parisrb_the_girlfriend_talk.md

Hi everyone,

It's time we had The Talk.

The tech world is currently managing its inclusion / exclusion / minorities problem. It's not always pretty. It's never pleasant, but it's necessary.

I've been dragged in an ugly troll around ParisRB. Full transparency is the only way to deal with this, so here it is. I know speed is key, as sad rumors are already spreading.

We'll have to set facts straight:

• who owns ParisRB?
• who are you to speak anyway?
• why I'm unconfortable writing this
• what was that "girlfriend" talk about?
• what were the true reactions from the crowd?
• how does ParisRB plan to deal with this in the future?

Thanks for reading, and yes, the facts are put well after some forewords. Speaking on the topic without the forewords would just encourage bashing.

Who owns ParisRB?

You do! There's no boss, leader or proper association. We're lucky to always have some goodwilled people to help and do talks.

If you looked or came to see us, chances are you've seen a few names, tough. Thibaut Assus created and paid for the Meetup account. He's managing the spoonsoring, buys the pizzas, and puts in a lot of effort.

A few of us have admin accesses to the Meetup, a Basecamp, and a few other things. Some other guys did arrangement for the rooms and bars, like Julien Ballet and myself. Others help bring beers, help with PR, or very often do cool talks, like Ori Pekelman, Simon Courtois, and the Simplib team.

We've been lucky to get plenty of help from awesome people all the time. Some help once, some for a few sessions, or more. But every single time, even for the smallest things, it was appreciated.

Based on visible presence, Thibaut and I seem the most exposed. We love the community, and we actually know how hard it is to keep going. This is why we work so hard to get every single person feel welcomed. We've been beginners too, and loved the friendly hand reaching out to us.

In a tech community, this means welcoming people who come to "simply attending", and people who DO the talks. More people mean more diversity: we want this, and we've had great presentations coming from every kind of people and topics. At ParisRB, this means "in front of 100~150 people".

• even awesome speakers are afraid of doing any talk
• even normal people can do awesome talks
• 'impostor syndrome' is hard to fight
• the first time is intimidating

Our engagement to inclusion was this: we try hard to make first-time speakers particularly welcome. We have now taken action and wrote a Code of Conduct which is brewing as I write this.

As "leaders", our opinion was requested by people, but this whole "who's the boss" thing tainted the debates. So if you want to be ParisRB, you can, because you already are!

Who are you to speak anyway?

Obvious disclaimer: I'm a white male, and have been privileged in many ways. I understand stuff about sexism or racism but never felt it firsthand.

A lot has been written on the topic, and I've read a fair share, hoping not to have the problem and wondering how to solve it.

A few takeaways are:

• the dominant culture has an edge, by the numbers or the time it's been like this
• this edge is so heavy we tend to forget it even while debating rationally
• not speaking up is contributing
• letting go will not help
• context is key

And this is why I feel compelled to speak up, as others did during the meetup. Interestingly though, the results are not the same and misunderstandings happened.

I've been in associations organizing stuff for years, and I can recognize the "bad karma" pattern. Sadly, more than ten years did not teach me how to solve this, only to look deeper. I've often found bitter experiences or internal rivalries to be hidden, and cling on any debate for one to hurt another. This makes me sad for the people, the communities, and for the noble cause at hand.

I cannot let people, communities and causes I care about, destructively fight each other.

I've been at the Ruby meetups for years, even before it was on meetup, when we were a few guys in a bar. I do love the community so much I'm helping out and speaking sa I can, which makes me visible. As such, I've been told that I have the social or moral responsibility to manage this.

