It's not about intent, it's about perception. Using or building a tit-staring app may or may not imply that the guy in question respects women less for their technical merits, or judges them on looks rather than skills.
The problem is that as a technical woman in the audience, you will be very likely to perceive such an initiative as something that detracts from your personal values (professional merit, technical skills). This is doubly true in the tech community, where women are a minority, and is separate from the question of whether technical guys actually disrespect women. This kind of initiative is bad regardless. I'm pretty sure, though, that you will find a correlation between tit-staring and actual discrimination. Women as a minority in technical communities already have a hard enough time coping with the pressure to perform "in spite of their gender", there is no point in making it tougher for them.
When we use words like "objectification" in the context of sex discrimination in tech, it's really just an abstraction over valuing women less than men regarding technical skills. A lot of smart people will consider this a weasel-word, but it has a foundation in actual social mechanisms.
Put that way, it may make sense...My problem is that almost everyone is reacting as if the intention of that presentation was to demean or objectify women rather than make light of the fact that men do stare at tits. Still, I'd go for both men and women understanding each other over political correctness. Reason, this will eventually lead to men only events http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=5811.
I wouldn't go for making men uncomfortable around women any more than making women uncomfortable around men. The solution, I believe, lies somewhere in between men appreciating that some things are rude in certain contexts and women appreciating that men may make certain jokes without any ill intent. Also, in my experience, in offices that are balanced, gender wise, such jokes are not uncommon; it's a thing people do.
Yeah, I agree with these points, and I believe the last one is a big deal. The ideal would be a tech community where there is a suitable balance in all respects. It doesn't provide any benefit if a lot of people have to self-censor in the name of political correctness. When people claim that this is necessary, they are missing the point. This is a nuanced situation where it would be very easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The PyCon incident perfectly illustrated this.
The problem is that as a technical woman in the audience, you will be very likely to perceive such an initiative as something that detracts from your personal values (professional merit, technical skills). This is doubly true in the tech community, where women are a minority, and is separate from the question of whether technical guys actually disrespect women. This kind of initiative is bad regardless. I'm pretty sure, though, that you will find a correlation between tit-staring and actual discrimination. Women as a minority in technical communities already have a hard enough time coping with the pressure to perform "in spite of their gender", there is no point in making it tougher for them.
When we use words like "objectification" in the context of sex discrimination in tech, it's really just an abstraction over valuing women less than men regarding technical skills. A lot of smart people will consider this a weasel-word, but it has a foundation in actual social mechanisms.