At PyCon, two (male) friends were talking privately. One of them made a joke comparing "big dongles" to a phallus. Their photo appeared all over Twitter with allegations of sexism and one of the men was fired soon after. He now has a wife, three kids, and a tarnished reputation.
Adria Richards used her soapbox as a developer evangelist at SendGrid to spread a covertly-taken photo to her thousands of Twitter followers (http://imgur.com/aiXK5SU is the first in a series; the "forking" reference turned out to be a fabrication). She never exchanged a word with the men.
From the response online it appears that most are in agreement that a phallus joke is immature but not sexist. The fact that it was a private conversation between two friends should make this even more clear.
In fact, the next day she made a phallus joke herself (http://imgur.com/7XGY8wB). This suggests that her motivations may be questionable.
This is hugely damaging to the community for a number of reasons:
- Anyone can post a photo of you an