
Sexism In The Tech Industry Takes Center Stage - dynofuz
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/09/11/221052414/sexism-in-the-tech-industry-takes-center-stage
======
cognivore
So, this has to be said.

These fucktards are the people representing our profession on NPR. NPR doesn't
run stories about the other apps presented at TechCrunch Disrupt. The public
won't here about that, or really, much of the cool tech that goes on. They'll
hear about this, and that's what they'll remember.

Why the hell doesn't someone go up on that stage and kick those idiots off?
Who's the goddamn moderator that is in charge and standing their watching this
go on, instead of walking up, killing the power, and getting them an escort
from the building.

I don't want to be an apologist for my profession, nor my passion. Right now,
I am, so it's up to us to put this shit down. Start now.

~~~
parfe
The moderators and many people in the room found the presentations funny. It
wasn't until later when they tried explaining their behaviour to their mothers
that they even began to understand the problems with what occurred.

~~~
minimaxir
It should be noted that the two moderators issued a "what the hell were you
thinking?" statement and apology _immediately_ after the hack was presented.

~~~
untog
It wasn't immediate, otherwise both Titstare and Circle Shake wouldn't have
been able to present.

And it was clear- they reacted after they saw the reaction on Twitter. Not
after they saw the presentations themselves. If you had those opinions all
along how could you stand on a stage and say "up next, Titstare" without even
blinking?

~~~
minimaxir
See other reply for order-of-events.

Apparently per their Facebook apology, Titstare entered under a different
name, with the Titstare name first being seen in the slide deck.

[http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/09/how-
avoid-...](http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/09/how-avoid-more-
brogrammers-behaving-badly/69252/)

------
babs474
Interesting that HN keeps killing threads on this topic:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6360328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6360328)

A stubborn refusal to confront the problem is what helps these attitudes
fester.

~~~
Karunamon
Probably a combination of fatigue and not wanting to deal with the toxicity
these type of threads tend to be utterly soaked in. "Confronting the problem"
is hard in the company of reasoned discussion and nigh-impossible in the face
of extremists.

*edit

And that's why I flagged it. Not because I'm some horrible sexist, or because
I want women to fail, but because I don't want HN turning into Tumblr or SRS.
On top of all that, they also tend to be the worst kind of predictable and
boring - i.e. the complete polar opposite of what great HN content is. No
thanks.

~~~
omd
Extremists? Is that what you call anyone who isn't a sexist like you? And what
does SRS have to do with anything? I left reddit to get away from the
r/mensrights freaks like you so you might want to keep your bullshit there.

~~~
Karunamon
Wow, defensive AND insulting. Thanks for proving my point about toxicity and
boring-ness.

------
dobbsbob
Where I live a very out, flaming gay dev once presented an app as a joke to
detect what he called gaydar and was pointing it at uncomfortable suit guys
and saying stuff like "you're a faggot dude, math doesn't lie". I thought it
was a hilarious small moment of anarchy in an otherwise very dull conference
full of banking apps.

A Jewish programmer also had a lol app to determine holocaust survival and the
outcomes ranged from 'Nazi comfort boy' to 'gassed immediately' after
analyzing your picture. This was a tradeshow/conference for payment solutions.
Lots of uncomfortable silence. Later found out the presenter was a comedian
some casino had hired. If he had done that at a US tradeshow all of twitter
would've exploded in faux outrage

I don't get the Business Insider troll tweets though. I think he forgot
Twitter isn't 4chan

------
nubb
Best comment on the article from Bob Costas...

For years people (and yes, mostly guys) who were involved in the tech industry
and engineering in general were shunned and dismissed by culture at large to
be losers and sexual non-entities and therefore lacking in social currency. As
a result of this mass dismissal and social rejection, and since most women
aren't raised or brought up to deal with rejection and social stigmatization,
while some actively participated and reinforced the stigmatization, women in
general didn't feel comfortable being in or pursuing a career in a field that
garnered such negative attention for a very long time.

To this day people in the tech field are often marginalized and in order to
attract women to the field companies like Google have to produce promo videos
that try to convince women to join the industry by suggesting that there
aren't that many weirdos in the industry and that most people in the industry
are "normal" as opposed to celebrating the beautiful weird male personalities
that achieved great things because of their weirdness not in spite of it and
helping women realize and embrace the male nerd ethic the went into building
this new world:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v..](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v..).

Notice the attention given to showering and how they gloss over the fact that
in reality, the current leaders in the tech world didn't bath regularly when
they were building their companies. Bill Gates comes to mind.

The reason why you get push-back from males from the industry when it comes to
involving more women in tech isn't because they have some "jock, locker room,
and frat" mentality that women are somehow mentally inferior to males and
aren't capable of understanding tech. Actually, women in science and
engineering classes at major universities tend to be the top students in those
classes. Its because they don't think women in general have the fortitude nor
the willingness to not shower for days and be content with not going outside
while living off cold pizza. While most tech experiences these days don't
involve this sort of lifestyle, the anti-social behavior and culture that are
associated with the lifestyle still exist and instead of women decrying these
prevailing attitudes in tech they should embrace these traits.

Case in point, Elon Musk's ex-wife. Instead of dealing with his borderline
autism for what it was, in her blog she attacked him being arrogant and
uncaring. Elon Musk is a weirdo and natural introvert who forces himself to be
an extrovert to be able to do the interesting and unique things he wants and
needs to do in life.

