There is one word for this behavior mentioned above: denial. Unfortunately, there seems to be a part of our community that refuses to call things what they are. This was an instance of sexism that manifested itself in a nasty way.

This is one of the most persistent problems when discussing these issues: the idea that if the victim of discrimination didn't get raped or beaten by people wearing white hoods, then it does not qualify as real discrimination.

It's absolutely accurate to call the general reaction 'denial.' People who complain who are on the receiving end of the harassment are 'overly sensitive' and those who aren't who speak up against the status quo are 'apologists' and 'white knights.' It's difficult to address a mindset which a majority of a community is complicit in at best, or active defenders of at worst.

At this point, I'd say it was the opposite of well documented and that's a problem. We do not have the statistics on this since it is not being reported to law enforcement or another body that collects these statistics. Does tech have more incidents than lawyers, plumbers, or actors? Don't know and I wish I did. I believe that it is a problem, but I cannot point to finding or study.

We are technologist. Many of us are academics. If someone writes or talks about how a compiler is slow, the community will demand more than anecdotes. We expect numbers, tested theories, and verified results. When people come to us with anecdotes, we often use "less than nice" ways to disregard what they say. hmm, I see parallels...

There looks to be a number of excellent evidence to prove that there is a gender equality issue in IT, but there is no scientific research on what the causes are. Is it the general culture in the world and IT has the same level as other industries? Is it because of the question/answer culture of engineers, which is an aspect currently being researched in regard to gender equality. Is it a lack of respect for women in the IT field?

I can think of plentiful number of ways to test those concept, work that anthropology might want to do if we asked them. We could also pay them to do it. Maybe that could be someones kickstarter project?

I have a strong conviction that if someone would bring scientific data on the issue on what the causes are and how to fix them, in a verifiable way, few would object. Can a strong worded policy document have an statistic proven effect in discourage sexism in a conference? If you think so, verify it with data. Get 10 conference to do it, and collect data from it and 10 other without any such document. If its verifyable, every conference should adapt one after that. Do you think negative IRC comments is the problem? Switch a number of projects to a moderated communication channel and test the concept. Compare a unmoderated IRC with a project page like stackoverflow. Bring data, do some science, show it to the community. Its the exact same thing we expect from anyone else when they want to do changes to the things the community care about.

Put that in contrast to the person who is calling somebody who is stating that the perpetrator might have been one (sic) female a ""conspiracy theorist"" and talks about "obvious truth".

all the while supposing that there is a consipracy among men to make women feel uncomfortable at tech conferences.

If irony had mass, this thread would undergo gravitational collapse and form a singularity.

Why is that possibility not worth considering?

If I were to bash a competitor in public by reference to his homosexuality, it won't make anything better to know that I actually don't have any problem with gay people myself. It's unacceptable and downright evil.

Excuse me, have you even read the article?

Someone uploaded fake porn pictures of her to a forum and then persistently sent the URL to her employers and acquaintances.

This was a targeted attack on her reputation, or perhaps malicious stalking, but how on earth does sexism factor into this?

The porn pictures were merely a vehicle. If the attack had been carried out against a man they would probably have used accusations of child pornography or such.

There are significantly more males in this industry with significantly more popularity. Yet no evidence is presented that these figures also have received this level of harassment.

When the OP says that "[women in technology] are scared" it is because they feel that they are in an environment that targets them for harassment and abuse. At this point, we hear arguments like "this could have happened to a guy just as easily" but the fact is that it doesn't. In a world where such events happen with equal frequency across genders then yes, this might be a silly discussion, but we do not live in such a world.

Engineers tend to find it disconcerting that an action's goodness or badness depends on its context. After all, shouldn't we be able to tell just by looking at the inherent properties of the action? What if we can't read the context correctly? Well, the answer is that we frequently do, and the result is these inane argument over whether posting fake porn pictures of a woman is a sexist act.

The fact of the matter is that women in tech are targeted because they are women. They are overwhelmingly more frequently attacked than their male counterparts, and if you think this is silly, then I suggest you go make friends with some women in tech. This attack is another outgrowth of that pervasive sexism, and the fact that it uses a medium that is traditionally associated with denigrating women [1] just makes it even more sexist.

[1] Yes, there is some non-misogynistic porn out there, but it is the exception rather than the rule.

This whole jumping to conclusions is just a bit much for me.

Couldn't she just as well be targeted because she rejected some nerd who had a crush on her? Or even by another woman who is jealous of her?

That obviously doesn't make the actions any better, but seems a more plausible motivation to me than "a random guy running a smear-campaign against a random woman, only because she's a woman".

Please, please do some reading on this - it's not hard to find reports and analyses of online woman abuse, and it's not hard to recognize the recurring themes and motifs, which prominently include image-based harassment.

That the perpetrator uses the most effective means available doesn't make the attacks misogynist, just because the target is a woman and the means is sex. That's like saying that choosing a knife to stab someone to death is obvious knife-ist behavior by the perpetrator. It's the misogynism of society and culture as a whole that is responsible for this; whether the perpetrator is misogynistic in excess of the culturally given amount is a question that we cannot answer based on the evidence.

We don't know that. This is an assumption made with no meaningful evidence.

I don't think that means what you think it means.

I'm suggesting that these sort of attacks on men are extremely limited is enough evidence to suggest the perpetrator is likely to be sexist and/or a mysoginist, which is pretty much the definition of a smoking gun as illustrated.

The fact that I'm asserting is that men do not suffer these kinds of attacks suggest the individual was motivated by sexism. I can't say anymore other than to say that you are wrong. I don't think it means what you clearly think it means. Sorry, no snark intended.

According to wikipedia:

> Sexual harassment, rape and other forms of sexual violence can be a part of more extreme, expressive, and emotionally impactive forms of sexism.[10]

what happened to her was obviously sexual harassment and extremely misogynistic, so at least according to wikipedia "sexism" is an appropriate word.

> The porn pictures were merely a vehicle. If the attack had been carried out against a man they would probably have used accusations of child pornography or such.

I don't think that's really how that works. This particular kind of attempted shaming / harassment is intimately tied in with notions of gender roles, patriarchal social norms, etc. I think if you're suggesting that attacking a man with accusations of child pornography is also sexist you might be right.

If you want blatant sexism, FTA: "no offence, I just don’t relate to girls speaking about the industry at all, I learn better from guys". That's sexism.

It's not denial if you don't know the motivation. Why is it so important to label these actions a certain way when we can just call it as it clearly is?

Trying to label everything that may or may not be sexism doesn't help the cause. Most of us know there is rampant sexism. Arguing about this just detracts from the real problem. There are more than enough obvious instances to demonstrate the problem.

