[jack_trades]

Public shame is not a problem. Public shame is less about an individual and more about sharing expectations with a community. Shame on people who can't help but blurt out clumsy penis jokes in essentially tight quarters at a professional conference.

Go and make colorful jokes everywhere and then defend yourself on twitter. Who's stopping you/them? They have twitter accounts, no? Represent yourselves. More words tell us more about you. Maybe we can laugh with you. Maybe your words are so witty that they make us believe you should build our next project? Maybe someone's inability to control their thoughts and words hints at their abilities to develop solid projects following best practices?

Seeing, mostly, entitle, white men parse apart interpretation and imply that women are not thinking critically when supporting an small instance of truth to power smacks of just how low social IQ is amongst the development community. It is inspiring to see the scale of the backlash. More acts of this nature will follow and awareness of expected behavior will have positive effects for women in tech. Nobody is really arguing that clumsy penis jokes have a place in "beige" professional environments, right?

It's not about a silly penis joke. Adria is obviously comfortable with silly penis jokes. It wasn't content, it was all about context. She's not comfortable with certain attendees' sense of entitlement to communicate a message that turns her professional environment into a space where she is not considered equal, let alone valuable. She mentioned the catalyst of the young girl's picture. She and that girl are not annoyances within the men's club of seriously capable developers. They are humans on some point of the same journey as everyone else in attendance. Why should they not be afforded the same benefit of NOT having to constantly worry about some set of barriers to success?

Certain communications in a professional environment indicate if people within that environment have power and control. These comments, in that context, imply that those individuals felt they could not be compelled to behave in socially acceptable ways. If they weren't willing to stand up with their company's logo on their chest and say it through the mic, they know that expressing it in the seats signals to surrounding ears that they have the power to act outside normal bounds of decency. The environment is toxic and hints at even worse environments outside that venue.

Also, wordplay on forking a repo is particularly anti-social. The developer is the actor who is enabled to control the object of the action because the object was not performing for them. An analogy to rape is too obvious. It's just not joke-worthy. The outcome should have been expected. The more we talk, the louder the backlash, but the public awareness is likely to have a net positive effect long-term.

[cmiles74]

I think we would all do well to pay more attention to this comment. While I disagree entirely with jack_trades, I believe their comment provides the most compelling rationale for both Aria Richards' behavior and that of the PyCon staffers.

It's been a while, but I have encountered these ideas before. This idea that reporting someone to those in authority because their behavior is "indecent" is, somehow, "speaking truth to power". That the off-hand comment of a person is a clear indication of "a sense of entitlement" and "and indication of power and control". The idea that some puns around the term "forking" and "dongles" is not only anti-social but also a clear rape analogy. You may have heard it before as well: 70's era feminist literary theory.

It's not my intention to argue about the validity of Gilbert and Gubar's arguments, I just want to point out that's where I first read about these ideas and first heard a lot of this terminology. I think it's also worthwhile to note that these ideas really took hold in academia, they were talked about quite a bit when I was in college during the 90's.

In any case, in my opinion, the real problem is the complete inversion of power. I understand that there are many environments that make women feel unwelcome and I agree that this needs to change and should change. On the other hand, an environment where men feel unwelcome is not the solution. The goal should be that everyone feels welcome. Aria's solution, keeping everyone on their toes for fear of being "reported" to "the authorities", is no solution.

[Torgo]

>Public shame is not a problem.

Consider that the ramifications of public shaming have changed now that your shaming can go viral and become a subject of debate among millions of people worldwide. This isn't even the world of fifteen years ago, and human tribal behavior hasn't adapted to these mediums.

Some man made an inappropriate joke and now the WORLD is shaming him. A woman's shaming tactic has subjected her to WORLD backlash and scrutiny. Both of these escalations happened because handling this infraction was not handled at the proper scope.

[jack_trades]

The ramification of our current context on undesirable behavior is great, but daunting. The attraction of this issue by that many means it has great importance to that many people. This is the spark.

To see mostly men try to defuse and take air out of the severity or gravity of the blow-up is telling. The ideas coming into play have powerful cascading effects. If you let women stand up for themselves on this, they'll stand up some more, and more, and more... until a certain group of men don't feel comfortable expressing ideas or behaviors that most would know they shouldn't. When those miscreants can't do that, maybe they'll look at my behavior next with a greater sense of entitlement???

For better and worse, we live in the current context and people are learning the new ropes. This is an example, and as I note above... There will be more of this and the net result will be that peoples' better natures will put in check anti-social habits and behaviors.

Bringing to light the issues, through spectacle, and bringing weight, in the form of tighter cycles of mass communication to action is all that "scary social justice theory stuff" becoming agile-like. This is open-source, agile-process social change.

To try to put the brakes on by trying to get people to keep it quiet (yeah, right conference organizers, really? you've seen how this works at universities) or to rein in the pace or scope of change is to be on the wrong side of history.

We are headed towards meritocracy and some people are fearful of what that implies.

[Torgo]

In your theory, how do you make sure that only good shaming and not bad shaming happens? How do you be sure that people don't post hateful provocative lies about people that make them the subject of this social pressure, or at the far end, mob violence?

It's not about "keeping it quiet," it's about being responsible and filtering what you say before you just upload it to the world, because it could turn into a conflagration.

>you've seen how this works at universities

I saw a while back how a campus exploded because somebody saw a person walking at night with a blanket wrapped around them and thought it was a KKK member. Great plan you got here, have you ever considered how it could go wrong?

[paulwithap]

How does making a joke about forking a repo and the fact that 'dongle' sounds like a slang term for a penis suddenly make women not equal or valuable?

Also:

>The analogy to rape is too obvious.

No. No, it's not at all. You have REALLY try to live in a world where you're being oppressed by evil "entitled white men" to think that.

[surge]

PyCon is a conference for Python programmers, professional and amateur, no where is the term "professionals only" stated. It's a conference for people who have an interest in Python.

If it is, maybe I missed the business attire requirement, and requirement that you have to be a professional Python programmer sent as a representative of a company to attend.

There are professional conferences, very corporate in nature, PyCon is not one of them.

It's not a professional conference any more then a Star Trek convention is professional.

[itafroma]

The PyCon code of conduct[1] appears to clearly disagree with your characterization that the event is not for a professional audience:

> All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks.

> Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other attendees. Behave professionally. Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary jokes are not appropriate for PyCon.

I understand you're trying to use "professional" in the sense of being someone who earns their living using the language and wears a stuffy suit, but that's not the sense used by the GP or PyCon.

[1]: https://github.com/python/pycon-code-of-conduct/blob/master/...

[hderms]

Do you think a code of contact like that is only required in professional settings? I would imagine Star Trek conventions probably have codes of conduct that read pretty similar, if you remove the explicit references to professional conduct in particular. Same with a classical music convention, or something. They probably don't explicitly say you must act in a professional manner, but I would imagine the other requirements would match pretty well.

[RougeFemme]

Even if it wasn't a professional conference, as another poster said, it was "professional-for-them" if their badgest identified them as being affiliated with one of the conference sponsors. I wouldn't have responded as Adria did, but I do believe they should have acted more professionally, which would include recognizing that their private conversations could be easily overheard.

[SallySinep]

Also, wordplay on forking a repo is particularly anti-social.

Would you care to recite the exact wording used in the forking remark for us?

Otherwise, how are we to know that it was "wordplay", or otherwise anti-social or inappropriate?