Ada Initiative Organization To End, But Its Work Will Continue

An anonymous reader writes: Today the Ada Initiative announced that the nonprofit will shut down in mid-October. Founded in 2011, the Ada Initiative is a nonprofit feminist organization created to help improve open source culture and build a more inviting, productive, safe environment for women. In this interview with Opensource.com, the co-founders look back at the organization's successes, and the work that still needs to be done.

Comments

Oh, Christ, here we go...

[LaurenCates]

FTFA: "Check back for our Diversity in Open Source series, which starts August 10."

Yes, of fucking course, because the product takes second place to having enough women and minorities that are safe from microaggressions working on it.

I admit that I respond to a lot of this stuff, and I probably should back off, but the number one reason why I do is because I feel I have to offer a counter-message to stuff like this. As much as I don't want to talk about it anymore, I feel like the more of the stuff like this that gets posted, the more it gets accepted as "truth" that women are somehow under attack by "the boys club".

For every woman that claims there's some inherent "truth" that conferences need "anti-harassment policies" and "safe spaces", I'd like to be a woman that says there are plenty of women with experiences that indicate the problem isn't as bad as they say it is.

(And, no, your feminist blog is not proof that it is. Any and all feminist blogs offering such "proof" will be roundly ignored.)

Yes, you have assholes. You have them everywhere. You can't keep them out of your arena.

But I go to Code Camps and other technical events fairly regularly. And I've never once got the sense that I (or any of the other women in the room) have been hounded, or hounded out or treated with derision.

Maybe the problem is because that one asshole draws so much attention to him- (and indeed, her-) self, we create archetypes based on those personalities which we then elevate into "the norm", and then we forget all the nice, normal people around us that aren't being assholes to us. And believe me, there are far fewer assholes than there are decent people out there.

If you can't find any decent people around you, and you're calling everyone an asshole, you might want to grab some toilet paper and give yourself a good once-over. Or as we used to say when we were kids: "She who smelt it, dealt it."

Maybe, then, the solution is to stop treating sexism as if it's a constant problem for everyone at all times. Maybe it's time to start understanding that what's creating a hostile work environment in many places is the assumption that it's going to be hostile from the jump. Maybe it's time to start acknowledging that when you have an organization that's a hammer, perhaps you've developed a myopia that tells you everything around you looks like a nail.

Men don't need to be taught not to rape (or for the purposes of this discussion, harass).
Women need to toughen up and realize that no space is ever completely "safe", and sometimes you just have to deal with it.

Re:Oh, Christ, here we go...

[Anonymous Coward]

A wise man once said:

"If you meet one person in your day who is an asshole, he's an asshole. If everyone you meet in your day is an asshole, you're the asshole."

Re:Oh, Christ, here we go...

[ADRA]

I'd call this the taxi distinction. Every time my girlfriend, sees a taxi she's terrified that they're going to do something dangerous or reckless. The reason? Quite a few taxi drivers are doing stupid things. Are all of them? Certainly not. Are they any more likely to do stupid things per km of driving vs. the general public? Almost certainly not, but the difference is this:

1. To my GF, all taxi drivers are the same. They represent the single very present danger of being in an accident, so she is terrified that all drivers (the good and the bad) act according to their
2. Taxi drivers are generally on the road much longer hours than we are, so statistically if nothing else, they're more likely to be involved in accidents.

Have these women had bad experiences (perceved or in real) in the workplace? Almost certainly.
Are their experiences with men in general colored by these bad past experiences (much like my taxi analogy)? Very possible.

It really sucks to generalize, but no matter how much you want to fight against it, its ingrained in who we are to defend against people/things that have wronged them (or perception of wrongness).

Re:"save environment for women"

[OhPlz]

Seems to me that some of these groups are the ones doing the harassment. Accusing men of this type of activity just because they're men is wrong.

Obvious

[meta-monkey]

I think the solution is obvious.

Good

[Intrepid imaginaut]

The Ada Initiative is a hardcore feminist organisation whose conference guidelines were used to justify the expulsion and subsequent firings of two engineers in the donglegate debacle. Despite claiming to be non violent, apparently they aren't bothered by suggestions to hand out the S.C.U.M. Manifesto at conferences - that would be the Society For Cutting Up Men - whose deranged author had attempted to murder Andy Warhol. They were also responsible for shutting down a well known and respected speaker at another conference.