~~~
untog
_Its because they don 't think women in general have the fortitude nor the
willingness to not shower for days and be content with not going outside while
living off cold pizza. [...] instead of women decrying these prevailing
attitudes in tech they should embrace these traits._

You really don't see the inherent contradiction there? The first half says the
problem is assumptions by men about what women will or will not do. The
'solution' buys into this assumption without examining whether it is in any
way true.

Who says women do not have the fortitude to not shower for days and live off
cold pizza?

~~~
awj
I've encountered more women capable of avoiding the shower for days than I
ever would have wanted. "Apathy towards basic hygiene" is not established at
the genetic level.

Either way, _that_ is something I'd like to see leave this industry too.

~~~
pjbrunet
I think Bob is hinting at where this evolved from. But that was 20 years ago,
we need to look forward now.

~~~
jerrya
It wasn't even true 20 years ago.

"Bob Costas" is playing the same stereotypes he claims to despise when others
hold.

------
zalew
> TechCrunch issued an apology Sunday for the "two misogynistic
> presentations,"

app is sexist yeah, but how is looking at tits _misogynistic_?

~~~
mistermcgruff
The reduction of women to a collection of body parts is often seen as a form
of dislike for holistic femaleness -- it robs a person of their humanity. 3rd
wave feminism might disagree with this to a point, but the 1st wave certainly
wouldn't.

~~~
betterunix
Meanwhile, women in blue collar environments joke about men staring at their
breasts, butts, and whatever else, engage in the same sort of rude banter as
men, and are generally accepted as strong and capable. At least that is what I
have seen at the railroad where my mother works, where women are not demeaned
by their coworkers and do not feel that their work environmental is "hostile."
Jokes about body parts are a bit immature but they come with the territory in
certain lines of work -- and as long as both male and female anatomy get equal
time, I do not think one can make a claim that there is some kind of sexism.

~~~
snowwrestler
Joking about bodies and sex with coworkers you know well is not the same thing
as a product built around the concept of staring (presumably lasciviously) at
the boobs of strangers.

Basically, it's a question of participation vs. objectification--of being in
on the joke vs. being the butt of the joke.

------
dexen
Let our inner knee-jerk selves remember the ``Why defend freedom of icky
speech?'' [1].

[1] [http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-
of-...](http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-
speech.html)

~~~
nicholassmith
I don't know if I'd agree this is a freedom of speech issue compared to that
article (which I've also read, it's great), there's very little the app is
trying to say (other than "hey this is me staring at boobs") which is pushing
the freedom of speech argument a little far.

~~~
coldtea
How is "staring at boobs" bad?

~~~
nicholassmith
That's quite a loaded question, obviously boobs hold a point of attraction for
men as we often like them and you know, they're there, but if you're making an
app of you staring at boobs it goes from a fleeting thing to more a situation
where you've just turned that lady in an object. That's not super awesome.

Look, I like boobs as much as the next guy, but there's got to be a line where
we go from "yay boobs are awesome" to "okay this is a bit creepy".

