes were not sexist. If it was jokes about vaginas then you would still say it was sexist against women right? In fact the jokes were sexual in nature but they weren't sexist at all. No one should have been fired and this just makes everyone look bad. The people who made the jokes look bad. The company they work for looks bad. The woman who reported them looks bad. The company she works for looks bad. Everybody looses.
I'd fire her for being poisonous to the work environment, and hire 10 easy going females who have senses of humor to replace her. This kind of wretch drags an entire organization down.
She overheard someone talking NOT TO HER, and tried to make sure they couldn't feed their families. That makes her a hero? Bullshit.
Anyone else remember when people had thick enough skins they could just roll their eyes, shrug their shoulders, and not give a crap about what other people were doing or saying (provided no one's really getting hurt)?
I am tired of everyone feeling so entitled - the whole world has to conform to their ideals, and if it doesn't then by Gawd they're going to bitch, complain, threaten legal action, and sue until they get what they want.
Shit like this just pisses me off no end and makes me pine for the days when the Internet was an exclusive club for us nerds (and perverts).
She was practicing cyberbullying. All that was warranted was turning around and making a comment to the offenders.
I'm not even sure the jokes count as "sexist". Even taking Adrias blog version of events the jokes were sexual double entendres, not sexist.
Her over the top escalation did cause one of the guys to be fired, apparently, and in addition caused the company she worked for to be severely DDOSed and presumably hit with a mountain of email. From what I can tell most people think she severely overreacted.
FWIW, women do have a right to expect not to be made the target of misogynistic jokes and have a right to be protected in the workplace from inappropriate comments. But that does NOT mean that two people cannot have a semi-private banter even in the workplace or at a conference.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Only if she was not sexually harassing the men. That is right. She was sexually harassing the men. She did not complain because the joke was sexual in nature, as those kinds of jokes clearly don't offend her, as she was making sexual jokes at the same event. She made the complain because she didn't feel that "men" should be afforded the same rights as women, and she used her position in the media to harass these men.
There is *no* right not to be offended. US case law (and the First Amendment) is clear on this.
If the guys are being inappropriate, that is one thing, but no-one ought to claim they have a right to not be offended. What was offensive to Richards was clearly not offensive to many other people. Personally I find hyper-sensitivity to be somewhat offensive, yet I don't feel the need to wage jihad against her. I've seen this behavior before from women (including getting guys chucked out of university for chuckling at inappropriate jokes). If *she* was offended then it is up to *her* to point this out to the culprits - without doing so in an offensive way herself. That's what a mature person would do. She can't claim they were threatening in any way, because their apologetic posture shows they were probably approachable for a mature person to make their point to.
Furthermore, there are a number of troubling aspects to Richards' claim (and those that support her narrow-minded point-of-view):
Who gets to decide what is offensive or not?
Should government, the legal profession, or business decide what is an appropriate joke or not?
There is only one solution, Free Speech. Free Speech is not about stuff you agree with - it is a principle that protected stuff you don't agree with (provided it is not out-and-out hate speech; eg. such as the racist and anti-Semitic core doctrines of the political ideology called Islam).
The solution is for companies to say, "We did not mean to offend you. However, we stand up for Free Speech for all out employees and don't believe we have the right to dictate what they can think or say, provided it is legal.". Too bad the World is full of beta personalities who cower at the thought of causing offense, rather than alpha personalities who may be brusque, but at least they stand up for moral principals (even if this is unpopular).
So grow some 'nads by fellow Slashdotters. You are either for Free Speech, and would not fire these guys (even if you would take them aside in private to tell them to cool it off a bit), or you believe in Political Correctness where someone else may dictate what you can say, hear and think. The real problem with PC is not that it dictates and denies what people can say, it denies that multitude of other people the right to hear (what can often be unpleasant but truthful).
No, she was fired because she created a PR shitstorm for her company. You would possibly have a point if she was fired because a fellow employ harassed her and she was fired for reporting it to her boss. That was not the case.
Oh and [url=https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425]this[/url] makes it really hard to feel too sorry for her over the "sexist" comment.
Already did. She got fired too! She still feels justified in her position which indicates she didn't learn anything through her experience. Meanwhile the guy that got fired? Yeah... apologized publically AFTER getting fired as well as before.
So seriously, if it's a question of conduct, I'd say the score was tied. But when it's a question of character? The lady loses and the man wins.
her actions constitute sexual harassment according to the sensitivity training i've recieved. if she had merely reported them to the proper authorities she would have been safe. stupid laws, stupid conduct.
Tell us more Benny- How did they sexually harass her?
Is the word dongle, seriously have you ever mentioned needing a dongle and not snickered?
After reading more about the incident I have to agree. Looks like all parties acted as kids. Firing them all was a bit too extreme I think... I don't know about the company's culture/morale though.
none
Wait, I post random shit about people on twitter all the time. I thought that's what twitter was for. Is there now some code of conduct on twitter? Is there going to be one on Slashdot, too?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I think the woman in this article was slightly overcompensating due to suffering "Impostor Syndrome". It's totally understandable, given the position of women in tech. So she triggered and went a bit too far, and that's grounds for her to be FUCKING FIRED by her male boss? What is Impostor Syndrome, you ask? I'm glad you asked, it's a chance for you to become educated with what the rest of the world thinks.
Impostor Syndrome describes a situation where someone feels like an impostor or fraud because they think that their accomplishments are nowhere near as good as those of the people around them. Usually, their accomplishments are just as good, and the person is being needlessly insecure. It's especially common in fields where people's work is constantly under review by talented peers, such as academia or Open Source Software.
Women experiencing impostor syndrome may be less willing to put themselves forward, feeling that they are not qualified, by eg:
For hiring managers, conference chairs, etc.
One woman's story about Imposter Syndrome and how it affected her geek career. This is serious stuff, people. If we can't overcome this, then women will never be accepted as equals in tech. :(
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Please, identify the target of the harassment.
