Rolling 'this is sexist' thread

sometimes you just want to duck into a place out of penis earshot and where you can also buy fugazi CDs for $15.99

Can I play the penis game now? Or would it be all "Sir,you're going to have to come with us."

Might be fun to try on a date: "so, do you want to play the penis game?" You friday night single okcupid people can have that one. Let me know how you do!

lololol first u read: "Technology has been a boy's club for most of its existence. Just another unfortunate repercussion of the patriarchy. But that's been slowly changing, and over the last decade we've seen a number of wonderful, intelligent, and cunning women make inspiring strides in the field of technology. Through web development, social media, space exploration, and video game design, we see the world of tech becoming a more equal playing field. Here are 40 women we admire doing work in the field of innovation."

and then you click to the first person

― Mordy

oh god please let a wave of sexy russian women make philology a thing again

that is my prayer

ok I guess nobody really wants to revisit the PyCon thing again but since the Amanda Blum article was posted upthread I thought I'd post this one too:

http://www.technologywoman.com/2013/03/24/digging-beneath-the-surface-that-amanda-blum-article-on-adria-richards-is-not-what-it-seems/

also uh this sounds totally lame but I only just now saw a picture of Adria Richards after reading the entire controversy with images turned off (why bcz at work) and realised that you were actually all telling me off for whitesplaining the other day when I thought I was being told off for mansplaining while not being a man, so apologies to everyone concerned

certainly there was some element of unwarranted splaining in my posts

i want to move to white plains, ny and write a letter to an advice column and sign it "whitesplaining in white plains"

plain whites whitesplain whitesplainin in white plains, new york

i read a very depressing shitty article on this stuff from someone and thought better than to post it here. the only striking thing to me is that it was well designed, well written, well argued, and still i just wanted to beat the crap out of it with a cluebat. the worst thing is when this stuff doesn't come from obvious mouthbreathers but people that by all impressions seem to have the mental facilities to know way better. natch there was discussion of dawkins, and that whole controversy, etc.

otoh i posted on one of my feeds an interesting nyrb article on galileo and was shocked to find someone I known from STEM circles weighing in with an 'its complicated' defense of the catholic church, so the ability of people to disappoint me is unflagging.

What this entire Adria Richards situation really highlights is that a lot of people feel like everyone else around them should be able to read their minds and know that they don't really mean it when they say stupid shit, and they will bend over backwards with ludicrously stupid arguments in order to protect this inalienable right to say stupid shit that may offend other people. Basically, unless you are In The Tribe, you don't deserve any sympathy, and there are a bunch of idiots out there fooling themselves into thinking they are In The Tribe.

Reminds me of the time when I got sacked for objecting to a manager's idea of team-building: whenever a new hire got a first sale, we'd have to stop so the manager could announce '[X] has lost their [retailer redacted] virginity!' Then we were expected to cheer while the manager rang a special bell.

Lol, aps, I didn't know she was a POC either! Anyway, still don't care about her outing them on twitter, still don't disagree with a single thing she did.

a lot of people feel like everyone else around them should be able to read their minds and know that they don't really mean it when they say stupid shit, and they will bend over backwards with ludicrously stupid arguments in order to protect this inalienable right to say stupid shit that may offend other people.

well yes, privilege very often means that you feel the freedom to decide the meaning of words in context and whether the are offensive or not

Then we were expected to cheer while the manager rang a special bell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNqSHaiMzvA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LiAaDN2bsA

who do i have to oppress to get into the tribe

anyone

c'mere

http://www.themarysue.com/pax-tomb-raider-cosplay/

What happens when a game journo dude decided to play the "cosplay is consent" card with a group of Lara Croft cosplayers

Wizemann had been interviewed in the past and said everything seemed normal. That is, until the interviewer asked his first question, “How does it feel to be at a convention where none of the men could please you?”

Gosh can't imagine what Adria Richards was all up in arms about re the tech industry

http://jezebel.com/5992787/game-developers-conference-features-sexy-dancing-ladies-because-tech-is-super-welcoming-to-women

From the comments: Games are businesses. Business want clients. Most clients are men. All other game booths/parties have "booth babes" and dancers. If your booth/party does not have booth babes and dancers then clients leave and go to parties that do. Your business loses clients. The end.

It's shitty and everyone knows it but no one is willing to break the cycle because everyone else is doing it too. Like steroids in sports.

