5 ms·
From the Ada Initiative response[1]: "Simply put, even the world’s most pro-woman, sex-positive, pro-consent talk about sex is likely to have negative effects
by tedks 14y ago
From the Ada Initiative response[1]:
"Simply put, even the world’s most pro-woman, sex-positive, pro-consent talk about sex is likely to have negative effects on women at a technical conference."
This seems like an incredibly accurate, well-reasoned, and thoroughly consequentialist view of the situation. It's supported by an overwhelming majority of objective evidence[2][3][4][5][6].
It is already being attacked as "against hacker culture," because apparently "hacker culture" is synonymous with "propagate any and all information regardless of the social consequences." Sharing information openly and freely is generally a good thing, because it generally leads to good results. But that's no reason to continue to senselessly spread information that will almost certainly lead to bad things.
To head off the inevitable argument about "censorship" and "freedom of speech," I'll note that nobody here was censored, nor denied freedom of speech. One group used their freedom of speech to convince another group hosting a conference to exercise its freedom of speech and not endorse a talk they were apparently convinced was harmful. Freedom of speech doesn't permit you the use of any platform as your own. My freedom of speech doesn't entitle me to writing the Washington Post's front page headline (or getting any space in the paper at all).
It looks like the organizers were right not to allow this talk to be given at their conference, and I for one applaud them for that, even though they'll inevitably be subject to backlash.
[1] http://adainitiative.org/2013/02/keeping-it-on-topic-the-problem-with-discussing-sex-at-technical-conferences/ http://adainitiative.org/2013/02/keeping-it-on-topic-the-pro...
[2] http://pwq.sagepub.com/content/30/1/59.short http://pwq.sagepub.com/content/30/1/59.short
[3] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11199-006-9140-x.. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11199-006-9140-x....
[4] That swimsuit becomes you: sex differences in self-objectification, restrained eating, and math performance. Journal of personality and social psychology [0022-3514] Fredrickson yr:1998 vol:75 iss:1 pg:269
[5] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FB%3ASERS.00000323.. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FB%3ASERS.00000323....
[6] http://www.sanchezlab.com/pdfs/FredricksonRoberts.pdf http://www.sanchezlab.com/pdfs/FredricksonRoberts.pdf
- zurn 14y ago> It's supported by an overwhelming majority of objective evidence[2][3][4][5][6]. Can you summarize the evidence more verbosely? Only 1 of those 5 references could be easily followed (1 broken, 2 for-pay, 1 no link). I couldn't find evidence for your claim in the one working publication and it kind of goes against common sense.
- tedks 14y agoIt should be pretty easy to figure out my email address, email me and I can send you the pdfs if you want. In a nutshell, internalized objectification is a cognitive process (like everything else), and it consumes mental resources. When these cognitions are made accessible by dressing participants in revealing clothing (swimsuits in most of these studies), those participants perform reliably worse on a wide array of cognitive tasks (arithmetic, simple logic, various other tasks that have been previously used in cognitive psychology literature) than participants in less revealing clothing (usually sweaters). Basically, if a woman is thinking "I look fat in this swimsuit," she is taking mental resources away from every other process. Common sense is not a reliable indicator of reality. Many things (general relativity, quantum physics, Milgram's obedience experiments, the representativeness heuristic, the conjunction fallacy, etc.) contradict common sense. If you prefer common sense to empirical science you will be reliably wrong on a wide array of things. I would urge you to banish the phrase "common sense" from your mind if possible.
- RexRollman 14y agoStill a dick move.
- cjbprime 14y agoThanks for linking to the Ada Initiative reply. After reading that, I agree with you (and them) that this talk was likely to result in more sexual objectification and technology-skill-dismissing of the female attendees, in today's society. It would be better if we lived in the society where you could talk about sex at technical conferences without making the women there feel threatened or objectified because no-one would threaten or objectify them as a result of the talk, but we aren't in that world yet.
- cupcake-unicorn 14y agoDoes anyone know if it's normal to keep the title/content of talks TBD until that soon before the talk? That stood out as odd to me.
- rdl 14y agoI think it is just that she's procrastinating a lot (which I'm also doing for a conference tomorrow). It wasn't intentional. She has a few talks on slightly edgy topics which she gives at different venues. The "hackers and suicide" one from CCC was probably more interesting, but that was just delivered 2 months ago to a largely overlapping audience.
- cupcake-unicorn 14y agoI wonder what would have happened if that was the talk to be cancelled? That's a triggery topic regardless of gender.
- bird_in_hand 14y agoIt doesn't make anybody feel singled out though. People affected by suicide and depression are much less visible of a population, and I think they'd be a lot less likely to have negative experiences at the conference as a direct consequence of the talk. If anything, that's a topic that doesn't get enough exposure. Sex does.
- rdl 14y agoIMO it should be about cost/benefit. I'd never put a Bond Girl in my talk (I might have at one point, but now I'm convinced it's slightly offensive); there's no reason. A Lena photo for an image processing talk, maybe, because that's essentially the standard. However, I'd be fine with a talk about sex, drugs, rape, suicide, etc., if it served a purpose. It has to be in the right venue, and I think BSides actually is a good venue for a lot of those topics (or CCC, or HAL/HIP/etc., or parts of Defcon, or Hope, but not RSA). It should be disclosed up front, and ideally way in advance.
- dktbs 14y ago