I hate that feeling.. the knowledge that engaging in the discussion is going to be exhausting and the chance of making traction is slim, and the feeling that inaction is the only reasonable alternative. Allow me to suggest another alternative to actual discussion in situations like this:
Tell the person to fuck off.
I'm serious. It registers disagreement, and to any rational person the lack of interest in attempting serious discussion. Ideal? No. Preferable to inaction? Absolutely. Plus where do you even start with a comment like that? I'd prefer to make it clear that I'm shocked than do someone who would say that the favor of jumping into a thoughtful discussion about how the merits of their opinion.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but for a non confrontational person this course of action is still a battle. When you see this all the time and fight it even just by calling it out, it still wears you out.
Like it or not the hackerverse is full of people who deemphasize social experiences in favour of other things. When someone makes a comment this inappropriate in public you're not just battling their sexism, you're going up against years of personality developed in an insular environment. I've known quite a few devs whose only social interaction in a year is GDC, barring a few friends of theirs who are like minded. They are awkward and inexperienced, and 360 days a year this is reinforced and tit jokes get laughs all round. Going up against that, I can really empathize with the authors central point. I'm tired.
If swear words aren't appropriate in this situation exactly what were they invented for?
Tell the guy to fuck off, and if he doesn't immediately apologise then call a waiter over and ask them to find him a table on his own somewhere because he's no longer welcome at this one.
Surely decent human beings don't meekly sit back and let bullying happen like that?
For a bit of nuance, instead of "fuck off", you could try something like "I disagree, but I'm pretty tired of that conversation", and change the topic.
I agree about the need to clearly register disagreement, but I'd opt for slightly less shock... I'd say, calmly and sternly "that is entirely inappropriate." I'd then call on others in the group to register their disagreement.
Okay, I may get many downvotes here, but this doesn't seem like the solution to the problem. Rudeness and insults are rudeness and insults. Cursing doesn't help the matter.
Inaction is not the solution either, but I'm sure there's a more mature way to handle things. Asking the party to leave politely is better than keeping your mouth shut, and it also seems better than cursing them out.
Of course, if they refuse to behave, then tell them the magic words.
This was painful to read. It's hard to get into the usual is-there-sexism-in-tech-or-not debate because this is so beyond the pale-dysfunctional. First, that anyone could say such a thing in polite company. Second, that the rest of the table did not demand the offending person to leave. Seriously, how is anyone, espicially the targeted woman, expected to enjoy their dinner and have a non-awkward conversation after that?
And really, this is not just a problem of some guy saying something kind of sexist. It's a guy who thinks the scales are so much in his favor that he can just say such a thing to a stranger without really offending people. He's not beyond hope, but he's not someone you should break bread with without making clear at he was completely out of line.
Edit: I'm not helping much with the OP's guilt trip...it's never easy thinking about what you should've done when the shock was over. The OP shouldn't chastise himself for not throwing a punch or making some other dramatic stand. But leaving out of protest is always an option. If it makes the troll and everyone who decided to stay feel awkward, well, that's their decision.
Why should I ruin my evening due to this guy? What exactly are you protesting? Do you think this kind of person gives a shit if you walk away? Do you think the entire rest of the table will follow you? (Answer: No.) Stand up to him and resolve it; if no progress is made and it turns ugly, that person is no longer welcome at your table and you move on. I laid out a template here[0].
I see lots of people saying "walk away" -- you're letting the troll win. That's your dinner. This isn't like high school where you can just up and walk away and get whispers going in the hallway about what happened at lunch last Tuesday, OMG! Handle it like a grown person.
This is important: TROLLS WILL CONTINUE TROLLING AS LONG AS YOUR SILLY CLINGING TO POLITENESS MEANS YOU WON'T CONFRONT THEM. Your being polite enables them. Think about that. Just don't get it wrong and draw down on a harmless comment that you misunderstood.
Why is this even a topic anymore? I don't understand how this can even enter into someone's mind as an acceptable remark to make. This is the 21st century - if you don't treat women with respect and as equals then please, don't show your face in public anymore until you learn normal human etiquette.
When I was in basic training for the Army, my drill instructor told us that they can turn us into soldiers but there is nothing they can do to fix 18 years of bad parenting.
