And so the Internet has found a new woman to hate. Most of you are probably already familiar with the Adria Richards debacle that’s developed over the past several days. If not, Jill at Feministe has a good summary of events:
Adria Richards, formerly of the company SendGrid, was at a tech conference this week when some dudes behind her made a series of inappropriate and sexual jokes. Annoyed by the pervasiveness of misogyny in the tech world, she snapped a photo of them and put in on Twitter with a complaint. One of the conference organizers spoke to the men and they apologized. Totally reasonable! Good response, PyCon. Later, one of the dudes got fired. Instead of getting mad at the company that made the choice to fire him, the internet hordes descended on Adria. She was on the receiving end of rape and death threats. Her address and phone number were published. Her blog and her company’s website came under DDoS attack. Oh and then her company, SendGrid, fired her.
Like Jill, I think firing someone for a “dongle” joke is an overreaction, to say the least. But Richards wasn’t responsible for that; indeed, she told the fired man she hoped his employer would reconsider and take him back.
SendGrid’s firing of Richards is far more problematic. It’s one thing to get in trouble for acting like a sexist boor; it’s quite another to get in trouble for simply pointing out someone else’s problematic behavior. Richards faced a virtual lynch mob for simply documenting an example of the everyday sexism that permeates the tech world; by firing her, SendGrid essentially sided with the mob.
Is “lynch mob” an unfair term to describe those who’ve gone after Richards? No. In this context, the term is sadly apropos, as the target of all this online “activism” is not only female but black – two strikes against her in the minds of many of her, er, “critics,” who attacked her as a “fucking nigger” as well as a “cunt.” (The more genteel racists referred to her derisively as a “diversity hire.”)
Numerous commenters have already documented some of the appallingly racist and misogynist attacks on Richards. (The links in the above paragraph contain plenty of examples.)
Here, I’d like to focus specifically on the attacks on Richards coming from Men’s Rights activists – that is, from people who like to think of themselves as upstanding human rights activists for the 21st century, virtual equivalents of Martin Luther King. In fact, many of the reactions of MRAs show them to have far more in common with the bigots who fought against the civil rights movement than they do with King.
In the Men’s Rights subreddit, the MRA masses gave more than one hundred upvotes to a graphic describing Richards as a “racist, sexist and hypocritical cunt.” Evidently pointing out that white men as a class have certain advantages in the world is a kind of “racism.”
Elsewhere in the subreddit, aasorted commenters indulged themselves in gendered slurs. Greyfeld got dozens up upvotes for comments denouncing Richards as a “feminist cunt” and a “screeching harpy cunt.” DerpaNerb described Richards as “a racist/sexist cunt [who’s] clearly … not capable of doing her job properly.” Buster2209 scored 160 upvotes with a comment describing Richards as a “stupid bitch [who] brought it on herself.” Cyridius simply declared “I hate her because she’s a dumb ignorant bitch.”
Others happily gave the Men’s Rights movement credit for Richards’ firing. The execrable EvilPundit got 180 upvotes for a post essentially endorsing the virtual lynch mob and declaring Richards’ firing to be proof that the Men’s Rights movement had entered a “new phase.”
Sorry to burst your bubble, Mr. Pundit, but there’s nothing new about men harassing and threatening a black woman.
AnnArchist – a former contributor to Reddit’s now-banned Beating Women subreddit — reacted with indignation to someone who pointed out Richards had been harassed:
Over on A Voice for Men, where the locals describe themselves with no sense of irony as Men’s Human Rights Activists, there was much rejoicing over the firing of Richards, who was variously described as an “entitled bitch,” a “sociopathic bitch,” a “femshit” and a “bush pig.” Naturally, the c-word, applied to all feminists, made an appearance as well.
Daflory hoped that Richards’ firing would be the start of an industry-wide purge:
Adria Richards seems like an entitled narcissist, who had become used to deference as a moral authority through her impeccable credentials as a diversity goddess: black, Jewish, and female. …
No one ever told Adria Richards that she was at best only an tolerated guest in the world of tech, and she could either play by male rules and contribute, or get lost. Hopefully other feminists in tech will get a similar message.
And August Løvenskiolds’ mind went straight to the gutter:
[A]fter being outed as a betrayer of her customers, none of them will want to work with her, and any tech company that hires her will instantly lose credibility.