~~~
coldtea
> _but if you 're making an app of you staring at boobs it goes from a
> fleeting thing to more a situation where you've just turned that lady in an
> object_

How is that different from going to see people play music or act in a movie?

Is an actor "an object"?

How about other people we see as objects/machines to do stuff for us, like
someone serving meals at McDondals (or a programmer)? In that interaction, we
only value what we get out of them -- they might as well be objects (and in
some cases, they ARE replaced by objects, e.g with automation).

How are those cases different, except in the puritan way of "it involves
sexual desire" so it's bad?

~~~
nicholassmith
Because those people are there to fulfil a role.

So there's looking at boobs and there's looking at boobs. There's looking at
the boobs of someone who wants you to look at their boobs, either they are an
adult model or a consenting adult who's thought "Hey, this guy/gal is alright,
I'm okay with them seeing my boobs". In that situation all is well with the
world, they're either fulfilling a role for cash purpose or they've decided to
extend a level of intimacy.

(sidenote: not a puritan, I think sex and sexuality is a big part of our
society and we ignore at far too often, and discuss it even less)

~~~
coldtea
> _Because those people are there to fulfil a role._

Isn't that exactly what bikini models are also there to do?

> _There 's looking at the boobs of someone who wants you to look at their
> boobs, either they are an adult model or a consenting adult who's thought
> "Hey, this guy/gal is alright, I'm okay with them seeing my boobs". In that
> situation all is well with the world, they're either fulfilling a role for
> cash purpose or they've decided to extend a level of intimacy._

And how's that different from what that app was about out?

Didn't it use professional models and such?

(Seriously asking, haven't read about that part)

------
efa
These guys are idiots and there is definitely sexism in the IT industry. But
every time I see these stories saying there is sexism in IT I think compared
to what? Finance (Wall Street!)? Marketing? Law? Government? Military?
Manufacturing? Construction?

I guess the disturbing part is what makes these guys think they can be this
open about it. Wall Street has rampant sexism but I'm thinking they are smart
enough not to show it is a public forum.

~~~
eli
The tech industry has a real problem. What happens in other industries doesn't
change that.

~~~
army
Agreed. I think we really need to look at where we're losing women, especially
in the transition from high school to college.

------
eli
Not sure this adds much to the story, but I think it's noteworthy that this
was covered in a mainstream news program. I heard it on the radio yesterday.

~~~
ChuckMcM
The whole thing is sad, but hopefully this sort of exposure will have the
'training' effect that folks won't seriously expect us to believe the excuse
"Hey, its just a joke, I didn't mean it." which works fine if you're comedian
doing a comedy act, not so well if your venue is more serious than that.

~~~
masmullin
Once we remove jokes from the workplace, then we can concentrate our focus on
removing smiling. Work should be no fun zones, one day our dream of robotic
toil will come to fruition.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I love that response. It captures the essence of the maturation process. My
kids would use variations on it when we talked about rules and behaviors. And
that lead to productive discussions about absolute rules versus (don't kill
people), contextual rules (kill people who are enemies), and societal rules
(kill people who are trying to kill you) [1].

Clearly in the context of TechCrunch Disrupt making _sexist_ jokes is a
problem, but Rickrolling Arrington as our CTO did one year when he showed a
backwards search engine (you went from a bunch of results to figure out what
the query was that would return those kind of thing) just 'funny' (for some
definition of funny, since it was pretty late in the Rickrolling meme but I
digress).

But the maturation process, the one where you look at a situation and predict
which behaviors will be ok for the group or not ok for the group, is something
that you can't teach but you can learn.

[1] "Murder" is a useful foil to have this discussion around as there are so
many different contexts in which one person may feel compelled or desire to
take the life of another.

~~~
masmullin
So that's one vote for removing satire from internet discussions.

------
marcuspovey
Commented earlier on another Women In Tech thread (seems to be the meme of the
day).

The question is not "Why are there so few women in IT?", it's "Why are so many
men in IT such jerks?"

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
My question is, what kind of jerk would brand a whole field as sexist because
of the sensationally bad behavior of two people?

