Comment by T-R | Hacker News Reader

Comment by T-R | Hacker News Reader

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> Have fun with that.

I think your tone detracts from your point.

> But a conference which will offend nobody in some small way is a sterile, dull thing.

I think the point to make is that this is not "some small way", as much as it may appear to be small to some - it's significant enough for you to stop attending. The group of people offended by misogyny is statistically independent from the group of people contributing to the conferences' success, so:

- there's no reason they needed to be offended

- offending them offers no real benefit

- offending them hurts the success of the conference by discouraging people from attending who otherwise would have.

- ignoring or supporting it exacerbates this problem, and so it's not in the best interest of anyone to ignore or support it, regardless of their views on women

The real benefit is that a more casual and honest environment is created at the conference.

At the typical sterile, corporate, business casual conference in my field (finance), there is a particular very boring code of behavior. There will be very little honesty - if you think a product sucks, or you think the industry is broken, you'll keep it to yourself. The guy from Morgan Stanley will never ever disagree with John Mack .

From LessConf's advertisements, I get the impression that their conference is more honest and more fun. The guy from Google might even disagree with Larry Page.

If this results in a few oversensitive people staying home, that sounds like a tradeoff well worth making.

That's absolutely a fair point. I don't want to imply that we shouldn't keep it in moderation, but I do think we should be careful about what we define as "oversensitive", particularly for groups that we don't belong to, because there is a danger of defining the whole group as such, and therefore excluding them entirely (socially). If they are sensitive to it, overreacting or not, it does discourage them from attending. I personally don't think giving up arguably misogynistic references (specifically) in presentations would be so detrimental that it offsets the benefit of not offending those sensitive to them, particularly since it's a group that we as a community have been so effective at scaring off in the past.

Who cares? This argument is a waste of time. Go find someone that is actually sexist and stop making mountains out of mole hills.

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