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'Titstare' app at TechCrunch: women in tech deserve better

theguardian.com

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Re: 'Titstare' app at TechCrunch: women in tech deserve better

#21

Post by jballanc »

The Hacker Community's greatest flaw -- a total disregard for predecessors -- may also be its saving grace.

On one hand, we guffaw at those "old timers" who worked in assembler, Fortran, C, or even Perl. "They could never have even imagined what they were missing," we might think to ourselves as we re-discover continuation-passing style while coding our latest, greatest node.js-based file server.

On the other hand, I think there's a good chance that Alexandra, and the rest of the next generation of programmers, will one day think that "rockstars", "ninjas", and "brogrammers" are as ridiculous and outdated as talking sock-puppets or anthropomorphic paperclips.

Re: 'Titstare' app at TechCrunch: women in tech deserve better

#22

Post by jnardiello »

chris_wot wrote: post #10
jnardiello wrote: post #8

Frankly, TitStare was quite funny. In despite of being tits-related, i can't see how a woman could find it offensive (maybe because she has tits too? i can't see the correlation). It's more about lonely developers staring at tits. It's funny to see how the tech industry is passing thru its "feminist" age and just can't understand that THERE ARE differences between men and women, which doesn't mean anyhow that one is…

Rubbish. It was about objectifying women. It had nothing to do with lonely developers. These were two boofhead Australians who sadly exist in my part of the world who used women's bodies as a joke so they could get a quick laugh. There are too many "men" like this in Sydney. I use the word "men" loosely.

Let me understand, anything sex-related which isn't expressed in scientific or moral terms has to burn in hell, right? Mainly because it is "objectifying" and insulting.

Sometimes having a good laugh is a lot smarter than creating a political situation out of nothing. I think this is the case.

Re: 'Titstare' app at TechCrunch: women in tech deserve better

#23

Post by lifebeyondfife »

jnardiello wrote: post #8

Frankly, TitStare was quite funny. In despite of being tits-related, i can't see how a woman could find it offensive (maybe because she has tits too? i can't see the correlation). It's more about lonely developers staring at tits. It's funny to see how the tech industry is passing thru its "feminist" age and just can't understand that THERE ARE differences between men and women, which doesn't mean anyhow that one is…

You need to learn that what is considered (possibly socially) acceptable behaviour amongst your friends, is not necessarily acceptable in the workplace.

If you want a definition of the workplace, it includes hacker meetups, youtube videos, presentations etc. where people of all social groups come together to discuss or create code. I have a very twisted sense of humour that many would find offensive. At work though I keep that side of myself under wraps, not out of a sense of fear but of respect.

The bottom line is this: by collectively changing our behaviour to be less offensive (from the point of view of gender, sexuality, race, religion etc.) then people from those groups feel more safe and secure in that environment. If women truly felt comfortable to enter into the currently male dominated tech industry we get a bigger talent pool to choose from - the competition and skillset increases. Now re-read that sentence substituting 'women' and 'male dominated' with any minority/majority pairing and we start to see how much bigger we can make the number of available programmers.

It may seem dull to have a workplace that's so sterile and inoffensively humourless, but it's work, not a bar.

Re: 'Titstare' app at TechCrunch: women in tech deserve better

#24

Post by chris_wot »

jnardiello wrote: post #22
chris_wot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rubbish. It was about objectifying women. It had nothing to do with lonely developers. These were two boofhead Australians who sadly exist in my part of the world who used women's bodies as a joke so they could get a quick laugh. There are too many "men" like this in Sydney. I use the word "men" loosely.

Let me understand, anything sex-related which isn't expressed in scientific or moral terms has to burn in hell, right? Mainly because it is "objectifying" and insulting. Sometimes having a good laugh is a lot smarter than creating a political situation out of nothing. I think this is the case.

"Titstare" was designed to allow men stare at women's breasts. In other words, for one reason only: objectification of women and their body parts.