The only harassment I see here is someone eavesdropping on a private conversation and secretly taking pictures of 2 individuals at a private gathering and publishing them online with a public defamatory statement.
An inappropriate joke about a "big dongle" is not sexual harassment, it is anatomical humour. It was not aimed at her, or her sex. It was certainly not appropriate for that setting, but not worth firing someone over.
She overreacted by publicly shaming them on twitter instead of just confronting them directly or complaining to the conference organizers (as per the code of conduct for the conference).
The employer of one of the developers overreacted by firing him.
There was a backlash against her for her actions, and so her employer felt that she could no longer do her job (developer relations) and fired her.
The conference organizers did the right thing...everyone else screwed up to varying degrees.
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex. I'm all for firing employees who do not stop behaving like that towards colleagues (after appropriate warnings).
But two guys making dongle jokes at a conference is not sexism.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
So two guys can't make stupid jokes about dongles, but she is allowed to make comparable dick-size jokes in public? you should put something in your pants next time...like a bunch of socks inside one...large...sock. TSA agent faint. Fucking hypocrite. She's also been -very- selectively moderating the comments on her site. The above has been brought up a few times, but left either unanswered, or banned/removed. Nice.
Relational aggression:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_aggression
Richards didn't confront the people who allegedly offended her. She did nothing in person to convey that she found the comments made inappropriate. What she did was and use her influence to damage the commenters' social status. Basically, this is how females fight. Guys are fucking useless at this shit and don't understand it.
Starting a development company without an evangelist is like going to war without accordions.
This was an outstanding, very brave effort for a woman who had just been triggered. She was applauded by the feminist blogosphere, and in the end was fired by a man in a position of power. The fucking patriarchy. Fuck them.
First off, stuff the "triggering" bullshit - I'm getting really tired of people slinging that word around. Using the word to describe seeing an innocuous photo is an insult to people with PTSD.
Second: half the population is male. That means that there is a high likelihood negative decisions that impact women will be made by men, and for reasons that have nothing to do with gender.
Your comment is as stupid as a male programmer complaining that his female manager "hates men" when she fires him for insubordination.
Please help metamoderate.
News flash:
They didn't make a sexist joke
They made a penis joke via "dongle"
Jokes about male genitalia are not inherently sexist. In order to be sexist, the joke would need to directly denigrate women.
Inferring that any joke that referencing male genitalia is sexist on the other hand, is sexist in and of itself.
Also, there's a difference between sexist comments and sexual jokes, which it seemed the po-faced Ms Richards didn't appreciate.
All in all, she seems to be a drama llama.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
PyCon has RULES OF CONDUCT.
Those "guys" BROKE THE RULES OF CONDUCT.
Dude, PyCon didn't fire them. PyCon didn't even ask them to leave the conference. Adria Richards said PyCon handled the situation fine.
Why in the world would "breaking rules of conduct" be grounds for firing them, given all of that? If we went around firing everyone who broke ANY "rules of conduct", or went 5 MPH over the speed limit, or jaywalked... we wouldn't have an economy anymore.
As a woman, "self-proclaimed nerd", I am highly offended by the actions of Adria Richards. Her offense offends me. Did anyone commit any wrongs towards her? Absolutely not. These men weren't talking to her, or even about her. Now, if one of them had pointed at her and said something like, "I'd like to use my big dongle on her" or something, then perhaps it would make sense to be offended. Even if that were so, who cares? If she wants to label herself with stereotypes, "nerds" are generally classified as socially-awkward and sexually frustrated. Why was she so surprised by their conversation? They weren't even being sexually explicit, they were cracking puns. I wish that I had been at the conference with her and seen her tweet. I would have found her, sat next to her, and whispered to her asking her if she's seen any big dongles recently. It's honestly women like this that make people not want to hire women. I would have been angry with her even if she had tried to settle this woman-to-man, so to say. There was nothing to settle, nothing to fix. No one did anything wrong. Her passive-aggressive attitude led to the firing to people who didn't deserve it.
I don't see how I can give +1 Intentionally Ironic.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
They were fired for being overheard in (essentally) a public place. Being crass to a colleague who finds it funny - when there is nobody around who is bound to sit and listen to it who cannot effect a change - shouldn't result in losing your livelihood and possibly everything you own.
If they had pulled out their headphone jack while listening to a song exposing rape, should they have been *fired* or being offensive?
I suppose, in your world, driving 36mph in a 35mph zone is a license-revoking offense.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
'Richards -- who has upward of 9,400 Twitter followers -- overheard a couple of unnamed developers in the row behind her engaged in a private conversation. One made an anatomical joke about "dongles," and the other made a comment about "forking."`
...
..
'Richards found their comments offensive, so she turned around, took their picture, and posted it to Twitter with the following text: "Not cool. Jokes about forking repo's in a sexual way and 'big' dongles. Right behind me #pycon."`
The real story being Richards invading other peoples privacy
Ted: That's because their mouths were full of your wife's box
AccountKiller
Let's say I'm a great technologist, awesome project manager and give good client-meeting, but when I hang out with my friends I refer to women as 'bitchez' and my favorite pasttime is thinking of them in the most physical way -- and on occasion penetrating said bitchez.
My general attitude is that if you're offended, then you offend me with your rigid mindset and efforts to control the way I act and think.
The basic problem here is that many feminists simply loathe male sexuality and its outward expression. They believe they have the right to determine what is 'acceptable' and what isn't.
How is that philisophically different from condemning homosexuality?
Yeah, he should have said: "I was raised on the command line, motherfucker." Because we all know he really wanted to say that, but he was too much of a pussy to use the f-bomb. Where are the chicks like "Maya" from Zero Dark Thirty to show the boys how it's done?
They made comments of a sexual nature, they did not make comments of a sexIST nature - that is 2 entirely different things. Plus the way the woman name and shamed them and how she behaves on her blog? Sounds like justice was served to me.
