If i were to tweet a mysogynist joke …
If a man were to tweet a mysogynist joke and his followers were men, would that be an issue? What if one of them re-tweets it and one of his female followers complains on twitter? And then many other people start tweeting and re-tweeting this or that and what if this all got the initial tweeter fired from his company? And then her company would fire her as well?
Quite a mess, obviously. However, I think everyone had their reasons for talking and acting the way they did. And it boils down to the perspective you are able to feel empathy for. Here is a possible set of perspectives:
Perspective M: “The other day i was ridiculed by a bunch of girls at the office. I wanted to pay back with a little joke in an environment where i felt safe to do so.”
Perspective F: “Again a tweet with bad mysogynist jokes. I’ve had enough. This time i won’t sit quietly but call it out.”
Perspective C1: “Damn, look what this guy caused. His twitter profile is directly associated with our company. And now he tells bad mysogynist jokes and it’s now all over the internet. We cannot let go this time.”
Perspective C2: “Damn it, look what she caused. She is working in public relations and doesn’t know better than to cause a shitstorm which directly comes back to us a company? We cannot let go.”
I could understand each of these perspectives though i’d have a suspicision that the companies choose a bit of an easy way out. Had they rather put the issue of misogyny at the center of their positioning and communication, rather than focusing just on keeping some damage from the company, everybody would have learned a lesson and the incident could have contributed to a more enjoyable environment, i am sure.
Written by holger krekel
March 23, 2013 at 12:16 pm
Posted in metaprogramming
Tagged with pycon mysogyny shitstorms techonlogy
8 Responses
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metaprogramming and politics 
The point is, one never knows how many factors are involved in a dismissal. Perhaps the person concerned was already on a warning for kicking the office cat? To assume,as many have, that the dismissals were solely due to the PyCon events is to reach out into the unknown. Confidentiality is important in these matters,so we can never know.
holdenweb
March 23, 2013 at 1:30 pm
True, we cannot know what other factors played into the decision of company C1 or C2 for that matter. Still i think they could have done more to talk about the contextual issue (misogyny, sexism, …) without implicating their (ex) employees.
holger krekel
March 23, 2013 at 1:54 pm
Pycon got too big. Twitter is too big. Peoples heads got too big, and so did their mouths.
some dude
March 23, 2013 at 3:19 pm
I think it is also relevant to point out, regarding teh context, that no misogynist jokes were involved in the incident. The words “big dongle” and “fork” are *puns*, or plays on words. Not misogynist, and hardly even jokes.
John Dearhart
March 23, 2013 at 4:23 pm
I was intentionally using a similar but fictious base story. I am not a native english speaker and am not sure about the meanings of the words in question.
holger krekel
March 23, 2013 at 7:10 pm
I’m sorry, maybe it’s just my perverse mind, but I can’t think of a non-sexual “pun” for “big dongle” that fits the context here. One of the main mechanisms of double entendres is punning: github itself used to refer to “hardcore forking”, which seems to be the same implication of the “I’d like to fork THAT repo” remark.
alex dante
March 24, 2013 at 12:53 pm
Too soon.
The silence on this topic on Planet Python was so nice.
Palmer
March 23, 2013 at 7:01 pm
Oh, wasn’t aware i broke it on the planet. There certainly was a lot in my twitter timeline about the incident.
holger krekel
March 23, 2013 at 7:12 pm