For me, there are certain traits and ways of thinking that I just can't tolerate. In some cases, I can tolerate those beliefs if the person is able to keep them locked up when I'm around. Usually this person is smart enough to know a certain belief if controversial or similar and knows when to keep quiet.
Some people know when to keep quiet, some people don't. Some people can swear like a sailor when drinking with friends at a private location but have the good sense not to do the same when out at a family location on a normal day.
People probably can't / won't change. Discussion and arguments won't do it. Even if you could change a person, it's not worth the effort for you to try. It's best to just cut the cord right there and move on with your life.
Not sure why this comment is being downvoted. It's entirely true. The reason we've got people in the world who make comments like this is because they were raised in an environment where it was normal, and they think it's normal. We've got bad eggs in all walks of life. Society moves on and ultimately those people will suffer for going against the grain. It's a shame that ladies are so overwhelmed by this in our industry but you can't let the dweebs in society get you down.
Most of the people in her group shared the same reaction: they were surprised and defended her. I realize that ladies have it tough in our industry, but it's not a 50:50 men vs women war.
When you're in a jam like that, there isn't much you can do. You don't engage them. When someone says shit like that, you just ignore them. Or change the subject. Or leave. As the author said herself ... she isn't a confrontational person. Most women aren't. So, you just drop it and walk away. I do it all the time. I have no patience for stupid people, regardless of their gender.
You're right that it's not OP's job to fix broken people.
If the broken person wishes to change, he can. He can ask for help. I hope this wasn't a cry for help because it got lost.
However, signalling that his behavior is not OK is important for everyone else at the table. Maybe there is some naive young guy sitting there who didn't think the jerk's comment was okay, but without seeing any kind of sanction he may start thinking "oh, that's how I'm supposed to talk to be respected." Make sure that he doesn't end up thinking that. It's also important for the person who was insulted, of course.
I once witnessed overt racism at an event. I didn't know either party. To this day, I regret not intervening.
Perhaps I'm now over compensating, but I became "that guy" who always speaks up. That time, I was so shocked, I didn't know how to respond. Replaying it in my head over and over, now I don't need to hesitate when it happens again.
Note: you're not persuading the antagonist. Screw him. By speaking up, you're putting him and everyone on else on notice that pathological behavior will not be tolerated.
A year or two back, we had a guest female speaker at a local user group. I felt that she wasn't being given the same level of respect afforded every other speaker. People talked over her, interrupted her, etc.
So I said something. I pissed some people off. Others laughed at me.
But next time we had a female speaker, EVERYONE was super courteous. They even joked that if anyone was rude, Specialist (me) would bring on the hurt.
My advice to Andy Moore, and everyone, is to learn from his experience, and prepare for the next time, until such time that the trogs realize they can keep their sexism, racist, hatred, etc to themselves.
The guy who was making sexist statements is ignorant, not a "fucking loser."
How do you make these situations positive for everyone?
Empathy.
Empathy for all sides.
Everyone exposed to this kind of social ignorance is a victim if you dig deep enough.
In the tech world we are quick to call users idiots, each other inept, ideas retarded...
I ask for empathy.
Empathy for this offensive guy who most likely grew up intimidated by social situations. He was picked on and bullied, and never grew past it. If I ventured a guess, I'd say he's still in pain, and still not sure how to act due to years of relative social isolation. He is simply ignorant of the effect of his actions. He literally knows no other ways to relate.
Calling him names makes us no different from him, or the people who encouraged his social isolation. Do you think shaming him will convince him we're right? He'll just view us as "another bully" and continue his anti-social behavior.
Encouraging growth through understanding, not through social imposition or public shaming is how we resolve these situations positively.
I don't think the person in this particular story is being ignorant -- he's being willfully sexist. This situation is not a misunderstanding. And we don't know why he thinks the women in the post can't get by on her own merits.
We do know that after hearing what other people had to say, he insisted on his sexist remark. He had a chance to reflect on it, and exhibited no remorse or apprehension. That kind of behavior doesn't deserve empathy, it deserves harsher correction and condemnation by his peers. Letting a situation like that slide only says, "If you insist enough, people actually shut up because they're agreeing with you or don't think it matters enough to merit dissent." Silence is just as bad as agreement in a case like this.
