What exactly did she do? I recall she complained on Twitter, and exercised her freedom of speech to express her opinion. A number of people shared that opinion and also spoke freely about their opinion.
In the fullness of time, his employers acted like craven cowards and sacked him. Did she sack him? No.
Was he scarred for life? Ostracized? No, he found work again quickly. But what happened to her? A bunch of other people exercised their freedom of speech and shared their opinion of her choices, and she was also fired. Was she ostracized? Yes. People said things like, “She should never work in tech again.”
To anyone on the outside of that incident, it’s quite obvious that the treatment of the two persons involved was completely asymmetrical, especially considering that what she did was express an unpopular opinion.
Which is something that hackers, especially hackers here, often say is something that ought to be protected. But there’s always the weasel words that “speech has consequences,” which mean that in reality, “privilege” is being insulated from those consequences, and lack of privilege is being exposed to the maximum consequences.
Getting back to your rules, she didn’t get anyone fired. She spoke out about something that was said in a public place loudly enough for her to hear it.
I’ll gladly defend that. There is nothing remotely civilized about saying that she shouldn’t be allowed to object to anything she hears, or express her opinion about how a civilized society should respond.
White males do that all the time. Why is a black, Jewish female not afforded the same option?
> To anyone on the outside of that incident, it’s quite obvious that the treatment of the two persons involved was completely asymmetrical, especially considering that what she did was express an unpopular opinion.
And what was he doing, besides expressing an unpopular opinion?
> There is nothing remotely civilized about saying that she shouldn’t be allowed to object to anything she hears
Of course she should be allowed to object. She should also be sensible enough to recognize that including the identity of the individual in the objection is the same as asking the public at large to take action against the individual.
Free speech does not mean free from consequences. Both parties learned that in spades.
Yes, his name has been carefully kept out of public discussions. This is the patriarchy protecting his reputation while repeating the complainant's name as often and as widely as possible to make sure that anyone who dislikes what she did has a target for criticism and/or abuse while the people who dislike what he did don't.
He didn't ask for his name to be published and she outed him under her real name on her employer's Twitter account. 'The patriarchy' is not conspiring against her to keep her name public, it's just maintaining the status quo.
>What exactly did she do? I recall she complained on Twitter, and exercised her freedom of speech to express her opinion.
What she did was escalate, and that unwisely.
She added identifying info. Anyone familiar with the internet knows what can happen.
Say I'm wrong, and that she never meant for it to get so out of hand. Where was her defense of mr-hank? She could have stopped the madness or even reversed it after the fact with the right blog post. Perhaps she felt culturally unsafe in a big conference room surrounded by a bunch of white male Christian programmers, but when you complain, and someone gets fired over it, turns out you had more power than you thought, and with that comes responsibility.
In short: she started a lynch mob fight, and lost.
How about you don’t tell me what I’m going to say in response to you, and then you don’t argue with yourself?
What I’ll actually say is that you appear to have decided that she got what she deserved, and everything you’re arguing is post-facto reasoning to rationalize the decision you’ve already made.
I might as well have a discussion with a volleyball.
Exactly. And I'll add that a private conversation is one thing. A conversation had in the middle of a crowd is another. And it's another still when that crowd is at a convention with a code of conduct and the conversation violates it.
I think the article mentions how in the good old days, conventions didn't have (or need) codes of conduct and a politically correct squad on standby to escort people out of the building if they made innocuous jokes that anyone turning on the TV to watch a sitcom gets peppered with (followed by laugh tapes to make sure people understand that it was supposed to be funny).
What was said code of conduct? Saying things in a certain tone of voice is not allowed? Referring to a dongle as being big is not allowed? Their claimed violation was all very up for debate TBF.
In particular, I think this was the part that was violated: "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."
The jokes were about forking and big dongles; they were obvious sexual references. The maker of the joke, the overhearer, and the people running the conference all agreed that it was a code of conduct violation, so there's nothing really up for debate about that.
That you don't understand why these codes were created or what practical benefit they have means little other that you haven't taken the time to learn anything before opening your mouth.
Apparently the reference to "forking" and "dongles" could be considered sexual, if you squint enough. Never mind that it was a private conversation and Richards wasn't a part of it - she needed to get her outrage quota for the day so she photographed the jokers and tweeted it to tens of thousands of people with her martyrdom narrative appended.
I think the problem with the whole event in the end was that people don't think too highly of other people's privacy anymore - posting someone's picture or even using someone's real name on the internet was unheard of and Not Done ten years ago, nowadays people just do it because IDK, they haven't gotten their required 100 tweets / day yet or something.
In the fullness of time, his employers acted like craven cowards and sacked him. Did she sack him? No.
Was he scarred for life? Ostracized? No, he found work again quickly. But what happened to her? A bunch of other people exercised their freedom of speech and shared their opinion of her choices, and she was also fired. Was she ostracized? Yes. People said things like, “She should never work in tech again.”
To anyone on the outside of that incident, it’s quite obvious that the treatment of the two persons involved was completely asymmetrical, especially considering that what she did was express an unpopular opinion.
Which is something that hackers, especially hackers here, often say is something that ought to be protected. But there’s always the weasel words that “speech has consequences,” which mean that in reality, “privilege” is being insulated from those consequences, and lack of privilege is being exposed to the maximum consequences.
Getting back to your rules, she didn’t get anyone fired. She spoke out about something that was said in a public place loudly enough for her to hear it.
I’ll gladly defend that. There is nothing remotely civilized about saying that she shouldn’t be allowed to object to anything she hears, or express her opinion about how a civilized society should respond.
White males do that all the time. Why is a black, Jewish female not afforded the same option?