One of the reasons I've taken an interest in this whole fiasco is that I occasionally make "colorful" jokes. Not dissimilar from the two guys at PyCon. I make every attempt to keep these jokes private between my friends and I, but I'm sure others have heard me make them. Some people might find them funny, others may be offended. It scares me to think that making an offhand penis joke could result in being publicly outed on Twitter with no opportunity to defend myself.
I believe that Adria Richards did not handle the situation appropriately. I believe she's being a hypocrite by taking offense one day, and making her own penis joke on Twitter the next. I believe that she's further stoking the internet's rage by refusing to admit any fault. I think the other women that are jumping to her defense are doing themselves, and women in technology a disservice. They are not thinking critically or putting themselves in the conference attendee's shoes. I'm quite sure they would not like to be publicly outed for a private conversation.
Public shaming was not the right way to handle the situation. An apology from Adria would have gone a long way in defusing the situation. She chose not to go this route. I'm sad that a silly penis joke turned in to this.
Preemptive Edit: I do NOT believe that ANYONE should suffer the wrath of the Internet. I do NOT believe that ANY conference attendees should have to sit idly by and listen to penis jokes. I'm only saying that publicly shaming these guys was a mistake, and that an apology for the mistake could have basically fixed the problem before it got this far.
What's amazing to me is the cognitive dissonance required to make the leap from Adria publicly outing someone (questionable, but not egregious given you know, the public venue) making an off-color joke to 'she got these people fired'.
Their boss finding out what they said got them fired. Because what they said wasn't appropriate in the opinion of their employer. Period. Full stop.
| what they said wasn't appropriate in the
| opinion of their employer
There's more nuance than that. By tweeting it, she turned it into a public issue. The scale of the issue changed. The guy's employer probably fired him to avoid association with negative publicity, and to try to avoid being seen as supporting what he said. The fact that the guy was publicly shamed led to that. Had identities been anonymized while the issue was discussed publicly, then things may have turned out differently.
I don't think that she set out to get the guy fired, and it wasn't through direct action, but she did up the stakes.
The same way that if you and I were standing in the subway discussing the finer points of <topic potentially offensive to people on the same railcar> or cracking stupid jokes regarding the requirement for some software to have a dongle.
Just because someone in that crowd can be offended by something we say doesn't mean jack shit, unless it is directed directly at them I don't see how it applies to them.
That's entirely a matter of opinion. I think you're wrong. PyCon's code of conduct does too. I think adding a clause about not public shaming is good though. These comments were creating an environment that reasonably made someone uncomfortable. PyCon's updated policy gives people a safe and productive way to deal with it. There's still a risk it'll leak out (as it often does), but it at least lets everyone know what the expectations are.
She probably didn't want to get them fired. But it's hard to argue that she didn't want to cause them real damage, at the very least to their reputation. And it should be plainly obvious to someone with a media presence that anything negative they say about someone will ripple well beyond that person's own realm of control.
Everyone says things in private they wouldn't want their employer to hear. People curse outside of work. People drink and smoke. People break the law. They don't get fired for it because there's no one taking pictures of it and blasting it across the Internet. What we have here is irresponsible disclosure. You might not be able to forecast the full effect of such an action, but you have to know it's not going to be good for anyone involved.
> Everyone says things in private they wouldn't want their employer to hear.
That's the difference in this case. The men in question were not in the personal life having a private discussion, they were attending a conference that their employer was a sponsor of and they were marked as being representatives of that sponsor company via their badges. They are already damaging their own and their company's reputation by making dumb sexist jokes at a professional-for-them event.
Until the day a man feels equally comfortable telling a sex-related joke to a woman as to another man, all such jokes are, by definition, sexist. We as a society are not open towards sex and the real sexist men feel that it is to their advantage that women should feel more embarrassed about sex jokes, even a woman have no reason whatsoever to feel that way.
You make a key point: the men were not in their personal lives having a private conversation. I also used your "professional-for-them" in another post.
It was her public outing that caused this situation in the first place!
Also, do you think if there wasn't as much drama going around that these men still would have been fired?
There is much more to this situation then an employer finding out that one of their employees make a dongle joke at a conference, and decided that was grounds for them to be fired. It is much more likely that the employer doesn't want to be associated with the debate taking place online, rather than being appealed by their employees actions.
If a man had posted that tweet, their firing would not have been notable and the internet would not be calling for boycotts, 'justice', apologies nor issuing death threats.
If a man had posted that tweet, likely nobody would have paid him any attention aside from maybe an eye roll from how easily offended he was, how he lacked a sense of humor (even if the joke wasn't very funny), and how he resorted to extreme passive aggressive tactics instead of simply saying STFU to the guy making the joke.
And if the tweet had still somehow garnered a lot of attention and gotten someone fired, he would have been condemned much more strongly for lacking the basic human decency not to out someone publicly, lacking the empathy to express regret over a man with a wife and three kids losing their job, and not manning up to admit they didn't handle the situation appropriately.
In other words, if a man had posted that tweet, he would have received much worse treatment, because this has everything to do with the tweet being an inappropriate reaction to a silly joke, and nothing to do with discrimination against women.
No, sorry, the situation was started by someone doing something which is at least rude.
They robbed the butcher's cash. It is his fault for leaving it in the counter. Sorry: it was the robber's fault and the butcher's imprudence, nothing more.
So throwing out a hyperbole to point out absurdity: if this man had been stabbed rather than fired, would you still say that if they didn't want to be stabbed, they shouldn't have made a rude joke? If the community is just so far out of control like people here are saying it is, who is the actual irresponsible party here?
Making the crude remark might be rude, but it hurts no one. There was no real damage from the joke. Public shaming is rude and hurts everyone involved. It can now be measured in real dollar amounts. That's not a consequence of the joke, that's a consequence of irresponsible journalism.
> So throwing out a hyperbole to point out absurdity: if this man had been stabbed rather than fired, would you still say that if they didn't want to be stabbed, they shouldn't have made a rude joke?
I can't even begin to explain how fallacious this argument is.
Note that I explicitly called out the hyperbole of the statement. If the argument is that he got fired because he made this joke rather than because Adria posted about the joke, then surely it should follow that any alternative consequence could be subbed in, right? His employer was mad enough about his joke to fire him. Is it not possible that, in a hypothetical world someone else could be mad enough about the joke to cause him physical harm? And since it's his fault for making the joke, then it's his fault he got injured. Adria did nothing wrong, because he didn't get fired because of her tweet, he got fired because of his joke.
The idea is to point out that his private conversation would never have been made public without Adria, and Adria as a media figure should be able to see the negative consequences of her actions. There are better ways of handling the taking of offense.
