[VonLipwig]

What exactly was sexist about what they did?

"""Women: Need another beer? Let one of our friendly (female) event staff get that for you."""

Perhaps the quote is missing context, I found it here: http://philomousos.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/how-to-apologize.h...

To me it doesn't even make sense. What is this 'Women:' bit about?

If you discount the 'Women colon' I think if anything it offends programmers. Are we really so geeky that we would go to an event just to get a beer from 'female' event staff?

Perhaps they think their audience is locked in some underground lair 364 days of the year and women have become nothing but a mythical creature to a programmer. The promise of seeing this rare and mysterious creature serve beer would make someone like me want to go? I think not.

There are 3 things that bug me about this.

1) The quote makes no sense and if you try to rationalise it attendees should be most offended.

2) People have got into such a kerfuffle which in scheme of things shows the inexperience of the hosts rather than their malace.

3) The event might not go ahead at all because of this... which seems like a bit of a shame.

This looks like a storm in the tea cup brewed by people who don't get out enough.

[danilocampos]

> What exactly was sexist about what they did?

I came here looking for the standard, oblivious, "Hey, what's so sexist about being completely sexist?" comment.

As usual, HN did not disappoint.

So let me explain:

"Women" are not a perk. Women are humans with as much value to contribute to software development as men. To list them as a "perk" and to relegate them to a service role minimizes women in two ways beyond the obvious, gross objectification:

First, by saying "hey, all women are good for at this event is serving beer."

Second, and much more toxic, listing women as a perk reveals the unspoken understanding that heterosexual males are the intended audience for the event and that anyone else is secondary.

> I think if anything it offends programmers.

But yeah, by all means, muster up some indignation for all the poor, privileged, over-represented men who should be offended by this.

[nollidge]

I definitely agree with you, but I think men should be offended by this! What many heterosexual men don't seem to get is that sexism against women usually hurts them too. TV commercials that treat women as objects are usually also sending the message that men are drooling hormonal morons. If a sitcom wife is portrayed as a shrieking harpy, she's usually berating the dopey, inept man who screwed everything up.

It's bad for all of us. Sexism (or any -ism) is a net negative for anyone who values the intellectual growth of society, regardless of sex, gender, or orientation.

[VonLipwig]

pfft... like I said "What is this 'Women:' bit about?"

I didn't realise that they had listed women explicity as a perk. I just thought it was a bad bit of copy. I didn't see their original site and as it has now been taken down.

I thought they had listed it in a less obvious way noting the servers would be women to bait males to attend.

Perhaps this is a bit more than a kerfuffle then.

While what they wrote turned out to be sexist I don't think at all this was there intention. They fell into the trap of sterotyping their audience. If your a hacker your probably a pale introvert with little access to women. The trouble is a hacker/programmer/whatever is just a job title. The people who do these jobs have variety personalities and genitals.

If anything they misunderstood their audience which is a shame really and managed to generate some copy that could offend just about everyone.

[thejefflarson]

Are you serious? "Generate some copy?" Copy doesn't just appear out of nowhere. Someone wrote that, and meant to write that, you're kidding yourself if you think they didn't.

[VonLipwig]

I have no idea what you are on about to be honest.

Surely in this context generate == produce. I don't really get how you could take what I wrote as 'these guys made content "magically appear" in their event description'.

[chrisrhoden]

In context, the "Women:" part denoted the title of a perk in a bulleted list of perks, which absolutely makes this more offensive. The idea that you would put "Women" in the same list of perks as "Food", especially in a widely public way, is sort of mindblowing.

[xiaoma]

After food, shelter and possibly respect from one's tribe, women are probably next on the hierarchy of needs for most men. Interestingly, even women tend to prefer looking at beautiful female forms to beautiful male forms.

This isn't the kind of language that should be used by an event trying to attract female participants, but on the other hand I don't think many men would object to being listed as a "perk" at an event for elementary school teachers, flight attendants or some other female-dominated field. There certainly wouldn't have been a lynch-mob reaction as there was in this case.

The real world is asymmetric... and that holds for every human culture.

[z0r]

The difference between your conceptual examples and what has happened here in reality is in part a matter of history. There is the history of women being objectified to promote and sell things, and the better part of society has decided that this history is in poor taste and is something to rise above, especially for a professionally affiliated event. There is no comparable history for men, and any event objectifying them as a promotion would clearly be seen as being tongue in cheek - the kind of joke the backpedaling event organizers here would like to be seen as having made, but one that cannot be made honestly in such a straightforward way because of the asymmetry of the social treatment of women and men historically. You might think it would be nice to make a clean break from this history, but it will never be as simple as everyone suddenly agreeing to clear off the scoreboard and start from scratch.

[xiaoma]

Actually, I think you may have misinterpreted me. It's not simply a matter of history or culture. There will be a greater market for looking at attractive females than for attractive males in the greater human culture until we have the ability and the will to re-engineer our biology. I would be very surprised if any level of condemning men and/or other social manipulation changes this in our lifetimes.

Sex sells. While there are good reasons for restrictions in many situations, the successful strategy will be to walk up to the line of what's acceptable, whether that is booth babes or simply having attractive people (particularly women) in PR and advertising materials. This isn't an ideal situation, but unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world.

I can respect people who wish we were built to value competence or altruism like this instead of sex. It's very hard to make progress without addressing reality, though. One of the more unfortunate things about political fads is that they make it difficult for people to even discuss issues. It's far easier to write-off, downmod or brand dissenting opinions as immoral, heretical, communist, sexist, divisive, etc... than it is to really probe them.

[DanBC]

The "women:" bit is a listed perk.

   PERKS
   * Women (who will serve you beer)

The people at Sqoot really need to learn better writing - their listing on EventBrite was full of typos.

[pmjordan]

I don't think the quality of their writing is the problem. Their "apology" comes across as the same kind of apology a child gives when their parent forces them to apologise for something, but they don't really think what they did was wrong. But hey, nobody can complain anymore because they apologised, right?

[cookiecaper]

And your suggestion is that they say or do nothing until they believe all the same things you believe? Sometimes people have a real disagreement or contention.

I think there is some value to "I'm sorry that upset you" -- obviously the apologizer is not sorry that the thing was done, but they are indicating they did not mean it maliciously.

[knowtheory]

2) If you're putting on an event where you have paying sponsors, "inexperience" is a pretty lame excuse. If you're going to play in the big leagues, you get held up to the standards of professionalism of the big leagues. As far as i'm concerned, they're being accorded the appropriate level of respect & deference.

[bandy]

"(female) event staff get it for you" == "They're less likely to dose it with roofies than a man would be."