I'm a man in Canada. I'm not involved with Ada or with any of the conferences mentioned. My use of "we" was meant to indicate that no one banned anything. A conference organizer pulled the plug on a problematic talk. That's not a ban, it's organizing.

Your whole post is indicative of the problem: I didn't come here for debate in the combative sense you're obviously expecting. I came here for discussion. So, yes, lobbing softballs is how that can work--not so they can be deflected, but so they can serve as lead-ins to further points that leaves everyone a bit more knowledgeable. You could have come away from this exchange, not agreeing with Ada or Velvet Blue, but at least understanding how they think they're going about achieving their goals, and what those goals are.

However, you got on to your "stupid or malicious" false dichotomy, and it was obvious that you're looking to score points rather than feel like you know a bit more than you did earlier. So, I take my ball and go home, mainly because debating someone who starts with logical fallacies, likely as a debate tactic, has proven to never be worth my time.

The place to get somewhere was after my comment that we didn't ban anything. Your derail into "look how hostile I can be to the idea" has made me not give a shit about helping you learn.

I have. You're still wrong. They are arguing for not discussing sex in very specific contexts for specific reasons. It's fallacious to extend that to a general proscription on discussing sex.

Here's a third explanation: your dismissal is facile and mistaken. It's not obvious that it's not a good argument. You might think it is; you might be wrong.

Does this style of interacting with people actually work for you?

The Ada Initiative is NOT arguing for anything like what you say. Get your facts right.

The actual argument is the one I mentioned, though the argument is not that "talking about sex openly is harmful in any circumstances". If you find it easily deflected, then good for you.

The Ada Initiative didn't know about the talk until a few hours before it happened, like everyone else. There was no premeditation, and no conspiracy to silence Violet Blue or an interesting talk.

Well, we didn't ban anything. The Ada Initiative takes the position that any sex content at a technical conference is out of bounds and hostile to women--and there's a good argument for that. Women at tech conferences are very much in the minority, sex is generally not a topic within the normal scope of technology, and the geek community has real problems with sexism, creeping on women at conferences, and just generally losing its shit when the topic of women comes up. So the rep from the Ada Initiative talks to the organizers, mentions this and their specific concerns that content of the talk (like use of GHB for sex) could trigger rape victims, and the organizers pull the plug because they're appropriately risk averse on this topic.

So who blew it? The Ada Initiative did by not approaching Violet Blue beforehand. Violet Blue is trained as a crisis counselor and has worked with rape victims. She knows the issues. They could have worked out a way to present the talk without triggering content and with sensitivity to the concern that discussing sex with a room full of geeks could have a negative impact on the women at the conference.

but how does one not survive

By committing suicide. The suicide rate among victims of rape jumps significantly.

Obviously those phrases are part of a culture the general populace (at least me) is not accustomed to using/hearing,

And it would be really beneficial if people like you and geeks in general were exposed to them.

Rape victims often suffer PTSD. People who suffer PTSD can suffer from things that trigger their PTSD response--like a rape victim who sees a rape scene in a movie, or a veteran who hears fireworks and relieves Fallujah. It's a common aspect of PTSD, and as we become aware of it, it's becoming common in some areas, at least, to warn people of triggers in your essay or blog entry or whatever to give them a chance to duck out.

People who survive rape sometimes have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which includes an extreme sensitivity to anything reminding them of their experience (like a rape victim who later sees a rape scene in a movie). There's a growing consensus that, in some circumstances, warning people of potential triggers is considered polite, at least, to give them a chance to avoid it.

You're not rude, but you are ignorant. The variant of pancreatic cancer that Jobs had was much more survivable than the majority case, and his nine-month fruit juice odyssey contributed directly to an early death; had he immediately followed the proper medical advice for treatment, he'd almost certainly still be alive today.

Well done! Now do the Enterprise E against an Imperial Star destroyer.

Wow... First time I've seen a callout to 2 PPCLI over Kapyong. Definitely a high point in Canadian military history.

Because NoSQL isn't an alternative to an RDBMS except where an RDBMS is a bad choice in the first place. They're complementary technologies, doing well what the other doesn't. If you're appropriately set up with MySQL (or Postgres, or Oracle), then any NoSQL solution will be a bad move no matter how mature.