We live in a politically correct world, and employers will do the wrong thing in order to save face because it's more expedient. It's hard to both try to help run a business and simultaneously wage war over social discourse.
The pattern is that firms will react, and overreact, to what they perceive as a scandal involving hot-button issues. The firing was a mistake but maybe the people involved were afraid of what might happen if they didn't do it. Or maybe they were acting on the same social outrage that Adria was acting on.
The point is there's a whole social anti-pattern behind the firing and it's incorrect to pin it on any one actor to the exclusion of others.
Then those employers should be punished via the same public shaming mechanism. If this is the new way to do things, fine, but it works both ways.
Never heard of PlayHeaven before. Now it is on my black list. I will make sure to remember it. Unless I read a public apology with an offer to hire him back, I will make sure to go out of my way to let everyone know about them.
PyCon -- making off color jokes is reason to take statements and escort people out in front of everyone, but posting insulting face pictures on attendees (sponsors none the less) is ok? Nope. It is not 'OK'. There should be a public apology. Guess which one makes PyCon a hostile environment? Imagine someone saying "I refuse to attend PyCon if the person who posted a picture of naked woman in one of the slides comes too". Everyone understands that, sympathy flows on twitter etc. Now what if I say I refuse to attend if Adria attends. I don't feel safe and don't feel welcome when my face could easily end up twitter with an insult underneath. Isn't that the same issue?
It doesn't work both ways, because the employer is not subject to the same external pressures that the employee is.
The employer answers to the general public, the employee answers to one easily-scared manager.
I meant it is similar in how public shaming and humiliation is accepted as a valid way to deal with such situations.
Initially it was probably done more to companies. It is probably the most efficient way to get a large corporation to listen to a customer -- fear of public shaming.
Adria applied it a personal level and in the context of a tech conference. That was the "new" twist here.
From an external point of view a scared manager, a small pyramid of scared managers, or a single owner doesn't matter. I see it as a corporate response. That is what makes manager's job hard -- making such decisions. He made a bad decision, the company or higher ups haven't responded yet, or apologized.
Exactly. Think of yourself as an employer - either you retain the employee and get branded as a "Women unfriendly company", or as a company that harbors "Male chauvenists". Or you just fire the relevant folks and save face.
Both are tough choices - but its obvious which one is the most (to the employer).
Hopefully with more incidents like this, employers branded as "overreacting, bending over backwards PC twats" will start receiving similar unfavorable treatment as the aforementioned labelings.
Not all employers will over-react and fire someone. The employer could have chosen to keep him and say the standard, "We regret. . .We do not condone. . .We have taken appropriate action. . .The specific action taken is a private personnel matter." Yes, it's BS to some degree, but in this case it would have been valid. And yes, some people might have still called for his head, but I suspect that number would have been relatively small.
Hypothethical example: if a feminist group attacks a company which employs a person, then the company is pressured into letting said person go, because they don't want to get associated with misogy, as that might decrease profit. In that example the feminist group is clearly responsible for the firing of the guy, even though the company technically made the decision.
You can't just lay the blame on the company which has to operate in reality, and has to protect their brand. That said, part of the blame is also with the company.
This is exactly what we would expect to happen. Company's that employ and protect people who reinforce misogyny should held accountable for that, although I would argue most groups prefer education and training over discipline and firing for the most common work-related sexism issues.
Their boss finding out what they said got them fired.
You know, we don't actually know what they said. We also don't know for sure why the guy was fired.
It might help to keep these things in mind before yelling "off with their heads" or "off with her head".
For the record, I'm neither defending them nor saying Adria handled it right. I could go on, but I already blogged about it [1] and I'm tired of repeating myself.
The person being fired is a direct consequence of her tweet and/or blog post. She has thousands of followers. It isn't likely she thought nothing would come of it.
Or maybe a viral picture of a misogynist with the company tshirt would be motivational enough for the company to fire him (maybe summed to other things in him the company didn't like, who knows).
Is he really a misogynist jerk? Does not matter: the picture was published to twitter with that message implied.
EDIT: I'm not saying he's a misogynist, in fact I think otherwise. What I'm saying is if she implies he is with a photo attached, he can easily be seen as one.
Read my comment again: it's not about what he is or what he's done, but what the picture (and her explaining in her blog or HN) made it seem.
Of course it's not sexist, let alone misogynist.
Do you have the raw text of the "dongle" joke available? If not, then on what basis are you labeling this person as a misogynist?
Really now -- you're making a specific, and highly charged accusation about this person. If you can't provide substantiation, then you should step back and apologize.
Read my reply to aviraldg's comment. I'm not saying he is a misogynist. I'm saying that as soon as she posted the picture (and blogged and etc) he's as good as a misogynist.
My thoughts exactly. She may have overreacted, but it's irrelevant. She's free to say whatever she'd like in her personal life just like these two gentleman are.
The employer OTOH, made a very stupid decision based on an opinion someone expressed on the internet. They are the ones to blame, not Adria.
Totally agree. The employer owns absolutely all responsibility for terminating the employee. However, I do not believe it would have been out of line for Adria to have said something like "I heard one of the guys in the photo I posted on Twitter yesterday was fired. I just wanted to say that I'm terribly sorry to hear that and my intent was never to cause harm! I'm very sorry!" I believe contrition on her part would have nipped this whole thing in the bud.
I also know that had I posted that picture which resulted in someone losing their job, I would feel great remorse and WANT to make amends. Especially given the relatively minor infraction (private, but overheard, joke).
So she should apologize because someone was offensive, got outed for it, and their employer felt that was reason enough to can them? I have to disagree, you do not have a right to remain anonymous while making a space unsafe and if the company you are representing feels that you've made them look horrible, they have a right to discipline you (although I believe a firing was too severe, if you fired everyone who had a problem with keeping things professional you'd have no workers, companies are better off with some kind of sensitivity training for the staff).
> So she should apologize because someone was offensive, got outed for it, and their employer felt that was reason enough to can them?
No. What he said was:
> I do not believe it would have been out of line for Adria to have said something like "I heard one of the guys in the photo I posted on Twitter yesterday was fired. I just wanted to say that I'm terribly sorry to hear that and my intent was never to cause harm! I'm very sorry!"
Not that she should have done it, but basically that he thinks it would have been a good idea and could have been a solution to the entire fiasco.
For someone who is so publicly concerned with professionalism, I feel Adria should/could have either:
1. Not taken a semi-secret photo of the guys with the intent of publicly outing them. If she was really offended by the comments she should have gotten up and contacted the event staff. The unprofessional thing to do would be to take a conversation out of context, pair it with a picture of the guys, and tweet it to thousands of people. What's the end game there?
