My company also runs digital conferences and she's frequently spoken at our events - and I'm very thankful it wasn't one of ours where the sleazeball stuff happened.
From a purely pragmatic perspective (i.e. what, as organisers, can we do about sleazeballs) I'm fascinated by two aspects of my own personality:
- on the one hand, I skew towards believing that individuals are entirely responsible for their own actions. If someone's a sleazeball at one of our events, that's entirely his fault (I would obviously react badly if I witnessed it or knew it was happening in real time)
- on the other hand, I'm into game theory and behavioural economics and I wonder how we can structure things so that we reduce the occurrence of this kind of thing. I'd love to hear ideas for tactical things conference organisers can do to filter and constrain ridiculous behaviour...
I think not having booth babes and strippers would be a great start. It would sure cut down on the males of our species being subconsciously primed for sexual thoughts.
To clarify / reiterate - the issues didn't happen at our conference (I double-checked with Jane on this!). I'm more interested in pre-emptive things to help make sure it never does happen at our conferences in future.
I'm a bit torn by this particular post. On the one hand, I think there's enough evidence of sexism and racism in the technology sector to treat it curiously -- as in, it's worth examining further and figuring out if there's an actual problem (I think there is, but that's just opinion) and where that problem is and how it can be addressed. I'm also interested in why so many self-described "hackers" seem so quick to dismiss it, especially since if they share any one trait, it should be curiosity.
So if this were a post about how they couldn't make a business deal or get funding or were at a disadvantage because they had a woman on their team, it would be as compelling to me as some of the other stuff I've read recently.
But: it's primarily about jackasses with no social skills, and there are tons of those in technology circles. People who interact with electronics more than other people are more likely to have all the social graces of a meadow muffin, and I don't think that's a solvable problem in society this year or next.
It sucks that she had to deal with those people. It sucks that they focused on her gender or attractiveness and said stupid things instead of having a conversation about one of her interests. Still, this is mostly a case of nerds behaving badly more than anything else.
I'm also pretty lukewarm on her feelings about “the sexiest women in social media”. Taken seriously, she's right on all her points. Taken in good humor, I find it about as offensive as sexy firemen calendars (i.e., not at all offensive, just all in good fun).
The problem here is not the inappropriate behavior of one individual at a conference -- there will always be someone behaving badly. The problem is that when made statements like "all women who come to conferences should be available", that every other person at that table did not immediately speak up and say "Hey, shut up! You're behaving like an asshole and I won't have it!".
That is exactly what we need. Stupid casual statements made in the presence of other men are "tests" to gauge the acceptability of the behavior. That is the critical point in time when this behavior can be stopped, and the socially dangerous individual conditioned to live acceptably in our society.
>> I think there's enough evidence of sexism and racism in the technology sector to treat it curiously -- as in, it's worth examining further and figuring out if there's an actual problem
Doesn't enough evidence of sexism and racism constitute a problem already?
>> I'm also pretty lukewarm on her feelings about “the sexiest women in social media”. Taken seriously, she's right on all her points. Taken in good humor, I find it about as offensive as sexy firemen calendars (i.e., not at all offensive, just all in good fun).
The difference being that firemen calendars are advertised to be in good fun, whereas "sexiest women in social media" is advertised as sexy women in social media.
This is not just about absence of social skills, but something much more aggressive, and she's not primarily talking about tech in general, but SEO and social media in particular, which sounds like a cesspit that marries the sexism of tech with the narcissism of sales conferences.
Even something as asinine as, say, "Wow, you've got huge boobs!", might be a one-off extreme lack of social skills -- the first and only time it happens. But the kind of things she's talking about are the symptoms of much more fundamental dysfunction. These are adult men treating women as though they are objects for the pleasure and amusement of men, and doing so openly and habitually.
These people should be pariahs in their industry, but somehow they're not. That does not reflect well on the culture, and says there is a serious problem.
(Edit: By the way, I have asperger's syndrome and seriously deficient social skills, and I've said stupid things a few times to women when my mouth got ahead of my brain, but nothing even remotely like the creepy "It's not fair!" guy or the threatening "hook up" guy.)
