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Heroku Pulls Sponsorship After Boston API Jam Publishes Sexist Eventbrite

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Re: Heroku Pulls Sponsorship After Boston API Jam Publishes Sexist Eventbrite

#51

Post by bicknergseng »

tptacek wrote: post #6
bicknergseng wrote: post #3

Meanwhile, "booth babes" remain a common tech industry trade show practice http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/the-ces-2012-booth-babe... .

Seriously, you just linked Violet Blue's odious post tagging an application developer as a "booth babe" because of the fit of her shirt. +10 points for proving the overarching point.

Inflammatory and less than accurate would be the words I would use, but the general slant of the article isn't off base. If you're talking about the comment on the bottom of the page, that Skunk Works employee never said she was an application developer... she said she was a professional model and actress who knew about the product and wasn't an idiot. Blue is wrong and off base to make generalized statements about the women themselves at those shows, but it doesn't change the fact that the whole "booth babes" practice is incredibly sexist in general. If the only issue you take away from that article is that Blue is a terrible journalist, I think you're proving the overarching point.

Re: Heroku Pulls Sponsorship After Boston API Jam Publishes Sexist Eventbrite

#52

Post by cjbprime »

byrneseyeview wrote: post #36

A general question: when someone says something offensive, the apology is often "We're sorry: we thought this was funny, but obviously it wasn't, so we've changed it." This seems to get universally condemned, and lots of people argue that it's wrong to say "I'm sorry you're offended." But what are the alternatives? I suppose they could have said that they were deliberately sexist and hoped to hurt people's feelings,…

The alternative is to realize why it was offensive instead of just that people got offended in some abstract sense that is unrelated to anything you can comprehend. For bonus points, further show enough empathy that you realize that what you said now offends you, too, culminating in some kind of "Damn, I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that" apology.

Re: Heroku Pulls Sponsorship After Boston API Jam Publishes Sexist Eventbrite

#53

Post by jsprinkles »

tzaman wrote: post #43
vertis wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heroku didn't notice/care until someone else started making a big deal about it. Then like any sane company they took the safe route.

I agree. This was a prank gone bad. No one got hurt (apart from a few egos). Pulling sponsorship because of that is just lame. Don't get me wrong, I have the deepest respect for women but that doesn't prevent me from pulling (even sometimes sexist) pranks on my wife. She does the same to me and we smile at each other. I dare you, everyone that's horrified by their prank say it out loud (and mean it!): "I have never,…

Any chance you could switch industries and, say, work in advertising or something? I don't want to share a career with you.

Re: Heroku Pulls Sponsorship After Boston API Jam Publishes Sexist Eventbrite

#54

Post by tzaman »

ceejayoz wrote: post #50
tzaman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. This was a prank gone bad. No one got hurt (apart from a few egos). Pulling sponsorship because of that is just lame. Don't get me wrong, I have the deepest respect for women but that doesn't prevent me from pulling (even sometimes sexist) pranks on my wife. She does the same to me and we smile at each other. I dare you, everyone that's horrified by their prank say it out loud (and mean it!): "I have never,…

> This was a prank gone bad. A prank? As in "haha, we got you!"? > Don't get me wrong, I have the deepest respect for women but that doesn't prevent me from pulling (even sometimes sexist) pranks on my wife. She does the same to me and we smile at each other. Your wife presumably is comfortable in the knowledge that you respect her, because she knows you well. A woman showing up at a hackathon likely hasn't known the…

prank == joke

Sorry for my poor choice of words

Re: Heroku Pulls Sponsorship After Boston API Jam Publishes Sexist Eventbrite

#55

Post by tptacek »

stevenpworrel wrote: post #46
tptacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell are you talking about? Medical doctors are not "mostly men". Roughly 50% of all medical students are women, and current trends have women overtaking men in the profession long term. "I very much doubt the dearth of women in technology is because men are sexual predators". Sheesh. I agree. Comments like this do the job just fine, too.

