Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam. • Hacker News Board

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#51

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 20, 2012, 10:35 PM UTC

ugh wrote: post #46

rjdagost wrote: post #35

While I don't condone the choice of words used in the ad I am underwhelmed at the "offensive" content. If you are offended by this you need to get some thicker skin.

It’s blatant sexism and misogyny. That is always offensive. I’m not sure why you don’t seem to have a problem with sexism and misogyny. That’s all being offended means: I have a problem with you saying stuff like that. That seems reasonable enough to me. No, whoever is offended by this is exactly right. They do not need a thicker skin.

[deleted]

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#52

Post by pavel_lishin » Tue, Mar 20, 2012, 10:37 PM UTC

ArtB wrote: post #25

pavel_lishin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generally speaking men on average will enjoy themselves a lot more if there are pretty girls around. Sexism aside, if I'm some place where I intend to get some coding done, pretty girls in short skirts are only going to distract me.

Are these really for coding? I am thousands of miles away from any tech centre, but to me they always seemed like parties and social gatherings. Kinda like a LAN, except the people there enjoy coding more than gaming. That's why it seemed "appropriate" to me, it's a party they are attractive models bringing booze.

It looked like some of both, actually. Which is good! A 12-hour coding marathon can be fun and productive, but at the end I want to etch-a-sketch my brain with vodka to start fresh in the morning.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#53

Post by DannoHung » Tue, Mar 20, 2012, 10:38 PM UTC

funkah wrote: post #18

Guy in a polo shirt talking about "chicks": Garden-variety moron. Guy in a C++ shirt talking about "chicks": Representative of the RAMPANT MISOGYNY in our industry.

Guy in a polo shirt talking about "chicks": Garden-variety moron being a moron on his own time.

Guy in a C++ shirt talking about chicks at a programming conference: Representative of the RAMPANT MISOGYNY in our industry and wasting the time of everyone he's talking to who came to the damn conference to learn some shit, not awkwardly listen to a jerkoff make a fool of himself and alienate people.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#54

Post by gojomo » Tue, Mar 20, 2012, 10:39 PM UTC

Super-dumb thing to write. Plus the other misspellings indicate the writer had little other writing talent, as well. Maybe he was drunk.

But, enthusiastic young event promoters aren't the most enlightened crew. (Indeed, too much enlightenment could kill your chances of launching a hot new bar, 'energy drink', or various other kinds of youth-oriented events/venues/local-deals.)

So there's a message here about culture and the reckless generalizations of youth, but not especially one about tech events. (Other than: at a tech event, this sort of thing is noted and corrected very quickly.)

As with a dog and a carpet, sometimes shit happens. The dog only learns slowly, and by the time it learns: there's another puppy making the same mistakes. Give quick and firm feedback – one wap with the newspaper! – and get a correction/apology, but don't dwell on it. It's not something that stains everyone vaguely associated to the Nth-degree.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#55

Post by DarkShikari » Tue, Mar 20, 2012, 10:42 PM UTC

Othering. Get that word into your head, and keep it there. Othering.

Othering is when you make someone feel as if they don't belong in a community, that they're different from other people there. Making stupid (racist) Asian jokes about the only Chinese-American member of your team. Writing flyers that assume that your entire audience consists of a certain type of heterosexual man. Even something small, like constantly poking at the fact that one of your fellow hackers also has an MBA. The list is endless.

Usually it's best to not call attention to such things at all, even in a positive way. Telling someone how awesome they are for being different is still making a big deal about how different they are, as opposed to helping them fit into your group.

All of these things make those people feel as if they don't belong on your team or in your community. It doesn't matter if you think it's "in good fun" or "just a joke". It doesn't matter if you think "oh, it's not really sexist". It makes people feel unwelcome. It's dumb, pointless, and it's the responsibility of any hacker to just not do it.

