The more I think about it (after a day now), the more I realize this was an opportunity for her to become famous. Think about what does she do -- developer advocate, her site is called "butyouregirl", she does talking engagements. She is a no-name. Have you heard of her before? Doubt it. I haven't. Does the whole tech world know her name now and who she is -- "YES". Hello speaking engagements, hello millions of visitors to her blog, hello book deals about social gender issues in post modern technology landscape.

Besides this, I am sure she is aware what happened before at PyCon (there as a guy who had a picture of a nude woman in one of the talks and he was escorted out and rightly so), then Jesse Noller et. al. made a strong statement that they are very intolerant to this kind of stuff (and rightly so). But I think there in lies a golden opportunity -- one little message + shitty deceivingly taken photo -- and bam! momentary boost to the top.

She made penis jokes herself not too long ago. If that doesn't convince you of her motivations I don't know what will.

Unfortunately public reputation, shaming and humiliation goes both ways. Tech community if anything doesn't tolerate bullshit, bureaucracy, dishonesty, and bullying. The 4 parties that played along here:

   *) Adria
   *) SendGrid
   *) PlayHeaven
   *) PSF

I sure hope this person has an offer on the table by now.

I think you nailed it. Her post about the incident is strangely long and melodramatic.

"I calculated my next steps." "It very much reminded me of Lord Of the Flies." "Yesterday the future of programming was on the line and I made myself heard."

I agree her judgement was bad and she shouldn't have posted the image (she has every right to post about the incident, though!).

But what I'm reading here is an awful lot of bile about this woman. She's being asked to answer for someone else's decision to fire someone (there's still no documentation or testimony about this fact, FWIW). She's being attacked for "setting back women's rights". She's basically being made the target for (what I perceive to be) a bunch of anti-feminist frustration among the male geeks. And that's... just really, really ugly; sorry.

She got pissed off and made a mistake, for which it would probably be a good idea to apologize. That's it. Everything else is on you guys.

This whole thread is making me sad.

For example, it turns out white people don't have to just sit there when somebody's being racist. They can speak up just as much as a black person can.

There is such a thing as unacceptable behavior. But the measure of that is not whether some member of a protected group was offended. Nobody has the right to never be offended in a public place.

Of course these very same laws require that the claim is filed confidentially, and the kind of public shaming we've seen here is itself considered harassment.

If PyCon had been held here the only party with their noses clean would the conference organisers.

"I saw a photo on main stage of a little girl who had been in the Young Coders workshop. I realized I had to do something or she 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."

Seems a tad melodramatic as a reaction to a private conversation. Seems to go with the Joan-of-Arc complex:

https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313442430848487424

> I agreed with [the guy behind me] ... He said he would be interested in forking the repo [...] That would have been fine until the guy next to him... began making sexual forking jokes

I don't see how that constitutes a private conversation. The joke was apparently interjected into a discussion she was already part of.

Now, I still don't think the "public shaming" attempt was a good idea, and I certainly wouldn't support firing the guy (if that actually happened; again, no evidence at hand!). But I'm seeing the anti-Adria crowd here really bending over backwards to make this her fault. I think it's entirely reasonable to be offended by this, nor is it unreasonable to tweet or blog about it. That she got a little too hot-headed and posted a picture seems to be all anyone wants to talk about.

Because that's what got the guy fired. If she had just posted a tweet complaining, or just made a blog post talking about how those kinds of comments were offensive, people would have learned but nobody's life would have been ruined. Instead she choose to post their picture online AND continue to make a big deal about it. That's a personal vendetta.

"I calculated my next steps." => I'm sorry but that just feels wrong.

You actively tried to harm these guys (and succeeded). I'm pretty sure they weren't "calculating" their bad jokes to hurt your feelings.

Instead of an absurdly long post you should probably just have mentioned their bad taste, apologised for getting somebody fired and tried to resolve this issue as peacefully as possible instead of blowing it up.

No, the future of programming wasn't on the line yesterday. Yes, you made yourself heard but in way that (so far) has only done harm to this community.

I'm finding it hard to reconcile this with the idea that women as a group aren't weak and in need of white knight protectors.

It sounds more like she was personally offended yet wanted "to be a hero", where elsewhere she recognizes that "It takes three words to make a difference:“That’s not cool.”"

I can sympathize with being uncertain about how to react to a situation when people are being rude, and it's often overlooked that calm personal confrontation is actually very difficult. But I think a good heuristic would be to save the heroics for when you meet a villain--and that doesn't seem to be the case here. Most rude people are just oblivious and too comfortable to suspect that people around them aren't.

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Now I do agree with you somewhat. I doubt she saw this "joke" as an opportunity to screw someone over (at least I hope so. If she did, then all bets are off); but that doesn't excuse her wrong. Her actions caused this guy to be fired. She needs to own it. Apoligize, Offer amends and move on.

You could blame the millennia of sexism that set up the situation. You could blame the gender-imbalanced context: it's easy for humans to be insensitive to minority views. You could blame the guy's parents and teachers for not raising him right. You could blame the guy for saying something inappropriate. You could blame his friends for not reigning him in. You could blame Adria for reporting what he said in public. Or you could blame his boss, the person who actually fired him.

