[rickmb]

#2 was 100% real. Yes, it was a joke, but it's only the kind of joke you make if you have absolutely no intention whatsoever of inviting female hackers to your event. The humor didn't cross the line, the being explicitly uninviting to women crossed the line.

[kstenerud]

You are presuming to have intimate knowledge as to their thought process when they attempted the joke. By inserting your own psyche into their actions, you falsely assume to know that they were malicious in intent. Not everyone thinks the same way you do, or reacts the same way you do. On the other hand, I know Avand personally, and spoke to him shortly after the whole thing blew up.

Hanlon's razor is apt in this situation.