People with this mindset have never been to a conference this size before or they're forgetting what the environment is like. You are going to come across opinions and jokes that may not be in your taste, and it is up to you to either choose to ignore them because you were not a part of that conversation, or to discretely alert someone to the presence of this humor because you think it is actually harmful to people and the event itself.
She took a comment that had nothing, nada to do with the sexualization of women and tried to spin it into some sort of anti-women/"This is what we're talking about!" ridiculousness (p.s. this isn't actually at all what we're talking about when we bring up inequality, which is why women like me are furious about this).
We know from her blog post (and her previous tweets about stuffing socks into pants to impress TSA agents and her playing Cards Against Humanity at the same event - where she held up "Eating all the cookies before the AIDS bake sale.") that she wasn't actually offended; she saw the guy was a sponsor and determined that she was going to use him and his total non-issue of a statement to humiliate him because that little girl on the screen was going to grow up so fragile that she couldn't possibly handle two guys in public making an audible joke. Less people congregate at a random public place than at this event, does that stop you from hearing filth there? Can you handle it? Are you going to make a mockery of them over your public and professional Twitter account with thousands of followers?
Worse, she'd already had a dialogue with the men in which she butted into their conversation to add to it just a few minutes prior. So here we have someone admitting they're eavesdropping into conversations, which in itself isn't a crime, but you can't just listen in on what people are saying when you're not a part of the conversation and pull out a penalty flag when you hear something that "offends" you. A flag so big that the dude got fired over a joke that less people overheard than people saw her tweets on stuffing pants and eating AIDs cookies.
Totally with you there. I am a huge fan of Amanda Blum's post on the matter, she really got down to the nitty-gritty of it: don't be a dick, you're ruining it for everyone. I also had the privilege of meeting and speaking to Blum a few times at RailsGirls PDX (which she also helped put together) and she was an absolute pleasure; really cared about the even from beginning to end and set a fantastic mood for the day (and a half) with her enthusiasm. If she said this woman was hard to work with, I believe her.
Right, I was confused why he thought I would be offended by that when my point was that the joke was a non-issue. That sketch is fantastic and isn't new to me. What I find so silly about this whole thing - which is exactly what the skit helps imply - is that you can hardly even say the word dongle without laughing; you don't even need to know what it really is to see the low-hanging humor in it (no pun intended). It's just one of those words. She'd have an entire magazine spread if she went to some of the gaming-related events I've been to.
We were all in 5th grade once, I think a conference for adults can handle that same behavior.
Hopefully you are still reading the comments here as I'm just catching up on all of this and watching how it is continuing to unfold.
Please don't apologize.
As other women before me already have, I want to apologize for this incident; honestly I probably would have been giggling myself if I was in an earshot of you. With respect to Adria's past and her sensitivity to the triggers she refers to, a comment like this is not demeaning to women and her reaction has nothing to do with supporting the future of this industry and the women who partake in it. In fact I'd say just the opposite. Just a few weeks ago we had a similar conversation when Torvalds replied to a woman with the term circlejerk (in regards to the argument they were having) and a few people raised their pitchforks thinking it was offensive in the context of her gender. It has nothing to do with gender.
Taking the photo and posting it for her global audience was just too much. The appropriate course of action would have been to show the picture privately to staff and have them talk to the parties involved individually and maybe bring everyone together to talk about it after-the-fact. I can't even fathom losing my job over something that I know I have made jokes about in the past, jokes that may have a juvenile slant, but that I thought would be acceptable because I was in the company of people who could - if not appreciate them - at least understand what I meant by them, and especially understand that it wasn't sexual.
Some jokes are not okay in the presence of certain people or during certain times. This was not one of them, and again I'm so sorry for what you're dealing with because of it. Best wishes to you.