I noticed that in a few places here (and at least one other past post of yours) you used ‘women’ as a singular – is this an error, or is this a conscious choice? If the latter, would you mind educating me regarding your reasons for making that choice, or pointing me to your preferred style guide? Thanks!

I especially appreciate your perspective as a conference organizer on this issue. Thank you for sharing it.

Any more comments that focus solely on the inappropriateness of Richards’ behavior will be removed. You have most of the rest of the internet on which to do that.

If you continue to focus on Richards’ actions in your comments, I will delete them. There are many place on the net where you can kvetch about how poorly she acted. I don’t need to provide another one here.

Adria’s not automagically a victim because she is female. Here, I think she is a victim of a stupid-dongle-joke indeed told inappropriately, but mostly of her own howitzer like PR-campaign overreaction, which spiraled way out of her control. Mr Hank (?) is apparently the other victim of her PR-campaign.

She didn’t mean to get him fired? Huh, what? That’s precisely what she set out to do.

She was supposed to be a diplomat. She wasn’t one. She eve started a war, so I expect that’s what got her fired. Did you read the blackmail notice?

PS. I was sorta expecting to have my argument picked apart, point by point. Not trolled. Sorry.

You say that it was okay for her to come out using a political howitzer to swat a (really smelly) fly because she legitimately feared for her life in a crowded room. If she’d used a gun, would it have been self-defense? What about measured or appropriate response?
I am not a lawyer, be gentle with my use of vocabulary.

Because she did pull out the (political) howitzer, she attracted the attention of those on the planet who do wish her harm, instead of the most likely two harmless fly’s who likely would have been educated by the exchange of “hey not cool, how do you think it makes me feel?”. Sure it feels better (to some people, not me) to blow people away than trying to educate them, but civilization didn’t get built by condoning feuding. Do you want eggshells or equality? Some women say they don’t want the eggshells.

In her own words, she started out by demonizing the two men. She then ended up being demonized herself. I thought the goal was for everyone to treat everyone else as humans? How does automatic escalation cause that to happen?

I was unable to locate the dirty jokes she allegedly tweeted in the days prior to the incident. The dirtiness was probably exaggerated like everything else, but it still seems relevant enough to mention. Humans are human.

I’m a pacifist. I humanize everyone.