Friday, March 22, 2013

Terrifying, Escalating Sexism

A lot of people in the tech community have been abuzz about the recent story of Adria Richards, and I'd like to comment on it as a woman in technology, and as an observer of some pretty scary, sickening behavior.

Adria is a developer evangelist and a woman of color who attended PyCon, a large conference for Pyton developers. Up until today, she was employed by a company called SendGrid.

Here is a timeline of what has transpired as I understand it:

1. Last Sunday, Adria was at a keynote talk at PyCon. Two men behind her who work at PlayHaven, Alex Reid and "Mr. Hank", made inappropriate jokes about forking and dongles. It is worth noting that both Alex and Hank were clearly wearing company T-Shirts, and were attending this event as Gold Level company sponsor representatives.

2. Adria tweeted about how their joke was unprofessional and posted their photograph. She blogged about the incident, and how it was not inline with PyCon's rule of proper conduct for the conference. She also contacted the PyCon organizers. [1]

3. The chair of PyCon, Jesse Noller, addressed the parties privately, and amicably resolved the issue in order to continue a peaceful conference. [2]

4. Hank is fired from PlayHaven. He posted an oddly worded apology in Hacker News, mentioning they didn't mean anything at all sexual about their jokes, how it was just her interpretation, and, by the way, getting fired "sucks" because he is a father of three. [3]

5. Adria posts a kind note to Hank on the thread, apologizing for him losing his job, and encouraging his company to reconsider their actions. [4]. Several people attack her for this apology, actually, though Hank comments that he thought the gesture was kind. [5].

6. A petition is started online to save Hank's job, entitled, "Give the mistreated employee their job back". [6]. I've grouped the comments into common sexist tropes to help make it easier to skim.
Supporting the family man: "Dude, the guy has three kids and really enjoyed his job and is getting fired over the sensitive feelings of an already biased towards men female? Right on guys."

Bashing the feminists: "So it has come to a point where feminists have to make every joke between some friends a personal attack. This woman wasn't even involved in their conversation. She didn't even understand their jokes and yet the guys have to suffer for it? It's not fair."

Lighten up it's just a joke: "You should fire every developer who has ever made a harmless joke about about "forking", "fscking", or "Big O". Because god forbid people have fun while they work."

"If they were honestly fired for making a dongle joke to themselves and some over reacting bitch felt the need to get so pissed off I don't think I want to live on this planet anymore." 
Godwin's Law (Comparisons to Nazism): "Shameful. Just shameful. I, and others in the very liberally-oriented music industry have done this same thing at conferences, meetings and corporate get-togethers for the last 35 years now. There is no harm associated with this kind or type of behaviour, other than offending the occasional feminist shill... When did we become Nazi Germany and begin to turn in our fellow citizens for crimes of "humour" or "sexism?" Give the damn guy his job back, willya - and stop being so politically correct..."

"People like Adria Richards are little more than fascists"

"Please don't support her oppression and viciousness." 
One woman is all women: "This is absolutely disgusting! Adria Richard's actions have made it difficult for women to be properly accepted in the tech industry!"
I'm going to pause here, because I think if we review the facts thus far we can agree that perhaps this situation could have gone differently. As many people in these comment threads have stated, would it not have been better for Adria to have simply addressed the commenters directly, rather than calling them out publicly on Twitter? Perhaps. But at this point the cat is out of the bag, and I think here we can see in (5) that Adria expressed sincerely that she wishes Hank had not been fired.

7. Sometime around Wednesday, Jesse Noller starts receiving threatening phone calls, which scare him and his wife. [7]. Apparently the harassers do not like the fact that he helped pioneer (and enforce) a Code of Conduct for PyCon, in order to make it more welcoming place to women and other groups underrepresented in computing. [8].

8. Adria receives death threats, rape threats, racial slurs, sexist slurs, and calls that she kill herself.  Here are several:
"Cunt of the Year" goes to early entry @adriarichards. [t1]

"I'm pretty sure that Adria Richards has set women in technology back 50 years. What a bitch." [t2]

"Did that desperate attention whore and "diversity hire" Adria Richards get the wrong guy fired?"[t3]
"@adriarichards Shut the fuck up stupid bitch and go to the kitchen" [t4] 
"@adriarichards you need to kill youself tranny what you did was wrong"[t5]

"@adriarichards you are a stupid uneducated filthy nigger who deserves to die" [t6]

"@adriarichards You are a pure cunt for what you did. I hope you get Cancer and die a slow and painful death. I will celebrate your death" [t7]

"@adriarichards THIS COCK OF MINE IS BURNING RED ITS LOUD ROAR TELLS ME TO RAPE YOU" [t8]  
9. On Wednesday, Adria receives a photo of a, "beheaded woman, bound and stripped, with the caption 'when Im done.' Next to it was [her] home address and phone number."[9].

