A Docker engineer got so many threats the company hired security to protect her(businessinsider.com)
businessinsider.com
A Docker engineer got so many threats the company hired security to protect her
http://www.businessinsider.com/death-rape-threats-for-docker-engineer-2016-4
5 comments
how was the company supposed to react anonymous people harassing her on IRC?
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The news here (if you can call it that) is that Frazelle seems to have left because Docker was tolerating her being harassed, instead of supporting her like they said they would. You have to read between the lines to see it, because she's not coming out and saying so, so there's really not enough there to hang a news article on.
Is this going to be another article that Hacker News tosses on the pile of "chose not to believe"? Here's hoping this is finally the one that makes people realize that these things are happening irl.
Shrugs, speak for yourself.
I was at a tech talk last week, 40 devs, 1 woman, 39 blokes.
You don't have to be a genius to see there is something off with that ratio.
I've rarely seen more than 1-2 at any of the tech events I've gone to there.
I've also heard the crap some programmers say about women (not all but enough to leave a bad taste).
Prior to working in the tech industry I worked in the retail industry and the gender split was pretty much 50/50.
I was at a tech talk last week, 40 devs, 1 woman, 39 blokes.
You don't have to be a genius to see there is something off with that ratio.
I've rarely seen more than 1-2 at any of the tech events I've gone to there.
I've also heard the crap some programmers say about women (not all but enough to leave a bad taste).
Prior to working in the tech industry I worked in the retail industry and the gender split was pretty much 50/50.
>It's worth repeating: this person received horrific threats because she's good at her job and out teaching others how to use an up-and-coming programming technology.
That's just not believable. There has to be more to the story than that. Nobody gets harassed because they're good at their job and go out teaching others etc, etc.
That's just not believable. There has to be more to the story than that. Nobody gets harassed because they're good at their job and go out teaching others etc, etc.
I'm choosing to interpret this as massive cognitive dissonance between what you would do as a decent human being, and what actually happens "IRL" to women in tech.
Sad to say, I don't think there is more to the story, without just egging on the trolls. Her offense was to be a woman as the public face of a hot new tech, and that's all.
Turning it around, what would she had to have done , in your mind, to elicit death threats and revenge porn? Double parked? Cut in line in front of someone's grandma at the bank?
Sad to say, I don't think there is more to the story, without just egging on the trolls. Her offense was to be a woman as the public face of a hot new tech, and that's all.
Turning it around, what would she had to have done , in your mind, to elicit death threats and revenge porn? Double parked? Cut in line in front of someone's grandma at the bank?
It actually does happen to a lot of people. The reason is not "because they're good at their job", its usually because they are people who are in the public eye and are seen as leaders. Some people have a problem with women being leaders and so decide to harass them. Yes, people like that do exist. Jessie is a really awesome hacker and it makes me sad that she left her awesome job (allegedly) because she didn't feel comfortable. I (presumably like you) don't like diversity quotas and all that other bullshit, but denying that people like Jessie are harassed for no reason other than "being a public figure" doesn't help your case.
Kathy Sierra's "Why the Trolls Will Always Win" might be relevant: http://www.wired.com/2014/10/trolls-will-always-win/.
I think it's believable. Go read the Twitch comments when a woman appears on a popular stream.
I was just about to make the same suggestion. Twitch chat is basically as low as it gets. I have absolutely no problem believing that someone would make death/rape threats out of the blue after seeing how women are treated by a random (large) Twitch chat.
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Lots and lots of dudes out there consider "saying things while being a woman" to be a crime against society.
No, there aren't. What year is this?
The author of this article is leaving something out.
The author of this article is leaving something out.
What are either of those statements based on?
Experience. There are tons of women in the workforce. It's unexceptional to the point you wouldn't even notice, even in tech.
If you read an article that said "Bob the mailman was beaten to death by local residents because he was good at his job" would you think "Yep, that sounds like the whole story"?
If you read an article that said "Bob the mailman was beaten to death by local residents because he was good at his job" would you think "Yep, that sounds like the whole story"?
She also had the audacity to do things like 'talk at conferences'.
In general, a good thing to do in lots of situations is listen to people about their lived experiences, and after listening to women talk about being in this industry for a while this sort of thing becomes just 'a particularly horrible example' instead of 'something totally incomprehensible.'
In general, a good thing to do in lots of situations is listen to people about their lived experiences, and after listening to women talk about being in this industry for a while this sort of thing becomes just 'a particularly horrible example' instead of 'something totally incomprehensible.'
>She also had the audacity to do things like 'talk at conferences'.
Sure. That would be believable if the year were, say, 1850.
Sure. That would be believable if the year were, say, 1850.
