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Frankly, TitStare was quite funny. In despite of being tits-related, i can't see how a woman could find it offensive (maybe because she has tits too? i can't se
by jnardiello 13y ago
Frankly, TitStare was quite funny. In despite of being tits-related, i can't see how a woman could find it offensive (maybe because she has tits too? i can't see the correlation).
It's more about lonely developers staring at tits.
It's funny to see how the tech industry is passing thru its "feminist" age and just can't understand that THERE ARE differences between men and women, which doesn't mean anyhow that one is better than the other. They are just different. Liking tits is completely normal for a man, joking on it is too. Sexism is something different, a much bigger and subtle problem, against which (too often) women themselves do not react.
- iMark 13y agoYou're playing devil's advocate, right?
- jnardiello 13y agoNot really. Just expressing a point of view.
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y agoA devil's advocate expresses a point of view. Specifically, they express a point of view that they do not agree with.
- WayneDB 13y agoIt's more than that. Playing devil's advocate means you're expressing the opposite point of view when you don't really hold that point of view, but you're doing it to prove a point.
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y agoIndeed. jnardiello was asked if that is what they were doing, or if they genuinely hold that view; and they haven't given a definitive answer.
- chris_wot 13y agoRubbish. It was about objectifying women. It had nothing to do with lonely developers. These were two boofhead Australians who sadly exist in my part of the world who used women's bodies as a joke so they could get a quick laugh. There are too many "men" like this in Sydney. I use the word "men" loosely.
- jnardiello 13y agoLet me understand, anything sex-related which isn't expressed in scientific or moral terms has to burn in hell, right? Mainly because it is "objectifying" and insulting. Sometimes having a good laugh is a lot smarter than creating a political situation out of nothing. I think this is the case.
- chris_wot 13y ago"Titstare" was designed to allow men stare at women's breasts. In other words, for one reason only: objectification of women and their body parts. If you can't see that here, I'm not sure what else to say to you!
- laichzeit0 13y agoWhat if, let's just make this hypothetical for a second, woman want men to stare at their breasts? Would you still have an issue?
- chris_wot 13y agoWhere you are going with this is so ridiculous I won't be responding, other than with this response!
- laichzeit0 13y agoIt's not ridiculous at all. It's one of the fundamental assumptions you're making in all your arguments but unwilling to put down as an axiom.
- drunken_thor 13y agoIt's more about objectification of women it doesn't matter if it is lonely developers doing it. It is disrespectful. What are the women who attended this hackathon supposed to think. Do you think they would feel like they are valued for the ideas and knowledge they bring, or their tits?
- pstack 13y agoI have asserted that it's not so much that it in itself is disrespectful. It is disrespectful that they would not take into consideration that some of their audience may be made awkward by it (and a person can feel awkward about many things which are not necessarily bad in any way).
- lifebeyondfife 13y agoYou need to learn that what is considered (possibly socially) acceptable behaviour amongst your friends, is not necessarily acceptable in the workplace. If you want a definition of the workplace, it includes hacker meetups, youtube videos, presentations etc. where people of all social groups come together to discuss or create code. I have a very twisted sense of humour that many would find offensive. At work though I keep that side of myself under wraps, not out of a sense of fear but of respect. The bottom line is this: by collectively changing our behaviour to be less offensive (from the point of view of gender, sexuality, race, religion etc.) then people from those groups feel more safe and secure in that environment. If women truly felt comfortable to enter into the currently male dominated tech industry we get a bigger talent pool to choose from - the competition and skillset increases. Now re-read that sentence substituting 'women' and 'male dominated' with any minority/majority pairing and we start to see how much bigger we can make the number of available programmers. It may seem dull to have a workplace that's so sterile and inoffensively humourless, but it's work, not a bar.
- jnardiello 13y agoAnd i do totally agree with you on this. Both presentations were pointless, stupid, superficial and idiotic. Still, the point here is not about sexism, but about (as you mentioned) idiots being on stage presenting something they had to keep for themselves or for their local meetups.
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago> i can't see how a woman could find it offensive Irrelevant. If you want to know if women find it offensive, ask women. Stop dismissing things because you manage to fail to see them. This is an area in which you should probably check your intuition with other people.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- yashg 13y ago//i can't see how a woman could find it offensive // Feminism won't be required the day men understand why a woman would find it offensive. Imagine being a man in a room full of women in a society ruled over by women and all women are laughing at a penis stare app. Today you'd say "Oh I would find it funny too", but that's male privilege. We live in a male dominated society so you fail to see why women would not find a tit stare app funny.
