Sexism in Tech: A Good Apology is Better than No Mistakes

https://keen.io/blog/42031860734/sexism-in-tech-a-good-apology-is-better-than-no

by mwetzler • 13 years ago

72 170 13 years ago

chunsaker• 13 years ago

This is a great synopsis. There are so many examples of how companies have handles sexist snafus well, compounding the gaffe like this is inexcusable.

dkador8• 13 years ago

It's inexcusable from a PR standpoint. It's sad to think how much more love they could have received from the community.

sp33218• 13 years ago

The women don't exactly look degraded. I can understand how people would be offended by this, but I don't see it being sexist. As they pointed out, both men and women were involved in putting together the booth, so it's not like this is universally offensive to women.

TheCapn• 13 years ago

I understand how it can be offensive and why it is but in this particular situation I can't help but feel the publicity being provided to the company is doing them a favor. Sometimes these campaigns go a little overboard and become zealous when they aren't making much of a difference.

I have never heard of Hyper-whatever. I have now. In 5 months time if I come across their name I may not remember the controversy but I will remember the brand, and they know it.

Its a little different however if their core customer base was the ones in arms, not people like me who have never heard of them. Non-customers rallying doesn't do anything but spread their name about I feel.

mwetzler20• 13 years ago

I wrote the piece and I worry about this too :( My hope is that even if they get more brand awareness out of it, they'll at least think twice about their next booth.

nollidge• 13 years ago

Just because women were involved in creating something doesn't make it not sexist.

sp33218• 13 years ago

Well it's no guarantee, but does make it a lot less likely.

crindy3• 13 years ago

The problem isn't that women are being degraded. The problem is that women are being presented as bodies that can help sell laptop batteries.

sp33218• 13 years ago

Women are bodies, among other things. They can pose for a display for tech junk without giving up other aspects of their humanity. In other words they are not reduced to being bodies, they are just choosing to express that facet of themselves. Tomorrow they'll show off some other aspect.

Edited to add: I'm good friends with a model. She does stuff like this for fun.

randomdata8• 13 years ago

I'm not sure I like that explanation. If the laptop batteries were sold using women's brains, we'd be celebrating how far women's rights have come, despite completely ignoring that women are human and also have bodies.

The real issue here seems to just be a puritanical view of nakedness/sexiness.

Women most certainly do deal with problems in the workplace, but having the ability to choose to stand mostly naked to sell batteries doesn't seem like one of them.

Cowen5• 13 years ago

There are very few things that are "universally offensive." As nollidge accurately pointed out, just because women were involved doesn't mean it's not sexist.

The fact is that this was widely considered offensive and unnecessary, and the CEOs response only made it worse. No one has the right not to be offended, but everyone has the right to speak out and not buy a product for whatever reasons they choose, which is exactly what happened.

Personally, I don't have a problem with naked people in body paint as part of a display; it does everything you want a display to do, it catches eyes and it sticks in memory.

But why did they only choose naked women? There are no painted male models in their staff photo from the event.[1] Was it decided that including naked men would somehow hurt the effectiveness of the display, and if so, why? Certainly there were willing male models, so it seems that HyperMac just steered clear of hiring men. The accusations of sexism (or more accurately, objectification) all springs from that, and the unwillingness of the CEO to even acknowledge that as a concern is honestly disturbing.

[1] http://www.hyperblog.com/2013/01/thanks-for-an-amazing-ces-2...

sp33218• 13 years ago

The complaint in the article was that the display was degrading to the women. Including men in the display just would have degraded men as well as women. It's not a numbers game.

jlgreco11• 13 years ago

Not to say that this is not an issue, but is this sexism in tech... or sexism in marketing?

masklinn2• 13 years ago

Sexism in both?

jlgreco11• 13 years ago

I don't deny that there is sexism in tech, but I can't figure out how this is an example of it just because the product being advertised is in tech. Is there sexism in the razor-blade industry because of how razor-blades are advertised? I can't imagine the people advertising razor-blades and the people manufacturing razor-blades have very much in common.

mnicole3• 13 years ago

My issue here - and why I am glad it's on HN - is because we have this problem in our industry a lot. We question why more women aren't interested in it while we parade them around our conferences or include photos of them in slides barely-clothed. We make very vivid implications that they are just visual stimuli for the taking.