10. Several petitions demanding Adria be fired are posted, on change.org and elsewhere. [10].

11. On Thursday, someone (Anonymous(?)) posts on pastebin that while they think these petitions are great, they doubt SendGrid will pay attention to them. So, instead, the threaten SendGrid: [11]
...You[r] client list has also been obtained by Anonymous. They have already begun harassing your customers. These include obnoxious phone calls, emails, denial of service attacks, online vandalism and defamation, and even real-life harassment...Anonymous has analyzed your business model, and based on your clientele and competitors, you are very vulnerable. They are very focused on this.

Your financial backers have also been targeted for the same harassment. Normally, when a venture capitalist puts money into your organization, a bond is forged through your idea or product gaining the confidence of your financial backer for future returns. This is a strong bond that is not easily broken through petty harassment. However, if any of your backers have something embarrassing or illegal to hide (sexual misconduct, tax fraud, etc), Anonymous WILL find it (they are good at doing this) and make it public.

Real life harassment is an escalation that comes into play based on how long this situation is allowed to play out. It is not affected by the effectiveness of the previous forms of harassment. Even if your customers and financial backers are dropping like flies (or the opposite, entirely unaffected), this will still happen if Anonymous still maintains an interest in this situation. Doxing is a term used to define the discovery and dissemination of all personal information, including but not limited to home address, phone numbers, credit card numbers, your medical records, what brand of toothpaste you buy, etc. If some of the more talented members of Anonymous take an interest into this, every employee of Sendgrid becomes a target, starting at the top. For your reference, this is already happening to Ms. Richards as per standard protocol.

...You do have a choice to make at this point: Do nothing, or Publicly announce that Ms. Richards will be fired. The opportunity to stop this growing mob in its tracks before it tries to tear Sendgrid apart is as simple as publicly announcing Ms. Richards' firing. Now, you also have the opportunity to be sneaky about it and just publicly announcing the firing but not actually do it. But if Anonymous ever finds out, they will bring the full fury on you and your company. To put it in perspective, not even secure government websites are safe. If you believe you can tough it out, by all means, do nothing.
12. Later on Thursday, SendGrid is victim to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. [12]. Adria's personal site was also attacked (though hers is protected by CloudFire). Kris Holt has a good break down of how these attacks were organized on 4chan. [13].

13. SendGrid announces on Twitter and Facebook that they have fired Adria Richards. Immediately their posts get a lot of "likes", and very vile comments against Adria are posted. [14].

And here we are.

Three things greatly trouble me about all of this:

1) Rape Culture. Death threats. Racial and Sexist name calling. None of this is ok, ever. I don't need to explain this further, do I?

2) 4chan-ers/Anon/whomever managed to easily cyberbully SendGrid into firing Adria. If I was a CEO of a small startup company with 130,000 customers and received a threat like that, I might acquiesce too. It's a credible threat. (Though, I probably would have first contacted the FBI before acting.).

3) Although he's not getting as much press, I'm also troubled by the fact that Jesse Noller is getting threats. Based on some comments I've read of his on github, it seems like his heart is in the right place with both the original Code of Conduct and its revisions.

In any case, there are a lot of factors at play in this story, and this is a complex situation, but I think it all warrants a larger discussion. I welcome your comments.

48 comments:

  1. Wow, that's scary. Is there any possibility of organizing a counter-protest?

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    1. That's a good question, though I'm not sure who we are would protest against. I can't entirely blame SendGrid - they were a small startup company held hostage by hackers.

      Perhaps Chris Poole for not shutting the 4chan threads down, maybe. I would hope he would at the very least share the IP addresses of the DDOS instigators to the police/FBI.

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    2. Very late to this (in interwebz time), I would say that, yes, protesting to SendGrid would be appropriate. Of course Chris Poole, I agree, but I don't understand a reluctance to hold SendGrid responsible for their action.

      I would also say that contacting SendGrid's known clients, such as Pandora, would also be appropriate. Obviously, this contact would be courteous, but blatant discrimination such as this should be discussed far and wide.

      I also found this essay interesting: http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2013/03/28/a-white-boys-observations-of-sexism-and-the-adria-richards-fiasco/


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  2. This whole thing escalated so quickly. There really has to be a way to handle this without everyone fired and unhappy.