2. Assuming she did tweet as she did, the professional response would be to apologize to the guy that got fired. Saying that she's sorry that he got fired (not even that she's sorry for getting him fired, which is obviously debatable) would have, as the above poster noted, nipped the whole thing in the bud.
The other factor here is that Adria was obviously villainized and attacked seemingly from all angles. I understand that this would be a hard thing to deal with, but I can't exactly empathize with her. Tweeting about the incident is one thing, but taking a picture of them is taking it to another level entirely - and not a very professional level at that...
Given she tweeted shortly afterwards that pycon staff were dealing with the problem and she was happy with that, I think she implicitly wasn't condoning any action taken by anybody afterwards.
Making that explicit might have been a good thing to do at the time; I don't see that such a statement would've needed to be in the form of an apology though, merely a clear dissocation from the stupid choices made by an HR department she has no control over.
I do NOT believe that ANYONE should suffer the wrath of the Internet
I would encourage everyone to react more slowly and deliberately to stories like this that outrage them. This applies to companies firing people as well as people using the complex facts to support their existing points of view.
Slow down, everyone. Injustice will still be there for you after your blood pressure goes down.
> Slow down, everyone. Injustice will still be there for you after your blood pressure goes down.
That's why you should follow Prussian military complaint rules. The Prussian military allowed all soldiers to file complaints, even against officers. However the rule was that you could only file a complaint after one night had passed.
The idea is of course that you can think about what happened and reevalute it. Naturally the rule has its limits. If you are actively harassed then try to find help immediately. But in most cases it is a pretty good rule.
I very deliberately didn't comment on this story when it broke yesterday and had to actively fight my instinct to point out just how obviously wrongheaded some people were.
Now, if nothing else, I can look back and be proud that I wasn't baited into saying anything hostile or embarrassing.
There is really nothing to be gained in those "rage fests". And this whole incident clearly shows that. One bad decision after another escalating the situation. When it's over there won't be anything gained but only destroyed. So far we have two people without a job and two companies with a tainted reputation.
I'm still holding out some hope that we'll be able to get to a reasonable middle ground. All parties gainfully employed again. Coming together to show more empathy and restraint about creating hostile environments, public shaming, and rushing to judgment.
In a way, since so many people acted so badly, it should be easier for everyone to apologize and de-escalate while saving face.
I think this was unavoidable. Because the guy was forced to apologize publicly and was fired by the (excuse my words here) pussy ass company that's scared of getting tarnished of a little tweet by adria.
If either one of those three didn't happen, I think this could've been avoided.
There is plenty of commentary from the founders to indicate that. Judges are suppose to be above the "rule by mob" mentality. Choosing justices according to hot topic political views as we have been recently is directly counter to the whole purpose.
Mind you, I run with a fairly politically-charged crowd -- pro-feminist, pro-gay, firmly anti-racist and anti-sexist -- the kind of people who wouldn't think twice of throwing you out of a bar, physically if necessary, for saying something legitimately creepy or offensive. But still I can't imagine that kind of a joke getting anything more than smirk, or a roll of the eyes out here.
Really now, some people need to get a grip, and a sense of perspective.
"the kind of people who wouldn't think twice of throwing you out of a bar, physically if necessary"
How is this type of reaction any better than saying something anti-feminist, anti-gay, racist or sexist? Sorry but people need to get over the idea that they have the right not to be offended. If you're offended then you can say "I'm offended", you can leave, you can ask the person to leave, you can offer a rebuttal, etc. But physically man-handling someone or reacting in a way that suggests that they have someone violated your "right not to be offended" is wrong because you have/should have no such right.
If you're at a bar and you're ruining the vibe in any way, you need to get out. If you don't leave when asked, you will be gently but firmly escorted to the door. It's just the way things work.
But again, this refers to bars and other private establishments. I wasn't talking about how things should be handled in society at large.
Totally. My anecdotal experience with the Bay Area is that people are really quick to freak-the-fuck-out at just about everything and turn around and make some awful, emotionally-sourced decisions.
Call me crazy, but something tells me this guy wasn't just fired for this incident. Good Python help can be hard to come by and firing someone over a private dongle joke has been seen by everyone, including Adria, as a total overreaction.
That being said, telling a woman that she should be raped or killed over such a circumstance (which did happen on Twitter) is also an overreaction. This sort of thing happens quite a bit to any woman who seems to challenge the status quo culture of tech. Both women AND men I know are saddened that this happens.
People shouldn't feel that the speech police will reign down on private jokes not directed towards specific people. And no woman should ever be threatened with rape or death, especially when she is not reponsible for the overreaction that ensued.
While you are right in thinking that perhaps an apology would stop all this, you have to consider the price that Adria paid because she was sick of hearing evidence of "bro culture" in programming. Have you ever had someone tell you that you should be raped? Do people wish you dead? I doubt Adria would disagree with your assessment, as she could never have anticipated that the man would have been fired. At this point though, she is probably hoping she can still do her job without getting hurt by some. Your hindsight observation doesn't really help here.
Some people posting on here seem to think that what Adria had done represents an evolution of social pressure for change. But in the end they will both have been fired by their employers because they were associated with bad publicity and not because of what they may have done. I think that is the lesson of this event for why, regardless of the reasons or the legitimacy of her being offended (I think a separate but legitimate discussion btw,) the way she responded was a mistake.
I believe she's being a hypocrite by taking offense one day, and making her own penis joke on Twitter the next.
I've seen that argument tossed about. There's a difference between reading someone's Twitter stream and hearing someone's joke while sitting in the audience at a convention. The former is reading content from someone you chose to follow, the latter is the equivalent of having people talk behind you in a movie theater.
Since when did it become ok to vilify someone for a private conversation? A private conversation in a public area is still private. This woman was guilty of listening to a private conversation, taking some sort of offence and then going out of her way to publicly shame them. Anyone trying to defend her is not thinking very clearly.
If you look at her own posting history she is guilty of off-colour jokes and downright racist comments. The whole thing smacks of hypocrisy and self publication.
I can't even ignore the conversation of annoying people three seats down in the train. When people in the seat behind me will start talking during a conference there would be no way for me not to listen to their conversation.
Just because you have good hearing and/or are incapable of focusing on something else does not make the conversation less private.
A private conversation is one that is intended to occur only between the parties involved. Your being able to hear it or not is irrelevant if the intention and expectation was that the conversation is meant to be between specific parties.
I understand this is not completely black and white, but fail to understand why anyone should take offence at a conversation they were not meant to be a part of and where they don't understand the history and social dynamics of the people involved in the conversation.
