> Whatever she says on her own personal twitter feed is wholly unrelated to what happens at a professional event.
And why doesn't that logic hold for the two people who were joking amongst themselves? The parallel is : just as her twitter feed is public, and other people can "hear" her speak, these guys were making private jokes at a public event, and that is none of her business.
You seem to be jumping over the point here. Both the conference and twitter are public venues, and both the jokes are sexual in nature.
You seem to be arguing here that a joke at a public conference is a different situation to a joke posted publicly to twitter - I do not see the difference. Her twitter account is now irrevocably linked to Sendspace's image as she has claimed that Sendspace backs her views, which in turn claims that Sendspace is backing her sexual joke in a public space while also calling out a sexual joke at a conference. This is obviously paradoxical, and is also why I'm asking you to rethink your posts.
> You seem to be arguing here that a joke at
> a public conference is a different situation
> to a joke posted publicly to twitter
I'm sorry. Posting something on Twitter is simply not the same as saying something several feet away from a stranger in person. There are two primary reasons.
One, anybody reading Adria's Twitter account is doing so on a voluntary basis. Adria, on the other hand, did not volunteer to listen to a bunch of sexual jokes from these men she doesn't know.
Two, there's the issue of physical proximity. The overwhelming odds are, of course, that the men at this conference were not a physical threat to Adria. Nobody was arguing they were anything worse than some guys who made a joke at a sub-optimal time. However, please understand that sexual violence is depressingly common in America (http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2011/p1214_sexual_violence...) and that it's one more reason why we don't subject strangers to unwanted sexual banter, even if that stranger said something off-color at some point in their lives.
Again, I have to ask: given that every woman you know has probably said something off-color at some point in their lives, perhaps publicly, does that give me the right to speak to them in whatever off-color way I wish?
I'd say that no, it doesn't. You say I do?
Or, let's try another tack. Forget Twitter. Let's compare apples to apples.
Do you think you have the right to go up to any female comedienne who's ever made an off-color joke, and tell her off-color jokes? You don't, because she is not volunteering to listen to your jokes in the same way that you did when you listened to her routine. And honestly, I think you probably do know that, and would probably not walk up to Ellen Degeneres and discuss lesbian sex with her even though she has publicly identified as a lesbian on national television.
>she was tweeting sexual innuendos while at the conference
besides the point. It's not about the sexual innuendo, it's about the context of the sexual innuendo. Clearly she is not a prude and against sexual jokes in general. But in that specific environment, they were inappropriate. Twitter is a different environment.
There's a difference between reading someone's Twitter stream and hearing someone's joke while sitting in the audience at a convention.
I've pondered this myself and, at least in this situation, I disagree. How can it be a fireable offense to make a penis joke in a room where a few people may overhear it, while it being completely ok to tweet the penis joke to the whole room?
I know you would only receive the joke if you follow her, but most people are following her because of her status in the tech community, not because she has great dirty jokes. In my eyes, this makes her joke an even worse offender than Alex's. They were both made in a professional environment but one was a private conversation that happened to be overheard, the other was a public broadcast to a portion of the tech community.
According to her account, their initial jokes were based off of a conversation that she was directly involved in. Based on that fact, in her position I would not have considered their conversation private.
Furthermore they continued their discussion while the presenter was talking. That right there is going to annoy people around them, even if they had the most innocent conversation in the world. Which they weren't. In fact her description left me with the impression that she thought they were specifically joking about her.
Basic scenario. Off color jokes starting off of your conversation, that you feel are directed at you, by random strangers in a public space. I can understand her getting upset by that. She may have been mistaken in her impressions, but her unfortunate emotional reaction is understandable to me.
I believe she's being a hypocrite by taking offense one day, and making her own penis joke on Twitter the next.
I've seen that argument tossed about. There's a difference between reading someone's Twitter stream and hearing someone's joke while sitting in the audience at a convention. The former is reading content from someone you chose to follow, the latter is the equivalent of having people talk behind you in a movie theater.
> So she should apologize because someone was offensive, got outed for it, and their employer felt that was reason enough to can them?
No. What he said was:
> I do not believe it would have been out of line for Adria to have said something like "I heard one of the guys in the photo I posted on Twitter yesterday was fired. I just wanted to say that I'm terribly sorry to hear that and my intent was never to cause harm! I'm very sorry!"
Not that she should have done it, but basically that he thinks it would have been a good idea and could have been a solution to the entire fiasco.
For someone who is so publicly concerned with professionalism, I feel Adria should/could have either:
1. Not taken a semi-secret photo of the guys with the intent of publicly outing them. If she was really offended by the comments she should have gotten up and contacted the event staff. The unprofessional thing to do would be to take a conversation out of context, pair it with a picture of the guys, and tweet it to thousands of people. What's the end game there?
2. Assuming she did tweet as she did, the professional response would be to apologize to the guy that got fired. Saying that she's sorry that he got fired (not even that she's sorry for getting him fired, which is obviously debatable) would have, as the above poster noted, nipped the whole thing in the bud.
