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Comment by danilocampos | Hacker News Reader

> What exactly was sexist about what they did?

I came here looking for the standard, oblivious, "Hey, what's so sexist about being completely sexist?" comment.

As usual, HN did not disappoint.

So let me explain:

"Women" are not a perk. Women are humans with as much value to contribute to software development as men. To list them as a "perk" and to relegate them to a service role minimizes women in two ways beyond the obvious, gross objectification:

First, by saying "hey, all women are good for at this event is serving beer."

Second, and much more toxic, listing women as a perk reveals the unspoken understanding that heterosexual males are the intended audience for the event and that anyone else is secondary.

> I think if anything it offends programmers.

But yeah, by all means, muster up some indignation for all the poor, privileged, over-represented men who should be offended by this.

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I definitely agree with you, but I think men should be offended by this! What many heterosexual men don't seem to get is that sexism against women usually hurts them too. TV commercials that treat women as objects are usually also sending the message that men are drooling hormonal morons. If a sitcom wife is portrayed as a shrieking harpy, she's usually berating the dopey, inept man who screwed everything up.

It's bad for all of us. Sexism (or any -ism) is a net negative for anyone who values the intellectual growth of society, regardless of sex, gender, or orientation.

pfft... like I said "What is this 'Women:' bit about?"

I didn't realise that they had listed women explicity as a perk. I just thought it was a bad bit of copy. I didn't see their original site and as it has now been taken down.

I thought they had listed it in a less obvious way noting the servers would be women to bait males to attend.

Perhaps this is a bit more than a kerfuffle then.

While what they wrote turned out to be sexist I don't think at all this was there intention. They fell into the trap of sterotyping their audience. If your a hacker your probably a pale introvert with little access to women. The trouble is a hacker/programmer/whatever is just a job title. The people who do these jobs have variety personalities and genitals.

If anything they misunderstood their audience which is a shame really and managed to generate some copy that could offend just about everyone.

Are you serious? "Generate some copy?" Copy doesn't just appear out of nowhere. Someone wrote that, and meant to write that, you're kidding yourself if you think they didn't.

I have no idea what you are on about to be honest.

Surely in this context generate == produce. I don't really get how you could take what I wrote as 'these guys made content "magically appear" in their event description'.

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