EDIT: for the 2 down-voters so far: the point I'm making is that sexism is a major problem but trying to ascribe motivation to something with uncertainty is intellectual dishonesty that does nothing but detract from the real problem.

The CDC's 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, which looked at society at large and excluded the prison population, found that 1.1% of women and 1.1% or men surveyed were raped in the prior 12 months.

98% of women who had been raped identified a man as their attacker and 80% of the men who had been raped identified a woman as their attacker. This works out to men being 60% of rapists and women being 40% of rapists.

Here is an analysis with all the calculations laid out and tied back to the data tables in the NISVS report: http://www.genderratic.com/p/836/manufacturing-female-victim...

Here is a link to the data tables with the relevant figures circled: http://imgur.com/a/aw0eU

Now, the NISVS's executive summary does not tell this story. It tells the usual story of rape being something men overwhelmingly to do women. The way it does that is by defining rape to be 'being penetrated against your will', excluding 'being made to penetrate', which is what a female rapist would do to a man.

Nevertheless, the study does track how many men were made to penetrate (which it categorizes as 'other, sexual assault'), so it is possible to correct the definition of rape to one that doesn't erase female on male rape ('made to have sex against your will'), and when you do, rape ceases to be a gendered crime.

So yes, I can imagine what it would be like for men to be raped as often as women are. Now, can you imagine what it would be like if female rape victims, like male rape victims, were defined out of existence, and offered no recognition, or help?

I agree that the narrative of men being strong serves the interests of the men at the top of the power structure, but that is a tiny percentage of all men.

The average man has no more power than the average woman.

I'm not claiming that for the statistic for the US at large is 100% representative of the tech community. But unless you have a good reason to believe it to be different, it seems like a reasonable starting point.

To be honest I really despise this mobbing attitude that seems to surface here. Somebody has been wronged, so now people on the internet have to be hated that have no connection to the event whatsoever. Just because I didn't join the chorus of "it's all the fault of sexism"?

Edit: also, with respect to the 1 in 4 number, have studies about what men experience even been conducted? Since most of those rapes occur for young people, a lot of men could be affected, too (raped as kids). Also men appear to be much more likely to become victim of violence than women, from what I have found so far.

Bringing up this hypothetical is a distraction/derailment tactic used by what I will call 'agents of the patriarchy,' un-wittingly or no. So when you say it, just understand why feminists get annoyed…

I assume you are not aware of it, but it seems very twisted to ask for some aspect and then condemn the mentioning of said aspect.

Also how is the story here relevant to systemic harassment of women by "our" community - how common is it that a women in the community gets flooded with fake nude photographs, and how is that the communities doing (except for providing an online forum)?

With respect to the 1 in 4 figure, surely you are aware that most rapes occur in relationships (relatives, spouses, acquaintances)?

Also I only researched that figure of violence against men yesterday, but for Germany. In the German police crime statistics severe violence against men is much more frequent than severe violence and rape against women. So there is at least one data point.

It's irrelevant. If you do sexist things, you are a sexist. Maybe you don't know you're a sexist, but you are.

> Sexism definition: Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

I'm not arguing that this isn't a terrible, unwarranted attack; I'm arguing against the dilution of the term. Not every attack against a person of another race is racist and not every attack against a women is sexist.

Where is the "basis on sex" in this story (genuine question, i.e. did her gender motivate the attack)? Without this, you can call it many things but not sexist.

Also, note that that definition is not the one that most people who care about this topic use. That would be 'sexual discrimination.' Sexism is a systemic cultural force of sexual discrimination. That said, it's not particularly relevant to what I'm saying either, but I thought I'd mention it.

The type of attack (porn) seems gender-specific to me.

And it's plausible to me that the "same old face" critique is more prevalent with women speakers than with men. How many talks does a man have to give, on average, to get that response, vs. OP's total of three?

If I wanted to harass a female, I would probably choose sexual shaming as a weapon, because it is obviously one of the most effective weapons available to me, because society is sexist. I would be morally reprehensible for choosing to harass someone, but my motivation for harassing her would not necessarily be sexist. Perhaps she ran over my cat, I believe she did it on purpose and want to punish her. The attack would work because our culture is rife with sexism. The attack was chosen because I'm angry with her for killing my cat: not because I'm sexist.

Maybe this is a better way of putting it: Person A and Person B exist. One of the two means to be sexist, and one does not. They both go around and do the exact same things.

What is the difference between A and B, as far as women or our community are concerned? There effectively isn't any. Now, maybe Person not-sexist is more likely to come to understand how their actions are harming people, and be reformed, but before that point, their intent doesn't mean a damn: they're still hurting others.

Which do you think helps remove the behavior in our society: "that sounded racist, is that really what you meant?" or "you're a racist. I can't believe you said that." One of them gives the person an opportunity to evaluate what they said and how they want to be perceived by others, the other immediately puts them on the defensive and marks you and your cause an enemy to their person.

> the consensus is that you address behavior and not identity because attacking identity accomplishes nothing positive.

Right! Which is why I care what someone does, not what they say or what they mean. Address the behavior. I'm glad we agree on this.

- the fact that she is a woman adressing a predominantly male audience (the fake porno)

- the ambient objectification of women in society

How can that not count as sexist?

It is, yes. The vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of porn panders to a specifically, typically male fantasy (and bravado) of sexual interaction.

Imagine if you will that, hypothetically, 10% of male fantasy is about humiliating women. Imagine also, hypothetically, that all porn is based on that 10%. In this way, you can see that it is possible for all porn to be about humiliating women, but that does not imply that the majority of male fantasy is about that.

Put another way, if all cows are black, it does not mean that everything black is a cow. If all porn is based on a male fantasy, it does not mean that all male fantasy is represented in porn.

Regardless, I doubt the fake porno was in any way intended respectfully. Sexuality is extremely personal and private. Attacking someone that way is generally a very ugly thing to do. Sexual assault is often included as a part of torture because you can cause enormous physical pain and long term psychological damage without leaving a mark on them.

That in itself doesn't seem to make it sexist?

"Most porn is strongly rooted in objectifying women in a way which denies their humanity"

Or maybe porn is simply about one, limited aspect of humanity? By chance (might have been YouTube's recommender algorithm) I watched this on Objectification recently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUhW41Qpjg

I guess I can settle for "sexist porn is sexist", though - obviously there is a huge range of porn out there... Is a picture of a naked woman sexist, for example?

Which is a longish way of saying that, globally, it is so common for women to be treated in a demeaning manner that many women view porn per se as demeaning to women. I do not. But I do think a great deal of porn is done in a fashion which is demeaning.

Hopefully that satisfies your side question in some meaningful manner, hopefully without getting me publically lynched for daring to say it.

Oh, and have an upvote.

