Stupid jokes and hypocrisy

Submitted by David on Thu, 2013-03-21 08:18

I recently came across a case in which a woman managed to get at least one person fired for making some fairly stupid jokes at a tech conference - specifically she overheard some humor of the phallic variety in a conversation among a couple of friends. Would I have had any objection to her telling them to shut up? No. Do I tend to find that sort of humor annoying? Yes.

Her reaction seems a bit over the top though. The big inconsistency here is her twitter activity - right around the time she made her complaint was when ... she was making phallic jokes on her twitter feed about others at that very conference. Seems like a pretty clear case of hypocrisy to me.

Her twitter account has about 10,000 followers. Making such a statement there is a far more public activity than a couple of people talking amongst themselves that may have annoyed a few people sitting around them.

She argues that she took the action she did to make the tech world better for women. Instead I'd argue that she probably made the situation worse, just like I'd argue Lily Ledbetter did. To quote one commentator:

She's done the opposite of making men and women feel more comfortable working together; now men will be looking over their shoulder every time a woman is present in the workplace or a conference because hey, she might do what Adria did. This is not an environment anyone wants to work in. ... Adria instead should have turned around and told the men that it made her feel uncomfortable. They likely would have apologized and this would be a non-issue. And if they didn't make it right, she could escalate it in a more productive (but still assertive) way.

I wonder if either of the two involved here might have been readers of her twitter feed. Could they have assumed that since she'd just recently engaged in exactly the same sort of jokes it might be OK for them to do so as well?

Addendum: Adria Richards has stated that she didn't intend for this particular guy to get fired, though such was the result, and apparently now appears to be out of a job herself.

Addendum #2: This post seems worth reading for context.