This is a timeline of sexist incidents in geek communities including:

See Timeline of geek feminism for the development of geek feminism itself.

(Mary Gardiner explains the reason for this list in Why we document, originally on the Geek Feminism blog.)

1963

The Great Breen Boondoggle: Walter Breen excluded from Worldcon as he was judged (correctly) to pose a threat to children.

1973

Lena Söderberg's photograph is first used in image processing experiments.

1982

Custer's Revenge (rape simulation game) released

1988

1989

1993

1996

1999

2000

2001

2002

F.I.R.S.T. Robotics groping incident (Technology industry & education)

Debian mencal incident: longer developer discussion of usefullness of little tools to support women in menstrual period calculation

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

October Penny Arcade announces Dickwolves tshirts; Courtney Stanton announces Dickwolves Survivors Guild tshirts in protest



November Noirin Shirley ApacheCon incident



2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

June OpalGate incident



July French Wikipedia discussion about removal of a domestic violence mention on Thomas Piketty page. Andrea-ritsu's tumbler post on Nintendo's Fire Emblem Fates. (here too) [TW drug, consentment] The author explains that the scenario allows the player to "drug" one of the lesbian character to make her see women as men. The author is targeted by Gamer Gate proponent. Jessie Frazelle's blog post describing the harassment and threats she received as a Docker core maintainer is published. She later leaves her position at Docker to join Mesosphere. Mesosphere's CEO is Florian Leibert, who assaulted Noirin Plunkett in 2010. Ellen Pao resigns from CEO position at Reddit. Users wanted her to step back as CEO, officially because she was hold responsible of Victoria Taylor (Ask Me Anything creator) eviction in the company but this narrative is put in question. On the other hand Ellen Pao removed some fat shaming and racist subreddits and this makes her unpopular for some communities. This article [TW:Online abuse] sums the situation up.



September @irongeek_adc, responsible for A/V for some computer security conferences, accused of sexism https://twitter.com/HackerHuntress/status/639224664225546240, claims "Cries of sexism that's not there is one category. Examples: Donglegate, Shirtgate, Yogagate" https://twitter.com/irongeek_adc/status/639218545897930752, is called out by others https://twitter.com/McGrewSecurity/status/639167304819994624 https://twitter.com/RSWestmoreland/status/641707740704952321 BSidesLV subsequently issued a statement and no longer plans to work with him for future conferences. Katherine Moussouris files lawsuit against Microsoft for gender discrimination



November Ceylon code of conduct Automated script "smack my bitch up " that sends text messages with a random string after 9pm and the respective discussion about...the title.



December IBM "#HackAHairDryer" campaign to encourage women in tech is criticized for sexist stereotypes



2016

January R developer Oliver Keyes announces he's leaving the project after core team members dismissed a request to change a sexually explicit variable name.



March Neil deGrasse Tyson tweets that any species for whom sex was painful would go extinct, then doubles down and defends his statement in an interview. Leaving aside non-human species, sex is painful for many humans, especially women. Minimizing or denying this is an example of rape culture in practice. Dragos Ruiu, operator of the CanSecWest security conference, hands out cards advising attendees to perform a "Slut Check" for wireless access points with poor authentication YET ANOTHER Game Developers Conference (GDC) party features sexualized women dancers. This time they are wearing schoolgirl uniforms and the party is sponsored by Microsoft. Adam Shostack confronted at RSA 2016 Conference in SF - accused of drugging a woman at ISC2 Security Congress 2014 in Atlanta. This is the third complaint against him as documented at ADAMSHOSTACK.COM and includes hospital records of the woman who had an allergic reaction to something she believes was put in her drink and a video clip of part of the confrontation by her angry boyfriend. Lambdaconf incident



June Jacob Appelbaum rape report



July Nvidia exec "jokes" that a young woman does not know what GPU is.



August (CW: domestic abuse) Startup CEO Gurbaksh Chahal convicted of domestic violence

October Harassment incident involving Babak Nivi, AngelList founder and board member at poolside party - precise details unclear as covered by non-disparagement agreement, but reported on by NY Times here.

November Computer hardware company Razer tweets a sexually-explicit "joke" advertising a product. Razer fans proceed to harass women who voice concerns about the tweet. They later deleted it.

December Prominent Drupal event in Germany intended to give away issues of the German edition of Playboy to all attendees as part of the swag (along with industry-related material). They removed the magazines after complaints and issued an apology. The Drupal Community Working Group subsequently issued a statement on the matter. A senior Oculus executive was arrested in Washington State after soliciting sex from a police officer he believed to be a fifteen-year-old sex worker.



2017