It was whoever that posted that ridiculous Tweet that deserved to be fired for not respecting those guys privacy and posting their picture like that. How do you even know she isn't some nut job making that up?
And so what if they made jokes with a sexual connotation? The jokes where not personal or even something offensive... unless if you are some nut-job for whom the very mention of sex is offensive.
Get a grip on reality Adria Richards you should be ashamed for being a prick and getting 2 guys fired just because you have some puritan social disabilities.
Man this has dug into my forking. Ive been following this all night. My take, I love women, I love smart women even more. I hope I never meet this one, in front or behind, up or down, back or front, side to side. This is a cry for help.
At first I thought that this was some epic sarcasm as I am a fan of the practice. However if you scroll down towards the bottom of the comments section, you can see that DNS posted this gem:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3570077&cid=43241181
After reading that, I am thinking that perhaps DNS was actually being serious. That post is also filled with what one might say was even more thickly veiled sarcasm but the post above has that final line which you and I thought clearly defined it as sarcasm. My linked to post does not have any final statement and actually empathises with women in tech:
"One woman's story about Imposter Syndrome and how it affected her geek career. [wikia.com] This is serious stuff, people. If we can't overcome this, then women will never be accepted as equals in tech. :("
That statement, to me, says that even though we thought he/she was being sarcastic here, that they are indeed siding with Adria and so the responses to DNS's post are quite on-topic.
Unless the women that loves me is Virgin Mary herself, I would expect her to have no problem hearing mentions of sexual intercourse, or any kind of sexual body parts.
I can face the horror of any man that is in love with a female doctor tough, carying the burden of his loved one having to face the mention of body parts related to sex for the rest of her - surely - very miserable life. Oh the humanity.
If I were the guy that got fired I would go see a lawyer. I'm assuming the employer is covered as it's probably, however a civil case against her may be doable. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but you have NFL players who are convicted of crimes who fight bans from the NFL under right to work laws. No idea if legally it's plausible, but I sure would try. The argument can be made that this woman derailed someones career.
python za gud language
There ya go...
He has a daughter who was aspiring to be a programmer but now daddy doesn't have the money to send her to college and she's taken a job as Charlie Sheen's "assistant"
While reading about all of this, my biggest issue was that I felt like I was lacking perspective. I was seeing a lot of arguments from various people but I didn't understand how anyone's perspective could lead to the given outcomes.
I found this post very helpful: http://griffin.oobleyboo.com/archive/on-pycon2013-and-equality/
It does a good job of moving you into someone else's shoes; some who is very different from you, whoever you might be. It was helpful. Viewing things from another perspective is NOT condoning actions. It's learning. Understanding. It's a step in the direction of addressing long-standing systematic issues. A first step.
hehe, fikun programers
Once more, some overly politically correct social justice warrior with a blog and constant craving for attention via playing the victim makes the world a little worse. Racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and everything else unbefitting a civilized society should be called out and fought against but political correctness is not that; it is just a scourge.
ts sad that someone lost their job because this person (who lets not forget made her own dick jokes, and also said that 'black people can't be racist,' which goes to show you her character) felt the need to take offense at the non-offensive, but at least some justice was done. People like this need to grow up. But you know they won't. She'll find herself the victim her, a noble martyr fighting against the [insert conspiracy here], and other overly PC nutbags will offer support.
People take themselves way too freaking seriously. A joke is a joke. If you take offense at this.. then you got a problem. If I'm fat and I hear a fat joke and it's funny, I will laugh. If I don't like that I'm fat, I can always try and lose weight. But jokes are based on sarcasm, wit and ridicules. Tweak of the extreme so to speak. When a person hearing a sex joke gets offended, that's a PC, "Politically Correct" people and they are the worse hypocrites on the planet. There is a saying, "Don't take life too seriously, you'll die anyways"..
When I first read this article today I wondered if SendGrid's site would be targeted. Status page: http://support.sendgrid.com/entries/23417077-21-Mar-Website-Down-Refusing-Mail
I've seen some negative comments directed towards SendGrid for firing her but their CEO's comments are IMO pretty classy: http://send.gd/11pgIMj
What we do not support was how she reported the conduct. ...
A SendGrid developer evangelist’s responsibility is to build and strengthen our Developer Community across the globe. In light of the events over the last 48+ hours, it has become obvious that her actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid.
And then gun the engine?
In the end, the consequences that resulted from how she reported the conduct put our business in danger. Our commitment to our 130 employees, their families, our community members and our more than 130,000 valued customers is our primary concern.
Maybe I don't understand how company policies are written, but this sounds like public advertisement of a private company decision. Even accepting that these would be the facts, I assumed that in many cases, people are given the option to leave with something noncommittal like, 'mutual parting of the ways'.
But broadcasting to the public that:
is unusually specific and, particularly with the last item, nothing short of damning. This comes from the CEO, too.
ive been around /. for a bit and this is about the the saddest shit ever. thats all
I think people are understating how difficult it can be to confront people who cause offence
So then go to the PyCon organisers in private and raise your complaint with them. They will then go and find the individuals, again in private and inform them of their infraction.
Taking photos and using your position of influence to publicly shame people based on heresay is a severve form of harrasment. It's so severe that it even lost one guy his job over midly innapropriate comments. Dont you get it? The guy has a wife and kids and no income now... it's freaking tragic.
Crusading blowhard deserved what she got, but in the end everyone has lost. It's very sad indeed.
I don't know about "never". If the person is a public figure, or the remarks were made in a public manner, then I can see the argument there.
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1) Be appropriate when on the clock, and...
2) Twitter / Facebook / Social Media shaming is a childish act.
The guy should have been respectful and appropriate, not made the comments.
But sorry, she's just as bad here. She could have spoken to them, or gone and told a representative directly to have them dealt with. But publicly shaming them, with photos, while *she* was on the clock, too... Not appropriate either.
