How is it unnecessary? Someone is using their female significant other's gender to promote their product.
Just having his girlfriend make a video explaining his startup wouldn't be an issue - but having her make that video, then submitting an article that "hey, here's my GIRLFRIEND explaining my startup" makes it off as sex appeal.
Since sexism in gaming is a hot thing topic right now, imagine if Spike TV was to advertise that a program that discussed videogames, and that they advertised as being hosted by a "woman", no names, just "hosted by a woman". That's pretty much what this submission is doing.
It really depends how you read it. I read the hook as getting a non technical person to explain the product so the benefits are communicated in layman's terms. Most people don't have a partner in the same profession, so it's simply a situational occurrence that it ended up as "girlfriend". It could just have easily been a woman getting her non-techy boyfriend to explain it, which would equally have been a non-issue.
Okay, I sort of get what you're saying but what if it was a gay man saying my boyfriend made this? Or a woman saying my boyfriend made this? What if it was his mom who made the video? Does that still invoke sex appeal to you? The problem here seems to be with your reaction to the word girlfriend and not actually based on anything other than her gender and status. I agree that the girlfriend part could have been left out of the title, but I also don't think it ruins the integrity of this posting at all.
I think based on sexual preference you probably have different ideas of what "sex appeal" means and what your reaction to X word is.
That being said, titles are there to tell you what something is about, and to get you interested. This does both, and part of this example is surely sex appeal. You can debate whether it was intended, but that's how genders work.
Being blunt, how many readers with a sexual preference towards females considered whether or not the girlfriend in question was attractive when they landed on her Google+ page? I suspect the answer is greater than 0.
Gender plays a role in everything, it's human nature.
Women are also conditioned to judge the competency of other women based on their appearance. This isn't relevant to the case at hand however. Personally I welcome a lot, lot more posts with women somehow in them because at the sheer mention of women in HN the thread jumps to the topic of gender and I don't see that changing until there are just a lot more women posting and being posted about.
@ntumlin: when the issue is explicitly gender based and is referring to "using one's girlfriend"...there is a great deal of baggage that comes with the word whether the writer intends it or not.
Just having his girlfriend make a video explaining his startup wouldn't be an issue - but having her make that video, then submitting an article that "hey, here's my GIRLFRIEND explaining my startup" makes it off as sex appeal.
Since sexism in gaming is a hot thing topic right now, imagine if Spike TV was to advertise that a program that discussed videogames, and that they advertised as being hosted by a "woman", no names, just "hosted by a woman". That's pretty much what this submission is doing.