Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

blog.sqoot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 81 posts

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#41

Post by knowtheory »

VonLipwig wrote: post #13

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…

2) If you're putting on an event where you have paying sponsors, "inexperience" is a pretty lame excuse. If you're going to play in the big leagues, you get held up to the standards of professionalism of the big leagues. As far as i'm concerned, they're being accorded the appropriate level of respect & deference.

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#43

Post by z0r »

xiaoma wrote: post #35
chrisrhoden wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ev…

The difference between your conceptual examples and what has happened here in reality is in part a matter of history. There is the history of women being objectified to promote and sell things, and the better part of society has decided that this history is in poor taste and is something to rise above, especially for a professionally affiliated event. There is no comparable history for men, and any event objectifying them as a promotion would clearly be seen as being tongue in cheek - the kind of joke the backpedaling event organizers here would like to be seen as having made, but one that cannot be made honestly in such a straightforward way because of the asymmetry of the social treatment of women and men historically. You might think it would be nice to make a clean break from this history, but it will never be as simple as everyone suddenly agreeing to clear off the scoreboard and start from scratch.

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#44

Post by knowtheory »

kristiandupont wrote: post #15

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…

Even if it did mock geeks, how does that excuse the dehumanization of women? Just because you're saying shitty things about everyone doesn't mean it's okay that you're saying shitty things.

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#45

Post by knowtheory »

thoradam wrote: post #36
ctide wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Having/Wanting someone to serve you is not "idolizing".

And as said elsewhere, just because you say shitty things about everyone doesn't mean that it's okay to say shitty things.

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#46

Post by VonLipwig »

danilocampos wrote: post #28
VonLipwig wrote: post #13

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…

pfft... like I said "What is this 'Women:' bit about?"

I didn't realise that they had listed women explicity as a perk. I just thought it was a bad bit of copy. I didn't see their original site and as it has now been taken down.

I thought they had listed it in a less obvious way noting the servers would be women to bait males to attend.

Perhaps this is a bit more than a kerfuffle then.

While what they wrote turned out to be sexist I don't think at all this was there intention. They fell into the trap of sterotyping their audience. If your a hacker your probably a pale introvert with little access to women. The trouble is a hacker/programmer/whatever is just a job title. The people who do these jobs have variety personalities and genitals.

If anything they misunderstood their audience which is a shame really and managed to generate some copy that could offend just about everyone.

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#47

Post by xibernetik »

For those who don`t think this is offensive: Replace Women/Female with an ethnic minority (e.g. Japanese, Hispanic) of your choice, and then think about how someone of that background would feel reading that message. Then try it with other minorities - lesbian or deaf people, for example.

Yes, it's blown up. Proportionally? I don't know.

A lot of the people who are saying "get over it guys, this really isn't that bad" are the people who've never had to face continual prejudice regarding their coding abilities or competence because of their genetics. It's difficult to understand the perspective of a woman in tech unless you're experienced that. When you've been receiving subtle indicators that "you're not really part of this club", this sort of message can sting quite a bit.

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#48

Post by thejefflarson »

VonLipwig wrote: post #46
danilocampos wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

pfft... like I said "What is this 'Women:' bit about?" I didn't realise that they had listed women explicity as a perk. I just thought it was a bad bit of copy. I didn't see their original site and as it has now been taken down. I thought they had listed it in a less obvious way noting the servers would be women to bait males to attend. Perhaps this is a bit more than a kerfuffle then. While what they wrote turned ou…

Are you serious? "Generate some copy?" Copy doesn't just appear out of nowhere. Someone wrote that, and meant to write that, you're kidding yourself if you think they didn't.

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#49

Post by donohoe »

_nist wrote: post #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...

An apology is nice. They wrote a good one too.

However you do not have to accept an apology.

Re: We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

#50

Post by VonLipwig »

thejefflarson wrote: post #48
VonLipwig wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pfft... like I said "What is this 'Women:' bit about?" I didn't realise that they had listed women explicity as a perk. I just thought it was a bad bit of copy. I didn't see their original site and as it has now been taken down. I thought they had listed it in a less obvious way noting the servers would be women to bait males to attend. Perhaps this is a bit more than a kerfuffle then. While what they wrote turned ou…

Are you serious? "Generate some copy?" Copy doesn't just appear out of nowhere. Someone wrote that, and meant to write that, you're kidding yourself if you think they didn't.

I have no idea what you are on about to be honest.

Surely in this context generate == produce. I don't really get how you could take what I wrote as 'these guys made content "magically appear" in their event description'.

Post reply on HN