This is one of those things where personal actions do mean something. Avoid booths with half naked girls at conferences. It will only take one conference with an empty booth for that company not to use this kind of attraction again. Makes sure that people around you know that this is not OK, they will think twice before acting as assholes, even if it is for the sake of peer pressure and not out of respect for women.
Sadly I don't see this scenario changing any time soon, the reason being that so far, for these guys, the rewards are much greater than the risk.
The rewards would be (male) peer approval and easy relief during presentations, whereas right now there seems to be little risk of either law suit or peer reprehension.
So, since these guys don't really think of women as people, they don't see any harm done.
It's actually a horrible picture of just how much non-empathic an adult can be and still function well in our culture.
The fastest way to revert this is to get many male tech guys to acknowledge the problem enough to publicly reprehend them. That way the rewards are thinned for the sexist presenter. He may carry on to be a jerk, but won't gain as much from being a public jerk.
Unfortunately there are many men (in all industries) that still put women on the 'scale' immediately, & subconsiously. At one end, women get ignored, stared through and sidelined. At the other they get harrassed and the only topic of conversation is attractiveness.
These men don't distinguish from the booth babes, strippers etc (who have chosen the model industry) and the women that they work with, that are their peers in the tech industry.
I think the worst part is when you point out you don't want to be addressed according to your appearance, these are the guys that claim their remarks were some kind of backhanded compliment!
Perhaps naming and shaming those involved in the more threatening, dangerous and scary encounters would be a deterrent or a warning sign at least.
I work in the tech industry & as yet to have never had a comparable encounter, though there have been general annoyances in the workplace that I've put a stop to early on.
Should I ever have such an experience I'd be sure to speak up about it.
A lot of excellent points, and I don't think "digital conferences" are the only places women are harassed in this nature. But for all the good points I found myself wondering what she was really struggling with at some times. Part of her piece came off as a rant about how she felt jilted that she didn't "stack up" to other ladies.
What I'm still missing here is how this links back to technology.
A lady has a deeply unpleasant encounter with some some jackass, and also notices that in an industry which is mostly men, you get some creeps putting together sexist things like the "sexiest women in technology".
But: what's the relationship with this to technology conferences, other than: you're going to meet a lot of men? What's the take-away here for the tech industry? What does she want us to /do/ about this?
1. She is in tech.
2. In tech conferences, companies tend to use scantly dressed women to advertise their booths. Connection between the product they are selling and the external looks of the model presenting it is non-existent. Therefore it is about objectifying women for the sake of marketing. It should stop.
I don't think overt sexism is any more prevalent at tech conferences than it is in any other predominantly male gathering. In fact, I would bet it's actually less prevalent at tech events: for every aggressive jerk at a tech conference, there are 10 quiet geeks who would be scared to death to talk to an attractive woman. Try going to a male-dominated sales conference for comparison. I'm not condoning the behavior, only pointing out that it is hardly unique to tech.
Could one of the anonymous downvoters provide some rationale for their disagreement? I'm open to evidence that the tech industry suffers more harassment claims than other male-dominated industries. Or is your disagreement based on the idea that the tech industry should be held to a higher standard? That sexism is ok for those other people, but not for us because we're expected to be more civilized?
My company also runs digital conferences and she's frequently spoken at our events - and I'm very thankful it wasn't one of ours where the sleazeball stuff happened.
From a purely pragmatic perspective (i.e. what, as organisers, can we do about sleazeballs) I'm fascinated by two aspects of my own personality:
- on the one hand, I skew towards believing that individuals are entirely responsible for their own actions. If someone's a sleazeball at one of our events, that's entirely his fault (I would obviously react badly if I witnessed it or knew it was happening in real time)
- on the other hand, I'm into game theory and behavioural economics and I wonder how we can structure things so that we reduce the occurrence of this kind of thing. I'd love to hear ideas for tactical things conference organisers can do to filter and constrain ridiculous behaviour...