[dizzystar]

I went to school for a female-dominated profession (yes, there are quite a few out there where the balance goes the other way). I can assure you that if you find the things men say offensive, you haven't heard anything...

I want to add the caveat that I am NOT attempting to appeal to hypocrisy.

While I agree that there is a limit, I don't see how calling languages "estrogen" is offensive and I don't understand how calling a hat "cute" is offensive.

Maybe its because I grew up in the 90s, when the world starting embracing the insanity that is the PC revolution. We've (and I mean "White Men") made it a point to relabel and rename everything to be non-offensive. Blacks are no longer African Americans. Indians are now Native Americans. The guy cleaning your toilet is not a Janitor, but a Maintenance Technician. The Secretary is now a Front Office Assistant. Parents started raising their children on Barney the Dinosaur and that is pretty much when it all fell apart.

For golly, people. We've created a purely insane world, where even mild jokes have become Purely Offensive and Crude. We have to bite our tongues and be careful of everything we say, and I hope you can see how that this attitude has created an unhealthy ecosystem for everyone involved, including the well-meaning welcomers and the curious, ultimately destroying any ability to progress past 2001.

I really don't want to believe that the programming world is so pent up about sexuality. I want to believe the industry as a whole is highly intelligent and mature, and if a women goes on stage and says something silly about a Cute Cowboy Hat some dude is wearing, we don't see it something offensive or threatening to men.

I can't imagine that other industries go through this so much. Certain branches of marketing, spas, hair cutting, anything to do with writing, fashion, among many other professions are female-dominated. The men who enter simply enter and understand that they are entering into a world where yes, they will be told in no uncertain terms that she is not feeling well and just started her period. He will be told in no uncertain terms that size does matter. He will be told things he cares to never hear about again, but he joined into that smallish arena so he has to accept it.

It's all an illusion, people. Men and women both talk smack and say gross stuff. We can't whitewash everything and pretend that we will never say something stupid but if it isn't something that would be offensive on Ellen Degenerous or The Voice -- which say way worse things than you'd hear at a conference -- then it should be fair game to say in your presentation: the trash those people say on those TV shows are more offensive than anything any presenter would consider saying. I'm not saying the PyCon should be Married with Children the Sequel. I'm just saying to let small stupid words go by and don't hang onto every small word as an offense. You can create drama anywhere, and it just so happens that programming is an easy target to fuss up and create drama because the men are so convinced that they are wrong that they've allowed themselves to be put on the defense at all times, and there is really no logical or good reason for it, no matter how much you write about the justifications of this attitude.

Vanilla jokes are exactly that: Vanilla jokes.

[rmrfrmrf]

> While I agree that there is a limit, I don't see how calling languages "estrogen" is offensive and I don't understand how calling a hat "cute" is offensive.

To be frank, you don't see these things as offensive because you're ignorant. I grew up in the same era as you did, and I'm guessing you just had the misfortune of not being asked to walk in another person's shoes. You go ahead and enjoy all that delicious privilege.

> I don't see how calling languages "estrogen" is offensive

When I first read this in the article, I cringed. Then, when he further tried to 'explain himself' with, "I was mostly making a joke about how seriously C++ programmers take themselves compared to Java programmers," I cringed even harder. IT'S OFFENSIVE TO SAY THAT ONLY MEN TAKE THEMSELVES SERIOUSLY IN PROGRAMMING. It boils down to men = serious and women = emotional, flippant, hysterical, etc. It's a horrible horrible analogy and quite frankly I'm surprised that didn't blow up in his face even more than it did.

> I don't understand how calling a hat "cute" is offensive.

Again, ignorance. Would you tell a male admiral that his hat was "cute"? This is a classic case of infantilizing women, which makes it seem like Grace Hopper's brilliant, groundbreaking work was just another finger painting that can be tacked onto the refrigerator. "Aww, look at what the cute little girly did! Go run along now and put away your EasyBake Oven."

[dizzystar]

>> To be frank, you don't see these things as offensive because you're ignorant. I grew up in the same era as you did, and I'm guessing you just had the misfortune of not being asked to walk in another person's shoes. You go ahead and enjoy all that delicious privilege.

