25 ms·
Heroku Pulls Sponsorship After Boston API Jam Publishes Sexist Eventbrite
- iros 15y agoMore on storify here: http://storify.com/ireneros/sexist-language-earns-sqoot-lots-of-fury http://storify.com/ireneros/sexist-language-earns-sqoot-lots...
- bicknergseng 15y agoMeanwhile, "booth babes" remain a common tech industry trade show practice http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/the-ces-2012-booth-babe-problem/963 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/the-ces-2012-booth-babe....
- nsxwolf 15y agoNo complaints from me.
- tptacek 15y agoSeriously, 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 15y agoInflammatory and less than accurate would be the words I would use, but the general slant of the article isn't off base. If you're talking about the comment on the bottom of the page, that Skunk Works employee never said she was an application developer... she said she was a professional model and actress who knew about the product and wasn't an idiot. Blue is wrong and off base to make generalized statements about the women themselves at those shows, but it doesn't change the fact that the whole "booth babes" practice is incredibly sexist in general. If the only issue you take away from that article is that Blue is a terrible journalist, I think you're proving the overarching point.
- tptacek 15y agoYou know what, either the vb got edited or there's a different post you cited; I said you "proved the point", but shouldn't have personalized this, because yeah, the issue I'm talking about isn't in that post. I apologize. Meanwhile (apropos nothing you wrote): http://4ma.me/481/hear-that-noise-thats-violet-blue-backpedalling.html http://4ma.me/481/hear-that-noise-thats-violet-blue-backpeda... The woman Violet Blue was talking about was Piroska Szurmai-Palotai, a developer for NeoPlay Entertainment. When confronted with this fact, Violet Blue doubled down, in effect accusing the developer of acting enough like a booth babe to be called one in print.
- bicknergseng 15y agoNo worries at all. In hindsight I should have found a more respected journalist. HN users are picky about article sources haha. Good luck with your reports.
- bicknergseng 15y agoAh.... 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 15y agoYep, 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.
- tptacek 15y agoAlso Apigee, MongoHQ. Presumably the rest eventually, too.
- mweil 15y agoCloudMine pulled its sponsorship too.
- gamache 15y agoAttention NYC brogrammer dipshits: next time, please tarnish the name of your own city!
- j2labs 15y agoIt has nothing to do with the location.
- gamache 15y agoI don't like that Boston is in the headline. People do notice these things.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- brown9-2 15y agoThen shouldn't you be angry at the Boston API Jam people, not people 300 miles away who have nothing to do with this?
- martingordon 15y agoI think he may be referring to the fact that Sqoot, the event organizer, is based out of NYC (and Chicago) but: > Sqoot was founded in 2010 at DreamIt Ventures, a startup incubator based in Philadelphia & NYC. We're a scrappy team in beautiful Chicago & NYC. From: http://www.sqoot.com/about http://www.sqoot.com/about
- gamache 15y agoThe 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!
- avand 15y agoHey, I'm one of the co-founders of Sqoot. We're a small startup trying to do big things. Sometimes we trip and fall. This is one of those times. In hindsight, our language was reckless & immature. Please accept our apology: http://blog.sqoot.com/we-can-do-better-an-apology-from-sqoot http://blog.sqoot.com/we-can-do-better-an-apology-from-sqoot
- mcherm 15y agoIf 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 15y agoHeroku didn't notice/care until someone else started making a big deal about it. Then like any sane company they took the safe route.
- izak30 15y agoIt's just as likely that they didn't know. Marketing materials don't get sent through sponsors first.
- tptacek 15y agoIt took less than 2 hours for this to go from Twitter meme to Heroku and Apigee pulling out. If a sponsor pulled out tomorrow, I'd still be impressed with them for doing it. The simplest explanation for what happened here: this is an image Heroku gives a shit about not having.
- stevenpworrel 15y agoSo they're OK with scantily-clad booth babes handing out beers at sponsored events, but they're not OK with a poorly-written post about scantily-clad booth babes handing out beers at sponsored events?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 15y agoNo? That's not what anyone is saying? That's not even wrong?
- 15y ago
- vertis 15y agoI'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."
- tptacek 15y agoYes, because pulling sponsorships from an incompetently promoted event is definitely the same thing as lynching its organizers.
- ajpiano 15y agoI don't think anyone in particular tried to make a furor, more that this was just a particularly egregious and dumb case, where it was easy for everyone to pile on and apparent to everyone what the proper resolution was. It snowballed quickly because unlike more pervasive gender issues in the tech community, this was an easy one to solve, if not avoid in the first place.
- msbarnett 15y agoOne 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).
- kellishaver 15y agoAs one of those elusive "females in tech" who generally gets somewhat tired of hearing about all of the complaints about sexism in tech, because I think a lot of people are overly sensitive to it, Sqoot's actions were the first thing I've read in a long time that actually offended me.
- _delirium 15y agoI 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...
- shallowwater 15y agoAm 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.
- j45 15y agoGood 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_LinuxXbox.gif http://www.neoanathema.com/gallery/albums/ClipArt/PA_LinuxXb...
- ellyagg 15y agoWhenever 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.
- ceejayoz 15y ago> 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. Oh, honestly. Institutionalized sexism sure as hell made it quite difficult for decades (if not centuries) for women to become doctors.
- byrneseyeview 15y agoA 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 15y agoThe 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 15y agoAnd 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.
- nirvdrum 15y agoUpvoted. And I just wanted to give some encouragement. It's become commonplace here to get downvoted not because you're belligerent or off-topic, but simply because you hold an opposing viewpoint. Please don't let that discourage you from participating in conversations here.
- javadyan 15y agoI think some people should loosen up. Yes, it's a bad unfunny joke. But it's not that big a deal.
- kpanghmc 15y agoYou 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 15y agoBelieve 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.
- sequoia 15y agoWhen 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 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.
- shallowwater 15y agoThank you for being wonderfully articulate.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- niete 15y agoWhen 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 15y ago
- shawn-butler 15y agoI'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?
- avand 15y agoHey, I'm one of the co-founders of Sqoot. We're a small startup trying to do big things. Sometimes we trip and fall. This is one of those times. In hindsight, our language was reckless & immature. Please accept our apology: http://blog.sqoot.com/we-can-do-better-an-apology-from-sqoot http://blog.sqoot.com/we-can-do-better-an-apology-from-sqoot