[michellegreer1]

Call me crazy, but something tells me this guy wasn't just fired for this incident. Good Python help can be hard to come by and firing someone over a private dongle joke has been seen by everyone, including Adria, as a total overreaction.

That being said, telling a woman that she should be raped or killed over such a circumstance (which did happen on Twitter) is also an overreaction. This sort of thing happens quite a bit to any woman who seems to challenge the status quo culture of tech. Both women AND men I know are saddened that this happens.

People shouldn't feel that the speech police will reign down on private jokes not directed towards specific people. And no woman should ever be threatened with rape or death, especially when she is not reponsible for the overreaction that ensued.

While you are right in thinking that perhaps an apology would stop all this, you have to consider the price that Adria paid because she was sick of hearing evidence of "bro culture" in programming. Have you ever had someone tell you that you should be raped? Do people wish you dead? I doubt Adria would disagree with your assessment, as she could never have anticipated that the man would have been fired. At this point though, she is probably hoping she can still do her job without getting hurt by some. Your hindsight observation doesn't really help here.

[Torgo]

Some people posting on here seem to think that what Adria had done represents an evolution of social pressure for change. But in the end they will both have been fired by their employers because they were associated with bad publicity and not because of what they may have done. I think that is the lesson of this event for why, regardless of the reasons or the legitimacy of her being offended (I think a separate but legitimate discussion btw,) the way she responded was a mistake.