Amazing how you can write such stuff about someone that you never met. I'll just say you're dead wrong and not bother extrapolating.

The rest of your comment is representative of the very crap I am railing against. You're reading way to much into it and now you want to create drama and tons of deeper meaning into something means almost nothing at all.

EDIT: I just read your comment downstream about Affirmative Action. Fwiw, I am a white guy that went to an all-black school. When I say that, I mean, I was like 1/3 of the entire white population. Regardless, blacks didn't like AA either. I'll let you figure out why.

[kimjongillmatic]

While we're enjoying our "delicious privilege", I hope you're similarly enjoying your oh-so-righteous victimization complex. Taking offense when no offense is intended is the very picture of being the fun police. You're the kid on the playground who would beg to be let into the game, but then run, crying, to tell his/her (see how neutral I'm being?) mother as soon as he/she got fouled, and then would complain when no one wanted to play with him/her. No one likes that kid.

>> It boils down to men = serious and women = emotional, flippant, hysterical, etc. It's a horrible horrible analogy and quite frankly I'm surprised that didn't blow up in his face even more than it did.

While perhaps not the most innocuous choice of words, testosterone is associated with aggression and strength because testosterone makes you aggressive[1] and strong[2]. Strictly speaking, his statement is not even talking about genders, it's talking about hormones.

[1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=tes..., among many others

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20061435 among many others.

[georgeorwell]

Please be civil. I asked you nicely when you were complaining about death threats and you ignored it. I've flagged that comment and the three comments since then. This isn't the place for sarcasm, all-caps, insults, or flame wars.

[hashbanged]

>When I first read this in the article, I cringed. Then, when he further tried to 'explain himself' with, "I was mostly making a joke about how seriously C++ programmers take themselves compared to Java programmers," I cringed even harder. IT'S OFFENSIVE TO SAY THAT ONLY MEN TAKE THEMSELVES SERIOUSLY IN PROGRAMMING.

Disclaimer: not defending dizzystar.

The way I interpreted it was that, compared to Java programmers, C++ programmers have a "macho" attitude about being "real programmers," which as a phrase is riffing on the idea of the "real man." Again, not that women don't possess the quality "real" in any way whatsover, but just that I can't even think of what the female equivalent of macho is. Perhaps Bob Martin would have done better to say that the C++ community suffered from excessive testosterone. That's what I believe he was implying, but as he says, we're both just Wilson talking over the fence here.

[WizardlySquid]

Check your privilege

[rhdoenges]

We have to bite our tongues and be careful of everything we say

Every word out of your mouth has an effect on the people around you. Please, consider consequences before you speak. This is not a radical notion.

[mc32]

While this is true, technology and society are conspiring to make society even more coarse and making coarseness even more acceptable. (for example, tweeting and txting and expletive usage among teenagers and beyond). Not only that, but there is also a slow moving trend away from the separation of work and home, professional demeanor and casual demeanor at work. This blurriness contributes to this kind jocular humor creeping into the workplace. There is also the facet of how this is perceived by a people in a society (how in France double entendres are quite normal and sexual repartee btwn the sexes is in metropolitan areas present).

Watch family TV shows form the 70s. Did they say things like "Mom, this sucks"? Watch a family TV show from modern times. It's normal to hear teenaged characters say that on TV. Does anyone even think she meant to say "Mom, that sucks dick"? The ellipsis would have been tagged mentally in the 70s --not today.

What I'm saying is that college/crude humor has crept into society wholesale. Unless there is a societal move away from that, it'll be hard to decouple that from people, even in a professional setting. There would be two forces in opposition and the demarkation is getting blurry.

[newnewnew]

IMO, this comes from the ideology that the reason underprivileged groups are underprivileged is because of negative social expectations that have a negative subconscious effect on their performance. I don't find it completely convincing (there is much evidence which refutes it), but there are some small experimental studies which support it. I find it plausible that in a group where the minority is extremely small the effect may be large and significant.

[rhdoenges]

What "small experimental studies" are you referring to? This entire comment was a dismissive appeal to authority.

[rmrfrmrf]

Well, like, a man said it, so it must be true, right?