I must say I have never noticed this, so I am not sure what to say. I can't really make sense of it either. My impression was sex exists to create babies, not to pleasure men. I don't say that to try to be funny, just to express that it seems a very long way from that to "female sexuality exits to pleasure men".

Or do you mean the use of women in advertising, their sexiness associated with chocolate or cars or whatever? I guess it could be interpreted like that, only I wouldn't have referred to a woman's presentation in a (supposedly) sexy way as her sexuality. With "female sexuality" I thought about what arouses women. Maybe I misunderstood.

My interpretation of women is advertising is simply that men desire women, not that women's purpose is to pleasure men. Actually, isn't it rather the other way round? You want that car because supposedly it helps you get the woman, it seems to be more about pleasing women than men?

Edit: also, my apologies, I am getting tired and HN is probably not well suited to this kind of discussion. I am interested in it, though.

"Female sexuality is framed as something which exists for the pleasure of men" is a true statement in general media.

So. [Most] Porn. Watch it. Who's orgasm is displayed? Who's orgasm is typically non-existent (to the point it is fetishized when it does occur?) Make a judgment. Why is this true? See my earlier post about "bisexual porn."

Ok. Advertising. "With 'female sexuality' I thought about what arouses women." Good. That's a part of what sexuality is but not what it is framed as in terms of its portrayal in media. "You want that car because supposedly it helps you get the woman, it seems to be more about pleasing women than men?" I kinda hope you don't mean that. :) How in the world does 'getting a woman' as a heterosexual man 'please women?' If you are thinking about answering that question... don't!

It would be pleasing to women if their needs (sexual needs in terms of porn, practical needs in terms of cars) were met in media. However, only the needs of men (getting women somehow in BOTH cases) are being portrayed. That's a problem to men because it reduces us to gullible sex drives, yet it is worse for women because it reduces them to objects of that drive... dismissing any quality that a woman can have as an individual.

This is an example of the objectification you see discussed here. Women are the object, men are the subject, we see this in porn, advertisement, and even employment posters (gee, we wonder why 52% of women drop out of the programming field after college.) It's kinda gross and defeating when you take the "red pill" and start to see it everywhere. Even more daunting when you go against the grain of prevailing thought and start talking about this being an actual problem. It just seems like everybody else took the "blue pill" and just don't want to see it. But it does have a negative effect that has been thoroughly studied.

If we accept these tenets as true, and I do and will strongly suggest that you do as well, then we have to see the attack here as sexist. The attack serves to objectify in the same manner as media: by removing individuality, quality, and self from the person. It uses the sexualized images of women just as media uses for this purpose. It is done against a woman, who as I've discussed are oppressed as opposed to men who are simply (at most) discriminated against. It was done so in an obviously malicious manner (that is, beyond parody) in order to hurt their reputation by targeting the fact that they are female (given the nature of their attack,) not by aspects of their character or refuting the merit of their knowledge. That serves to oppress via discrimination determined by their gender: sexist.

The thinking is "you get her because it pleases her to be with you." The idea behind a car is not "great, now I can chase down women and rape them" it is "hey, they will get so excited by the car that they'd like to hang out with me" And most importantly, status - whether being with a high status male pleases women I don't know, but it seems to be what they often desire (also media wants us to believe that).

"That's a problem to men because it reduces us to gullible sex drives, yet it is worse for women because it reduces them to objects of that drive... dismissing any quality that a woman can have as an individual."

I'm sorry but I don't understand you. So what is the quality men can have as an individual? That they can own cars and chocolate, whereas women can only own nice lipstick and high heels?

As I said before, I suspect it is much more likely that certain media (ads, porn,...) only focus on certain aspects of an individual. I honestly don't understand what is meant by "subject" and "object", unless you mean "active" and "passive"? I know what subject and object are in a sentence (grammar), but other than that, what does it even mean?

Also, another point: why do men obsess about penis length (or are supposed to). Even though allegedly size doesn't matter, it seems to me men thinks size matters and pleasing women is the ultimate status symbol.

Best of luck with whatever you were hoping to better understand when this conversation began.

Peace. Out.

There was a study about porn actresses recently (I think for California) and it turned out that they were not less happy than other women.

That people should be allowed to choose what they do with their bodies seems a pretty basic, true demand. I don't see how women are not allowed to choose, unless they are being raped (which is a crime)?

In the last story I read about stalking the stalkers were people who had personal relations to the victim. No idea if this is common for stalking (as for rape), but I wouldn't be surprised.

I don't mean it to defend anything (what?), just trying to understand the "xyz is sexism" mindset?

This was clearly sexism since it was demeaning to the woman and her gender was used as a part of that (e.g. the fact that pictures of naked women were used in the attack).

If the same happened to a man, we would probably call it harassment, not sexism, since men at large are not discriminated against based on their gender. A female posting pictures of a man at the conference wouldn't be signaling that men don't belong in the group, since the group is dominated by men to begin with.

Either gender can be stalked, but there are FAR more female victims, a symptom of sexism at large in society. FAR more women are harassed as well. 1 in 5 college women are raped during their college years.

To take some of your words, the deed was encouraged by and reflective of rampant sexism in society at large.

I don't think I've done a good job explaining this, but hopefully provoked some thoughts on it at least.

Uh, hello there - that's a huge assumption. I think they are discriminated against very much, but I guess no point to discuss on HN :-/ I'll only say that I don't enjoy having to spend time away from my kid.

"A female posting pictures of a man at the conference wouldn't be signaling that men don't belong in the group"

Very confusing? I thought the problem was that the pictures where fake nudes? In any case I think in general a swath of postings of somebodies picture would be disturbing. Also I don't understand "it's sexism because in the pictures she is a woman"?

"1 in 5 college women are raped during their college years."

This has been debunked, I only googled for that yesterday: http://www.responsibleopposing.com/comment/1in4.html (originally I had a better link but this was the next best I found yesterday - the stats actually seem to go back to some manipulated study in 1985). (Edit: this link from the article is probably the better debunking, but longer http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9502/sommers.html )

"the deed was encouraged by and reflective of rampant sexism in society at large."

They don't even know who did it, so how can they know what inspired it?

Your experience doesn't mean we shouldn't work together to support women who are being discriminated.

The survey questions used in the study certainly don't reflect what we normally think of as "rape". But even if the statistic were 1 in 10, it is still a huge problem faced by women, and it's indicative of a society that doesn't treat women very well.

I don't understand why the "inspiration" behind the harassment matters. It doesn't even matter if the perpetrator was male or female. A woman was demeaned in a sexual way in front of a mostly male audience of her peers. Does the person have to tweet "I hate women" in order for this to be considered sexist?

