6 ms·

What a bizarrely sexist description: "Intelligence has never been this adorable: Marissa Mayer, the sexy, hyperactive, geeky Vice-President of Search Product a

What a bizarrely sexist description: "Intelligence has never been this adorable: Marissa Mayer, the sexy, hyperactive, geeky Vice-President of Search Product and User Experience at Google. Her Googliness was at Stanford University, giving her insightful take on creativity, followed by the usual Q&A. She's really the girl of the millenium."

foobarbazqux 13y ago
The comments below are better.
- chaddeshon 13y ago
  Honest question. Why does the comment feature on YouTube still exist?
  - hayksaakian 13y ago
    The same reason 4chan has /b/ If you don't keep the crap in a pot, it spills all over the place.
    - chaddeshon 13y ago
      YouTube would be a better site if they just removed the feature. Let it spill somewhere else. Why should I have to read comments like that on a video that has done nothing to invite them?
      - foobarbazqux 13y ago
        Google probably has a financial incentive to keep YouTube comments around. You don't have to read them at any rate. And the video did invite the comments because it featured a woman.
      - glesica 13y ago
        Write a Greasemonkey or Userstyles script to hide them. Problem solved. I do that kind of stuff all the time to fix busted "modern" web interfaces (low contrast text, insane amounts of padding, important interface elements that only display on rollover) for web sites I use regularly.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    Because people want to have fun with comments? Why does the comment feature on HN still exist after this silly "is sexist" discussion? Oh right, having fun.
dominotw 13y ago
> What a bizarrely sexist description Calling it sexist is sexist. I don't see what is so wrong with calling someone adorable and sexy.
- saraid216 13y ago
  > I don't see what is so wrong with calling someone adorable and sexy. Have you considered looking, or have you made up your mind?
- vkou 13y ago
  It's sexist, because the first and foremost descriptor it applies to of one of the most influential women in tech is... A quantification of how attractive she is.
- jerf 13y ago
  "adorable" and "girl" both diminish a woman's potency in this context. I also wouldn't expect to see "sexy" used to describe any man who is not an actor or something very similar. I don't feel like I'm diving into anything very PC here. This is a straightforward reading of very normal connotations of the words in question. Calling middle-aged women "girls" is generally belittling. Contrast with "hyperactive" and "geeky" which are often used to describe males in similar positions.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  Just listen how ridiculous it sounds when it's a man: "Intelligence has never been this hunky: Paul Graham, the handsome, hyperrich, nerdy Chief Architect of Hacker News at Y-Combinator (among other things). His Y-Ness was blogging on his website, giving his insightful take on founding a startup, followed by the usual round of HN comments. He's really the boy of the millenium."
  - adventured 13y ago
    Not that ridiculous in this era. Women openly drool over hunky men. From Jon Hamm to Beiber to Brad Pitt to Clooney and on and on it goes depending on your taste. They're obviously traditional celebrities. The only thing unusual about it is the fact that Mayer is in tech where I think the cultural stereotype would be that there are less sexy people because most jobs don't benefit from it or require it. However I've seen guys like Kevin Rose, Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk and Dennis Crowley regarded for various degrees of sex appeal. Or take a negative example of this: Bill Gates for the entirety of his Microsoft career, was frequently regarded as looking nerdy, dressing badly (early days), looking unkempt, not combing his hair, all sorts of negative descriptives