This guy doesn't need a kindergarten-level explanation of why it's not nice to tell a lady she got where she is "because of her tits" -- he needs someone to tell him to cut the crap because it won't be tolerated.
"Calling him names makes us no different from him"
In my opinion, you've missed one very important detail. He's only getting "called names" in response to his "offensive guy" actions. Nobody involved in this conversation would have said a single word, good _or_ bad about the guy, except for the fact that he chose to publicly be a sexist jerk and intentionally offend someone in a social situation.
I _do_ feel empathy for people with poorly developed social skills - having been there myself and having friends and colleagues in the same boat (as I suspect most of us in this industry/profession do), BUT, if you've made it to 20 or 25 years old without having worked out that accusing a female of ony having accomplished something "because TITS!", you're clearly in need of stronger education techniques than "encouraging growth through understanding" - I'm not advocating punching him in the face, but if he were a puppy I'd be whacking him on the nose with a newspaper. Social imposition and public shaming are _entirely_ appropriate tools to deal with adults who make comments like he did.
While I'm not going to argue against empathy in general, registering some blunt disapproval is less of a bullying behavior than saying nothing and passive-aggressively excluding someone, which seems to be the runner-up suggestion in the thread.
Drawing moral equivalence between participating in hostility against women and hostility against the rude and ignorant is a bit of a stretch, too.
Saying "fuck off" is not morally equivalent to implying a specific woman was hired for their purely physical assets irrespective of their intellect.
And public shaming is absolutely the way you do it. You need to draw a very firm line in the sand which cannot be interpreted in any other way; some wishy-washy "I wish you wouldn't say that" isn't going to do it for some classes of people, who'll just think you're saying that because the woman is there.
Now, myself, I would probably not say "fuck off." I might stand up and say something like "I'm going to have to ask you to apologize for saying that. You disrespected her and you disrespected me." It is polite but firm. It brings to bear social pressure, letting him know in clear terms what he has done and how he can fix it in the near term.
This is why I never use the word "fuck" in common discorse. For these situations exactly. So that when I hold up my hand and say "$name, fuck you" it goes off like a bomb and I don't have to say anything else.
That's because they're not the target audience. It's a call to action for everyone who may have witnessed a scenario like that one and didn't tell the guy to fuck off.
And the usual stack of classic comments building on there already as well. "Man the fuck up bitch".
Some guy talking about how he's totally on side but somehow is unable to keep himself from commenting on her breasts; presumably he subscribes to the idea that if you can pretend to be ironic, you can still say it. Classic stuff.
Despite the feeling that "some people can't / won't change" I believe in teachable moments[1]. I can't recall where I heard this, but someone once said that racism and bigotry were diminished in this country when people shamed friends and family members for making insensitive remarks.
> Defenses and arguments tried to be brought up, but conversation quickly moved on with the men talking over the woman until she just sat there quietly and resigned.
Hmm. Why haven't I seen a single woman post an article about this issue? I'm tired of all the me-tooism from men about this subject. Yes, sexism is abhorrent fallacy, but inverse-sexism is still sorta sexism -- enough with the White Knights, already.
Not to defend the guy who made some joke about tits, but I look forward to the day when we can be more than humorless automatons regarding this issue. Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgqUQ17sYm0
I suggest next time this happens saying, "you're being rude", and change the topic. I've gotten really good results with that statement, ymmv, but hth.
Reactionary and probably won't help. Involving some sort of arbitrary authority only serves to dilute the cause and adds external interests to influence an outcome. It also means this type of behavior will continue when the 'sexism police' aren't looking.
I think social pressure is what needs to make this stop. We need to be mindful of what's not ok and have the courage to say something. That means that the authority is open-sourced to you and me.
Speaking based on experience with what happened to Jesse Noller and the PSF just two weeks ago, you do not want to escalate this to any level where someone might lose a job or be asked to leave the conference. The same people that cannot handle social situations with women without discussing their tits resort to death threats and nonstop harassment when one of "their own" is chastised publicly for such a thing. If I were Jesse, I'd be having second thoughts about my volunteer work after that shitshow. It's just not worth it to be kind to these people. Ever.