I never said that I wouldn't. In fact I googled those links yesterday because I am interested in the subject and like to research how to help. Understanding what is really going on seems to be an important first step, and throwing false numbers around won't help with that in my opinion.

"I don't understand why the "inspiration" behind the harassment matters."

That was my original question: what does it matter if it was sexist or not? To classify it as "sexist" seems to be an extremely awkward way to describe a crime of harassment. Imagine somebody with a blue shirt was murdered, and the conclusion was "the murderer really didn't like blue".

I thought sexism was bias or discrimination against people based on their gender. How is posting fake nudes of somebody on the internet bias or discrimination? It's just harassment/stalking. Sure, make it a data point in how likely women are to be victim of such a thing. But I don't see the point of calling it sexist. I don't think anybody at that conference applauded those actions, for example - even if they were sexist (except for the perpetrator, if he was indeed among the audience). Because those actions were simply criminal harassment.

Some examples at random: percentage of males in teaching professions, and/or daycare?

Breast cancer funding and research versus prostate cancer funding and research, despite the relative frequency of each? Hint - 1:6 men will get prostate cancer, 1:8 women will get breast cancer. But the National Cancer Institute allows for $1,318 worth of research into prostate cancer per new case, and $2,596 for breast cancer (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/cancer-funding-does...)

Just some thoughts...

But we have to understand that in those situations it is not oppression. And that is a key point. Men are not oppressed by society when they are discriminated, because by-and-large, men make more money, have more opportunity, stay within their industries longer, are (perhaps due to last point) promoted more often, tend to be selected with a gender bias to speak about their subjects. Women currently get more college degrees in general today, yet the gender pay gap remains. That's evidence of systemic oppression. That's why we can say men at large are not discriminated against.

No, that's a correlation of two things.

That's just bad maths, sorry. First you have to look at what subjects men and women chose and what average pay is for careers in those subjects. Some people graduate in computer science, other people graduate in "do you want fries with that" liberal arts or whatever.

Go to a morgue in a place of heavy industry - mostly men.

Go on a cargo ship, spending weeks at sea in less than comfortable conditions. Oil rig, mine, etc

I hope this makes my use of the word sexism clear. I welcome further communication here in this thread or at my personal email, which can be found in my profile.

I probably can't describe it very well, but I sense lots of weird implications of calling it "sexist" which I think are not really what the people calling the sexism flag had in mind.

For the cases where there is no question who the perpetrator is - I wonder if it would be beneficial to encourage more public shaming? Part of me knows that if these people are lead to believe their actions are left without consequence they will continue in their wrongdoing. When a blog post tells a story of someone being assaulted, a lot of good people will come to their support but I would be genuinely surprised if a creep is convinced not to be a creep by reading a story in the third person about another anonymous creep.

If we call these people out and kick them out of the community, like when a spouse kicks out a cheating partner, we have more room for responsible, respectable community members.

On the other hand, public shaming at any level _seems_ childish to me, but I can't point out why. Additionally, if someone makes false claims, they can do serious damage very easily. There is probably no easy answer here.

I since regretted my comments on Sarah's success. I believe I apologized on twitter (after being called out). I was embarrassed, but have not contacted her since, I just see her on rosters for speaking at various conferences.

Now, when I read this post of hers my heart sank. Not only because it is utterly sickening someone could do this to another person, but that at one stage I was unkind to her online.

What if she suspected me because of my remarks 2 years ago? What if she called my name out as a suspect. My web development career and reputation would be shattered. Now what if someone decides to play detective and look through twitter history and sees my comments and accuse me publicly. Ruined.

Its not that public shaming is childish, its that that such accusations have huge ramifications if false. It's "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"[0]

This does not mean I hope the person/people involved are not held accountable, it just needs to be handled outside a public internet witch hunt.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstones_formulation

edit: grammar

How do we hold individuals accountable without encouraging a witch hunt?

The larger developer community is open and unmoderated and as a result we have no organizational "justice system" to fall back on in order to correct behavior (not that I am proposing this).

And from that same page, "better for whom?"

It takes great care to attempt to apply knowledge from one ___domain to another ___domain. Humans are great at seeing patterns and making analogies, but no matter how many times you say "technology is evolving," that won't make it adhere to the Hardy-Weinberg principle[0]. Attempts to actually implement these analogies tend to be problematic[1].

The US justice system, on the federal and state level, has a wide array of checks against it that (nominally) protect people from state abuse. This is necessary because of the vast power imbalance between a nation-state and a private individual. In this case, it's probably far better to have a 10:1 false negative:false positive ratio. The more false positives, the more potential for abuse.

Conventions and the hacker community do not have the power of nation-states. There's no reason to apply the same very stringent and very necessary restrictions that we apply on nation-states to DefCon. DefCon cannot hurt you the same way the US government can.

So, who is this better for? Certainly not the women attacked: they're left with few options, little sympathy, and copious amounts of victim blaming and denial (as the current top comment indicates). It's far better for the abusers -- especially when the potential for system abuse is far less, because conventions and other hacker/tech events are not nation-states.

If we're going to solve this (or any) problem, we need to look past platitudes and into quantified, measured thought towards a solution. This might very well be naming and shaming likely perpetrators, especially when the evidence is more convincing than a few twitter posts two years ago. We might get more false positives, but we have to contrast this with the current status quo of simply denying any justice to the people actually being harassed for their gender. Personally, I think the cost-benefit is overwhelmingly in favor of excluding more maybe/maybe-not abusive men from our communities, if it results in half the human population being allowed to add their talent to the collective pool.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy%E2%80%93Weinberg_princip... [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20070818124133/http://www.greythu...

One way we can make a difference is to refuse to tolerate that kind of thing in our own circles of acquaintances, because otherwise those individuals will take our silence as implicit affirmation of their worldview. Sometimes it's hard to be "that guy", but if you're not prepared to do it, then you're one of the people that's enabling this kind of behaviour. By not speaking out you're telling these people that what they believe is OK: silence is complicity, like it or not.

Afterwards, a well-known, elite developer asked me if I programmed. When I said yes, he said that made me 50% less attractive. Then he asked me if I cooked and cleaned. To my face.

You don't have to be high profile to deal with this stuff. Just being in a room where you're 1 female out of 15 males is enough to get this kind of attention.

I understand the reasons why you might not want to. It's tragedy of the commons problem; you get no benefit and possible detriment from naming names - only society as a whole benefits.

Nevertheless you should. It's the right thing to do.

Most people (despite the arguments here, which are mostly about either semantics or arcane ethical points) think that the way the guy you described behaved is unacceptable. You're one of us, a hacker, and you don't deserve to be treated like that. I can't imagine you'd get anything other than a positive association from standing up for the rights of hackers to get on and live their lives free of that kind of harassment and bullying.

