As an attendee at Defcon right now I agree with you, it is a rather hostile group. > Invites to parties being handed out to male speakers and not female speake

As an attendee at Defcon right now I agree with you, it is a rather hostile group. > Invites to parties being handed out to male speakers and not female speakers My guess is this was a result of an oddball selection process rather than anti-female bias. I have never seen a party at Defcon didn't already have a huge surplus of males. > Women stripping being used as a prize in hacker jeopardy > Jeopardy game features the category "hot pussy" > Objectifying content on slides I find this whole Las Vegas scene to be gross. Most indoor places stink like cigarette smoke. Nevertheless, let's not take Defcon and other Jeff Moss/Dark Tangent productions as representative of the "security community". There are a great many other people in security who go out of their way to be welcoming and respectful. > Hacking devices of new users at conferences is considered completely acceptable This is well known. One of the functions of Defcon is as an exploit/malware trading market. > I can only conclude you don't want to be welcoming to new users. Should they be? It's a place for amateur hackers, pros, double agents, Feds, and internationals to gather in the same place for a few days with a tacit understanding of some relaxed rules. It's a once a year opportunity for many attendees but its not for everyone.