> What if I told you that I find the term sausage fest offensive and it makes me feel unwelcome in this community?
If you said that, if you took that position, I would strongly recommend that you do what you can to ignore those kinds of feelings.
It's my belief that women have a natural place in science and technology, but caring too much about social trivia and language (as with the recent PyCon episode) represents a pointless diversion that can only hold women back.
Would you want to be treated by a doctor who fainted at the sight of blood? I think you would prefer one who didn't care about that, who looked beyond it to something more important like a diagnosis and a cure. By the same token, people in science and technology need to be able to look beyond the petty annoyances and focus their attention on more important things.
Wouldn't it be ironic and deplorable if history recorded that an entire generation of highly skilled women didn't enter the ranks of modern science and technology because they sometimes overheard ambiguous remarks about "dongles", "forking" and "sausages"?
To say this in the most concise way, what price sanctimony?
Some people are crass, boorish, crude even. Develop some tolerance. I don't mean suffer in silence either. It's fine to let someone know how you feel. But it's not (IMO) fine to demand that everyone always cater to your extreme sensitivity. I'd personally prefer to be insulted occasionally, rather than having to walk on eggshells for fear of offending someone.
What if I were a woman complaining about sexism in the industry, would you give me the same advice? Several female bloggers have complained about the "don't be so uptight" reply they received to their complaints...
Are you a woman? If so, some people are crass, boorish, crude, jerks even. That doesn't make them right, but try to develop some tolerance. I don't mean suffer in silence either. It's fine to let someone know how you feel, and you definitely shouldn't tolerate, or allow people to make you feel unsafe. But it's not (IMO) fine to demand that everyone always cater to your extreme sensitivity. And, some people are just jerks, even if you can get them to shut up it doesn't make them nicer.
If you are both a woman and crass, and the person persists in annoying you, maybe try telling menstruation-themed jokes or anecdotes. But, if you are both a woman and crass, chances are you don't need me to tell you how to rid yourself of unwanted company.
I have a dream, that one day it will be rare to hold sexist perspectives like the one you just described. In my dream world, the importance of people feeling welcome is independent of that person's gender or that person's sex. I don't know what you meant to say, but what you said is that gender is among the things that you consider most important about participants, when deciding if their feelings matter.
The type of bigotry you just exhibited is way, way down the list of priorities. But most of the higher priorities are complicated and nuanced[0][1], but the thing you said is just straight-up wrong.
[0] E.g. affirmative action is complicated and nuanced.
[1] E.g. assuming a randomly-selected conventional-looking women at a tech convention is not a developer is... totally horrible, but also rational, given the distribution.
Yeah, well, my analysis, then and now, is that you were replying inappropriately to a semi-trollish comment by someone who's probably redeemable.
And actually, if counter-trolling is how you frame your comment, then I have to say, you're doing it wrong. The correct response to trolls is to silently downvote. This is called "don't feed the trolls", and it's the right strategy because genuine trolls are encouraged by counter-trolling, and this would result in more noise and less signal. Alternately you can try to say something that will be useful to other people, while still downvoting and ignoring the troll.