have been applied to him from the founding days forward. Do you think that was detrimental to his career? His start-up efforts? Do you think it kept him awake at night? Did it crush his self-esteem? Did it harm him as a professional? You could hardly read an article about him without them first describing him based on his nerd'ish looks. Gates was regarded as a 'boy wonder' for about the first 15 years of his career, thanks to his young appearance (despite being in his 30's). The reality is, guys don't get upset when they're ogled for being sexy. It's a compliment. There's an intense double standard derived from the notion that women are not given equal opportunity and are treated in a sexist manner across the board. On average men and women take sexual advances completely differently, and they take compliments about appearance very differently as well. If you compliment Elon Musk for being good looking, he's not going to think that detracts from his abilities, and nobody is going to care. If you do the same thing to Mayer, you'll create a firestorm; suddenly it's sexist and not being fair to her. Thus a double standard. Take a bar poll some time about how men and women react to having their ass slapped by the opposite sex, see how those numbers roll out, and that'll tell you most of what you need to know about the difference between the sexes on this topic. Point being, men and women generally react very differently to the same input.
kyberias 13y ago
I think you don't really know what sexist means. There is zero prejudice or discrimination involved here. Merely describing a woman or man sexy is not sexist. I wasn't really surprised that this is the first (and only?) issue people discuss here.
- anologwintermut 13y ago
  It is sexist. Mayer's appearance has nothing to do with the context of the video and focusing on it perpetuates the double standards about what we expect of men in terms of appearance, effort towards it, dress, etc and what we expect of women in the same. Mentioning it implies it's something worth mentioning. It isn't, for either men or women. The trick is it's self evident that mentioning it for men would be irrelevant. For some reason, however, people take issue with someone pointing out that it ought to be irrelevant for women.
- saraid216 13y ago
  > There is zero prejudice or discrimination involved here. That's the elementary school explanation of sexism. It's useful as a shorthand for explaining the concept in a sentence, such as saying "the ground is down", but it misses all the larger nuance, such as the concept of an inertial frame and the arbitrariness of coordinate systems. With sexism, reducing the concept down to "prejudice or discrimination" misses its more essential points about psychology and sociology. It doesn't explain what objectification is nor how gender imbalances are arbitrary, even if we have some idea of how they came about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaze http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaze
goggles99 13y ago
Lets be honest here, If Marissa was not "adorable" and "sexy", this video and discussion would never have appeared on Hacker News. The majority of you men who watched any part of this vid and are calling the description sexist are hypocrites. You at least partly watched it for these same reasons. Just because you won't say it out loud does not make you an less sexist inside.
- saraid216 13y ago
  Even those of us who are gay? I mean, I realize you have a global mindreader to rival PRISM, but do you have to be so heteronormative?
  - goggles99 13y ago
    The majority of you men...
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  Projection; ad hominem: tu quoque.
- hyperbovine 13y ago
  > Lets be honest here, If Marissa was not "adorable" and "sexy", this video and discussion would never have appeared on Hacker News. I believe that is exactly my point.
  - siegeofacre 13y ago
    Oh please. Get over yourself.