Sorry lady, two wrongs do not make a right. Shouldn't have shamed them on twitter in the first place, and certainly not done so on the job.
This sig intentionally left blank.
Hell, I put a Post-it note on a woman's boob today, and stared at her boob, while saying "No, I'm not looking at your tits."
It was a demonstration of why I hate those damn "HELLO, My Name Is " nametags at conferences. Why can't they get baseball caps? Then we would be looking near their eyes, while trying to think up something non-offensive to say.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
If anything this actually hurts opportunities for females. All this has done was create an environment where females may end up excluded because anything a male says could be used against them to cost them their jobs. I don't think this person even understands the magnitude of what she's done. Job loss is a Big Deal (tm). Immature jokes entirely NOT DIRECTED at you or even your gender from behind you in a crowd is nothing. Unless they were directing these comments at her I don't even see how this got to this level. Is there something I missed here? How is this not misandry?
OMFG where have the times of the 60s and 70s gone?!!! Have the PENCIL-PUSHING PRICKS taken over HR now too? I remember the old days where your boss knew if you did a good job or not, and was able to substantiate that using proze and relevant examples that you didn't even knew (s)he knew about. Nowadays the pencil-pushing pricks have taken over, so they are staring over sheets filled with "metrics", comparing "actuals" to "targets". That's a trend going from the Top down, where the COO used to take over when the CEO stepped down; nowadays you will often see the CFO take over.... that's right, a glorified BOOK KEEPER running the company.
And now it trickled down to the HR department... terminating someone's employment over some innuendo in a JOKE? And firing someone for saying that they didn't think it was funny?
Do yourself a favour and go look at some videos from the late 60s, early 70s. How people rose up against the prude bourgeoisie. And in 2013 we're right back...
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
A woman complains about two adult males making sexist jokes near her and SHE gets fired? Shouldn't it be the other way around?
Complaining is one thing. Throwing a massive Twitter tantrum and stirring up bad press for a company that you're supposed to be evangelizing is grounds for termination.
Termination for cause was the correct action for SendGrid to take, and I commend them for it.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
You know, I try to avoid making comments on things I know are going to be controversial because I'm always going to piss off xx% of people, and I really don't set out to piss off anyone. (Except when I do...) But sometimes, something so heinously, irredeemably, goddamn stupid happens, and I have to vent or I'll simply explode. So here goes all my friggin' karma... PLEASE NOTE: My opinions are simply based on events as they have been described.
While I wish I could be all diplomatic and say that everyone involved shares the blame for this incident, that wouldn't be honest. He's a nerd, making nerd jokes, to another nerd, at a nerd convention. The stuff he supposedly said is just silly. Sure, there's SORT OF innuendo there, but it's like middle school stuff. There was nothing overtly-sexual or graphic about it, and he was having what he thought was an at least semi-private conversation. It was those two computer nerds in WarGames. It wasn't a truck stop on the Jersey turnpike.
I get that she found it offensive, and that's her right. But the fact that she was (supposedly) smiling as she took the damning TwitPic just seems... I don't know. Malicious? What was that supposed to be? "Heh, I'll fix YOU! I'm going to tell the INTERNET!" The whole thing just seems so damned petty.
Replace her phone with a gun, and now we're closer to what happened; *Bang!* There goes your job.
Let's take that analogy and run with it, as one might with a pair of scissors! (Well, as I might, anyway.) If I overhear someone making dumb comments behind me, I'm probably going to just roll my eyes. The most I might do, is tell them to shut up. I'm not going to turn around and SHOOT them. (Probably.)
She defends her actions, saying that in order to make the IT industry safe for women, she HAD to shoot him.
I really don't want to sound biased just because I'm a guy, because on its most fundamental level this has nothing to do with gender. Look at the situation; You have two people carrying on a private conversation, albeit a dumb and juvenile one. A third person overhears them, and instead of asking them to kindly shut the hell up snaps a photograph of them, grabs the internet bullhorn (With which they are apparently quite skilled), and says "Internet, you wouldn't BELIEVE what these two bozos just said!". Then one of those 'bozos' loses his job. Twitter shaming; No less asinine and juvenile than the dongle jokes.
I want to see more women in the tech industries, I want to see more female makers and tinkerers. Why? It's not just because I think we need more beauty to balance out the neckbeards. It's because I think technology and making things are TOTALLY FUCKIN' AWESOME and everyone deserves a turn!
This is not how that happens. This is how the gap gets bigger. Please stop. Sexual harassment is a completely reprehensible thing, and it happens way too often. In the tech industry, in every industry, in society in-general. But every time an incident like this gets ink, it only makes things harder on those experiencing legitimate harassment.
Okay, putting all that aside, so far, this has just been my reaction to what actually happened at PyCon. That was admittedly a very small slice of the pi--incident. (I couldn't go through with it, sorry.) Let's talk about the aftermath.
So, 'Mr-Hank' loses his job... That's really unfortunate... I think his employer overreacted, but the reality is, with the way everything goes viral these days, dropping him like he's radioactive and ON FIRE probably seemed like the best course of action from a PR standpoint, since it was like he was very publicly being accused of sexual harassment, and you don't play around with that. I even feel bad about his apology, because while it was ultimately the right thing to do, it just felt like too much for what he did, like it was just more shaming...
Ms. Richards loses her job, which is also unfortunate, but I can't say that I hold her blameless. Her employer had no choice but to fire her; they're a media
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
I guess that was the point
I've made the same dongle joke... I'm just so happy that I didn't get "caught" by someone who clearly cannot handle such a joke.
To Adria Richards,
We all learn as kids how to behave in different situations. For example, we learn to be quiet at the movie theatre but we can be noisy and have fun at camp. Being at a professional conference is no different, everyone is expected to behave in a professional manner. In addition, you represent whoever paid for you to be there. For most people, this is their employer.
