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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

#101

Post by javadyan »

kpanghmc wrote: post #78
javadyan wrote: post #42

I think some people should loosen up. Yes, it's a bad unfunny joke. But it's not that big a deal.

You clearly have not experienced discrimination before. It's not just the act of being discriminated against, it's the memories that it invokes and the reminder of how little has changed.

Believe me, friend, I have experienced discrimination. My entire family has. They have been driven away from their home because of their nationality. Then I was mocked and humiliated by other kids as the-kid-who-cant-speak-our-language. Then there was the high school and all the "nice" things it holds for the nerds. It might well be that I have experienced more discrimination than some of the furiously anti-sexist people here. Yet I don't have anything against racial, sexist, religious or other kinds of "sensitive" jokes. They are jokes. They are not meant to be taken seriously. It's OK to laugh at them if you find them funny. If you don't, shut up and let other people laugh. Don't be a self-important asshole. After all, your precious nationality/religion/sex/sexual orientation is worth exactly nothing.

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

#102

Post by jballanc »

reinhardt wrote: post #91
jballanc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between "We thought it was funny. We were wrong." and "We are sorry you were offended." The former makes the person in bad taste the responsible party. The later makes the "offended" person the responsible party. When you say "We are sorry you were offended..." many people will read in to that "...but if it weren't for you being offended there would be nothing wrong with this." A simple choice o…

"...but if it weren't for you being offended there would be nothing wrong with this." Is this statement even controversial? The only reason someone issues an apology (honest or not) is because one or more others were offended. If nobody is offended, by definition there is nothing wrong with it.

What you're describing is moral relativism. If I kill someone that everyone hates, is that wrong? If I kill a homeless person that had no friends and no family so nobody notices they're dead, is that wrong?

The real question here is would you stand in front of the mirror, with no one around, and say to yourself "The women at this conference are a great perk!" without feeling bad?

It's tempting to think "I have these views about blacks/hispanics/asians/women/etc., but I know how to control my reactions and keep my mouth shut." The problem is that people communicate as much subconsciously as they do consciously.

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

#103

Post by bicknergseng »

tptacek wrote: post #64
bicknergseng wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

You know what, either the vb got edited or there's a different post you cited; I said you "proved the point", but shouldn't have personalized this, because yeah, the issue I'm talking about isn't in that post. I apologize. Meanwhile (apropos nothing you wrote): http://4ma.me/481/hear-that-noise-thats-violet-blue-backpeda... The woman Violet Blue was talking about was Piroska Szurmai-Palotai, a developer for NeoPlay E…

No worries at all. In hindsight I should have found a more respected journalist. HN users are picky about article sources haha. Good luck with your reports.

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

#104

Post by shallowwater »

sequoia wrote: post #84

When I got to this thread the top comment (by ellyagg) 100% missed the point. He seemed to think people were upset by the idea of sexuality, or offended that a man might be attracted to a woman. Sexuality or sexual orientation is not the issue. The commodification of women is the issue. When you list "Women!" as a feature of your event along with "Booze", "Gym Access", and "Food Truck" wares [1], you are treating the…

Thank you for being wonderfully articulate.

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

#105

Post by lysol »

drusenko wrote: post #19
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.

Excuse me: "As soon as the event was published the Heroku team immediately took action with Apigee quick to follow." What would you expect Heroku have done differently? HN has seen a sharp increase in negativity lately. What gives?

Kids think it's clever to play devil's advocate all the damn time.

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

#106

Post by javadyan »

marshray wrote: post #99
javadyan wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't see any evidence that they were just trying to be humorous. "Women" is listed right after "booze". If they were joking by advertising "women" as "perks", then they should have understood that most people are not going to find that particularly funny. They advertised "friendly female event staff to get you a beer". Any reasonable person would believe that they were intending to follow through on that.

Well, did you expect to see a "WARNING! WE NOW WILL ATTEMPT A POTENTIALLY OFFESIVE JOKE" written in red print? Those things are supposed to be spontaneous, you know.

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

#107

Post by marshray »

javadyan wrote: post #81
waterlesscloud wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it was a poor attempt at humor, but it was an attempt at sexist humor.

So? It's not hurting anyone. You know, there is a difference between an ad for a geek event that no one cares about and a woman not getting a job because she's a woman. These are not the same things.

You're right about one thing: nobody cares about any technical value that might have been at Boston API Jam now.

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

#108

Post by ceejayoz »

tzaman wrote: post #72
jsprinkles wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why is that? Because I can't agree with big companies pulling their sponsorship because of a mistake? They apologized - which doesn't make it ok, but hey - now pretty much no one knows or cares how much effort has gone into the hackaton event. All it matters now is that they made a mistake. So the whole industry is giving the message: Your effort is totally worthless (and unnoticed) if you make mistakes that offend s…

> So the whole industry is giving the message: Your effort is totally worthless (and unnoticed) if you make mistakes that offend someone.

The message is "grow up and stop acting like a hormonal 13 year old".

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

#109

Post by temphn »

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,…

Mr. Byrnes, it is a little more complicated than that.

Many of the people angry about this incident will, in another context, back up someone like Richard Dawkins when he offends. Dawkins happens to be one of my favorite authors, but he is quite provocative. And Heroku advertises the Dawkins Foundation as a success story:

  http://success.heroku.com/dawkins-foundation

  The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science 
  (RDFRS) supports scientific education and advances 
  critical thinking and an evidence-based understanding of 
  the natural world, in the quest to overcome religious 
  fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and human 
  suffering. The foundation’s namesake and founder, Richard 
  Dawkins, is a scientist and best-selling author of works 
  including The God Delusion, The Selfish Gene, and The 
  Blind Watchmaker.
As an objective fact, The God Delusion is surely a book that many millions of people around the world are on the record as finding "offensive" [1,2,3].

So the issue is really not whether a statement is offensive or not, or how the apology is phrased. It is whether the group that is offended has the power to force an apology.

[1] http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/religious-debates/65603...

[2] http://richarddawkins.net/articles/628795-duking-it-out-over...

[3] http://mattgrube.com/seminary-writings/dawkins-god-delusion-...

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

#110

Post by yummyfajitas »

ceejayoz wrote: post #89
yummyfajitas wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, the marketing material assumed that the people reading it would be drinkers, and gave no consideration to the idea that a non-drinker might actually want to attend. In addition to sexism, the marketers seem to believe that "teetotalers don't really qualify as people in the same way drinkers do, and no I've never really thought very hard about it". (They also seem to feel the same way about people who don…

There are people alive today who were alive when women were not able to eligible in the USA. There are no people alive today who were alive when cupcake haters were not eligible to vote in the USA.

It would help if you explained your logic a little further. Why this fact is relevant? If this fact changes (e.g., once the last suffragist dies), will the conclusion change?

Note that if the conclusion doesn't change upon the death of the last suffragist, the fact is irrelevant, and you bringing it up is a red herring.

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