[hazov]

You Americans have a real love story with this political correctness thing that I'll never understand, when I say love I mean bashing it.

In the past it was the commies, now that they're gone I believe this is a good way of saying why things fell apart and why the are not as good as in the old days, if they were ever that good.

[logjam]

No.

Ellen Degeneres or The Voice or any of the other false equivalences you're desperately reaching to make is not the professional technical workplace.

If you run in any of my technical circles, put on a technical presentation, or otherwise represent at a technical conference, and you make "jokes" that are sexual innuendos of any kind or are otherwise unprofessional....

You will be gone. Gone.

Count on it.

The tech world created these shitty circumstances for women and this shitty little drama because we males in that world have behaved abominably. Over decades.

Guess what? Now we're going to start demonstrating that we can be professional, or heads are going to roll. Continually.

Count on it.

[mindcrime]

"sexual joke" are not necessarily "sexist jokes" and there is no particular reason to say that women are somehow traumitized by the mere mention of sexuality. Is making sexual jokes at a conference unprofessional? Yes, but it's unprofessional regardless of the gender of anyone or everyone in earshot. Whether it's unprofessional enough to justify:

"You will be gone. Gone."

"Count on it."

is quite clearly a subjective matter. All I can say is, don't invite me to represent at any event you put on. Being professional is one matter, catering to PC bullshit in the misguided belief that you can avoid even the remotest possibility of offending someone, is quite something else.

[jodrellblank]

It's not about "the remotest possibility of offending people", it's about the cultural background that a large penis is pushed as a dominating, masculine thing, and being in a room of 80% male attendees and someone makes a "big dongle" comment (for example) skews the environment in a male-friendly-masculine-dominance way and a female-unfriendly way.

In the same way that being around a group of really rich people and saying you missed an appointment because your car broke down and they say "didn't want to get the weekend car wet, eh? Why didn't you hire one for the day you cheapskate! Hahaha!".

It's not the mention of money that matters, it's the automatic dismissal of your life situation as something that doesn't happen to real people - it isn't even a concept - to all the other people in the group, and how alienating that scenario is to be on the 'wrong' side of. The implicit pushing of the idea "everybody" is rich and because you aren't, well, you aren't really a person. Not really.

And you say "hey, I couldn't afford one, I missed whatever it was and that sucked for me" and they say "what do you want me to do, pretend I'm a pauper forever and never talk about money? That's just political correctness GONE MAD!".

But the request is not "they should pretend to be poor", it's more like "they should consider your situation as a real person and then not say something that sounds like a clueless bozo said it".

[ciupicri]

Since you've started this analogy what am I doing in that group of rich people if I don't belong there? Also, do I really want to be there or am I doing it just because it's cool or whatever?

[jodrellblank]

I hadn't decided, but it ought to be something basically irrelevant to the point, so not a country club or a networking event with potential investors. Maybe you were pushed by family obligation into visiting your spouse's rich relative at their lakeside property and all got invited next door to a barbecue. How's that?

They're all rich and friendly, they're basically "nice" people, and you're not rich in their league. They're "trying" to help you fit in, but somehow everything they say just helps to heighten the feeling that you aren't equal and don't belong. You roll with the punches, you aren't offended, but you are alienated. You'll make the best of the night, but next time you'll try harder to avoid going.

Which is fine for an informal night with strangers, but it's not the feeling a trying-to-be-inclusive professional event wants to invoke in significant fractions of the population. It's the difference between them "trying" to be friendly (in quotes - meaning acting how they would act to each other to be friendly) and actually being friendly in the all you have to do is whatever it takes sense.

[ciupicri]

Speaking of PC bullshit, let me quote from the agile manifesto website [1] (emphasis mine):

> This freedom from the inanities of corporate life attracts proponents of Agile Methodologies, and scares the begeebers (you can’t use the word ‘shit’ in a professional paper) out of traditionalists.

It looks like you've already been unprofessional by using that word :-) By the way, I don't want to be part of those events, too.

[1] http://agilemanifesto.org/history.html

[rmrfrmrf]

> "sexual joke" are not necessarily "sexist jokes"

There is absolutely no point to this statement. Inappropriate comments do not need to be tied to a particular group of people.