Someone else I know wrote a blog post about the Adria Richards thing. He then moderated one comment which was extremely offensive. In retaliation, the person that wrote the comment launched a denial of service against his blog. This industry is full of emotional children that cannot handle being adults, and most of them can never admit that they might be wrong. Had OP confronted this jackass, it probably would have gone nowhere, and running to the cops/conference people is just shoving your problems on someone else. There is just no easy solution here without stepping up and being confrontational.
I'm assuming the game development people (different industry) and GDC might have missed that brouhaha, even though it was all over the news, so I'm sparing the benefit of the doubt that game development should have learned a valuable lesson from the PSF's (and Python community's) misfortune.
It's an aggregation of stories from people working in the service industry who have horror stories to tell from the customers they serviced. If you read through a few stories you might pick up on a anomaly that seems to pervade. Particularly any story from the "Awesome Customers" category.
For some stories we see normal, self-righteous, mildly ignorant, comical behavior, typical of human beings in general I would say. Other stories have this strange, caricature, like quality about them. People come off like comic book villains, cackling maniacally as they monologue about how demographic X is inferior in way Y. They say statements which are way beyond the pale of current society, and in these stories one brave individual stands against their unwavering ignorance in a triumphant display, shaming the villain.
I think you'll pick up on it as well. These stories are fantasies. Spirited teenagers imagining themselves slaying the ignorance and wrong-doings of their bigoted elders, and reporting it as if it actually happened for the mass approval of people on Facebook.
I had the same reaction. After years on the Internet you have to develop a sensitive bullshit detector. I'd love to hear this story told from the perspective of someone else at the table.
She did speak up. See the comments (you can't at the moment because the traffic's taken the site down). And the comments have a guy who is behaving exactly like that.
To paraphrase - she tried to make the witty comeback but was talked over, and part of the point is this isn't isolated, she gets rape threats every game release; can you imagine how wearing that is?
She suggests that others also need to speak up - a quick "Not cool, dude" to anyone who behaves like this.
When you are intellectually advanced to the point where sexist jokes simply make you want to rip out the throat of the party saying them, you begin to realize that disrespect for women is not only illogical but very perverse. Telling someone they have "good tits" is not funny or even sexy to the party that it is said to.
It's a fucking disgrace to humanity. Not only is it objectifying, but it's insulting, rude, and so incredibly improper.
I thought we had reached the point where our minds found others attractive based upon intelligence, and not on physical appearance. I thought we had reached the point where sexism had all but disappeared.
Of course, as I always am, I was wrong.
This is quite frankly getting ridiculous. I don't tell women anything about their physical appearance, unless I've known them for a long time; which is when an "You're a very beautiful person" may be appropriate.
I know many others that go by the same maxim. It's a shame some men haven't matured enough to behave.
Wait, nobody's even bringing up the fact that maybe the game developer didn't get the pass on merit alone? Yeah, the comment was rude (people are rude everywhere, always), but maybe he had a point.
[+] [-] famousactress|13 years ago|reply
Tell the person to fuck off.
I'm serious. It registers disagreement, and to any rational person the lack of interest in attempting serious discussion. Ideal? No. Preferable to inaction? Absolutely. Plus where do you even start with a comment like that? I'd prefer to make it clear that I'm shocked than do someone who would say that the favor of jumping into a thoughtful discussion about how the merits of their opinion.
[+] [-] rescripting|13 years ago|reply
Like it or not the hackerverse is full of people who deemphasize social experiences in favour of other things. When someone makes a comment this inappropriate in public you're not just battling their sexism, you're going up against years of personality developed in an insular environment. I've known quite a few devs whose only social interaction in a year is GDC, barring a few friends of theirs who are like minded. They are awkward and inexperienced, and 360 days a year this is reinforced and tit jokes get laughs all round. Going up against that, I can really empathize with the authors central point. I'm tired.
[+] [-] ratherbefuddled|13 years ago|reply
Tell the guy to fuck off, and if he doesn't immediately apologise then call a waiter over and ask them to find him a table on his own somewhere because he's no longer welcome at this one.
Surely decent human beings don't meekly sit back and let bullying happen like that?