Why I'm uncomfortable writing this even if it's the right thing to do

Please understand it's the first time I do this, that I'm uncomfortable, and I didn't ask for this. Thibaut didn't, too. This means I'm prone to blunders, and I'm asking for your forgiveness if I happen to do one

Also, everyone is an expert on people stuff, and everyone knows what I should have done. Except not. No one doubts, questions, or explains his job to a rocket scientist... but everyone do about "people skills". This is dangerous, as

• you cannot prove you'd do differently: it did not happen to you
• you cannot prove your solution worked: it's already happend
• you can make people upset even if you're kind
• upset people are easy targets
• we all have biases

It's easy to criticize, much harder to act After I had to intervene on stage a few times, people told we I was calm. I was not. Writing this, I am not either. Being calm is a survival tip. In this game, you can only lose, yet not playing means losing too. I take full responsibility for what I do, what I write, and for my opinions.

As everything you do in public, your full reputation is at stake. I worked for years to appear professional, reliable and whatever, yet I have to openly discuss this and risk being misunderstood or resented against, simply because not speaking is not an option. People have felt the same, but it's easy to get clumsy and some goodwilled people were flamed too.

I WILL be challenged by people cherry-picking tiny extracts of this text, not having read the rest, or omitting it on purpose. Please do not be one of those people.

I should also get this straight:

• this talk has already been done once at HumanTalks (awesome events, you should go) and did not raise any problem
• though we rarely do so, I did the lineup and published it in advance (well, a few hours)
• the speaker is a friend, and I've known him since school
• my sense of humour is very bad

So here I am, trying to reconcile values I hold dear: no sexism, but no bashing. This means we only accept constructive criticism. Not negative, not ad hominem. Bashing the guy, any person in fact, is useless.

What was that "girlfriend" talk about?

The title is: "How I got a girlfriend using Node.js" It's actually not about girls, but about side projects.

The title could have been:

• "three steps to APIphany, creating convenient APIs when there isn't one"
• "lean dating : three MVPs with sh, then node+angular, then machine learning"
• "how I hacked a dating site to find out my neighbour's political inclination"

I please ask kindly that if you want to weigh in, go on and read the slides.

Yes, the title is objectionable. Yes, that was an unnecessary exposure. Yes, it's simply not done in 2013. Based from this facts alone, I'd say the speaker wasn't aware.

So have a case of goodwilled people, picking on the wrong target: a single blunder, not a real offender. And that's where it gets ugly:

• fighting for the guy and the right to do blunders is viewed as sexist
• not saying anything makes you fear you'll be called sexist

But we're engineers, it's not about debates or past mistakes, it's about lessons right? I so, so hope I didn't have to write these middle sections and skipped to the last one...

Some chronology could help a bit here:

1. My friend submitted the idea to me. Though the title made me laugh, I said to be careful about it. I did not stress this point, he did not get the hint, "et voilà".

2. He did it at Human Talks. It was great, and people loved it. Yes, I know this is the danger of dominant culture: nobody feel, notice, or speak up about it. Please read the previous paragraphs, which were the most difficult to write, and not quote me out of context.

3. He submitted publicly on rubyparis.org (our talk-proposition tool), days before I believe. No one spoke up. I posted the lineup publicly a few hours in advance. No one spoke up.

4. The meetup went great and Mattt Thompson launched helios.io I cannot say how honoured and grateful we all are.

5. The "girlfriend" talk started, and gave context: dating sites. There's a heavy use of meme imagery: troll guy, forever alone, challenge accepted.

6. at some point, someone from the back yelled "DUDE, YOU SUCK". Nobody picked on this, I believe most actually wanted to hear what was next. I was at the front, so I can't tell you more.

7. the talk went on. This must have been tough for the speaker.

8. at the end, the debate sparked in a heated, but healthy way. There were trolls, on both sides, of course, but I feel most people wanted to make this a healthy one. Thanks.

9. the meetup continued: a pause, my "Hack Your Brain" talk, Thibaut's lightning, and an awesome Grape talk with live-coding from Ori.

OK, this had to be partial. Sorry, I only have two ears and one brain.

What were the true reactions from the crowd?

Suddenly I realise this title is preposterous. I only have a few facts to note, as I cannot declare myself the only single source of truth.

