

Sexism and the ISC West Party Girls - jhonovich
http://ipvm.com/report/sexism_domewizard_girls

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claudius
Could someone please explain to me how this is sexist?

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sp332
It's using women as passive objects instead of as participants in the show.
Women and men have different roles in the show. The men are taken seriously
and the women are not. That's why it's sexist.

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claudius
So it would be fine if the scarcely dressed participants in the show were of
the same gender as the main characters?

Furthermore, I don’t think that the ‘passive objects’ were chosen based on
gender, but rather on appeal to the assumed audience, possibly complementing
the main presenters as to offer likeable elements to every member of the
audience.

Or are you saying that the visitors of this show are sexist because they only
like women (assuming that this is true)?

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sp332
I think the main problem is that women are already a minority. So when they
look around, the women they are most likely to see are the ones who are not
being taken seriously. This will discourage women from participating, and
continue to ensure that the audience in future events is mostly male.

A larger issue is that attendees will stop taking _all_ women at the event
seriously. It's like a spam filter for the brain: if you want to talk
seriously about a product, find a man. Please note that even women attendees
do this to each other.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2963733> especially the comments

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claudius
So clearly if the general population was less heterosexual[0] and/or more
women in tech[1], this wouldn’t be a problem. However, it is rather difficult
for me to understand that an action (employing scarcely dressed women) can be
sexist depending on external factors such as the percentage of people
interested in women/men.

[0] Such that more men would be interested in men and hence scarcely dressed
men were around as well.

[1] So that the link female ⇔ booth babe breaks down.

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sp332
Mostly, yes. Of course inviting only scantily-clad _women_ makes women
attendees feel a little less welcomed/catered to/pandered to than the men.

