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Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

blog.katylevinson.com

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Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#181

Post by lmm »

stephencanon wrote: post #165
lmm wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a more efficient social protocol - rather than having to ask everyone what their interests are at the start, and abandon 80% of conversations, you dress in a way that indicates what you're interested in, and then can quickly identify the like-minded people you want to talk to. I thought engineers were all about efficiency.

The Knuth quote regarding premature optimization is rarely so apt.

Being able to spend less time talking to the people I don't want to (and more time talking to the people I do) would probably be the single greatest improvement to my life. It's not at all premature to expend a bit of effort on it.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#182

Post by FreeKill »

ars wrote: post #153
jmharvey wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem she described is a bit tougher to solve than simply saying, "don't hire booth babes." "[W]omen who are pretty but not models, dressed in normal street clothes" describes a pretty big percentage of the general population. Under her definition, "If you have 'booth babes' ..., I'm not going to buy your product" is essentially the same as saying "If you have women selling your product, I'm not going to buy it…

Another solution is badges. Either "side" could wear them: Either require all promoters to wear them, or hand them out to all attendees. Make them large and noticeable, on a lanyard probably.

Yeah, I was going to say some kind of universal uniform for anyone there not as an attendee...

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#183

Post by rurounijones »

AJ007 wrote: post #174
onemorepassword wrote: post #6

Seems like a hard problem to solve. Sending people to do product promotional is perfectly legitimate depending on the type of event. Even if you weren't deliberately targeting a male audience with attractive females (although I'm sure that was the case), odds are that if you were recruiting for that kind of work 90% would be outgoing and attractive young women. Just like recruiting programmers will get you 90% geeky…

Let me suggest that this is an impossible problem to solve. Here are our options: 1. Require a strict dress code for booth babes as to not offend anyone with scantily clad women. Result: we can't tell booth babes from technical females. 2. Require everyone working at the conference to be an active and knowledgable employee of the company which has purchase the booth space. Result: number of females on the show floor…

This might sound bad but...

I cannot actually see a problem with #2, it would be my preferred solution. When I go to trade shows / conferences it is to talk to brains, not bodies, the sex of the brain is immaterial to me.

To me, making sure the bodies are 50% equal in gender means nothing if 80% of the female bodies are only there to make up a body quota but have no interest / knowledge of what is going on.

Maybe change it slightly so that the rules state anyone at the booth must be a full-time employee or a contract employee with X months at the company.

Could you go into a bit more detail about your reasoning for #2 not being suitable?

[EDIT] Messed up my percentages

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#184

Post by stcredzero »

obviouslygreen wrote: post #89

Women were being very clearly, intentionally objectified with the "booth babe" thing. Now, rather than something obnoxious and sexually overt, we have something that I'd call far worse in its subtlety: Using women for exactly the same purpose but in a much more approachable, casual, and probably effectively interactive way. How did this happen? I seriously doubt it's because girls in bikinis stopped being effective.…

> we have something that I'd call far worse in its subtlety: Using women for exactly the same purpose

Let's get this straight: It's not a sin. Objectification is just a particular functional state.

There is only a problem when there is a systemic imbalance that either consistently robs a particular group of agency. There is nothing inherently wrong with objectification. When you are being a spokesperson, you are voluntarily being objectified. You have basically taken on the role of an information appliance -- one with a friendly face and engaging manner, hopefully. This is fine. What would be wrong is if everyone treated you this way depending on some trait, like your gender or race. (Which is what happens when people assume female developers are paid shills or when people assume that the females in the current context are just decorative.)

The notion that "Objectification = Sin" is onerous nonsense. Denizens of a complex multicultural world need to turn on the brains and understand functional implications. We should stop using labels and tribal knee-jerks. Our new world is too complicated for those old heuristics.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#185

Post by mitchty »

theorique wrote: post #151
jmharvey wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem she described is a bit tougher to solve than simply saying, "don't hire booth babes." "[W]omen who are pretty but not models, dressed in normal street clothes" describes a pretty big percentage of the general population. Under her definition, "If you have 'booth babes' ..., I'm not going to buy your product" is essentially the same as saying "If you have women selling your product, I'm not going to buy it…

Under her definition, "If you have 'booth babes' ..., I'm not going to buy your product" is essentially the same as saying "If you have women selling your product, I'm not going to buy it," which isn't exactly an enlightened position to take. It's almost as though you need to get ugly women - if the women are too attractive, then they are written off as "booth babes". Which is kind of sexist in its own way.