[+] [-] richforrester|13 years ago|reply
Statement made, stupid comment brushed off, nobody got hurt.
The whole "down to their level and beat you with experience" thing comes to mind.
[+] [-] 18hrs|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kunai|13 years ago|reply
Okay, I may get many downvotes here, but this doesn't seem like the solution to the problem. Rudeness and insults are rudeness and insults. Cursing doesn't help the matter.
Inaction is not the solution either, but I'm sure there's a more mature way to handle things. Asking the party to leave politely is better than keeping your mouth shut, and it also seems better than cursing them out.
Of course, if they refuse to behave, then tell them the magic words.
Fuck off.
[+] [-] danso|13 years ago|reply
And really, this is not just a problem of some guy saying something kind of sexist. It's a guy who thinks the scales are so much in his favor that he can just say such a thing to a stranger without really offending people. He's not beyond hope, but he's not someone you should break bread with without making clear at he was completely out of line.
Edit: I'm not helping much with the OP's guilt trip...it's never easy thinking about what you should've done when the shock was over. The OP shouldn't chastise himself for not throwing a punch or making some other dramatic stand. But leaving out of protest is always an option. If it makes the troll and everyone who decided to stay feel awkward, well, that's their decision.
[+] [-] tiredofcareer|13 years ago|reply
Why should I ruin my evening due to this guy? What exactly are you protesting? Do you think this kind of person gives a shit if you walk away? Do you think the entire rest of the table will follow you? (Answer: No.) Stand up to him and resolve it; if no progress is made and it turns ugly, that person is no longer welcome at your table and you move on. I laid out a template here[0].
I see lots of people saying "walk away" -- you're letting the troll win. That's your dinner. This isn't like high school where you can just up and walk away and get whispers going in the hallway about what happened at lunch last Tuesday, OMG! Handle it like a grown person.
This is important: TROLLS WILL CONTINUE TROLLING AS LONG AS YOUR SILLY CLINGING TO POLITENESS MEANS YOU WON'T CONFRONT THEM. Your being polite enables them. Think about that. Just don't get it wrong and draw down on a harmless comment that you misunderstood.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5483332
[+] [-] tjbiddle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SkittlesNTwix|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fudged71|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gexla|13 years ago|reply
For me, there are certain traits and ways of thinking that I just can't tolerate. In some cases, I can tolerate those beliefs if the person is able to keep them locked up when I'm around. Usually this person is smart enough to know a certain belief if controversial or similar and knows when to keep quiet.
Some people know when to keep quiet, some people don't. Some people can swear like a sailor when drinking with friends at a private location but have the good sense not to do the same when out at a family location on a normal day.
People probably can't / won't change. Discussion and arguments won't do it. Even if you could change a person, it's not worth the effort for you to try. It's best to just cut the cord right there and move on with your life.
[+] [-] whalesalad|13 years ago|reply
Most of the people in her group shared the same reaction: they were surprised and defended her. I realize that ladies have it tough in our industry, but it's not a 50:50 men vs women war.
When you're in a jam like that, there isn't much you can do. You don't engage them. When someone says shit like that, you just ignore them. Or change the subject. Or leave. As the author said herself ... she isn't a confrontational person. Most women aren't. So, you just drop it and walk away. I do it all the time. I have no patience for stupid people, regardless of their gender.
[+] [-] danielweber|13 years ago|reply
If the broken person wishes to change, he can. He can ask for help. I hope this wasn't a cry for help because it got lost.
However, signalling that his behavior is not OK is important for everyone else at the table. Maybe there is some naive young guy sitting there who didn't think the jerk's comment was okay, but without seeing any kind of sanction he may start thinking "oh, that's how I'm supposed to talk to be respected." Make sure that he doesn't end up thinking that. It's also important for the person who was insulted, of course.
[+] [-] specialist|13 years ago|reply
Perhaps I'm now over compensating, but I became "that guy" who always speaks up. That time, I was so shocked, I didn't know how to respond. Replaying it in my head over and over, now I don't need to hesitate when it happens again.
Note: you're not persuading the antagonist. Screw him. By speaking up, you're putting him and everyone on else on notice that pathological behavior will not be tolerated.
