Your experiences sound awful and truly disheartening, and I hope we can move towards a better and more inclusive future for everyone.
However, I do feel compelled to make one point about this part:
>Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech. And this upset me, but not for the reasons you think. I agree that Adria went too far in publicly Tweeting and "name and shaming" these guys. But the vitriol and hate that has spewed forth online to her is what takes my breath away. Comments calling her a "cunt" and saying she should be raped (this I found on her blog, presumably before she had a chance to delete it.)
I agree those comments are absolutely horrifying, and the act of people I would never associate with. However, I don't think it's fair to attribute them to the 'tech community.' This incident was linked to by extremists on both sides of gender issues, and I believe it's largely that community that was responsible for the worst behavior (many of the most egregious twitter accounts featured imagery that was taken from some of these extremist communities). These extremists on both sides have pre-existing ideological war that's been going on for decades and has intensified over the internet, especially recently, as they isolate themselves in echo chambers like private subreddits and tumblr cliques. Of course, there is some overlap between that and the tech community, but if this topic was only being discussed by people who had previously heard of PyCon, I imagine the tone would be far, far different.
If you'd really like to back up the claim, go grab some of the threads on this subject, and spider the account pages of the people posting to the threads.
Plot them by amount of karma and # of days since the account was opened.
As much as i do think /r/mensrights are assholes who are making this situation worse, i would assert that there is a preexisting strain of this behavior on Hacker News, and this behavior is not an incident isolated just to this debacle.
To be fair, she claimed that these people represented the tech community, the responder said that they didn't represent the tech community and you instantly jump in to put the burden of proof on statement 2? Why not statement 1? If we're really calling the tech community sexist because someone got twitter hate after an article was posted on Reddit I'm just blown away at the logic gymnastics one would have to do to arrive at the point you've seemingly just arrived at...
>You are making a quantifiable assertion.
If you'd really like to back up the claim, go grab some of the threads on this subject, and spider the account pages of the people posting to the threads.
I don't see how plotting thread discussions on HN would even vaguely correlate to the Twitter abuse the GP was referring to.
zevyoura was asserting that the behavior seen on twitter is not representative of our community, and that those sentiments are isolated to a set of bad actors.
My assertion is that there is a substantial number of people who share that same ill will here on hacker news. Most of the threads that have been posted to HN have been dog piles of hating on Adria Richards. So the question is are those people new and in fact not representative of HN? Or are they people who have been around for a while, and have made substantive contributions to the community (using karma as a proxy measure)?
You seem to have a super inconsistent burden of proof.
-Poster above who says hacker news posters are typically sexist. No problem whatsoever, no burden of proof needed.
-Person responds and says they disagree that this represents HN posts. You respond and demand that they produce quantifiable proof.
-You then go on to assert that hacker news posters are like this, based on 0 quantifiable evidence, but just your hunch.
How do you make a point like that and not realize how unfair/unrealistic you're being?
No? I said if he wanted to quantify his claim, he could do so, and recommended a course of action. He said he didn't have the time/effort to do so.
All i was asserting was that my hunch was contrary to his. That's the perfect place for an experiment. Given that we don't have any evidence in front of us, we just have his hunch and my hunch. I'm not asserting anything beyond that.
"You are making a quantifiable assertion. If you'd really like to back up the claim, go grab some of the threads on this subject, and spider the account pages of the people posting to the threads."
My problem is simply that you demanded this of guy who disagreed with you, but you did not demand it from anyone who agreed with you. Its about the most biased/unfair way of making an argument possible.
I understand what you are trying to quantify, but I think you may be conflating sentiment.
zevyoura was responding directly to the GP's comment which made reference to use of the word "cunt" as well as threats / wishes of rape (and worse). The assertion being that the tech community was not responsible for some of the most hateful vitriol, none of which (AFAIK) was mirrored on HN.
Assuming that in fact all thread contributions were in opposition, it seems uncharitable to infer that simply because a HN contributor disagrees with Adria's actions that they are also somehow equivalent to the worst offenders on Twitter, FB and the like.
As zevyoura mentioned, there may be overlap - but IMHO this isn't as quantifiable an assertion as you make it out to be.
I usually stay away from twitter, but reading through some reddit threads (Seen nothing hateful on HN at all), only the communities made up mostly of idiots had any hate speech (SRS, SRSucks and MensRight)
Aren't the names of new users shown in green? So unless they already had accounts waiting around then people new to hackers news would stand out pretty easily.
