6 ms·

Tech leaders strike back over Techweek Chicago images of women

13 points by lauradhamilton 12y ago

sp332 12y ago
The photo in question was taken from a series of photos of event attendees that were posted on our Facebook page in March. This seems pretty reasonable of Techweek. They used actual attendees, so they're not oversexualizing the event like that time they posted women in bikinis to Instagram. I'm glad they took people's complaints seriously and removed the image, so I don't see a lot to complain about.
- startupstella 12y ago
  Have you seen the images? That's clearly not true. When pressed to identify the so called "eventgoers" the leaders of techweek came up empty. just a bad excuse.
  - sp332 12y ago
    Was it just the 4 photo booth pictures from the top of this Tribune article? Edit: where were they pressed on that?
- rhizome 12y ago
  Except for the fact of their code of conduct.
stcredzero 12y ago
[Time to burn some karma.] "Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue..." This strikes me as lazily nonspecific. Isn't sexual language and imagery a pervasive part of the human experience? Isn't the problem specifically with sexual language and imagery which disempowers and objectifies people against their will? With language as general as that, you could outlaw a glance paired with a half-smile given by someone in Victorian garb completely covered from the neck down and wrists up. I've said it before: Maybe a Victorian level of carefully maintained polite deniability could facilitate greater consensuality, so long as it's absent the Victorian level sexual inequality and doublethink. (It could also be used in the opposite direction.) I don't disagree with the notion that the language of human sexuality has been twisted in unhealthy ways to support the status-quo power structure. I've personally been on the short end of that deal. However, I do disagree with emotionally driven backlash devoid of consideration that seeks to vilify. Traditional cultures have already tried shaming, fear, and repression as instruments of control over human sexuality. How about we start to further consensuality and open communications instead? And for that, the atmosphere created by vilification is only unhelpful. What we have here is a fundraising rave that's using sex in its marketing of an event at a nightclub. Nightclubs are supposed to be sexually charged. It suffuses the music and couture around such venues. What if a similar event had happened at a gay club, with the photo shot with two beautiful young men in the same garb and with the same poses and facial expressions? Would Techweek have come after them? It seems like Techweek needs to clarify its policies surrounding concurrent events. It's a typical organizational response to greatly overshoot on the side of caution. Hopefully, this will be understood as just that. EDIT: Downvote, eh? Funny how the stance of "You're either for us or against us" is cited as a sign of George W. Bush's intellectual bankruptcy, but is the unspoken policy around subjects like this.
- rhizome 12y ago
  I didn't downvote you, but while we can all generalize and extrapolate to our preferred points, at the end of the day Techweek Chicago is not at all about "the human experience." Techweek did clarify their policies. They said they weren't to use sexual language and imagery. Nothing you can say about people being hypersensitive can take away from the fact that this was a completely unforced error.
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    If you're going to reduce this to a logical contradiction, then it does take away from the gender issues. I doubt Techweek will smell like roses or deserve to come out Scott free. That doesn't mean we should set a pattern for knee-jerk vilification. (That ship may well have sailed and entered a canal to an entirely different ocean.)
    - rhizome 12y ago
      It's not a logical contradiction nor knee-jerk. They came up with a code of conduct, violated its terms themselves, and now people are reacting to that news. An unforced error on Techweek's part, and reasonable to call them out on it. The only pattern is that when you do something stupid, people call you stupid.
      - stcredzero 12y ago
        An unforced error on Techweek's part, and reasonable to call them out on it. The tenor and severity with which they are being called out is a bit out of whack. It's mostly out of proportion with an unintentional mistake, which probably results from emotional factors and political haymaking. It's also a mistake because of a poorly and too-generally written policy, which I am also calling out. Please re-read. That poorly and too-generally written policy is in fact my main point.
        rhizome 12y ago
        Well of course it was unintentional, nobody's saying it wasn't. It's just highly stupid, especially considering their history (http://chicagoinno.streetwise.co/2014/06/04/techweek-is-young-but-its-history-of-sexism-is-getting-long/ http://chicagoinno.streetwise.co/2014/06/04/techweek-is-youn...). I don't agree that the policy leaves room for misinterpretation.