A year or two back, we had a guest female speaker at a local user group. I felt that she wasn't being given the same level of respect afforded every other speaker. People talked over her, interrupted her, etc.
So I said something. I pissed some people off. Others laughed at me.
But next time we had a female speaker, EVERYONE was super courteous. They even joked that if anyone was rude, Specialist (me) would bring on the hurt.
My advice to Andy Moore, and everyone, is to learn from his experience, and prepare for the next time, until such time that the trogs realize they can keep their sexism, racist, hatred, etc to themselves.
[+] [-] noobface|13 years ago|reply
The guy who was making sexist statements is ignorant, not a "fucking loser."
How do you make these situations positive for everyone?
Empathy. Empathy for all sides.
Everyone exposed to this kind of social ignorance is a victim if you dig deep enough.
In the tech world we are quick to call users idiots, each other inept, ideas retarded...
I ask for empathy.
Empathy for this offensive guy who most likely grew up intimidated by social situations. He was picked on and bullied, and never grew past it. If I ventured a guess, I'd say he's still in pain, and still not sure how to act due to years of relative social isolation. He is simply ignorant of the effect of his actions. He literally knows no other ways to relate.
Calling him names makes us no different from him, or the people who encouraged his social isolation. Do you think shaming him will convince him we're right? He'll just view us as "another bully" and continue his anti-social behavior.
Encouraging growth through understanding, not through social imposition or public shaming is how we resolve these situations positively.
[+] [-] mlent|13 years ago|reply
We do know that after hearing what other people had to say, he insisted on his sexist remark. He had a chance to reflect on it, and exhibited no remorse or apprehension. That kind of behavior doesn't deserve empathy, it deserves harsher correction and condemnation by his peers. Letting a situation like that slide only says, "If you insist enough, people actually shut up because they're agreeing with you or don't think it matters enough to merit dissent." Silence is just as bad as agreement in a case like this.
This guy doesn't need a kindergarten-level explanation of why it's not nice to tell a lady she got where she is "because of her tits" -- he needs someone to tell him to cut the crap because it won't be tolerated.
[+] [-] bigiain|13 years ago|reply
In my opinion, you've missed one very important detail. He's only getting "called names" in response to his "offensive guy" actions. Nobody involved in this conversation would have said a single word, good _or_ bad about the guy, except for the fact that he chose to publicly be a sexist jerk and intentionally offend someone in a social situation.
I _do_ feel empathy for people with poorly developed social skills - having been there myself and having friends and colleagues in the same boat (as I suspect most of us in this industry/profession do), BUT, if you've made it to 20 or 25 years old without having worked out that accusing a female of ony having accomplished something "because TITS!", you're clearly in need of stronger education techniques than "encouraging growth through understanding" - I'm not advocating punching him in the face, but if he were a puppy I'd be whacking him on the nose with a newspaper. Social imposition and public shaming are _entirely_ appropriate tools to deal with adults who make comments like he did.
[+] [-] bcoates|13 years ago|reply
Drawing moral equivalence between participating in hostility against women and hostility against the rude and ignorant is a bit of a stretch, too.
[+] [-] wonderzombie|13 years ago|reply
And public shaming is absolutely the way you do it. You need to draw a very firm line in the sand which cannot be interpreted in any other way; some wishy-washy "I wish you wouldn't say that" isn't going to do it for some classes of people, who'll just think you're saying that because the woman is there.
Now, myself, I would probably not say "fuck off." I might stand up and say something like "I'm going to have to ask you to apologize for saying that. You disrespected her and you disrespected me." It is polite but firm. It brings to bear social pressure, letting him know in clear terms what he has done and how he can fix it in the near term.
[+] [-] noonespecial|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] norswap|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmcg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whalesalad|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wonderzombie|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 205guy|13 years ago|reply
On the other hand, I was kinda waiting for the twitpic to go with the story.
[+] [-] EliRivers|13 years ago|reply
Some guy talking about how he's totally on side but somehow is unable to keep himself from commenting on her breasts; presumably he subscribes to the idea that if you can pretend to be ironic, you can still say it. Classic stuff.