    The virulent misogyny that rose up in response to this is frightening. It's been very eye opening to see.

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    1. I agree. This is why I posted some of the comments directly - to bring light to how truly virulent this has become.

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  3. Those aren't death threats.

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    1. She received the photo of a woman bound, gagged, raped, and murdered, with her home telephone number and address next to it. The caption was, "when Im done". http://www.dailydot.com/news/adria-richards-fired-sendgrid-violent-backlash/

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    2. Yeah, I'm not a specialist in death threat literature or anything, but I'm pretty sure the above qualifies...

      -A different Anon

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    3. "Those aren't death threats"? Jesus Christ, if that picture doesn't qualify as a death threat, what the hell DOES?

      I don't care if one despises Adria Richards, if one completely disagrees with what she did, or whatever the hell. Sending that picture is a crime. Full damn stop.

      Here's hoping that the FBI can track down whoever the hell sent that picture. We'll see how tough he is when he spends some time at Leavenworth.

      --yet another Anon

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  4. What happened to voicing your opinion in a courteous way? Maybe it never really was ideal, but the anonymity of the internet has made it orders of magnitude worse. It even seems to be socially accepted to some extent. Sigh.

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    1. (Apologies, anon@8:09 - I misread your post. Please ignore my other comment)

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  5. There are no good guys in this story. Some are clearly worse than others, but no one was in the right at any point here.

    When did firing someone become the first level of punishment?

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  6. FYI the jokes about forking were *not* sexual. Adria added the sexual connotation in her own mind.
    The jokes about forking were about forking git repositories in the context of "forking is flattery".

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  7. The jokes about dongles and forks were in no way more inappropriate than what Adria herself wrote about on Twitter, publicly, while at PyCon:
    http://i.imgur.com/nRC5J7f.png



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  8. Even if she overreacted since when does that make death/rape threats ok? At this point the original joke almost seems beside the point. Since when do we jump past any semblance of a reasonable discussion to threats of violence? People are getting hung up on the technicalities of the joke being ok or not and this obsession some men have with never having their behavior questioned.

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  9. For the beginning, I had problems getting into this article for the following reasons.

    >> 1. Alex Reid and "Mr. Hank", made inappropriate jokes about forking and dongles.

    They *supposedly* and *subjectively* made inappropriate jokes. Having this as part of your summation of events implies a bias onto your article.

    >> 2. Adria tweeted about how their joke was unprofessional and posted their photograph. She blogged about the incident, and how it was not inline with PyCon's rule of proper conduct for the conference.

    And posted the photograph without their consent. You don't mention this, or that it *might* be against proper conduct.

    >> 4. Hank ... posted an oddly worded apology in Hacker News, mentioning they didn't mean anything at all sexual about their jokes, how it was just her interpretation, and, by the way, getting fired "sucks" because he is a father of three.

    Why do you need to mention that it was oddly worded when *summarizing* the events? It's an unnecessary feature implicitly weakens his reply.

    5. Adria posts a kind note to Hank.

    So, Hank is 'oddly-worded'. Adria is 'kind'? You flippantly say 'and, by the way, getting fired "sucks" because he is a father of three' - regarding Hank's comment. You don't say 'and, by the way, Adria said "sorry".

    Further, you then mention "several people attack her for this apology". You don't mention that several people have attacked Hank as being a sexist pig, who deserved to lose his job, as bad as a rapist, a poster-child of a despicable culture, and so on.

    What I'm trying to say is that article appears loaded with bias. For example, you mention: a petition is started online to save Hank's job. You don't mention that the same has been done for Adria? Or the tropes that have been used to argue for her reinstatement.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm not wanting to declare a side this post - rather, the opposite. To make an informed article, you need to consider both sides, weight your arguments, and substantiate every point you make with evidence which is difficult to counter. At present, you don't do this.

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    1. This isn't a "pick a side". There are multiple sides. But perhaps you should consider that if you've just divided this into two sides, how can you not see one "side"'s resort to rape and death threats as a game-over-you-lose move? No human deserves that.

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    2. I'm afraid D. Reed has hit the nail on the head here. Whatever your take on the incidents in question, this article is a long way from objective commentary, and as a result serves only to exacerbate the situation.

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    3. D. Reed,

      From the beginning, I had problems getting into your comment because:

      1. You missed the whole damned point of what FCS wrote.
      Try reading this for a short and sweet version of the same idea: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/03/21/two-simple-observations-regarding-women/

      You won't get distracted by the details, but of course if you know little or nothing about the incident, you won't be informed of the details, either.