sp332 12y ago

The photo in question was taken from a series of photos of event attendees that were posted on our Facebook page in March. This seems pretty reasonable of Techweek. They used actual attendees, so they're not oversexualizing the event like that time they posted women in bikinis to Instagram. I'm glad they took people's complaints seriously and removed the image, so I don't see a lot to complain about.

startupstella 12y ago
Have you seen the images? That's clearly not true. When pressed to identify the so called "eventgoers" the leaders of techweek came up empty. just a bad excuse.
- sp332 12y ago
  Was it just the 4 photo booth pictures from the top of this Tribune article? Edit: where were they pressed on that?
rhizome 12y ago
Except for the fact of their code of conduct.

stcredzero 12y ago

[Time to burn some karma.] "Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue..." This strikes me as lazily nonspecific. Isn't sexual language and imagery a pervasive part of the human experience? Isn't the problem specifically with sexual language and imagery which disempowers and objectifies people against their will? With language as general as that, you could outlaw a glance paired with a half-smile given by someone in Victorian garb completely covered from the neck down and wrists up. I've said it before: Maybe a Victorian level of carefully maintained polite deniability could facilitate greater consensuality, so long as it's absent the Victorian level sexual inequality and doublethink. (It could also be used in the opposite direction.) I don't disagree with the notion that the language of human sexuality has been twisted in unhealthy ways to support the status-quo power structure. I've personally been on the short end of that deal. However, I do disagree with emotionally driven backlash devoid of consideration that seeks to vilify. Traditional cultures have already tried shaming, fear, and repression as instruments of control over human sexuality. How about we start to further consensuality and open communications instead? And for that, the atmosphere created by vilification is only unhelpful. What we have here is a fundraising rave that's using sex in its marketing of an event at a nightclub. Nightclubs are supposed to be sexually charged. It suffuses the music and couture around such venues. What if a similar event had happened at a gay club, with the photo shot with two beautiful young men in the same garb and with the same poses and facial expressions? Would Techweek have come after them? It seems like Techweek needs to clarify its policies surrounding concurrent events. It's a typical organizational response to greatly overshoot on the side of caution. Hopefully, this will be understood as just that. EDIT: Downvote, eh? Funny how the stance of "You're either for us or against us" is cited as a sign of George W. Bush's intellectual bankruptcy, but is the unspoken policy around subjects like this.

rhizome 12y ago
I didn't downvote you, but while we can all generalize and extrapolate to our preferred points, at the end of the day Techweek Chicago is not at all about "the human experience." Techweek did clarify their policies. They said they weren't to use sexual language and imagery. Nothing you can say about people being hypersensitive can take away from the fact that this was a completely unforced error.
- stcredzero 12y ago
  If you're going to reduce this to a logical contradiction, then it does take away from the gender issues. I doubt Techweek will smell like roses or deserve to come out Scott free. That doesn't mean we should set a pattern for knee-jerk vilification. (That ship may well have sailed and entered a canal to an entirely different ocean.)
  - rhizome 12y ago
    It's not a logical contradiction nor knee-jerk. They came up with a code of conduct, violated its terms themselves, and now people are reacting to that news. An unforced error on Techweek's part, and reasonable to call them out on it. The only pattern is that when you do something stupid, people call you stupid.
    - stcredzero 12y ago
      An unforced error on Techweek's part, and reasonable to call them out on it. The tenor and severity with which they are being called out is a bit out of whack. It's mostly out of proportion with an unintentional mistake, which probably results from emotional factors and political haymaking. It's also a mistake because of a poorly and too-generally written policy, which I am also calling out. Please re-read. That poorly and too-generally written policy is in fact my main point.
      - rhizome 12y ago
        Well of course it was unintentional, nobody's saying it wasn't. It's just highly stupid, especially considering their history (http://chicagoinno.streetwise.co/2014/06/04/techweek-is-young-but-its-history-of-sexism-is-getting-long/ http://chicagoinno.streetwise.co/2014/06/04/techweek-is-youn...). I don't agree that the policy leaves room for misinterpretation.