Sexualized jokes like this--and mind you, this isn't defending or excusing Richards's actions, which I find unconscionable--do enforce stereotypes around who's allowed to participate. "Overwhelmingly masculine culture," for lack of a better phrase, encapsulates that sort of behavior, and it's historically and to this day exclusive of women. You are asking for diagrams, you are asking for logic, about something that's got hundreds, if not thousands, of years of baggage. This isn't something you can feed into your Turing machine. When people say you're hurting them, you need to accept that rather than trying to reason yourself into "well, I'm really not." That's just part of being a decent human.

None of that is to say this should have been a huge thing--of course Hank shouldn't have been fired, and had his employers acted like adults I don't think this would have spiraled as it did. But Hank's still wrong. That doesn't make him a bad person, and I think, from reading this and some other stuff, that he understands his error in this thing. I'm wrong all the fucking time about this stuff. But I suck it up, I make good on my mistakes, and I do better next time.

Question away, I don't live in the US and I have no intention to. I was under the impression that this could, indeed, be handled by a court of law or the police; today I learned, I guess :) but even so, I don't think it takes away my point.

Racism and sexism are very legal around here as well, because they are personal opinions. Wrong as as hell, but the state is (fortunately!) not in the business of righting wrong opinions. What is illegal (or considered as an aggravating circumstance) is making someone the victim of those opinions: firing someone because he's black or implying that someone can't be promoted because she's a woman and women are only good for sex and cooking.

> When people say you're hurting them, you need to accept that rather than trying to reason yourself into "well, I'm really not." That's just part of being a decent human.

I obviously do not disagree with this. I also believe, however::

* That this is not what happened in Hank's case. This was a private conversation that was overheard. Have you honestly never cracked a sexist joke with a friend in a bar? A racist joke? You sure you never laughed a bit too hard at that picture about Irish yoga? Alcoholism is no joke!

* ...and if empathy is indeed the solution, why would it not go both ways? When people say you're hurting them, why does it flow only in terms of "I'm sorry I hurt you, I am going to stop" and not also in terms of "He seems like an allright guy though; perhaps he didn't want to hurt me?"

I'm not talking out of my ass here: I have a very obvious defect in my left eye (crippling enough that I cannot e.g. hold a driver's license, and sometimes embarrassing enough that I drop or hit objects because my depth perception sucks), and I was the target of many mean jokes, both as a child and as an adult. I also understand, however, that there is such a thing as a harmless joke, and I am firmly convinced that not understanding that wouldn't mean "I'm accepting and acknowledging my condition". It would just mean I'm a bitter asshole. And, if I were to react with anger or disappointment when I hear someone behind me saying that the guy on stage should put his glasses on because the color scheme of his presentation is ridiculous, everyone around me would really be right to treat me like an asshole.

Upon hearing something along the lines of "In the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king", the correct, normal reaction of someone who is socially responsible is not to instantly go into a fleeting rage of hurr durr this is offensive. I'm emotionally mature enough to tell when someone wants to offend me -- and if I weren't, I honestly don't think society should indulge me. We don't indulge many other symptoms of emotional immaturity. This shouldn't get special treatment.

Sexist and racist jokes? No, I don't, and I don't associate with people who use them. Now, and this is important: I didn't call Hank's joke "sexist", I called it "sexualized", because I think intent does matter. I don't think Hank's intent was sexist. But Hank needs to understand that a joke like this with a sexual context, in the absence of mitigating factors, does contribute to that just-us-guys, implicitly-othering culture that doesn't need to outright say "no girls allowed" to make it feel that way. That culture is not only kind of deleterious in general, but just wholly inappropriate in professional a setting. It's a crap joke, and one that I can easily understand being hurtful and exclusionary. In a managerial position, I wouldn't fire Hank for it, but I'd probably have given him a ration of shit for poor judgment.