In my opinion, the guy's behaviour was crude, inappropiate, and unprofessional and that he should have been called out for it. That being said, it definitely does not rise to the level of sexual harassment, harassment, or any other seriously concerning behaviour as it was a private conversation not directed at anyone in particular. It was simply inappropriate. He basically said the wrong thing, at the wrong place, and the wrong time. We all have done it at one point or another. That doesn't absolve him from responsibility, though.
However, your response was also neither professional, mature, nor appropriate. My sister would have simply turned around, given them a good stare as said "stop acting like a two year old". I understand that you didn't feel comfortable doing this at the time, but there was nothing to stop you from being a professional and going to the back of the room and talking to one of the event personnel. You even had the professional and mature option to simply tweet that you needed to talk to someone from the event.
Instead, what did you do? You took their picture, and publically shamed them, causing one guy to lose his job, however indirectly. Honestly, this is the type of behaviour that I would associate with an immature teenager who is out to get revenge, not a professional.
Again, I agree that the guy's behaviour was inappropriate, but your actions left a lot to be desired as well. My mother always taught me to treat others as I would like to be treated. Is this truely how you would want others to handle your mistakes?
As one professional to another, please take the time to think through your actions and consider that maybe this could have been handled in a more mature and professional manner.
I was joking around with the bar-man (a long time friend), I made this joke about the size of his nose, and did a swoosh sound as he turned his head.
The new bar woman got really angry, 'how dare I make fun on someone's appearance'. Both of us sort of looked at her like she was an idiot, but she persisted with it. Insisted I leave the bar or she'd call the police. Friend nodded to the door, better to go so as not to cause a scene, and looked at the back of her head like he wanted her to just drop dead.
What struck me is that she PRESUMED to be offended on behalf of SOMEONE ELSE. He's a long time friend, he was not offended, yet she overruled his choice and was offended on HIS BEHALF as if his opinion didn't matter! She was poison.
Sadly she's still there, the popular bar staff have moved on to new bars, and the bar turned into a restaurant to stay in business. If the owners were closer to the business they would have found a way to get rid of her quickly.
Even more so since it seems like it was predicated on what sounded like an explicable, rectifiable employee mistake.
She posted an image of two guys and accused them of misogyny, then compared herself with Joan Of Arc when people started complaining she was out of line. THEN she claimed her company backed her, basically implying her company agreed with all of her actions and subsequent writing.
All of this pubic on the internet. How exactly do you "rectify" all that? You can't un-post everything, it's all way too public and endlessly re-quoted. Not possible.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
the wikipedia page on Valerie Aurora has a bit about Noirin Shirley being attacked at ApacheCon. I had not heard about that. That was the only page I could find on wikipedia about it. Do you have some other links about it?
You are aware of the fact that an organization and/or script kiddie using a botnet to DDOS someone they have a vendetta against is not going to, nor should it, change their behaviour
Actually - yes, yes it does. If you are the very public representative of a company you do in fact moderate more of what you say on the internet, or in public, because it reflects on the company you work for.
Or at least you do if you are a professional.
It's called "self-restraint". And "being responsible".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's what surprises me most, especially with America's free speech stuff.
What?
Freedom to speak does not mean freedom from repercussions of what you say. It means only that no-one has the right to prevent you from speaking in the first place.
Freedom is not possible without corresponding levels of individual responsibility, or all dissolves into chaos.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm sorry but there is a proper and improper way of dealing with things. She escalated matters too quickly without given them the chance to apologize or respond in anyway. I think she should also be fired for here jokes and for being a hypocrite.
I find her hypocrisy and misandry to be distasteful. I also find the reaction of the employer to be unfair and reactionary. They should have had the opportunity to explain themselves and apologize without being terminated. What is the name of the company so I can be sure to never give them my business?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
maybe there was a reason that women was kept down all these years... because when you let them out they are way more insane than men
Women are treated like absolute crap by most of the IT industry
No they aren't - or not especially. EVERYONE is treated like absolute crap by the IT industry. It's why I (a male) got out.
she was exposed to behaviour that had no place at a IT conference.
If you can't make stupid jokes about dongles or forking in a private conversation (BTW, when did eavesdropping become publicly acceptable?) at a technical conference than we might as well just all get the frontal lobotomies now.
I have had many brilliant female co-workers and managers. I have every wish that more women be involved in the tech industry - and the REALITY is that of all the things you could do at any company, technical work is where a woman is going to most probably be treated as an equal. And yet some people like Adria chose to treat the smallest of bad jokes as a personal affront to all women.
Think of the terrible, terrible message you and her are sending to women not yet in the tech field. You are damning them to even worse areas of employment where they will in fact be less respected simply because they are women, but WHEW they escaped IT! Who cares if the fire is white hot, the frying pan is sometimes overly warm!
Lastly consider there are three ACTUAL young women who are a lot less likely to enter technical work after this - the three daughters of the guy who got fired. That in the end is the very direct result of this madness, three young girls who has a father out of work now. So much for supporting women.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We should all boycott those companies until either Adria Richards is fired by Sendgrid for her hypocrisy, sexism and unprofessionalism or Play Haven does the rational thing and rehires the employee they fired with a reprimand instead.
I think Adria Richards should apologize for her behaviour and recognize that she overstepped sensibility and professionalism by "outing" those guys like some whiny teenager.
What the guys did was inappropriate and they should apologize for the comments but what Adria Richards did in response was even worse and she engaged in similar behaviour without any sort of reprimand. The reaction of their employer was reactionary and unwarranted.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
"Not cool. Jokes about forking repo's in a sexual way and "big" dongles. Right behind me"
:) geez] joke.
Well, lots will dismiss me as ehh-another-d*ck, but I have to say, this whole thing seems, looks, smells like one of the top10 stupid things I ever heard. Let me write this down: today you can loose your job for telling a "sexist" joke? Really? For talking about big dongles in the presence of a woman? Really? I'd say this really was a sexist move, but not from the guys. I know some really prude american women, but man, even they wouldn't do such a move over a big dongle joke or a forking [again: really?
