What I find especially hilarious is that there are so many people who complain about the patriarchy and then proceed to discuss the story about PyCon, SendGrid and Adria Richards in terms of gender wars (“Men are to blame!” “Women are to blame!” “Men victimize women!” “Women victimize men!”).
Gender wars are a product of the patriarchy It sets the victims of the oppressive gender roles against each other and sits there waiting for the poor losers to devour each other. Which is exactly what’s happening right now.
If you find an article or a blog post that puts the blame in this situation where it belongs, namely, on the stupid, unfair employers, please leave a link. I’m trying to find out how many people can see past the gender-blaming and notice that there are two poor unemployed schmucks in this story who lost their jobs over nothing. And there is a curious gender symmetry among these recently jobless people.
And if you don’t see that this is a story about nothing other than workers’ rights, I sincerely hope you never post anything on social networks and nobody posts anything about you on social networks that might be used to ruin your career.
Clarissa's Blog 
Today’s companies rights as stated in contracts over employees behavior in and out of the office is outrageously abusive, particularly in Anglosaxon countries. At least, as you say, we should see this as the problem, and not take sides on the flame war.
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Finally finding someone who agrees with me. “this is a story about nothing other than workers’ rights”
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I’m also glad somebody agrees with me. 🙂
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I agree with you, too. I thought the situation was so clear that I cannot imagine anyone thinking otherwise.
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Thank you, David! As I have discovered, mane people think very differently.
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Clarissa,
This is why I love reading your blog. We obviously don’t agree on everything, but I can respect your opinion and see that you truly are a logical, intellectual scholar and thinker who does not get unnecessarily worked up over manufactured controversies.
Over at feministe they are going ape-shit crazy over this and if i were to comment there and say this was a manufactured contoversy I would be called a troll.. (as they have already done to dozens of women and men)…
Just frustrating that I really think you are in the minority of feminists and really outspoken women in general who are fair-minded. Just really bugs me actually because I DO want to be enlightened and I will be the future leaders of business/politics/culture and incidents like this make me more cautious (in a bad way) around women in the work place and really insight anger inside of me. I know the best I can do is “rise above” and be fair to all genders, races, sexual preferences etc. but its tough.
Again, thanks for restoring my faith that there are outspoken individuals who are still very rational! Hope you have been doing well.
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“This is why I love reading your blog. We obviously don’t agree on everything, but I can respect your opinion and see that you truly are a logical, intellectual scholar and thinker who does not get unnecessarily worked up over manufactured controversies.”
– Thank you. 🙂
“Over at feministe they are going ape-shit crazy over this and if i were to comment there and say this was a manufactured contoversy I would be called a troll.. (as they have already done to dozens of women and men)…”
– I tried to read the most recent discussion of the whole thing at feministe, and the very first comment in a very long thread starts with: “Forget Sendgrid and the workplace.” Unless this was written by a billionaire and addressed to billionaires, these people are hopeless. Yes, let’s totally forget the workplace because what kind of a joke one made and who said what online is SO much more important than one’s livelihood.
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Two things make me angry about this incident:
1) The behavior of the employers.
The two men work for the same company. One of them was fired, the other wasn’t. Their company has since come out with a press release stating that, for the one fired, this incident was one of a string of problems (sort of like the straw that broke the camel’s back), which is why the other guy still has his job. But ultimately I don’t think this should have even been a big problem. It happened, it was called out, and that’s that. Life went on.
Then there’s the behavior of Richards’ former employer, who fired her after receiving threats and hacker attacks (so has she – see below). They seemed to have caved into the worst form of pressure.
So basically, yes, we’re on very shaky grounds here for workers’ rights.
2) For one tweet about two men who were cracking sexual jokes in the middle of a conference presentation – and terming this disrespectful behavior “not cool” (which even the two men in question agreed with as being disrespectful and uncool) – Richards not only lost her job, but has been receiving a deluge of rape and death threats, including people publishing her address online and sending her graphic photos of decapitated women with the message “you’re next.” This makes my blood boil too.
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“Richards not only lost her job, but has been receiving a deluge of rape and death threats, including people publishing her address online and sending her graphic photos of decapitated women with the message “you’re next.””
– This is what is so mind-boggling about all this. Instead of identifying with people who have been fired for no reason, these losers get fixated on gender, which is one thing that has nothing whatsoever to do with this situation. Just last week I heard about somebody – a really good professional – being fired because some jerk published lies about him online. The company chose not to investigate but simply to fire him. Every participant in this story was male. They all could have just as easily been female. This is not a gender issue, this is an issue of our protection in the workplace. Yet people insist on this infantile genderization of the whole thing. At this rate, we will never have employee rights.
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hkatz,
Definitely agree about the worker’s right point. The problem is (on both sides – the feminists who are making this a big deal about gender and the male techies who are relentlessly and shamefully attacking Richards) workers rights is not “their issue” so they don’t want to get worked up about it. They are **trying** to fit all issues into their hot button pet project..
Kind of the whole “when you are a hammer.. everything looks like a nail” syndrome.
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“They are **trying** to fit all issues into their hot button pet project..”
– Exactly! Tunnel vision in action. People often confuse their grievances against men in general / women in general with political activism. True activism, however, has nothing against men / women. It has everything against injustice.
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I especially enjoy the detailed investigations as to how mild or not mild the dongle jokes were. On what planet does this even matter?
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