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Will Donglegate Affect Your Decision To Attend PyCon?
theodp writes "Its Code of Conduct describes PyCon as 'a welcoming, friendly event for all.' But will the post-conference fallout from this year's 'Donglegate' debacle and proposed remedies affect your decision — one way or the other — to attend next year's PyCon in ironically naughty Montreal? And even if not, could 'Donglegate' influence the-powers-that-be whose approval you'll need to attend? How about conference sponsors?"
Bit strong, but not too far from Amanda Blums's experiences with Adria Richards.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The first group of people is not offended by jokes, including jokes influenced by sexuality.
The second group of people is offended by jokes, especially jokes influenced by sexuality. A subset of this group is offended by such jokes when spoken by members of a certain gender. Of course, this is discriminatory so we will ignore that aspect and categorize them as offended in general.
I think there is a desire to be respectful of the second group while avoiding strict censorship of the [majority] first group.
I suggest a clearly visible sign that someone is offended by jokes influenced by sexuality (or, perhaps broadening this to include all jokes?). Perhaps a yellow hat or something like that. People within earshot of such people should refrain from telling such jokes. People wearing the sensitivity marker who hear things offensive to them can raise the issue to convention staff who will attempt to deal with the issue. People wearing the "sensitivity" marker who make such jokes will permanently lose the right to wear them.
People not wearing the sensitivity marker who hear something offensive to them should either (A) indicate to the offensive person directly that their conduct is perhaps inappropriate, or (B) move away from the offensive person so that they are no longer offended. If (A) is ineffective and (B) is ineffective or impossible the convention staff can be notified and they may or may not choose to act; anyone not wearing a sensitivity marker who is upset is free to go put on a sensitivity marker.
People may wish to have activities which may include things that people find offensive, they are free to ban sensitivity markers. Additionally, "sensitivity-marker free zones" or "automatic sensitivity marker" zones could be created. Or even entire conventions where no sensitivity markers are allowed -- one would expect a crude joke convention to probably not cater to overly sensitive people.
Of course, in an ideal world, everyone would be adult enough to know to watch their language a little bit, and to not overreact a lot. But given that certain people are especially sensitive for various reasons, we should find a way to allow them to coexist with the rest of society.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
"...chilling effect on developer conferences in general.."
Probable correct. This 'effect' for tech conference is an extension of the workplace enviroment.
My employer recently lost an excellant (female) engineer because she grew wreary of the social and professional isolation. An incident with a previous female employee had made some male employees somewhat paranoid. Perhaps a type of 'inverse discrimination', where the female becomes isolated because males become too risk-averse and actively avoid accupying same area as a female.
The whole thing is worrying.
I am a male lead programmer in China, I hire a lot of female programmers and extol the virtues of hiring female programmers to my Chinese peers who lead other projects, who have started hiring female programmers also, seeing my success in using female programmers to achieve good results. I think they are more consistent and reliable, about 10-30% cheaper then men and have better company loyalty than men. There is a surprising amount of coding that could do with a woman's touch. I like to have over 30% of my team to be women since in my experience if a woman has done something before, she's much less likely to make a mess of it than a man is, since men of above average IQ tend to get bored, lazy and arrogant the second time around. Women also don't like being assigned repetitive work, but even if they get angry with me, they generally still don't screw it up, though they will quit eventually if one exploits this too much.
My little sister and cousin are both female programmers in Australia. They are both excellent, consistent and make very few mistakes, my cousin even has some of the problem solving creativity that the women I've managed seem to lack and I'm optimistic about my sister developing that skill too with time. This high profile firing stuff makes me somewhat concerned for the careers of these two dear young ladies.
The thing is, in China, sexism is a non-issue, by which I mean, it exists in a huge way, but nobody talks about it. In the west, it's a big issue with big consequences, so I realised, if a manager was considering hiring a woman in Australia into an all male team, they would quite likely first measure up the probability and possible severity of a sexual harassment issue and offset that against her utility as an employee. For large companies who have various HR policies supporting diversity and for whom maintaining a completely male workforce would be utterly impractical anyway, this is a non issue, the risk is lower and the reward is higher. For smaller, up-coming companies with higher potential for growth but larger exposure to risk, this is going to really going to work against female candidates. This is somewhat irrelevant anyway, because these two young ladies both work for absolutely enormous multinationals, but for others, or in the future, who knows.
I completely agree that inappropriate behaviour in the workplace is bad and should be stopped. But for a manager, being forced to fire potentially crucial people for something unrelated to performance is extremely scary. If a manager looks at a candidate and has any niggling doubt that "HR has a remote chance of making me fire some people I need if I hire this person and something goes wrong" then it really doesn't help the candidate. I really do not think this helps women in the industry.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Her job was to evangelize for the community. Instead she decided to wage jihad against jokes she didn't like. She was a fool and her company was right that she was working against the goal they hired her for.
I find it funny that she disliked the way the men were talking loudly in their private conversation and could be overheard. Those guys must have been *loud*. I say this because as a Bloody Foreigner I find that all (US) Americans are enormously loud when they talk - all sorts of details of their private lives are shouted at each other at maximum decibels. However, as a quiet foreigner I don't feel the need to change their culture, I just mock instead :) Perhaps Richards should have been a bit more accepting of geek culture *while at a PyCon Conference*. Perhaps if the guys had been at a "Women against Domestic Violence" rally instead she would have been appropriate.
Incidentally, why do we need more women in programming? The ones that are there do a great job. The guys that do it also do a great job. So why do we need to change the entire technology culture to get a few reluctant girls to try it out? for what end? what is the problem we are trying to solve? is it just so we can satisfy some academic theory that there is equality in programing because the numbers by gender are more equal? well, that doesn't solve the problem that many girls at the start of their work career choose to things that they like - which is not creating hardware or software. Apart from a few ideologues one has a serious problem with the gender imbalance in nursing or teaching - so why should the gender imbalance in tech be a problem that requires warping the existing tech culture conform to their ideological wishes? If tech culture was "No girls allowed" then there would be a problem. If it was structurally sexist then there would be a problem - but to complain about tech culture (to the point of loss of livelihood) because some loud-mouthed guys make a joke intended to be kinda private too loudly? That is just silly.