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Patriarchal Nonsense.
How many more examples do we need to understand that our society is still in love with patriarchy and misogyny? Adria Richards makes a reasonable gesture, calling people out for their crappy remarks, and for her trouble she is fired and gets rape and death threats.
We’re completely ready for the post-feminism society. For-sure. David Futrelle over at Manboobz has the story.
“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.”)”
Oh hey they are talking about this on Pharyngula as well – consider this comment:
“I’m just going to go ahead and re-quote what JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness said in #74, because it bears repeating for the folks who keep insisting that Richards brought everything down on herself solely because of how she raised her objections:
Every single day, all damn day women are subjected to this kind of shit and there’s no reason to give “mercy”. We’ve done the “guys please don’t do that”, remember how that turned out? Every fucking day at work, in public, even at home with our friends and families, we’re pressured to be quiet, speak softly, which adheres to that sexist “ladylike” expectation. FUCK THAT.
What is crystal clear in our culture is that IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW A WOMAN RAISES AN OBJECTION. She can be polite, she can say, “guys don’t do that” without even naming or identifying the person she’s talking about in any way, and go on to be incessantly harassed for over a year. Polite objections by women result in the exact same onslaught of violent hate speech, death threats, and rape threats.
So keep on focusing on what Richards did to “bring this on herself.” Just understand that by doing so, YOU are contributing to this culture of misogyny and YOU are part of the problem.”
So before we get any further please take the following piece of helpful advice to heart: Your experiences are not the experiences of others, thus take the time and really listen to what others are saying, before opining on what is going on.
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