      2. "WHAT ABOUT THE MENZZ!!! OH MY GOD, THE MENZZZ!!!" Seriously?
      (And I say this as a straight white male who thinks ALL the firings were probably overreactions --unless, as some news reports suggest, this was just the final straw for "Mr. Hank." )

      3. "Further, you then mention "several people attack her for this apology". You don't mention that several people have attacked Hank as being a sexist pig, who deserved to lose his job, as bad as a rapist, a poster-child of a despicable culture, and so on."

      So you're equating a woman getting attacked (and sent death / rape threats) for saying that she's sorry the guy got fired and that his company should rethink this... with a man getting attacked (though not sent rape/death threats to my knowledge) for allegedly telling sexually offensive jokes in an inappropriate setting?


      4. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not wanting to declare a side this post - rather, the opposite."

      I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit.
      (And also second what Anonymous at March 22, 2013 at 2:45 PM said.)

      5. "To make an informed article, you need to consider both sides, weight your arguments, and substantiate every point you make with evidence which is difficult to counter."

      The post isn't about trying to convict the original jokesters in a court of law. In fact, it's not about them at all. It's about how it's messed up that we live in a culture where Adria received threats of rape and murder FOR ANY REASON, much less for her supposed offenses (especially publicly apologizing --GASP!) in this case.

      As I read it, the summary was for people like me who hadn't followed the whole story until today. FCS cited her sources, and you haven't cited yours, so your accusations of bias aren't all that credible, but in any case the Monday morning quarterbacking misses the point (i.e., as our hostess wrote: "Death threats. Racial and Sexist name calling. None of this is ok, ever. I don't need to explain this further, do I?")

      But, sadly, maybe this does need to be explained to people.

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    4. You realize: linking to other articles, 'WHAT ABOUT THE MENZZ!!! OH MY GOD, THE MENZZZ!!!" Seriously?', calling bullshit, aren't arguments. They're quips. I'll argue against them once they are substantiated.

      In turn, you reason that I'm: "equating a woman getting attacked (and sent death / rape threats) for saying that she's sorry the guy got fired and that his company should rethink this ... with a man getting attacked (though not sent rape/death threats to my knowledge) for allegedly telling sexually offensive jokes in an inappropriate setting?".

      I do not argue that they're morally equal - only that they are both contextually worthy of note. Balance is the meat good journalism. Therewith, in such an article as this, one needs to succinctly review the whole landscape, rather than point to the most repungent. That's Daily Mail tactic; to include the objectively disgusting, ignoring the subjective gray-area.

      Admittedly, yes, I didn't post any citations. As said, I'll try to dig them out for you.

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    5. @ you should consider that if you've just divided this into two sides, how can you not see one "side"'s resort to rape and death threats as a game-over-you-lose move? No human deserves that.

      The side you're referring to is that of the internet and the mod. It is not, intrinsically, that of the male actors in this event. That is why I believe their 'side' would be included for balance.

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    6. D. Reed, my point is that at this stage, what Adria Richards did can be likened to a hand grenade, and the "collective wisdom" (sic) of 4chan decided to drop a nuclear weapon on her, her company, her company's clients, and Jesse Noller. This is not a proportional response whatsoever.

      As others have pointed out, at this point it doesn't matter how she handled the original situation. What matters is the insane, violence-instigating misogyny in these groups, which has already lead to cybercrimes, and could possibly escalate into physical violence given the level of threats that have been made.

      You're welcome to attack my lack of journalistic ability, I am, afterall, a Computer Scientist and not a journalist, but I think that detracts from the real argument here, an argument that is terrifying to me.

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    7. "As others have pointed out, at this point it doesn't matter how she handled the original situation."

      FCS, how can you write that with a straight face? Two MEN making off color jokes objectifying MEN, and a party not privy to the conversation invokes the nuclear option. What would you expect the reaction to be? Based on Richards' resorting to hyperbole, what we are witnessing is hyperbole escalation. Had she made the right first move, which is to confront the two directly and explained to them that their comments were offensive to her, (a) the two men probably would have done the decent thing and toned it down, and (b) we wouldn't be having this discussion. But the moment she escalated to the greater audience without giving the two men a chance to rectify the situation, she gave up control. When you voluntarily give up control, you must accept the consequences. Now, that does not excuse more bad behavior on the part of other commenters, but to expect anything different is truly, truly naive, considering human nature.