I can think of all kinds of situations where a private conversation, if overheard and taken out of context could be devastating to those involved.
According to her account, their initial jokes were based off of a conversation that she was directly involved in. Based on that fact, in her position I would not have considered their conversation private.
Furthermore they continued their discussion while the presenter was talking. That right there is going to annoy people around them, even if they had the most innocent conversation in the world. Which they weren't. In fact her description left me with the impression that she thought they were specifically joking about her.
Basic scenario. Off color jokes starting off of your conversation, that you feel are directed at you, by random strangers in a public space. I can understand her getting upset by that. She may have been mistaken in her impressions, but her unfortunate emotional reaction is understandable to me.
You also can't ignore the history and social dynamics of women at tech conferences. There's a sordid history of misogyny at these things.
I remember just last year reading horrible accounts from either blackhat or defcon (can't remember which). I understand PyCon is almost certainly of a different breed, but the history can't be overlooked in this situation.
It was Defcon, but I can't see how what happened there is any way related to what happened here.
"People have treated women badly at tech conferences before, thus it's perfectly valid to overreact and ruin the career of a guy who did nothing wrong"
Just as Adria didn't know the history of the guys behind her (for example, the nature of the forking joke), those guys need to understand that while no one else may have been actively participating in their conversation, their talk can still effect those around them.
I absolutely do not comprehend how so many posters here can place the blame firmly on one side or the other for how things transpired. Neither side handled this perfectly, failure to acknowledge that someone could hold a differing view than you on what is "offensive" or "sexist" or an overreaction is a very close-minded stance to take (I'm not speaking to you particularly on this, since I haven't looked at your other posts)
Not really. I'm rephrasing your argument to be more blunt. What I said was definitely the spirit of your post.
>Just as Adria didn't know the history of the guys behind her (for example, the nature of the forking joke)
She didn't need to, it was none of her business.
>those guys need to understand that while no one else may have been actively participating in their conversation, their talk can still effect those around them.
Still has nothing to do with Defcon.
>I absolutely do not comprehend how so many posters here can place the blame firmly on one side or the other for how things transpired. Neither side handled this perfectly, failure to acknowledge that someone could hold a differing view than you on what is "offensive" or "sexist" or an overreaction is a very close-minded stance to take (I'm not speaking to you particularly on this, since I haven't looked at your other posts)
I just think your argument was phallacious, and was pointing out why. Also, see what I did there?
I appreciate you using my actual words this time! Is that what you wanted me to look for? I will disagree that it was the spirit of my post though. I take no stance in my post as to whether the reaction and ruining of his career were valid or not.
My comment you replied to dealt specifically with the point that SeanDav made about Adria not knowing the "history and social dynamics" of the people she was overhearing, implying that she may misinterpret their jokes. I think this is pretty valid. Inside jokes can certainly seem one way when they're actaully another.
My suggestion was that the history and social dynamics at tech conferences (defcon included) is also an important factor here. If you're in an environment where you know there is a history of offensive behavior. I think it's prudent to be careful about saying something potentially offensive, unless your goal is to make some point or actually offend. Also, due to conference experiences such as Defcon, attendees may be more vigilant regarding perceived offensive behavior, resulting in overreaction.
I've been careful not to agree or disagree with any of the parties involved, rather, I'm just trying to lay out additional factors which could be contributing to this fracas.
The ideas behind libel and slander laws apply here. The larger your public profile, the less protection you have from libel and slander.
Mr. Romney was saying politically relevant things at a politically relevant dinner while running for a political office. The recording was perfectly legal and I'd consider moral. The people have the right to know the truth about the politicians they're voting on.
I don't pay much attention to American politics, but Romney was running for public office. Arguably the most powerful political role in the world, which makes his private opinions very relevant to everyone.
If you run for public office and believe that everyone who [correction: doesn't] vote for you is sub-human, that is a reliable indicator of how you will treat the people who didn't vote for you.
If you spoke up in that conversation on the train, do you think you would normally be well received? No. Although you could technically hear it, it was nevertheless a private conversation.
I suspect there is probably an element of culture at play here. Having spent a good deal of time in cities, I see absolutely no connection between being able to overhear a conversation, and that conversation not being private. In fact, I have internalized this such that it is actually difficult for me to pay attention to private conversations that I can hear. In return I expect, and in practice receive, the same courtesy.
I wager that many people who think that "if I can hear it, it isn't private" have not spent much time in situations where private conversations would become impossible by that logic. Learning social boundaries where physical boundaries do not exist is a skill that could easily go un-exercised.
I don't believe that "if I can hear it, it isn't private". On the other hand, if I'm saying something that I know could be overheard and offensive, I usually choose my words a little more carefully, especially when I will be in close proximity to others for a while - like when I'm sitting at a conference, in a movie theater, etc. On the third hand, I recognize that everyone's filter is calibrated a little differently and that some people have no filters - which is why we have written codes of conduct. Yes, learning social boundaries is a skill that could go un-exercised - which is another reason for the codes of conduct.
Ever seen Steve Hughes on being offended? If you're offended, so what, nothing happens. If we all walk on egg shells because any kind of discourse might offend someone, you'd suck the air out of the room.
Seriously, by the rules at PyCon, I'd be afraid to have any conversation for fear I might say something off hand, get publicly shamed for it and fired for it before having a chance to state my case for something that could have been taken out of context or doesn't offend the audience I was speaking to.
No one else is responsible for your emotional state. If someone is intentionally trying to antagonize you that's one thing, but no one should care if you're offended by something they might have said when they are not speaking to you.
I don't necessarily disagree with any of this. I merely am voicing a point of view to counter those who seem to find it inconceivable that these people thought they were engaging in private conversation. I find it highly probable that they, while fully aware of the fact that they were in a mildly dense crowd, considered themselves to be having a private conversation.
I know crackers have the same issue. They can't help not to look when people freely type their passwords in front of them during conferences. How can they not look memorize that password? And from there to use it or post it on twitter is just a small step right?
Admins has the same problems. A co-worker ask them for help fixing their emails, and the content of those email are just there. How can they not see the conversation about sexual diseases being present in the inbox. And from there to complain on twitter about it is just a small step.
Polite behavior is to sometimes not look/listen/read even if its being done right in front of you. At least one should have the decency of not go out and post it on twitter, even if one is "offended" by what you saw/heard.
People use POP email at work all the time. I can see their plaintext passwords coming through the network monitor (which it's my job to review), and I've seen some patently offensive passwords being used. This brings up two of your points: First, I ignore the fact that I can see their username and password. The responsible thing to do is to completely forget that you can see it. I have no business with their login information. I'm completely aware that the only thing I can do with this information will cause damage to myself and to the person who unwittingly gave me this information. Secondly, I ignore the words on the screen. Because it's not something that was designed for me to see in the first place.
