

‘Play with my V spot’ - shakes
http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/03/play-with-my-v-spot/

======
dizzystar
This article is taking two points and conflating them together in a way that
makes no sense at all:

Good Point: Marketers, who in this case are predominantly male, are using
hyper-sexuality to promote their image and their ad and are being insensitive
to women, thus abandoning 50% of the possible customer base. This is a stupid,
of course.

Bad Point: Engineers are predominantly male because the marketers (an industry
teaming with women) of this particular company are pigs.

The author of this article is saying that women are chased away from
programming because some CEO and CMO, both presumably male, sat in the office
and beat their brains out trying to conjure up a good image and brand strategy
for the company. Is she saying that some lowly engineer, with no MBA +
Marketing should have the power to stop this, and even if she (he even?)
speaks up, there is anything that will stop it? What proof does the author
have that all the engineers working at this place are males and that maybe a
girl or two worked on the website and thought it was a good idea?

While I understand this article from an emotional stand-point, I am failing to
understand it from a logical perspective.

Here are a few reasons that girls aren't attracted to engineering:

Boys receive Lego block and Lincoln Blocks. Girls receive prefab Barbie Doll
houses and cars.

Boys are told to play video games, which are all male-centric. Girls... Shoots
and Latters?

Girls are told that they shouldn't be good at math or science. Boys are told
they should be good at math or science.

This is all a much deeper cultural issue that sexuality is a veneer we use to
hide the real issues. Marketing in general is lambasted for objectifying the
female body, but that didn't stop droves of women going into marketing. Yeah,
if sexuality was really the issue, then marketing would be 99% male also.

~~~
jerrya
_Good Point: Marketers, who in this case are predominantly male, are using
hyper-sexuality to promote their image and their ad and are being insensitive
to women, thus abandoning 50% of the possible customer base. This is a stupid,
of course._

No, this is a bad point.

It is a point that at the least, needs a citation, re: the gender split of
marketing professionals. Let me tell you, in my MBA program, the majority of
marketing MBAs were women.

It is also a bad point because in this case, the person that came up with this
ad is a WOMAN. Ya, a female not a male marketer.

~~~
dizzystar
Sorry, I missed the footnote. Well, then that is somewhat a bad point, but...
it is ultimately up to the company to figure out who they are and what image
they want to represent, and saying that a female marketer came up with the
idea (Is Annie Dirk an iron-fist controller of all ideas from her company?) is
still no excuse for the company's executive team to be mindless in their
company's image.

We could also point fingers at the fashion industry as well. There is no other
industry that I can think of that perpetually exploits women yet is full of
women workers. Fashion schools aren't exactly male-dominant.

~~~
jerrya
On the other hand, and I certainly don't know how this works, I don't think
the CEO or President of many firms personally okay each ad in a campaign.

They give the marketing department a budget and say, there, go, spend that
money.

So the interaction here is between a bunch of marketing people, we don't know
the genders of many of them, we don't know what their relationship to tech is,
we don't know what their relationship to the execs is.

~~~
dizzystar
>> _They give the marketing department a budget and say, there, go, spend that
money._

I don't know how this company works. I used to be a marketing director and I
know it didn't work the way you describe at all. No manager is an island and
everyone has to answer to everyone somewhere along the line.

I will argue that a CEO should be well-aware of what their company is and what
it represents. I don't fault the company in the article for okaying the image
portrayed in the ad, though. It is truly their own decision.

~~~
jerrya
Okay, well thank you, then for the information.

------
pygorex
As a straight male I guess I'm the target of this type of advertising. But I
don't find it even remotely sexy or titillating. This is a shallow, junior-
high level male teen deuche bag perspective on sexuality. God damn it's sad
and just plain gross.

What do ads like this say to me? What impression do I get of the company
(Voco)? "Are you a dull, hyper-sexualized idiot? Do you treat women like trash
are rarely get laid? If so you'll love Voco! Play with our V-spot, 'cuz that's
the only action you're going to get!"

------
rb2k_
> Guys, this is why we don’t have more women in tech: It’s a cesspool. As long
> as we’re passing offensive schlock like this off as marketing for a major
> technology conference, we don’t deserve more women in tech

Engineers don't design advertisement campaigns.

Engineers aren't staffing booths at conventions.

~~~
danilocampos
> Engineers don't design advertisement campaigns.

You're totally right. I can't think of _any_ technology companies with
engineers in their leadership. Further, leadership never approves ad
campaigns. Ads get designed and run no matter what the CEO thinks.

~~~
angryasian
i think the best technology companies are run by engineers , page and brin of
google, zuckerberg of facebook, bezos of amazon.

------
jerrya
What does this have to do with "women in tech"?

The ad was created by a female marketing puke and her advertising team that
put together this promotion.

It wasn't created by engineers, or physicists, or software developers, or
occupations traditionally associated with tech. This could ad could have been
about anything, because the woman in charge thinks that sex sells.

It was created by people that are much more closely related to journalism,
Venture Beat, than it is to tech.

Also Patriarchy ain't a real thing.

Lazy journalism is.

~~~
DanBC
> What does this have to do with "women in tech"?

A tech company commissions, approves, and delivers an advert for their
product.

Did the company have no input to the creatives?

> Also Patriarchy ain't a real thing.

