[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.