Apologies, this is going to be a wall of text. The most disturbing thing to me about DongleGate is that even Adria Richards' opponents are conceding that the PlayHaven devs were "unprofessional" and "inappropriate." Many self-proclaimed MRAs even accept that if Adria felt the remarks were offensive, she had the right to say something. To all of the above, I say "hogwash." I have worked in numerous professional office environments - (and large megachurches) and I will say with certainty, there is nothing wrong with light bawdy humor in a professional environment. I've never seen an office environment where it wasn't acceptable - possibly because if one were to exist, nobody would want to work there.

The entire notion that it creates a "sexualized environment" which threatens women is 3rd wave feminist claptrap, and nobody who takes it seriously is worth listening to. Most professional women can enjoy or at least ignore such venting. Now, I'll make a few clarifications here. Sexual jokes are not the same thing as sexist jokes. This is the thing all the radfem ambulance chasers on this topic love to intentionally get wrong. If the guys had been saying, for example, that women can't be programmers because their boobs get in the way of their typing, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that 4chan would have been DDoSing PlayHaven. Or at the very least, nobody would have condemned Adria's actions. And the men certainly weren't harassing or threatening her, which is never OK.

But here's where the dumber ranks of feminism and I will disagree - her feeling harassed is not the same thing as her being harassed. And who am I do "deny her experience?" Someone who isn't an idiot with a victim fetish, that's who. If I hear "death by a thousand cuts" one more time, I'm going to punch a metaphorical baby. What should Adria have done? Keep her mouth shut. The PlayHaven devs have nothing to apologize for.

I've heard a lot of people (mostly pseudofeminist "Women in Tech" crusaders like Rebecca Greenfield and the Ada Initiative) claiming that Adria's firing was a "warning shot" to women not to speak up about sexual harassment. That's hysterical propaganda. If there's a warning to women here, let it be this: "Hard working, professional women are very, very welcome in the technology field. Repressed, perpetual victims who look for reasons to be offended - of any gender - are not, and never will be - no matter how much they profess to love technology." That's my opinion, and if the reaction of the tech community over the last few days is any clue, it seems to be prevalent.

Adria's firing was a victory for all people, male or female, who have better things to do in life than waste time attacking people for imaginary slights. And if we're going to leverage this victory at all, we need to stop letting the language of social justice bloggers frame the debate. Sexism, sexual harassment, and workplace equality are real things which have actual definitions, and are not beholden to the subjective opinions of moral crusaders. "Safe spaces," "brogrammers," and "the patriarchy" are not real things. They are imaginary concepts made up by sad, angry people who contribute nothing to the world, in order to fuel their Joan of Arc fantasies.

The recent trend toward "moral codes of conduct" at conventions is conspicuous and troubling. Nobody (myself included) has any objection to making sexual harassment explicitly not OK, but their real purpose was to enable exactly this kind of thing. Watch a speech by Rebecca Watson or Michael Nugent PZ Meyers. PyCon knew what they were doing. I suspect this will be remembered as the event that killed this conference. I hope others get the message.

If you'll note, nowhere in this diatribe have I used any gendered slurs, or taken issue with feminism in general. That's because I don't hate women, and I think feminism is (or at least, was) the greatest force for good in our society since the civil rights movement of the 60's. Some of the best programmers I know are both awesome and female. But this kind of SJW superiority complex indulgence has to stop, and I'm glad that Adria's firing has shown that there are real consequences for dragging your tumblr blog tripe into the real world.

To MRA's in particular, stop pretending the PlayHaven devs did anything wrong, or that anyone was at fault for this clusterfuck besides Adria "The World is Oppressing Me" Richards. It doesn't make you look more reasonable, it just gives the idiots more ammo for their Victimhood Guns. There, that's pretty much everything I have to say on this matter.