Woman who gets man fired for penis joke, gets fired herself [View all]

[LittleBlue]

So here’s what happened:

1) While sitting in the 10th row of a Python programming conference, a developer who used to work for mobile monetization startup Playhaven apparently made a joke about “big” dongles and “forking someone’s repo.”

2) Adria Richards, a developer evangelist sitting in front of them, called them out on Twitter and in a blog post for making the conference environment unwelcoming toward women. PyCon then escorted them out to the hallway.

“Women in technology need consistant [sic] messaging from birth through retirement they are welcome, competent and valued in the industry,” she explained in a blog post.

3) Shortly afterward, Playhaven said it had fired the developer. CEO Andy Yang explained, “As a company that is dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior, we conducted a thorough investigation. The result of this investigation led to the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go.” He added that the employee wasn’t Alex Reid, who is the guy looking straight at the camera in Richards’ tweeted photo. Reid still works for Playhaven.

4) The unnamed fired employee showed up on Hacker News by the name of “mr-hank” and apologized for the joke.

I really did not mean to offend anyone and I really do regret the comment and how it made Adria feel. She had every right to report me to staff, and I defend her position. However, there is another side to this story. While I did make a big dongle joke about a fictional piece hardware that identified as male, no sexual jokes were made about forking. My friends and I had decided forking someone’s repo is a new form of flattery (the highest form being implementation) and we were excited about one of the presenters projects; a friend said “I would fork that guys repo” The sexual context was applied by Adria, and not us.

My second comment is this, Adria has an audience and is a successful person of the media. Just check out her web page linked in her twitter account, her hard work and social activism speaks for itself. With that great power and reach comes responsibility. As a result of the picture she took I was let go from my job today. Which sucks because I have 3 kids and I really liked that job.

She gave me no warning, she smiled while she snapped the pic and sealed my fate. Let this serve as a message to everyone, our actions and words, big or small, can have a serious impact.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled-way-out-of-control/

Long story short. Woman hears joke about a "dongle". She goes on twitter to report it. He gets fired. He goes on social network to claim that she missed the context of the joke. Twitter outraged when it learns about it, hackers attack her place of work. She refers to herself as "Joan of Arc" protecting the workplace from sexism. Some apparent hypocrisy ensued, as she herself was caught making penis jokes:

Adria Richards ?@adriarichards

@skwashd you should put something in your pants next time...like a bunch of socks inside one...large...sock. TSA agent faint
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425

She gets fired by her company after they and their clients are targeted by hackers (Anon specifically). She has been threatened on twitter, and now her former company is under DDOS attack by hackers. http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/21/breaking-adria-richards-fired-by-sendgrid-for-outting-developers-on-twitter/


In retrospect, I agree with Kim-Mai Cutler's conclusion. A dongle joke wasn't worth 2 people's jobs and possibly their careers, threats against her, and numerous unrelated companies being attacked by hackers.