Quote (Handcuffs @ Jul 8 2020 02:51pm)

The difference is that traditional boycotting is merely an individual decision to discontinue support going forward, and encouraging others to do the same. It kind of starts and ends there.

So called "Cancel Culture" often involves going beyond this. They want people to be fired from their jobs/roles, disavowed by groups/companies that formerly worked with them, and for instance in JK Rowling's instance there are some (very small in number) people who believe that her intellectual property rights for Harry Potter should be revoked.

Quote (Skinned @ Jul 8 2020 09:29am)

If you're not actively helping a person who should be receiving resources due to prejudices, which is how this is viewed. It sounds like having a whites only domestic violence shelter, which we have decided is a problem.

The crux is whether transgenderism is a valid identity.

And it gets weird. I work in mental health and I've treated some people I wouldn't want to go to a women's shelter that believe they should go there. That is me, a white male in a position of power, deciding where this transperson should and shouldn't go, which is what is at stake here and what a lot of folks would say is part of the problem.

Quote (Handcuffs @ 8 Jul 2020 17:51)

The difference is that traditional boycotting is merely an individual decision to discontinue support going forward, and encouraging others to do the same. It kind of starts and ends there.

So called "Cancel Culture" often involves going beyond this. They want people to be fired from their jobs/roles, disavowed by groups/companies that formerly worked with them, and for instance in JK Rowling's instance there are some (very small in number) people who believe that her intellectual property rights for Harry Potter should be revoked.

Quote (bogie160 @ Jul 8 2020 05:03pm)

We've identified a need for female-only shelters. This sort of discrimination is obviously permissible, it is after all inherently discriminatory.

In any event, what we are discussing is not violence. It would be violent to throw shakes at trans individuals, smash eggs on their heads, or otherwise commit or threaten bodily harm. It is not violent to dedicate charity to a non-trans cause, or to refer to them with conventional pronouns. We need to accept that there is a difference between being rude and being violent.

Quote (excellence @ Jul 8 2020 06:18am)

great post my friend! another rando bamboozled by the score of 1-0!

Quote (Testiclese @ Jul 8 2020 09:40am)

Whether they are or are not women. That's what there is to debate.

Quote (thundercock @ Jul 8 2020 11:35am)

Here is one that comes to mind: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html
There are thousands of examples of the above. This occurred in 2013 I think. Granted, in this case, she was simply unlucky that she went viral and I'm not sure if anyone purposely targeted her. As I've said before, I don't think society has figured out how to use social media properly and we should be more lenient. The correct response by her company should have been to issue a statement that it doesn't support her statements and for HR should have talked to her about sensitivity, racism, social media responsibility, etc. Granted, she got back on her feet several years later but she wears a scarlet letter.

You're not wrong about social boundaries. I think the thing that you're missing is that they aren't meant to be uniform. We shouldn't expect urban Chicago to have the same virtues/beliefs as rural Oklahoma. It's great when people see different ideas and react positively. That's fantastic. It's very bad when you start seeing people as "them" or "the other" though and you try to silence them. I don't see Americans using social media responsibly in this regard because you aren't getting the whole picture. When two people from different areas go to college together, you experience them as a person. On the internet, people aren't seen as people.

Quote (Mr-Hank)

Hi, I'm the guy who made a comment about big dongles. First of all I'd like to say I'm sorry. I really did not mean to offend anyone and I really do regret the comment and how it made Adria feel. She had every right to report me to staff, and I defend her position. However, there is another side to this story. While I did make a big dongle joke about a fictional piece hardware that identified as male, no sexual jokes were made about forking. My friends and I had decided forking someone's repo is a new form of flattery (the highest form being implementation) and we were excited about one of the presenters projects; a friend said "I would fork that guys repo" The sexual context was applied by Adria, and not us.
My second comment is this, Adria has an audience and is a successful person of the media. Just check out her web page linked in her twitter account, her hard work and social activism speaks for itself. With that great power and reach comes responsibility. As a result of the picture she took I was let go from my job today. Which sucks because I have 3 kids and I really liked that job.

