
Heroku Pulls Sponsorship After Boston API Jam Publishes Sexist Eventbrite - polarslice
http://bostinno.com/2012/03/20/boston-api-jam-publishes-eventbrite-with-sexist-language-enrages-community-sponsors-quick-to-pull-out/
======
sequoia
When I got to this thread the top comment (by ellyagg) 100% missed the point.
He seemed to think people were upset by the idea of sexuality, or offended
that a man might be attracted to a woman.

Sexuality or sexual orientation is not the issue. _The commodification of
women_ is the issue. When you list "Women!" as a feature of your event along
with "Booze", "Gym Access", and "Food Truck" wares [1], you are treating them
as commodities/paid for services like, well, booze, gym access, and food
trucks wares. The unfortunate juxtaposition of "massages" and "women" in their
list of perks makes the whole thing more unseemly (moreso than they probably
intended).

Imagine you are a new female developer in Boston, and you're considering
coming to this API jam, and you see that they are promising "women" to people
who sign up to come.* Well, now you have to determine a) whether the
organizers will see/treat you as a professional and not just a treat to dangle
in front of lonely male nerds and b) whether others attendees have certain
"expectations" about your reason for coming, based on what they were promised
in the event promotion. This is bad. I won't speculate as to whether or not
that would prevent anyone from coming, the fact that these considerations
would even exist are unacceptable.

[1] <http://i.imgur.com/HNdWg.jpg> *I know this opens my argument up to "well
I'm a woman and I don't see it that way" but please note that the assertion
that follows doesn't claim any particular person would react this way but that
such a reaction is reasonable/likely.

~~~
niete
When I tell my friend that he should come to my party because a bunch of
really cool people will be there, didn't I just commodify them too? OH THE
HORROR.

When you apply English class style logic you can make anything seem as bad the
holocaust.

~~~
scate
You are right with your first sentence. Don't know why you needed to invoke
holocaust emotive in your last.

------
mcherm
If everyone responded like Heroku did (immediately, firmly, and without
apologies) when they saw such sexist behavior it would improve our industry.
Please do so whenever you get the chance, and props to the Heroku team!

~~~
vertis
Heroku didn't notice/care until someone else started making a big deal about
it. Then like any sane company they took the safe route.

~~~
tzaman
I agree.

This was a prank gone bad. No one got hurt (apart from a few egos). Pulling
sponsorship because of that is just lame.

Don't get me wrong, I have the deepest respect for women but that doesn't
prevent me from pulling (even sometimes sexist) pranks on my wife. She does
the same to me and we smile at each other.

I dare you, everyone that's horrified by their prank say it out loud (and mean
it!):

"I have never, ever made a sexist joke before in my life. At least not a kind
that would in any way offend someone"

~~~
ceejayoz
> This was a prank gone bad.

A prank? As in "haha, we got you!"?

> Don't get me wrong, I have the deepest respect for women but that doesn't
> prevent me from pulling (even sometimes sexist) pranks on my wife. She does
> the same to me and we smile at each other.

Your wife presumably is comfortable in the knowledge that you respect her,
because she knows you well. A woman showing up at a hackathon likely hasn't
known the organizers for years.

I'll smack my wife on the ass, but if I walk up to random women and do it I'm
going to get the cops called on me.

~~~
tzaman
prank == joke

Sorry for my poor choice of words

------
byrneseyeview
A general question: when someone says something offensive, the apology is
often "We're sorry: we thought this was funny, but obviously it wasn't, so
we've changed it."

This seems to get universally condemned, and lots of people argue that it's
wrong to say "I'm sorry you're offended." But what are the alternatives? I
suppose they could have said that they were deliberately sexist and hoped to
hurt people's feelings, or something. I'm not sure. What--aside from groveling
--do people want when they aren't satisfied with that kind of apology? It's
scarily reminiscent of the way cults and authoritarian regimes function: it's
not enough to confess a mistake. You have to confess your malice, too. (I wish
I had some examples that weren't so fraught, but that's all I can think of:
_The Gulag Archipelago_ , various ex-Scientology memoirs, and lots of
interactions with political correctness.)

For what it's worth, I agree that the copy was lame, and the sponsors were
right to disassociate themselves. I'm just not sure it's a mortal sin to make
a tacky joke and then apologize.

~~~
cjbprime
The alternative is to realize _why_ it was offensive instead of just that
people got offended in some abstract sense that is unrelated to anything you
can comprehend. For bonus points, further show enough empathy that you realize
that what you said now _offends you_ , too, culminating in some kind of "Damn,
I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that" apology.

~~~
toomuchtodo
And what if it doesn't offend them? Just because it offends you doesn't mean
it should condemn them.