> there is no particular reason to say that women are somehow traumitized [sic] by the mere mention of sexuality.

Thanks for the man-splaining. Are you, by chance, on a tour of inner city high schools telling black kids about how affirmative action is unfair to white people?

> Yes, but it's unprofessional regardless of the gender of anyone or everyone in earshot.

Oh ok, so you're fine with an offensive joke being offensive, you just have an issue with the fact that a woman brought it up. Got it.

> All I can say is, don't invite me to represent at any event you put on. Being professional is one matter, catering to PC bullshit in the misguided belief that you can avoid even the remotest possibility of offending someone, is quite something else.

Mommy, help! They're taking away my boys club!!

[mindcrime]

Please don't put words in my mouth. I will happily stand by any and every thing I've said here, but I feel no need to defend strawmen and intentional misinterpretations.

Better yet, just go back to Slashdot and do your trolling there.

[dizzystar]

Let me ask you:

Guy calls a hat cute, he...

Woman calls a hat cute, she...

Which one is more offensive?

What exactly did men do that was so terrible to women -- in this industry -- that you feel like everyone has to make amends, and anything that "could" be a sexual joke should result result in the drama bomb we just seen or any ultimatums?

I did NOT suggest that you should be making bathroom jokes on stage. I DID suggest that calling a hat "cute" is not the slightest bit offensive. Seriously zero need to call for an apology over that.

You know what this drama bomb does to your profession?

-- It makes your profession unwelcome to me (male) and to many other people who would like to join in. We just had a post on the front page yesterday written by a woman who found this whole hoopla offensive and I am willing to bet excellent odds that women don't want to be part of this drama either.

Why?

-- The immaturity and the way you handled this stuff, as a community, is so incredibly shameful and backwards that I simply refuse to be a part of it. I would love to go to PyCon or similar places, but this makes it look like your profession is virulent and everyone is at each others throats, and any small spark is going to light a huge fire of controversy. I don't want to be a part of a drama bomb and I don't want to be part of a club that is openly succumbing to every whim of Drama Queens and Drama Kings.

[MoreMoschops]

I think you left out some context there.

Grace Hopper, one of the most accomplished computer scientists not just of her day but ever. Rose to dizzying heights in the US military because they needed her so much. A towering giant of the field. So when the picture of her comes up on screen, does the speaker say any of this? Does he acknowledge her greatness? No. He says she's wearing a cute hat. All her accomplishments and ability reduced to how she looks in a hat.

The problem here has absolutely nothing to do with the hat.

[theoretick]

This debate is entirely moot without context. I imagined/read it as something like: >"...Ah, and this absolutely brilliant woman started that trend. Just look at her, a beacon blahblahblah wrapped in that cute hat."

If neither of us have been there, its pointless arguing the statement. My point is simply that when I do such talks I frequently inject humor into it, just the way he had. Reading it as a completely isolated comment seems highly unrealistic to me.

[EliRivers]

When you give your talks with humour injected, do people in the audience come to you afterwards and suggest that your remarks were unhelpful to some people in the audience, as someone did in this case? In essence, do people politely complain to you about what you said?

If they did, would you ignore them and carry on injecting your humour?

[nemothekid]

Maybe because I'm young and I don't know "how it works" yet, but I would hate for the Tech industry as I know now to become "professional." To me, the tech industry is one of the few places I can work without wearing a suit and tie everyday and still make more than 6 figures. I don't want my presentations to be "censored" because someone has a stick too far up their ass. I don't want the next Linus to be fired because he was "unprofessional" in the way made a statement. Maybe I'm trying to cling too much to College, but I like being able to talk to my co-workers as friends and not robots where work goes in grunts come out.

I get people aren't 100% politically correct. I'm black and some people still panic when the word "nigga" plays on their speakers. I know its a song, not KKK propaganda, and I'm not going to give a lawsuit for "oppressing" me with your taste of music. I think its important to consider people's intents for their action. I think thats crucial for maintaining the "hippie" culture of Silicon Valley. I'm a grown man and I know women have periods and men have dicks. You know what pisses me off more than sex jokes? Cat Jokes. I fucking hate cats. If I can keep myself composed over a shitty 5 second cat joke, I think most people can make it through a man saying a woman has a "cute navy hat."