The other factor here is that Adria was obviously villainized and attacked seemingly from all angles. I understand that this would be a hard thing to deal with, but I can't exactly empathize with her. Tweeting about the incident is one thing, but taking a picture of them is taking it to another level entirely - and not a very professional level at that...
It's a personal conversation then, in either case, its NOYB. Unless he was using actual obscene words, I don't get it. She can't be offended by behavior she herself publicly broadcasts on twitter to anyone who follows or reads her feed. A conversation is the same way, you can't help who chooses to sit next to you and eavesdrops on your conversation.
Since when does everyone have the right to being offended?
To put this into context, Adria is most certainly allowed to be bothered the comments made during this conversation. However, there has to be a distinction between whether or not this is private or public.
If this fellow went on stage and then started to make these jokes, it could be considered inappropriate and as a result she would in my mind have a valid complaint. It is similar to how Michael Richards made some rather off-colour remarks about a certain ethnicity on stage, which as a result ruined his career. If he had made these comments in private, I'd imagine that he'd still be making terrible attempts at sitcom pilots.
However, when it is a conversation between two parties where she wasn't included but just ended up overhearing it, then she has no right to complain. These guys may be obnoxious to you, but you can remove yourself from the situation quite easily. Tweeting a photo of them was uncalled for however, but she could have still made a photo-less quip about them which would have been appropriate.
Public shaming people for their private conversations is uncalled for when it is specifically targeted. Adria doesn't need to apologise for being bothered over it, but she certainly should for going about it the way she did.
[edit]
Sendgrid responded:
Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards. While we generally are sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature. We have taken action that we believe is in the overall best interests of SendGrid, its employees, and our customers. As we continue to process the vast amount of information, we will post something more comprehensive.
> She claims jokes were offending, she then posts
> racists and penis jokes on her twitter account.
> Not only does it smell of hypocrisy it smells of
> maliciousness.
Wow, so if your mother (or sister, or girlfriend, or wife, or daughter) has ever made an off-color joke in her life, that gives any man in the world the right to discuss penises with her in person?
I mean, wow. That's what you're getting at.
Twitter has elements of both a public and private space. It's public, obviously, but people read your Tweets voluntarily.
It's not at all comparable to making unwanted sexual comments to a woman you don't know on a bus, or in an alleyway, or in a convenience store, or at a conference.
It's not comparable to subjecting
It's
>Either we hold everyone responsible for what they say publicly, or we don't. On one hand a person was having a conversation that was over-heard and caused offence. We admonish him and hold him responsible. Is this right and fair? Consensus seems to be yes.
What consensus? I find it absolutely horrifying and terrible that this thing happened for a private conversation (that the conversation took place in a public place means nothing. People talk privately in public places: restaurants, city parks, whatever, offices, all the time).
And judging from the comments I've seen, most people agree.
Only Adria spoke in public: on twitter and her blog, and intending the posts to reach a wide audience.
"Private" conversations held with people in close quarters (e.g. conference keynote-esqe seating) is not a private conversation. Sexual jokes create an unnecessarily hostile and unwelcoming environment, especially when women are so drastically underrepresented.
I fully support her in calling them out publicly. Quietly informing the authorities does little.
IMHO, it's more public and potential offensive than muttering 'dongle' in a crowded theater.
The point I was trying to make is that every party involved is in definitely in the gray area between offensive and unoffensive. She made sexual humiliation jokes in front of thousands of twitter followers. Her company made scatlogical jokes in a much more professional setting than a conference. Compared to these, muttering 'dongle' in a crowded theater is, you must admit, at least equally as offensiv, if not quite a bit less.
And nobody gave a damn about her twitter jokes or the company jobs page before this.
nope. nobody made an inappropriate comment to her nor any females in that gathering. she tweeted a joke that was made in a private conversation which she overheard.
There's a fundamental difference between publicly shaming someone who made a semi-private comment (I'm assuming the guy in question did not stand up and yell the joke to the entire conference) vs. publicly criticising someone for comments they themselves made in a way that was extremely public.
If she wants to take something like this public, she should expect the responses to be public.
Because she apparently approves of this type of humor between friends, and she has in fact demonstrated it herself in public, I'm actually really confused about where she's coming from and having trouble relating to her motives for doing this.
I guess it hinges also on the definition of "private".
Is it always the offended party's prerogative to claim offense if, "in passing", they hear something that upsets them but which was (1) not intended for them to hear and (2) not directed at them?
That appears to be the case here - the jokes were not directed at the (now-fired herself) Ms Reynolds.
Was there a large audience to the comment? Was it directed at a general group of people? No. It was directed at a single other person, and she happened to overhear it. So it was private. That it was made in public and within earshot of others does not make it a public statement.
Actually according to Adria's blog post (linked elsewhere in the thread) the jokes were made in response to a comment about "forking" a repo from the person sitting next to them. They were riffing off of a conversation she was part of; assuming you believe her, that's "non-private" regardless of context.
And why doesn't that logic hold for the two people who were joking amongst themselves? The parallel is : just as her twitter feed is public, and other people can "hear" her speak, these guys were making private jokes at a public event, and that is none of her business.
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