Here's the part where I play a serious suggestion off as a joke, because I know no one will take it seriously no matter how I put it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuBWbpTJRqk

And here's the part where I address obvious arguments against it, to try to save everyone some time:

0. You're seriously suggesting that people who threaten, sexually harass, or otherwise behave toward women in tech, in such fashion as to (at the very least) necessitate posts like Ms. Frazelle's, should be doxxed, confronted in person, and beaten.

Doxxed and confronted in person, certainly. But let's not lose all sense of nuance; I think beatings for a first offense are a little disproportionate, unless the first offense is itself exceptional.

1. This is vigilantism!

No, this is a community choosing to police itself in a more vigorous fashion than has previously been the rule. Vigilantes, historically speaking, tend to (literally and figuratively) shoot first and ask questions later, if at all. I think that's wildly disproportionate here, and that the mere suggestion of potential real-life consequences, for this sort of malbehavior, will almost certainly produce a remarkable change in the extent of bullshit that women in our industry find aimed in their direction.

2. This is a problem for the police to handle!

Let me know when they start!

3. Doxxing is a crime!

Some actions which might be taken in the course of a doxxing attempt are crimes, to be sure. But you might be surprised how much you can lawfully, with a little effort, learn about someone who doesn't put a lot of thought into anonymizing himself because, after all, who's going to come after him for something as trivial as trying to chase someone out of an entire industry because she happens to be female?

4. Assault is a crime!

Oh, certainly. I think it's entirely possible to have a reasonable conversation with someone, in the course of which is offered advice on patterns of behavior which would be frankly better for everyone involved, without trespassing into the realm of assault proper.

5. Battery is a crime!

It sure is. And, of course, all dry sarcasm and deadpan humor aside, I would absolutely never encourage anyone to commit a crime.

On the other hand, I grew up in a place and a time where anyone who behaved in too excessively unacceptable a manner did so at risk of receiving more than merely verbal chastisement from the members of his community; put simply, someone who made himself enough of a stench in the nostrils of his fellows, for long enough, could expect them eventually to respond to his misbehavior in vigorous enough fashion to leave bruises.

In no small part as a result, the place and time where I grew up were, and the place largely remains, known for the politeness and courtesy characterizing social interaction there, and such methods as I allude to above are hardly ever actually necessary in practice; for the most part, the simple knowledge that such a response might occur suffices to prevent it actually needing to.

Granted, very few in the tech industry have personal experience of such robust social interactions, and I think I don't go too far in saying that there's a certain squeamishness around the subject. On the other hand, given that nothing else yet tried has worked worth a damn, I think we'd be short-sighted to dismiss such ideas entirely out of hand.

6. Two wrongs don't make a right!

Perhaps, but I've never understood the perspective from which it is wrong for members of a given society to correct misbehavior which fails to live up to that society's avowed standards.

Of course, given the rather pathetic extent of our industry's accomplishments in preventing the kind of behavior under discussion here, anyone could be excused for imagining that, collectively, we don't give as much of a damn about this kind of abhorrent behavior as we claim we do.

7. Women don't need this sort of white-knighting from men in the industry!

Perish the thought! Frankly, I am too often embarrassed and ashamed to admit myself a member of an industry where behavior such as this is acceptable to any extent -- even by the people who actually engage in it. That I should, even in jest, feel myself moved to write a comment like this one, is frankly mortifying.

Put simply, if our industry were composed of the professionals we flatter ourselves it is, I wouldn't have written this and you wouldn't be reading it. If you feel yourself personally insulted by that statement -- good! You should, because you, too, bear a share of the responsibility for letting such abhorrent behavior run effectively unchecked.

There's too much of that behavior, too widely spread, for anyone to argue that it's "just a few bad apples". Our industry has a problem. As members of that industry, we have a responsibility to address it. Some of us are trying to live up to that responsibility. Most of us aren't. I'd like to see that change.

8. But this kind of response will just make things worse! Even if you do confront this scum in person, they'll just take it out on the women they're already abusing.

That's not impossible, but I think it's also not at all likely. It's long been recognized that anonymity is tremendously empowering, for good or ill; the perceived absence of risk seems to be what drives a lot of the venom we see directed at women in our industry. Too, if anonymity weren't a major enabler here, we would see the people who spew this filth doing so under their actual identities, and likely in public, as well.

That being the case, I think taking that cloak of anonymity away should have a very strong effect on the people who engage in this kind of behavior. In short, I should think it'd scare the hell out of them!

It's one thing, after all, to talk shit when you know you won't ever have to live up to it. It is quite another to talk shit when you can be reasonably sure that you will. In my own experience, and in my observations of others, this latter condition tends to result in a healthy degree of circumspection, something I think is long overdue here.

9. But you can't change people's minds this way, only their behavior! They'll still find ways to mistreat their female colleagues -- they just won't be able to be as overt about it.

True enough, but also an example of the perfect as an enemy of the good. And besides -- honestly, if someone's an asshole enough to do this kind of shit, he's already using whatever other methods of abuse he has at hand. Just because we can't take all of them away at once doesn't mean that taking away a cheap, easy, and disproportionately filthy one isn't worth doing.

--

And, of course, there are all kinds of hairy details I haven't addressed here, not least because I'd like to think I can keep at least one or two people reading all the way to the end. Lest we forget, this comment is written entirely in jest, and any extent to which you take seriously anything herein is entirely your responsibility.

Even if you think it's totally stupid and wrongheaded, though, I'd take it as a favor if you respond by offering a suggestion which

a) hasn't been already tried and found useless,

b) offers some prospect of success, and

c) isn't just more of us all sitting around beating our gums about how terrible this is, while largely not bothering to try to do a damn thing about it.

Come on! This is our industry. This kind of rampant shitty behavior is our responsibility. It's up to us to find something effective to do about it, and do it. Sure, I've made a stupid suggestion, but at least I've made a suggestion. If you want to tell me my suggestion is stupid, great! When you're done doing that, make a sensible one.