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We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

blog.sqoot.com

31–40 of 81 posts

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#31
To all the straight men here who can't see what the original problem with including "Women who bring you beer" as perk, let me give you a little thought experiment.

Imagine instead all the gendered terms were swapped in the original post, and it read something like this:

Perks:

* Men. Need another beer? Let one of our friendly (male) event staff get that for you.

You hardly ever see that, and if you're used to the programmer culture, when you read that you might mentally stumble and feel weird. Would you like to go to an event like that? If you went, how do you think people would treat you. This is what the subtle sexism feels like.

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#32

I'm obviously the minority here but I feel that this backlash is way over the top. Sure, the comment was sort of stupid and shouldn't be a part of any official communication from a company (although part of what I love about startups is that the communication is more human and doesn't feel like it's been screened by legal and marketing before published). To me, it pokes more fun at geeks than anyone else. "A real wom…

I think the underlying message is that only male geeks would ever go to a hackathon.

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#34

I'm obviously the minority here but I feel that this backlash is way over the top. Sure, the comment was sort of stupid and shouldn't be a part of any official communication from a company (although part of what I love about startups is that the communication is more human and doesn't feel like it's been screened by legal and marketing before published). To me, it pokes more fun at geeks than anyone else. "A real wom…

Looking past the "women servants" message there's the implication that "developers are men, and we'll have women there to serve them beer."

DO you think a female developer would feel welcomed by that message?

The servants bit is a joke, the unspoken assumption that devs are men is the insidious poison.

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#35

What exactly was sexist about what they did? """Women: Need another beer? Let one of our friendly (female) event staff get that for you.""" Perhaps the quote is missing context, I found it here: http://philomousos.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/how-to-apologize.h... To me it doesn't even make sense. What is this 'Women:' bit about? If you discount the 'Women colon' I think if anything it offends programmers. Are we really so…

In context, the "Women:" part denoted the title of a perk in a bulleted list of perks, which absolutely makes this more offensive. The idea that you would put "Women" in the same list of perks as "Food", especially in a widely public way, is sort of mindblowing.

After food, shelter and possibly respect from one's tribe, women are probably next on the hierarchy of needs for most men. Interestingly, even women tend to prefer looking at beautiful female forms to beautiful male forms.

This isn't the kind of language that should be used by an event trying to attract female participants, but on the other hand I don't think many men would object to being listed as a "perk" at an event for elementary school teachers, flight attendants or some other female-dominated field. There certainly wouldn't have been a lynch-mob reaction as there was in this case.

The real world is asymmetric... and that holds for every human culture.

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#36
post #16
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the big deal. People get way to offended this day in age. It's almost as if people are waiting for someone to say something offensive just so they can jump on it acting all high and mighty.

Sexism (specifically in tech) is the new racism. If you go down that path of anything remotely sexist, expect to be torn to shreds just as quickly as if you made a racist remark. If people didn't get offended, then people like Sqoot will feel like it's totally OK to belittle women, even if they would never think to include racist jokes.

Actually that's the funny part, this "joke" was in no way belittling women, it's idolizing them. It was made at the expense of the stereotypical male geek to whom women are otherwise inaccessible. Somehow it was appropriated as being about the female attendees.

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#37
There are a couple forces at work here.

First, the tech/hacker world tends to be male-dominated, which creates a male-oriented culture, which reciprocally draws more men, and the cycle continues. We want to break that cycle, and a good way to do that is to snap at the heels of people (like Sqoot) who are slow to get with the program. Overall, this sort of admonishment improves the community. I'm glad it's happening.

Second, anyone who has first-hand seen or experienced being subjected to this type of offensive comments will almost certainly have an emotional interest in the matter. It feels pretty good to watch someone burn at the stake, especially when day in and day out you watch others get away with making similar comments. Just scroll through the comments on Sqoot's apology and you'll find some pretty visceral remarks.

The problem is, it may feel good but it doesn't help. Here's why: As blatantly offensive as the original comment was, it wasn't written with the intent of bashing women -- it was just plain insensitive. Grossly insensitive and very hurtful? Yes. But there's an important difference between being insensitive and being malicious.

Why does it matter? Because if you truly have the goal of improving the community, insensitive/ignorant behavior needs to be met with education. Otherwise, all we get is an "Us vs. Them" mentality, which leads me to the third force at work here: defensiveness.

Sqoot's initial apology, along with many of the comments on this new one, reek of defensiveness. It's easy to see why: those people are most likely just as oblivious as Sqoot, and they see themselves in Sqoot's behavior. Don't alienate those people and don't put them on the defensive by being overly harsh on Sqoot. That pushes people away from the conversation -- the very people who most need to be educated.

There needs to be a clear distinction between Sqoot's words (not tolerated) and Sqoot's mistake (mistakes must be tolerated).

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#38
post #22

What exactly was sexist about what they did? """Women: Need another beer? Let one of our friendly (female) event staff get that for you.""" Perhaps the quote is missing context, I found it here: http://philomousos.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/how-to-apologize.h... To me it doesn't even make sense. What is this 'Women:' bit about? If you discount the 'Women colon' I think if anything it offends programmers. Are we really so…

The "women:" bit is a listed perk. PERKS * Women (who will serve you beer) The people at Sqoot really need to learn better writing - their listing on EventBrite was full of typos.

I don't think the quality of their writing is the problem. Their "apology" comes across as the same kind of apology a child gives when their parent forces them to apologise for something, but they don't really think what they did was wrong. But hey, nobody can complain anymore because they apologised, right?

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#39
People do realize that this is an apology right? You do realize that they did this twice right?

Why in the world can't be just accept it and move on. It literally boggles the mind that people ARE STILL OFFENDED after an apology.

Get over it! Geez...

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#40

What exactly was sexist about what they did? """Women: Need another beer? Let one of our friendly (female) event staff get that for you.""" Perhaps the quote is missing context, I found it here: http://philomousos.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/how-to-apologize.h... To me it doesn't even make sense. What is this 'Women:' bit about? If you discount the 'Women colon' I think if anything it offends programmers. Are we really so…

> What exactly was sexist about what they did? I came here looking for the standard, oblivious, "Hey, what's so sexist about being completely sexist?" comment. As usual, HN did not disappoint. So let me explain: "Women" are not a perk. Women are humans with as much value to contribute to software development as men. To list them as a "perk" and to relegate them to a service role minimizes women in two ways beyond the…

I definitely agree with you, but I think men should be offended by this! What many heterosexual men don't seem to get is that sexism against women usually hurts them too. TV commercials that treat women as objects are usually also sending the message that men are drooling hormonal morons. If a sitcom wife is portrayed as a shrieking harpy, she's usually berating the dopey, inept man who screwed everything up.

It's bad for all of us. Sexism (or any -ism) is a net negative for anyone who values the intellectual growth of society, regardless of sex, gender, or orientation.

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