FWIW, PyCon and the PSF have really tried over the last five years or so to consider gender issues and I think they've had a good start – I believe I heard PyCon had women accounting for around 20% (edit: corrected thanks) of total attendance. That's pretty cool considering how much lower the numbers were a decade ago.

It was 20%.

https://twitter.com/doughellmann/status/313319682943905793

thanks for the correction. fixed to reflect your more accurate numbers/not my clearly horked brain's recollection.

I don't think people understand what "sexist" means. There is no prejudice or discrimination based on gender here. Sexist joke would be someone making a joke implying women were inferior programers or belong in the kitchen not at the computer etc. Saying you would like to fuck the hot blonde sitting in front of you is not sexist (just obscene). What the guys at the PyCon said is so out of category of sexist that it's ridiculous.

Besides the larger issue here is should freedom of speech (in the public sphere) include the freedom to offend. One could make a compelling argument that it should.

"these last 24 hours have been actively painful to me."

That's a sign you are doing it right

I don't know if i'm missing something, but I've seen very little introspection in the responses to the situation. The guy who was called out's apology notwithstanding, out seems like there's just been a mass venting of anti-feminist attitudes all around.

I've seen a lot of posts reflecting on the situation, including of course this page on reddit. Certainly it hasn't just been a "mass venting of anti-feminist attitudes", although that's certainly been present too.