151–160 of 257 posts
People laugh when they hear a "sexist" joke because it's funny. Maybe gender related jokes don't have a place at conferences and work places - I am not sure - but there should be room for jokes about genders somewhere, right? I mean, where does this political correctness stop?
For those who think it doesn't matter, and that there is no sexism and that women aren't be discriminated against due to the pure fact of their gender, be aware that there have been double blinded scientific studies that show that if you change the name of a CV/resume to a female name when applying for science jobs, they don't get as much/as good offers. If this was question about whether a new drug worked or not, th…
> For those who think it doesn't matter, and that there is no sexism and that women aren't be discriminated against due to the pure fact of their gender, be aware that there have been double blinded scientific studies that show that if you change the name of a CV/resume to a female name when applying for science jobs, they don't get as much/as good offers. Then maybe try to fix that instead of complaining about bikin…
1. You say "instead", as if this were a choice between two alternatives. This is known as the "false dilemma", and it is a logical fallacy.
2. It is not clear how to fix the problem about discrimination based on names on CVs/résumés, whereas the solution to bikinis in powerpoint slides is much simpler (delete the pictures from the slides, smartass). To use a much abused phrase, this is low-hanging fruit.
3. You also assume that the issues are unrelated or isolated, and that (for example) showing inappropriate pictures of women at tech conferences does not cause people to discriminate against women on CVs/résumés, when it is very plausible that the pictures of women in bikinis normalize / contribute to the measurable acts of discrimination.
> Would anyone raise even an eyebrow if a woman sliped a sexy male model photo in a slide?
You think this is a clever argument, but it is not. Let me illustrate for you a better analogy.
Suppose for a moment that you are a guy who just graduated from college, make $20,000 a year in your dream internship, and are on the long trek to success in your field. You're in a new city, and don't know many people. You're constantly bombarded with pictures of men who "made it", have $200k cars, wear $10k suits, drink $500 bottles of liquor, and buy their mistresses $80k pieces of jewelry.
Now I'm going to kick the analogy up a notch, so it's solidly in the "alternate reality" realm.
You date a girl, and she tells you, "My personal goal for you is for you to make six figures next year."
What a jerk, huh? Well, if you swap genders and replace the line with "lose fifty pounds this year", then you're back in our current reality.
Sexism is not a simple problem and you do not help anything by imagining what it would by like if a woman put sexy pictures of a man on a powerpoint slide. Fact is, men are not generally worried about getting raped.
Thus, something one finds funny can be not-funny to another either because it appears dangerous (offense), or because it seems normal (meh). This correlates with how closely or exclusively one feels the "norm" that is violated.
It's interesting to analyze why I find jokes funny or offensive (or funny in spite of myself), such as self-deprecating humor, puns, racial/religious/dirty jokes, etc.
Although this can explain why some are offended when others attempt humor, it in no way excuses including offensive content - the point is to be sensitive to the feelings and values of others. We should work both to avoid giving offense, and to be tolerant when others offend without intent.
[comment on the comments here] These threads make me so depressed. HN is normally such a well-informed, polite place. Then someone posts a "sexism exists and is bad" post and suddenly this is a youtube comment thread where wilfully-ignorant people shout at each other (alas, with a layer of smugness because they have superficially analysed the problem, or rather, have analysed how to speak their prejudice while soundi…
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See, you just called me a "douche" in polite (from my part) conversation. That's your way of advocating for more politeness? Just goes to show the hypocrisy of the whole thing.
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I don't think so (I am a man); in the end it all boils down to excluding women. My 4 year old boy goes to a day-care where one of the care givers is a man. I know of at least a mother that refused to leave her kid there scared that he was a sexual predator. The same prejudice is faced by male obstetricians. In the end, whenever you stigmatize a profession as belonging for a specific gender you do sexism, doesn't matt…
I just can't see how making jokes that include sexual imagery are at the expense of women. Crude? yes - inappropriate? absolutely - funny? not in my mind - "against" women? I don't understand how. I make this distinction because I think about an old professors of mine who stupidly would try to make women welcome by saying things like "Nice to have such a beautiful young lady here". His intent was to make them feel be…
Note that it included sexual imagery of women, not just sexual imagery. Making a commodity of women's bodies is a big theme of sexism in media, so to introduce that kind of imagery at conference where women will be a smaller percentage of the audience compared to men, you are essentially saying that those women present don't have value outside of their bodies. This kind of thing is hugely alienating.
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Yes, there should be jokes about race, about countries, about religion, children, adults, boys, girls, lesbians, straight, gay, transgender, programmers, computer-illiterates, politicians and laymen or any other way to slice and dice humans into groups. Joking about things is one of the fundamental freedoms we value - it's one way to deal with preconceptions we all have about us and other people. Good jokes take your…
Sure, and my somewhat cheap response misses the subtleties, see my response to JohnnieCache - at a conference with women in attendance and slides/etc. with an obvious 'aren't these women fucking sexy we geeks don't get much of that do we? Haw haw' edge to them, are such 'jokes' really making light of sexism or not? I think very much the latter.
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> Maybe gender related jokes don't have a place at conferences and work places > I mean, where does this political correctness stop It seems really obvious to me. At work, at a conference, you don't tell racist, sexist, ableist etc jokes. What you do outside work is up to you. (But, if you do it outside work and in public it may complicate things if you have a work related discrimination problem.) > political correct…
> "Political correctness" is often a buzzword used to dismiss people who want to discuss this. Other, better, words exist. "Politeness" is one. "Freedom of expression" is another, though.