Shit that Pissed me Off this Week – 3/29

Woman Complains about Sexist Behavior at a Convention and she gets Harassed and Fired

I just don’t get it, really.  A couple of guys were making sexist jokes while sitting in the audience for a panel about women coders and an audience member thought they were in the wrong.  Yeah.  I agree.

She asked the conference organizers to tell them to stop.   They were asked to stop and they did.

Then all hell breaks loose because one of the guys loses his job.

Look, I don’t think the guy should have lost his job for that but I wonder if it was really just for that? Isn’t it possible he was shitty at his job already? Even he was “just” fired for sexual harassment (oh the humanity), the logical response should not be for other people on the internet to attack the woman’s place of work and get her fired.

Hey guys! Let’s use our computers to teach this uppity bitch that she shouldn’t complain when we call her an uppity bitch!

That’s the sort thing dicks do.

Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of dicks on the internet.

Update:  Clarifications in the comments below.  And in this article. She did send a tweet to the conference organizers, not a public one (at least according to what I read).  I question any firings happening and the harrassment is completely unacceptable.

Mea culpa on this one, though.  I usually research the articles better before I comment on them.  I didn’t look into this one deeply enough. If I had, I would still have commented on it but been more clear about all of the details.

The results of this situation – both firings – look to be classic overreactions by both companies and that still pisses me off.

Victoria’s Secret Announces Plans for a line of Lingerie Aimed at Young Teens

Hey look, I have no problem with a healthy attitude towards sex.  We don’t have a healthy attitude towards sex in this country but if we did, I would have no problem with it.

I am a little concerned that some executive somewhere decided that we should sell thongs with the words “call me” on the front to thirteen year olds.  That feels like we are teaching young women that their primary value is as sexual objects.

I’m the father of two boys and I’m trying to instill in them the idea that women are partners and equals and should be treated with love and respect.

When a chain of stores comes up with a concept like this in the name of profit, they are teaching young men something different.  That’s the trap, right?  We can’t just teach young women that they are something more than sexual objects, we have to teach young men the same thing.

With this new line, it really feels like Victoria’s Secret has hit the sweet spot of teaching both genders the wrong thing.  Go marketing!

Update:  I blew this one too!  This comes from one conservative blogger and there is no such line.  But hey – it would be pretty awful if they did, wouldn’t it?

The Supreme Court is Predictable

Gay marriage got it’s day(s) in the Supreme court this week and even though I firmly believe that this is not a conservative/liberal issue, it certainly seems as if it will be with the court.  The four conservative judges seems pretty firmly against any ruling that might grant rights to gay people and the four liberal judges are for it.

Justice Kennedy appears to hold the deciding vote in these matters and his comments were, as always, wishy-washy.

Justice is blind….to what the other side thinks

I find it annoying that the justices split along ideological lines on this (and most every) issue.  The Supreme Court should be neither red nor blue.  It should be purple.

Update!  I’m still right about this.

Kansas Poised to Pass a Law that would Quarantine AIDS Patients

The bill, which is meant to allow quarantine of people with “infectious diseases”  could have been amended to exclude individuals with HIV/AIDS but the legislature opted to vote down that language.

Now why would you do that?  Why would you vote against an amendment like that?

Probably because you are a paranoid homophobe.

You probably aren’t a doctor who understands anything about communicable diseases or you would understand that HIV/AIDS does not spread through traditional means and, therefore, does not require quarantine.

Will AIDS patients be mistreated because of this law?  Hell, I don’t know.  Most people are basically decent and when faced with a dying patient (or a patient who is HIV positive and could live for decades), they probably wouldn’t place them under house arrest for the rest of their lives.  But if this law passes, you could legally do that.

Point is that they could be and the lawmakers producing the bill had the opportunity to make sure that you couldn’t do that and they didn’t.

Kind of a dick move, wasn’t it?

Study Finds Voter ID Laws are Applied Disproportionately to Minority Youth

While my objections to voter ID laws have more to do with the fact I think voting should be made easier and not harder, I have always felt that their primary design was to make it harder for certain demographics to vote.

I don’t think this comes from some paranoid conspiracy theory but rather a natural conclusion based on the fact that one political party is pushing for voter ID laws.  When that happens, it can be fairly assumed they are doing so because they are looking to gain a political advantage.

Well this latest study seems to show that, if that is their goal, it is working.

Hi five it!

Given that minority youth are more likely to vote Democratic and they are disproportionately the ones being affected by voter ID laws, it is working like a charm!  Way to turn those kids off of voting for life!

Rigging Democracy is fun!

Russian Photographer Breaks the Rules and Climbs the Pyramids

How horrible of this guy to disrespect the condition of the pyramids and climb to the top, right?  Especially since he wasn’t me.

When I go to a new place, my first order of business is to get as close to the top of it as I can.  The view from above is like nothing you will see anywhere else.  And no, pictures taken by someone else are not the same.

Top of the Duomo in Florence, bitches! This ain't no postcard!

Top of the Duomo in Florence, bitches! This ain’t no postcard!

But this one dude (and his friends) got to see Cairo from the top of the pyramids.  You know how many people get to see that?  Hardly anyone because it’s illegal and the guy could have totally gotten thrown in jail.

And given he found a hole in security, he probably just made it that much harder for me to climb them.  Asshole.

Member of the Press is a Dick to Lara Croft Cosplayers at PAX

Last year at CONvergence, there was an anti-harassment campaign built around the slogan “costumes are not consent.”