We can advise them to use whatever we want, the trick is getting them to listen. Our corporate email disallows POP, but we aren't in the business of blocking their personal email on our non-secure network.
It's a personal conversation then, in either case, its NOYB. Unless he was using actual obscene words, I don't get it. She can't be offended by behavior she herself publicly broadcasts on twitter to anyone who follows or reads her feed. A conversation is the same way, you can't help who chooses to sit next to you and eavesdrops on your conversation.
> Just because something is private doesn't mean it isn't disruptive to people within earshot
Just because something is disrupting people's ears, that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen. Ultimately it becomes a freedom of speech issue.
The joke wasn't sexist. Sexist jokes offend me too. But am I supposed to stop making sexual jokes now because somebody around me might get offended? Sorry, but fuck off and don't listen if you're a sensitive bitch.
>* You don't generate a cone of silence by addressing a statement to a particular person. It is likely that people around you can still hear you.
And... so what? If I walk through a cafeteria and someone says something I don't like while chatting with their friends, I have the right to get them fired over it? I don't understand how people are advocating that.
No. Looking at her Linkedin profile the person is a women-in-tech evangelist. This incident - especially posting the photo of the offenders on Twitter and the subsequent penis joke - served to make the news to give her visibility. The PyCon code of conduct serves to provide a pleasant atmosphere at the conference, it isn't a weapon or a means to make the news.
This is not true. Any conversation had in a place where it could easily be overheard by others is legally not a private conversation. Even if it was had between a client and an attorney the privilege that would normally exist would not.
Alright, next time I'm out somewhere and I hear someone making racist jokes or swearing in front my by little brother I wont say anything. I'll tell my brother we have to respect their social expectation of privacy.
Do you expect me to say that's a bad idea? We must have some serious cultural differences because as far as I am concerned, ignoring it and minding your own business are the only reasonable actions in such a situation. How can you possibly live your life confronting every stranger you find objectionable?
If for you privacy only exists when invading it is physically impossible, then can you really say that you have a concept of "respecting one's privacy" at all? It would be more accurate to say that you "respect the acoustical properties of walls".
There's a difference between reading someone's Twitter stream and hearing someone's joke while sitting in the audience at a convention.
I've pondered this myself and, at least in this situation, I disagree. How can it be a fireable offense to make a penis joke in a room where a few people may overhear it, while it being completely ok to tweet the penis joke to the whole room?
I know you would only receive the joke if you follow her, but most people are following her because of her status in the tech community, not because she has great dirty jokes. In my eyes, this makes her joke an even worse offender than Alex's. They were both made in a professional environment but one was a private conversation that happened to be overheard, the other was a public broadcast to a portion of the tech community.
> How can it be a fireable offense to make a penis joke in a room where a few people may overhear it
You should take that up with the people who did the firing. The only thing that happened at PyCon was that the organizers told them to knock it off and they did.
We're talking about two different things. I made no mention of PyCon rules because the sexual joke was clearly against their rules. What I'm talking about is Adria's double standard for what is offensive and what is not. So lets try this again:
"How can it be not cool to make a penis joke in a room where a few people may overhear it, while it being cool to tweet the penis joke to the whole room?"
The fact that the former was meant to be private doesn't grant it a reasonable expectation of privacy. When you're in a public place where you're likely to be overhead, don't expect privacy.
More importantly, the issue of privacy is irrelevant to what I was saying. In one situation, you're attending an event and someone is ruining that experience for you. In the other situation, you're reading someone's content by choice.
Lastly, I'd like to make it clear that I'm not actually claiming that Adria is or isn't a hypocrite; I've read her blog post and her comments and I have my own opinions on her. I'm claiming that the above argument is not valid when trying to call her a hypocrite.
It is relevant. The entire predicate of this situation was that she is offended by such jokes because they oppress women (a bizarre and utterly arbitrary conclusion, by the way). If an overheard joke made between friends is oppressive to women in her view, then a public tweet of the same nature must also be oppressive to women. It's hypocrisy made plain.
I don't know, I felt pretty blind-sided when someone linked to that Twitter post here on HN and I was hit with a gasp penis joke. I was just on HN to be informed of the current events at PyCon and all of a sudden this lady I don't know is putting tweets about penises in a place I might accidentally read them.
No, it is hypocrisy. She was clearly feigning offense. She eavesdropped her way into internet infamy and her behavior was so extraordinarily irrational, I'm disappointed the PyCon organizers (and everyone else who has encountered this story) didn't laugh her out of the convention.
There's a difference between reading someone's Twitter stream and hearing someone's joke while sitting in the audience at a convention.
At the conference: was this a quiet, whispered joke between two people overheard by someone determined to eavesdrop, or was it make in voices loud enough that people sitting nearby had no choice but to listen? Or somewhere in between?
On the twitter feed: was this more of a personal twitter account that was technically public but clearly intended for friends, or was this an account representing someone in a professional capacity that might be followed purely for work-related reasons? Or somewhere in between?
The medium itself actually isn't the most relevant factor here. The context of the statement or tweet is probably more important.
< the latter is the equivalent of having people talk behind you in a movie theater.
And here we have the center argument why some people don't go to a movie theaters. Its noisy. The volume is not set to a personal setting. Its crowded (and by definition, again noisy). While one can ask extra loud people to tone it down, you can't eliminate all sound a crowd has. So long people talk to just the person next to them, that is often considered acceptable. The only other option is to view the movie at home.
Most of the people offended / affected by that are angry because the poor guy got fired over this. I think it was wrong to do this tweet, but she wasn't the one to get him fired. The employer should have the courage and stand behind his employees instead of firing him over appearantly nothing.
It was an overreaction, but 'Women in Tech' is a hot-button issue. The ultra-conservative approach is to distance yourself from everything that could be construed as promoting a "boys' club" in tech.
Disclaimer: I'm not supporting one side vs. the other here. I bear no grudge against her, but feel that she made a mistake in the way that she handled this.
This is true and actually contributes to the fact that women have a hard time in tech. If a company simply fires people as a CYA move nobody is ever going to seriously learn about and address sexism within that company as the decision makers there would rather just ignore the problem than do something about it.
Agreed. What did the "unfired" people left at the company learn from this? That it's unacceptable to ever have bawdy thoughts, let alone verbalize them? That it's unacceptable to make comments like that, ever - and here's why? That it's unacceptable to make comments like that in professional environments - and here's why? Or that you shouldn't make comments like that around Adria? This could've been a teachable moment for them and they blew it. Or maybe they didn't - we don't know what was said to the fired employee and remaining employees.