I don't really understand why people don't mention this more often: the kind of bullying that women in tech receive now is pretty much the kind of bullying that male geeks got from non-geeks twenty years ago. It's not really anti-women so much as it's anti-people-being-geeks; society at large may have (grudgingly!) accepted male geeks, but female geeks are still getting abuse for being more interested in computers or science or whatever than in what society thinks they 'should' be doing. As such, this affects all of us and we all need to be pretty damn clear that we won't stand for it.

I can't agree with that. The situation she describes is where she's acting as a representative of her company, and anything she does is as the face of the company, rather than as a person.

The decision to be confrontational about it is her company's decision, not hers.

It's kind of like when a crazy person yells at you on the street. Yeah, you could tell them to stop, because it makes you uncomfortable, but that would require even more interaction, and they'd probably do something to make you even more uncomfortable. Easier to walk away.

At least by sharing it here some people can learn from the example of what not to do :)

I suppose this is one of those "there's a time and place" issues. I wouldn't likely call out such an asshole while I'm on stage (unless this person tried to humiliate me while I was presenting, in which case I'd simply state that's not an appropriate comment for the conference and move on to the next person), but I'd certainly escalate[1] the issue privately.

We need to look into some sort of zero-tolerance[2] policies for this kind of thing until the message that this isn't okay is clearly understood. Certainly if I'm hosting or attending a conference and witness this kind of behavior, I'll be going out of my way to get this person removed from the conference and will also bring it up with their employer.

[1] In the "I'd like to speak with a manager" sense, not throwing a loud tantrum. [2] Not that I generally support zero-tolerance policies, or find them effective. But I think the concept is directionally correct; any attendee making another attendee (including speakers) feel uncomfortable or unsafe should be removed form the event. Maybe they get one strict warning; it depends how obviously offensive they were being.

It's entirely possible that the guy thought he was being funny, has no idea he wasn't and genuinely finds women painful because he's so ignorant. By adopting the role of teacher, you may win a valuable ally.

But there is a more subtle effect here (if you're still reading and haven't thrown something at the monitor yet). This response from you, if you do it the way I have in mind (even if I'm not articulating it properly), will be entirely patronizing, in fact it will be patronizing in exactly the way men like this patronize you (and I know you know what I'm talking about-- see below). It is delivered from a position of strength, not weakness, in the sense that you are giving sage advice: is he smart enough to see it? Some will be, some won't.

Beyond this, remember to trust your gut. Sometimes the guy is just an asshole (a big clue is if other guys think he's an asshole) and words like I've written above are totally off-the-mark for the situation.

My wife is in a male-dominated (at her level) role, and I hear these stories all the time. Sometimes my advice is helpful- often she tells me to just STFU and listen. YMMV.

http://www.seductionscience.com/2010/negging-women/

Just threw up in my mouth a little.

Yeah, maybe someday he'll meet someone who cares enough to set him straight.

For me, it really is as simple as that. I want my daughters to feel as welcome in their careers as I hope my sons will be. Anything less than that is utterly unacceptable.

I'm sorry this happened to you and I hope you believe me that not all guys think this way.

I wonder if there are specific things which make it more likely for some women to be harassed like this. And, is relatively mild stupidity like this correlated in any way with more serious issues (either assault or serious job discrimination)?

1) I do some programming for my job, but a majority of it involves going out and meeting other developers, learning about their work, and seeing how we can make our API better for them. I live in SF so I can't get a coffee without bumping into another developer. I bet I have many more interactions than someone who is developing full time in their home or office. More interactions increases chances for good and bad types of interactions.

2) Since I have been researching sexism in the industry, I have started to notice small slights and snubs more. I went for years brushing off countless minor incidents. I still don't get offended easily, but I do notice things more. For example, checkout the gun.io landing page right now (Beards of Experience). I like gun.io, but their homepage is definitely not female-friendly, and I noticed it immediately.

I'd wager that people who have had some kind of experience that really bothered them, or ones who have recently started learning more about gender bias, will suddenly start to notice all the little "micro agressions" more. Even my male colleagues have started noticing them more since we have been discussing it recently.

One of them even said "it's like when you get a new car, you suddenly start to notice how many people drive the same car as you do".

I don't know how I feel about the "Beards of Experience" thing. I guess I'd be annoyed if it were a permanent branding of the site, but as a one-off short campaign, I'm I think I'm fine with it. It does only focus on a specific group (I assume it is "unix neckbeards vs. hipster/corporate/suave designer developers", ignoring women entirely), but for a short marketing message, it's probably better to strongly appeal to a subset vs. be "meh" for everyone. It's not on its face offensive, which would be bad even if 5-10% of people were seriously offended and 50% were approving, just narrowly scoped. But it's obviously bad if that kind of exclusion is the default across the whole industry all the time.

The solution, in my view, has less to do with going out of our way to bring women into the fold and more to do with not putting stupid shit like "Beards of Experience" on your homepage.

It's not offensive, but it is mildly sexist (implying that only those who have beards can be that experienced, and as women cannot generally grow beards…)

The key word in mwetzler's comment is "microaggressions". It's the small things which are probably defensible in isolation but when viewed together exhibit some pretty obvious patterns.

If we accepted that "Beards of Experience" is sexist, we would have to accept that it's also racist (many Asian men can't grow beards like the guy on gun.io) and maybe homophobic. Don't you think it would get ridiculous at that point?

What about parenting sites where the design and images are clearly targeted at mothers (and not fathers)? Are they evil? Sexist?

And yes. Parenting sites that assume that fathers can't be parents are sexist. Parenting sites that assume that fathers won't be primary caretakers because their target demographic's culture is sexist and doesn't understand that male parents are important are fence-sitting and sexist by omission.

Me neither. But then again, I don't see anything that makes me think it's sexist. Or racist, for that matter.

And yes. Parenting sites that assume that fathers can't be parents are sexist.

Well, that's the problem I'm trying to highlight. They probably assume no such thing. But we must brand them as sexist by the same token that we are not supposed to tolerate a guy with a beard on an IT recruitment site.

Here's another example: when Nike uses a photograph of a tall black guy to advertise their basketball shoes - are they being racist, sexist and disrespectful to short people?

That's true. It's a good thing someone points it out, then.

> Here's another example: when Nike uses a photograph of a tall black guy to advertise their basketball shoes - are they being racist, sexist and disrespectful to short people?

Yes.

It's even more wrong to criticize someone aggressively for sexism in this case, but overall I think there would be net gains to everyone by attracting and retaining more women in technology. So, while it's not evil or sexist, "beards in technology" is counter to one's own interests even as a male in technology.

I think it's a good example of an easy thing to change for the tech community to be more inviting to women. If we want to break down stereotypes and gender ratios in tech, one thing we can do is make it more inviting for women to work here.