If you can't see that here, I'm not sure what else to say to you!

Re: 'Titstare' app at TechCrunch: women in tech deserve better

#25

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

jnardiello wrote: post #8

Frankly, TitStare was quite funny. In despite of being tits-related, i can't see how a woman could find it offensive (maybe because she has tits too? i can't see the correlation). It's more about lonely developers staring at tits. It's funny to see how the tech industry is passing thru its "feminist" age and just can't understand that THERE ARE differences between men and women, which doesn't mean anyhow that one is…

> i can't see how a woman could find it offensive

Irrelevant. If you want to know if women find it offensive, ask women. Stop dismissing things because you manage to fail to see them.

This is an area in which you should probably check your intuition with other people.

Re: 'Titstare' app at TechCrunch: women in tech deserve better

#27

Post by [deleted] »

jnardiello wrote: post #8

Frankly, TitStare was quite funny. In despite of being tits-related, i can't see how a woman could find it offensive (maybe because she has tits too? i can't see the correlation). It's more about lonely developers staring at tits. It's funny to see how the tech industry is passing thru its "feminist" age and just can't understand that THERE ARE differences between men and women, which doesn't mean anyhow that one is…

[deleted]

Re: 'Titstare' app at TechCrunch: women in tech deserve better

#28

Post by sambeau »

Grue3 wrote: post #4

What is sexist about CircleShake? It's not about women at all.

  It's not about women at all.
sigh

In an already male-biased community the non-inclusivity of demos like these put out a very specific message to women: this is not for you.

The tit staring demo puts out a worse message: this is not for you—you are just a sex object to us.

If you were a female hacker how would that make you feel your work will be judged by your male peers?

Turn it around in your head, if you can, to a position where all industry and powerful roles are controlled by women and an important industry is dominated by women. It holds a conference where there are demonstrations of things that are women-only and where a man's role is reduced to that of sex object. Add to that a lot of cliquey female sex jokes where men are often the but but you are expected to laugh along and shrug it off. Is that a conference you would want to attend? What if you felt you had to to further your career?

If that doesn't work turn it around to Jocks vs Geeks. Imagine you had to go to a Jock conference to further your career. Where the demos were all about football and the jokes were about weedy geeky types. Now imagine that you had to go to conferences like this if you wanted to further your career and you had to put up with an undercurrent of secret sexuality where jocks joked about having sex with geeky boys and demonstrated technology to spy on their genitalia. Even if I was gay I'm sure I'd find that intimidating.

The world of tech needs to move away from this stupidity and be at the forefront of gender equality like it is at the forefront of a lot of new thinking.

Technology can only bring about a better world if the people who create it understand what a better world looks like.

Re: 'Titstare' app at TechCrunch: women in tech deserve better

#29

Post by zamalek »

The presenters should not get a response such as "the audience laughed at the numerous tit-related puns." or "The audience found it hilarious." Instead they should have instead met deadly silence, not booing, nothing. Don't feed the troll.

Yes, they had inappropriate ideas, yes, they should not have been let near the stage - but why did we give them the response they were after?

Respecting women doesn't start with pointing fingers at other people, it starts with the individual doing so.

Re: 'Titstare' app at TechCrunch: women in tech deserve better

#30

Post by sp332 »

jnardiello wrote: post #22
chris_wot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rubbish. It was about objectifying women. It had nothing to do with lonely developers. These were two boofhead Australians who sadly exist in my part of the world who used women's bodies as a joke so they could get a quick laugh. There are too many "men" like this in Sydney. I use the word "men" loosely.

Let me understand, anything sex-related which isn't expressed in scientific or moral terms has to burn in hell, right? Mainly because it is "objectifying" and insulting. Sometimes having a good laugh is a lot smarter than creating a political situation out of nothing. I think this is the case.

Specifically, it makes the women in the audience feel like they are only wanted for their tits and nothing else. It throws away the rest of the woman and says, we only need the tits.
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