Or I could have called this… When Twitter is a weapon.
On Sunday 3/17/2013 a lady attending PyCon in Santa Clara overheard a couple of developers engaging in some sophomoric joking where they were trading sexual innuendos about poorly named devices.
Instead of doing the simple thing like turning around and letting these guys know they were out of line she photographed & tweeted their picture out into the twitterverse.
Her action caused the two developers to be removed from the convention, one of the guys lost his job and ultimately so did she. This Article is pretty brutal about how they report it.
There is so much that is wrong in this scenario.
This woman had options:
She could have done the human thing and asked the guys to cool it, explaining that they were being offensive.
She could have moved, thereby taking responsibility for her own feelings. (I’m not saying that she should have been required to move, but she could have removed herself from the annoyance.)
She chose to be passive aggressive, snap a photo of the guys (without their knowledge / consent or modeling release) then broadcast that photo to a presumably wide public audience captioned with something identifying them as pigs. Saying essentially HELP ME THEY’RE SEXUALLY HARASSING ME!
We’ve all sat through sexual harassment training. As I’ve sat through those classes I’ve often thought that the Harassment brush was just a little too broad and biased against men. Women have far greater latitude in what they can say to men and we men have to take it.
I’ve been asked in the workplace if I was circumcised, and how big my dick was by crude Women. I’ve also listened to endless gay jokes and disparaging remarks, from men.
Hell, I’ve been present in rooms where the evil of the WHITE man was being discussed and the suggested solution was that all the white people should be punished. Yeah racism isn’t solely the domain of white people. Racists come in all colors shapes and sizes.
So WHAT?
Next! I simply exited the area when the conversation turned to stuff I didn’t want or need to hear.
I’ve watched woman after woman end good mens careers with the corporate Nuclear weapon of “Harassment” it’s not a new phenomena. I’ve also seen men laughed out of an HR department when they decided to report a woman that was harassing them.
I remember laughing my ass off several years ago when after considerable publicity a female sports reporter was allowed in the locker rooms of male professional teams.
She was then offended by naked men walking around in the locker room. I thought it was a joke, but quickly it escalated into something more. After gaining access to the male locker rooms, she decided that the men should be clothed when she was there. The insanity came to a halt when the teams simply stopped talking to her.
I remember thinking, “Lady that’s why we built locker rooms. Guys would be just as happy changing clothes and showering outside. We created the space so that women and children wouldn’t be offended.”
At the time a number of male sports reported speculated about gaining access to female locker rooms but that was considered creepy.
This situation is also about our collective thin skin, and our psychotic enforcement of Politically Correct standards on steroids.
You can reasonably expect to be offended by something anytime you’re out in public.
For that matter you can expect to be offended by the crap that passes for entertainment on TV, not to mention the commercials. KIAs booming hip hop commercials come to mind. The Kardashians, uhh hello???
It’s the kid with his pants hanging down his butt.
Or the morbidly obese guy sweating like Niagara Falls in front of you at a fast food joint ordering 2 mega cheese burgers super size fries and a gallon cup of diet coke.
It’s the plumber proudly showing off a hairy plumbers crack.
The gang member flashing signs at an opposing gang in front of a crowd of kids, daring someone in the opposing gang to shoot him, thoughtless of the collateral damage.
It’s the past middle aged woman whose been around the block once too often, braless dressed like a teenage slut.
And it’s the teenager dressed like a slut being upset because people treat her badly.
It’s the Middle Eastern guy screaming and shaking his fist at a veiled woman in a mall, as she shrinks away.
It’s the profane, the obscene, the morally ambiguous.
It’s the self centered dumbasses more interested in texting while they’re driving or walking expecting you to move out of their way because they can’t be bothered to pay attention to someone as lowly as you.
It’s signs with messages you find offensive. Do I need to see salacious advertising for the latest “Falling Star” from Hollywood?
How about booming music with lyrics talking about killing whitie or slappin dat ho ’cause she don’t suck you right.
It’s the gas pump TVs screaming at you while you’re just trying to put gas in your car. while you’re thinking, “why am I paying 4.80 a gallon to be forced to hear this shit?”
In short it’s all the things that we each find offensive, yet put up with and ignore.
These things we take no action about because after all it’s about freedom of expression. Well, freedom… and the undercurrent of fear of getting involved.
But two men, having a laugh at bawdy innuendo at a convention in public who happen to be in earshot of a woman… and the shit hits the fan.
I think that SendGrid did the right thing firing this woman, I also think they should apologize to the developers who were removed from the conference and they should pay the developers companies for the lost conference fees.
Moreover, I think this should serve as a call to arms.
The time for draconian Politically Correct enforcement is past. it’s time for some of us to grow thicker skins, and stop trying to see offense in every situation.
It’s also time to stop denigrating being Male.
Face it men are different. Aside from our cocks and balls. We think differently and look at the world differently. As a result our jokes and what we find funny will be reflective of those differences.
It’s time to let men be men.
Ladies, believe it or not, if you simply ask us to play nice… We will.