The last part better explains it. It doesn't change the fact that it was sexism, but I categorize this one as stupidity and awkwardness instead of malice.

You should have smiled and told him no, because you programmed a robot to do all that stuff for you. Then punched him in the face.

Join us on #geekfeminism sometime on freenode (if you're not already there) :)

Very often it's women. I don't know why but either there's a class of developers who feel personally threatened by women in their chosen profession, or it's personal: some individual has believed themselves to be entitled to that woman's attention & when it was not forthcoming begin a cruel campaign of punishment to make up for the perceived insult. Maybe even both?

It's been said that sunlight is the best disinfectant: I know that I'd be completely unaware of this behaviour if some of the women involved weren't brave enough to speak out about it. I don't have any good solutions though: the best I can do is to refuse to tolerate any sexism in my own circles, on the grounds that the people who do this kind of thing take other people's silence (not wanting to be "that guy") as implicit affirmation of their actions.

Software development has a broader appeal now than it did twenty years ago, and in spite of the numerous cases like this one, there seems to still be a growing population of women in the community. (I hope that continues, we need all the talent available.) So, hopefully this will sort itself out in time.

In the meantime, I'm more intrigued by the idea of gated communities than I am of moderated communities. Moderation seems to require a lot of resources and lead to conflict. Gated (online) communities don't seem to have been tried as much, and I'm curious about whether or not a lot of social problems would simply solve themselves if not everyone were invited to participate.

Just keep in mind that, whatever growth you've observed, the number of women in programming now is much lower than it was in the 1980s.

For some historical statistics see http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-08-26/opinions/35268...

How does notion work to you - is there some sort of cosmic female hive-mind that determines the quotas of them that can be part of any given activity? Is it some sort of feedback loop so that we as a species are approaching the limit of $MAX_FEMALE_DEVS?

For example, most of the software development community would see a 22yo guy persistently pursuing a girl who clearly isn't interested as innocent, awkward, and empathize with the guy's rejection (or lack there of, since he probably doesn't have the courage to directly ask her out). They wouldn't consider how it feels to the girl have someone watching you, following you, looking up private information online, and invading her space.

> ...a 22yo guy persistently pursuing a girl who clearly isn't interested...

To be fair, you came >this< close to describing the plot of the average romcom here. The only difference between "sweet" and "creepy" is in judging whether or not the person is interested, or might become interested. A lot of nerds (I use the term with love here) aren't even good at mingling at social events, let alone reading whether or not their advances towards someone are going to turn out well. (This isn't limited to man-woman relationships either, as a recent case shows.)

...I wonder if maybe a huge root cause of this problem is simply that there are few enough women in our field that any attention from men feels like it's too much? I have to imagine that if you got regular, "Hey, are you busy Saturday night?" inquiries from different guys, you'd start to feel a little like chum in shark-infested waters.

The online hacker/development community's continuous excuses and empathy for members of their own community who behave inappropriately towards women makes this a field where prominent women are expected to be harassed on a regular basis.

It isn't even a matter of rejecting the person for bad behavior. You didn't even reject the behavior, you justified it.

No, it's not. You misread my comment.

> You didn't even reject the behavior, you justified it.

HN is large enough now that I can't expect you to know that I've never done any such thing, and in fact have said exactly the opposite pretty frequently.

When I mentioned the romcom stuff, it wasn't because I was arguing that it was a how-to or that nerds couldn't distinguish fiction from reality. It was only there to illustrate that the line between "creepy" behavior and behavior that in the ideal sense might be considered "sweet" is really blurry, and that it's dependent largely on receptivity of the people involved, and that as a trend, people in software development have a more difficult time correctly interpreting these situations.

I could go a lot more in-depth on this. I think there's a lot of very interesting cultural stuff happening in the U.S. (and to a larger extent, Japan) in male-female relations, I think there's a lot of uncertainty now about what constitutes "attractive" behavior and what doesn't, and I think that the ability to correctly interpret body language and other subtle cues is the only substantial edge anyone has over other people in this environment.

However, none of that should be read as a defense of behavior like posting fake nudge images of someone or outright harassment or any of the other things that women have recently been rightly complaining about. I was only wondering aloud earlier whether the combination of the ratio of men to women in software, combined with social impairment by a significant number of people in the industry, might be contributing to the problem.

I'm not really sure what else to say to defend my earlier comment; I honestly wasn't expecting it to be controversial. At this point though, if you'd like to continue to disagree, and you expect me to respond, I'd like for you to at least argue against what I actually write (e.g., I did not say, "nerds are incapable of 'reading' the difference between fantasy and reality"), and I'd love it if you bundled some kind of insight or evidence with your argument.

Gated communities still need moderation: someone has to decide whether or not to kick people out if they behave badly!

[deleted]

We certainly need to address the problems of sexism within our community, but I think it's a mistake to assume that it's part of the community's particular quirks that produce said sexism. Especially when there are some far more obvious indicators of where the sexism comes from: the larger cultural discourse and ambience, for instance.

To paraphrase Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, one problem is guys believing that they're too smart to be sexist.

I also believe that a lot of people involved can't handle the idea that they're being bullies, and so further attempt to rationalise their actions with terrible analogies and arguments that boil down to "I'm a geek - I'm incapable of oppressing someone!"

35% or so of geeks are closet sexists in reform: aware that their belief systems are wrong / socially unacceptable and trying to change.

5% or so aren't sexists but misogynists: men who truly feel wronged by women and wish to retaliate.

60% are perfectly stand-up men who wouldn't do a bit of harm

Now the trick is that whenever the sexist and misogynists form a group where they have a significant majority, the closet sexists will give the misogynists a platform to damage women.

Meanwhile the other 60% sees nothing but 95% of perfectly respectful men who would do no harm against women and can't even imagine something like that happening in their company.

The vast majority of people who participate in conference are good people. However, it only takes one person (out of thousands!) who has this kind of personality dysfunction to lead an attack, and women are much much more likely to be the target of their dysfunction.

But, I've said it before and I'll say it again: men have even more of a responsibility than women to speak up and combat this kind of sexism. We (men) have the utmost responsibility to make sure that we are fighting to allow women a place in our industry, a place where they feel safe enough so that they can be equal participants without worrying about being looked down upon, harassed or concerned for their safety.

The sad reality is, more than having courageous women speaking up about sexism, men speaking up about sexism convinces other men to treat women respectfully.

Some advice on how to do this, for anyone looking: http://www.anamardoll.com/2012/11/deconstruction-how-to-be-m...

- Unless you're all using your real names and on the same campus or convention floor, how does that even work, logistically?

- Treating people with basic levels of respect does not magically make them attracted to you, though it will make them more comfortable hanging around you.

