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Comment by lallysingh | Hacker News Reader

Why does every OS screenshot (not from a big company) always have to have a few pictures of women in it?

It's ridiculously unprofessional in my book.

Uh, it has (at least, by conventional stereotypes; I don't know the actual gender identity of the individuals involved, at least some of whom are fictional) women’s headshots, a man (though this might not be apparent in the actual image without being familiar with the source image), a male demonic figure, and a reptilian beast that doesn't particularly have strong gender indications.

So, is your complaint that it I closed female-appearing figures at all, or...what, exactly?

The screen cap is dominated by three glamour shots of women. It's not like it just happens to contain a woman getting on a train or ordering a coffee, among other images.

I find it terribly stereotypical and prejudicial of you to determine their sexes based on their exterior appearances.

Why does every comment about there being only women in OS screenshots stereotype bodies?

P.S This is a joke. Serious people who care about other people don't really care about this type of gender thing at all.

While it would be more accurate to say that it contains “only figures that conform to female body stereotypes” rather than “only women”, to the extent the latter is an issue of any kind, the former is an issue of the same general class (in fact, I don't think the people complaining about the former would actually be concerned at all if it was the former but not the latter); further, in the case of images where he individuals aren't known to the speaker, the only way the latter can sensibly be interpreted is as a reference to the former, so the objection itself seems to me to be rather context-blind pointless pedantic distraction from any substance.

Thanks, I'll try to be mindful when I'm stereotyping and joking about upset gender people and remember this to improve the quality of the joke the next time!

In this particular case it feels like a throwback to 80s-style tech marketing. I think the low resolution bitmap images look cool and associate beauty with the OS in a way. I understand your point but I say keep them!

What part about someone's hobby OS for a 30 year old CPU, that runs 1,000 times slower than a $5 computer, is professional?

Let's keep things in perspective, there are much bigger injustices than this out there.

In this case it's arguably tied to 80s home computer nostalgia, but that itself rests on a bedrock of 'computers are boys' toys' sexism that gave us booth babes and all sorts of other nonsense. Magazines of the period had small ads for 'graphics collections' (soft porn) you could order on disk and of course much BBS culture was a way of accessing porn for boys either too young or too shy to buy it in magazine form.

> Why does every OS screenshot (not from a big company) always have to have a few pictures of women in it?

> It's ridiculously unprofessional in my book.

If it were pictures of men, people would complain that there are no women included in the pictures people (i.e. women are discriminated against). You can't be everybody's darling.

Maybe half women and half men.

Then the political correctness warriors come out of their holes and claim that this reduces humanity to two genders.

People like to look at women? Even most other women.

Show some initiative. Fork it and put some Tom of Finland wallpapers in.

Problem solved!

It's really jarring, isn't it?

You would rather only have men? I’m not sure what kind of anti you are.

I wouldn't mind a few shots of both, y'know?

If you need to have pictures, take landscapes.

Is this really where we are at now? Don't demonstrate any software using pictures of people, even in a niche hobbyist OS for a retro CPU architecture, just in case someone gets offended.

I dunno, apparently. I personally like landscapes anyway, but am not offended by pictures of people... Just naming what might please others. :)

It reinforces the idea of the IT industry as a place for men, and the male gaze[0], as well as injecting sexuality into an entirely asexual domain for no reason. If we want computing to be inclusive, and I personally do, then we should make representations of computing inclusive.

That is diametrically opposed from being "anti" anything.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_gaze

I still don’t get it - there are pictures of men and women in that screenshot.

Maybe if you count the demon as male, or the tiny silhouette in the bottom right.

There are not. Only women, unless you're looking at a different screenshot.

I thought the two on the left were women and the one on the right was a hair band rocker (man).

I think if anything this is confirming your individual biases about what men and women should look like, which is part of the problem with our tech community. Even if I'm wrong about the rocker (likely), the problem isn't the picture - it's all of us.

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