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    8. Phil, no human being ever deserves rape threats and death threats for anything they do. FULL STOP.

      I actually do expect better behavior, especially of the hackers. These attacks were clearly not Anonymous-cannon, considering this tweet, "Misogyny? Not in tech, you say? Adria Richards fired by @SendGrid for outing developers on Twitter" [t1]

      Also, they've been doing more positive hactivism lately - thwarting Westboro church protests at the Sandy Hook and Adam Schwartz funerals, rallying attention to the Rohingya massacres, even Steubenville.

      They have #RapeCulture hash tags. They tweet things like this, "People need to understand if you bully a rape victim and #Anonymous finds out, you're fucked. #OpRaider" (via @DBCOOPA)". [t2]

      So if one were to argue that Anonymous-cannon is rape-is-bad, massacre-is-bad, misogyny-is-bad, I think it is perfectly logical to think other hackers can also see the light. I do not think it is naive at all.

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    9. All true and quite irrelevant. My point is that when you consciously give up control of the situation, you need to be prepared to deal with the consequences. Human nature, being what it is, will bring out the worst in people who feel threatened. I suspect that Richards may have learned a valuable lesson in this regard, unless she is so solipsistic that she is beyond redemption.

      Anonymous is not a culture. At best it/they have limited shelf life. Further, Anonymous only has power within the grid. Outside the grid, Anonymous is totally powerless. Which means that for 98% of all human interaction, Anonymous doesn't even show up on the radar. Hackers probably spend more time plugged in than the average human, but you are discounting the fact that every hacker has a set of personal values, and no two are the same.

      So, you can expect better behavior. My advice is to prepare to be disappointed.

      I would have fired Richards too. But then, all my employees understand the basic escalation process as I alluded to in my earlier comment.

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    10. "My point is that when you consciously give up control of the situation, you need to be prepared to deal with the consequences."

      Rape threats and death threats are not the consequences. They should never be the consequences. None of us should be accepting of that. You, too, should be enraged by that. Your attitude instead sounds very defeatist.

      "I suspect that Richards may have learned a valuable lesson in this regard"

      This type of statement is called "victim blaming". From http://stoprelationshipabuse.org/educated/avoiding-victim-blaming/ :

      Example of Victim-Blaming Attitude: “She must have provoked him into being abusive. They both need to change.”



      Reality: This statement assumes that the victim is equally to blame for the abuse, when in reality, abuse is a conscious choice made by the abuser.


      With the victim blaming stance, Adria is fully to blame for the rape and death threats she received, her company fully deserves the terroristic threats, because she "gave up control".

      "Further, Anonymous only has power within the grid. Outside the grid, Anonymous is totally powerless. Which means that for 98% of all human interaction, Anonymous doesn't even show up on the radar. "

      If you rile up the crazies, dox a victim, and give their personal information to the crazies on a silver platter, that most definitely is power, and that power can be used to incite violence. The meatspace vs. internet distinction becomes irrelevant. All it takes is one violently-inclined person to escalate this.

      "So, you can expect better behavior. My advice is to prepare to be disappointed."

      I absolutely expect better behavior. Always. I too have my set of personal values, which says that we should avoid creating a culture where raping and killing women is ok. My suspicion is the people behind these attacks got caught up in the moment, and did not stop to think about their consequences of their actions.

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    11. I fear you are living in a fantasy world. The basic nature of human beings is evil, as evidenced throughout history. I did not teach my children to lie or fight, yet they engaged in these behaviors without any coaching whatsoever.

      So, expect all the better behavior you want, but you are being totally unrealistic if you think anything will change. It may do you some good to study human behavior instead of computer science for a while.

      "My suspicion is the people behind these attacks got caught up in the moment, and did not stop to think about their consequences of their actions."

      Which, interestingly, is what Richards did. ;-)

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    12. Phil, your point about your children is exactly why we DO need to expect better behavior from people and build a culture where falling short of those expectations is unacceptable. You *didn't* have to teach your children to fight and lie, you had to teach them *not to.*

      But I don't know why I'm even engaging, when it's clear you just want to troll. Somehow it doesn't surprise me that someone whose Blogger profile includes the gem below thinks than simple non-misogyny is out of reach for most people:

      "Why do women let their mouths hang open when they apply eye makeup?"

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    13. Actually, you do know why you are responding; lie to me, but not to yourself. As to trolling, I can only assume that you are resorting to accusations and ad hominem because you cannot come up with a counter argument.

      I am attempting to educate. Attempts at changing human nature have failed for thousands of years. My issue is not with the content of the reaction to Richards' misdeeds. My issue is that she, and FCS, expected anything but what happened.