- If the only (or even the most notable) reason someone can think of for trying to argue against misogyny or other flavors of assholiery is to get laid, that person needs to go home and rethink their fundamental values in life. Implying this is true of men generally is pretty misadrist.

I suspect you aren't actually using knowyourmeme's definition, so could you clarify the behavior you're referring to when you say "white-knighting"?

Your typical Internet White Knight is most likely not explicitly aiming to get laid, but simply following the classical role model they've absorbed via Hollywood: women are weak and need to be defended, good men defend them (and get the girl in the end).

It can get a bit comical but the real problem is that it takes the form of personal defense in specific cases, and is focused on women. So males getting treated like shit are unlikely to get any help or even sympathy from a White Knight, and they're unlikely to spend any effort on actual solutions to a toxic atmosphere.

This doesn't mean that it is wrong to argue against misogyny.

It just points to a real phenomenon among men, where they are trying to look like they are calling out an asshole when what is really going on is logically much more similar to acting holy in a bar fight over a woman.

If you think observing actual idiotic behavior which occurs sometimes among men is misandrist then I am happy to be a "misandrist" in your perception. I think the condition of men in our society can withstand a small amount of anthropological observation.

What indications do you have that defending a woman is a sexually motivated act?

Found out later he was doing this same thing with other girls, too, and was kicked out of the group.

Can I get a clarification on the downvote, given that the parent asked for examples and I provided one? I've elaborated on the specific situation.

"You shouldn't hit a girl!" <-- white knighting "You are being violent; if you do not stop we will ban you from this space." <-- insisting on basic, reasonable standards of behavior.

It's not about women needing special protection, it is about the community not welcoming people who act like assholes. Of course women can defend themselves, but no one should have to defend themselves against that kind of behavior. And the only reason I believe it is important to talk about gender in this context is because women are being targeted because of their gender and using cultural weapons specific to their gender. Again, it is about the people behaving badly, not their targets.

You don't have to be sensitive or show yourself off to shut down misogynists and you definitely don't have to go looking for unclear offenses which the purported victims have no complaint about.

If a man hits his wife, I call the police. If she says, "No, it's ok, I provoked him, I deserve it," do I shrug and say, "Well that's all right then?"

Attempting to intimidate me out of speaking up by labelling me a "white knight" and questioning whether my motivation is to seduce women is pretty low and vile, but what I expect from the kind of apologist scum that perpetuate these kinds of social bullying behaviours.

"Reg, shut up, you're just trying to sleep with dykes" is not going to work in this or any century.

To be very clear: I haven't labeled you a "white knight," accused you of "trying to sleep with dykes" (!?), said that you shouldn't report men hitting their wife, approved of racial slurs or anything like that.

I have simply made an observation about an certain, occasional obnoxious behavior by certain males... I have never said that arguing against misogyny, or speaking out against bullying (etc.) are wrong. I certainly don't think those things. I certainly don't "apologize" for people behaving in a discriminatory way. I simply say that sometimes people aren't doing what they say they're doing. I refuse to give men carte blanche provided only that they claim or pretend to be defending someone weaker than themselves, but this doesn't in any way imply that I reject people trying to defend those weaker than themselves. Why does this seem to be so controversial?

I don't give a rat's ass what the definition of "white knighting is. I'm calling you out now to be much more specific about what kind of slighting is involved and what you're rolling your eyes at. Give examples. Justify yourself.

I never once hear a DE, SDE, SDET, or any other technical person say anything remotely along the lines of "women suck at programming because they're women." Not once, amongst the hundreds of people I worked with there. That's an anecdote - take it for what it's worth.

Why is wondering aloud how sexist/creepy the bulk of male programmers are more acceptable than wondering aloud how untalented the bulk of female programmers are?

I think both behaviors are rather low shaming behaviors.

1. Most of the those who have power are men.

2. Most of those who are men have power.

They are very different statements and one does not imply the other.

The average man has no more power than the average woman.

    > The average man has no more power than the average woman.

second, arguments based on the apex fallacy assumes that power can be treated in some "average" way, so even if the top has power, if the bottom doesn't it somehow "averages out". and that's pretty clearly not a good model for how society works (which is why these kinds of arguments are popular only in fringe anti-feminist groups).

I don't get how dominating the tech sector translates into a general dominance of the society, whereby a woman's sexist remark against a man can be thought less damaging than a man's sexist remark against a woman.

>which is why these kinds of arguments are popular only in fringe anti-feminist groups)

I think feminists have a long and proud tradition of employing the apex fallacy, whereby they argue that men have all the power worth talking about because of their representation at the top (CEOs, high government posts, ...) and ignore their over-representation at the bottom (prison, homeless, suicides (3x), high school and college drop outs, lower educational attainment (college enrollement and graduation is skewed 60/40 in favor of women now)).

Which anti-feminist apex fallacy arguments have you run into?

Look at how women are treated in the Middle East. Listen to stories of the rape culture in Delhi. Pay inequality the world over. A media industry which sees young women as commodities to sell their product. What we're seeing here is the thin end of the wedge; the individual who committed this disgusting act would probably have felt entitled to behave this way even were they working in another industry.

It's ugly, but this is a very large societal problem that we're still really struggling to address. As pleased as I was to see President Obama address gay rights in his inauguration, it was equally significant that he addressed gender equality. We've a long way to go before this is fixed, but rather than indulging in self-pity or recrimination, how about we work to be the change we want to see in the world?

In daily life I don't hang out with those assholes, do you? If not, why the fuck are you doing it online? Just because they have decent skills? How many people do they keep away from your project and from this community who could easily make up for that, who would have better skills and who would bring you project much further?

If you have a project and want to do something against what is currently fashionable in discrimination, stop writing comments, write a code of conduct and let's be honest if you don't, you are not any better than the people you are criticizing.

I think the more privilege you have, the less courage it takes.

[1] That some people arguing on the 'wrong' side here are not doing so for misogynistic reasons doesn't mean that nobody is; part of the problem is that you can't easily tell the difference.

> We need to make a clearer distinction between the average member of the tech community and, for want of a better word, the 'asshole contingent' who are the source of the problem.

What I'm suggesting is that the average member of the tech community himself needs to do a better job of being distinguishable from the asshole contingent - and the typical pedantic, aggressive, head-buried-in-sand HN reaction to instances of sexism, chauvinism and abuse is a real part of the problem.

On the minor-but-still-horrible end of the scale, female colleagues have complained in the past that their ideas are often not taken seriously until repeated by a man. I hope I'm not guilty of this one (being the repeater or the listener) but I'm not entirely sure.

