> “Danger,” she said. “Clearly my body was telling me, ‘You are unsafe.’”
... I'm honestly shocked anyone could say that with a straight face. Apart from the incorrectness (is there any reason to believe a developer making a joke about dongles increases the risk of bodily harm?) -- what the hell does "your body" saying things have to do with anything?
I'm a guy and my "body" says all sorts of things that I wouldn't repeat or act on. She's implying she has no civilized control over her natural, probably rather miscalibrated like everyone's, instincts?
And to claim there's a risk of getting killed... it sounds like the no-fly list. Such obvious danger that we must restrict such people drastically because we're so sure they're going to kill people, but we've no actual evidence of wrongdoing to actually arrest or otherwise prosecute them.
And then going on to accuse the guy of starting a hate campaign against her? When all evidence points in the opposite direction? Perhaps she's planning a career move or book or something, and it's good publicity to just double down on her position, rather than just be another person that made a mistake?
It really hurts equality in tech when these incidents happen.
> When all evidence points in the opposite direction?
Hmmm, can't let that go. Look, everything done in that situation was a dickish thing, but Adria got dumped on in every exchange.
1. Guys enjoy a bit of innuendo without having the common sense to figure that it is inappropriate in the middle of a hall (quiet or not) at a professional conference. That's not cool.
2. Adria takes a photo and calls out the guys doing it to her followers on Twitter. That's not cool either.
3. A bunch of self-righteous twitter folks decide to make "Hank" pay, and tweet his boss demanding his job. Ugh.
4. His employers then fire him. WTF?
5. Internet shitstorm of epic proportion lands on Adria, rape and death threats, doxing, a DDoS attack on her employer, who is blackmailed to fire her. WTactualF?
I don't think anyone comes out of that smelling of roses. But "Hank" and Adria's misdemenours were pretty minor "could have done that better" or "could have been more considerate" stuff. There's no reason to assume any malice aforethought in either of them.
And more to the point, whatever "Hank" suffered, Adria was dumped on tenfold. So unsympathetic or not, we should all be really angry at the way Adria was treated. To suggest it her is attitude that hurts equality in tech is pretty low, I think. And, those of us who haven't been professionally assaulted, and personally threatened and hounded, should probably cut her a break before accusing her of doing it for profit.
> Adria: "Maybe he’s to blame for complaining that he got fired. Maybe he secretly seeded the hate groups. Right?"
Um, no? With zero evidence, it's rather a big thing to accuse someone of.
She goes on:
> Adria replied that she was happy to hear that Hank “wasn’t active in driving their interests to mount the raid attack”, but that she held him responsible for it anyway.
So she accuses him. Then is told he didn't do anything. She persists in blaming him anyways. Apparently he's just guilty, full stop, no matter what he did?
Giving her a profit motive was actually intended as a compliment. As in, there's no way anyone can actually think it's fair or two same to blame someone for someone else's actions when there's no evidence it was their fault. Therefore, instead of just becoming another Lindsay Stone and painting over a past mistake, why not go all out, admit no fault, and gain followers that way? At least that makes sense.
The alternative is to actually believe she thinks it's fair to blame you if someone else acts on their own accord, but in your "favor". That's pretty horrific.
And I say that this incident, hurts equality, because the initiating episode isn't something that anyone should take seriously. Then, after all this abuse is piled on her, the same guy who made a joke is held responsible for an Internet mob. That distracts from the real problem, doesn't it?
(And as a "disclaimer", no one is excusing /b/, and it's stupid (and just weird) to 'shop porn pics and death threats. It draws attention away from the individual suffering.
But like groups that riot over cartoons, I don't think anyone expects to be talking to or convincing people taking part in the riot, right? What's an actual, useful, response, to the abuse Adria got? Does anyone support it? Does anyone think it's effective? Suppose I wanted to teach trolls a lesson or stand against them, how would I do that?)
You didn't get round to the point where all the evidence points in the other direction.
There's a lot in there about how and why you think Adria is unreasonable in her reaction to "Hank" and what happened. But that's not the same thing.
You're coming across as someone who feels they have a grievance against her. Particularly doubling down on the "profit motive" accusation. One that was, incidentally, used to incite against her in the initial onslaught.
> Does anyone support it? Does anyone think it's effective?