Men like women. Men are, speaking factually, the extreme majority in the tech
industry. Don't be shocked if your values don't match those of others.

~~~
cjbprime
I don't think I understand your point, but to be clear:

I'm a man, and I like women. My like of women extends to not wanting them to
be treated like beer-servants and told that they aren't welcome as equals at a
coding event, because it would make me feel awful if someone did those things
to me.

Empathy allows you to try to work out how something might feel from someone
else's perspective, and is what should be used when trying to work out how to
apologize for inadvertent offense.

~~~
nirvdrum
There's a big difference between understanding how something might offend
someone else and equally being offended by it. I wasn't offended by this. I
ran it by my wife, who happens to also be a programmer, and she wasn't
offended by it either. Are we wrong or bad people? I mean, we see how others
might be offended by it, so there's some level of empathy, but we're not
grabbing our pitchforks over it.

On the other hand, we have friends that love bartending. The insinuation that
they're not as good or equal to someone who wants to go into programming, or
are nothing more than "beer-servants", could be construed as offensive as
well. I'm guessing you're drawing from different experiences, so I'm not going
to attribute malice to it. But these sorts of things have the ability to spin
rapidly out of control.

~~~
scate
When you say that you "ran it by your wife who happens to be a programmer and
she wasn't offended by it either", are you then saying that your wife must
then have a proxy for all women? That all women must then agree with your
wife's point of view? Because she apparently is not offended, therefore no
other woman should be offended? If she thinks it's ok then it must be ok
because she's a woman? I wonder how many times this has been used against
women? I know someone who is ok with this so therefore your argument is
invalid.

------
j45
Good for Heroku. Clear, zero tolerance for avoidable stupidity with a group
(developers) that prides itself on details, but is just lazy.

The more events that are run, and organized by over-brained and under-hearted
geeks (by/for developers), the more bias towards women seems to come out..
maybe from their inexperience with women to begin with.

Reminds me of a penny arcade comic on the insecurity that often fuels this
type of behaviour; there's a reason you're single.

[http://www.neoanathema.com/gallery/albums/ClipArt/PA_LinuxXb...](http://www.neoanathema.com/gallery/albums/ClipArt/PA_LinuxXbox.gif)

------
shallowwater
Am I missing the part where they actually no longer intend to have female-only
event staff/beer-servers? The apology makes it sound like they just changed
the ad copy.

------
tptacek
Also Apigee, MongoHQ. Presumably the rest eventually, too.

------
ellyagg
Whenever people get outraged about things like this, it interests me. I like
looking at attractive women. I like programming. Would it be possible to have
an event where I could program and look at attractive women at the same time?
Or does enjoying seeing attractive women in public make me a bad person? As a
man, is this my original sin?

In fact, I've even been known to flirt with attractive women in public--
perhaps even servers at restaurants and events. I've dated many women I've met
this way. Is it ok, when I'm eating and drinking, but not when I'm
programming?

Sorry, but I don't think this is as cut-and-dried as the pitchfork brigades
here make it seem. In my world, there isn't a bright line between
"professional and sexless" and "fun", with programming strictly under
"professional and sexless". Obviously there's a conflict here. I don't know
what the right balance is, but I cringe every time men are screamed at for not
hiding carefully enough that they like sex, as if it's mens' faults that women
are powerfully interesting to them in a biologically mandated and different
way than vice versa.

While I'm at it, I might as well mention that I very much doubt the dearth of
women in technology is because men are sexual predators. Medical doctors have
been mostly men, and, in my experience, exhibit pretty much the same desire
for women as tech people, but that never stopped women from flocking to become
nurses. As you well know, doctor/nurse fraternization is a time-honored
pursuit. There is one big difference between the two groups, though, in that
doctors are considered by women to be higher status than technical men. I've
noticed that behavior which is welcome from high status men is often labeled
"creepy" when exhibited by low status men.

Edit: I notice that people have latched onto the doctors thing which is
bizarre inasmuch as it strengthens my point. I worded it the way I did on
purpose, "have been", with an idle thought to making a point about the inroads
made by women, but was too lazy to look up the percentages. The fact that the
male/female ratio of doctors has improved so much is a tribute to the fact
that women have no problem succeeding in a previously male dominated industry
if it caters to their interests. And if you don't think the medical profession
was a good 'ol boys club, or think that systematic "awareness raising" was the
cause for the improvement, I'm afraid you're not too familiar with the history
and dynamics of that industry.

~~~
tptacek
What the hell are you talking about? Medical doctors are not "mostly men".
Roughly 50% of all medical students are women, and current trends have women
overtaking men in the profession long term.