And about tweets having power... some people having a large number of followers who pick up every crazy idea, scary stuff.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
This story is not true, and it's easy to verify on blog posts. This was not done be a developer. The person fired and the person that said it was a recruiter. So the story headline should be: A company sends a recruiter to a tech conference. Hilarity ensues.
*making joke that caused you to feel uncomfortable? *
Where can I acquire this gypsy magic?
If I had the power to cause women to feel things, I would not be here talking to you chumps
http://www.awfullybigmoustache.com
There was a much more informative post that got skipped :
http://slashdot.org/submission/2558213/pycon-twitter-callout-incident
A few details you might wish to know about the incident :
0. SendGrid is an email spammer. Yes, they only send legal spam, stuff the direct marketers want you to call bacn, but really most of the emails they send you do not want. Anything bad that happens to SendGrid is a good thing.
1. Apparently mr-hank only made one sexual crack, the dongles one. He apologized for that one quickly. Richards miss-interpreted his "forking" comment as sexual, actually homosexual. If you really believed she took offense to what he actually said, then you'd eventually conclude that she was a homophobe. That isn't correct. She simply miss-heard him.
2. Richards has pissed people off by pulling similar publicity stunts several times before :
http://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/
3. Ms Richards defense of her actions was completely fucking bonkers. Some girl "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." Really? Joan of Arc? Really? Pfff. She's simply grandstanding to her twitter followers.
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313442430848487424
4. Richards made a much worse joke about some guys balls much more publicly on twitter earlier in the day.
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425
5. PlayHaven isn't such a nice company either. In game micro-transactions sounds like your business is built upon ripping off poor people. It doesn't bother me as much as spam since I don't play any games like that, but worth mentioning.
Anyways I hope Mr-Hank and Richards find new jobs quickly and that SendGrid continues to lose business.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I'm sorry, but taking a snapshot and putting it up on twitter with a comment like that is something that should be illegal.. The developers never asked her for putting it in public, what I have to say to a collegue is non of her business even if it's offensive, and yes if it's offensive then she should SPEAK to the persons in question, not use twitter.. What ever happened to freedom of speech.. If the dev's were targetting her specifically with sexual comments, then it's a whole different matter..
There is a cute shirt about the incident here : http://forkmydongle.com/
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Adria Richards really should not have posted the photos of the people she was complaining about. As a private citizen she is entitled to do that of course, but I understand that she was there on behalf of her employer, who were a sponsor of the conference. Had she complained to the organisers and they then did nothing, she would have been perfectly entitled to call them out in a blog post. Just tweeting straightaway is really inappropriate.
Assuming the guy who got fired was there working (ie if his company paid for him to be there), of course they would have to fire him. They will have a policy about gender equality and anyone who breaches that policy when representing the company will face very severe sanction.
Some of the responses on here seem a bit hysterical to me.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
If their company paid for them to be there, they were "in their workplace".
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
I put "Noirin Shirley assault" into google and it pulled up a bunch of relevant links - having not gone through them I'm not going to recommend one in particular. (I was recollecting from when it happened, she's a friend of several friends.)
There is such a double standard wrt harassment. I saw a male peer be asked to change his desktop background while our female superior had a "Penises of the Animal Kingdom " poster in her office.
Btw the desktop picture was the face of a woman, neck and up not an ounce of cleavage. So, yup as a man you have to be more careful than as a woman and that's not cool.
There are _no_ women apparent in the tweeted photo, among the roughly 100 attendees present. Where are you going to find the 10 easy going women, especially when your own employees are rude enough to be making that kind of joke in the audience at a professional conference?
I warn you, it can only get worse. Maleness is being redefined as pathological. The geek culture of males is no longer acceptible to females now that they are being forced into its ranks. Even the IEEE is thinking in terms of quotas. I saw an article on a woman engineer's dolls in a spectrum issue. Pathetic. The level of male aggressive creativity that has made us the technological driving force of the world will slow and stall finally under the onslaught of gynocentric special treatment and the forced imposition of female-friendly environments. Only males showing the proper genuflecting attitude toward females will be allowed into tech eventually, just as in the military now. You've been warned. How do you fight back and keep the male spirit alive? Exclude them deliberately from every private area of tech life that it is still legal to do so. Private, side meetings at tech conferences. Encryption to baffle the gynopolice. I'm not kidding. It is coming. It is here.
E Proelio Veritas.
I constantly wonder how these people get any work done given the amount of time they seem to spend on blatant self promotion.
Glad to see it sometimes backfires.
If you can't make a dongle joke at a Python convention, where can you make one, really? I personally appreciate a good penis joke now and again. Given her history of histrionics and her admission that she was essentially one stamp away from mayhem bingo at the time, I don't think it should be a surprise when the Internet took offense to the way she behaved. This is a spoiled child getting exactly what she deserves, if not what she planned.
For those using this as an excuse to bash feminists, please note that Richards says over and over in the comments section of the linked article (http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at-tech-conferences/) that she is not a feminist. Why she doesn't believe in equal rights for women, I am not sure, but this isn't the action of a feminist, ultra-liberal feminazi, modern feminist or any other kind of feminist.
In another life, Mrs Richards would have worked for the Stasi or the local committee of the Communist Party. In bad old times, your neighbor might be secretly spying on you and report any suspicious or deviant activities or conversations. Utterly bad consequences ensued for the "guilty" persons, with or without public shaming.
That people will do this to you with their cell phones is scary.. And in this case, the message with assorted photograph was posted to an actual worldwide audience without a second thought. Not even to "friends" or "friends or friends". I didn't know Twitter messages contained sneaked pictures, nowadays ; that made the story a lot worse.