We can go back to that whole Violet Blue Twitter/article debacle wherein she criticized a woman legitimately working at her company's spot on the floor for being a boring-looking booth babe.

In my opinion, the only people that should be doing your advertising for you are your employees. There's no reason to bring human eye-candy to these events in the hopes that it will get a few more customers. I do like PAX's stance where if the "babe" isn't educated on your product as much as you are, she shouldn't be there. At the same time, those are "models" of the characters for your games at a gaming convention, not male or female bodies just standing in a warehouse being ogled to sell unrelated product.

jlgreco11• 13 years ago

I think we would be remiss if we did not consider this in a more bayesian fashion.

Say 90% of all tech companies are using sexist advertising. Big problem; clearly something wrong with tech.

But that is only part of the picture. We have to consider what companies that are not "tech companies" are doing as well. If we see similar levels of sexist nonsense from them, then we should consider the possibility that the "techiness" of tech companies is not to blame and the problem has another cause.

I think it is very likely that this incident is a manifestation of something that is wrong with marketing and corporations in general. This stuff isn't popping up because tech is involved, it is popping up because advertisers are involved and executives okay it.

I feel I should say explicitly that I am not saying this behavior should be permitted "because everyone else is doing it". The behavior is not acceptable, but we should find the real cause.

DirtyCalvinist3• 13 years ago

Interesting here is the automatic assumption that the company should agree with the criticism and apologize. Except for the gratuitous accusation of bad faith, the response is what one might expect from someone who did not agree with the offended's characterization of the situation.

Rather than explain exactly why the display was sexist, this is mostly a combination of condescending hectoring and whining. You have no right not to be offended. If you think that the display was sexist, it is incumbent on you to explain why and not act as though it is obvious to everyone under the sun.

jlgreco11• 13 years ago

Eh, I would say everyone has the right to feel however they wish; be it happy, sad, angry, or even offended.

Now, you are not entitled to have other people care about your emotions, but that is rather a separate issue. If you feel they haven't adequately defended their reaction you are of course free to disagree, but your right to disagree should not be misconstrued as a lack of a right to be offended on their part.

jamesaguilar5• 13 years ago

> Rather than explain exactly why the display was sexist

It should be obvious. I'm not sure, but I think that pretending not to know why people could be offended by this display in this day and age is just willful ignorance. Note: I'm not claiming that everyone has to agree that the display is offensive, but you must at least know why some people think it is.

At any rate, it is not true that every article on gender politics should have to re-explain the basics to people who haven't been paying attention for the last few decades.

> You have no right not to be offended.

I think you mean, "You have no right to be offended," and you're wrong. Of course, it's awful hard to force people to stop offending you, but you absolutely have a right to be offended.

DirtyCalvinist3• 13 years ago

I mean you have no right to an offense-free existence. Otherwise, claiming offense amounts to a heckler's veto, and is chilling and oppressive. You can be offended, and proclaim your offense to your offender, but offense isn't enough to require a change of behavior without an ancillary moral imperative, such as "offending some women is wrong".

On further thought, this post was probably written for an particular community, of which I am not a part, and on whose internal discourse I cannot make demands.

king_jester13• 13 years ago

> If you think that the display was sexist, it is incumbent on you to explain why and not act as though it is obvious to everyone under the sun.

Uh, when someone does something wrong, its not up to the oppressed to explain everything. This is classic victim blaming mentality that seeks to take the blame off of the company putting out sexist messaging and advertising and to place it on women at large. People have a right to be upset at this company and if you feel that people don't you are implicitly endorsing sexism.

