Ugh, both this and the original post disturb me greatly. I sense a good deal of hypocrisy and bad faith on both sides (though much much more so on the, and excuse the terminology but I can't think of any better, "anti Adria" side).

The original story should have been a good one:

PyCon has codes of conduct, and procedures in place if those are not followed. Some jerks weren't behaving appropriately, it was settled in a fair and appropriate manner - everyone wins!

It was slightly ruined when Adria decided to, apropos of nothing, go outside those procedures by posting pictures of the "offenders" on her twitter and complaining about them.

This is bad for a variety of reasons. It's a response that, relatively speaking, is a "punishment" that was disproportionate to the offense. It's a little hypocritical as it shows little consideration for the various people in the photograph both "innocent" and "guilty". For example, someone in the picture may have a stalker. Showing up in the background of some random pictures at PyCon would be a bit risky, but largely acceptable. Appearing in the foreground of a picture of picture tweeted on a popular stream and discussed widely is much more risky. In some cases such a response may be appropriate, from everything Adria said in her post it seems a relatively disproportionate response.

More importantly though, she didn't give a chance for the proper mechanisms to work...it spoils the victory. This could have been an issue of everything working as it should but now, while the outcome at PyCon (the inappropriateness was stopped) was good...it's slightly hollow.

The other disturbing thing is there is a small degree of hypocrisy and bad faith in Adrias original post. The focus on women as opposed to creating an appropriate environment for EVERYONE is a little disappointed. As noted elsewhere in general terms women are absolutely disproportionately affected by this sort of thing in general...but this was a case where gender is less important (contrasted to something like "booth babes" or pornography) and was a good opportunity to make this into a discussion about how it's also important to make EVERYONE feel welcome as opposed to a "boys vs girls" framing which can be toxic to productive conversation.

I have full confidence that Adria was acting almost entirely in good faith. I don't think she had anything personal against these guys, nor does she sit around hoping to be slighted or wronged so she can blog about it. However it's hard to sense any good faith reason to post the picture to twitter...it seems to be entirely punitive. It wasn't out of exasperated impotence because she hadn't even tried the proper channels. I likewise doubt it was for "help in identification" since she published it immediately when it was unnecessary. Also it's hard not to detect a little bit of glee in there, she clearly envisions herself as a crusader "sticking it to the man".

Everything Adria did is absolutely understandable, the sort of thing we all do. I agree it would be nice if she could have said something and resolved it there...however that's not reasonable to expect. There are a variety of legitimate reasons why she may not have been able to...and why it may not have been a good idea regardless. Simply going and talking to the appropriate person of authority should be enough.

As an activist I find the idea of losing empathy with those you disagree with extremely dangerous and counterproductive. It happens to all of us sometimes, it's just important to see it when it happens and check it. Likewise it's important to try and react appropriately/follow the correct channels. You won't always be able to...but we need to recognize when we mess up and apologize if necessary.

I don't think I need to spend much time discussing why this post and much of the response to Adrias original post disturb me. A lot of it is based purely in misogyny, reactionary, hateful, etc. I don't think it's hard to see a lack of empathy in this post, or an excessive eagerness to attribute negative motivations to Adrias actions.

So we end up with a victory that was deflated a bit by classic ills of activism, and then a possible productive discussion of those ills ruined by misogyny. As much as I hate to say it I do hope Adria apologizes - her actions certainly could use one and it would take the ammo away from those who would use this as ammunition against the cause she was working for in the first place.

I hope the person who wrote this post, along with the authors of the hateful replies apologize too...but I'm not holding my breath on that one.