Ask yourself: why is she the one you chose to focus on?

You're right. The guys need to own-up for their stupidity too. Oh that's right, they never got the chance. She didn't confront them. She snapped a picture and tweeted.

And I agree about their employer. In fact, I'd love to know who the employer was?

So dick jokes are off the table, I get that. What about "your mom" jokes? Or blonde jokes? What is the invisible line that I dare not cross?

In this case, the line was pretty visible: the conference has a code of conduct.

But to be clear, as I have written circa 15 times at this point, I was not comparing the situations. I understand why people might think that, but I didn't say it. I apologize for not being explicit about that, as it has caused a great deal of distraction from my actual point.

I think in fact that people understood you were trying to "invoke a feeling of sexual threat" and that you did this by making blatantly homophobic remarks.

I also think you should realize that even if it was not your intent to analogize, there is still an inherent comparison being made between the two situations. If they are not at all comparable, then Adria Richards must be examined according to the circumstances outlined in this thread. It appears to be the consensus among both male and female posters (including yourself) that it is unlikely that the situation could have made her feel sexually threatened. That being the case, you are simply defending the fact that she could have. This is irrelevant. Is it fair for me to feel threatened by you because you made a homophobic remark which, unlike the comments made in the presence of Ms. Richards, was actually perceived by the community to be reprehensible? Frankly, no - and I think it is a failure on your part to evaluate her situation critically rather than defending people's ability to be offended by anything they deem offensive.

EDIT: Typo.

> How is this being gender-neutral?

These actually don't have anything to do with gender neutrality, btw. But it is pretty considerate. And if you don't think you need to be constantly considerate of diversity when speaking around a lot of people, you need to rethink that.

Possibly. Or, they could be cool with it. Or, they could refrain from passing their judgment to the rest of the world and inform me that what I said was offensive. The thing is, this is less about being aware of women and minorities and more about knowing if there are any people in the room who are easily offended by scatological humor.

From a recent wired article:

"The court of public opinion is an alternative system of justice. It’s very different from the traditional court system: This court is based on reputation, revenge, public shaming, and the whims of the crowd. Having a good story is more important than having the law on your side. Being a sympathetic underdog is more important than being fair. Facts matter, but there are no standards of accuracy. The speed of the internet exacerbates this; a good story spreads faster than a bunch of facts."

If she had reported it to the conference staff and just tweeted what she had done, without identifying them i don't think anyone would be focusing on her, and it would be a non-story.

There is a world of difference between the actions.

It could be she didn't realize how much juice she had, but with 9k followers, that seems a little far fetched.

At a guess, it appears that sexism is a specific instance of "People with power wielding it against people who don't have it, in a manner which the community finds morally questionable." Which seems to be what people are judging her for; not that she retaliated, but her escalation. Perhaps it's a good thing, the whole situation brings to mind the saying about "An armed society is a polite society."

In the end, I'd guess every party involved is going to wish this had never happened, and spend years carefully watching every word they say, and learning the first rule of InfoSec; Never Say Anything.

It wasn't inappropriate.

Now, presuming he knew that: shouldn't he, too, be "taking responsibility" for his actions instead of blaming some girl with a blog?

I just don't see where that logic goes. Everyone can be at fault here. But it seems like you (and most other men here) only want one person's head. That strikes me as distasteful.

Since we don't have the facts, we don't know, and folk are assuming the company over-reacted because it fits into the proffered narrative.

Why didn't she tell them to just be quiet? That's what normal people do.

What has to change is that everyone must take personal accountability and speak up when they hear something that isn’t ok. It takes three words to make a difference:

“That’s not cool.”

However, she appears to have not followed her own advice. I think it probably would have turned out differently if she had, though.

"Report the harassment incident (preferably in writing) to a conference staff member"

If she had asked them to quiet down, it could have turned into a pissing match. Or maybe they would have complied. You never know how it's going to play out.

However, she did report it to pycon. She tweeted about: "Can someone talk to these guys about their conduct? I'm in lightning talks, top right near stage, 10 rows back". She also says that she "began to contacting the PyCon staff via text message".

What she didn't have to do is take pictures of them without their permission and post their pictures on her public twitter feed. That is the part that steps over the line in my opinion.

1) post the picture on a world wide forum (twitter)

2) contact them via public channel (twitter)

Thank you

She took the cowardly way out and a man was fired for it. And that's assuming it was even true.

She explained why she didn't just tell them to be quiet on her blog. But here's my take:

It is not her job to teach people how to behave properly in public. It is their job to behave properly. And it's the conference organizers' job to maintain a safe space, one where everybody is behaving according to conference standards. And when they heard about the problem, they jumped on it.

I also agree that the company that fired the person should also be held responsible for caving in to social pressure so easily. They are both responsible for the outcome.

By defending her and using phrases like "maintain a safe space," you make it sound like quietly speaking innocuous words is of any legitimate concern or consequence. In reality, Adria's behavior was far, far worse and did, in fact, have serious consequences that will adversely affect an individual's career.

https://twitter.com/smarx/status/313939094902292480