EDIT: If you are occupying the position of privilege, you have a duty to go read about why this is sexist and to listen to the perspectives of the people affected (in this case women). You can Google, so don't sit there and demand an explanation before you are satisfied.

Hairy_Sandwich• 13 years ago

One of the key facts I hear about privilidge over and over, is that it is so ingrained in those who benefit from it, that they don't even realize it. So how else are they supposed to understand if you don't explain it to them? Essentially your message then becomes "You're bad but I can't tell you why, you should just know" which just seems like you're wasting their time. If it's worth their time to care, it's worth your time to explain it.

cantastoria3• 13 years ago

If you are occupying the position of privilege, you have a duty to go read about why this is sexist

According to what? The Social Justice Handbook? king_jester please stop lecturing us on how to behave. You are not our proctor. You clearly subscribe to a post-structuralist/Marxist belief system and thankfully most of us do not. What you are doing is equivalent to a Evangelical Christian going into an Atheist discussion forum and telling them all they must consult the Bible to find out why they're behaving incorrectly.

justin66• 13 years ago

> If you think that the display was sexist, it is incumbent on you to explain why

This is a genuinely odd sentiment. The message was written by someone who thinks it is obvious why painted naked booth babes are "mildly offensive," for people who think it is obvious why painted naked booth babes are mildly offensive. Prefacing her message with a treatise on feminist theory 101 (or something) would just add noise to the signal.

In other words, this isn't for you and you can move along. You don't want to experience all of her "hectoring and whining," right? That woman is hysterical!

DirtyCalvinist3• 13 years ago

I actually thought of this after writing the above. It struck me than KeenIO is probably the sort of community where this wouldn't need to be explained.

For better or worse, HN is.

mwetzler20• 13 years ago

Thank you! The first version of the post DID have the explanation. But it ended up being multiple paragraphs and distracting from the point. It is hard to explain without a lot of historical context. It may become a separate post, though I'm not sure how much appetite there is for that based on what happened here today.

davidpayne11• 13 years ago

There is a very thin line between being a feminist and being an asshole. The problem with these women, who claim to be angered by women being treated as objects is that they don't identify the real problem.

Women are attracted to men and men are attracted to women. This is basic nature and no one can change it. Using either to sell a product is not exactly sexism. For example, many deodorants use both male and female models to promote their products.

Sexism in my definition would be when given the same opportunity, when one gender is being paid or treated better than another gender, that would be sexism, because someone is being treated unfair.

What hypermac (the company in question) did was not wrong. They hired models who were for god's sake ready to do it. They were ready to accept money and stand nude on their product exhibit. It would have been unfair if they were treated unfair, or against their will, none of which had happened.

The real problem about women being objectified is that women are ready to be objectified - either for money or for some other form of compromise. This is the real problem. As long as such women exist, the product makers and corporations would obviously use them. So, if you want this to stop, you have to revolt when someone from your own gender (male/female) is ready to represent your gender infront of a public audience and accept to be objectified for money. Don't go after the corporation that hired them, instead ask these people why they let them objectify you, on behalf of you/your gender in the first place. This is the real problem.

I love the way that these rogue women go after men (and vice versa) only because they want an apology to feel superior and write a blog post about it.

I think it must have been a great marketing campaign for HyperMac and the guy was right - These people deserved no apology for this particular event and this particular event alone (please don't generalize this conclusion).

There's a great saying - Any publicity is good publicity. I hope these feminists realize this and stop fucking themselves up like this, publicly.

saraid2165• 13 years ago

> The real problem about women being objectified is that women are ready to be objectified

Root cause analysis, please. Five why's. You've answered one.

wahnfrieden3• 13 years ago

Taking money for something does not mean that you're comfortable with it, that you're not being exploited (unknowingly or not), that what you did was right, that you understand the context of your actions, etc. Being a man or woman does not mean you speak for all men or women.

mwetzler20• 13 years ago

I've never been called a "rogue woman" before. That's awesome. It's funny how women having an opinion is so offensive to some people.