I don't really understand why you think that there was no harassment (or that Jessie deserved it or did something to rile the community against her). The solution to problems like this isn't to deny it. I've worked with her online for several years and she's an awesome hacker, and I'm not aware of anything she did to "deserve" being harassed.
I do not think that OP doubts the existence of harassment, I think he doubts the causes of it. The cause written, "this person received horrific threats because she's good at her job and out teaching others how to use an up-and-coming programming technology" does seem pretty unlikely.
On one hand, this comes off kinda' bad, as if we're looking for the real reason this person is being harassed, looking if they deserved it or not. No matter what prompted this harassment, this is wrong, terrible and should not happen to _anybody_ no matter the sex, position or actions of that person.
But, I still have my curiosity as to what reason these harassers might have. They might be simply sexist but that seems a little exaggerated, considering there are other women that have exposure and don't seem to suffer the same level of harassment. I enjoy greatly reading Julia Evans's posts for example, and I haven't seen signs of harassment over there - maybe I haven't been paying attention.
There might be something specific that this person did that made the harassers angry - I repeat, this is not to incriminate miss Jessie Frazelle, and she might not have done anything wrong, but something made the attackers angry, maybe something complety ridiculous. What would that thing be? If there is a thing this person did, this harassment might have originated even if she were a man. Maybe it's not such a sex thing after all? It seems there are plenty of public people that get death threats and are harassed, and these things are generally tailored to the sex of a person - women get killed an raped, men get killed and told to suck a dick.
I don't know, I'm just confused - it's true there aren't many women in tech, and I'm as welcoming as possible but there are certain issues that I don't understand and don't know how to approach, but trying to solve them requires actually understanding them beyond a short article and evasive tweets.
On one hand, this comes off kinda' bad, as if we're looking for the real reason this person is being harassed, looking if they deserved it or not. No matter what prompted this harassment, this is wrong, terrible and should not happen to _anybody_ no matter the sex, position or actions of that person.
But, I still have my curiosity as to what reason these harassers might have. They might be simply sexist but that seems a little exaggerated, considering there are other women that have exposure and don't seem to suffer the same level of harassment. I enjoy greatly reading Julia Evans's posts for example, and I haven't seen signs of harassment over there - maybe I haven't been paying attention.
There might be something specific that this person did that made the harassers angry - I repeat, this is not to incriminate miss Jessie Frazelle, and she might not have done anything wrong, but something made the attackers angry, maybe something complety ridiculous. What would that thing be? If there is a thing this person did, this harassment might have originated even if she were a man. Maybe it's not such a sex thing after all? It seems there are plenty of public people that get death threats and are harassed, and these things are generally tailored to the sex of a person - women get killed an raped, men get killed and told to suck a dick.
I don't know, I'm just confused - it's true there aren't many women in tech, and I'm as welcoming as possible but there are certain issues that I don't understand and don't know how to approach, but trying to solve them requires actually understanding them beyond a short article and evasive tweets.
For me the problem is that gozur88 "just doesn't believe" this, that the article seems "fishy" and that "experience" tells gozur that these things just-don't-happen in the post 1850 world. These are all the smells of an argument driven by an intuition prioritized over and above the real experiences of women in tech. Again and again we see this. The article that quantifies the amount of speaking roles in movies by gender, or if women have been sexually assaulted at work or not, excluded some datapoint, had one poorly stated point, didn't cover x or y or z, and therefore can be discarded. The problem is that no amount of evidence seems enough to please these people, and that any amount of links or anecdotes or documented cases seems to be discarded as cherry-picked. And the conclusion drawn is that the problem is overblown, and doesn't need to be addressed.
Its interesting to me that you mention Julia Evans. I've never encountered her writing, but she definitely has a belief in the truth of women's stories about harassment. See here: http://jvns.ca/blog/2016/03/06/women-only-spaces-are-a-hack/
Perhaps Julia would respond better to a direct e-mail asking her if she'd share any of her experiences in tech! Might be worth a shot?
Its interesting to me that you mention Julia Evans. I've never encountered her writing, but she definitely has a belief in the truth of women's stories about harassment. See here: http://jvns.ca/blog/2016/03/06/women-only-spaces-are-a-hack/
Perhaps Julia would respond better to a direct e-mail asking her if she'd share any of her experiences in tech! Might be worth a shot?
> On one hand, this comes off kinda' bad, as if we're looking for the real reason this person is being harassed, looking if they deserved it or not.
Hence why I used scare quotes for "deserved". People don't deserve to be harassed.
As for "something that made the harassers angry", eh. I don't know. But that's not the point. The fact that people are so happy to create a toxic environment for other people is something we should address.
