This piece is about as far from “brilliant” and you William are so far from “woke AF” that I wonder if the other commenters know what these terms mean. You’re a mental midget who deserves to be lampooned for your virtue-signalling, white knight, and frankly anti-female behaviour.

Men cop far, far more abuse than women. You’d have to travel a long way down the social heirarchy to find a woman who is under threat of violence in a social situation. Not so for men. It is much more difficult for a man in a male dominated industry because there are no kiddie gloves for men. I know many woman are sensitive to the word bitch, but I would rather be called a bitch than, “dumbc*unt, f*ckstick, dumbf*ck, c*cks*cker, so on and so forth (in the company of men these words would not even register as unusual vernacular). Men get far more creative when labelling each other than they do when aiming the same sentiments at a woman.

Your employer betraying friend, may her behaviour follow her with far more stigma than the odd “b” word at a glorified cocktail party, should have gotten the pasting she richly deserved, rather than the low-resolution “b” word. Something along the lines of: “I found her to be most unprofessional in her conduct. She took a six-month contract with my firm and then opportunistically left after only two. This caused many hardships for me personally, and for the company in general. I would never hire her again, and I would not recommend her as a hire for anyone else.” She got off light at “bitch”. He was basically saying, I don’t like the bitch, but good luck to her in the future. It’s actually a very male behaviour I’ll admit, but NOT a destructive one. His brief venting does her no harm, a thorough expose of her faults as outlined above and the will to disseminate them would be a much more female orientated behaviour; AND far more harmful.

The reason men roll their eyes when a woman gets up to talk at an event like this is because there is already a strong culture of doubt around how she got there, i.e. not on MERIT. Men don’t bat an eyelid when a woman gets up to tell them what’s up is an arena WITHOUT affirmative action (it’s the reason female firefighters in Victoria, Australia campaigned against and rejected affirmative action — they know that they are well-respected because they got their positions on merit, and rationally do not want to destroy that respect). However, as soon as affirmative action is in force, it casts a terrible, clinging aspersion on any woman — or hispanic, or african-american — who dares to open their mouth. It promulates doubt, and the more of these affirmative action recipients who disappoint through their lack of readiness, the greater the doubt.

The best thing for it is to push back against knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathers such as yourself who seem to be ignorant of basic cause and effect. If you keep supporting people into positions on any platform other than merit, you will poison the well for women who do DESERVE to be there. It is QUOTAS and UNFAIR hiring practices that kill men’s respect for women in tech. Go blame yourself.

)