[zem]

i disagree. he seems to be saying that the industry needs women because of the new and different, "grown-up, nurturing, ..." perspective they can bring to the table. i think the industry needs women because, well, when you arbitrarily exclude half the human race from contributing, you are unquestionably losing something of significant value.

the thing is this: women have already gotten a raw deal by being socialised to find sex uncomfortable, and by living in cultures where sex has been linked to aggression. the problem with the pycon incident was not that anything was intrinsically wrong with dick jokes, but that it was creating a hostile environment in the context of a playing field that was already tilted.

the critically important thing to take away, in my opinion, is not that "women are different" (because that lumps women into one group and men into another, and posits that there is less variance within the groups than across them), it is that women live in a different environment than men do, and that while men are unaffected when they forget this, women are reminded of it every single day. (look up microaggression theory for a lot more about this.)

[kylebgorman]

(not to get offtopic but) sex is linked to aggression in _all_ cultures: two human universals are "rape" and "rape proscribed".

http://condor.depaul.edu/mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm

[illuminate]

"women have already gotten a raw deal by being socialised to find sex uncomfortable"

The counter to this is that they should be made more comfortable by not ~forcing~ them to pretend to be comfortable with awkward conversations in professional situations. Some things aren't as progressive as you imagine.

[zem]

How is that a counter? It follows directly!

[illuminate]

Right, but plenty are attempting to sidestep this comfort level and any contextualization, demanding that women enjoy lame dick jokes for the comfort of the men around them.

[zem]

that's exactly what i was trying to say. the thing to do is notice the context that leads women to disproportionately find sex jokes uncomfortable, not to conclude that "women are different from men and therefore..."