I'm glad to have no Facebook account yet most every one has one.. In a few years, and years after that there will be a terrifying amount of Facebook and Twitter data for you to datamine and pinpoint what everyone does or think. If dictatorships arise in Europe or Northern America there will then be little hope of putting them down.
One aspect I find troubling about all this is the response of the employers. 2 people were fired. Not just publicly reprimanded, not merely denied a raise, not put on unpaid leave for a week, fired. Guess finding replacements is easy. Must be a lot of skilled people out there who are unemployed. I note also that the employers aren't bothering to explain. They get to fire people without apology or transparency, and no one thinks anything of that. But if a peon makes some sexist crack, it's the firing squad. Sure, we all understand why they were fired, the employers don't have to explain that. What I'd like to hear is why they chose termination rather than some more mild punishment. Or am I out of touch, and being fired is not such a big deal these days? Last I heard, losing your job ranks up there as one of the top traumatic events of life, with the only clearly worse things being the death of a spouse or child, and I think that's still true, though much depends on the circumstances. If it was only some temporary, low paying job, it's not so bad. If it's something more but you didn't mess up, it's bad, but you still have your self-respect. What's horrible is to be judged and found wanting, and to see that they just might have a point or two, because you did screw up badly.
I wonder how significant this black mark is on their records. Will they ever be able to get another job in IT, or will they have to change careers? Ms. Richards is radioactive now. No one is going to want to be within a mile of her, let alone converse with her. Might cost you your job, and we all know how hard it is to get another job. How many men, and perhaps women as well, will feel now that if they see her at some conference, they should be careful not to be anywhere near her, and if she sits near them, they'll get up and move away. Unfair? She deserves some grief, particularly as I understand she even acted a bit smug about having gotten someone else fired. But if she ends up being driven out of IT altogether, then yes, I'd say that's unfair. The extreme reaction of the employers made the stakes way too high, makes being around her too dangerous. What will we have to say for ourselves if the ostracism gets so bad that she exercises the same option Aaron Swartz did?
Pro sports players do worse and get slapped around with a fine, and maybe have to sit out a game or three. Good athletes are valuable. Techies aren't.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
If their company paid for them to be there, they were "in their workplace".
That's fine but she was not in their workplace. She was essentially walking my their workplace and she heard one of them crack a joke. She was eavesdropping on their private conversation. She also handled the matter incorrectly and she was fired for it. Her actions were a clear violation of the spirit of the conference. The men making the jokes should not have been fired because the punishment did not fit the crime. The actions of their employer creates a chilling effect where humour is not tolerated because someone one with self esteem issues might be offended. I would rather starve to death than live in a world were every company was that anal.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
She breached the two mens privacy in a serious way ...
"Privacy"? In a packed auditorium? That's like saying you have privacy in a movie theater or a football stadium -- which, of course, you don't.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Just out of curiousity, does anyone know what the laws are regarding taking somebody's picture at a private event and posting them publicly without permission?
Regarding Steubenville: was that due to her gender or due to the individuals accused being part of a *very* popular group (the athletes/stars/jocks whatever)?
If a similar incident had happened regarding sexual hazing of a male, or perhaps harassment of a homosexual male, do you thing that the reaction of the "sports-fans" would have been much different?
... and this was the opportunity. The complaint and tweet were completely appropriate; would a similar reaction to a couple of goofs making KKK or holocaust jokes or slurring some Middle Eastern religion in a public place have been acceptable? No. Both would have deserved the action the conference organizers took.
BUT loss of employment? You might expect a slap on the wrist, right? Unless the employer was looking for an excuse, say, the company was tired of similar behaviour in the workplace. Yeah, this was just an excellent opportunity to get rid of a workplace problem.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
She makes the case for becoming an independent business owner with one employee: yourself. No HR department to answer to, no behavior modification classes to attend, no draconian hyper-fems watching your every move.
I have been reading here for years. I have worked with more of you than I can count. So I know you aren't all stupid, vulgar, or insensitive. You must know that when you are at a professional conference, you are expected to behave as though you are at work, not at a backyard barbecue or strip club. You must have learned by now, since you are on the web, that women who speak up generally receive threats of death/violence/sexual assault that have to be taken at least somewhat seriously. You also have to know that there are men in the next cubicle who do mean it when they make sexual jokes or innuendo and want all women either sexually submissive in the workplace or gone. You don't wear safe/not safe identifiers, so get used to being polite adults. It is up to the men in this industry to fix this. Women cannot change men's behavior by dressing differently, pulling our forelocks in submission, or whatever today's blame the survivor theory may be. The ball is in your court. Do something.
Take a quick peek at this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiP1z9qfojA
Can you put yourself in that woman's place? Do you get why making inappropriate jokes behind a woman's back is intimidating and uncomfortable?
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
I am an old school female geek, meaning I have hit the half century mark in life. This is one subject that has rubbed me the wrong way (oops that could be taken out of context)... for many years now.
If we go back a few years back to the days when there were only 3 channels on TV and censorship, well censorship in general was strict, while these type of things happened they didn't become issues especially in the public eye, censorship wouldn't have allowed it. I was a tomboy so most of my friends were male and a lot more fun than playing with dolls. I was also a geek however I had to keep that part a secret for that was a pass to beat up after school everyday.
I will now jump to when I was 13 at which time I began my professional drummer/percussionist position (oops that could be taken incorrectly too, shame on me). Well that most definitely was not the place for a girl, in the eyes of most males and some females, however it sold lots of tickets. I was having fun doing what I enjoyed and ticket buyers got what they paid for... a great band, awesome music, and to see a girl play better than most male drummers. More than once I was pulled off stage backwards, while I was playing, by some idiot who in his words said "Let me show you what girls are supposed to do" and he didn't have music on his mind. It happened twice, separate occasions, that a guy on got passed security and given I was tiny pulling me off stage fast was easy to do. I never made a big deal of it, in fact I simply got back on stage and said that concludes the dumbass portion of our show... and I didn't give it a second thought.
