Totally agree with your first 3 sentences, can't agree with the last. Finding the courage to stand up and directly address someone who is making you feel uncomfortable - especially if you're a minority in a certain environment - takes a lot of courage and absolute certainty that you're not going to get a mouthful of abuse back.

(I think talking directly to the conf organisers/staff would have been the preferred route, personally.)

> Finding the courage to stand up and directly address someone who is making you feel uncomfortable [...]

She didn't. Instead of directly addressing them and giving them a chance to explain and apologize, she instead proceeded to put them in a public pillory. That's the opposite of courageous, it's malicious, sneaky, and underhanded.

I know what she did. I didn't say I agreed with her approach (quite the opposite, in fact).

Handling it personally makes a lot of sense. I have children, I don't teach them to immediately run to authority the minute they are offended. You should be able to confront/request somebody behave appropriately without them "giving back a mouthful of abuse". And therein lies the key, if they give you back a mouthful of abuse, then take it higher up. There are absolutely situations where going directly to conf organizers and staff is appropriate, but this doesn't seem like one to me.

I also have children, and I'm not sure how it's relevant.

Of course you SHOULD be able to tell someone you're offended without the risk of backlash, but it's always a risk. Clearly Adria decided to handle that risk in a different way than you or I would have.

It's relevant because talking directly to people and not tattle-telling is part of growing up, and it's unfortunate this wasn't done.

It doesn't mean she isn't grown up though as this is just one non-representative tiny slice of two people's entire lives. Honestly, I didn't get a chance to update my message, but another question (seen here and elsewhere) is probably more important: "Why isn't the story about her life being threatened over this?" That's the more ridiculous part of this story.

If all she had done was go the organizers, we wouldn't be talking about it.

But if she was scared, why would she tweet using her real account.

That is in fact what happened. PyCon posted a statement afterwards (http://pycon.blogspot.ca/2013/03/pycon-response-to-inappropr...) that said "Both parties were met with, in private. The comments that were made were in poor taste, and individuals involved agreed, apologized and no further actions were taken by the staff of PyCon 2013. No individuals were removed from the conference, no sanctions were levied."

The problem is that things didn't stop there.

That is exactly why tweetshaming is so bad. Because you're basically throwing chum in the ocean and disclaiming that you're responsible for the shark frenzy.

What wasn't cool? Making a joke about a human body part to a friend that was accidentally overheard? Didn't she make a similar joke on a far more public forum than Hank did?

If it was me I'd have said something like "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it to offend you, I didn't mean it to".

But yeah, your one works too ;)