A Difficult Situation

Re:A Difficult Situation by pukka_my on Thursday March 21, 2013 @09:10PM (#5420684)

Actually, it is sexist to believe that it's ok to make comments of a sexual nature if they are likely to lead to members of the audience feeling uncomfortable or offended. Sexism is not just skill-related, it's the attitude that the opinions, feelings or actions of one gender are somehow inherently inferior or less important than those of another and expressing that attitude through your own actions or words. Intentionality has nothing to do with it; sexism is often implicit or so internalized that people (especially but not exclusively men) fail to realize when they are in fact acting in a sexist manner. A little self-reflection might help here . . .

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Re:A Difficult Situation by guptaneil on Thursday March 21, 2013 @09:45PM (#5420836)

Making innuendo about forking or dongles isn't sexism because they aren't belittling any specific gender. A man could be offended by that innuendo as much as a woman. If he had said, "women only exist to get forked by big dongles," that would be sexism because he would be belittling women. Don't confuse sexual for sexism.

Making innuendo jokes to a friend is not sexual harassment either. If he had said, "hey want to see my big dongle?" to the girl, that would be harassment because he would be making unwanted sexual comments towards her.

However, he just made a joke to a friend in private, and she overheard. I'm allowed to say anything I want to my friend, even if it may be inappropriate for the setting. She was free to think of him as a jerk, or even tweet "there's a jerk behind me." (Although I don't think there's anything wrong with making an innuendo joke to a buddy, but clearly she does.) Unfortunately, publicly shaming the guy for a private comment not meant for her was totally uncalled for and puts her on the wrong side of this mess.

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Re:A Difficult Situation by dinkumthinkum on Thursday March 21, 2013 @11:11PM (#5421165)

Intentionality has nothing to do with it? The problem is if we played your game everything we do or say could be sexist. You could argue the act of programming is some sort "performance" of male dominion over women or some such sociological jibber jabber. If you combine that with the well known law that there's always someone in the world that think just about any crazy thing could name, you're always in danger of offending someone.

I stopped in a local donut shop a couple weeks ago and there was a patron with his child that was horribly offended that the shop had a TV in the store and it was turned on (to some benign news channel) without even the volume on. I could tell it was one of those crazy people that don't even want their children to even know TV exists, he kept going on and on about "I can't believe they would have a TV." Long story short, the fact that you're alive will offend someone.

In this case, I don't believe Adria was offended. She is inauthentic to me.

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