jamesaguilar5• 13 years ago

I love the unintentional imagery of feminists as rebels against the system, with the implication that the rebellion is unjust and the correct behavior would be to know one's role. The term "rogue woman" about someone standing up for equality is so offensive it almost makes me laugh.

olgagalchenko• 13 years ago

Hahahah. The first line is gold. Took the words right out of my mouth.

mercurial5• 13 years ago

> The real problem about women being objectified is that women are ready to be objectified - either for money or for some other form of compromise. This is the real problem. As long as such women exist, the product makers and corporations would obviously use them. So, if you want this to stop, you have to revolt when someone from your own gender (male/female) is ready to represent your gender infront of a public audience and accept to be objectified for money. Don't go after the corporation that hired them, instead ask these people why they let them objectify you, on behalf of you/your gender in the first place. This is the real problem

Either you think objectifying women is wrong, or you don't. If you do, then it's absolutely logical to go after the people deciding to run their marketing campaign this way. You will always find people ready to do whatever if you put enough money on the table. It doesn't mean it's not wrong.

randomdata8• 13 years ago

What I fail to understand is why objectification of the body is wrong, but objectification of the mind is normal, if not encouraged.

We spend a lot of time trying to make individual thought into an interchangeable machine. You don't even have to dig very deep in HN to see people boasting about the benefits of a college education, or why you should drop out, in order to make yourself like just like everyone else, creating an "us vs them" mentality. Then we put the most attractive minds on display for all to see. "Buy this and you can be smart and successful just like me!"

Exploiting a woman to display her body to sell a laptop battery is no more wrong than exploiting a woman to use her mind to create the battery in the first place. In either case, we are not appreciating the person for being a person, just an object that gets the job done.

Women are not free of problems because of their gender, but this case seems entirely about a non-sensical shame of the human body.

king_jester13• 13 years ago

> Women are attracted to men and men are attracted to women. This is basic nature and no one can change it.

Except when, you know, they are gay or on the asexual spectrum.

> Using either to sell a product is not exactly sexism. For example, many deodorants use both male and female models to promote their products.

People aren't objecting to the existence of ad, but rather that this marketing reduced women's bodies to a commercial commodity. Lack of self agency and a women's body as property is a very sexist issue that is present in US culture today and affects many.

> Sexism in my definition would be when given the same opportunity, when one gender is being paid or treated better than another gender, that would be sexism, because someone is being treated unfair.

This is the case today. We have well documented instances of individual sexist treatment and systemic sexist treatment, mostly towards women.

> What hypermac (the company in question) did was not wrong. They hired models who were for god's sake ready to do it. They were ready to accept money and stand nude on their product exhibit. It would have been unfair if they were treated unfair, or against their will, none of which had happened.

Getting a job isn't some kind of process that occurs in a cultural vacuum, a lot goes into why people take on jobs that are sexist in nature. Also, just because the company can hire models for sexist marketing doesn't mean they should.

> The real problem about women being objectified is that women are ready to be objectified - either for money or for some other form of compromise.

This is victim blaming at its prime. You are blaming cultural objectification of women on women.

> So, if you want this to stop, you have to revolt when someone from your own gender (male/female) is ready to represent your gender infront of a public audience and accept to be objectified for money.

This directly against what feminism is even about in the first place. Feminism doesn't proscribe that you attack women who exercise their self autonomy. In fact, telling women to attack other women who act in a way they don't approve of is a common way to sow discord and distract people from the larger social and cultural issues that affect their lives. That is, you are telling people to ignore context and attack other people who are just as affected by our society as they are.

> Don't go after the corporation that hired them, instead ask these people why they let them objectify you, on behalf of you/your gender in the first place. This is the real problem.

That you see no problem with ignoring corporate behavior and attacking individuals speaks a lot about how you feel with regards to corporate domination and control over people's lives.

> I love the way that these rogue women go after men (and vice versa) only because they want an apology to feel superior and write a blog post about it.