Easier to say if you're not the one getting 81 cents to the dollar.

~~~
jerrya
_Easier to say if you're not the one getting 81 cents to the dollar._

That point has been debunked for just about forever now, including from Robert
Reich, former Secretary of Labor to Bill Clinton, and about as feminist
friendly as a man could be.

The net net being that if there _is_ a gender wage gap, it's on the order of 6
cents to the dollar, not 23 or 19 cents.

[http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/05/01/robert-reich-
answers-...](http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/05/01/robert-reich-answers-your-
labor-questions/)

We also know that many if not most young female college graduates do better
with salary than their male counterparts.

~~~
DanBC
Do you have a better source? Not being snarky, but a couple of sentences with
no cites isn't particularly compelling.

Especially when he starts by saying it's a rough estimate, and finishes by
saying that the pay differential does exist, and is partly caused by bias and
prejudice.

> _Q: I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the feminisation of poverty
> and the male-female wage differential. How much of that is due to career
> choice?_

> _A: Rough estimate: About 50 percent of the differential has to do with
> different career choices made by women and men. Twenty-five percent involves
> greater time women spend on care-taking of children and elderly relatives.
> The other 25 percent is due to bias and prejudice in the labor market._

~~~
jerrya
There are a wide variety of takes, pro and con, on the gender wage gap. It's
clearly very political, and so for every report X you can easily find !X out
there.

It's also useful to know how this wage gap is calculated. So as you search,
see if you can find any source that says this is an apples to apples
comparison. Men of some age and schooling in some field compared to women of
the same age and schooling in the same field. Because the 77 cents number, the
81 cents number really seems to from adding up all wages in all fields from
men and comparing them to all wages in all fields from women.

Here is a report from CONSAD commissioned, I believe from the Labor Department
under GWB, removed from gov't websites when President Obama came into office,
and if you google it, a report criticized by many on the left, frequently and
loudly.

[http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20...](http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf)
[PDF]

Here's an article at Forbes that seems to break down the 81 cents number.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/05/21/mind-the-
mal...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/05/21/mind-the-malefemale-
income-gap-but-dont-exaggerate-it/)

Here's a Warren Farrell article that provides more information:

<http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=621>

Here's Christina Hoff Sommers, discussing in 2012, the AAUW 2012 Pay Gap
study:

Wage Gap Myth Exposed -- By Feminists --
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-
ga...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-
gap_b_2073804.html)

What is interesting is that, I believe, all of these supposedly conservative
reports and analysis support what Robert Reich is saying (and/or vice versa.)

------
Uhhrrr
I must confess, I flagged this article before clicking through because I
thought it was using dumb innuendo, not vilifying it.

------
steele
And my sons will never feel comfortable in the cologne industry. :(

~~~
esperluette
Many of the most prominent perfumers are men. Frederic Malle comes to mind,
plus a large chunk of the ones on this list:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfumer#List_of_notable_perfum...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfumer#List_of_notable_perfumers)

~~~
steele
They need to perform better oversight to their marketing departments!

------
ucee054
Let's imagine the outrage if they used a hunky Cosmo centre-fold "Nude
Fireman" in their ads...

<crickets/>

...feminists, cry me a river

------
outside1234
there is no bad press. by vilifying it, she's promoting it.

~~~
pyre

      > there is no bad press
    

Does the following review qualify as good press:

    
    
      This product did not work at all once I bought it. I
      contacted the company to get a refund. The customer
      service person swore at me, called me an idiot, and
      told me to "get lost." Enraged, I found the contact
      information for the CEO. I appealed to the CEO that
      the product was non-functional. The CEO replied by
      email with a pornographic picture with the caption,
      "GO F**K YOURSELF!"
    

I bet that company is going to rolling in the money due to all of the brand-
recognition that they just got, right? </sarcasm>

------
baddox
> Maybe the beholder doesn't think of women's body parts as playthings.

Isn't that a valid use for many body parts, and a primary use for a few,
regardless of gender? I don't think this marketing, by displaying legs and
lips in the context of sensuality, is implying that other uses for legs (like
running) or lips (like playing the harmonica) are any less valid.

~~~
danilocampos
You've missed the point.

The issue here is that the company's marketing pivots entirely around the
desire to have sex with women.

Which signals to, say, heterosexual women, that they are not a valid user of
the depicted technology.

~~~
baddox
Is the issue the desire to have sex with women itself, or the choice to market
specifically to people that desire to have sex with women? I don't see
anything wrong with either.

And does it _really_ hint to heterosexual women that they aren't a valid user
of the technology? I certainly don't automatically assume that I'm not a valid
user of a product when I see marketing directed at a demographic of which I'm
not a member. I've bought laptops and tablets despite them being primarily
shown in ads with college students or teenagers.

I am tempted to think that the author has a specific problem with _sexuality_
in marketing, not simply marketing that targets a specific demographic.

~~~
danilocampos
> I certainly don't automatically assume that I'm not a valid user of a
> product when I see marketing directed at a demographic of which I'm not a
> member.

Did you have an Easy Bake Oven as a kid?

> I don't see anything wrong with either.

I know, that's part of the problem we've got, here.

~~~
baddox
There's lots of things I didn't have as a kid, including numerous toys
marketed at both genders. The fact that males usually don't buy _every single
product_ that has ever been marketed to females isn't a very useful piece of
evidence.

You just claimed that part of the problem is my belief that marketing
specifically to people that desire to have sex with women is not bad. I find
that claim incomprehensible, and I am very curious at your reasoning behind
it.

