Donglegate: The Adria
Richards Saga
I don’t know if you've heard the story of Adria Richards and
her incident at PyCon. Basically,
seated behind her two developers started making sexual comments using tech
talk. They said something about Forking and a
term Big Dongle.
Richards was pissed and decided to dish out some
Internet Justice. She turned around, smiled and took the pictures of the two developers. She then proceeds to post it on her powerful Twitter page. 
From there, things went terribly south. The skinny guy on the left, not looking at
the camera, got fired from his company due to the controversy. The guy has a family and was fired for making a dumb joke that she
happened to hear. It was the action of smiling, a false pretense, and taking the picture that bothered me and gave me a sense that she had an agenda.
What is wrong with
her?
This was where I think she wanted to make a crusade out of
these two men. If you look and read
everything she involved in, you will come across with the notion that she is a
technology feminist. Like others, she
feels that technology field is lacking women, and she’s right, but shaming two
guys for making an inside joke comes across as being an extremist. It does more harm than good to her
cause. Extremist actions have a way of giving people an excuse to shut the door on your cause.
Paragon Interrupt?
How about turning around and telling them that you were
offended by their comment? Or at least
tell them to lower their voices so you could hear the speakers on stage. Instead she decided to take the Renegade
Interrupt, and post it on Twitter.
When will people understand that Twitter is evil? Stop tweeting shit, because it will get you
fired.
The Internet was divided. Many women in the technology field and a few "white knights" came to her defense claiming that she had every right to do what she did. Other came down strongly against her after her actions cause the firing of one of the developers.
That was when Anonymous took action and hacked the company site that she
worked for. This in turn forced them to
fire her from her job.
So, one poor judgment ended up with two people losing their jobs. I am torn on this. I didn't like the harmful things said to her via death threats and anti-female responses. There is no place for these comments anywhere. But, this crusader attitude is also troubling. Given my long period of time being on the Internet, via my blog, I can be accused of doing the same thing (such as my infamous Cheerleader blog and a few others I've deleted recently), so I can see where she's coming from. But, someone actually lost their job over this, and that changes everything.
Did she deserve to lose her job? Probably not. But, some people do believe this was just karma. While I don't think anyone deserved to lose their jobs over this, the company that she worked for did give a sound enough reason. Just have a talk with either employee and say, "Don't do that again."
End
of Part 1
Posts
4 comments:
If the commentary wasn't directed at her, she overreacted. Especially if they were just being silly and not making deliberately derogatory remarks. I am a feminist. I don't like the fact that women are constantly sexualized. But there is a difference between ignorance and bawdy joking and malicious remarks reducing women to fuck dolls.
I believe both parties agree that it was an inside joke between the developers and she overhead it. It wasn't directed at her.
Also she talked to them before the event started as well about something else.
she overreacted, but so did both of the companies.
I think a general tiring of Political Correctness had a lot to do with it. Adria's moral crusade, that of pushing her particular moral principles, perhaps has rubbed people the wrong way for to long. It wasn't just Adria that people were lashing out against, I think many saw in her, the embodiment of the oversensitive PC type who considers their moral principles and the fact they hold them as giving them some authority and 'one upmanship' over others.
http://www.natalt.org/2013/03/25/donglegate-how-society-has-grown-tired-of-political-correctness/
I partly agree with this, but I think it mainly has to do with the overactive and "Putting herself" first attude that has people rubbed the wrong way and the PC stuff is a bi-product of that.
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