Lol "rogue women"

> There's a great saying - Any publicity is good publicity. I hope these feminists realize this and stop fucking themselves up like this, publicly.

So now feminists are fucking themselves up because a company engaged in sexist marketing and people called that out? What's really fucked up here is how willing you are to defend companies and marketing over the actual lives and experiences of people who are directly affected by that kind of sexist marketing.

wizzard• 13 years ago

Why do people accept money to do things? What a great question. That ranks right up there with "Why do prisoners want to escape from prison?"

Everyone has a price. If someone told you they'd pay you a million dollars to stand naked for a few hours in front of a gaggle of lecherous old ladies, I bet you'd do it. Scruples don't pay rent or put food on the table. Maybe your price is higher, or maybe it's lower like these models, but at some point you'd do it.

bitops2• 13 years ago

Cue the usual slew of comments stating "I have a hard time seeing how this is sexism."

Really, there's no need to post these types of stories on HN anymore. The discussion always goes the same way - lots of heated argument, no open discussion, no admission of vulnerability.

Very few men are willing to question the power structure they've been brought up in. If you're born at the top, why bother to question the system?

[EDIT: yeah, I'm grumpy about this today.] [Further edit: when I first posted this my karma was 1129 - let's see where it stands at the end of the day.]

masklinn2• 13 years ago

> Further edit: when I first posted this my karma was 1129 - let's see where it stands at the end of the day.

And you were doing so well until then…

dorkitude4• 13 years ago

I think he means "I think I'm going to get downvoted by a lot of privileged dudes", rather than "I'm gonna get mad points from this!"

dkador8• 13 years ago

Love this. At the very least, you get a +1 from me.

crindy3• 13 years ago

I'm new around here, and I've got to say, this thread has really let me down. All these definitions of feminism and sexism that seem to have been taught by straight white fathers to their straight white sons.

adamors• 13 years ago

I'm also new and until now I didn't actually encounter the angry, hateful sexism on HN that is rampant on Reddit & Co. However with comments like "There is a very thin line between being a feminist and being an asshole." I guess I just didn't look hard enough.

mnicole3• 13 years ago

Welcome Crindy!

HN is great for some topics, but on the issue of women, get ready to cringe. In the same thread where I said I didn't want kids I was told that I would live a miserable life where I would always wonder what I was missing on top of being told that I shouldn't have a problem with not getting a certain job or making less money because the potential for maternity leave is a liability to the team (I don't disagree with the latter in theory, but I'm an individual, not a gender, so if something doesn't apply to me, I shouldn't be reprimanded for it).

There's also at least one member (with a decently large karma score) that goes around downvoting (and often times insulting) every female-looking username in these types of threads. For this reason, many women use gender-neutral names and don't bother engaging in these conversations.

Very embarrassing for the community, we need to do better.

cantastoria3• 13 years ago

Well your racist, hetero-phobic and misandrist accusations aren't helping the situation. Are you coming here from Tumblr?

rjknight5• 13 years ago

The "fathers" to "sons" thing I get, but you have to be straight and white to have an incorrect interpretation of feminism these days? I am _genuinely_ confused by this. Not trolling, I just don't understand this aspect of the discourse.

mwetzler20• 13 years ago

I know what you mean, but the problem is not straight white males, it's everyone. I find MYSELF being sexist at times (and then I catch myself and feel terrible). Seems there's a feminist backlash that has been deeply ingrained into most of us. I hope to write about this soon.

rjknight5• 13 years ago

These days, the pre-emptive "cue the usual slew of comments..." happen first. Then someone feels they have to defend the tech industry against these silly generalisations, and the prophecy is fulfilled.

dorkitude4• 13 years ago

Aaaand, cue the throng of straight, white, upper middle class males, who'll post a hundred aggressive comments like "stop being oversensitive".

jwoah122• 13 years ago

As opposed to these types of comments that attempt to preempt and invalidate the viewpoints of straight, white, upper middle class males because every single one of them obviously can't think objectively.

dorkitude4• 13 years ago

As one of those people myself, I certainly didn't mean to suggest that all straight white males are oppressors, but rather quite the opposite: that all or most oppressors of civil rights in this country appear to be straight white males.

zalzane• 13 years ago

So you're invalidating other people's opinions because of their skin color and gender?

