Donglegate 2013

Adria Richards, a feminist blogger and tech-rep overhears jokes of a sexual nature at a conference. Takes a picture of the jokesters and uploads it to her Twitter. Gets both men kicked out of the con. Writes an article on her blog. One jokester is fired, shitstorm ensues. There is the regular sort of outrage, but the various online "hacktivist" groups have also gotten involved, resulting in plenty of internet terrorism and tons of bad press for Richards' company. Richards is fired. Everyone's getting ready to sue everyone.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/n...and-other.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/20...-being-sexist/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/deannaza...rong-question/

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/22/ad...-staying-safe/

http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/adri...l-out-culture/

http://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/

So, there's tons of reading here and a lot of issues. Do jokes of a sexual nature or anatomical nature count as sexIST jokes? Did Richards have the right to publish these men's pictures and publicly shame them? Did Sendgrid (Richards' former employer) have the right to fire her over the backlash caused by her outing the men in the way she did or was it retaliation against whistleblowing? So many issues overlapping means there's not really a good solution anywhere in the mix. Pretty much everyone loses.

As usual when something like this happens, I'm surprised by the sheer volume of press it gets. I really should be used to this by now. That said, two articles in particular seemed to mesh with how I feel about it:

"Donglegate" is classic overreaction, and everyone pays
Hell... is other people

I know it's kind of shitty to respond to a link-heavy post with more links, but the key points have been made in a number of articles. From the 'offender' side - be aware of your surroundings and keep your douchery to yourself. And from the 'offended' side - think twice before blowing a situation out of proportion. In essence, regardless of which side you're on - try to be a reasonable human being :).

'Know your audience' is such an important guideline for life in general. But as much as an overheard private joke might make people uncomfortable, it really grates on me when people make the leap that it's perpetuating some techie boys' club and keeping the woman programmer down. When you magnify bullshit like this, I think it only serves to undermine legitimate cases of discrimination/sexist behavior.

This is a shitstorm, a very "spinful" shitstorm. You can basically spin the story the way you like and condemn anyone who doesn't spin in the same way.

You could argue that AR should have first tried talking to the guys or to the organizers and if someone doesn't agree with you, you call them an online bully or something. You could instead focus on the abuse she got from trolls and accuse anyone who doesn't immediately start his/her post by condemning those attacks a sexist or someone who thinks she deserved those attacks. You could also focus on a black woman being fired, after speaking up against sexism and claim with certainty that this is another classic example of women and minorities "getting it" for speaking up against the dominant white-male culture tyranny and if anyone wants to discuss nuances and details, you can again call them a fool, sexist, privileged, etc.

And I personally like to see it as yet another example of humans talking over each other and believing that they are the rational ones while at the same time trying to avoid acknowledging valid points made by others.

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And I personally like to see it as yet another example of humans talking over each other and believing that they are the rational ones while at the same time trying to avoid acknowledging valid points made by others.

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QFT

Unless the comments were directed at the woman, or unless the men's comments were particularly heinous and they continued after she asked them to stop, she was the one who overreacted in this case, period. Without either of those scenarios, she experienced no abuse. I didn't read all of the articles because, imo, this is a whole lot of bullshit over nothing and I couldn't be bothered. Out of the ones I did read, none were able to report exactly what was said and in what context they said it. None reported that the men's comments were particularly heinous. None reported that the comments were anything more than something she overheard and a situation she decided to purposely *TRY* to fan into a fire, herself (none of the articles even reported that the men were being particularly loud and/or obnoxious in the way they carried on, or that it was an ongoing affair rather than a couple sentences). Well, it seems she succeeded, and she was wrong to.

Is sexism a problem in the programming world? I'm not a part of the culture, but I'd guess it probably is along the same lines that it is in gaming culture. That doesn't mean it's okay for her to take something that may or may not have been the result of a larger problem within her field and turn it into a personal attack against two guys who (by all the accounts I've read so far, at least) did not personally attack her. What she did is not okay. I've not heard anything so far that would make me say what the men did is not okay.

There is such a thing as being too offensive to be fit to be around people, and there is such a thing as being too sensitive to be fit around people. The story so far sounds like a case of the latter. Just another example of political correctness being thrust into a situation where it has no place.

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Originally Posted by Jyn

Is sexism a problem in the programming world? I'm not a part of the culture, but I'd guess it probably is along the same lines that it is in gaming culture.

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It's not *nearly* as big a problem as it is in various other worlds, largely because it's easy to be unaware of the gender of another contributor. (This is often deliberate. Female programmers will obscure their gender behind shortened names (in a conversation between Chris Angelico, Chris Rebert, Chris Wain, and Chris Manrique, would you know how many of us are guys and how many are girls?) or vague handles.) And a lot of men know that geek women are just as geeky, just as expert, etc, as the men are.

But unfortunately that's not the whole story, and sexism IS a problem. There are cliques of male-only programmers who will feed each other's prejudices, and basically make it impossible for any woman to be respected. You can find some comments on the subject on The Daily WTF:
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-...-Services.aspx
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Slig...-Sociable.aspx

As you see from the last one, though, there are plenty in the programming world who absolutely will not tolerate sexism. So it's not too bleak.

Here is some of what PZ has to say (PZ was involved in elevatorgate, and helped form freethoughtblogs - a place where atheists / scientists / progressives congregate to comment/argue against the sexism/racism etc. - particularly on-line.)