There's a fundamental difference between publicly shaming someone who made a semi-private comment (I'm assuming the guy in question did not stand up and yell the joke to the entire conference) vs. publicly criticising someone for comments they themselves made in a way that was extremely public.
If she wants to take something like this public, she should expect the responses to be public.
That's the first time someone has made that distinction, so while that might be your belief, that's the general public in outrage over what she did does not follow in this belief. The comments speak for themselves: publicly outing someones mistakes is not the way to resolve these situations.
I have a hard time parsing your first sentence. As for your second sentence, I agree, and so does most of the friends and co-workers of mine that reacted to Adria's tweet with utter outrage.
Many in public because far more than me felt that a public response is a perfectly acceptable reaction to her public harassment of someone else.
The only way I can interpret your comment given the "You, obviously, feel differently" is that you are talking about "publicly outing" her mistake.
But she did that herself, and the moment she did, public criticism became fair game.
(The threats and insults against her, and DOS against SendGrid, on the other hand, are disgusting and shocking and reveal that certainly she would have plenty of valid gender and discrimination issues to comment on - just not by publicly shaming someone who did not harass her even if the joke might have been totally inappropriate for the setting).
One distinction is that the comments made by the developer were directed at his colleague, while her tweet was directed to the public, or at the very least to those that followed her on Twitter at the time of her tweet.
That's the distinction. The joker made a private comment, which was made public by a third party. Adria made a public statement. There's no hypocrisy here; Adria wanted attention to her comment.
Was there a large audience to the comment? Was it directed at a general group of people? No. It was directed at a single other person, and she happened to overhear it. So it was private. That it was made in public and within earshot of others does not make it a public statement.
<offtopic>Sorry - I hate to be a grammar nazi, but this is something I feel more people should know about: "wraith" means "ghost" whereas "wrath" means "anger."</offtopic>
In many ways, the issue here boils down to what happened to these guys in the context of having joked around with each other in a private conversation. And what happened is tragic. Someone got fired for it. Someone's livelihood was affected by this. Not to mention the emotional shock this surely caused.
What's right and what's wrong? Sometimes the answer isn't easy. Private conversations between friends have been known to have content that surely someone, somewhere is bound to find offensive.
The other effect is that there are people who hear what they want to hear --or read what they want to read-- rather than what was actually said or written. All you have to do is watch Fox News, CNN or, for that matter, any news show to see this effect.
HN is perfect proof of the fact that this happens. I've seen it a bunch of times and I've experienced it myself.
A joke is a joke. A dumb comment is a dumb comment. It happens. And, if it hasn't happened to you (plural) yet it surely will at one point or another. I don't know any perfect people.
What saddens me in this case is the firing. I think that was wrong. Way wrong. And absolutely unfair.
One thought that went through my mind is the idea of surveillance cameras picking up private conversations. One could argue: Well, be aware of it and act accordingly. Then there's the question, perhaps legal, of what actually constitutes a private conversation protected by privacy laws. Does one have the right to publish the contents of someone else's private conversation, whether it was overheard or picked-up via intentional or unintentional surveillance? I don't know. It's a bit disturbing because of the potential implications on the assumption of privacy in otherwise public settings. Now you have to look around before having any kind of a conversation because you don't know if anything you say, offensive or not, might come back to pummel you on the Internet.
I would not be surprised if lawyers are involved at this point. I'd certainly go talk to one right away if I was on the receiving end of something like this and it affected my job.
Once, sat in the audience at OSCON with people I knew, a particularly inappropriate joke occurred to me that I thought the friend sat next to me would appreciate.
I sent it to him via private message using my laptop.
That way, the conversation was -actually- private, rather than 'private plus whoever else sat near me overheard what I said'.
This is not a difficult concept for me, though my primary motivation was 'not distracting the people around me' rather than what they might have thought of the content.
> That way, the conversation was -actually- private
Except if the person in the seat behind you took a screen shot of you or your friends computer screen and then posted it on twitter. There are enough epic fail photos of people playing games during lectures / senate voting to make that a real possibility.
If they lean over my shoulder and read my screen intentionally, they've taken a specific action to do so and I'm comfortable defending myself on the basis that in that case I had an expectation of privacy, and if they were offended by what they read while they were violating it that was their problem.
As public figures (celebrities, politicians) have found out, once the information is out there, how it was obtained seems to be unimportant except in court. It won't really matter what your expectations were when it goes public.
I do find this tragic but the way it is these days.
Private conversations between friends have been known to have content that surely someone, somewhere is bound to find offensive.
We were short on cubicles a while back, and about half a dozen people from the team I'm on were sharing a conference room as an office. They kept a counter on the wall, for "number of times we would have been called to talk to HR today, if we left the door open and were overheard".
Then there's the question, perhaps legal, of what actually constitutes a private conversation protected by privacy laws. Does one have the right to publish the contents of someone else's private conversation, whether it was overheard or picked-up via intentional or unintentional surveillance? I don't know.
I looked into this a little bit, from what I remember it more-or-less corresponds to whether the people in question know (or could reasonably expect) that they're in public and is about the same as the rules regarding eavesdroppers and peeping toms (or maybe it's exactly the same and the laws don't care about technology?).
When you are a geek and attend a conference, you are certainly going to tweet everything relevant about it. Well, Adria Richards decided that silly joke was worth tweeting.
I am sad for the person evicted from his job, but then again: f you do not know your environment, you should not work in it. And tweeter is as strong as it gets.
It is hard, but these are real life jobs and real life conferences and real life education and real life people. Deal with it: the only way not to appear on tweeter the way you would not like to is to... behave VERY CAREFULLY.
You do not want to look dumb? Do not act dumbly.
Silly jokes during a talk are like using a public wifi at RSA...
> [i]f you do not know your environment, you should not work in it.
I think part of the issue is that Adria's been in this industry for long enough to know that these situations are not new and we've all seen examples of how it should be handled. Furthermore, dick jokes are not exclusive to any gender or any industry. Despite that, she did something extraordinarily and knowingly cruel. Cruel because she has so many followers. Cruel because she was representing her (now former) employer. Cruel because she was trying to use the situation as a talking point for women's issues and claimed to be fighting on behalf of women in this industry - so far as to call herself a modern day Joan of Arc - when it wasn't a women's issue at all. It was irresponsible all around.
What you said about the men here knowing their environment applies just as much to her as it does them. You gotta know when to fold, and it has nothing to do with silencing victims (as some people are claiming) and more to do with common sense and picking the right battles in the right ways. Not public battles intended to humiliate that actually end up hurting your gender and get you just as publicly, and humiliatingly, fired.
