Sexism is not funny, let's stop laughing

1. "Jokes are not discrimination." I hate to tell you this, but tasteless jokes are part of the problem. People absorb and internalize their environment. Maybe if I phrase it this way: Why is it that you bombard kids with pictures of women in bikinis and men in lab coats, then wonder why women don't go into tech in spite of their competence?

2. "We should solve actual discrimination, this just isn't important." Sexism is a multifaceted, interconnected beast of many factors.

3. "What if a woman showed a picture of a man in a bikini?" You are not being clever by swapping the genders, this isn't some math problem where you can flip the sign and cancel a bunch of factors out. People are constantly exposed to media which equate the worth of women with their physical attractiveness, so showing a picture of a woman in a bikini leverages decades of social conditioning. It reinforces the idea that women should be evaluated based on cup size rather than the quality of their GitHub repositories. To make an analogy, if you are a man, were you ever stressed out (maybe during your 20s) about whether you were successful enough? Have you ever paid for a date that you couldn't really afford so you could impress a woman? Imagine if you went to a tech conference with tons of women, and they made jokes about men who are poor, and showed pictures of guys with $10k suits driving Audis, joked about never dating someone who wasn't at least a senior VP, and then a tubby, mustachioed woman who hasn't showered approaches you and drunkenly asks if she can see your wallet, and asks how much you make in a year. "I bet it's a lot." She says, thinking it's a compliment.

I'd like you all to listen to this last bit.

This is a discussion about sexism. It's a proper field of study, like chemistry. It doesn't make non-stick pans, rocket fuel, or methamphetamine. However, just like doing meth doesn't turn you into Walter White, living your life doesn't make you an expert on sexism.

Most of you guys I'm guessing have never read a single fucking book on sexism, but you're chiming in with your damn opinions anyway. The reason why Hacker News discussions on Go, tech startups, and prime numbers are so interesting is because Hacker News is filled with experts on those subjects. A reason why the Hacker News threads on sexism are so terrible is because y'all are lazy fuckers who don't know what the hell you're talking about. Owning a penis makes you about as qualified to comment on how pictures of women in bikinis affect women at tech conferences as, say, the fact that I own a bicycle makes me an expert at automobile maintenance.

It's the same kind of thinking that leads people to think that they can hold an interesting discussion on philosophy when they ask whether the "red" that you perceive is actually the same as the "blue" that I percieve. Okay, sure, that discussion is worth having, I guess, and if you've never read a book on philosophy in your entire fucking life it might actually cover new ground.

The "joker" vents out his frustration, fed by a male daily work environment, in a gender-mixed conference. The result is event more detrimental than when such attitudes are displayed in front of a 100% male attendance indeed.

> Being frustrated about something doesn't make it okay [...]

I did most certainly not write, nor imply, that it was OK. I just didn't insist more on how bad it was, because there's only so much beating a dead horse can take, and because I didn't think I had anything constructive to add to this truism.

> Funny how many meandering explanations/justifications are sat in this thread. Quite depressing.

I'm afraid you're getting confused between explanations and justifications; that's probably one of the causes for your depressed feelings.

How do you know the fix isn't to complain about bikinis in presentions?

As far as I can tell, your argument is "because people like it, it is okay." This is obviously wrong, so please explain your argument in more detail.

> see Sciolino as a counter-example

An opinion held by a journalist is not a counter-example. You'll need something better than an argument to authority.

>> There's an obvious point being made when a slide with women clad in bikinis is shown at a geeky male-dominated conference.

>> Personally I find what marketing does to women both when advertising to them and advertising using them utterly despicable.[/quote]

Oh come on, please...

The point being made is very likely not much more than 'look, here's some nice looking girls to make you feel good', which tends to work on male audiences, because men like looking at good-looking girls, just like they like looking at shiny sports cars. It's the exact same reason why car ads or ads for computer components often have good-looking female models in them. It gets the audience in a positive mindset, so the ad has more effect. If you take big issue with that (like you seem to do), your problem is with the simple evolutionary fact that men fancy good-looking women, good luck trying to change that...

As for 'what marketing does to women both when advertising to them and advertising using them': did you ever care to have a look at one of the millions of magazines explicitly targeted at women? They are full of pictures of fashionable sexy people, male and female, for the exact same reasons some geeks put bikini pics in their powerpoints: because the audience likes looking at them...

I don't condone sexism in any way, but trying to find some kind of evil sexist motives, intentional or unintentional, behind every instance where women are depicted for their good looks, seems extremely cynical and sour to me.