We Can Do Better: An Apology from Sqoot

Post by thoradam » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 8:14 PM UTC

knowtheory wrote: post #45

thoradam wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by donohoe » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 8:59 PM UTC

Gayle wrote: post #59

donohoe wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An apology is nice. They wrote a good one too. However you do not have to accept an apology.

They wrote two apologies. Their first one was pretty terrible and did not show that they had actually processed why what they did was so offensive. Their second apology was a bit better. But they claimed that their comment was "aimed to call attention to the male-dominated tech world through humor and intended to be inclusive." Do they honestly expect us to believe that their comment was designed to be inclusive, so…

Post by cookiecaper » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 11:09 AM UTC

pmjordan wrote: post #38

DanBC wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 23, 2012, 6:05 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #27

strickjb9 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women - did you know that on golf courses the attendant who serves you beer is commonly referred to as a beer girl? Did you know that it describes the attendant perfectly because she is in fact a girl who is serving beer. What if, the attendants at the hackathon were in fact an all lady staff?

she is in fact a girl who is serving beer. I didn't think many golf courses could employ children. Unless you're trying to belittle adult women by calling them childish names. This has been done many times, e.g. the old habit of white men calling black adult men (before & after slavery) "boy".

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 24, 2012, 3:20 PM UTC

xsmasher wrote: post #34

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…

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.