I remember when this incident happened. I can't remember what my reaction was at the time (probably a combination of "let's not alienate women in tech further" and "sexual jokes are OK in the right context, and a conf is propably not it") but reading this excerpt - particularly reading about Adria's continued anger(?) at Hank - really shocked me.
The issue was that the sexual joke - a subtle and not particularly harmful one - was part of a private conversation between the two men. Richards inserted herself into that situation and made a big deal out of it. OK, you could say, she felt upset at their language, so maybe reporting it to the conference organizers was fine. But sic'ing her twitter mob on the men essentially invited the backlash that followed.
Is private the right word? I don't think they were trying to share their conversation with the rest of the room, but they also didn't go very far in trying to keep it from the rest of the room.
In a legal sense, private more or less goes out the window when you share something with a third party, a court would be unlikely to step in and protect the privacy of a conversation held in a shared space.
The internet conversation certainly doesn't have to use the legal definition, but "private" does sort of invoke the idea that the communication is intentionally being held close, and if you are talking in a room with other people, you aren't working very hard at that.
Well, "private" in the sense that it was two people speaking one-on-one in a personal conversation, and not attempting to gain the attention of others in the area.
Obviously not "private" in the sense that they were attempting to keep their communications confidential.
I remember this too. When sendgrid was ddosed, as a company that entirely depended on sendgrid to send mails (I had joined recently), we were affected too. Since then, we run postfix and use multiple email providers behind it, but ironic how a tweet affected so many people.
She lost her job and faced the usual (sadly) torrent of internet abuse. I really dare you to be cool then … I mean, the gall of some people. That’s so fucking weird.
In my view no one should have been fired here and that’s that.
We are facing a huge problem. Abuse and harassment run rampant and I bet that’s one of the reasons why some women are very, very sensitive to some things. That’s the problem to solve here.
When I was ~17, I was cast out of an online community that I had been working in/with for around 3-4 years. Overnight I lost my hobby, my so-called friends, and my entire personal life was examined in detail and revealed to the public for mocking/the enjoyment of the perpetrators.
Anyway, the scope of the backlash was not the same as it would be these days (because of the availability of Internet access for one) but my entire life was turned upside down for several years. I had to go into virtual hiding for a while. I'm 29 and I still feel shame thinking about it, even though I'm not entirely sure what it was I did "wrong".
So, I think that I have a tiny smidgen of an idea of what it's like (maybe?) and I still don't get Adria's anger.
There's only one way to reach peace: By not attacking the other party and by giving up past debts, altogether at a country level.
Example: The current way we deal with respect for women in IT is to raise those problems, get people fired, give women the promotion preference, and shame reluctant minds. If those actions leave scars in the sentiments of males, we won't be any closer to peace, confidence and safety between the two genders.
After WWII, the German people started to learn French and the French people started to learn German, among a lot of similar things. We need to find what will lead us to work together and acknowledge each other's qualities, more than attacking each other on legal grounds.
I get that, and I empathise for Adria, but Hank isn't the perpetrator of the abuse. It's the direction of Adria's anger that shocked me, not that she's angry.
