Kathy Sierra Threatened
Posted by
Kevin
I don’t really have anything substantive to add to this conversation, but I just wanted people to be aware of it. A female technical writer had to cancel her presentation at ETech because she was receiving death threats. Kathy Sierra is a top notch writer and a very smart person. I read her regularly and even when I don’t agree with her she makes me think about my profession.
And yet a group of people hate her so much that they would trip over the line into a vile, sexually depraved attacks and threats. And what brngs about this rage? Honestly? I would have to guess its a personality disorder of some kind. Because, again, Ms. Sierra writes about the software industry! How far down the rabbit hole do you have to be that disagreements about OO send you flying right off the edge of sanity into Hannibal Lector territory? It’s insane and I hope the cops catch the SOB responsible. No one should be afraid because they have an opinion — especially an opinion on how to write code.
Edited to add: And while this isn’t the largest point, don’t for one minute think that the fact that Ms. Sierra is, in fact, a Ms. has nothing to do with the treatment she has received. There are still some men who resent the fact that woman are daring to become successful in the technical fields. I’ve worked with the b*stards and there are a lot more of them than you would think. The highly sexualized nature of many of th attacks also suggests that what really gets some people’s goat is that the opinions are coming from an uppity woman.
2 points:
1. The person or people that did this are sick and twisted individuals that need help in a big way.
2. The addistion of the point in the Edit was useless and adds nothing to the discussion. It may even distract from it. If I’m not mistaken, there was at least one woman involved in the site. Threats of that kind of action against anyone is stupid regardless of gender.
Comment 3/27/2007
Crossing over the line…
Kathy my thoughts and those of my readers go out to you. Folks, if you are reading this, please stop by her site and show her some moral support….
Trackback 3/27/2007
[…] Lean Left, Winds of Change.NET, Scobleizer, protein wisdom, Pandagon, Polimom Says, Creative Think, Althouse, Tennessee Guerilla Women, NewsBusters.org, Feministing, Feministe and Majikthise […]
Pingback 3/27/2007
BigU, do you think that the sexual threats are only incidentally sexual? Can you cite any instance of hate speech involving women raping men? How about even a man being described as sexually promiscuous except in the case of a particular complaint of sexual impropriety? (E.g. saying somebody shouldn’t be elected because he’s a philanderer isn’t the same as calling somebody an oozing cunt for advocating open source software.)
Do you see no difference between threats of murder and threats of rape? You don’t think the inclusion of rape threats in any way pertains to the nature of the problem?
(Also, death and rape threats really aren’t “stupid”. This isn’t a matter of prudence, but a matter of criminality.)
Comment 3/27/2007
Dan M. My points were as follows:
1. There was at least one woman involved and for all anyone knows, the threats, though sexual in nature, could easily come from a female masquerading as a male. Identifying gender in this instance is not in any way useful.
2. Any threats against any gender are wrong and in my mind stupid (lacking in intelligent thought or common sense).
Comment 3/27/2007
I’m sorry, but I can’t find anything sexist in this event. To find anything sexist, you would need to parse the text of the threat. However, the text of the threat consists of psychotic ravings. Psychotic ravings can use any mix of vocabulary, racist, sexist, religious, ufologist, mathematical, what-have-you. What you end up with is the same regardless: psychotic. A nut hates Ms. Sierra and, most likely, other people too.
Now, having a violent lunatic on your case is no picnic, but connecting it somehow with sexism would be to enter the world of the lunatic. Ms. Sierra has been dragged in there, and that’s terrifying, but we don’t have to follow. We can do much more good out here where the clear light of reason may shine upon our activities.
Comment 5/22/2008