She has been blamed to be the face for a manufactured persona, to be generally incompetent at anything maker related, etc. The explanation for why she (and her "handler") would do that, is that they get hired to endorse products. Plenty of sexism, slutshaming, and circumstantial "evidence" (e.g. the comment about almost cutting her finger this one time) have been used against her.
It is a generally disappointing story of slutshaming.
Now a well known media persona in the maker community decided to entertain those allegations and ruined her reputation.
Just to bring up a tangent - remember this: http://www.zdnet.com/article/when-software-offends-the-panty...
My question is; is there a double standard wrt sexualised personal projects?
There seems to be a contradiction in that sexual content by a man is seen as "hostile" or "unwelcoming" to women, but criticising a woman for producing sexual content is "slut-shaming"...
That said, being called "fake" may be wrong. I have no knowledge one way or the other.
Pushback here is people literally saying she is fake and can't be skilled. It is not complain about the decency nor double standard.
Then you have competent people who arnt sexy thinking - hey that's not fair, she is using an asset I don't have to gain viewership. So they feel compelled to point out the obvious.
I feel like this is sort of like why the weather person is often an attractive girl. Sure maybe she doesnt have a phd in meteorology but she understands it well, and generally people would rather take the info from her than some fat guy mumbling about advanced meteorology. And so when this guy sees people flocking to get weather updates from her, rather than tuning into his youtube channel his instinct will be to say she is using sex to sell.
When that happens I'm not sure what the appropriate response should be. I mean, here clearly this girl is using sexy videos, so it seems odd to be defensive about it. Maybe the response should be- "yeah, so? All that and I deliver informative content"
"Beside personal taste, the other issue is my appearance is effective. Female Makers- or Women in Tech are rarely featured in Chinese news, it's just not something that gets much interest and there is no community of like-minded women I can look to. Sexy girls are still the delivery vector for nearly all messages in tech here. If I want to get my message out- that these new technical tools are accessible, and that there are well-paying jobs available for women that master them, I have to do so in a way that will actually reach my audience. I'm sure the high road is nice- but in China, no one will hear a word you say while you are on it."
I don't see the harm in everyone doing as much as they can with the cards they are dealt. The alternative is a dystopia like Harrison Bergeron (http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html)
It is generally useful to use a reversal thought experiment to check for logical consistency.
Would a photogenic young man who wore tight clothes while presenting their hardware projects be told he's not a real person because he had the audacity to own his sexuality? Would that be warranted or expected?
"A speedo barely concealing their junk"? Maybe.
To be fair, in a lot of her videos she's wearing something completely reasonable for a workshop.
Why and how did you create this “Sexy Cyborg” character? Is it all persona or is it also the real you? Basically, when you are not being a maker, do you still dress just as sexy?
It’s the other way around, I actually wear more conservative clothing when taking maker pictures and video for English-speaking social media than I do normally just walking around and running errands. Westerners just seem to get enraged over silly clothes. Well, Americans and British mostly. Europeans and South Americans just think it’s funny and exciting, like Chinese do usually.
I have what I call the Auntie Test: Do Chinese women over about 50 or so have any problem with my clothes? The Auntie who cleans the halls in my apartment building has twice sent me back home for a sweater, but that is just because it was winter and catching a cold calls for Chinese Traditional Medicine. I was raised properly and am respectful. If the day comes and the neighborhood Aunties tell me not to dress so sexy, I won’t. But so long as they smile and wave at me, I don’t really think it’s anyone’s business what I wear in my own country.
http://www.makery.info/en/2017/01/30/sexy-cyborg-la-communau...
How about this thought experiment: what if I made a poster of Wu and put it on my office wall next to the posters of Steve Jobs and Limor Fried? Would I be creating a hostile environment for my female coworkers?
Wu can dress how she wants in her private life and it's none of my (or our) business; commenting negatively on her private attire would indeed be slut shaming. However she is projecting a highly sexualized image into a field that has problems with sexualizing women; that is what opens her to criticism.
In what universe does "a field that has problems with sexualizing women" mean the opening for criticism is on the women, not the problem of "the field"?
Dougherty needs to stop pretending he's a fit and appropriate person to lead or speak for a major company - and go learn a bit of respect and restraint. Right now his reputation is lingering around Jake Applebaum, Frank Artale, Dave McClure, and Harvey Weinstein.
I'd like to hope Tim O'Reilly realises the damage Dale's doing to the Make and Makerfaire brands, and reacts as well as 500 Startups and Ignition Ventures both (eventually) did... But, as you point out, we're in "a field that has problems with sexualizing women".
Some comments in this thread amount to encouraging that we should blindly accept that a person is who they say they are because they are the "right kind of person".
We don't need to get wound up into a knot about sexual mores to recognize that nobody should have to defend themselves against false accusations that they're not even a real person.
If she were a dude with an unfitted black tee, it seems a lot less likely that she'd be accused of being 'fake'.
I agree that there's probably an unpleasant subtext behind this guy's decision to wreck Naomi Wu's career. All I'm saying is, we don't have to reach that issue to see how reckless what he did was.
Context: https://medium.com/@kelas/how-is-tj-holowaychuk-so-insanely-...
Do you mean the accusation that someone is playing a role for marketing purposes, and is not actually like the image portrayed? Why is that such an inconceivable accusation? Why should nobody have to defend herself against that?
That's an odd argument. Why would someone manufacture a schlubby geek persona? Seems like attractiveness and distinctiveness are key qualities in a (hypothetical) persona.
I'm not really sexually attracted to her but I have noted a lot of people commenting how she is doing plastic surgery to enhance her breasts for the views or something. She is not, she got those breasts before the views and they were primarily because she wanted to enhance her body and become a cyborg, hence her own nickname: "Sexy Cyborg".
Moreover, negative comments build on this enhance-breasts-for-views argument to imply that she is a front built for commercial purposes.
EDIT: Heres where I paraphrased her body modification quotes, this pastebin link is also on her patreon and youtube.
I'm sorry, can you explain what breast enlargement is to do with "becoming a cyborg"? I am genuinely baffled.
I could not get longer legs (height is most important in China) so I decided a big chest was the next best thing for looking more interesting
That makes a lot more sense.
To get some idea of what's going on here, see (EDIT: possibly NSFW based on where you work, and this is deeply part of the story) http://archive.is/GE0he from May. I have been following this story not super closely, but a bit; my understanding is the original tweets have been deleted, but Dale was saying stuff in line with that story up above. The article discusses why that matters.
curious to get some more details about this if you're interested in sharing some of what you've read. thanks for the archive link.
I became aware of this specific situation because I started seeing tweets about it; basically this article contains most of my understanding of the situation, as well as some stuff that I didn't know, like "Guanxi Bias."
What exactly was said was not under dispute by anyone, as far as I can tell; mostly what's under discussion is the charges of Make being mostly a thing for tourists rather than working with local makers, the general blackballing of Naomi from Make events (and if it is 'blackballing' or just generally being overlooked, that kind of thing), the authenticity of the apology, etc.
That's pretty much my understanding at the moment.
It's on her twitter page header.