(forgive me in advance, but I don't understand what the problem is... a man massaging a woman would have been better? a man massaging a man? a woman massaging a woman? two robots perhaps? what would not make people more comfortable?)
Taken all together it seems to suggest that women are objects and that this is a product for men.
Yes, we're all being hyper sensitive about it, and it's likely that nothing negative was intended but it's something that we could do with having a bit of sensitivity about, given that it costs us so little and our current level of sensitivity has made the culture so hostile to women.
It's like doing a presentation with a prominent stain on your shirt: ideally the audience should be able to separate appearances from content, but the reality is that they can't.
Maybe it is, I've got no problem if someone wants to make that argument. I don't know much about the Ballet world, so it's not something I'm going to raise myself.
On the other hand I've got personal experience of talking to a young girl who was trying to understand gender roles and if it was acceptable for a girl to be interested in space or computers because of things people had said to her at school. If she'd been looking at webpages with these kinds of pictures, I'm sure they would have had an effect.
> Stop being oversensitive about such minor things
At some point the regress of people getting annoyed about other people getting annoyed becomes ridiculous. I'm not spending time in a state of rage about this, and you don't need to be in a state of rage about my opinions about this either.
> I want to live in a society where there is no outcry over a chosen photo
And I want to live in a society where people understand that communication involves two sides, and that if your speech / picture selection makes a significant number of people think you're sexist and you aren't then maybe you should improve how you communicate.
Culture doesn't "say" this, culture reflects the reality that this is mostly the case. If the reality changes, culture will adapt to that new reality.
Thinking it is the other way around is a classic case of the "wet roads cause rain" fallacy[1].
See also Lee Jussim's work on Stereotype Accuracy, [2] is a good intro.
[1] http://larvatus.com/michael-crichton-why-speculate/
[2] http://www.spsp.org/news-center/blog/stereotype-accuracy-res...
You are simply asserting that "sexist stereotypes contribute to more skewed representation", which is no better than asserting that wet roads cause rain.
First, there is nowadays strong evidence that people generally do not hold explicitly sexist views. So the fact that people know that there are, for example, fewer female software engineers does not mean that they think women are incapable of being software engineers. Knowing that there are fewer female software engineers and therefore a software engineer you encounter is more likely to be male is not sexist, it is simple knowledge of the facts.
So what about "implicit bias"? Well, the poster child for implicit biases, the Implicit Association Test, is actually highly dubious, as results (a) are highly inconsistent [the same person will get wildly different scores on different instances of the test] (b) quite weak and a bit different than reported and (c) do not predict biased behaviour.
What do I mean with "a bit different than reported"? IIRC, it was reported that the IAT showed men being biased against women. Which was a bit of mischaracterisation: for male subjects, there was no difference in "bias" for/against women or men, but women had a positive bias towards other women. So there was a difference, but not quite what was reported. (This in-group bias was also discovered in a different study).
Finally, what about the backwards causality? Let's take Stereotype Threat. Results were always weak and somewhat questionable, and basically crumbled in the replication crisis, the effect disappearing when controlling for publication bias.
https://replicationindex.com/2017/04/07/hidden-figures-repli...
Maybe they should illustrate her putting batteries in a vibrator, so she can go fuck herself, just like you should.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
> Jesus, have become so sensitive to everything?
What you call "being so sensitive" can also just mean that people are being considerate. The people suggesting the photo is inappropriate are not "triggered" or "offended" or whatever. They just seem to understand that the photo evokes real cultural problems and can easily be changed.
Why do you seem to be so offended on behalf of the picture?
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/business/china-women-tech...