The idea here is that if a woman wants to dress up as a sexy character, she is not inviting a bunch of lewd behavior from every guy that sees her.  A lot of the male population at conventions is pretty clueless and awkward, though, so it happens anyway.

I’m not excusing the behavior, mind you.  The whole idea behind the campaign was to remind people that they are adults and they should act like it.

If there is a source where one should expect professional behavior, though, it should be from a member of the press.  At PAX, however, that turned out to be a poor assumption.

After asking several young women a question about their sexuality and being told he was being a dick, the reporter in question told the lades that they were asking for that kind of question given how they were dressed.

I made this costume myself! Please ask me about sex some more!

Hey guys – what are the odds you would be treated this way if you decided to dress up as Conan?

So ask yourself – if a bunch of ladies wouldn’t treat you this way outside of a male stripper review, why the fuck would you treat them that way?

And to anyone who thinks that it smacks of hypocracy when I talk about women dressing sexy deserving to be treated with respect a little while after I talked about how offensive it is that a large chain is marketing sexy clothes to teenagers, I’m see your point but it is really the same problem.  Women treated as sex objects before they are treated as people.

CPAC Attendee Wears his Racism on his Sleeve

I realize not all Republicans are racist.  And not all Democrats aren’t.

You gotta shake your head when a white guy goes to a breakout session presented by a black man and says that he is feeling disenfranchised.

I don’t want to come off as an intolerant asshole but I’m OK with that.

Speaking as a white male, I don’t feel like we’ve done a particularly good job running the country as of late.  I’m OK with getting a little disenfranchised if it means other capable people are getting the chance to run the government.

Here’s the thing – when men get elected, they make all sorts of decisions for ladies based on their opinion of what ladies want.  When women get elected, they don’t do the same thing for men.  Elected Hispanics don’t seem to make assumptions about what we white people want.  Neither do African-Americans.

In fact, the only group that seems to make all sorts of assumptions about what other people want is white guys.

So please, disenfranchise me and that privileged white fuck at CPAC.  I’m pretty sure if people like him stopped voting, the results would be better for all of us.

Minnesota for Marriage says that if you support Gay Marriage, you are  a NAZI!!

No.  They didn’t actually say that.  It would be a lot easier to make fun of if they did.

What they really said was that picking and choosing research results, which is something they do all the time is exactly the same thing as Joseph Goebels did. Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.

Like the lie that gay marriage will somehow bankrupt our society?

Like the lie that marriage has always been between one man and one woman?

Well one white man and one white woman. Amirite?

Like the lie that a same-sex couple will not be able to raise children as effectively as a straight couple?

Like the lie that being gay is a choice but being straight is not?

Like those lies, assholes?

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8 responses to “Shit that Pissed me Off this Week – 3/29”

  1. Jess says :

    The woman who was fired didn’t complain to the conference until AFTER she’d tweeted publicly about the jerks behind her, calling them and her company by name. I’m not condoning her firing OR theirs (I firmly believe there should be a warning system in place for this type of scenario), but to be fair all the articles I found about this issue said she was fired because she tweeted about it INSTEAD of going to the conference to complain.

    More and more companies are sensitive about execs (and “regular” employees” badmouthing their company/coworkers/etc on the interwebz.

    Do I agree with it? No: free speech is free speech…but that also means the dudes had a right to say something stupid and be called out on it as stupid and given the opportunity to make it right. Is it an excuse for firing? Maybe, if it’s in the company policy. Shrug. The whole incident seems to have been poorly handled by all parties involved.

  2. Tim Lieder says :

    Actually the first part is inaccurate. The woman did not ask the organizers to tell the guys to stop joking about the piece of tech called a “dongle” (pretty easy to joke about that one). Nor did she ask them herself or even give them a look that told them that their jokes were being heard and not appreciated. Instead, she smiled at them, took their picture and then posted their picture on the internet in a public shaming campaign.

    If she had done anything up to the point of taking their pictures and publicly outing them as guys who tell dick jokes in a tech forum (including asking the organizers to tell them to stop if she thought that she was in any danger from speaking up herself) she may have been justified in her last action. However, she went straight to the public shaming.

    Apparently this is not the first time she’s used such tactics instead of actually talking to people on a one-on-one basis. Her job as a technology evangelist requires a degree of public relations and she has failed miserably on that front.

    • Petsnakereggie says :

      I’ve updated my post to reflect this. My own fault for failing to check the background information on the story – which I typically do.

  3. Tyrion Lannister (@CaptainHeck) says :

    I am only confused by the Pyramid story because when I went two years ago there were hundreds of people climbing them and we all thought it was expected and normal. I didn’t climb to the top or anything due to the lazy, but I did go about halfway up and took hundreds of photos of the swarms of people doing the same. I didn’t pay any bribe or anything and there was nobody to stop people from climbing further up so I don’t understand if they changed the rules or if they were not enforced or what?

    • Petsnakereggie says :

      Apparently they don’t allow it any longer due to the amount of damage it was causing the pyramids.

      • Tyrion Lannister (@CaptainHeck) says :

        I am actually glad if they changed those rules as nothing was really protected, even thousand year old color images on the walls are unprotected from people rubbing them off for luck and selling the dust they carve off. Not joking, I saw the gashes and people doing it and selling it. The pyramid tops are the limestone parts and are particularly vulnerable to wear and tear.

      • Petsnakereggie says :

        Oh, I think changing the rules was a good idea. I still wish that I could climb them, though.

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