- rational_me 13y agoIt already happens. Women laughing at a man having his penis cut off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDjUjhexTQk&hd=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDjUjhexTQk&hd=1
- icebraining 13y agoYou forgot the "society ruled by women" part.
- rational_me 13y agoYou mean the oppressed minority that constitutes over half of humans?
- icebraining 13y agoNo, I mean the gender that has more than a thousands of deaths per year at the hands of their partners, and of which 20% is raped at least once in their adulthood. Bit regardless of that, if you think a majority can`t be oppressed, I suggest you learn some history.
- marvin 13y agoReally? It's impossible for you to see how women at a tech conference could get the impression that they aren't valued for their ideas and skills when an app to look at tits gets a prominent spot? I sometimes think that the persistent claims of sex discrimination in tech are a bit over-the-top, but in this instance it's quite obvious. This stunt was very poorly thought out.
- partoa 13y agoWhat does titstare have to do with not valuing women for anything other than their tits? Pardon me for asking.
- marvin 13y agoIt's not about intent, it's about perception. Using or building a tit-staring app may or may not imply that the guy in question respects women less for their technical merits, or judges them on looks rather than skills. The problem is that as a technical woman in the audience, you will be very likely to perceive such an initiative as something that detracts from your personal values (professional merit, technical skills). This is doubly true in the tech community, where women are a minority, and is separate from the question of whether technical guys actually disrespect women. This kind of initiative is bad regardless. I'm pretty sure, though, that you will find a correlation between tit-staring and actual discrimination. Women as a minority in technical communities already have a hard enough time coping with the pressure to perform "in spite of their gender", there is no point in making it tougher for them. When we use words like "objectification" in the context of sex discrimination in tech, it's really just an abstraction over valuing women less than men regarding technical skills. A lot of smart people will consider this a weasel-word, but it has a foundation in actual social mechanisms.
- partoa 13y agoPut that way, it may make sense...My problem is that almost everyone is reacting as if the intention of that presentation was to demean or objectify women rather than make light of the fact that men do stare at tits. Still, I'd go for both men and women understanding each other over political correctness. Reason, this will eventually lead to men only events http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=5811 http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=5811. I wouldn't go for making men uncomfortable around women any more than making women uncomfortable around men. The solution, I believe, lies somewhere in between men appreciating that some things are rude in certain contexts and women appreciating that men may make certain jokes without any ill intent. Also, in my experience, in offices that are balanced, gender wise, such jokes are not uncommon; it's a thing people do. I just think that such arguments simply trivialise misogyny which actually exists http://www.policymic.com/articles/30922/adria-richards-why-are-women-threatened-with-rape-for-what-they-write-online http://www.policymic.com/articles/30922/adria-richards-why-a....
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pstack 13y agoLet me preface this by saying that I'm frustrated on a regular basis by the claim that everything is sexist, because labeling someone who isn't with that word can be just as harmful. Especially in the tech industry and gaming and geekery. Even more, I'm put off by the almost constant misuse of the word "misogyny". It is never used for what the word really means. It just sounds good, so people throw it around. However, as thick headed and unapologetically thick-skinned I assert myself to be and expect others to be, I can absolutely see why women would have a problem with this in this particular environment. Let me present a really shoddy analogy (but it's all I've got at the moment): I am obese. I attend a tech conference full of professionals in my industry. Friends, colleagues, potential connections, people I admire. Someone then comes on stage and does a presentation about fat people. It's an app that focuses on how fat people are. For humor. And they attempt to make a lot of humor about it. And the audience around me is laughing. Now, I'm super fat. I'm more than aware of that. I know that people around me are, too. I have a good sense of humor. I'm even happy to make myself the ass-end of a joke about my weight. However, when I am in a huge room full of people laughing at a presentation making light of people like me, I suddenly feel incredibly awkward, self-aware, embarrassed, and like I'm not wanted there. Maybe that I don't even belong there. So, I stop going. I stop supporting. I stop participating. It's all about context and having a little tact. These guys used pretty poor judgement. I don't think they should be strung up or driven out of town for it. They should just be an example of how people with no ill-intentions can end up making other people really uncomfortable and how that is something you need to be sensitive to when acting in any professionally related capacity.
- eli 13y agoThis app has a high probability of making people in the audience uncomfortable on the basis of their gender. That is pretty much never cool.