| Hey Chad! I wanted to mention why these two tweets bothered me. I know | |
| you're a good dude, so I wanted to go to the trouble of spelling it all | |
| out, and this obviously doesn't fit in a tweet. :) | |
| > Apropos #pycon, I like confronting people directly first. Going to the | |
| > authorities first or to Twitter first doesn't seem right to me. | |
| > | |
| > https://twitter.com/whit537/status/314634497687703552 | |
| Okay, so, here's the thing: there's a fundamental error here, as far as | |
| I'm concerned, because you're making an assertion about what she _should_ | |
| do based on what _you_ should do. But you aren't her! There's a pretty | |
| significant difference between the two of you, and that's gender. Here's | |
| why that matters: men and women: | |
| 1. Are socialized to deal with conflict differently | |
| 2. stress about conflict differently | |
| While I was looking up some information on 1, I found out more about 2 as | |
| well: http://blogs.tc.columbia.edu/icccr/2011/10/11/to-avoid-or-not-to-avoid-conflict-gender-matters/ | |
| > “men appear to use conflict avoidance in order to choose their battles, | |
| > whereas women appear to use conflict avoidance as a way to hide their | |
| > feelings and thus cope with their anxiety about conflict” The study found | |
| > that for men, conflict avoidance was often beneficial since it led to a | |
| > decreased level of emotional exhaustion – a break from the conflict. However, | |
| > the results revealed that women are more likely to continue to be emotionally | |
| > taxed when avoiding a conflict. The emotionality of conflict often does not | |
| > dissolve when it is avoided and often continues to take its toll on female | |
| > disputants. | |
| Now, I don't want to get bogged down in the details: I don't particularly care | |
| if this study is correct or not, because my argument is at a higher level | |
| than that. What I'm saying is that to assume that her feelings on the situation | |
| _should_ be the same as yours is missing important details that I feel are | |
| relevant to the discussion. | |
| > @steveklabnik I don't think statistics excuse a woman from addressing me | |
| > directly as a person before taking more drastic measures. | |
| > | |
| > https://twitter.com/whit537/status/314638943339544576 | |
| This one actually bothered me a lot more. I want to be clear that you are | |
| obviously not the agressor in this situation, but since you put yourself | |
| as the hypothetical one here, I'll address you that way. | |
| Let's review: in this situation, you've done something that makes someone | |
| else feel uncomfortable. Why do they need an 'excuse' to address the | |
| conflict as they see fit? Why do they owe something to _you_ when it's | |
| your actions that put them in this position? Why is following the rules | |
| of the conference 'drastic'? | |
| While I agree with you that often working things out between people is | |
| _best_, I don't think we live in a world where that's often feasable yet. | |
| Furthermore, even if it's worked out between individuals, often having | |
| a third party involved can help prevent 'your word vs. mine' arguments | |
| from arising, and can help someone who feels violated feel more safe. | |
| You're removing her agency, plain and simple. It's all about the | |
| aggressor, not the victim here. | |
| --------------------------------------------- | |
| Anyway, like I said, I don't think you mean to be in the wrong here, but | |
| I think you really are. <3 <3 <3 |
@steveklabnik First, thanks for writing this. I've been thinking about this a lot over the past couple days, and I'm sorry I'm only now getting around to responding.
Context
Here are the official statements:
- Adria: http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at-tech-conferences/
- mr-hank: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681
- PyCon: http://pycon.blogspot.com/2013/03/pycon-response-to-inappropriate.html
- PlayHaven: http://blog.playhaven.com/addressing-pycon/
- SendGrid: http://blog.sendgrid.com/a-difficult-situation/
Here's the context of our Twitter conversation between my initial remark and this gist:
@whit537: Apropos #pycon, I like confronting people directly first. Going to the authorities first or to Twitter first doesn't seem right to me.
@steveklabnik: you are also male
@whit537: Indeed, and in my experience both women and men are capable of confronting me directly. :)
@steveklabnik: some are, but your primary socialization is confrontation, a woman's is the opposite
@whit537: "a woman's" Is that generalization helpful? Strikes me as a stereotype, and not true in my experience.
@steveklabnik: anecdotes are not data
@whit537: Sorry, saying "confrontation" was distracting. The important word was "direct."
@steveklabnik: I guess what I'm saying is that you're not wrong, just that it doesn't really apply
@whit537: I don't think statistics excuse a woman from addressing me directly as a person before taking more drastic measures.