Let's have the girls' opinion Yes, I know the problem in sexism is women cannot express their points for fear of many things. Two of them expressed their point in public, which I hope is a sign that they can speak without stigma.

Chloe did a blog post on the topic (in French). Yes, we should note that Chloe is a woman, and also Thibaut's girlfriend. http://berlimioz.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/de-lutilite-de-casser-quelquun-en-public-sur-des-motifs-discutables/ TL;DR:

• she liked the jokes
• she did not feel discriminated against
• people calling out on sexism did not ask any woman's opinion

Lucie Pousson, also a girl (working with Thibaut), made the exact same points on the meetup's comments.

Most of the public debates actually happened on the meetup's comments. You can read them (in french) there: http://meetup.rubyparis.org/events/109572702/ I feel so happy to have lots of kind and supportive comments for the event and organization team.

Also, some people spoke on behalf of Mattt. Unsurprisingly, no two witnesses said the same. Please don't do that. Nobody likes for people to invent their own opinions.

Luckily we had some very constructive debates in private afterwards. I especially thank Ori for his kind contributions.

How does ParisRB plan to deal with this in the future?

We are currently writing a Code of Conduct and will publish it ASAP. Also, ParisRB has no leader, so it's up to you! If you're unhappy, please speak up!

Along with this uncomfortable debate, good criticism were raised on ParisRB not doing enough Ruby and tech talks. This is definitely true, and has been for quite some time. I'm glad we have some curious minds and we're exploring JS frameworks, startups, freelancing, and tips on french company creation process, taxes and health + retirement plans. I'm guilty as charged for non-tech talks, as you can see on my SpeakerDeck: developers' health, hacking your brain... hardly apply as tech topics. They do make yourself a better developer however, and I've been lucky to gather interest and kind comments.

We quickly raised a consensus on the future lineups: put Ruby talks first, other tech afterwards, and non-tech at the end.

I know non-tech opening can actually be great, especially opening a meetup with an expert-level talk can be discouraging for first-time attendees, so this "rule" is subject to change... if people ask for it. It's hard to strike a good balance between beginners and experts anyway.

I'm still not sure about filtering the talks beforehand. Who would have that authority anyway? We're open to suggestions.

As for myself, I will personally:

• continue being fully transparent about the incident, and update this gist if needed
• be both more open to speakers and touchy about hard topics
• post the lineup as soon as possible
• reintroduce coding labs in ParisRB
• start the Architectural Katas https://github.com/abelards/talks/blob/master/katas.md

Reminders

• we will publish a Code of Conduct soon, both in french and english
• it's easier to blame than to work on actual solutions
• a Right debate done wrong will lessen the cause
• the most vocal people are trolls

Thanks.

Hello,

C'est très bien écrit, gg Sylvain :)

Sur le fond je comprends vraiment pas le fait de devoir se justifier... Je n’étais pas présent donc je peux pas trop donner mon avis mais je vais quand même essayer.

Pour moi ce n'est nullement une question de sexisme ou de quoi que ce soit d'autre. Si quelqu'un aime pas la présentation ou a des choses à dire, il va voir directement le speaker, point barre. C'est une présentation ouverte aux questions à la fin et non aux critiques non constructives, c'est pas la nouvelle star ici.
Si certaines personnes se mettent à trasher le speaker en public, c'est qu'elles manquent seulement de manières.

'fin bref, tu remets bien les points sur les i avec style, merci Sylvain :)

❤️

Hi,

Thank you Sylvain for clarifying the situation and exposing the facts.

We welcome and respect any ruby-lover from any community/minority/planet/OS/editor/unicorn and will continue to do so. Thanks again Sylvain for repeating it loud and clear.

<3

Here's a translation of Chloe's blog post : https://gist.github.com/elthariel/dc17fcaa10b6728385e5

I know this is hard and that you're trying to be balanced. I appreciate you speaking about the subject. I wish it were more public though but I suspect it will be soon.