There have also been incidents where female friends and colleagues have been verbally and physically harassed in the workplace or in learning establishments, and they face an uphill struggle to get anyone to take their claims in the least bit seriously, with witnesses dropping out and the accused making all sorts of bizarre claims.

So no, sat here in the enlightened 21st century, amongst the people at the cutting edge of technology, the people who like to think themselves the vanguard of the new knowledge and tech based society... we're not the vanguard of social enlightenment, we don't operate as the fabled meritocracy, and we need to watch out for this behaviour and encourage women to speak up about it as much as possible.

If nothing else I have no desire to spend my days around sexist arseholes.

It seems hardly a week goes by without someone bringing forward a genuinely awful case of harassment, abuse, or worse, and that's only the stories horrible enough to make the front page of HN. So, who the fuck is doing this and how do we make them fuck the fuck off?

I kinda understand why some people's response is to doubt that this could really be happening, because it is pretty fucking unbelievable. But it seems that it really is happening, and it's undermining some pretty central notions of the meritocratic, no-bullshit character of the community. This kind of thing is pretty outrageous bullshit.

OK, to a certain extent we must accept that there will always be assholes, and the kind of spite and vindictiveness the OP relates sounds like the behaviour of a disturbed, obsessive individual, but there must be a way of deterring such behaviour. What more can we do here?

The problem with all of this that I've realised is that other people in the audience will see me being heckled and will think it's perfectly fine to heckle speakers, and that other people will see me being heckled and might be discouraged from speaking. It's got me thinking quite a bit about this. Any ideas what I should do about it?

His assertion is that it's not sexist if his projects are called "testicle" or "foreplay", since those words aren't intrinsically sexist. How do we, as a community, emphasize that sexuality and development can't mix if we want women to feel comfortable, given that they're currently a minority?

I'm a Vim user myself, and a big fan of his work. It's not nice to mention his name in a thread like this, however tangentially related. But given the topic, I thought for once it might be forgiveable to err on the side of those without male privilege.

Was this awful incident a one off or is attacking female speakers at tech conferences a thing? I've not noticed it until now. I don't get it, why would you? To what end?

The motives behind it seem to span a spectrum from straight sexism through to weird stalkerness.

As someone else wrote, sunlight is probably the best way to try and reduce the problem.

HN is getting better at being less aggressive and at being more constructive with criticism.

Perhaps you can find an example where a male dev had pictures of his face, and pictures of another man's penis, posted to a website with his name and email address. And, when you find it, HN will be supportive of that man and will condemn the anon attacker.

Perhaps "outing" a developer as gay could have a comparable impact for men, but that would only apply in predominantly homophobic communities.

Which in turn says a lot about this community's attitude towards women. If it wasn't hostile to women in the first place, extreme examples like this troll would never have such an impact.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2601342

Can you come up with a good example of this kind of extreme attacking of a white man? You say "How would this look for a guy", I honestly can't think of any examples where people go anywhere near as far trolling and harassing white men. I may of course just be forgetting some obvious cases.

And contrary to your suggestion, I've certainly received plenty of harassment based on my body as a white male. Less these days as I refuse to work with people who can't act like adults, but I've taken plenty of crap about my height and physical appearance (I'm 25; lots of "oh, when do you finish high school?" kind of stuff)

Not that it doesn't happen in day-to-day life, but I can't think of any case where even a white, gay cis man was targeted this way during a conference or subjected to an online harassment campaign. When maddog came out there were a couple comments quoting Leviticus and that was it. Certainly the HN threads about sexual orientation are almost completely free of the sort of "they're lying!" or "they're just manipulative!" or actually any sort of vitriol whatsoever (and what there is is rapidly down-voted.)

This is a good thing! But if you are going to argue that straight gay men in tech are treated similarly, I'd like some citations.

I wouldn't have replied but I hate that "what about the menz" trope. Men and women both have social problems, it wasn't appropriate to discuss men's issues here but that does not mean it is never appropriate. Maybe people need better filters than, "a discussion about gender is occurring, here is my two cents," but it's hard for people who care about these issues to find a good time simply because it's somewhat taboo to say men have problems at all. So they probably just don't mention anything until they really disagree with something being said.

Good, lets out them and get rid of them whatever their issue is, so the rest of us can get on with our lives.

As for the guy that said he learned better from other men - maybe he does, give him the benefit of the doubt - it's not ALL about you.

I glean the following from a few of these threads

1. Conferences, conventions, hackathons all should have published "acceptable behaviour" statements, and possibly a red / orange / green card system that everyone understands

2. online examples get red / orange carded though a bitly link posted on a red card site (did I read that?)

3. conferences share blacklists

4. we accept that this shit will continue and get worse in an anonymous internet and that we accept that as a price of freedom and try to mitigate it for those who actually pay that price.

I do grant though, that a lot of people seem to be missing some education on how to deal with other human beings. I don't think conference rules would be the best place to get the message across, though. Wondering if there should be courses in high school...

Based on my understanding of it, the red/yellow card system is largely an effort in self-policing, in that they're based on the assumption that someone who receives a red card will learn and change their behavior.

This seems like a bad assumption. A better system might be to have a simple mobile app or website, run by the conference, that allows women (and only women) to report harassment by a particular person, causing that person to be immediately blacklisted.

This is severe enough that you won't see it being used as a joke, and it'll be effective at removing scuzzy people from conferences.

The mere idea of abuse creates an incentive to steer clear of any females in the audience, which is sort of the opposite of the desired goal - acceptance.

By taking the patriarchal power dynamic and turning it on its head, systems like these create radically better environments for collaboration and collective empowerment.

If you're a man who would avoid talking to any women at a convention where women calling you out for harassing/threatening/misogynist behavior, the real problem isn't the system that allows women to hit back harder than their abusers, it's that you have far too high a probability of doing something harassing/threatening/misogynistic, and you should take some time to reconsider your behavior-patterns.

Lets compare two conferences. One is 5% females participation, and a other is 50%. We can directly say that the risk of getting sexually assaulted is minimum 20x larger at the 5% conference than the 50%. there is also a number of additional considerations one can add to the risk assessment like age, marital status of people in the conference, and access to alcohol.

  50%/50% distribution:
  100 male participants, 100 female participants
  number of sexual assaults: 100x10% = 10
  *Risk for each female participant: 10/100 = 0.1

  5%/95% distribution:
  190 males, 10 females
  number of sexual assaults: 190x10% = 19
  *Risk for each female: 19/10 = 1.9

  *Risk compared: 0.1 vs 1.9 = 0.1/1.9 = 19x

A), Female to Female sexual assault is 0. Not true, but close enough in regard to what is reported.

B), Regardless to number of females, the risk of each male participant stays the same. If the 50%/50% actually has a higher number of assaults in practice, then the risk difference between the two type of conferences actually drop.