If Hank had been making overtly racist comments in earshot of other people is it your opinion that those would be private things the other attendees should have ignored? Of course not. If someone a row in front of you can hear the joke while the speaker is on stage then what you are saying is public, not private, so it definitely falls under the code of conduct. The content of what's being said is irrelevant, be it a joke about big dongles or a racist remark.
Whether they should? I don't know. Maybe. Sexism in tech is a weird and hard problem, and if regulating private conversations helps solving it, then I'm cautiously willing to give it a try.
Whether they do? Yes. From the CoC[1]:
> Be careful in the words that you choose. Remember that sexist, racist, and other exclusionary jokes can be offensive to those around you. Excessive swearing and offensive jokes are not appropriate for PyCon.
> If a participant engages in behavior that violates this code of conduct, the conference organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expulsion from the conference with no refund.
Presumably everyone was there under their own free will, so if they agreed to the CoC and then failed to respect it, well, that's not good.
Define offensive. if I think cat photos are offensive would I be in my rights to kick someone out of a conference? I'm not sure what the "offense" was. If someone says "damn," that might be offensive to my dad, but to my coworkers that might be completely fine.
In this case, there was nothing anti-women or racist that any reasonable person would infer. So where's the line? Perhaps we could create some new Orwellian language for conferences and have everyone in a tape delay so the offensive-content censors would have time to bleep it out. Reminds me of the swearing fines in that movie Demolition Man.
> In this case, there was nothing anti-women or racist that any reasonable person would infer.
No, that's wrong. There are plenty of legal cases where sexual jokes were found to be creating a hostile work environment.
This conference had rules about conduct because of the problem of men making sexual comments to women.
The comment "Hank" made was not appropriate. Just because the reaction and consequences were clearly awful it doesn't mean he was fine to make those kind of comments.
> So where's the line?
Don't make "jokes" about dongles in a voice that can be overheard by anyone but the intended audience, and make sure you know those people well.
Conferences are likely to involve many people from social groups outside your own, with different views on what is acceptable and what is not. That's life...
