PyCon and harassment, or, why social media is a bad thing
So, those of you who are not Python programmers (Python is a programming language that powers a lot of the Web) have probably missed out on something of a shitstorm over the past few days. I've been debating posting this, but for all the heat this kind of topic draws there's usually some light, too, so I figured why not. In terms of the actual story; I just kind of want to throw my hands up here.
Short version (always beware of the short version of anything): man at a conference of programmers makes a sexually inappropriate joke, or perhaps two (he admits and apologizes for one joke, but says the other joke never happened).
Woman sitting in front of him reports his behavior to the conference organizers, man is asked to leave. Harrassment policy works as intended. While she was doing this, she also took his picture and tweeted it.
The man is then let go from his job and mentions that online. In the predictable shitstorm that ensues, someone digs up a sexually inappropriate tweet the woman had posted while at that same conference. As should not surprise me but continues to, the man and woman in question actually trade amicable regards and wish each other no harm, while the flame war around them continues unabated. (I want to stress here: she contends he was making a lewd joke about forking software; he insists his joke about forking wasn't sexual at all. Both agree he made a lewd joke about dongles.)
The reaction included repeated Twitter and email storms to her place of work demanding she be fired, a denial-of-service attack on her blog (though this can be difficult to distinguish from simply having a lot of unexpected traffic come to you), and a horde of fake female Twitter accounts telling her how she's setting back womanhood.
Now apparently the woman has lost her job too (the job having been, ironically or not, social media outreach to programmers).
A few immediate reactions:
* Don't tell sexually inappropriate jokes to your friends at a conference, even if you think nobody can hear you
* Don't tweet sexually inappropriate tweets at a conference, even if you think nobody will read it
* Two people have lost their job, but only the woman has been doxed and repeatedly harassed and threatened; the man was simply summarily let go the next morning
* Neither "dongle" jokes nor TSA groping jokes are funny enough to lose your job over
* Women who assert themselves at conferences have a history of having online harassment aimed at them
* Back in the day, the narrative was women turning to the Internet for support after a con dismissed their concern; now we have the opposite (the conference acted quickly and firmly; the Internet was hostile and harassing)
Anyways, I don't think there's much of a moral here, I just find this whole thing depressing
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