Silly jokes at a conference are like using a public wifi at RSA...
This is a terrible analogy, and your point is incomprehensible: If you don't know your environment, you should not work in it? Then we should never, ever attempt to enter a new field (including the first time), as there's no way you can ever know what you're getting into until you're in it, and we're all still learning about each other. Permanently.
I said environment. You do not start a job 'out of the blue' (as a matter of fact, it is impossible). Environment, just the environment. Please, please.
I know my words are hard but...
The analogy is terrible why? Running risks is risky whatever the risk.
One of the riskiest thing, probably by an order of magnitude, the average American does every day is get in their car and drive to work. In fact, it's probably the most dangerous thing they do all year.
The problem with your statement is that it's impossible to know what every single person around you will find offensive. It's not a solution, because it's assuming the impossible. And when you go reductio ad absurdum, it basically boils down to everyone never saying anything to anyone for fear of offense, which is clearly not the desired goal.
I don't think you were worthy of being downvoted, but I your last sentence is terribly redunctionary. Breathing carries a risk, I could breathe in a fly and choke and die. Should I private conversation be a public affair, I think is the question. It's regrettable that anyone make a joke that offends someone or turns away a minority from the tech community, but where does one draw the line.
At least, I hope that's what we're discussing, I think I might be aiming a bit high.
You seem to say that publicly calling these guys out on twitter was OK and to be expected. Some people will disagree with that. I'm not sure downvoting is strictly supposed to be for registering disagreement though.
Also not everyone tweets all the time. I don't know anyone technical that does, only non-tech folks.
When supporting women's right on Hacker News you tend to get a disproportionate number of downvotes compared to 'normal' topics.
That means that if your comment usually would just not get any upvotes (which yours wouldn't since it wasn't terribly well written) you'll suddenly get into negative point territory on these issues.
If you look you'll be able to find other comments as well which easily pass the 'constructive discussion' criteria of HN comments but are deeply in the gray nonetheless.
Good god this is so false. I cannot even begin to comprehend that someone would make the statement that anyone supporting women's rights will be automatically downvoted on Hacker News. You can't imagine any other reason the post would be downvoted? How about the statement that you shouldn't say anything you wouldn't want tweeted out of context? How about calling Twitter "tweeter"? Or the implication that this guy had it coming because he should have known better than to try to have a private conversation without it being plastered on the Internet?
There are a number of reasons someone could have downvoted this post, and the first one that jumps to your mind is that a great number of people on HN inherently hate women and don't believe in equal rights. Seriously, I can't even fathom...
If you take a look at my comment history you'll see that I tend to comment on womens rights issues quite frequently, since I'm LGBT myself so their cause is quite close to my heart.
I can tell you from experience that I've seen my votes go up and down 5 or 10 points easily when I comment on topics like these. I've never noticed that for any other comments I make.
I post not infrequently on these issues (this is an aversion for me as this is a case where the female party is unambiguously wrong and behaved in a manner no better and arguably worse than the two guys) and I never see what you claim. So I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am skeptical of it being endemic to the topic.
The post whose downvotes you are ascribing to misogyny can also just be called a poor post. Which, FWIW, I do.
I could understand your statement if the post in question was a worthwhile contribution to a discussion, was well formatted, and had a reasonable writing style (grammar and spelling). But with as many flaws as the post had, attributing the downvotes purely to an apparently large population of misogynists on HN seems to be a strawman designed to further the already controversial discussion at hand.
He seemed genuinely confused as to why he received these downvotes and I just tried to inform him that, apart from his comment not being particularly good, he was probably also the victim of excessive downvoting due to the polarizing nature of the topic.
Your first statement is an unprovable assertion. He might get an equal number of upvotes from Adriana-supporting hardliners, but perhaps they are just outnumbered.
You are trying to frame this conversation in terms of 'you support women in tech if you make apologist comments for Adriana, you are a hardliner if you think she overreacted and should be brought to account'. It's a bit of a false dichotomy.
I think this is a particularly polarizing event that is causing a lot more downvoting than normally happens on HN.
I've adjusted my first statement to be more neutral.
As for your last sentence, I can tell from experience that threads on womens rights topics tend to be more polarized in general and cause a lot more downvoting in general which is exactly the point I was trying to make initially.
"When supporting women's right on Hacker News you tend to get a disproportionate number of downvotes compared to 'normal' topics."
Slightly off topic, but if that is the case, then so what? I'm pretty sure it could be scripted (go through all HN topics, check downvotes etc. you could make this reasonably scientific). The point is still, should we even care? Why must we feel like there is a need to shape this fact or alter it according to some PC dogma? Let's be tolerant and leave the community to downvote/upvote as it wants. If it reaches a critical mass then those taking offense will find a way of reacting appropriately (downvoting anti-feminist posts, stop posting on HN, etc.) If HN posters are for the majority anti-feminist, then it is. There will be some people that take offense to this, other's not. The assumption that we can't offend or be offended needs to be questioned.
Agreed. But there are obviously huge differences in definitions for acting like a professional adult. I think people even disagree on when/where you should have to act like a professional adult - if at all.
I'm quite sure they would not like to be publicly outed for a private conversation.
It's not private if you're in public and other people can hear you. What would you think if they were describing the details of their company's upcoming S-1 filing? Private conversation still?
Whether you believe she was appropriate or not (I don't but that doesn't matter) the fact is conversations and actions made in public are not ever really "in private".
Actually, if you are in the audience of a conference and there is someone talking in the front, any disturbance to the people around you is at least impolite. And if anyone should leave it's not the one who is silently sitting there and listening.
there's no opportunity to defend yourself from a tweet? tweet back. certainly you agree twitter is effective now that a bunch of racist, sexist scumbags used it to harass her company into firing her.
Public shame is not a problem. Public shame is less about an individual and more about sharing expectations with a community. Shame on people who can't help but blurt out clumsy penis jokes in essentially tight quarters at a professional conference.
Go and make colorful jokes everywhere and then defend yourself on twitter. Who's stopping you/them? They have twitter accounts, no? Represent yourselves. More words tell us more about you. Maybe we can laugh with you. Maybe your words are so witty that they make us believe you should build our next project? Maybe someone's inability to control their thoughts and words hints at their abilities to develop solid projects following best practices?
Seeing, mostly, entitle, white men parse apart interpretation and imply that women are not thinking critically when supporting an small instance of truth to power smacks of just how low social IQ is amongst the development community. It is inspiring to see the scale of the backlash. More acts of this nature will follow and awareness of expected behavior will have positive effects for women in tech. Nobody is really arguing that clumsy penis jokes have a place in "beige" professional environments, right?