She gave me no warning, she smiled while she snapped the pic and sealed my fate. Let this serve as a message to everyone, our actions and words, big or small, can have a serious impact.

I will be at pycon 2014, I will joke and socialize with everyone but I will also be mindful of my audience, accidental or otherwise.

Again, I apologize.

Quote (Adria Richards)

Hey,
Thanks for speaking up, contributing your viewpoint on HN and not attacking me.

I'm sorry to hear your employer deciding to not to work with you on this and I hope they reconsider, bring you back on and dealing with it constructively.

For context, I'm a developer evangelist.

That means I'm an advocate for developers, male and female. While I hear abou demanding bosses with impossible deadlines for product launches, I also hear about the experiences of women working at startups.

In both cases I offer suggestions, ideas and mentoring to help the developers become problems solvers. Sometimes the answer is our API or not answering email after 7pm while other times it about being assertive and shedding impostor syndrome.

The forking joke set the stage for the dongle joke.

Yes, this time I decided I didn't want to argue my perspective. I decided instead to accept it bothered me and took action based on the PyCon Code of Conduct. It sounds like if I'd said something about the forking you would have denied it having a sexual association. Not sure if I smiled but I'm also unsure what facial expression you would have expected.

I just got done writing my blog post you can read here: [link redacted, goes to 404 page].

See you next year.

Quote (Handcuffs @ Jul 8 2020 03:42pm)

Isn't the real issue then the companies that "cave" to the bemoaning of a small, vocal, online minority?

Edit: For example, the NYT article you posted also provides the example of Adria Richards after she posted to Twitter a photo of two men sitting behind her making jokes about "dongles" at a tech conference back in 2013. Here's the tweet:

https://i.imgur.com/pvlk6vm.png

The individual looking straight ahead was fired from his position, and the individual looking at the camera was not fired. The 1 guy fired was dismayed because he enjoyed his job and had 3 kids. It really caught him off-guard. However, Adria Richards didn't want him to be fired, and both of them posted to Hacker News with their take on it.

Here's from the guy who was fired:
Here's Adria's response where she says that she hopes his employer reconsiders, rehires him, and handles it in a more constructive way:

In the end, Adria Richards herself was actually fired from the company she worked for, SendGrid, because of this incident.

Sources:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391667\
https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled-way-out-of-control/

Quote (Handcuffs @ Jul 8 2020 06:42pm)

Isn't the real issue then the companies that "cave" to the bemoaning of a small, vocal, online minority?

Edit: For example, the NYT article you posted also provides the example of Adria Richards after she posted to Twitter a photo of two men sitting behind her making jokes about "dongles" at a tech conference back in 2013. Here's the tweet:

https://i.imgur.com/pvlk6vm.png

The individual looking straight ahead was fired from his position, and the individual looking at the camera was not fired. The 1 guy fired was dismayed because he enjoyed his job and had 3 kids. It really caught him off-guard. However, Adria Richards didn't want him to be fired, and both of them posted to Hacker News with their take on it.

Here's from the guy who was fired:



Here's Adria's response where she says that she hopes his employer reconsiders, rehires him, and handles it in a more constructive way:



In the end, Adria Richards herself was actually fired from the company she worked for, SendGrid, because of this incident.

Sources:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391667\
https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled-way-out-of-control/

Quote (thundercock @ Jul 8 2020 05:02pm)

I don't know if that's the "real" issue but it's certainly a large part of it! However, people weaponize this fault in companies which is pretty malicious. To me, malice is worse than laziness. Companies are merely reacting to the fake outrage so I'd rather people stop doing that first.

Quote (EndlessSky @ Jul 8 2020 05:06pm)

We dont even have to parody the news anymore. Its literally a comedy sketch as written.