[+] [-] gdubs|13 years ago|reply
1. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teachable_moment#section_3
[+] [-] namuol|13 years ago|reply
Hmm. Why haven't I seen a single woman post an article about this issue? I'm tired of all the me-tooism from men about this subject. Yes, sexism is abhorrent fallacy, but inverse-sexism is still sorta sexism -- enough with the White Knights, already.
Not to defend the guy who made some joke about tits, but I look forward to the day when we can be more than humorless automatons regarding this issue. Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgqUQ17sYm0
[+] [-] influx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ronaldx|13 years ago|reply
No yelling or arguing or rational reasoning: People like that guy just need to understand simply and clearly that it is not acceptable.
[+] [-] banachtarski|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tankbot|13 years ago|reply
I think social pressure is what needs to make this stop. We need to be mindful of what's not ok and have the courage to say something. That means that the authority is open-sourced to you and me.
[+] [-] tiredofcareer|13 years ago|reply
Someone else I know wrote a blog post about the Adria Richards thing. He then moderated one comment which was extremely offensive. In retaliation, the person that wrote the comment launched a denial of service against his blog. This industry is full of emotional children that cannot handle being adults, and most of them can never admit that they might be wrong. Had OP confronted this jackass, it probably would have gone nowhere, and running to the cops/conference people is just shoving your problems on someone else. There is just no easy solution here without stepping up and being confrontational.
I'm assuming the game development people (different industry) and GDC might have missed that brouhaha, even though it was all over the news, so I'm sparing the benefit of the doubt that game development should have learned a valuable lesson from the PSF's (and Python community's) misfortune.
[+] [-] jason_slack|13 years ago|reply
See you thought better than I did. I decided to insult him first, think logical second :-)
[+] [-] GhotiFish|13 years ago|reply
It's an aggregation of stories from people working in the service industry who have horror stories to tell from the customers they serviced. If you read through a few stories you might pick up on a anomaly that seems to pervade. Particularly any story from the "Awesome Customers" category.
For some stories we see normal, self-righteous, mildly ignorant, comical behavior, typical of human beings in general I would say. Other stories have this strange, caricature, like quality about them. People come off like comic book villains, cackling maniacally as they monologue about how demographic X is inferior in way Y. They say statements which are way beyond the pale of current society, and in these stories one brave individual stands against their unwavering ignorance in a triumphant display, shaming the villain.
I think you'll pick up on it as well. These stories are fantasies. Spirited teenagers imagining themselves slaying the ignorance and wrong-doings of their bigoted elders, and reporting it as if it actually happened for the mass approval of people on Facebook.
This story has such a quality about it.
93 points and counting.
[+] [-] bcoates|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] defen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whalesalad|13 years ago|reply
But these are the kinds of people you don't want to hire.
[+] [-] danielweber|13 years ago|reply
This isn't necessarily "firing offense." It is "fireable offense" and if you aren't sweating through your talk with HR you are messed up.
And if your company doesn't have an HR department: congratulations, now they need one.
[+] [-] tempestn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rocky1138|13 years ago|reply
She didn't speak up, either?
[+] [-] bazzargh|13 years ago|reply
To paraphrase - she tried to make the witty comeback but was talked over, and part of the point is this isn't isolated, she gets rape threats every game release; can you imagine how wearing that is?
She suggests that others also need to speak up - a quick "Not cool, dude" to anyone who behaves like this.
[+] [-] kunai|13 years ago|reply
When you are intellectually advanced to the point where sexist jokes simply make you want to rip out the throat of the party saying them, you begin to realize that disrespect for women is not only illogical but very perverse. Telling someone they have "good tits" is not funny or even sexy to the party that it is said to.
It's a fucking disgrace to humanity. Not only is it objectifying, but it's insulting, rude, and so incredibly improper.
I thought we had reached the point where our minds found others attractive based upon intelligence, and not on physical appearance. I thought we had reached the point where sexism had all but disappeared.
Of course, as I always am, I was wrong.
This is quite frankly getting ridiculous. I don't tell women anything about their physical appearance, unless I've known them for a long time; which is when an "You're a very beautiful person" may be appropriate.
I know many others that go by the same maxim. It's a shame some men haven't matured enough to behave.
[+] [-] martinced|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] verbalist|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lowboy|13 years ago|reply