A few points are regrettable though :

• The part about ownership of the group comes across as trying to distance yourself from the responsibility that leading a group entails. Without an authority figure, nobody can speak on behalf of the group and nobody can say "we fucked up" or "this is over the line". It sucks that we need a spokesperson and right now it sucks even more if that person is you, but it's necessary in my opinion.
• The sections describing the talk and the reactions that it got only go in the direction of reinforcing your bias.

This is actually what the debate is about, but instead of facing it head on, you provide token justifications from people who are directly linked to a person that behaved in very poor taste during the talk and you divert the issue to be around the heckling that happened during the session.

A better title for the talk? "How to be a sexual predator online in less than 100 lines of JS". I'm not even exaggerating, this is how I interpreted it. All you've done so far is dismiss this because it doesn't fit your world view and this is exactly the problem. You don't even acknowledge that the content of the talks was questionable, to put it mildly. And I'm sorry, but it wasn't an unfortunate blunder, a simple slip of the tongue. It was a series of continual statements and images throughout the presentation.

In particular, this sentence is infuriating : "Also, we've not had touching, sexual harassment, rape or death threats, so I believed they do not feel threatened to talk." Yeah, let's be proud that we haven't raped our women and that is certainly the same thing as treating them with respect and making them feel safe (and yes I did read the whole post).

As a side note, I don't know how real the issue about non-tech talks is - I love them personally but again, why is this taking up so much space distracting from talking about the real issue?

I hope this was just a first draft.

Hi Chris, this is indeed a first draft, and I'm releasing it slowly to people so they get a chance to share their opinion before I dare say this is the absolute untainted truth.

non-tech talks

Issues about non-tech talks deserve some room because:

• this is a real concern that wasn't addressed for months
• this point did take a significant part in the aftermath, depending on the people involved

I did not feel that "it could've been worse" was infuriating. I'm removing it right now.
One problem in sexism scandals is "you don't talk about sexism".
I'm trying to make a point that though the topic is hard, there's no stigma in speaking up.

hecklers

This topic is particularly hard to manage correctly, and for me to manage.
But it had to be done, and it's thanks to you and Ori.
You're making important points and giving useful insight.
Emotion sometimes tainted your points: I can understand and forgive that.
I'm all for constructive criticism and I can take it.

But I put an emphasis on heckling because it's rude, it's bad, and nobody's getting anything from it.

I also had to set things straight about ownership because I am positive there are hidden agendas that led to using sexism as an attack angle. Attacking someone by destroying what he loves is just terrorism.

authority

Why should someone speak on behalf of the group?
Why would I speak on behalf of 750 people?
They did not sign up only for me to use their voice for things they didn't wanted.
Can't we be a self-organising entity?

This is actually what the debate is about
What, ownership?

very poor taste

If you're saying he was offending on purpose, I have to disagree.
If you're saying he had very poor taste, I'm glad to agree!

You're right though: I will edit this text and make it clear that acknowledge the content was objectionable. I still believe, however, that the speaker did not know and did not deserve this treatment.

Thanks for the comments.
I love finding common grounds instead of creating gaps.

Also, no one do talks to fuel hate and look ridiculous, that's what politicians do.
How can anyone willingly do a talk he knows will end in a fiasco?
This is why I call for the "unknowingly offensive" point.

I would also like to add that thinking that the title is borderline is allowed (since it was meant to be both provocative and fun in a kind of bad way). But all humorist use that to make people laugh. Being able to recognize that the speaker used a "basic" trick to provoke laugh is not hard. The whole presentation was on a tone that was hard to miss (I assisted to this one at HumanTalks myself and everyone LOVED it there, as Sylvain stated). And it seems a good part (I don't say all because I doubt we have the minds of all of them but at least there is no of the girls in the audience recognized this fact both at HumanTalks and at ParisRB.

I find it really uncool from tigrish not to recognize after hand that he might have interpreted badly (maybe because he was in a bad mood at the time) what went on. If it was really that sexist, girls would have felt it. You can argue that the girls speaking of it are dull minded and thus are not able to speak of it. But it's not what I felt about it. They seem strong willed and very aware of the facts at hand.

