Developer and self-professed “technology evangelist” Adria Richards has ignited an online firestorm concerning women in the field of technology.

Richards used Twitter to call out two male attendees who were making sexually charged, tech-themed jokes at the technology conference, PyCon, on March 17.

The men, seated a row behind her at the conference, were joking about “big dongles” (hardware that plugs into a computer) and “forking” repos (a term for when developers lift code from each other). Richards snapped a picture of the pair and posted it to Twitter, along with the PyCon code of conduct, to call attention to their behavior.

The incident resulted in one of the men losing his job at PlayHaven. Richards was also let go from her position at the cloud-computing-based startup, SendGrid, and endured several threats of rape and murder by irate Internet trolls.

In a blog post published the day after the incident, Richards said her decision to comment on the inappropriate jokes was inspired by her fear that young girls would “never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible to do so.”

Lessons to be learned have risen from this incident that has divided the tech community, which is still much of a boys club.

Though it’s not right to make dirty jokes in a professional setting, it’s also not appropriate to snap a picture of someone without permission and publicize what should have been a private exchange. This situation could have been easily diffused, rather than unnecessarily escalated online for the sake of a perceived greater good.

The threats Richards has received as a response to the event have proven how ugly the situation has gotten. The cruel irony is that Richards’ call for a greater show of professionalism has resulted in just the opposite.

A few dumb dongle jokes aren’t what are keeping women out of the tech industry, but the undercurrents of vitriolic misogyny will. Smart women may decide they don’t want to work in an industry in which being called a “b*tch,” “stupid slut” or “attention whore,” as Richards has, is the result of pursuing geeky interests.

Jim Franklin, the CEO of SendGrid, wrote that the company “supports the right to report inappropriate behavior whenever and wherever it occurs.” Yet he contradicts himself by saying she “crossed the line” and “her actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite.”

But what line could she have crossed by calling attention to people who violated the code of a conduct in a professional setting?

What it seems SendGrid is really saying is it will support its employees only until it causes a problematic public relations situation. By caving into the pressure, SendGrid employees let the mob mentality win once again.

As a society, we need to find a way to report minor infractions without it spiraling out of control. People screw up and say silly things, and it’s borderline impossible to find a universal humor.

In trying to make things better for women in technology, Richards might have accidentally done the opposite by picking the wrong method for fighting her cause, even though her heart was in the right place.

The boys broke the rules. She just tattled. And all the little children proved they’re still not ready to play nice.

Kat Smith is a senior creative advertising major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at [email protected], on Twitter at @WhateverKat or by telepathy, if possible. 

Published on March 28, 2013 at 1:06 am