You're never going to be taken seriously when you dismiss the opinions of others based on the not-necessarily-true claim that they hold that opinion because of their skin color, gender, and upbringing.

hoverkraft2• 13 years ago

I agree that it could have been phrased better (dorkitude's post seems to suggest a causal relationship) but I don't think that's what he was really saying.

As people have observed elsewhere in this thread, there's a natural human tendency for the privileged to underestimate their own privilege, and to overestimate the power of other groups. There are several comments in this thread that try to put the blame on women for not defending themselves more effectively, or even for contributing to the problem of sexism (see dizzystar's opening volley). This is flawed in the same way that it would be flawed to shout-down critiques of institutional racism by saying that minorities are as much to blame as white people. Of course there are sexist women and racist minorities. But they and their actions are not on an equal footing with those of the dominant holders of power in this country.

The fact is, in situations of social power imbalance, blaming the victim is an easy, shitty way to avoid addressing hard problems. The very defensiveness being displayed in this thread is further evidence that the members of this community need to calm down, look in the mirror, and consider their own privilege.

(And no, I'm not saying everyone in the HNN community is a straight, rich, white guy, but I think it's pretty clear we have a stilted demography).

slewis2• 13 years ago

HyperMac's response was certainly accusatory, which is probably not good for anyone.

But what if they had just said "We believe our display was not sexist, and we won't be changing anything." Is that any better than "We acknowledge that you think our booth was sexist, and we support anti-sexism in tech, but our display was not sexist and we're not going to change anything" ?

The former at least seems honest, the latter condescending.

dkador8• 13 years ago

I think both of those would be better than their actual response, which was accusatory and hostile.

slewis2• 13 years ago

Totally agree. But the article seems to say that you should always acknowledge and support, even if you disagree. And I think that could come off as dishonest in some cases.

dizzystar5• 13 years ago

Did the fact that all of the models are, in fact, the apparently objectified and degraded women pass everyone up?

Look, I am totally against misogyny and sexism as much as the next guy, but I have a hard time taking these posts seriously on a few counts:

1- A large portion of the marketing industry is based around the "objectifying of women." Women should go out in droves and write long screeds against marketers (pigs?) instead of flooding the marketing companies with their resumes.

2- Stop buying clothes from the long list of fashion companies that are clearly objectifying women to an unrealistic standard of beauty. Oh, right, fashion schools aren't male dominated either.

I love women and I have a lot of female (and male) friends, and I am just as bent out of shape about the way marketing is done as many other marketers (which I am), but you have to call out double-standards when you see them if you are ever going to have an intelligent debate about it. It's very easy to point out a male-dominated industry and call it all sexism, but please look at the very culture you not only built with your sisters-in-arms, but the culture you implicitly support with your dollars.

As for the picture in question. Yeah, I don't see how it sells hard-drives either.

jamesaguilar5• 13 years ago

Re: your point 2. There is a huuuuuuge difference between women dressed in the clothes being marketed sending the message, "You could look like this," to other women, and women placed on pedestals like the product being marketed sending the message, "Buying this hard drive is like buying hot sexy naked me," to a group mainly comprised of men. Huuuuge difference.

Maybe the former is not completely kosher, but the degree is so different that it makes zero sense to accuse someone of not calling out double standards when they mention the one and not the other. Also, it is really silly to tell activists that they aren't allowed to bother you until they have sufficiently bothered everyone else to your satisfaction. Basically all you've done is ask them to go away. It is morally equivalent to saying that people are not allowed to worry about healthcare or the homeless in their own country until the Africa problem is fixed. It's dumb.

Also, plenty of feminists are complaining about the representation of women in fashion. So on top of being bad rhetoric, your objection is wrong on the facts.