It's important for me to stress that this is not to say that you cannot joke about sex or race. But it's not funny when you punch downward. Louis CK is a wonderful example of this. His jokes reference women and minorities all the time--but the jokes aren't about them, they're about him and his reactions to them based on his own personal context. He's asking us to laugh at him, not to laugh at the person who is, by and large, probably getting a way worse deal in life than he is. Lots of his fans don't get that, and this is also why Dave Chappelle walked away from Chappelle's Show: it's hard to do that kind of comedy when your audience doesn't get the joke.

> We don't indulge many other symptoms of emotional immaturity. This shouldn't get special treatment.

When it's the result of four hundred years (and more, really, but let's just be geographic here) of concerted activity on the part of society to constrain and hurt the people we consider less privileged today, I think it's not unreasonable to expect understanding and respect on the part of the people who've profited from it. Even setting aside the personal context described in the article, there is a metric shit-ton of cultural context in both tech and in America as a whole that means that somebody like me is starting at third base when somebody else isn't even getting out of the batter's box and it's neither just nor fair for me to use that against them when they react accordingly.

I am a straight, white male. I have it really good in the United States. I recognize that others do not. It is not my obligation to cape for other people, but it is my obligation, and Hank's, to not be an asshole. And that's a really low bar to hurdle.

I'm sorry, but I find that very hard to believe. Of course, I'm sure that you don't associate with people who routinely crack sexist or racist jokes (neither do I, and I think we have the same reasons), but "never laughed at a racist joke" is unlikely to be true, even if you so much as watched Tom and Jerry when you were a kid.

I'm sure you never laughed in good humour at something you perceived to be racist, but are you so certain that there is no one who holds the bar as low as you do? For everyone? Remember that scandal with the Super Bowl commercial, where they sang America the Beautiful in nine languages, and every ultra-conservative man was offended? Were they wrong?

> Now, and this is important: I didn't call Hank's joke "sexist"

You didn't, but I'm pretty sure the accusations brought to him were of "sexism", not "sexualization".

> But Hank needs to understand that a joke like this with a sexual context, in the absence of mitigating factors, does contribute to that just-us-guys, implicitly-othering culture that doesn't need to outright say "no girls allowed" to make it feel that way.

"Was a private conversation" is a pretty mitigating factor in my book. Even in a professional setting.

> It's important for me to stress that this is not to say that you cannot joke about sex or race. But it's not funny when you punch downward. Louis CK is a wonderful example of this. His jokes reference women and minorities all the time--but the jokes aren't about them, they're about him and his reactions to them based on his own personal context.

I'm preeeetty sure Hank's point was also not offensive towards women, either. He literally made a joke about cocks. Should I also be offended, because he was kind of implying that, as a man, I'd probably stick it everywhere? Come on...

> When it's the result of four hundred years (and more, really, but let's just be geographic here) of concerted activity on the part of society to constrain and hurt the people we consider less privileged today, I think it's not unreasonable to expect understanding and respect on the part of the people who've profited from it.

I don't think you are wrong, I just think that woman's interpretation of this was extremely hypocritical. I cannot sympathize with that washed out a reaction. Throughout her life, and that of her mother, and that of her grandmother, women have had pretty much equal rights. Everyone she can remember has literally had more rights in her own country than my grandfather had in his (for political and historical reasons). If she claims to be offended by this kind of stuff, she is the one who's being an asshole, exactly like that kid in school who was butthurt by everything that didn't fit his temper was an asshole.

What's important to realise is that we live in a society that is inherently sexist (that much is clear simply from the statistics), without really having many 'sexists' in it as you would normally define them. Nobody walks around saying (or even thinking, I suspect) that they hate women. The only sensible conclusion is that the bias is a product of our inherent subconscious prejudices, and unfortunately that's really hard to combat because it means we have to inspect every part of our behaviour to try to make sure we're not doing something that puts minorities at any more of a disadvantage.

I'm not defending the really extreme feminists who can definitely go way overboard, but I can understand where they're coming from -- how else do you fight this institutionalised bias that puts you at a significant disadvantage for your entire life? I don't think anyone has a great answer right now, and that has to be so frustrating. As a white male who's never faced much discrimination, it took me a very long time to empathise with that, but I think it's important.