      In fact, the trolls were actually the ones that made the threats. The behavior you decry was totally predictable. I was not surprised. Why was FCS? My kids are grown and on their own. Guess what? They still lie and they still fight. They are much more sophisticated and subtle, but humans that they are, they slip up and are evil from time to time. Just like me. Just like you. Just like Richards and the two men she publicly humiliated.

      So, my contention has nothing to do with "mysongyny" and everything to do with understanding human behavior, which, by the way, has not substantially changed any time during recorded history.

      Therefore, you may attempt to change human nature all you want to. You will fail. It is better to recognize the inevitable and conduct your actions accordingly.

      I will say this: I think the biggest difference between myself and FCS (and possibly you) is decades more experience at life. It does indeed give you a different perspective. Especially when you have lived a large part of in multiple cultures.

      As for the quote in my profile, my wife gave me that gem. (I never watch women apply makeup, so I wouldn't have otherwise known. When she related it, I thought it was humorous.) Is she mysogynous?

      Rhetorical question. I will trouble you no more in this thread. It has been a good discussion, and I have enjoyed it. I will await another interesting installment in the main blog.

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    14. “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”

      I am not living in a fantasy world, I am challenging everyone reading this to work to build a better world. I am challenging everyone to be in a fury over the misogynistic terrorism in this story, and to enable themselves to act to do something about it.

      I do not agree that human nature is fundamentally evil. I tend to think most people have a "neural good alignment" if you've ever played D&D. The fringe crazies hold far more power and receive far more attention from the media than they should. I actually suspect most people involved in the misogynistic-terror-mob probably got swept up in things, Zimbardo-style.

      Stephen Pinker and others have argued that our society is actually becoming less violent, media sensationalism non-withstanding. c.f. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228340.100-steven-pinker-humans-are-less-violent-than-ever.html

      So, yes, I have hope for humanity. I am very sorry that you don't.

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  10. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEO-ADIniag

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  11. Bob Arthur:

    So you're saying that, because FCS had the gall to express a point of view on her own blog, that this post makes things worse than the existing threats of rape, mutilation, and death? Really?

    Given the status quo, I think it would be hard to "exacerbate the situation" without resorting to physical violence (which I hope doesn't happen to anyone).

    There really aren't two sides to FCS's main argument: If you're threatening rape, mutilation, and murder, you are wrong. And on the other hand... there is no other hand.

    I hope you'd agree that no matter whose actions you personally think were more stupid leading up to this whole clusterf#@%, that racist, sexist, violent threats are not an acceptable response.

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    1. The men in question weren't threatening rape, mutilation, and murder.

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    2. @Anonymous "So you're saying that, because FCS had the gall to express a point of view on her own blog, that this post makes things worse than the existing threats of rape, mutilation, and death? Really?"

      Nope, that's not what I'm saying at all. What I said is what I'm saying. If you can't discern a difference, that's your lookout.

      At no point did either I or D. Reed say anything to condone or trivialise the vile threats made against those involved in this incident. You do understand that one can disagree with one person without automatically taking the view of their polar opposite, right?

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    3. Anon @ March 22 at 5:46 PM:

      No one said they were. No one implied they were. No one thinks they were.

      And that's to the point I was making: It's *not* about the original incident. FCS was, rightly I think, drawing attention to the batshit crazy people out there who are threatening rape, mutilation, and murder, in the fallout over that incident, and who are actually conducting real-life cyber crimes over it.

      -Anonymous @ March 22 at 5:34 PM



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    4. Nobody has a right to make terroristic threats. However, when you enlist authority to police other people's private speech, and then boast of your heroics on the Internet, there is going to be a backlash.

      Numerous threats were made against Todd Akin after his demonstrably stupid remarks about rape. Nobody wrung their hands about "escalation," because it was generally understood an idiot deserves to suffer public outrage.

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    5. @Anon 8:44 - I'm not sure if you're replying to my comments or someone elses', but as I said above - no one ever deserves rape threats or death threats, full stop. Even Todd Akin.

      And indeed, both the capitol police and the FBI did "wring their hands" about the escalation. [wp].

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  12. FCS, with all due respect, I think your post is not representing things fairly or accurately. You're conflating two very different questions: (a) the question of whether the outrage in the hacker community was justified, and (b) how that outrage was expressed. As far as I can tell, everyone in this thread, without exception, agrees wholeheartedly with you that there is no justification whatsoever for the kind of threats that Adria Richards has been receiving. People who make death or rape threats against other people--irrespective of gender, race, or age--deserve to be pursued and prosecuted to the full extent of the law; their behavior is despicable.

