I take it as a bad smell someone goes the PR route over a lawyer (perhaps a confidential legal threat?) to discuss things privately and settle thing amicably.

2. Right to confront accusers? This seems extremely one-sided. No one she blames gets to defend themselves, where are the witnesses on either side?

It's true, in USA, we respond to things emotionally, even the best of us sometimes.

Imagine, if you as a CEO of a security company acts like this, imagine what a marketer with no talent or skill does when she doesn't get what she wants? She can't lean on ability... nor reason, She leans on the, you've guessed it, the crowd.

I bet you, 9/10 times, you have better things to do than pick a fight or be on twitter because you have skills. Even if people hate you, you still can be a productive member of society. Other people only have a self-esteem boost of retweets to rely on, and they misinterpret that as career value.

In USA, we have a special sub-type of "office lady", which is the "marketer / enthusiast" twitter troll.

The issue is, in other countries, office ladies are happy to just dress professionally and do their clerical work.

In USA, we have self-esteem bubbles, an education system, a political culture that create a factory of women like this. Basically, office ladies who act like bulls, get enabled by nice-meaning people, then bite off more than they can chew.

Also in USA, understand that our english isn't to be taken literally; it infers complicated politically-charged emotions. Americans react very harshly and nit-pick blunt truths, our public discourse is not one of reflection, clarification or debate, but projecting emotion at an idea we don't feel reaffirms our view of the world.

These people are a tiny sliver of our society, but since we in USA are good people, we tend to give them benefit of the doubt. Because of the abuse by this type of women in the workplace, some Americans are associating women in distress with people like this. The boy who cried wolf.

People like this can really hurt things for actual victims of discrimination who do their job.

She simply is mentally unable to admit personal fault. Why? Social media encouragement and well-meaning enablers.

The secret.ly screenshot says how she can't handle professional criticism - behaviorally reinforced by culture, twitter and social networking sites "+1" and "retweet" is more important that doing what her manager and the house wants her to do.

There is also the popular implication when there is a girl on twitter starting trouble again, they're not coding and trying to claim some form of discrimination, instead of developing programming skill.

Going into a workplace with a feminist agenda is a distraction and problem waiting to happen.

Twitter Followers != Engineer

https://github.com/nrrrdcore - she didn't even have any code. She's not a prominent engineer IMO. More of a marketer / enthusiast type.

Edit: Does anyone here have proof of gender discrimination or she was a good engineer?

What are some examples of the recent ones? (links are preferred, please).

I feel everyone gets a temporary jolt of validation from being voted up. However, it should be in exchanged for adding value (being insightful, interesting, useful, funny).

Forcing people to use Linux sounds antagonizing and like it'd hurt the reputation of Linux. The same way feminists / marketers think they should be CTO's and top developers with nothing but twitter followers - and how it could potentially hurt females who no axe to grind who actually love engineering.

Sympathy, courtesy, favors and censorship can't substitute the effort to learn programming and build.

  Judging by that and the fact you throw out "feminist" like it's an insult,
  I'm going to say you've got some pretty heavy bias.

In engineering culture, we consider this disruptive behavior disruptive and call it trolling.

Our consumer culture makes everything so easy and convenient. Our compassion to woman and how nice we are to them allows some of them to take advantage. This is a case of it.

In any case, removing merit from the dictionary won't get you into an engineer position. These tricks and trolls may have worked for special treatment before, but programming will take honest, hard-work and effort.

It's a vicious cycle.

1. First there is a tiny group of feminists, mostly consisting of marketers, call themselves coders, but if you were look them up, they're twittering and having fun more than building. They seem very happy to stir indignation.

2. Then, people in positions of power bend toward the illegitimate trolls who cried wolf. I'm talking, the word "meritocracy" being offensive by github CEO [1], python board members referring to geekfeminism.org as a charter [2] for pycon conferences.

Pack up and go home, these are the leaders, the chiefs, the alphas of engineers - and they are cowing down to politically correct trolls on twitter, who aren't even participants to the causes.

