andrewdupont

Journalists are not special beings, but it is typically presumed that they report in good faith, and without ulterior motives. I know that isn't always true, but it's true often enough that I think the burden of proof would be on the people being investigated to prove that the journalist's intent was malicious.

Yes.

This reasoning bothers me.

Let's stipulate that Adria's post to Twitter was a mistake. You seem to say that the abuse is her fault, because if she hadn't made that mistake, she wouldn't have received any abuse.

But shouldn't punishments be proportional to crimes? We all seem to agree that it's barbaric to cut off a shoplifter's hand, or to hand out the death penalty for petty crimes (as was once common in England, for instance).

People say this sort of thing all the time — "If you didn't want Y, you shouldn't have done X." I feel like it shuts down the conversation. Yes, X was wrong, but Y was also wrong, and it's ridiculous that something as wrong as Y resulted from X. That's a discussion worth having.

The point is that nobody deserves death threats. It need not feel like a defense of Adria Richards to say that.

If your goal is that nobody on earth would bat an eye, that's a pretty high bar to clear. Keep in mind that some people (and a healthy percentage of them represented here on HN) find the existence of Pyladies troublesome. I suspect a similar percentage would find the existence of Pygentlemen troublesome.

When one person says "black people can't be racist" and another person says "black people can indeed be racist," they are using the word two different ways and meaning two different things. It has derailed more threads than I care to remember.

I feel like you're being willfully obtuse here. The penis is commonly used for exactly two things. Sex is the only reason why anyone would consider it advantageous to have a large penis.

And not men?

Sure, men too. Let me repeat that: you are "allowed" to be offended about this if you are a man. People tend to say "creates a hostile environment for women" not because of assumption or stereotype but because of many personal accounts of specific women who say that this sort of joking makes them feel like they're in a hostile environment.

You might not be familiar with defamation law in the United States, but understand that truth is an absolute defense against defamation. Nobody is disputing the facts of the incident (the actual content of what was said), and Adria's interpretation of the jokes (whether you agree with it or not) is clearly in the realm of opinion.

I could take pictures of any two guys at an event and put it on Twitter and say they were gay bashing or using racial slurs, and they have no opportunity to defend themselves.

Yet ask yourself: does this happen in the real world? Is there an epidemic of false, Twitter-aided public shamings? We've already established that this isn't an example, since no facts are in dispute. Maybe the implications of this incident aren't as far-reaching and scary as you think.

> Furthermore, it's a magazine FOR MEN so most of the words were Anglo-Saxon and avoid the errors that Orwell rails against in "Politics and the English Language."

I don't even know what you're trying to say here. I mean, I can guess, but it makes me queasy.