"I very much doubt the dearth of women in technology is because men are sexual
predators". Sheesh. I agree. Comments like this do the job just fine, too.

~~~
stevenpworrel
I'm a doctor and the profession is still quite dominated by men. The women are
far more likely to fill primary-care specialties while the good-ol-boys
dominate ortho/neurosurg/EM/plastics and most of the internal medicine
subspecialties. The women in my specialty (ortho) tend to lean toward the
masculine side (in personality). A lot of it is about fitting in.

~~~
tptacek
Which sentence did I write that is actually wrong? I'm glad to have another
doctor writing here, but (respectfully) I am not particularly interested in
how "masculine" you think women in your specialty tend to act to fit in. The
statistics do not appear to back up the argument the previous poster made.

------
vertis
I'm all for less sexism in the tech community, but this just looks like
someone taking an opportunity to make a furor, rather than constructively
working to change attitudes.

"Let's have a lynching."

~~~
msbarnett
One of the easiest and most powerful actions you can take to change attitudes
towards acceptable behaviour in a community is, unsurprisingly, to immediately
express disapproval whenever undesirable behaviour happens in your presence.

It's Frown Power. It's effective. Sqoot engaged in some pretty douche-y sexism
in the e-presence of thousands of people, and thousands of people are
expressing disapproval back at them. It's a safe bet they'll get the message
that doing things like that in the future is undesirable, because having
people vociferously disapprove of you isn't a pleasant experience.

It might not fix the attitudes of the people who wrote that line, but if it
discourages the _expression_ of those attitudes, the culture will radically
change in a quite short period of time regardless of whether or not those
individuals ever get a clue.

(Incidentally, comparing Sqoot getting told off on twitter and losing some
sponsors to minorities being murdered because of their race is more than
needlessly hyperbolic).

------
iros
More on storify here: [http://storify.com/ireneros/sexist-language-earns-
sqoot-lots...](http://storify.com/ireneros/sexist-language-earns-sqoot-lots-
of-fury)

------
mweil
CloudMine pulled its sponsorship too.

------
shawn-butler
I'm curious about how exactly the people who are complaining about the
potential discriminatory hiring of female staff for this event and the sexist
way it was described feel about several (most of the successful?) sxswi
parties promoted and paid for by startups that hired local UT coeds to attend?

Shouldn't the same level of outrage apply? If not, why not?

------
bicknergseng
Meanwhile, "booth babes" remain a common tech industry trade show practice
[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/the-ces-2012-booth-
babe...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/the-ces-2012-booth-babe-
problem/963).

~~~
tptacek
Seriously, you just linked Violet Blue's odious post tagging an application
developer as a "booth babe" because of the fit of her shirt. +10 points for
proving the overarching point.

~~~
bicknergseng
Ah.... different article. That one about the Saddest Booth Babe in the world
is from 2 weeks after the one I posted. I'll stick by that point that Blue
isn't much of a journalist, but I still don't think it overly detracts from
what she said in the earlier article about booth babes being a degrading
practice.

~~~
tptacek
Yep, it was the wrong article. I jumped on you for this and shouldn't have.
It's a procrastinatey day for me (finishing reports), but that's no excuse.
I'm embarassed and apologize sincerely.

------
_delirium
I also involuntarily twinged slightly at "take a brake" and "thing of the
paste". Going to guess this didn't get a lot of review before being sent
out...

------
gamache
Attention NYC brogrammer dipshits: next time, please tarnish the name of your
own city!

~~~
j2labs
It has nothing to do with the location.

~~~
gamache
I don't like that Boston is in the headline. People do notice these things.

~~~
brown9-2
Then shouldn't you be angry at the Boston API Jam people, not people 300 miles
away who have nothing to do with this?

~~~
gamache
The Boston API Jam was being put on principally by Sqoot, who are a NYC-based
deals API company. Presumably they were trying to drum up interest in their
platform.

Now, see? Even you thought Boston had something to do with this!

------
javadyan
I think some people should loosen up. Yes, it's a bad unfunny joke. But it's
not that big a deal.

~~~
kpanghmc
You clearly have not experienced discrimination before. It's not just the act
of being discriminated against, it's the memories that it invokes and the
reminder of how little has changed.

~~~
javadyan
Believe me, friend, I have experienced discrimination. My entire family has.
They have been driven away from their home because of their nationality. Then
I was mocked and humiliated by other kids as the-kid-who-cant-speak-our-
language. Then there was the high school and all the "nice" things it holds
for the nerds. It might well be that I have experienced more discrimination
than some of the furiously anti-sexist people here. Yet I don't have anything
against racial, sexist, religious or other kinds of "sensitive" jokes. They
are jokes. They are not meant to be taken seriously. It's OK to laugh at them
if you find them funny. If you don't, shut up and let other people laugh.
Don't be a self-important asshole. After all, your precious
nationality/religion/sex/sexual orientation is worth exactly nothing.

