Here is a short list of things that many people completely miss about the entire "dongle gate" situation. (back story here)
Before one hits the world to "support" one party or another in this whole mess, think about the following issues.
Nobody actually has come forward and described the "dongle" joke in detail To "fork" a repo is a technical term, and was used in the context of it being a mark of code quality. Adria Richards' role was "developer evangelist" Adria Richards herself tweeted dick jokes prior to the encounter Adria Richards tweeted her own bizarre philosophy about racism prior to this event: Adria Richards was playing "Cards Against Humanity" at the PyCon conference and posted a picture on Instagram. Adria Richards publicized that her employer supported her without question: Well before tweeting pictures of the male developers, Adria Richards made similar mistakes same mistakes at earlier engagements: People are saying "Adria didn't want anyone to be fired". Yet she did not apologize to the developers, and even favorited this tweet that was dismissive of the consequences: The developers were in no way addressing Adria Richards. The developers did not harass, threaten or intimidate Adria Richards in any way.
Before one hits the world to "support" one party or another in this whole mess, think about the following issues.
- Everybody was excited about how well represented women were at PyCon
- "Dear world, I'm going back to celebrating that fact that #PyCon had 20% female attendees. I hope you will join me. Cheers, LH"
- "I'd fork his repo" for example, was provided as a strange compliment
- It has been denied that "fork" was meant to be a stand-in for "fuck"
- "you should put something in your pants next time...like a bunch of socks inside one...large...sock. TSA agent faint"
- Black people CANNOT be racist against White people. Racism is a position of the oppressor who has the power
- Hint: The game is played precisely because it's inappropriate!
- "Hey @mundanematt, it's clear from the last 24 hours you're a bully. @SendGrid supports me. Stop trolling."
- Danielle Morrill used the word "Money Shot" at a conference session title. Without talking to Danielle about it, Richards told her blog readers that Morrill was "promoting porn"
- Adria's site, butyoureagirl.com, had article initially titled "Wordcamp Boston’s Ignite session turns to porn pitch for votes"
- Made a scene of a comic Jane Wells created from an XKCD strip, arguing that the woman stick figure looked silly compared to the male stick figure.
- "@paxdickinson Pretty sure a python developer isn't going to be out of work for long in this market. Unless he makes dick jokes in interviews"
- They were not talking to Adria
- The joke did not reference females in any way
- There has been no evidence put forwards regarding any prior interaction between the parties involved
- A sexual joke is not necessarily a sexist joke.
- From the photo, it is obvious several males knew their photo was being taken by a rather attractive woman. From what they knew, she was going to post it on Facebook and caption it "Look at all the ugly neckbeards!" - but they didn't say a single word to her.
Put yourself in the position of her employer, SendGrid. You have an employee that finds themselves in this situation frequently - even in the company of other females.
You have an employee that tweets using her company persona anything that happens to come to mind about race relations.
Furthermore, her job is developer evangelist. Her ability to do her job rests on a good relationship with the community at large.
The employee has told the masses of developers that the company has her back for all time, and that several of them are "trolls" circling around in an unsafe, anti-woman community.
Her entire identity has morphed into not something that interacts with the community at large in regards to its core goals, but rather one that stands out as critical of it.
The icing on the cake is that her choices harmed the reputation of other companies that attended the event.
A programming conference, at its core, exists not to propel some social justice agenda. It exists to talk about programming. If your ability to primarily engage people on that topic comes into question, you are no longer a developer evangelist.
So step back for a moment and ponder a terrible situation.
But do not, for one second, believe that Adria Richards is somehow a victim of a crime committed by the developers at that conference.
Finally, the focused suggestion that SendGrid should simply re-hire Adria Richards is actually sexist. If you think sock-joke Adria should be employed while it's somehow OK for the dongle-joke male to be terminated, then you happen to host a sizable amount of gender bias.