Blum: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

Posted Mar 22, 2013 21:49 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Fair enough (I wouldn't know).

However, even if the page was different before the incident, I doubt it said that if you hear somebody make what you think is an inappropriate joke you should photograph that person and post the picture to Twitter at once to shame them. Even in the absence of explicit guidelines it does not take a Ph.D. in psychology to figure out that a more reasonable reaction in this case might have been to ask the guys politely to tone it down. Given that the inappropriate nature of the banter is in doubt to begin with, maybe the most reasonable reaction would have been to concentrate on the presentation, or the swag bag, or anything else, instead and let the moment pass. Especially if, like Ms Richards, you're just listening in accidentally and are apparently not above making a »dick joke« yourself on occasion.

It is very important to be sensitive to harassment issues but going around on a hair trigger, ready for all-out thermonuclear warfare, at all times does not really advance the issue. Sexism at tech conferences is very real and we should all contribute to stamping it out, but this includes dealing with your colleagues (of either sex) in a mature, reasonable, professional, and friendly way instead of gratuitously aggravating situations that are very likely really quite easy to defuse. There are other conceivable situations that might require immediate and decisive reactions in order to protect people's well-being or life but this one arguably wasn't one of those.

It is safe to stipulate that attendees at PyCon are there because they share a passion for Python programming, and IMHO that should serve to establish a common ground and keep people from assuming by default that everyone else there is a monster who can't wait to harass them with sexist jokes or worse. If there are in fact sexist monsters around it does help if there are documented and well-known procedures to deal with them, and if tech conferences are wising up to this then this must be a good thing. Even if the PyCon staff added these procedures to their page after the fact, I would think that they will remain there for next year's PyCon, and for other similar conferences to emulate. While we would all welcome instant perfection, gradual improvement is better than no improvement at all.

Posted Mar 23, 2013 4:44 UTC (Sat) by laptop006 (subscriber, #60779) [Link]