I believe (this is my way of thinking & hopes, not something I'm trying to impose : feel free to correct me if you believe I'm wrong, I try hard these times to challenge myself and what I'm thinking) every man should realize that by trying to overprotect women "that can't protect themselves" they are also being somehow sexists themselves in an another more counter intuitive and probably more damaging way on the long run.

If men are truly for women equality, they should help them see differences they think they might not see and give them the tools to fight those if needed. In no way any man should do the job for them because to make them strong and assert their rights, it has to go with giving them the responsibility to fight for it. And looking at the past years, I feel they are already doing very great for themselves and hope they keep the freedom and strength to continue in that direction in the future. I really strongly believe (this in my humble opinion, it's true) that the simple fact that men believing they have to protect women is already a proof we are not done with sexism. That is what we should correct about ourselves here. They can protect themselves and they will.

Edit: I edited some misspelling, nothing more

The crazy thing with this narrative is that the victim is made out to be the speaker. If you meant it in the sense that he was given a stage and the opportunity to fail, then I would have to agree, but that's not the case.

You go on to mention how great you thought the talk was, dismissing objections against it in the process. The problems you mention are that people called out the speaker on his bullshit. How rude that was! And of course, they can't possibly be objecting to the content of the talk, they must have a hidden agenda!

There's no regret that that girlfriend talk took place. There's no mention that this kind of talk will not happen again, or at least that it will try to be prevented. If anything, it seems like you support this risk-taking behaviour.

Of course nobody means to be offensive, but seriously, what kind of an excuse is that? Yes, we want to encourage new speakers, but not at the cost of our integrity and our values.

BTW if you want people to make up their own minds based on the slides, you should really provide the audio transcript - that's at least 50% of the story.

Also, I didn't mean it sucks that you are the spokesperson, I meant it sucks when that person is oneself. I think you'd be a great spokesperson (and already are)!

@even - way to go denying my experience. And the "let's just do nothing" argument is amusing.

@even - thanks for weighing in but calling @tigrish uncool is not the point.
His understanding is as good as yours, and that's the point.

Plus, all your points have already been disproven in sexism litterature...
Racism and sexism mean "it's easy for the dominant majority to oppress the minority".

• people not seeing the problem is part of the problem
• minority being afraid to speak
• requiring active commitment from the majority

We were hit by this problem for the first time and have had unfortunate reactions.
The code of conduct will try to prevent both problems, and unfair punishments.

---

I'd like to note that HumanTalks is mostly french, and seen no problem.
ParisRB's culture is more on the international side: foreigners living in Paris, guests from abroad, and more internationally-minded technical watch.

BritRuby, PyCon, GDC... sexism is a thing in the anglo-saxon tech world.
That's what I wanted to point at by "we had no big affairs", which Chris correctly calld out as infuriating,
I don't even know if it's a thing in the french tech world... and I feel bad for this.

Our guests prove ParisRB has international reach and reputation.
Therefore this text is not meant for the french guys only, but as a signal for all.
This is why I love Chris' points on how the same words can be understood.

I have actually reached out to @steveklabnik and @ashedryden to have their opinion. They will kindly give some of their time about this in a few days. I hope to get more points of view so we reach a good consensus.

---

There's no regret that that girlfriend talk took place.

I regret the bashing, and accusations of white-knighting.
Thanks for supporting this point Chris.

There's no mention that this kind of talk will not happen again,
or at least that it will try to be prevented.

The code of conduct will do just this.
I hope so.

If anything, it seems like you support this risk-taking behaviour.

I do not support such risk actually but I don't know how to show it.

BTW if you want people to make up their own minds based on the slides
you should really provide the audio transcript - that's at least 50% of the story.

There were actually advice to censor the video.
Should we publish it for openness / transparency and risk being accused of supporting this?
Or should we not publish it?