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Comment by gibybo | Hacker News Reader

I don't know the context here (full audio is not loading for me), but doesn't it seem reasonable that it was just his way of congratulating her for recently getting married? I could imagine a similar intro being used for a guy that was just married too.

EDIT: I got the full audio to work and the introduction is longer than the quote he pulled out. Judging from his tone and the earlier part of the introduction, I really don't think he was doing anything but trying to compliment/congratulate her (though admittedly he could have done a better job).

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I'd encourage this for a thought experiment.

Take a step back. Bottle your immediate reaction to this article.

Starting asking yourself a few questions. Why did the author react this way to the introduction? Why do so many people in the comments seem to agree?

Avoid easy, dismissive answers. "Because they're illogical," "because they're too sensitive," "because they're not thinking this through," etc. are not good answers. They're easy answers.

If it helps pretend there's a woman upset by this sitting across the table from you. Have a conversation with her. The goal is to really understand why she's upset.

Or imagine what the husband in the audience felt -- if I were him, I'd be a little embarrassed and apologize to my wife afterwards. I'd also send a follow-up email to the moderator and the person who organized the conference voicing my displeasure (as the husband).

I'm not being flippant. Think deeply about why people are reacting this way, and avoid easy answers.

I think you have a very good point, and a great technique. In general, it works great when reacting to things.

In this case though, you have a third party journalist complaining that a racy joke is a cultural set back to an entire group of people ("startup guys"). It's pretty far out there. The commenters are mostly agreeing with a generalization of the headline, something along the lines of "there is too much sexism in tech", which is probably true.

All but the most blatant examples of sexism (and racism -- "food stamp President" anyone?) are like this. At worst they seem insensitive, at least in isolation. That's why it's so easy to talk about getting a thicker skin, etc.

I know this will seem like I'm dismissing you, but looking at your profile I see you're a current student at RIT.

There is a backdrop here and it's hard to see from the other side of the country. Heck, it's hard to see right here in Silicon Valley unless you're in the middle of it and sensitive to it.

Many people are the former, but not the latter.

You might accuse me of using weasel words -- "many people," "most instances," etc. -- and I won't blame you.

What I can say, though, is that there's a lot between the lines here. Anyone who spends time in Silicon Valley and isn't completely unaware sees it and knows it.

See my top-level comment on this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3573674

My profile is outdated, I've been working in the valley for 8 months. If anything, the sexism at RIT was far more widespread.

Extremely well put.

If we wanted to give it a name, as a point of reference to research this more, I'd say it boils down to "ethics".

It's great to see that I'm not the only one who likes to use this approach! :) That is probably the best example of this tactic I've seen, very well written.

[Also, I couldn't let this comment thread go without this nick getting an outing ;)]

Perhaps. Still seems a little strange to me- if someone described my (at this point, imaginary) wife as "sexy" I would probably be more weirded out than complimented- especially at a professional event.

My wife would be extraordinarily flattered fwiw:)

You don't congratulate someone for getting married as an introduction when their technical chops are what got them there. This was an awful intro - you want to establish someone's right to be there with an introduction, not comment on their personal life.

Check out the full audio, the rest of the introduction goes into more detail of her technical chops.

You can talk for a half hour about someone's chops, but if you conclude by saying what a great ass that person has, that's the part that people are going to focus on.

Change the genders, would you expect the same style of introduction for a man, even remotely?

Careful, there's no shortage of clowns in the comments on the blog post literally substituting a male name in the quotation and going "see? no sexism now!"

Edit: Fuck, I just scrolled down and found http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3573710

> ...and so I wanted her lucky new spouse to stand up.

This kinda comes off as, "don't worry, this woman is being properly escorted."

a) we have an insightful comment from gibybo.

b) the incredibly sexy gibybo commented.

one of these is better. sexy.

I admit 'sexy' was a little out of place, but I ended up getting the download to work and the full introduction starts out: "Rebecca took over as effective director of northwest entrepreneurial group and just blew us all away with her expertise, knowledge, connections, and her charm." The tone of the final remark really just sounded like he was trying to compliment and congratulate her. The sexist implication of using 'sexy' was pretty marginal and is being blown a little out of proportion I think.

I'm sure it was the best of intentions.

I'm just not sure when physical attributes have any relevance to a professional introduction.

When we selected Bob and he said yes, he was a fat single man.

When we selected Dave and he said yes, he was a acne-ridden single man.

When we selected Joe and he said yes, he was a weightlifting single man.

I think in all other cases, you'd just say single. maybe "talented" rather than drawing attention to physique.

It's just stereotypical nerd bullshit that everyone will try to paper over as not a big deal. Frankly, there doesn't seem to be a market for non-stereotypical engineering environments, or the market would capitalize on that. So perhaps it's not a big deal in any startup sense, but it's a real effect.

I've actually seen the weightlifting case with men, though it's far less common. Former EA and now-Blizzard AI programmer Brian Schwab gets a lot of comments about his physique, because he has a bodybuilder-type physique, which is sort of unusual in videogame programming. It doesn't seem to bug him, though.

It's kinda like having an awesome idea, starting a company, and watching it sink because you screwed up on execution. He was trying to compliment and congratulate her. He gets points for effort. That's worth something, but it's not much when stacked against everything else.

Something can be both a compliment and sexist. Especially if it's a compliment that has a lot of baggage and assumptions. There is a history women only being viewed as good for marriage and babies. It used to be seen as unusual & unnatural for a woman to not want babies and marriage. It was seen as weird for a woman to want to focus on carrer rather than marriage. Also they were viewed as "nice to look at, but unable to do any real work". Things have gotten a lot better, but there are still bits of this attitude around. If you compliment a woman based on (a) getting married and (b) physical attractiveness, you are slightly re-inforcing that meme. You are also signaling that you might be the sort of person who thinks the above, or that you support the above attitudes.

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