She’s going to be hard-pressed to find a job as a sex-worker unless the light is quite dim.
Taking a step back from the particulars of the incident, Mark Trueblood wondered if a man strike might help to put things right once again:
I’m pretty sure Amnesty International doesn’t exactly endorse this sort of “human rights” activism.
Joy. This is the first I’ve heard of this, idk whether I should count myself as lucky for that :/ Faith in humanity significantly lowered.
Why, oh why aren’t there more bright, capable, creative, innovative women in tech fields?
I had such a lovely day. We had a bunch of kids come to the court to learn about the justice system, they had a funny mock trial, got to have pizza and cookies and I come online to this.
Way to kill a mood online misogynists!
Apparently the MRAs have started a bitcoin fund for the guy who got fired:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/reddit-mens-rights-activists-are-fundraising-for-the-victim
Naturally, since they are so concerned about the evils of rape in this world, they have teamed up with admitted rapist Roosh.
INITIATE TROLL/DUDEBRO DEFLECTOR SHIELDS!
@Tulgey: I wish those MRAs were kidding. Their screed reads like something a religious right wingnut could write – feminism is destroying our society! Feminism is destroying families! Feminism is destroying our wallets! Whatever will we do!
I particularly find a problem in their efforts to do fundraising via Bitcoin. (Do they know how Bitcoins work?) The conspiracist part of me is concerned that the “charity” that’s been set up is an excuse for its founders to take the donated money and run. They don’t know the identity of the man who was fired (as far as we know) and they’re willing to collect $1,000 in Bitcoins that may or may not be forwarded to the “victim.” The MRAs behind the charity state that they will post a picture of the cashier’s check of the converted Bitcoin donation before it’s sent out, but that doesn’t mean that they will do so.
David, I love the work you do. But I seriously think you might have gotten the beginning of this story wrong.
I’m not at all talking about the death and rape threats. Those guys are disgusting and quite probably crazy people. Well, I guess you know that.
But what happened at PyCon: The two men were quietly talking to each other. The “series of inappropriate and sexual jokes” is said to be the following:
First guy (talking about the speaker): “I would totally fork that guys repository”
Nothing sexual there. That’s an absolutely everyday figure of speach used as a compliment among tech-nerds. Given Adria’s reputation, I think she knows that, too.
Second guy (later): “You’ll need a big dongle for that”
Yeah, that one’s got innuendo. But it is so, so far away from anything that would qualify the speaker as a “sexist boor” and, quite frankly, I think it is not ok to call him that seeing how he has already lost his job over this big pile of nothingness.
I fail to see the sexism here. If you really wanted to, you could call it a sexual joke.
But sexual and sexist is not the same thing.
Especially when I see Adria’s own tweet from three days earlier (about a TSA patdown):
“you should put something in your pants next time…like a bunch of socks inside one…large…sock. TSA agent faint”
Isn’t that the same kind of joke, a sexual, not a sexist one?
Yeah, the tweet was directed at a friend of hers and the generally public just kind of overheard it, as is the nature of twitter. But the same is true for the two guys. The were talking to each other privately and she overheard them.
Oh and “bush pig”? The open racism is a particularly nice touch for a “human right’s movement.” 12 fucking upvotes as of this moment.
And now I regret not coming up with that plan for a con myself. There’s always next time! I could then donate those untraceable donations to a women’s shelter, or maybe to the defense funds for all the Quebec Maple Spring protestors against the student tuition hikes.
If you haven’t, I’d definitely recommend that you read her original blog post on the matter (linked on the Feministe post, I believe…Googling is just bringing me news about the incident). She is incredibly rational and sympathetic. I read it after reading a bit of the backlash against her and it just hammered home how unreasonable it is. Not to mention that apparently the guy who got fired was reasonable and didn’t blame her for it, and it gets even more ridiculous.
I don’t think either of them should have been fired, but at least the guy was out there representing his company badly (which he acknowledged!). All she did was call attention to it.
I grew up working with computers. My father is an IT guy, used to do hardware repair (back when that was still a thing LOL). Some of my earliest memories were of hanging out in the back of the shop he used to own after school, taking apart irreparably broken VCRs and such just to see how they worked. And him teaching me how to use DOS, playing the earliest computer games together, how to build computers, how to build websites from scratch and clean up viruses and all sorts of fun stuff.
