This is a (pretty bad) translation of berlimioz blog's post. You can find the original (french) blog post here: http://berlimioz.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/de-lutilite-de-casser-quelquun-en-public-sur-des-motifs-discutables/ . There's a public statement related to the incident evoked here on this (english) gist : https://gist.github.com/abelards/5312886
As a girl developper (Ruby on Rails for those who know), i was attending for the 7th time a meetup on the topic (it's once a month)
Everything went well until the second talk. A first time speaker in this group was trying to show that as developpers, we have skills and tools which were able to help us in our everyday life. He then explained how he developped himself a tool to help him meet girls on dating website (translator note: he was looking for a girl sharing his love of Miazaki's movies). He added he found his current girlfriend that way.
He was a pretty good and amusing speaker and, while i am a girl, i really enjoyed his talk as it wasn't containing anything aggressive.
On the other hand, a few people reactions puzzled me. A few indignant exclamations were shout two or three times during the talk : "You suck guy !", "This is crap !" (let me add it was male exclamations)
At the end of his talk, about 5 MENS in the room were booing him, apparantly shocked by this talk they were presenting as sexist.
Here come the funny part : I'm one of the rare girl who was attending this talk. Amongst the other girls who were there, i asked three of them, none of them had feeled the so-called sexism.
None of the men who were trying to shut down this so-called sexist talk took the time to ask me what i was thinking about it. And when i told what i was thinking about all this, they didn't even answer my comments. This is, of course, only my opinion. This is not as if i was concerned.
This kind of behavior drives me crazy. I think it is irresponsible and immature to talk for somebody else while meticoulously ignoring her/his opinion. Some of them are maintaining a conflict situation althought the girls present at the event are repeating, again and again, thet DIDNT FELT INSULTED by the concern.
Please doesn't tell my i sold myself since i'm the girlfriend of the main event organizer, it still allows me to have a opinion.
I'm concerned, i had to suffer during years i am a girl in a male world and i seized how degrading some attitudes are. I KNOW THERE ARE PROBLEMS.
That's why i find outraging to screw the goodwill of a speaker and the ambiance of an event in the name of problem who wasn't there.
When refusing to hear our testimonies, they act as if they were knowing more than us what we should think and what should hurt us. Maybe i'm going too far, when i say 'us'. I do not try to speak on behalf of the whole girl community. But i'm pretty sure i deserve the right to protest on my behalf , at least.
The whole sexism part of the talk just seems secondary for me. The main point in all this is that somebody get humiliated in front of a public audience.
Whether or not you like the talk, insults and boos are not acceptable. If you don't like or if you disagree, i can share your point of view directly to the speaker as an adult, in private. And maybe event discover that you didn't understood correctly the message, who knows ... On thing is sure, public trolling is narrow-minded and helps no one.
What we've got in the end, is a speaker who'll never talk again. Nice conclusion. But there's more: there's all the others who watched the scene, all the other who doesn't speak cause they're afraid of this happening to them. They won't speak neither.
The final picture isn't that dark, since finally the speaker decided to speak again the next time. But it seems incredible to me we have to fight like this to enforce the simplest good manners.