    What many of the commenters object to here is your misrepresentation of the first issue. The facts are, I would argue, quite clear: Adria Richards in effect publicly outed two members of the hacker community for jokes that were not (despite your intimation) clearly inappropriate or sexual, and certainly were not sexist. Moreover, as many people have pointed out, Adria Richards had herself made comparably off-color jokes *at the same conference, in public on her Twitter feed*. It is the height of hypocrisy and poor behavior to make arguably inappropriate jokes in public one's self and then publicly post people's photo online while complaining said jokes were threatening the future of women in programming (which is exactly what she claimed in her defense, if you read her blog). As for her firing, I'm with many other people in thinking this was a lamentable move on SendGrid's part, but it's hard to see how SendGrid could have avoided firing Richards after the event given that her job description is *to maintain good public relations with software developers*. As the SendGrid CEO correctly noted, there was simply no way Richards was going to be effective at her job from here on out.

    Again, I don't see why you feel the need to conflate these two issues. There is nothing inconsistent or morally wrong with saying that Richards acted despicably and deserved to lose her job (though maybe not so immediately and so publicly) while also adamantly maintaining that the people who are threatening her life now are an order of magnitude worse than Richards and fully deserve to be pursued and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The commenters who are objecting here are *not* objecting to your charge of terrifying escalating sexism; they are not in any way condoning sexism or rape culture. As far as I can tell everyone agrees that there is a serious cultural problem here that needs to be addressed, because it has chilling, dire effects. What people are pointing out is that the ends not justify the means in this case; you don't get to mischaracterize the situation in your post and paint Adria Richards as a misunderstood martyr just to make a point. You can make the same point just as effectively (in fact, I would argue more effectively) by conceding that the anger directed at Richards was actually quite justified (and would have been equally justified had she been a man), and that it's the *way* that outrage has been expressed that is ugly, vile and reveals a deep current of sexism in our society.

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    1. @ Anonymous March 23, 2013 at 8:29 AM

      If you read the title of the post, you'll see that it isn't about providing a journalistic look at exactly what happened in the initial accident. Instead, it's about "Terrifying, Escalating Sexism." It doesn't surprise me, then, that the post focuses on the rampant sexism (which is real and not a matter of "he said, she said," as one could argue the original incident to be).

      If you read carefully, you'll see that FCS actually says almost nothing about the men involved in the incident, except to point out that Mr. Hank responded very politely to Richards' apology. Almost all of what one could take as attacks on the men involved are actually direct quotes illustrating the sexism of their supposed supporters.

      She does also point out Mr. Hank's quote about having three kids, but if you're looking at this whole debacle through the lens of sexism (as, again, the title stated) it's easy to see that as an appeal to the sexist idea that men are the sole breadwinners in our society.

      FCS does address, in passing, the idea that Richards could have responded more productively to the joke, but makes it clear that this isn't the topic she's exploring in this post.

      "I'm going to pause here, because I think if we review the facts thus far we can agree that perhaps this situation could have gone differently. As many people in these comment threads have stated, would it not have been better for Adria to have simply addressed the commenters directly, rather than calling them out publicly on Twitter? Perhaps. But at this point the cat is out of the bag..."

      So, while I actually agree with you completely that Richards handled the situation very poorly,* I don't think that's the point of the conversation taking place on this particular blog. FCS is talking about the sexist, terroristic _responses_ to the incident, and I would argue that it is actually you (and a number of others here in the comments) who are conflating these two issues.

      You are right that Richards handled things badly.* FCS is right that that's completely irrelevant to her point, which is that (as you clearly agree) criminal acts and threats of rape and murder are unacceptable, and the culture that gives rise to them is a serious problem.

      I'm not sure you two disagree at all, but you're both focusing on different things. The difference is that this is FCS's blog, so it actually doesn't make a lot of sense to come in and tell her that she can't focus on the part that's of most interest to her.

      There are plenty of other blog posts out there dealing with who did what in the initial incident, and how they could have done better. But you could always blog on it yourself, if you truly think that needs more coverage. FCS has made one of the few contributions I've seen that sets that aside to focus solely on the wider issue of the violently misogynistic response to the incident. Personally, I think it's stronger for not going down the "he said, she said" rabbit hole.




