juridatenshi

> In September, Cirne told employees that Beloved in Christ will aid victims of the wildfires that burned more than 1 million acres across Oregon.

He mentioned his personal, religious charity at work and targeted it at all employees as part of a fundraising effort (admittedly for a good cause in this case). At that point, it's not just outside-of-work.

::looks at responses to @defunkt's twitter post::

1) it appears to be a pretty even mix of men and women responding positively. 2) a huge number of the people who responded positively (male and female) are in fact software engineers, some of them fairly well known (e.g. conference speakers), several of which work at big name companies.

So, uhhhh, what the hell are you on about?

Being respectful of diverse groups of people and technical ability are not mutually exclusive.

You keep using the term "lynch mob." I do not think that means what you think it means.

There have been some studies that indicate these sorts of jokes may increase negative behaviors towards women, such as victim blaming. This is troubling because even if these jokes don't inspire someone to rape or assault someone, they may encourage them to act in a way that enables others to get away with doing so.

That's because (hopefully) if you find them distasteful you're not the sort of person who thinks violence against women is awesome. The thing is, there are people out there who do think it is awesome. They tend to have a very different response to these sorts of "jokes" and imagery.

Jokes like this can and do contribute to a culture where violence against women is a very real and regular thing. Regularly joking about how hilarious it is to beat and rape women normalizes it to a degree and encourages those who already think this is acceptable behavior.

A huge number of the examples are encouraging raping, beating to a bloody pulp, and/or murdering women. The issues with them goes well beyond being offended. However, I'm guessing arguments about rape culture are unlikely to sway you if you think these are jokes and not hateful.

As a side note, facebook already censors a bunch of things. For example, they've taken down images of women breastfeeding if nipples are shown. It's kind of fucked up that the sight of nipples in a non-sexual context is worthy of a takedown, but encouraging violence against women is totally ok.

Yes, it's become so hard to be a man at tech conferences. They're so filled with hate for men that one could describe it as misandry. Did the feminazis also steal your ice cream?

If you're talking about many MRA groups, people would likely have a problem because they're considered hate groups by regarded organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Additionally, it's not like we have a dearth of men in programming. They seem to be doing just fine.

Definitely. I'm excited they're doing this, and I think it is useful. :)

The comment about hiring was mostly an aside as something else I wish they were taking more active efforts with in addition to efforts like this one.

Agreed with you about the donations. Tangentially, it would be cool if GitHub had more diversity in their software engineering staff - that is something they have control over.

Blinding combined with active outreach to get more people to submit to a CFP has helped several conferences improve their numbers. GoGaRuCo is the one that immediately comes to mind.