> I love women and I have a lot of female (and male) friends

If there was a website called "x-ist-tropes.com", "I have X friends, my mom is an X" would be the #1 trope for almost any value of X. Just don't say it.

dizzystar5• 13 years ago

I can write about sexism in female-dominated industries all day, and there are most certainly sexists pigs of all stripes and all genders. The fact is that the tech industry is a super-easy target for people to jump on, and this is wrong on so many levels it is barely worth writing about anymore. I could write long screeds about being a male in marketing and other industries, but what does it accomplish but upping my view-count?

Honestly, I'm not sure what the Africa thing is about.

rjknight5• 13 years ago

I'm worried that saying "there's a trope for this" is now becoming a trope. "It's a trope" isn't anywhere near as good an argument as "what you just said is really dumb and here's why".

king_jester13• 13 years ago

Women can be sexist towards women just as much as any other kind of person. In fact, some people have internalized misogynist feelings about women as a gender: http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/internali...

Also, people do quite loudly complain about objectification in media, esp. in advertising. Jean Kilbourne does a lecture series about this very subject called Killing Us Softly (trailer is on youtube): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Kilbourne#Works

mwetzler20• 13 years ago

The Miss Representation documentary is REALLY GOOD. If you have a mother, sister, daughter, or girlfriend I'd highly recommend watching it.

mwetzler20• 13 years ago

Are you saying I shouldn't write this post because some women work in fashion? Honestly, I don't understand.

dizzystar5• 13 years ago

No, I am saying that pointing fingers is easy to do and I can point to anything I wish. Blaming others for societal problems when there is clearly issues from within the very people this post defends is wrong-headed. If you want to be taken seriously as a person, I would suggest you learn to take responsibility for your own actions and be an equal opportunity blamer. Look in then look out.

shantanubala• 13 years ago

> 1- A large portion of the marketing industry is based around the "objectifying of women." Women should go out in droves and write long screeds against marketers (pigs?) instead of flooding the marketing companies with their resumes.

It's not that simple. Societal pressure can cause people to behave in ways that are detrimental to their own well-being (especially in a situation where the actual effects are extremely subtle). Question: which job would be more appealing to the average person who identifies as female: a job where she gets to work with other women and not face any criticism, harassment, or judgement for doing so, or a job where she is surrounded by men who (on average) get paid more and hold all of the higher level positions?

Take it a step further: if I'm a women, and I was being objectified, I would prefer to be objectified by women rather than men. I'd prefer to be in a career and a position that allows me to control how I am perceived, if I am going to be objectified regardless of which career I chose.

The current power structure favors men, and it's more the responsibility of those with power to make positive change. It doesn't mean women aren't responsible for their own well-being, but it means that men are more responsible for any detriment we cause when power is in our favor.

saraid2165• 13 years ago

Fun fact: Women are individuals and not a hive mind.

mwetzler20• 13 years ago

haha. I know it seems absurd to say that women are not a hive mind, but I don't know how else to react when someone says something like "if you want people to think x about women, stop women from doing y". As if I wield some kind of influence over women just because I'm a woman. That would be an amazing superpower.

dorkitude4• 13 years ago

To me, your post could be pretty easily translated to another industry & time as follows:

"Got a problem with slavery? Stop complaining about it! And just buy cotton from the Yankees or from the Dutch, ya bunch of whiners."

Drawing maximum attention to the problem is the most important step in solving it. Even stoking seemingly unproductive conversations like this HackerNews thread is an important step, if only because it helps those of us who are on the side of justice practice our arguments.

raganwald• 13 years ago

I'm calling this statement out as nonsense. The fact that this woman or that woman participates in it does not mean it's wrong to call it out. If you don't call it out 999 times in a row, it does not mean you have abrogated your right to call it out the 1,000th time.

There were black slave owners. Did that suddenly make it wrong to call slavery out? many whites said nothing for a century. When they spoke up, should they have remained silent for another century?