      *In saying this, I should admit that I've never been in a like position (I'm a white male, and I don't work in an environment generally accepted to be hostile to white males), so while I can't imagine dealing with the situation as Richards did, I also can't fully imagine what it's like to be in that situation at all, so I might not have responded as constructively as I'd like to think, if I were genuinely in her place.

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  13. Hadn't heard about this story until your post. Now I remember why I left the computer science field... ugh.

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    1. Anon @10am, I'm so sorry you left our field.

      At several points throughout my career, after some pretty atrocious acts, I too have contemplated leaving. But I love technology and am too stubborn to leave, so I stick around. I try to turn the bad situations into good ones, by mentoring young women in the field, by teaching, by blogging, etc. My hope is that I am helping young women see that they can persevere as well.

      I see large positive efforts to help women in tech succeed - from CRA-W, NCWIT, Anita Borg Institute, Girls Who Code, etc., that I truly believe like we'll get there some day.

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  14. Look, if FCS just wants to make the point that the sexism on display is unacceptable, I think everyone here can get behind that. But it's a cop-out to present a distorted version of events in the first third of the post, and then complain that it's not fair for people to object, because that wasn't really the point of the post. Just as FCS is free to write about whatever she likes, commenters are free to focus on whatever part of the post they like. The point I was making was not so much that FCS is wrong on the details (though she is), but that she does a disservice to her own cause (which is a noble one) by injecting irrelevant and biased commentary. I'm not saying she shouldn't write about the thing she cares about; I'm saying that when you write demonstrably incorrect things about a heated issue, you're going to get people objecting to those inaccuracies even if they're not the thing you wanted to talk about.

    You misunderstand me if you think that I think Richards' actions deserve more attention. I don't. What I'm saying is that if FCS doesn't think Richards' action are relevant to her point (and I agree, they aren't), she shouldn't present a skewed version of events that clearly casts Richards in a much more positive light than she deserves. The better way to write this post, in my view, would have been to say up front "look, it doesn't matter what you think about Richards, so I'm not going to try to take sides on that issue. Here's what I actually want to talk about." My point was that if FCS had completely ignored the issue of whether Richards was right or wrong, instead of taking a questionable stance on it, she would have been in a better position to communicate the thing she actually cares about (and that I think we mostly agree with), and the comment thread probably wouldn't have been derailed by a series of criticisms that, while they may miss the forest, are actually quite understandable given the contextual trees.

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  15. Anonymous @ 10:39 am, thank u ever so much for 'splaining the "right" way to write this post! I am not sure any of us could have understood that rape, mutilation, & death threats are wrong without your help. Or should I say, I am not sure that the discussion about this and the issue of terrifying, escalating sexism could have been so effectively derailed without your help.

    Why. Don't. You. Get. Your. Own. Fucking. Blog.

    You can call it "How to Concern Troll a Disscussion of Sexist Terrorism".

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    1. I'm with Zuska on the GYOFB front. The better way to get the post you want, in my view, would have been to write it yourself.

      The point I'm making is not that you're wrong about the details (though you've done nothing to establish that you're right), but that the middle school spat component of this whole thing doesn't actually matter, and your constant focus on it does not advance the discussion of the issue that *does* matter: the spiraling cesspool of misogyny and murder threats that have been the response of a major segment of teh interwebz.

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  16. It's sexist for him to have an income, and for that income to support his family?

    I'm absolutely amazed. Is it sexist that my wife supports our family while I'm a stay-at-home dad? I'm sure someone can 'splain why it's sexist that the white guy is staying at home while his wife is the breadwinner.

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    1. Nowhere did I write that it is sexist for him to have an income or to support his family. However, it *is* sexist for the commenters on HN/Twitter to assume he is the sole breadwinner, his wife doesn't work, and he will be unable to be re-employed, and use that as justification to make death threats and rape threats to Adria.

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  17. I think this ENTIRE situation is blatantly sexist and the responses herein and elsewhere show how messed up our entire society is. She was incredibly brave to speak up and talk to the organizers of that conference (which she did by tweeting them). Too often we suffer through these demeaning comments because when we do try to speak up, we are ignored, intimidated, and threatened.

    For more information see this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/deannazandt/2013/03/22/why-asking-what-adria-richards-could-have-done-differently-is-the-wrong-question/

    "Is it possible that by asking this question, that we’re digitally asking if maybe Adria shouldn’t have been drinking or wearing that short skirt, shouldn’t have been walking home from the subway stop by herself, shouldn’t have walked by that proverbial construction site where she knew she was going to get catcalled and harassed?
    Why are so many of us focusing on what Adria could have done differently?"

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