It's not about a silly penis joke. Adria is obviously comfortable with silly penis jokes. It wasn't content, it was all about context. She's not comfortable with certain attendees' sense of entitlement to communicate a message that turns her professional environment into a space where she is not considered equal, let alone valuable. She mentioned the catalyst of the young girl's picture. She and that girl are not annoyances within the men's club of seriously capable developers. They are humans on some point of the same journey as everyone else in attendance. Why should they not be afforded the same benefit of NOT having to constantly worry about some set of barriers to success?
Certain communications in a professional environment indicate if people within that environment have power and control. These comments, in that context, imply that those individuals felt they could not be compelled to behave in socially acceptable ways. If they weren't willing to stand up with their company's logo on their chest and say it through the mic, they know that expressing it in the seats signals to surrounding ears that they have the power to act outside normal bounds of decency. The environment is toxic and hints at even worse environments outside that venue.
Also, wordplay on forking a repo is particularly anti-social. The developer is the actor who is enabled to control the object of the action because the object was not performing for them. An analogy to rape is too obvious. It's just not joke-worthy. The outcome should have been expected. The more we talk, the louder the backlash, but the public awareness is likely to have a net positive effect long-term.
I think we would all do well to pay more attention to this comment. While I disagree entirely with jack_trades, I believe their comment provides the most compelling rationale for both Aria Richards' behavior and that of the PyCon staffers.
It's been a while, but I have encountered these ideas before. This idea that reporting someone to those in authority because their behavior is "indecent" is, somehow, "speaking truth to power". That the off-hand comment of a person is a clear indication of "a sense of entitlement" and "and indication of power and control". The idea that some puns around the term "forking" and "dongles" is not only anti-social but also a clear rape analogy. You may have heard it before as well: 70's era feminist literary theory.
It's not my intention to argue about the validity of Gilbert and Gubar's arguments, I just want to point out that's where I first read about these ideas and first heard a lot of this terminology. I think it's also worthwhile to note that these ideas really took hold in academia, they were talked about quite a bit when I was in college during the 90's.
In any case, in my opinion, the real problem is the complete inversion of power. I understand that there are many environments that make women feel unwelcome and I agree that this needs to change and should change. On the other hand, an environment where men feel unwelcome is not the solution. The goal should be that everyone feels welcome. Aria's solution, keeping everyone on their toes for fear of being "reported" to "the authorities", is no solution.
Consider that the ramifications of public shaming have changed now that your shaming can go viral and become a subject of debate among millions of people worldwide. This isn't even the world of fifteen years ago, and human tribal behavior hasn't adapted to these mediums.
Some man made an inappropriate joke and now the WORLD is shaming him. A woman's shaming tactic has subjected her to WORLD backlash and scrutiny. Both of these escalations happened because handling this infraction was not handled at the proper scope.
The ramification of our current context on undesirable behavior is great, but daunting. The attraction of this issue by that many means it has great importance to that many people. This is the spark.
To see mostly men try to defuse and take air out of the severity or gravity of the blow-up is telling. The ideas coming into play have powerful cascading effects. If you let women stand up for themselves on this, they'll stand up some more, and more, and more... until a certain group of men don't feel comfortable expressing ideas or behaviors that most would know they shouldn't. When those miscreants can't do that, maybe they'll look at my behavior next with a greater sense of entitlement???
For better and worse, we live in the current context and people are learning the new ropes. This is an example, and as I note above... There will be more of this and the net result will be that peoples' better natures will put in check anti-social habits and behaviors.
Bringing to light the issues, through spectacle, and bringing weight, in the form of tighter cycles of mass communication to action is all that "scary social justice theory stuff" becoming agile-like. This is open-source, agile-process social change.
To try to put the brakes on by trying to get people to keep it quiet (yeah, right conference organizers, really? you've seen how this works at universities) or to rein in the pace or scope of change is to be on the wrong side of history.
We are headed towards meritocracy and some people are fearful of what that implies.
In your theory, how do you make sure that only good shaming and not bad shaming happens? How do you be sure that people don't post hateful provocative lies about people that make them the subject of this social pressure, or at the far end, mob violence?
It's not about "keeping it quiet," it's about being responsible and filtering what you say before you just upload it to the world, because it could turn into a conflagration.
>you've seen how this works at universities
I saw a while back how a campus exploded because somebody saw a person walking at night with a blanket wrapped around them and thought it was a KKK member. Great plan you got here, have you ever considered how it could go wrong?
PyCon is a conference for Python programmers, professional and amateur, no where is the term "professionals only" stated. It's a conference for people who have an interest in Python.
If it is, maybe I missed the business attire requirement, and requirement that you have to be a professional Python programmer sent as a representative of a company to attend.
There are professional conferences, very corporate in nature, PyCon is not one of them.
It's not a professional conference any more then a Star Trek convention is professional.
The PyCon code of conduct[1] appears to clearly disagree with your characterization that the event is not for a professional audience:
> All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks.
> Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other attendees. Behave professionally. Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary jokes are not appropriate for PyCon.
I understand you're trying to use "professional" in the sense of being someone who earns their living using the language and wears a stuffy suit, but that's not the sense used by the GP or PyCon.
Do you think a code of contact like that is only required in professional settings? I would imagine Star Trek conventions probably have codes of conduct that read pretty similar, if you remove the explicit references to professional conduct in particular. Same with a classical music convention, or something. They probably don't explicitly say you must act in a professional manner, but I would imagine the other requirements would match pretty well.
Even if it wasn't a professional conference, as another poster said, it was "professional-for-them" if their badgest identified them as being affiliated with one of the conference sponsors. I wouldn't have responded as Adria did, but I do believe they should have acted more professionally, which would include recognizing that their private conversations could be easily overheard.
I believe that Adria Richards did not handle the situation appropriately. I believe she's being a hypocrite by taking offense one day, and making her own penis joke on Twitter the next. I believe that she's further stoking the internet's rage by refusing to admit any fault. I think the other women that are jumping to her defense are doing themselves, and women in technology a disservice. They are not thinking critically or putting themselves in the conference attendee's shoes. I'm quite sure they would not like to be publicly outed for a private conversation.
Public shaming was not the right way to handle the situation. An apology from Adria would have gone a long way in defusing the situation. She chose not to go this route. I'm sad that a silly penis joke turned in to this.
Preemptive Edit: I do NOT believe that ANYONE should suffer the wrath of the Internet. I do NOT believe that ANY conference attendees should have to sit idly by and listen to penis jokes. I'm only saying that publicly shaming these guys was a mistake, and that an apology for the mistake could have basically fixed the problem before it got this far.