I'm a doctor and the profession is still quite dominated by men. The women are far more likely to fill primary-care specialties while the good-ol-boys dominate ortho/neurosurg/EM/plastics and most of the internal medicine subspecialties. The women in my specialty (ortho) tend to lean toward the masculine side (in personality). A lot of it is about fitting in.

Which sentence did I write that is actually wrong? I'm glad to have another doctor writing here, but (respectfully) I am not particularly interested in how "masculine" you think women in your specialty tend to act to fit in. The statistics do not appear to back up the argument the previous poster made.

Re: Heroku Pulls Sponsorship After Boston API Jam Publishes Sexist Eventbrite

#56

Post by toomuchtodo »

rauljara wrote: post #38
ellyagg wrote: post #29

Whenever people get outraged about things like this, it interests me. I like looking at attractive women. I like programming. Would it be possible to have an event where I could program and look at attractive women at the same time? Or does enjoying seeing attractive women in public make me a bad person? As a man, is this my original sin? In fact, I've even been known to flirt with attractive women in public--perhaps…

The marketing material assumed that the people reading it would be heterosexual men, and gave no consideration to the idea that a woman might actually want to attend an event. Finding women attractive is not a sin. Assuming the whole world should revolve around what you find attractive without giving any consideration to the other half of the world's population is sexist. Not "I hate women" sexist. Just "women don't…

Tech population =! world population.

To not recognize that the tech population is dominated by men is to put your head in the sand.

I like to code, I like to look at scantily clad women, and I fully believe they're just as equal as men.

EDIT: Downvote away. You don't have to believe in fact for it to exist.

Re: Heroku Pulls Sponsorship After Boston API Jam Publishes Sexist Eventbrite

#57

Post by jballanc »

stevenpworrel wrote: post #46
tptacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell are you talking about? Medical doctors are not "mostly men". Roughly 50% of all medical students are women, and current trends have women overtaking men in the profession long term. "I very much doubt the dearth of women in technology is because men are sexual predators". Sheesh. I agree. Comments like this do the job just fine, too.

I'm a doctor and the profession is still quite dominated by men. The women are far more likely to fill primary-care specialties while the good-ol-boys dominate ortho/neurosurg/EM/plastics and most of the internal medicine subspecialties. The women in my specialty (ortho) tend to lean toward the masculine side (in personality). A lot of it is about fitting in.

I don't doubt what you say, but medicine (like most highly-skilled professions) has a long lag time. I would wager (without looking it up) that the median graduation date for practicing doctors today is around 1990. A beter indicator of current trends would be to look at medical school enrollment.

Re: Heroku Pulls Sponsorship After Boston API Jam Publishes Sexist Eventbrite

#58

Post by javadyan »

mcherm wrote: post #9

If everyone responded like Heroku did (immediately, firmly, and without apologies) when they saw such sexist behavior it would improve our industry. Please do so whenever you get the chance, and props to the Heroku team!

This was not sexism. It was a poor attempt at humour.

Re: Heroku Pulls Sponsorship After Boston API Jam Publishes Sexist Eventbrite

#59

Post by natep »

stevenpworrel wrote: post #41
tptacek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took less than 2 hours for this to go from Twitter meme to Heroku and Apigee pulling out. If a sponsor pulled out tomorrow, I'd still be impressed with them for doing it. The simplest explanation for what happened here: this is an image Heroku gives a shit about not having.

So they're OK with scantily-clad booth babes handing out beers at sponsored events, but they're not OK with a poorly-written post about scantily-clad booth babes handing out beers at sponsored events?

What reason do you have to think that Heroku or any of the sponsors had any knowledge of Sqoot's women-to-fetch-beers plan before the announcement?

Re: Heroku Pulls Sponsorship After Boston API Jam Publishes Sexist Eventbrite

#60

Post by jsavimbi »

ellyagg wrote: post #29

Whenever people get outraged about things like this, it interests me. I like looking at attractive women. I like programming. Would it be possible to have an event where I could program and look at attractive women at the same time? Or does enjoying seeing attractive women in public make me a bad person? As a man, is this my original sin? In fact, I've even been known to flirt with attractive women in public--perhaps…

> perhaps even servers at restaurants

what a tool.

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