[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.