These sorts of parasitic strident supremacist organisations aren't helping women, they're actively trying to damage men, and the sooner they are revealed for what they are the better. The extent to which this diseased movement has made its way into many parts of society will, for future generations, become a matter for horrified fascination, an education in mass institutionalised fraud and hysteria, an object lesson in the ease with which a moral panic can be raised.

And don't even bother with accusations of misogyny. Seriously, it's a sad and transparent attempt to shame the voices of truth into silence.

Re:Good

[Intrepid imaginaut]

You think that a comment with no replies means that the organization isn't bothered by it? If you're not a hypocrite, go read Slashdot at -1, and make those same accusations about the crowd here.

Slashdot deliberately exercises very little editorial control, I would certainly expect a professional organisation to police the commentary on its website.

... who was going to give a talk about sex, rape, and the use of drugs to obviate consent, at a computer security conference. And it wasn't the Ada Initiative that "shut it down", but rather, the conference organizer decided to shut it down because 'the talk included "discussion of date rape drugs"'. In fact, contrary to your accusation, the Ada Initiative suggested ways that the speaker could still make the presentation, specifically doing a video of the talk or as an after-con talk. As the organizer states, "I have since reached out to Violet about recording her talk so we can put it up on our video site."

Trying to rewrite history doesn't work very well on the internet, you know.

I arrived at the Security BSides venue half an hour before my talk was set to begin, and I tracked down the main organizer to get connected with the speaker wrangler. I found him next door at DNA Pizza, where he was talking with this person. I apologized for the interruption, the organizer told me where to wait, and the woman he was talking to smiled at me. I smiled back.

The organizer came into the LockSport Lounge around 10 minutes later and asked if he could speak with me. I asked Eric Michaud to join me.

The organizer said, “So, I need to ask you: is there any rape in your talk?”

I said, “Is there any WHAT in my talk?” I was shocked.

“Well, there’s been a complaint about your talk.” He continued, “It’s from someone who is a rape survivor and they said they will be triggered by your talk if there’s any rape in it.”

“No, no, there’s no rape in my talk. I talk about human sexual systems and the effects drugs, including caffeine and alcohol, affect the performance of these systems and the dangers of mixing different things. What’s going on here?”

He replied, “Someone has said they will be triggered by your talk, and they’re a rape survivor.”

“Okay. In the talk I do cover ‘date rape’ drugs, and I explain their actions and how they’re dangerous.”

Then he said, “Do you describe how to use date rape drugs? They said that if you are going to tell people how to use date rape drugs then it’s the same as rape, and there’s going to be a problem.”

I told the organizer, “Wow, this really sucks - I know it’s not your fault. Well, how about if I shift the talk to a different room? We could put it on the smaller stage where the room has doors that close, or I could do it in the LockSport Lounge. Hell, I can even present it at the afterparty, it’s no problem. What is going to be easiest for you? It looks like you’re in a shitty position.”

“No, they’re here and they’re not leaving. They told me they’ll make it into a bigger problem if you do your talk.”

I paused for a minute. I said, “Okay. I guess I won’t give my talk, then. I don’t want this to be a problem for you, you’re in a shit position. It sounds like this person is going to make it into a bigger problem no matter what you do. It’s no big deal, don’t worry about it. Maybe I can do a video of the talk and BSides can have it as an after-con talk.”

The way the organizer looked at me, I knew that wouldn’t happen, either.

I said,

Re:It's unfortunate they have to shut down

[serviscope_minor]

Well it's a pity that only filesystem might use compare by hash and that she's unaware of salting hashes. Oh wait neither of those is true and in fact the paper you gave mentions salting but not filesystems. You know git uses compare by hash, right? How world you keep salt secret with git? And git is not the only system out there.

Frankly, I think the claims are a bit over blown / the paper is not widely applicable, but that still doesn't make it anything like as wrong as you appear to believe. It's still just a mediocre paper and you can't glean much from that for reasons I've already elucidated and you haven't rebutted.

Look, I don't know this Valerie person from Adam, and I don't care if she's competent or not, but given that you are making demonstrably false claims about the evidence you provided, I'm now firmly of the belief that you're for some reason emotionally invested in proving her wrong. That's kinda weird.