I was a bit of a nerd in high school but when I went to join the computer club, I was the only girl and it was so hostile, I was scared off. Same with the few IT-type courses I took in college. Now I’m a professional animal trainer…and although I love dogs and horses, I suspect my career might look a lot different if I hadn’t been so discouraged every time I tried to join the boys’ nerd club early on. Kudos to Richards for speaking out, is all I can say.
AK, her comment that the behaviour at the conference would put young woman off the field is true (especially at about 14-21 before you get used to your role as a sexual being). Sadly, I think most of the trolls probably see that as a good thing. If the only person in our school with training in computers hadn’t been a bit odd (he was sacked for inappropriate relations with the students) I might have been more into programming now.
Animal training sounds cool though 🙂
I liked this comment from PZ Myers:
I can only hope they get scammed like they did with the whole anit-Sarkesian Kickstarter thing.
This is bullshit. Neither of them should have been fired.
I want to preface this by saying that I understand that “Anonymous” is a loosely connected group of vastly disparate people from around the world.
But I am so tremendously disappointed that in the SAME WEEK that we saw some semblance of justice for the Steubenville rapists courtesy of their work to expose the coverup going on in that case, Anonymous decides to destroy the life of a woman who merely exposed the kinds of casual sexism that women have to deal with every fucking day of our lives.
And I do mean destroy. Adria Richards’s personal information is being passed around along with a graphic photo of a brutally beaten woman. This goes so far beyond simply getting her fired, which in and of itself is a terrible overreaction. They are inciting violence against her.
Regarding the “tone” policing going on about how she was wrong in publicly exposing the men — fuck that noise. Seriously, the same assholes who claim that passing around photos of thirteen year old girls is fair game because they run around in public like whores are now trying to claim that this woman photographing two dudes acting like jerks in a public forum is justification for rape and death threats.
blitzgal, I don’t know how you have the energy, but you were wonderful over on that Pharyngula thread too.
That Matthew Best troll is just stupendously fucked up.
And that was just me jumping off from something that JAL said over there. She linked it to Rebecca Watson, who WAS polite and who didn’t identify the guy in any way whatsoever. “Guys, don’t do that.” That’s all she said. And she still got harassed for over a year, and she is still brought up as some kind of feminist boogie monster. That’s why tone policing is fucking bullshit — it doesn’t matter how we speak up, we will still be slapped down, harassed, abused, etc. So we might as well let them see our anger.
This makes me need to take a break. See you all tomorrow, keep the chew toys warm for me.
is there anywhere we can go to send adria messages of solidarity and support?
@ThomasR
This is lazy, ableist shit.
Disgusting? Definitely? Crazy? Oh, yes, let’s decide they’re the crazies, then it’s nothing to do with “us”, the sane ones, no one should try to stop them or argue with them or call them out on this because hey, they’re crazy. /sarcasm
Shorter: Try thinking!
@ThomasR Go read Shakesville on this before spouting off this rubbish.
@ThomasR
You know, if internet commenters across the world spent the same amount of time talking about how “disgusting” this was as they spent talking about how much “she deserved it,” there would be a lot fewer accusations of misogyny going around.
^ This!
And, ThomasR pathetically regurgitates every bullshit talking point that’s been repeated ad nauseum on every other forum that has tackled this issue. Pharyngula is up to 600 comments right now — go read that thread, because every point you’ve made has already been addressed a hundred times over.
But in short — the TSA joke isn’t equivalent, and you know it. Had these men been making their dick jokes on their own Twitter feeds instead of out loud, Richards would’ve never made a complaint.
Forking has a sexual connotation and there it no point pretending that it doesn’t. Github’s loading screen reads “Hardcore forking action.” And when someone follows up a forking comment with a comment about big dongles…..please. Don’t waste anyone’s time with this bullshit that she imagined the sexual connotation.
I love how Thomas claims that “I would totally fork that guys repository” has no sexual connotation, but then goes on to observe that the second guy did in fact take it as sexual and ran with it.
Tech sessions I’ve been to sometimes involve stopping to let people get the giggles out about forking. Guh.