Jessica Livingston’s Pretty Complete List on How Not to Fail

This is such a great comment! It should really be an article in itself. I pretty much agree with everything you said here.

Great insight.

> But MEN hired these showgirls, and WOMEN are actually fufilling [sic] those roles. So both parties are at fault.

There was a pretty good article written by a woman who was hired as a dancer to attend a convention who was lectured by one of the female attendees. Her point was that she had a right to make a living too, and it's just as destructive to bash a woman who works for a conference floor, as it is to assume a woman who attends a conference is there as a "showgirl."

Not everyone can be an engineer, and not all jobs make ends-meet, so throwing women who are working tradeshows under the bus is just another form of sexism.

edit to add:

https://makirollschopshop.com/2016/03/21/a-dancers-thoughts-...

this is true. I'm actually non judgmental of dancers and even strippers. I mean, for the same reasons you just said.

but should this be an advertising mechanism at a tech conference? if you need a dancer to advertise your startup, then you probably have a shitty startup because your product doesnt speak for itself.

So no I'm not against dancers in general, or even strippers, but there is a time and place for everything, is a tech conference the time or place for dancers? I would say probably not.

When I say "demeaning to women in tech" I mean WHILE AT A TECH CONFERENCE, for women to be default assumed to be in an auxiliary role because most women at tech conferences are hired to be in auxiliary roles, is demeaning.

I'm not making a statement about appropriate sexual behavior. I am a liberal feminist and I believe women should be able to do whatever they want with their bodies, and sympathise with women who don't get the opportunity to educate themselves, and also support women who willingly choose other paths. The female body is a wonderful thing and can be enjoyed by whomever she feels comfortable sharing it with. In South Korea, prostitution is a respected career and feminists in south korea even lit themselves on fire in protest of trying to outlaw it because they believed it was encroaching upon their freedoms. Awesome for them. One of the girls on my old sports team just got featured in VICE magazine for, after graduating as valedictorian from my highschool and then at Princeton, went underground for multiple years studying female rights as a call girl in multiple countries in multiple socioeconomic stratas and wrote a huge article on womens rights even in the realm of prostitution.

Believe me, I am not here to crap all over women dancers. It is women in entertainment, and female rappers who are trailblazing the idea that their bodies are wonderful and they can do what they want with them and say what they want and that its ok.

I absolutely agree with you, but I still dont see what that has to do with a tech conference...

tech conferences are somewhat professional and its even valid to argue diverse enough that some ethnicities might even have males that are offended by female dancers at a tech conference.

"make new partnerships, check out new hardware/software solutions to save time or money, possibly hunt for some new talent to join the company, discuss business propositions"

I think most of these are also things Jessica cited as distractions or just plain bad ideas for early startups.

Yes, your point that the men assuming women weren't engineers was incredibly sexist (although as I often joke with one of my friends when she talks about some game designer she infatuated with, by asking if she runs the game companies social media account). I do also think that it's less about Men & Women creating a sexist atmosphere, but rather, the old addage that sex sells (assuming the conference room floor was a tradeshow with vendors selling services).

For our tradeshows, most of the people who work our booths are either Account Managers, or the actual Marketing team that runs tradeshows.

I was lucky enough to be invited to our biggest tradeshow and work the showroom. Funny enough, I suppose, was because I was an engineer. As someone who is an extreme introvert around strangers, it was definitely an interesting time.

*

In this case, it was an afterparty.

For manning a tradeshow (mansplaining trigger warning) companies hire out to 3rd parties, who then staff the booths. Those companies usually are measured on how much traffic they generate.

I would strike up conversations with the women who worked at various PAXPrime booths about the games, and more often than not, they were just contractors.

Occasionally, as a rare treat, it would be one of the developers--like the lady who co-developed BroForce.

I've never been to a Pharma convention, but I imagine those Drug reps hire attractive people specifically to generate more traffic.