Twitter and blogs allow anyone to claim to be anything. You used to need a degree to Marketer! Now any girl with an iPhone can be one! Twitter lets anyone call themselves a programmer.

However, Github holds people accountable for actually having to program - funny how meritocracy came up as a bad word to these people!

What is really creating a hostile work environment for woman? I can tell you, men who stay silent watching this bogus stuff happen, woman with legitimate skill and talent may be cast off as a liability.

Consider this: if you are a woman, and you would let a bad joke ruin someone's life, or abuse politically correct sympathy as a female to get benefits - is that going to help your cause? If you are a leader or boss, and you let these trolls shape you - You lack backbone. I feel this is a lack of integrity, and they're not fit to lead.

I hope leaders set an example and not feed these attention trolls and call their crap out. These are woman creating a hostile environment for woman who would otherwise feel grateful to earn their way and belong.

[1]: https://twitter.com/defunkt/statuses/426104782894284800 [2]: http://jessenoller.com/blog/2012/12/7/the-code-of-conduct

  It's a funny joke, I love the name.

  Change it.

I feel this, "Change it.", as if you are some castrating, sky-god feels eerie. Like you are some judge of the highest moral purity, when in reality, you're the enemy of purity. You are taking an honest, organic creation and molding it for your own ability to feel powerful on the internet.

Change yourself.

Feel castrated?

edit: What really bothers me here is the "Change it.", it feels like a summary judgment. I don't think the author should be intimidated by popularity or political correctness. If he makes a joke, sometimes is best to own it. Personally, I don't find it funny, but I think it's an O.K. name and helps me remember its an app for reference purposes.

1. English

English is the more topic subject dividing engineers and programmer's from reaching their potential. These are people who are already on their path and passionate about growing themselves into programmers.

Can you imagine how we can help them? Their potential if they have localized documentation?

A story of disadvantage - imagine having an issue and being powerless to articulate yourself to a predominately english-speaking world of engineers. What about their hearts, their passions?

And this is effective, safe. Helps people. Constructive. This is great news man.

Now you see where I'm going?

2. The PC troll issue

I feel tempted to blurt out every emotion. But when a particular group is mentioned - we have to make everyone happy? Why is pycon code of conduct pulled off geekfeminism.org (http://jessenoller.com/blog/2012/12/7/the-code-of-conduct). This is sensitivity not to woman, but I feel it's creating a culture of hysteria.

Truly, I do not believe woman in the first world (I'm sorry if this offends people) are at risk of rape or sexual harassment at conferences. Most conferences do not have codes of conduct that state this because it makes you ask, "Why?". Do these people ever go outside, to starbucks, etc? Do they live in a Chapel away from vulgar language and stringent political correctness? I'm deeply sorry to offend anyone here.

But how do you even get to Pycon if you're in this feminist Cabal? Do you go around in a bubble when you're outside? Especially in SF where radical free expression is so prevalent, it's amazing how the when it gets to the workplace and conferences, women (a select few), pull what we may see as a 180. Now they're ultra-chaste, "triggered"* by humor they probably laughed out at dinners before, especially in front of more confident and boastful company.

I feel I can't talk about anything. I feel it's a sand pit meant to distract and divide. I feel like I can't express myself in the most basic ways.

* Triggered means PTSD for traumatic events in their past. So now it's not a matter of political niche. Ever study cognitive-behavioral psychology? People can link a bad memory to anything!

It's provocative, distracting and subverting - Introducing a politically sensitive, racially charged, artificial problem.

This will incite anger through political correctness. The cause is bogus.

Snubbing it is politically incorrect to criticize women and ethnic minorities in the west.

Non sequitur, PC trolls like this can do as much distracting as they please.

Why not bring up english? There are many people who are engineers who would benefit from localized API and developer documentation and understanding english better.

If you want discrimination in engineering - I'm surprised no one brings up english.

Edit to below: Sorry for editing this after your reply. I didn't notice.