@steveklabnik: :(
@whit537: Y u no like interpersonal interaction? :(
@steveklabnik: <3 <3 <3 https://gist.github.com/steveklabnik/475382a28d8c93b33882
First Remark
Apropos #pycon, I like confronting people directly first. Going to the authorities first or to Twitter first doesn't seem right to me. [src]
What I'm saying is that to assume that her feelings on the situation should be the same as yours is missing important details that I feel are relevant to the discussion.
Actually, my intention at this point was specifically to stop short of making a valuative judgment about Adria's behavior or feelings. I stated what "I like" and what doesn't seem right "to me" (where I also meant "for me"). I didn't say "Adria should ...."
Second Remark
I don't think statistics excuse a woman from addressing me directly as a person before taking more drastic measures. [src]
This one actually bothered me a lot more.
Yeah, I think we're getting to the meat of something between you and I here.
By this point, I had toed the line, implying a judgment of Adria's behavior as wrong, and I apologize for that.
Mostly I was miffed that you said "anecdotes are not data," as if that settled anything. Data is really hard to use properly in a conversation, and it felt like a power move on your part to use that quip to shut me down. :)
I guess what I'm saying is that you're not wrong, just that it doesn't really apply
Right, so: Do you want to issue a positive valuative judgment about Adria's feelings and behavior? And do you want to argue that this positive valuative judgment is indeed adequately justified simply by an appeal to data? Because that's a deep rabbit hole in front of us. :)
Revisiting My Commitments
After much reflection, I find that my primary intention here is to take the opportunity presented by Adria's behavior to revisit my own commitments.
What Adria did is like punching magic mud. She took a decisive action and the Internet hardened. My personal goal is to be more like yeast, worked through dough, helping the bread to rise. Speaking personally, I would rather participate in a thousand unnoticed and unnoticeable conversations than one big "scene" (@wilkie). Therefore, the challenge I'm personally taking to heart out of all of this comes from @carljm: "I don't know what to do about violent misogynist mobs on the internet except re-commit myself to call out the casual daily misogyny" (src).
Thanks again for pursuing this conversation, @steveklabnik. :)
[Late link to a comment I made that was directly influenced by this conversation, on the big CoC commit thread after PyCon 2013.]
Steve,
Sorry to barge in here, but I think to refer to the men in the pycon example as aggressors is a bit misrepresentative of how they actually behaved.
It seems pretty clear to me that sexism comes from two different places: ignorance and malice. What I have read was that these fairly silly jokes were not actually made to Ms. Richards, but were made between two friends in a conversation that she overheard.
This does not strike me as a malicious or aggressive action at all. It strikes me as insensitivity and ignorance at the worst.
I think ignorance is best countered with information, not aggression. There was room for compassion and restraint in Ms Richards response to the situation, and I believe she did a disservice to her cause by ignoring that. I respect that approaching these men directly may have been uncomfortable, but she had the option of privately contacting the conference's staff to report the incident as well. There was no urgency that required her to publicly tweet about it.
What happened instead was simply a public shaming, which is beginning to seem like the default response to these situations. As best I can tell, this hasn't been working. These things polarize the community, they lead to a spiral of more aggressive sexism followed by more aggressive anti-sexism followed by more aggressive sexism. And we all get nowhere. No one… literally no one is better off for this situation, and we've got to stop doing the same thing and expecting better results. The approach of slapping a scarlet letter on anyone who offends anyone is only going to leave us all with a lot of red in our wardrobes.
Conferences like PyCon don't want sexism at their event. They have policies against it, and they probably tolerate a lot less than the average person would consider acceptable. Let that system work. I guarantee issues do come up that get routed through the system, and I bet they get resolved more productively than the vigilante approach.
The sexism debate in our community scares the shit out of me. I asked a friend what the takeaway from this whole controversy is, and here's what he had to say:
Other friends who have spent their careers advocating for women in tech have echoed similar sentiments.
I don't think Ms Richards is a horrible person. I think she made a poor decision in a moment of emotional conflict (she cited her feelings about the comments, and her reaction to seeing a photograph of a young girl at a programming event). I think the guys involved should have had a more grown up sense of humor and behavior. I think both companies pretty much had to do what they did with respect to the firings, and I think that was just the least shitty option out of a bunch of really shitty options. Above all else, I think we are never going to make any progress unless we try to handle these things better.
This is way longer than I intended, but I really respect your opinion. I hope you can give me the benefit of the doubt that I want to encourage women in our industry as much as anyone as you read this.