Reading the reactions to the recent events at PyCon, one might think that the biggest problem facing the industry is the reactions—or, rather, the overreactions—to sexism.
Someone was fired—fired!—for making a dirty joke!
And, to read the outrage, Adria Richards personally fired the jokester.
Spoiler: she didn’t. His employer fired him. Not Richards. His employer.
She merely posted a picture on Twitter and wrote a blog post. She’s but a side note in the tale of this developer’s firing.
Yet, who receives the outrage? Who bears the brunt of the violent—and, ironically, itself overly sexist—backlash? Richards.
The story is not sexism. The story is the reaction to sexism.
It’s not surprising. It is easy to focus on reactions. When you focus on reactions to problems, you don’t have to face the problems themselves. You can just keep on going about your life without worrying. Everything goes back to normal. The status quo is preserved.
It’s easy: Just find a flaw in the argument. Find some reason why this or that isn’t sexist. Point out why it’s not a big deal. Describe why this is not the time to deal with it. Inform her that it was “just a joke.” Tell her how she’s completely overreacting.
Maintaining the status quo feels good when the status quo does not negatively impact you.
Of course it is easy for the tech industry to focus on the reactions to sexism rather than the sexism itself: the tech industry is dominated by men, and for the men, the status quo is fine.
For the women, the status quo is not fine.
At this point, whether any individual reaction is an overreaction is unimportant, as, at this point, there is nowhere near enough reaction.
At this point, anything that could be sexist is sexist. At this point, everything’s a big deal. At this point, it is always the time to deal with it. At this point, nothing is a joke.
At this point, it is rather hard to overreact to sexism.
It is quite easy, however, to overreact to reactions to sexism.
It is easier to fight a straw man than a real one, and overreactions to sexism are just that: a problem that barely exists; a problem that, compared to what we have today, would be a good problem to have.
Sexism in the tech industry is certainly the scarier enemy to fight. It takes everyone to stop it: everyone to speak up when they see it, and even more challengingly, everyone to stop themselves when they are about to do it.
It’s so much easier to complain about “Political Correctness.” It’s so much easier to whine about how “feminists can’t take a joke.”
In those rare times that someone is brave enough to speak up, it is so much easier to attack them. They’re probably women, after all, and it’s not like there’s enough of them in the industry to fight back.