
Atlassian Developer Makes A Horribly Sexist Presentation At A Tech Conference - _mayo
http://www.businessinsider.com/atlassian-atlas-conference-gender-gap-tech-horror-2014-6
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fizwhiz
I don't understand. This guy was talking about HIS girlfriend comparing her to
Maven and the perceived quirks and similarities. He was not talking about ALL
girlfriends or girls in general.

Would there be such a massive uproar if the slide mentioned his baby daughter?
Seems like the qualities of "complaining, demanding attention, interrupting
while working" could easily apply to a small child regardless of gender. But
no, we prefer to be particularly sensitive when he talks about his PERSONAL
life, and describes his PERSONAL girlfriend and her qualities. And then we're
just saying that he's suggesting that this is characteristic of all
girlfriends. That's garbage.

Of course, the easiest thing for Atlassian to do is throw this guy under the
bus saying that "immediate action will be taken". Give the guy a public forum
and a decent shot to defend himself. This is getting ridiculous.

~~~
aidenn0
> This guy was talking about HIS girlfriend comparing her to Maven and the
> perceived quirks and similarities. He was not talking about ALL girlfriends
> or girls in general.

I disagree. The slide presents a strong implication that the audience will
empathize with a "clingy girlfriend" stereotype. I personally seriously doubt
he is referring to a specific individual here.

Consider if someone had said "This piece of software is like my black friend:
It's lazy, eats fried chicken and beats me at basketball"; that's a sentence
that clearly

1) Probably isn't talking about a specific person

2) Invokes common stereotypes (both positive and negative)

3) Is racist.

Furthermore it implies a certain amount of objectification, since the only
positive thing in the list is "Looks Beautiful"

Finally you just implied that assigning qualities to someone because they are
female is equivalent to assigning qualities to someone because they are
immature.

[edit] One more point; even if this is about a specific person, rather than a
reflexive usage of common stereotypes, it does contain the assumption that the
audience empathizes with having a "clingy girlfriend" which expresses an
expectation that the audience is straight men.

~~~
narrator
Argument by analogy[1] (e.g Maven _is like_ <insert thing that is disagreeable
here>) is a lazy rhetoric style anyway. We should ban it completely. People
should construct their arguments from first principals Elon Musk style. I'm
only sort of kidding...

[1] :
[http://www.unc.edu/~theis/phil32/argsbyanalogy.html](http://www.unc.edu/~theis/phil32/argsbyanalogy.html)

~~~
rabino
Some say analogies are at the very core of our cognition.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8m7lFQ3njk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8m7lFQ3njk)

Even if you don't agree, it's an interesting and fun talk to watch.

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A_COMPUTER
Wow, I thought it was going to be a lot worse when I read that headline.

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McDoku
This is stupid and wastes every ones time... He was stupid for doing it
(should know the climate) Atlassian was stupid. This article was stupid and I
am stupid for STILL letting my humanism be exploited for click bait.

The whole kerfuffle is embarrassingly skewed...

~~~
thrillgore
Just wait till you see the NPR take on this:
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/06/04/318882...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/06/04/318882549/women-
complain-a-lot-interrupt-developer-says-at-conference)

~~~
saddestcatever
That's rough. I feel like they're itching to turn the developer's joke into a
'hot topic' of feminism debate.