It is entirely sexist to see an attractive woman and assume that she isn't intelligent.

It's one of the hidden sides of sexism in our society that annoy me. I try to catch myself whenever I find myself doing that, and have been pleasantly surprised.

A side effect of this is that those women that are attractive and intelligent tend to begin to hide it. So you get self-reinforcing behavior from society. Things like guys belittling smart women etc... The whole thing is annoying from the perspective of a guy that loves talking to non-white guys about programming or almost anything interesting. /squirrel banter mode off.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#186

Post by jchrisa »

My solution is to (as much as possible) assume that women at technical conferences are technical. If they aren't, it's not awkward, generally. At least it's less awkward than the inverse.

That is something that is in all of our power to do.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#187

Post by bluehat »

Kequc wrote: post #145
obviouslygreen wrote: post #89

Women were being very clearly, intentionally objectified with the "booth babe" thing. Now, rather than something obnoxious and sexually overt, we have something that I'd call far worse in its subtlety: Using women for exactly the same purpose but in a much more approachable, casual, and probably effectively interactive way. How did this happen? I seriously doubt it's because girls in bikinis stopped being effective.…

I think the major source of OPs discomfort at the conference was that she is surrounding herself with gamers. I'm just saying gamers spend time playing video games they could be spending interacting with other human beings, going out. Two things that many gamers significantly undervalue. So they get weird. I mean I don't really know how else to put it. No group of grown ups standing around at a conference would notic…

I actually generally really enjoy the company of gamers. They may be funny people, but most of the time they're good people.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#188

Post by PebblesRox »

ericssmith wrote: post #168
bluehat wrote: post #80

Hey guys, Katy here, just wanted to thank everybody for the support and super insightful feedback. I will continue to edit the post and post here with clarifications, mostly after work hours :) And yes, I know everybody's probably sick of gender issues, and that's why I almost didn't bring it up, but I hoped it would be a chance for a good civil discussion, and I'm really glad to see it turning into that. Hopefully s…

I am not sick of gender issues. I have recently been enlightened (mostly by Bob Martin's recent blog post) about language that I use at work (eg military analogies) that could be alienating to anyone (eg females) who didn't grow up idealizing warfare. This is an incredibly important point in history, and you are at the epicenter. Thanks for sharing your experience.

That Bob Martin post sounds interesting but I can't find it. Do you happen to have a link?

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#189

Post by jholman »

reinhardt wrote: post #157
JulianMorrison wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When orchestras started doing tryouts behind an opaque screen, they found that their previous insistence that women couldn't play as well as men was bogus, because the interviewees that got the job were 50/50 male and female. You could get a third party to white out the gender cues on resumes before you sort them into the shortlist, and then conduct interviews over text skype. But honestly, someone who uses the conce…

TIL finding a woman ugly is considered hardcore sexism. PC has moved beyond self-mockery at this point, it's surreal.

Don't be an ass. Today you learned, at most, that at least one person thinks that finding a woman ugly is hardcore sexism.

More generally, calling things "PC" is a lazy shortcut, a straw man attack.

I mean, unless someone actually sincerely says to you "oh, reinhardt, you mustn't say XYZ, I want you to be politically correct". In that case, mock away.

I absolutely disagree with JulianMorrison (that "us[ing] the concept 'ugly women' is failing so hard at sexism ..."). My disagreement has nothing to do with suspecting him of being "PC", nor do I dismiss other related claims from other people because of the existence of this statement.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#190

Post by neurotech1 »

bitwize wrote: post #129

Here's the problem. Humans of any gender perceive women to be less of a potential threat, and therefore more friendly, than men. This is why onboard computers for US jet fighters, and the American version of Siri, have female-sounding voices. And it is why the employment of women for promotional purposes will no doubt continue: if you want to persuade someone to buy your product in a way that comes off as friendly, h…

You are mistaken about the reason for the voice in jet fighters.

"Bitching Betty" [1], the voice warning in aircraft such as the F-16 and F/A-18 was originally female because female pilots, especially in the military were relatively rare, although there were some female controllers. The female voice was more noticeable above the normal male pilots chatter on the radio. The wiki entry is somewhat inaccurate on the historical detail, so I included some info from F-16.net

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitching_Betty#Voice_gender [2] http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-1950-postdays-0-p...

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