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> these things are hard

BOOM.. fired! See what happened there? You said it. I overreacted. You were fired. It actually is a real fear that something you say will unknowingly offend someone and get you in trouble. This has less to do with gender and sexism and more to do with just too many people being incapable of getting along.

> automatically act in ways that don't offend anyone.

Impossible. Everything is capable of offending someone. And everyone is offended by something. I would rather strive for a future generation that was not so easily offended.

This is what's commonly known as the ignorance of privilege. It's white people saying, "Why can't I make jokes about black people, when black people can make jokes about me?"

It demonstrates a total ignorance of what it means to be a discriminated against demographic.

I'm confused. Are you saying that just because a person is white they are not allowed to be offended by stuff and not allowed to question the validity of others who are offended?

Well, according to Adria Richards: "Black people CANNOT be racist against White people. Racism is a position of the oppressor who has the power".

http://imgur.com/xPztO6k

I don't think Adria represents women in the industry, or anyone other than herself. I feel sorry for SendGrid, PlayHaven, the developer who lost his job, and the fact that this is distracting from the real issues of sexism in technology.

I don't feel sorry for Adria. She represented her company in a grossly unprofessional manner by publicly naming, picturing, and shaming (including the use of "ass clowns" to describe them) two developers. You don't have to be sexist to be unprofessional. I just hope SendGrid has their lawyers ready to deal with the potential fallout of firing her.

I saw that. Of course we know that is bullshit. Just like it would be bullshit to say: "women cannot be sexist against men"

Hmmm...'colorblindness' by a privileged group is a refusal to acknowledge the real inadequacies between social groups.

Basically, "I treat everyone the same--I don't see color" (or gender, or sexual orientation, etc.) is a luxury that only exists for some. For people discriminated against, they /have/ to see color, gender, etc., because it's a limiting condition of their social situation.

I see color (and gender, and sexual orientation, etc.). I just don't let them effect how I treat people. But it seems pretty clear that this is a standard only some people are held to.

People really, really oversimplify these situations when they focus on ideas like "feeling offended". Yes, everyone is allowed to feel offended. That's not the point.

The point is that women in our society live their entire lives under a constant barrage of related offensive behaviors that men do not. Black people in our society live their entire lives under a constant barrage of related offensive behaviors that white people do not. (Black women get hit by both barrages.) In each case, some of the offensive acts are overt and nasty, but most take the form of countless tiny slights that seem harmless on their own but add up to an intensely oppressive environment.

So yes, everyone is allowed to be offended. But it's really, really unwise to "question the validity of others who are offended" if you aren't subjected to the same continually hostile environment that they are.

constant barrage? A bit of hyperbole there don't you think?

Not in the slightest. (Unless you took my "constant" to mean "every second" rather than "multiple times each day".)

I used to think about this sort of issue in much the same way that you seem to (or at least, I made similar comments at times). I was doing my best to be fair and sensible. But over the past year or two, I've read a lot and learned a lot, and I've realized that I was wrong. This stuff is complicated, and if you haven't spent as much time studying it as you'd spend on a couple of college courses, you probably don't understand it as fully as you think. (I certainly didn't.)

> these things are hard

hahaha I like that

> these things are hard

>> BOOM.. fired! See what happened there? You said it. I overreacted. You were fired. It actually is a real fear that something you say will unknowingly offend someone and get you in trouble. This has less to do with gender and sexism and more to do with just too many people being incapable of getting along.

Something similar actually happened on Twitter, Steve Marx said something about a lynch mob and she turned it into racism[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313946261055221760

Cheese & Rice! I had no idea she was that far out there. As a developer I am offended by her claiming to be an evangelist for us.

"lynching" has a very well-established racial subtext in the US... I'm sure this person didn't intend it that way, but she pointed it out and he apologized, all of which seems completely reasonable.

well... he used the word innocently, then she pointed it out she was offended and he apologized for her misunderstanding him... yes, that was reasonable (to an extent). But then, not willing to let it be, she continued to throw race in his face... leaving him not much choice but to continue to defend himself. That is pretty far out there to me.

This happens all the time in public politics, when opposing sides playing gotcha with each other and words like "smart" or "golf" can be reinterpreted as racist insults. But there is a cutthroat world where flinging dirt at your opponent may be your only way to get ahead. Sad to see it invade other aspects of life to.

You assume that taking offense is always reasonable, or whoever feels offended is always right. Also, playing the emotion card (it hurts my feelings/sensibilities) is a way to excert power and control.

> It isn't always reasonable, being called out for shitty behaviour is step one, step two is either you apologize because you realize you were in the wrong, or you have a discussion and hopefully both parties understand each other better at the end.

The idea that women have a hot branding iron with them where ever they go that they can use to permanently stamp the word 'sexist' onto whomever they like at the slightest offense is utterly silly - doubly so when it reverses the actual power dynamic that women deal with when in a room full of men.

Yeah, utterly silly, just like dongle-gate.

We all deal with the fact that we're in the middle of change, and it isn't always comfortable. Just as it wasn't comfortable for people dealing with the acceptance of homosexuals: I think everyone accepts that the word "faggot" is no longer appropriate.

Nope. That is not it. Men and women joke together freely with innuendo throughout society and most of the time it is not considered a problem. She did that exact thing on Twitter. To somehow say that a physical conference space is sacrosanct in a way that Twitter is not is ridiculous.

I think that if you look carefully, what you see is that what we term political correctness today is in actuality a new label on the old idea of chivalry. It aims toward a norm of social behavior where women are seen to require special protection in a way that men are assumed not to. They can toss away that protection and engage in banter, but men can not. This has been the norm in polite society for at least 500 years. Today, it just has different ideological window dressing.

No, context matters. Just as it is fine to be undressed when you go to bed but not when out on the street, it is fine to engage in innuendo with friends if that is what you and your friends do, or to be crass on Twitter to your followers who presumably opted in to reading your crassness (but not in @replies to people who don't follow you), but not at a professional conference in a public space. Can you understand that these situations are different?

Nope. I don't consider PyCon a "professional conference." Programming is not accountancy, or medicine. "Professional" is a word that people use to lull people into circumspect behavior leaving their basic humanity aside. Sometimes there is a good reason for it but often there isn't. In any case it's not a way of being at ease.

When I am with my close friends at a conference we speak however we like. It isn't church and it shouldn't be. But I'm sure now that I'll never go to PyCon. It's drowning in the crazy.

My sense is that this is largely generational and geographic. There's a strain of political correctness in the California area that is rampant among people in their 20s. I don't see it elsewhere in the US although I have seen it in Canada. PyCon is definitely a California conference.

I'm sure the educational system has something to do with it. It's a trend that rode the general trend in education in the 90s toward making people believe that feeling good was more important than anything and that their sensitivities were positive demands on other people's behavior. That's subsided since then in elementary education so I think this drama may be a blip.

So, you can't read then, and you also can't understand that people who are not exactly like you exist?

When you are with your close friends in public do you 'speak however you like' in such a way that it disturbs those around you? If yes, you are an asshole. The public spaces in conferences are much the same - and in the true Pythonic way (explicit is better than implicit) they even spelled out what the social norms were for the 'public spaces' at PyCon. If you call that crazy, you don't understand Pythonicity.

As for 'profession' - yes, programming is a skilled activity, and being paid to program usually involves being in a workplace with norms of behaviour - hence, a profession. You can say "I still don't consider it a profession", to which my reply is "that's nice; it still is one though".

edit: Urgh, I didn't see your edit when I posted. Your edit actually makes your post more stupid. Oh well.