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Adria Richards did everything exactly right
Conferences, Equality, Fuckbrained assholes by PZ Myers

We keep talking about making appropriate responses to sexism — not just those of us who are strongly pro-feminism, but even the regressive thugs on the other side will say that, although we’ll argue about what level of response is appropriate. But this is where I lose patience every goddamned time: apparently no response other than silence and submission is acceptable.

We’ve all seen how “guys, don’t do that” was turned into cause for outrage. Here’s another instance: Adria Richards was at a tech conference when, during a presentation that was about women coders no less, a couple of guys behind her started cracking suggestive jokes.

The guys were clearly in the wrong. They were being rude, distracting, and trying to assert their dudely privilege in one of the few moments granted women during a conference dominated by men. So Richards turned, snapped their picture, and tweeted it to the conference organizers, asking them to handle it.

This was a measured response. It wasn’t a blast of anger, it was a request that the conference enforce its code of conduct. It disrupted the meeting less than a couple of chattering smart-asses did. This is exactly what we should want people to do: polite confrontation through appropriate channels.

The conference organizers also did exactly what they were supposed to do: they called the two men aside and asked them to stop and behave themselves.

I assume the two men also reacted appropriately. There are no tales of angry shouting or rejection of the admonishment. I charitably presume that they were chagrined and a little embarrassed, nothing more.

This should have been the end of it: a happy story of a minor breach of manners handled by grown-ups who moved on to do their jobs professionally. Lessons learned all around; don’t disparage or harass minorities (women were only 20% of the attendees), trust the organizers to manage hiccups smoothly, deal with problems through official channels. Except you know more happened or it wouldn’t be news.

A whole bunch of otherwise uninvolved people completely lost their shit. This is ridiculous.

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But instead, the internet decided to throw one epic fucking tantrum. First, one of the men pictured in Richards’s photographs was fired from his job (his company was one of the sponsors of PyCon). Richards did not call for him to be fired, nor did she celebrate the decision, according to this post. Nonetheless, Richards’s company SendGrid—NOT the company that fired the dude—was subject to a DDoS attack courtesy of 4chan (their express purpose was to “ruin her life”). She’s also been subjected to the usual avalanche of violent harassment and rape threats that descends upon any woman who dares to criticize male-dominated tech culture (see: Sarkeesian, Anita; also everything else ever). Sidenote to tech dudes: GET A FUCKING GRIP.
SendGrid subsequently fired Richards.

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I find it amusing that articles always say, "that always accompany women speaking out." Threats of violence and rape are kinda 4chan's modus operandi no matter who's involved.

I specifically included the article on Call Out Culture because it's something I strongly disagree with. The notion that it's okay to make a big spectacle about something that offends you because you don't feel it'll otherwise be handled properly is pretty much the entire theme of this fiasco. If you're not able to trust the group hosting PyCon to handle misconduct, that's one thing, and you should be doing something about it with them. All the fun lawsuits, boycotting and that grand stuff. If you CAN trust them to take care of it, going the extra mile and making it very public yourself is just personal score settling. A person feels someone's done wrong by them, so they're going to make sure they suffer for it a little. You're basically taking justice into your own hands.

On the flip side, what's been put up on the internet is going to be seen on the internet. It was the news of the firing, coupled with the photo and the Tweet, "As an advocate for digital equality, my actions today at #pycon made me feel like Joan of Arc, minus the visions" https://twitter.com/adriarichards/st...42430848487424 which got the internet so incensed. The reaction is vile and harassing and, once again, really doesn't differ that much from any other harassment campaign against other people who have raised internet ire. This side is seeking their own justice too, because they didn't want to remain silent and thought it would just get swept under the rug.

I really do think all sides are in the wrong. If Richards hadn't decided to use it for PR, the men still would have been escorted out, chastised, and the one man who was fired might or might not have been. She did text con staff who would have handled the problem without her taking the next steps. Playhaven's very public firing pretty much linked the two tweets together, making a reaction pretty much inevitable. Anonymous, which isn't just 4chan, mind you, responded in its usual way which is anything but legal. Sendgrid blew their chance to smooth things over and simply canned Richards in a very obvious reaction to the whole fiasco.

Now, everyone is also in the right, as well. If Richards felt threatened, minimalized, or objectified by these men's behavior, it was her obligation to notify the con staff about it and she did. The vehement reaction from Anonymous goes to show that using the internet as a tool to harm other people (whether it's their person, their pride, their mental being, or their reputation) especially when you do it with your name attached doesn't often end well. (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/x-is-n...-personal-army ) Playhaven and Sendgrid both had their reputations to look out for, as well as their business interests. If someone out there was getting their photos taken of them with their company's name on their shirt while reportedly making tasteless jokes, that's making them look bad. If one person's public action caused their site to get DDOS'd and quite a few customers to quit service with them, especially if it was one of their PR reps who had the job of making their company look good, they're probably not going to want to keep that rep around.

(Edited to correct dyslexia >.>)

I read pharyngula from time to time but PZ can drop strawman arguments from time to time and sometimes he doesn't get facts right either. In this case, I don't see anyone arguing that only submission and silence are the acceptable responses to abuse. Those articles that I've read whose author disagrees with AR say she should have gone to the organizers.

And regarding the jokes, I don't think anyone has been specific with what was said. The guy who got fired only mentioned, "I'll fork his repo" (or something like that) which doesn't sound
too bad but then of course, he could have just picked the most innocent phrase that they used.

This shit can be handled privately and doesn't need to go to the internet unless first channels fail. You can't be in the tech industry and still be naive at how the internet treats these topics. That's not to say anybody deserved to be fired but all along the route of this fiasco there were opportunities to be human about it. Although, it might easily be argued that is exactly what happened.