Othering can happen in any community that is dominated by a relative homogenous group. It turns off many hackers who might want to work with you. There is nothing inherently "straight upper-middle-class Caucasian male" about wanting to build a working product; stop acting like there is.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#56

Post by Cushman » Tue, Mar 20, 2012, 10:43 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #49

thisduck wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, maybe I jumped the gun a bit. I'm not sure why you're repeating the "that's all women can do" part. I don't think that's the specific complaint. Perhaps you can tell me why having women on the list of things, bolded no less, is a selling point? Why is it relevant? And to whom?

[deleted]

I downvoted you for reducing the relatively nuanced, respectful and civil conversations taking place here and elsewhere to "zOMGSEXISM!!!1". Assuming you aren't just being hyperbolically disingenuous, and that is actually what you think is happening here, I'm not surprised you don't get why so many reasonable people have a problem with this.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#57

Post by angusgr » Tue, Mar 20, 2012, 10:52 PM UTC

I think sqoot should also reconsider autospamming their "apology" message to anyone who mentions them on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/sqoot

(Not because they shouldn't apologise, but because there are better ways to do it than spam.)

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#58

Post by mcbaby » Tue, Mar 20, 2012, 10:58 PM UTC

I'd like to point out that if we replaced the "Womens" perk with the "Perfect Fuel" perk, nobody would be complaining about how this insulted people who don't eat dark chocolate. Obviously not every guy cares whose serving their drinks, the same way not every guy attending the event cares to eat dark chocolate. They're trying to get people to go to their event. I'd imagine most people going to Hackathon's are heterosexual males. It makes sense for Sqoot, and it's saddening for me to see how we blindly kowtow to the PC police.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#59

Post by CodeMage » Tue, Mar 20, 2012, 11:03 PM UTC

alinajaf wrote: post #17

ArtB wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who cares whether a man or woman is delivering my drink? If you don't get this, then you are missing a lot. Generally speaking men on average will enjoy themselves a lot more if there are pretty girls around. There is a restaurant in town that serves Swiss Chalet grade food in town but all the chicks wear miniskirts and look like models. Even on a week night it is packed with businessmen tipping extravagantly. Sex…

> Generally speaking men on average will enjoy themselves a lot more if there are pretty girls around. And I wouldn't argue with that. In the short time I was in Japan I blew I don't even want to think about it levels of money on hostess bars and just about all the other sort of fun you can imagine. But really, there's a time and a place for that sort of thing and a hackday/tech-conference just isn't it. > The proble…

...when we learn how to start selling software to women. Having female engineers will probably help with that.

No, no, a thousand times no. The gaming industry used to think like that. Ernest Adams explained the fallacy of that thinking most eloquently in his article "Games for Girls? Eeeeewww!" [1]

You don't want to "sell software to women". You want to sell software to your target userbase. You want to sell software to people whose problem that software solves. Unless your software is solving a specific problem that only women have, then you're not "selling software to women".

[1] http://www.designersnotebook.com/Columns/004_Games_for_Girls...

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#60

Post by prodigal_erik » Tue, Mar 20, 2012, 11:05 PM UTC

theorique wrote: post #41

Jun8 wrote: post #20

Here's more coverage: http://bostinno.com/2012/03/20/boston-api-jam-publishes-even... The organizers' apology is: "While we thought this was a fun, harmless comment poking fun at the fact that hack-a-thons are typically male-dominated, others were offended. That was not our intention and thus we changed it." Which completely misses the fact that the other items on the announcement seem to be written by a 11 year old…

This kind of crap is at least part of the reason why there are relatively few women in tech. Yeah, some of them are natural pitbulls who will power through every obstacle. They aren't fazed by this kind of stuff. But then there's the quiet majority who could go either way - this kind of thing says "Working in technology isn't for you. You're not welcome here". Not really the message we want to send to people we'd lik…

Writing correct code is so close to impossible that only the obsessed will be even slightly competent. I want us to eject the army of male dilettantes from our industry, not go out of our way to attract female ones who will merely double the volume of broken crap we have to deal with.

Which is not to say that "BEER WENCHES HURR" isn't better avoided. Have some class, people.