>As much as i do think /r/mensrights are assholes who are making this situation worse, i would assert that there is a preexisting strain of this behavior on Hacker News, and this behavior is not an incident isolated just to this debacle.
Having recently discovered the /r/shitredditsays brigades, I'm not sure I'm comfortable seeing /r/mensrights called out without a mention of /r/srs, they are both equally egregious and antagonistic toward each other. And the pre-existing ideological warriors from either side have attached themselves to these communities just as swiftly as they rushed to the respective defense of each side of this story.
From what I've gleaned, /srs is pretty brutal, but towards the behavior of the MRAs. They are most likely a good mix of men and not attacking MRAs for being men who dare talk out about... the "gynocracy" or something. Your false equivalency is unnecessary and misplaced.
I don't really want to devote more mental energy to this topic than it's already consumed. I do agree that there are problematic elements within the tech community, and HN. I acknowledged this in my post:
"Of course, there is some overlap between [extremists] and the tech community..."
"I don't really want to devote more mental energy to this topic than it's already consumed."
The problem is, unless more mental energy is expended on this topic, it will be repeated. Better to have the full conversation now than to continually punt the issue.
"The problem is, unless more mental energy is expended on this topic, it will be repeated. Better to have the full conversation now than to continually punt the issue."
As much as I support discussion on these topics, it's the internet. Any message board will continue to bring up these issues in waves, as new events occur, as new posters join up, there is not going to be one article where everyone achieves some sort of understanding, now or ever. Set your expectations realistically :)
The problem is that people talking about it on a geeky news aggregator won't change the tech culture, and that similar incidents are to be expected in the future.
> I agree those comments are absolutely horrifying, and the act of people I would never associate with.
There is no way you could know this. People you associate with may be misogynistic or engage in trolling on the internet but they don't tell you or you aren't around to experience it. Bottom line is that the tech community does have issues with misogyny along with the rest of western society, although you are right in that there was a flood of attention from unusual sources for HN (/r/mensrights I'm looking at you).
However, I don't think it's fair to attribute them to the 'tech community.'
Really? People seem quite willing to ascribe to "feminists" all the negative attributes they can find. Is that OK? Why it OK to lump all feminists into one group but unfair to do it to "tech".
Also, despite what mad conspiracy theory people say, there aren't really many "extremists" on the "pro-equality" side of the gender issue. There are people complaining that they can't make belitting jokes about women at tech conferences. The other side think we should act professionally. One side is extreme, the other is reasonable.,
Case in point: There weren't making belitting jokes about women. Making jokes about "dongle" sounding like "dong" or about "forking the repository" of a male speaker? Where is making fun of women in there? Pretending like something else happened because it fits your narrative sounds extreme, not reasonable.
Often sex jokes and sex discussion in some communities only consist of one thing: men do the fing, women are fed. Treating women are sex sex objects, is a way to belittle and exclude women. (these jokes also affect some men too you know. Gay men are sometimes told they aren't real men because they do something only women should do, namely be the receptive sex partner (sometimes)). As a result many tech conferences have simplified things by banning all sex jokes, since it's often just the one type of sex in mind.
In THIS case (the one we are talking about), the sex joke consisted not in that one thing. There was no women being fed involved. There were talking about the repository of a male speaker. Don't you see that this is exactly the kind of "spreading the humor" that transcends the usual stereotype of a women being fed..? If you think that joke (which was supposed to be a sign of admiration for the guys code and I don't think anyone could misunderstand that part) implies him "being a women" (?) then I think you are reading a lot into it. Which is my exact point: you are not reasonable. You make the facts fit your agenda. You are being extremist.
However, I do feel compelled to make one point about this part:
>Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech. And this upset me, but not for the reasons you think. I agree that Adria went too far in publicly Tweeting and "name and shaming" these guys. But the vitriol and hate that has spewed forth online to her is what takes my breath away. Comments calling her a "cunt" and saying she should be raped (this I found on her blog, presumably before she had a chance to delete it.)
I agree those comments are absolutely horrifying, and the act of people I would never associate with. However, I don't think it's fair to attribute them to the 'tech community.' This incident was linked to by extremists on both sides of gender issues, and I believe it's largely that community that was responsible for the worst behavior (many of the most egregious twitter accounts featured imagery that was taken from some of these extremist communities). These extremists on both sides have pre-existing ideological war that's been going on for decades and has intensified over the internet, especially recently, as they isolate themselves in echo chambers like private subreddits and tumblr cliques. Of course, there is some overlap between that and the tech community, but if this topic was only being discussed by people who had previously heard of PyCon, I imagine the tone would be far, far different.