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by japhyr 4847 days ago
The pycon people are aiming to build a conference where women don't have to deal with this stuff at all. It's a lofty goal, and I appreciate them for setting a high standard.

Excusing little comments creates a culture where women have to put up with innuendo throughout the conference. I saw these people removed from the room, and it was done quite appropriately. (I did not hear anything directly.)
2 comments
singleuse 4845 days ago
It seems the pycon staff acted appropriately, but Adria certainly did not, posting pictures online with this kind of comment is not okay and goes against pycon guidelines.

And to me this report seems arguably abusive in the first place, but taken as a whole it amounts to witch hunting and hurts everybody to the benefit of no one.

Now both PyCon, the python community, women in tech and people working towards a more women friendly tech conference have a bad image that's impossible to restore. All because one single person misinterpreted a comment and found a joke not funny, well done !

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Tyrannosaurs 4847 days ago
If anyone wonders how bad things are they might want to think about the fact that creating an environment where this sort of thing doesn't happen is seen as a lofty goal.
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psionski 4847 days ago
If anyone wonders how bad things are, they might want to think that talking about sex is inappropriate in public, even though it's the most essential driver behind human behavior and, if you believe books, only one person on Earth was ever born without someone, somewhere having sex.
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japhyr 4847 days ago
This isn't "talking about sex". It's making comments with obvious innuendo that is not really funny. The net effect of this is to make many people feel unsafe and unwelcome.

I respect that many people have the ability to ignore this "noise", but we shouldn't have to.

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psionski 4846 days ago
It's funny if you like that particular type of humor. I find penises funny, and I can assure you many other people do too. Maybe exactly because of the inappropriateness, I don't know. They're just now doing research of jokes and humor.

Otherwise, I fail to understand how the sexual innuendo would make her feel unsafe or unwelcome - it was a joke between friends and it wasn't even remotely targeted at her.

Even if it was, offering someone your huge dongle is probably the most welcoming thing you can do, ever. It's not noise, it's a compliment.

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