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by king_jester 4884 days ago
It's true the interaction between companies and their employees has issues, esp. with regards to employees whose output is more mental than physical.

But objectifying women's bodies to sell a product is sexual objectification[1]. The issue with this is that we live in a society where attitudes that women do not control their bodies or that others get to control those bodies is a root cause of sexual violence against women and promotes an attitude that blames victims of such violence for being the cause of that violence. Keep in mind that for the vast majority of history in the western world, women were treated literally as objects and were bartered and sold and denied protection of the law when assaulted (this last point arguably is still true).

The difference between that objectification and the kind that occurs when a business simply treats you as a faceless output unit is that sexual objectification mainly has negative effects for women compared to men. The tech world has a long history of contributing to that objectification of women in a way that doesn't apply to men, who are the most common type of worker in the tech industry (that isn't to say that there aren't issues for tech workers with their jobs).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_objectification