Would anyone rather talk about what Adria did and is doing wrong instead?
Both were treated deplorably. "Hank" appears to have learned from it. Adria? If she's still beating up on the dude with three kids who got fired, I'm not sure she did.
I wonder if it is easier to 'learn from it' when a) it is clear what you did wrong was in breach of the rules of the conference you were in, b) you get a job pretty shortly afterwards, and c) you aren't threatened with death, rape and doxed out of your home and city.
I can imagine it is pretty hard to learn from it, in that case. So my natural default is to give her a huge amount of empathy in the situation. Especially given that I have no real likelihood of ever having to go through that myself.
> You didn't get round to the point where all the evidence points in the other direction.
Wait, what? Where? I quoted from near the end of the section on Adria/Hank. After that it just mentions that he is a bit more careful, and Adria doesn't have a job. Where's the evidence?
Maybe I'm reading another story, because this one paints a very bad picture of Adria, basically having her throw accusations at this guy of inciting hate towards her, saying the guy was innocent, then saying he's to blame regardless. Could you tell me how I am misreading it, for real?
Sorry, I read your original comment about "the evidence points in the other direction" as being about the original incident, that's why I was expecting you to justify the point you didn't, in fact, make.
Not to mention the idea that the presence of 2,000 bystanders offered absolutely no protection- because they were all white & male. Like, what, they would just stand there and watch her be murdered because she's a black woman?
The most charitable way I can interpret it, is that she's trying to verbalize a genuine, if irrational, fear and unconscious thought process that drove her emotions in that moment. Talking about what "the body is saying" makes sense in that context.
Still, she is not quoted as saying something like "But I recognize that's irrational, and that tweeting would not save me if I were actually in imminent bodily danger." So my conclusion is also not favorable to her, or maybe that the article author has not been fair to her.
It might not be as crazy as it sounds to you or me, who are guys.
Just like Internet mob mentalities can form, mob mentalities can form in real life. And it might not be a literal violent mob of people, but rather a collectively self-reinforcing sense of freedom from the normal constraints of society.
Conferences are the types of places where this sort of thing can happen, because almost everyone takes a break from their normal everyday life to go there. They're in a new location, often a fun one, and folks are explicitly relieved of their typical stresses and constraints. There's usually more free time and more drinking, and socializing with people one might never see again. There are more hookups and one-night-stands.
And so conferences do end up being places that women are harassed, groped, sometimes sexually assaulted. Tailhook is probably the most famous example, but certainly not the only one. Of course that sort of thing does not happen in the big ballroom during the keynote. It happens in the hallway, or in a hotel elevator, or the women's bathroom in an out-of-the-way corner, or outside a hotel room.
So a woman at a conference that is mostly men might know these things, and have her guard up. Even if she knows that it's unlikely that anything bad will happen, the consequences would be so horrifying that she might have an emotional reaction if she gets a bad feeling.
Important note: I am not saying that this particular conference had that problem. I'm just saying that her sense of danger might not be as crazy and unfounded as it sounds to guys like you and me.
The article quotes her as her suggesting she could be murdered, with 2000 bystanders looking on. That's considerably a bigger claim being made than assault in a hotel room or corner.
(OTOH, I'm fairly well convinced these threads are gonna go nowhere and reveal nothing interesting.)
She doesn't literally say that; the reference to being killed is a fairly well-known quote that attempts to illustrate that women often feel physically threatened in ways that men can't appreciate.
... I'm honestly shocked anyone could say that with a straight face. Apart from the incorrectness (is there any reason to believe a developer making a joke about dongles increases the risk of bodily harm?) -- what the hell does "your body" saying things have to do with anything?
I'm a guy and my "body" says all sorts of things that I wouldn't repeat or act on. She's implying she has no civilized control over her natural, probably rather miscalibrated like everyone's, instincts?
And to claim there's a risk of getting killed... it sounds like the no-fly list. Such obvious danger that we must restrict such people drastically because we're so sure they're going to kill people, but we've no actual evidence of wrongdoing to actually arrest or otherwise prosecute them.
And then going on to accuse the guy of starting a hate campaign against her? When all evidence points in the opposite direction? Perhaps she's planning a career move or book or something, and it's good publicity to just double down on her position, rather than just be another person that made a mistake?
It really hurts equality in tech when these incidents happen.