foobarbazqux 13y ago

The comments below are better.

chaddeshon 13y ago
Honest question. Why does the comment feature on YouTube still exist?
- hayksaakian 13y ago
  The same reason 4chan has /b/ If you don't keep the crap in a pot, it spills all over the place.
  - chaddeshon 13y ago
    YouTube would be a better site if they just removed the feature. Let it spill somewhere else. Why should I have to read comments like that on a video that has done nothing to invite them?
    - foobarbazqux 13y ago
      Google probably has a financial incentive to keep YouTube comments around. You don't have to read them at any rate. And the video did invite the comments because it featured a woman.
    - glesica 13y ago
      Write a Greasemonkey or Userstyles script to hide them. Problem solved. I do that kind of stuff all the time to fix busted "modern" web interfaces (low contrast text, insane amounts of padding, important interface elements that only display on rollover) for web sites I use regularly.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  Because people want to have fun with comments? Why does the comment feature on HN still exist after this silly "is sexist" discussion? Oh right, having fun.

dominotw 13y ago

> What a bizarrely sexist description Calling it sexist is sexist. I don't see what is so wrong with calling someone adorable and sexy.

saraid216 13y ago
> I don't see what is so wrong with calling someone adorable and sexy. Have you considered looking, or have you made up your mind?
vkou 13y ago
It's sexist, because the first and foremost descriptor it applies to of one of the most influential women in tech is... A quantification of how attractive she is.
jerf 13y ago
"adorable" and "girl" both diminish a woman's potency in this context. I also wouldn't expect to see "sexy" used to describe any man who is not an actor or something very similar. I don't feel like I'm diving into anything very PC here. This is a straightforward reading of very normal connotations of the words in question. Calling middle-aged women "girls" is generally belittling. Contrast with "hyperactive" and "geeky" which are often used to describe males in similar positions.
foobarbazqux 13y ago
Just listen how ridiculous it sounds when it's a man: "Intelligence has never been this hunky: Paul Graham, the handsome, hyperrich, nerdy Chief Architect of Hacker News at Y-Combinator (among other things). His Y-Ness was blogging on his website, giving his insightful take on founding a startup, followed by the usual round of HN comments. He's really the boy of the millenium."
- adventured 13y ago
  Not that ridiculous in this era. Women openly drool over hunky men. From Jon Hamm to Beiber to Brad Pitt to Clooney and on and on it goes depending on your taste. They're obviously traditional celebrities. The only thing unusual about it is the fact that Mayer is in tech where I think the cultural stereotype would be that there are less sexy people because most jobs don't benefit from it or require it. However I've seen guys like Kevin Rose, Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk and Dennis Crowley regarded for various degrees of sex appeal. Or take a negative example of this: Bill Gates for the entirety of his Microsoft career, was frequently regarded as looking nerdy, dressing badly (early days), looking unkempt, not combing his hair, all sorts of negative descriptives have been applied to him from the founding days forward. Do you think that was detrimental to his career? His start-up efforts? Do you think it kept him awake at night? Did it crush his self-esteem? Did it harm him as a professional? You could hardly read an article about him without them first describing him based on his nerd'ish looks. Gates was regarded as a 'boy wonder' for about the first 15 years of his career, thanks to his young appearance (despite being in his 30's). The reality is, guys don't get upset when they're ogled for being sexy. It's a compliment. There's an intense double standard derived from the notion that women are not given equal opportunity and are treated in a sexist manner across the board. On average men and women take sexual advances completely differently, and they take compliments about appearance very differently as well. If you compliment Elon Musk for being good looking, he's not going to think that detracts from his abilities, and nobody is going to care. If you do the same thing to Mayer, you'll create a firestorm; suddenly it's sexist and not being fair to her. Thus a double standard. Take a bar poll some time about how men and women react to having their ass slapped by the opposite sex, see how those numbers roll out, and that'll tell you most of what you need to know about the difference between the sexes on this topic. Point being, men and women generally react very differently to the same input.

kyberias 13y ago

I think you don't really know what sexist means. There is zero prejudice or discrimination involved here. Merely describing a woman or man sexy is not sexist. I wasn't really surprised that this is the first (and only?) issue people discuss here.

anologwintermut 13y ago
It is sexist. Mayer's appearance has nothing to do with the context of the video and focusing on it perpetuates the double standards about what we expect of men in terms of appearance, effort towards it, dress, etc and what we expect of women in the same. Mentioning it implies it's something worth mentioning. It isn't, for either men or women. The trick is it's self evident that mentioning it for men would be irrelevant. For some reason, however, people take issue with someone pointing out that it ought to be irrelevant for women.
saraid216 13y ago
> There is zero prejudice or discrimination involved here. That's the elementary school explanation of sexism. It's useful as a shorthand for explaining the concept in a sentence, such as saying "the ground is down", but it misses all the larger nuance, such as the concept of an inertial frame and the arbitrariness of coordinate systems. With sexism, reducing the concept down to "prejudice or discrimination" misses its more essential points about psychology and sociology. It doesn't explain what objectification is nor how gender imbalances are arbitrary, even if we have some idea of how they came about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaze http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaze

goggles99 13y ago

Lets be honest here, If Marissa was not "adorable" and "sexy", this video and discussion would never have appeared on Hacker News. The majority of you men who watched any part of this vid and are calling the description sexist are hypocrites. You at least partly watched it for these same reasons. Just because you won't say it out loud does not make you an less sexist inside.

saraid216 13y ago
Even those of us who are gay? I mean, I realize you have a global mindreader to rival PRISM, but do you have to be so heteronormative?
- goggles99 13y ago
  The majority of you men...
foobarbazqux 13y ago
Projection; ad hominem: tu quoque.
hyperbovine 13y ago
> Lets be honest here, If Marissa was not "adorable" and "sexy", this video and discussion would never have appeared on Hacker News. I believe that is exactly my point.
- siegeofacre 13y ago
  Oh please. Get over yourself.