A few years ago the video game convention PAX instituted a policy, under pressure from attendees, that amounted to "no booth babes." This applied to hired model

A few years ago the video game convention PAX instituted a policy, under pressure from attendees, that amounted to "no booth babes." This applied to hired models whose only job was to dress provocatively standing in a booth, but also to cosplayers who demonstrated a level of creativity in costume-making and performance matching Naomi Wu. In that case, a class of creative professional who are passionate makers and enthusiastic fans of a medium were denied a chance to ply their trade because the organizers felt it was a salacious distraction from the core proposition from the show. Here is some coverage: (https://kotaku.com/5900134/skimpy-outfit-gets-lollipop-chainsaw-cosplayer-asked-to-leave-pax https://kotaku.com/5900134/skimpy-outfit-gets-lollipop-chain...). The sense I get is that Dale is being criticized because he's seen to be questioning an individual's technical skills based almost exclusively on her physical appearance. I get that, and that criticism is fair. However, my read of his comment is that he shares the view of the proponents of PAX's policy. In that case, Jessica Nigri was a creative enthusiast, but her presence made the show less comfortable for other attendees for a variety of reasons, e.g. promoting unrealistic body images, adding a sexual dynamic to what is supposed to be an all-ages show, etc. I'm curious if the uproar would be at all diminished (or exacerbated) if Dale had framed the original decision to not have her present along one of these lines of argument: 1) If he was dismissive of her work, but not her as a person. "Naomi Wu is an impressive young maker with a large following, but we feel like her popularity is driven more by her appearance rather than the quality or originality of her work." 2) Or if it was presented as an editorial decision: "We've not invited Naomi Wu to present because her work, while interesting, is sexually charged and outside the scope of projects we want to highlight at MakerFaire." 3) Or a commercial decision: "Naomi Wu has not been invited to present at MakerFaire because while we believe makers should feel free to pursue a wide range of interests and modes of self-expression, her presence may prove distracting to the busloads of first-graders who make up a large portion of the audience, and uncomfortable to our sponsors." 4) Or even if it was a moralistic judgement: "Naomi Wu has not been invited to present at MakerFaire because we believe women in tech face huge amounts of latent sexism and our judgment is that featuring work in this style would worsen, not improve the problem." Would these have been better or worse? FWIW, I had the good fortune to spend a few hours with Dale and some of the O'Reilly crew circa 2008. It's hard for me to imagine a more "woke" group of people at the head of a large tech company. They were focused on diversity and inclusion well before the topics took on the wide-spread buy-in that they have today.