As someone who has only watched this popcorn feast, I have the sense that she was the subject of vitriol primarily for taking actions that people didn't like. Many of the insults may well have targeted her gender, but that is not the same thing at all.

I have seen literally no evidence that she was harassed simply for being a woman.

It seems like the major source of antipathy towards her was the firing of Victoria Taylor, which happened on her watch, but was actually done by a man who is still at the company, and nobody seems to want him fired. It's entirely possible I have some or all of my facts wrong, but this is what I understand to be the case.

The point of leadership is to deal with these sorts of issues, and take those hits when they don't pan out. It's like having your cake and eating it. On the one hand, we use the excuse: "just doing his/her job" or "just following orders", and then on the other hand: "Happened on his/her watch, by a subordinate", as if it makes it okay. The blame needs to be shared (if appropriate), and not shoved around depending on which side we are currently arguing for/against.

The buck stops with the CEO.

That's when most people started hearing about it outside of Reddit, but I guarantee there is been strong hate before any of that happened. And it really does seem gender-based, or at least those are all the primary attacks.

Really? What are the decisions she has made that seem so substantially larger than past Reddit CEO mistakes? Worse than selling to Conde Nast? Worse than closing subreddits for content?

To me the uptick in personal insults seems obvious, and uncorrelated to a long history of questionable decisions by Reddit admins. Although I think her being labelled as a feminist false accuser is as much the reason as her being a woman.

Probably the fact that she's relatively new and seen as an outside by most in the community who wants to "ban behaviour" yet goes after ideas (see: /r/fatpeoplehate drama, while subreddits like /r/coontown and other racist shitholes were allowed to stay). Their stance on brigading that seems to not apply to /r/shitredditsays. People seemingly shadowbanned for speaking their minds. Her lawsuit (that she rightly lost) against her former employer where she claimed her gender was the reason she wasn't promoted?

Pao was the face of reddit as CEO and had to rightly "face the music", not because she's a woman. I find it incredible to see things boiled down to "they hate her cuz she's a gurl".

> I have seen literally no evidence that she was harassed simply for being a woman.

Well, the litmus test can't be simply whether the harassment solely targeted her gender and nothing else. Sexism (and other forms of bigotry) have a more insidious nature to them.

I didn't say there wasn't sexism. I do indeed believe that gendered insults are the result of sexism. I am, however, stating that the genesis of the entire Ellen Pao affair seemed to be about her actions, not her womanhood.

I just think it's important that we don't gloss over the possibility that the level of criticism and outrage could very well have been exaggerated as a result of latent/subconscious sexism.

I think it's much more likely that the amplification of criticism and outrage was catalyzed by her high-visibility public image stemming from the KP trial. She came out looking (IMO) like a vindictive, petty, and greedy person. Whether that's true or not, I suspect that image was then projected onto her role as Reddit's CEO. The kind of insults she got were absolutely driven by some of the most vile and reprehensible expressions of sexism, but I think it was more that Pao was an unsympathetic person who made an easy target for sexists, than that some latent sexism caused otherwise-normal reddit users to turn against her.

I don't think she was responsible for nearly so much of the stuff Reddit reacted negatively to over the course of her tenure as some would think, but I think the primary blame for that perception lies with Reddit's leadership as a whole and their astounding lack of communication to their audience. They knew that Pao had been the subject of a high-visibility lawsuit heavily steeped in social justice implications, which she rather badly lost - it doesn't take a PR genius to think that if you start introducing sweeping social justice-driven changes to your site while she's in office as CEO, people are going to presume that she's the one driving them. That could have been trivially defused by saying "This was a decision made by our board" or "This initiative is something we've been working on for the past 3 years", rather than just sitting by and letting the bogeyman grow and grow.

As another example, as best I can tell, Ohanin let Pao take all the heat for Victoria Taylor's firing, and then clarified that he was the one who made the decision to terminate her only after Pao had resigned. A huge amount of unrest could have been deflected off of Pao if Ohanin had said "Hey, I'm the one that made this decision", but that wasn't said (if I'm wrong, please let me know; the first reference I saw to this admission was timestamped around ~1h ago). In fact, reddit's leadership as a whole was extremely wishy-washy and vague about the whole thing, despite the fact that it upset the volunteer base that makes reddit usable enough to incite mini-revolt.

Leaping to claims of sexism seems lazy and just a little-too-convenient for me. I think that if her husband had been in the CEO role and the same things had happened, given his PR image problems, you'd have seen the same magnitude of criticism and outrage (but then, of course, people would level claims of racism as the cause, which I think would have been equally as wrong).

Sure that's possible and it's likely that there are a lot of misogynists that have participated; but that doesn't make everyone who was critical a misogynist.

Isn't it strange that you have to say this? These people are literally insane.

There was no reason that it needed to be said, as no one claimed the thing he is refuting.

> It seems like she's been the subject of vitriol primarily for being a woman

More like passing off a lack a simple lack of ability at KPCB as gender discrimination, having the temerity to file a meritless suit on that basis, losing it so conclusively, and then further demonstrating her lack of ability at Reddit thereby harming something a lot of people love a lot.

I find that easy to see how that is vitriol-inducing.

You forgot the bit where she tried to blackmail KPCB or she would appeal. She also owed them nearly 1m in legal fees which they waived.

That's nonsense. While the expression of disdain for her probably did come forth at times through misogynistic language from some misguided users, it was pretty clear that it was her actions and vision (or lack of a coherent one) that was driving the backlash. Further evidence against the idea that there's a latent misogyny among Reddit's userbase: the firing of a popular female employee is what set all this off (this time at least).

That's hardly the only thing that predates the last few days:

http://www.vanityfair.com/style/scandal/2013/03/buddy-fletch...

Uhm, how? Although there were lots of trolls just looking to rile people up, a lot of the criticisms about her allegedly snubbing other females for promotions and baseless lawsuits that amounted to the same exact figure her fraud of a husband was being hounded for were perfectly valid. Or are all those forgiven because she has a vagina?

The problem with insults in America is that people confuse sexism for insults that are gender-specific. Unlike anal sex, many insults do not work on any gender.

Many of the insults we men use on each other just don't work on a woman. For example, what would calling a woman a "dickless wonder" even mean?

Similarly, let's say I wanted to insult a guy raised by a gay male couple. It would make no sense telling him "Your mother is a whore".