~~~
eli
The field has a serious problem with sexism, even if many (or even most) of
its individual members are not themselves sexist.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
drat! you again!

------
JonFish85
On top of being embarrassed for doing this on stage, these people should be
embarrassed for presenting such a fucking dumb idea for a hackathon.

On an 100% unrelated note, Adria Richards has transitioned from "Technology
Evangelist" to "Programmer"?

~~~
minimaxir
Per their apology, the two guys had a different idea for a hack (hence the
name issue) that didn't pan out, hence their Hail Mary in order to get free
Disrupt tickets. (You must present to get a ticket.)

~~~
JonFish85
Regardless, I stand by my statement: dumb fucking idea. Even if it was
supposed to be a joke. That's when you make the "Hillary Clinton Quote
Generator", "Virtual High 5 App", "I'm Pissed Button" or whatever. If you're
trying to get laughs by going with sexual jokes, you're not funny.

------
MattyRad
The only thing I found offensive about this story was the environment in which
the app was presented, which was definitely inappropriate. If the app was
presented by Daniel Tosh on his TV show, we'd probably all have a chuckle and
move on.

~~~
eli
But you see why that's a really significant difference, right? One is a
professional gathering for people who work in a certian field and the other is
a basic cable comedy show.

------
Spooky23
The sexist element is just one aspect of the fail. Fratboy behavior is
annoying in college. It's particularly annoying in the real world.

------
desireco42
I consider my profession fantastic, with a lot of beautiful and exceptionally
smart people. I haven't encountered this nearly as much. It must be happening
more in Silicon Valley and NY more, but generally I can't see sexism as a part
of culture in our profession. I am in Chicago if that matters, as a consultant
I changed a lot of companies.

On other hand, developers, both male and those few females are not the most
eloquent people, however women were always welcomed, especially developers.

------
bcheung
"Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex."

Talking about sex or using crude sexual humor is NOT sexism. It may be
inappropriate for a professional environment (especially if kids are around)
but it is not sexism; there is no discrimination nor an intent to put someone
else down.

~~~
dragonwriter
> > "Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex."

> Talking about sex or using crude sexual humor is NOT sexism

Creating a selectively hostile environment is a (fairly significant) legally
recognized form of discrimination based on sex, and both of these can be (and
not infrequently are) mechanisms that create such an environment, so it is, at
best, an oversimplification to say that they are not sexism.

~~~
bcheung
I agree it may be a offensive environment but how is it selective or
discriminatory though? People can be offended by just about anything. Doesn't
mean they are the target. Religion offends me—being around it makes me
uncomfortable—but that doesn't give me the right to tell people to stop
talking about.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I agree it may be a offensive environment but how is it selective or
> discriminatory though?

Its selectively hostile because of disparate impact due to occurring within a
cultural context in which sensitivity to these issues is not even
approximately evenly distributed by sex.

> Religion offends me—being around it makes me uncomfortable—but that doesn't
> give me the right to tell people to stop talking about.

Being human gives you the right to do that (just as the same thing gives other
people the right to ignore you when you do, in most circumstances.)

This, of course, is completely orthogonal to the question on discrimination,
as something being discrimination is not a pre-requisite for someone to have a
right to tell people to stop doing it.

------
alexholehouse
So while the Business Insider story was just in tech circles I can image
everyone's favourite brogrammer Pax Dickinson may have been able to casually
sidestep into another sector.

With it hitting NPR, I suspect this has irreversibly damaged his professional
reputation.

~~~
minimaxir
Pax Dickinson is now creating and running a tech startup.

[https://medium.com/glimpse-labs/4aa5b6a6a665](https://medium.com/glimpse-
labs/4aa5b6a6a665)

------
pjbrunet
I don't think they should make such broad generalizations about the tech
industry because of three 20-something guys from San Francisco, New York City,
who aren't even employed by any large, reputable technology company.

------
scc
Unsurprisingly, the guys who demoed "Titstare" are part of AngelHack - they
are from the "Hate-You Cards" team which was accepted into AngelHack's "pre-
accelerator" program.

------
option_greek
Would it still be sexist if the event was branded as R rated or adults only ?

~~~
eli
Yes.

------
gametheoretic
Q: Cui bono?

/provocateur