I have held various jobs throughout my life most of which were considered a "man's" job, actually they were geek jobs which were considered male jobs, with the exception of the very short term job I had working on an assembly line counting chicken nuggets into a bag. I hated that job more than anything and decided that my REAL job was finding a different job. The females on the line were far more raunchy than any male I ever worked with however that was OK and allowed, talk about double standards. I actually was laughed at because I didn't get some of the jokes, implications, snide remarks and so on. I lasted a month at that job after which I took a job as a draftsmen back when you had to actually draw on the board not CAD. Meaning you had to know what you were doing.
As time went on and CAD was beginning to take over board drawing I was one of the last to convert because I didn't want anyone to think I was a secretary, not that there is anything wrong with being a secretary, I just worked too hard to get where I was and my drawings were my legacy as nobody's drawings looked the same. Ironically Auto-Cad was what took me deep into the geek world as I no longer liked being a senior designer, I had advanced from draftsmen by this time, I wanted to pick apart what made Auto-Cad work. Again this was not a field for females and I took a lot of flack for it but it went in one ear and out the other.
Computers became my life with Linux being an obsession. It was made very clear I was not wanted in this field but that didn't matter to me all that mattered to me is it was where I wanted to be. All my life I have dealt with sex or sexual innuendo's and there were two ways to handle it, blow it off (oops dang I sure do say a lot of things that could be taken out of context), or be a cry baby about it. I chose the former because I liked my jobs, I do not get offended and if guys want to "fork" you with their "dongle" then hey that was a compliment.
The most memorable job where this type of thing would be an issue for most females these days, I was a Networking Systems Engineer so I was very upper management. All upper management had to take a sexual harassment class once a year. It was laughable at best but hey the food and drinks made it go by fast. I reported directly to the president of the company and he was completely computer stupid. To make a long story short he heard about
My goal is to learn at least one new thing before going to sleep and to wake up after each sleep cycle.
The problem is, people don't seem to see the difference between "gender equality" compared to "gender specific rights". Equality means, women are not allowed to be offended by things that men are not offended by. And vice versa. That's equality. If men are riled up by things women think are okay, it's not equality. Equality means women are held to the same standard that men are. And vice versa. The worst offender is the "parent" card. If you're not up to the task, don't do it. Who gives a flying "insert non offending word". If you're not up to the task, you're not. If you have a kid, it doesn't change the way your competence is measured (atleast it shouldn't). The last part means a child is not supposed to be considered a plus for you if you underperform. (and performance is compared to your workmates, not some general statistic. And this goes both for males and females. You getting fired should not have anything to do with your personal breeding) I know there's a history of preferring men over women. This still doesn't you make entitled to demands. If you want EQUALITY you take the jokes, and fire them back. (hint, if males are not offended and you are, it's not an EQUALITY problem) If you want gender specific rights, stop talking about equality. For example, breast feeding has nothing to do with equality. The first time i see an actual man (born as one) able to do that, i'll bow down and kiss the sky.
People who have a clean conscience are happy. People who don't have a conscience are the happiest motherfuckers alive.
I don't understand why not being allowed to use bedroom or bathroom jokes in a professional or public setting is such a major issue for the slashdot crowd. Isn't this stuff we learned in kindergarten?
Ditto with hot button social issues. It just seems like common sense to me... and I don't feel like my rights are being trampled on.
Obviously political correctness can go too far somethings, but bedroom/bathroom humor, at least in my experience, has been a no no in most professional workplaces for a very long time. Isn't that what most parents teach their kids at around 3-4.... no boob/butt/etc... jokes in the supermarket (but you might let it slide, or even laugh at the joke when in the privacy of your own home). Everyone I know was raised that way.
your attempts at controlling what I have to say to be extremely offensive. It doesn't matter if you meant to offend, they till are. Please apalogise to me and everyone else for your offensive remarks and never do it again.
Fucking stupid. We're in the 21th century, and you still haven't got over sex? It's a part of life, and it's fun to joke about it. Women dress in sexy attires. Men tell dirty jokes. We each have our own way of expressing ourselves. If you can't handle a few dick jokes, then GTFO.
You say you want the world of coding to welcome woman. We do. But you want US to change our ways. You need us to accommodate everything to the "fragile" females, who can't handle reality? Dirty jokes are rape. Flirting is rape. Looking at you is rape. Woman ARE NOT FRAGILE. They can handle dick jokes, they can talk about sex, and if somebody flirts with them on the job, they can either fuck him or tell him to go away. They don't need protection. It's not Woman in general who are fragile and need protection, it's YOU. It's not a female issue, it's a YOU issue. YOU are fragile, and you have problems with your own sex life, so you can't handle people behaving in a NATURAL way. Go see a psychologist, so that YOU can change to accommodate the world instead of expecting we all change the world to accommodate you.
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WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
You make jokes about putting a HUGE sock in your pants and you're uncomfortable because of a joke about dongles? Strange.
But the thing about this whole thing that worries me the most, is the lack of humour of people and people getting fired because of that. What happened to "I'm sorry, I didn't meant to make you feel uncomfortable"?
Privacy is terrorism.
hell hath no fury like that of a twitterati Black woman with a cell-phone camera and the need to drive traffic to her blog. Don't Hate The Playa Hate The Game: Do not fault the successful participant (or allow yourself to label the unsuccessful person a victim) in a flawed system; try instead to discern that aspect of its organization which allows or encourages the behavior that has provoked the situation.
You can run your own company on whatever principles you like.
No, if you run it on wrong enough (according to the government) principles, the gov't will take your money and give it to someone else (civil lawsuits) or take your money for itself, lock you in a prison with people who will try to do you grievous harm, give you a criminal record which will cause people to hate or not trust you, and take some of your rights away, often for life.
Sometimes that is appropriate, but often it is NOT.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!