This thing can be judged on its own merits without resorting to Ad Hominem Tu Quoque. This statement feels an awful lot like cross-examining a rape victim about her sexual past in an attempt to discredit her as a witness and intimidate other women so they won't speak up in the future.

spitx• 13 years ago

  GitHub is an exceptionally popular open-source community
  where any developer can find code for pretty much
  anything. But there's a problem—some of that code contains
  extremely offensive racist, sexist, and homophobic,
  language.

  A word of caution before you proceed, because these search
  results are very NSFW.

  You don't have to look hard for to find hundreds of
  results for controversial terms of every stripe. Simply  
  inputting racial slurs, misogynistic words turns up code
  in several languages—Java, HTML, Python, Ruby, and so on
  —casually riddled with things like bitch, slut, whore, and
  worse.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5980842/there-is-blatant-racist-and-sexis...

  GitHub is a platform geeks and techies love because it not
  only lets you manage projects but allows you to share your
  code and your projects with the outside world. This kind
  of transparency obviously has its perks as well as its
  downsides—among the biggest is the fact that now we can
  see who's coding what. And we can see exactly how mundane
  racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other kinds of prejudice
  are in the coding world on a granular level.

  GitHub sits in the center of an Open Source community that
  has been dealing with heated ongoing controversy over its
  lack of diversity. In November, BritRuby, a Manchester
  conference of Ruby on Rails coders, was canceled after
  outrage broke out online at its all-male lineup of
  panelists. Ruby coder Sean Handley took to GitHub to
  criticize the online community for bringing down the well
  -intentioned conference with "careless words."

  "Turns out, a lot of the prominent Rubyists are white guys 
  and all of the ones who said they'd like to come were,
  indeed, white guys," he stated. "Making an issue out of
  that is, frankly, misguided."

  Is it an overreaction to make an issue, likewise, out of
  the words being used by GitHub coders? Perhaps. But if
  anything, Morris argues that the issue strikes at the
  heart of nerd culture itself:

  The reason we’re seeing such vicious anti-equality 
  bullshit in the geek community over the BritRuby situation
  and other conference type stuff is because the very
  existence of societal inequalities (against women, racial
  minorities, gender/sexual minorities) threatens the whole
  idea that hackers got where they are because they are
  super-fucking-smart.… A lot of what we call luck boils
  down to us being in groups that don’t face discrimination
  and other problems.

Source: http://www.dailydot.com/society/github-code-search-racism-se...

mwetzler20• 13 years ago

thank you for sharing this!

drakeandrews• 13 years ago

I'm surprised no-one has taken note of the assertion in the title and at the end of the article, that "a good apology is better than no mistakes". Yes sure not making stupid, sexist decisions and never get all the publicity. However when a [person/group/company (delete as appropriate)] does something bigoted, even the best apology still leaves them several notches below where they started beforehand.

Torgo• 13 years ago

This is a transparent promotion for the nonprofit mentioned in the article.

mwetzler20• 13 years ago

It's not, but even if it was that wouldn't be a bad thing. They need as much support as they can get because they are doing very good work.

mwetzler20• 13 years ago

Anybody know why this post instantly dropped from page 1 to page 4?

Is it a bot or does someone really not want this conversation on the front page?

sp33218• 13 years ago

If a story gets flagged a few times it drops off the front page. If it gets flagged more it's killed. I think this is all automated.

hoverkraft2• 13 years ago

One point nobody seems to have touched on: men should be just as pissed off about the "booth babe" thing as women. A company using this tactic is basically telling the straight men at a conference to think with their dicks, not their brains.

It's taking a product that could only exist through cultivating the higher functions of the human mind, and selling it by appealing to our basest lizard-brain instincts. It'd be like marketing a product by having two gladiators fighting to death in front of the booth. Impressive, but a step backwards for the species.

And yes, it's totally degrading to women as well. Even if the models involved were willing/wanted to participate.

Sexism in Tech: A Good Apology is Better than No Mistakes

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