Hence why I used scare quotes for "deserved". People don't deserve to be harassed.
As for "something that made the harassers angry", eh. I don't know. But that's not the point. The fact that people are so happy to create a toxic environment for other people is something we should address.
What evidence do you have that makes you disbelieve this?
Have you never seen a woman speak at a conference? If so, did you see anybody threaten her?
Are you from Saudi Arabia?
Disbelief requires no evidence. It only requires a story that doesn't square with your experience. And this one definitely smells fishy.
Are you from Saudi Arabia?
Disbelief requires no evidence. It only requires a story that doesn't square with your experience. And this one definitely smells fishy.
> Disbelief requires no evidence.
Interesting. So is Atlanta rapper BOB right to say the earth is flat because he's never observed its curve? He personally thinks the idea of earth as a globe is fishy.
Its funny, I'd say to him that his feeling of fishiness has no merit and that he should be forced to justify his claim of disbelief.
Interesting. So is Atlanta rapper BOB right to say the earth is flat because he's never observed its curve? He personally thinks the idea of earth as a globe is fishy.
Its funny, I'd say to him that his feeling of fishiness has no merit and that he should be forced to justify his claim of disbelief.
Well, in the absence of any evidence the earth is round, it's perfectly reasonable for him to believe the earth is flat until he's presented with a plausible argument that it's round.
Have you ever been exposed to religion?
Have you ever been exposed to religion?
So to draw a parallel to the current argument, are you claiming that no woman has been abused by a man simply for doing a better job than them?
Are you assuming that these threats were in some kind of public sphere?
>Experience. There are tons of women in the workforce. It's unexceptional to the point you wouldn't even notice, even in tech.
Interestingly, noir_lord noticed and you can see that in his comments on this article. I have the impression that many, many people notice how exceptional and small the presence of women is in tech.
No news article has the "whole" story, so why single this one out? They are necessarily a digest of the events.
Interestingly, noir_lord noticed and you can see that in his comments on this article. I have the impression that many, many people notice how exceptional and small the presence of women is in tech.
No news article has the "whole" story, so why single this one out? They are necessarily a digest of the events.
I'm singling this out because whatever they left out was critical to understanding the story.
Could you explain to me what critical information you feel is missing?
The evidence that supports this statement:
"...this person received horrific threats because she's good at her job and out teaching others how to use an up-and-coming programming technology."
I'm not going to say it's not plausible that that is the reason like others are saying. Personally, I'm doubtful, but I'm willing to entertain that that actually is the reason.
Assuming that actually is the reason, what evidence supports that statement. Are there numerous troll comments that we can read with our own two eyes that unambiguously demonstrate that the trolls were motivated by her skill?
If there isn't, then I would expect the statement to be ""...this person received horrific threats."
Either there is evidence that supports the statement that begins with "because..." or there isn't. That evidence is clearly omitted.
"...this person received horrific threats because she's good at her job and out teaching others how to use an up-and-coming programming technology."
I'm not going to say it's not plausible that that is the reason like others are saying. Personally, I'm doubtful, but I'm willing to entertain that that actually is the reason.
Assuming that actually is the reason, what evidence supports that statement. Are there numerous troll comments that we can read with our own two eyes that unambiguously demonstrate that the trolls were motivated by her skill?
If there isn't, then I would expect the statement to be ""...this person received horrific threats."
Either there is evidence that supports the statement that begins with "because..." or there isn't. That evidence is clearly omitted.
The reason. If people are attacking her there's a reason. It might not be a good reason, but there's a reason.
But the article states what it thinks the reason is. You clearly think that reason isn't plausible. Could you help me understand what reasons you would find plausible?
>But the article states what it thinks the reason is.
Oh, does it? When you read this:
"...this person received horrific threats because she's good at her job and out teaching others how to use an up-and-coming programming technology."
it seems reasonable to you? Do people generally receive "horrific threats" because they're good at their jobs?
I don't see any point in speculating about what's actually going on here. It's pretty clear whatever it is isn't in the article, though.
Oh, does it? When you read this:
"...this person received horrific threats because she's good at her job and out teaching others how to use an up-and-coming programming technology."
it seems reasonable to you? Do people generally receive "horrific threats" because they're good at their jobs?
I don't see any point in speculating about what's actually going on here. It's pretty clear whatever it is isn't in the article, though.
> Do people generally receive "horrific threats" because they're good at their jobs?
If by people you mean women, then yes.
You don't seem able to say exactly why you find this so hard to believe. Could it be that your experiences are limited?
If by people you mean women, then yes.
You don't seem able to say exactly why you find this so hard to believe. Could it be that your experiences are limited?