Wow, the game industry is like stuck in the late 60's. Which is weird, because that is before pong and computer space.

booth babe arms race

Sigh:
http://storify.com/sduncovered/she-made-a-mean-beef-stroganoff

Be sure to note the idiotic comment

just in case anyone misses it:

Sean P. BeaverMaybe making beef stroganoff is what made her happy and making rockets just paid the bills so she could make said meal. Jobs don't define everything about us.an hour ago

You're just mad cause your stroganoff is wack

stroganoff
to live without you

harder better faster stroganoff

idk I'm pretty proud of my stroganoff

I mean, what the hell

okay I can't believe this shit (signed, someone who married his college sweetheart)

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/01/pf/princeton-mom-women/index.html?hpt=hp_t5

Patton’s parents, too, were unenthusiastic about her time in the Ivy League—something she previously wrote about in 2006 for the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

Elaborating on the phone, Patton explained:

“My parents were both survivors of concentration camps, and all they wanted for me was to marry. Ideally they wanted me to marry a butcher, because then there would always be meat on the table. The thought of their unmarried daughter leaving home before marriage was a disgrace to them. So I applied to Princeton as an emancipated minor, I paid for it myself, and I went away to college against my parents’ wishes. And it cost me dearly and still does.

oy

huh, I wonder if perhaps her own experience isn't a good start to giving out generalized advice

Patton, who graduated from Princeton in 1977 and went on to run an executive coaching business in New York City, said she spent most of her twenties focused on her professional life. At 30, she married a man who did not go to Princeton.

She wrote that "ultimately, it will frustrate you to be with a man who just isn't as smart as you." The couple recently divorced.

Ouch.

everything about that article is headdesk material and by the end I genuinely feel like she has been punishing herself for things that sound like they weren't even under her control

seems like a lot of inadvertent airing of dirty laundry, frankly.

if you're frustrated because you think your partner isn't as smart as you i'd suggest you're not as smart as you think

Hardly a fair appraisal of the situation.

cap'n save-a-ivy

yeah no one needs to ever defend Princeton

agreed

more followup to the Adria Richards situation: http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/04/how_to_get_a_black_woman_fired_in_six_tired_steps.html

I liked this take a lot: http://plasticbag.org/archives/2013/03/on-being-grown-ups-about-childish-behaviour

I mean, to the point that the polarization of opinions is ridiculous. No judgment on the appropriateness of anything, these days, from my corner.

That post is six kinds of condescending bullshit. And I'm just gonna start with "a vanishingly small proportion of people under fifty who would be legitimately offended by a big dongle joke." Oh, excuse me? I'm in the wrong place then, I must have taken a wrong turn back on OPPOSITE DAY ON BIZARRO WORLD.

We seem to have approached a point where any actual sensible discussion of questions raised by this situation is borderline impossible.

Oh but thank goodness, here is someone to set us straight by taking the middle road. Because a slavish devotion to being the "reasonable center" has never led to anything bad, in fact it shows you take the issues seriously! Why get sucked into being mad about the issues when this nice high perch is available, and so comfortable!

These are both ridiculous positions! These are insane positions! These are totally irrational positions!

No, one of these is a completely reasonable position if you don't agree that dick jokes are or should be the common currency of adult humor in the public sphere, and the other one is misogyny.

yeah basically that dude sucks and, despite his protestations, is pulling a false equivalency that minimizes the severity of what happened to Adria Richards

whatever your opinion of Adria Richards' actions, the blowback that she got from it, including getting blamed for that dude's company firing him and receiving death/rape threats and getting fired, was wholly out of proportion from any perceived bad behavior on her part (pro-tip tho: there was no bad behavior on her part; someone being irritating to you doesn't automagically make them wrong)

I mean, how come no one went after the company of the dude who got fired? Presumably they're the ones who actually terminated his employment, not Adria, so why were Adria and her employer targeted and why are people still openly reveling in the schadenfreude that a braying racist, sexist mob bullied both her company into terminating her employment and the conference into changing their code of conduct explicitly to show disapproval of her?

I filed my paperwork and called the hospital and did 4 loads of laundry and cleaned house and took a nap and woke up to THIS? Why are you trying to ruin my day? Is my feeling.

Not you, Dan.

I think theirs is the comparison he is making between "two arguments"' although it may not be clear:

The arguments now appear to be that either Adria fucked up and for this reason she deserved to get rape threats, or that since she got rape threats she cannot possibly have fucked up.

His own opinion of overreaction isn't what I was really interested in, but sure, these can also be seen as strawmen and detract from the original situation's importance. But really, at this point, hearing from others or encouraging other people to share their experiences should be the focus, and not the micro-analyzing of this one situation, which really is a lot less polarizing than I think it's drawn into.