Maybe I'm just trying to look for hard rules that don't exist for allowing casual immaturity while keeping everyone (reasonably) happy. Things are never that easy I guess.

Similarly, why not make an article about how kickass Pussy Riot is instead of an article about how shittily Lesley Stahl reports on how kickass Pussy Riot is? >_>

And again I agree. Both that you ought to keep in mind social and cultural power structures when talking to people you only know professionally, and try to be aware of their reactions to your words with as much respect as you'd afford anyone; and that the online clusterfuck of sociopathic brogrammers is the real story.

Tech conferences are replete with sexist bullshit. And I can understand why Richards did what she did, reading her step by step retelling of events it makes sense that you'd want to report it. And apparently PyCon agreed, it was inappropriate, and they took action, which Richards commended them for.

I agree with you. I just feel I'm not as hip as I'd like to be on where immature and unprofessional becomes sexist and harassing. You shouldn't do either in a professional setting, but someone being immature is something I'd just roll my eyes at, someone making women around them feel uncomfortable and harassed is…

I have read her posts, all of them. I'm not asking you for a transcript, I was, again, asking mgleghgo. And now I'm just responding to a conversation that I think lost all meaning a few posts back :P

Well no, she says herself that the trigger was seeing a picture of a girl on stage. She had left the conversation by that point.

I'm trying to discover, in this one particular thread starting with my response to mgleghgo's comment, not overall in the comments to this article, what it was that was actually said. Not the gist, not a paraphrase, but the joke itself.

I've read that comment before, but now that you mention it I realize I probably misunderstood. I took it to mean they left the presentation, not the convention :/

I can empathize with your brother. I'm a programmer, and it was pretty easy to call out idiots back in school, but at work there's so much more tension and things on the line. Even just not joining in the laughter and looking uncomfortable can make people less open and friendly with you.

I know it was inappropriate and unprofessional, I agreed with as much in my post there. As to whether there was a history of bad behavior there, as far as I know Adria Richards had no idea who they were and had never met them before.

Is this the part you're talking about?

They weren't actually thrown out though. PyCon talked to them and let them stay after the presentation. It hasn't exactly been made clear why they were fired, but it's a pretty safe bet that it was because of the media coverage their company received and not because PyCon had a problem with them.

It was a comment of a sexual nature, doesn't have to be about women for it to count.

But I don't see how those definitions fit. There weren't any comments about women at all. I can see the part about the victim doesn't have to be the person harassed, but who was being harassed in this case? The male presenter?

I agree that the real problems in this case are the companies that did the firing, and the online psychopaths who lead the witch hunt. I'm more trying to have a discussion about what we can learn from it. Or perhaps more selfishly, what I can learn from it and what I should keep in mind when I find myself in…

Yeah, I know. I'm a programmer, I've forked many a repo in my time, git or otherwise :)

That I can understand, that if the interpretation people are going with is that the jokes were meant to be demeaning to the subject of the presentation then I can definitely see the sexist connection. That's just not the context I've seen the issue being presented with, nor how Adria Richards herself phrased it in her…

Oh, no, I'm not trying to use Richards' words here, I'm mostly talking about what the rest of the internet (the parts that aren't busy being psychopaths) thinks about the situation in regards to Richards' and the jokers interaction. As in, if a colleague of mine made a joke like that to me at a conference (which I've…