Lastly, I understand there are lines however. The CouchDB porn star talk was way over the line. That is something I don't even understand how most guys would be comfortable with. All I'm saying is we should recognize when people are being hyper sensitive and when people are really being insensitive.

[angersock]

Being in an industry where there is still a chance to do new things and be judged on our work instead of other things is pretty great.

We just need to be sure that we all act with the maturity and respect befitting our good fortune--this includes dealing politely with things we disagree with, and having the good grace not to cause drama over dumb shit.

[rmrfrmrf]

When I say that I think we need to be more inclusive of women, the last thing I'm saying is that we need to turn every company into an HR police state (trust me, I've worked in those places before and they're hellish).

However, I think I can touch on one of your points to help explain why these seemingly petty word choices are more important than most people think.

> I understand there are lines however. The CouchDB porn star talk was way over the line. That is something I don't even understand how most guys would be comfortable with.

Your response to the CouchDB talk was similar to many people in the tech community, which (correct me if I'm wrong) was, "how did they even think that that would be a good idea?"

Well, chances are the CouchDB guys wanted to be funny and push the envelope a little to generate buzz about their product. But when we're constantly surrounded by this subtle sexualized environment in tech, our perspective changes as we become desensitized to it. So, what may have seemed to be a slightly risque presentation to the CouchDB presenters becomes a much bigger deal to people on the outside looking in.

While it might not seem like a man saying "and look at that cute little hat" about one of the most respected women in our field is a big deal, consider it in the context of what women see or hear at that conference on the same day:

* booth babes

* "dude, I fuckin raped that shit" (related to any job 'done well')

* being groped in an elevator

* scantily-clad women on every desktop background for entire rows of machines

* constant unsolicited flirtation and getting 'checked-out' (and being called a bitch after you say no)

* Guy 1: "I swear to God, this bitch that works with me never does anything right." Guy 2: "Well, I saw on Reddit that a lot of women's brains just aren't designed to program. They're designed for raising children and..." Guy 1: "Making sandwiches" [Both share a laugh]

* "Wow, I'd totally fork his repo."

It's just like...enough already, you know?

Also, I just want to point out that, no matter what the severity of the offense is in the tech community, there are always people that try to diffuse the conversation by saying,"Now, I consider myself to be a die-hard feminist, but we need to learn to pick our battles..." yada yada.

Here's part of Matt Aimonetti's infamous response to the criticism of his CouchDB presentation: "The topic of my talk was obvious, and I would have hoped that people who were likely to be offended would have simply chosen not to attend my talk or read my slides on the internet."

[derefr]

> consider it in the context of what women see or hear at that conference on the same day:

I think this is the problem with my perspective here. I don't have experience with any of those other things. At the company I work for, nobody thinks booth-babes, sexualized desktop wallpaper, or bland acceptance of horribly sexist stereotypical "humor" is a good idea. We wouldn't attend a con where any of those were the norm; we'd probably boycott it.

And since we don't have those things, the dongle-jokes seem a lot less like "adding onto the pile."

[pandaman]

Contrary to the popular belief white-knighting never got anybody laid. Count on it.

[ciupicri]

I was about to say something similar. I know at least one female friend who thinks this way for sure.

I'm also wondering if this white knight thing isn't making women feel powerless since they need to be helped as if they can't do it themselves.

[pandaman]

I am not a woman so I cannot know for sure but I figure is it as funny for them as it is for men.

[pjscott]

How confident are you in this prediction? You sound very confident -- "Count on it." -- but hoping that something will happen and being certain that it will actually happen are two different things.

[georgeorwell]

Please be civil and don't make threats. I flagged your comment.

[mgkimsal]

I was presenting at a tech conference last year and was trying to discuss the essence of PHP, and I accidentally uttered the phrase "php-ness". Accidental, it got a small chuckle, and we moved on (8:30am session time IIRC - not enough coffee yet). I'm glad someone didn't record it and sue the organizer or try to get me fired over it.

[scarmig]

'We've (and I mean "White Men") made it a point to relabel and rename everything to be non-offensive.'

Aw. How cute and generous of y'all!