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Comment by Mistletoe | Hacker News Reader

Ok, I encourage you to use this picture in your email signature at work or use it as your desktop wallpaper and see how far you get in 2024. And I think it is definitely a good thing it is like that now. How do you think women that worked where John Knoll was doing demos felt about the naked woman? Not sexualizing the workplace is better for everyone. Actually kind of dismayed to see HN be so "good ol' boy" on this one. It reminds me again how out of touch and male-dominated it is.

I love the photo, but it's a great photo for private use, not work use. I think you guys aren't paying attention to the HR videos you are supposed to be watching.

I do think John knew exactly what he was doing and that the killer app for Photoshop, computers, and the internet that would come after was sex.

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I’m not interested in your hypotheticals when we can just talk about the actual use of the image. Why change the context? At the places I’ve worked it’s been unusual for people to even set a wallpaper and extremely unusual to use some arbitrary image in an email signature (like what??).

Maybe you should ask some women that you know what they would think about this actual scenario (not contrived scenarios), rather than presuming.

Ok...you want a scenario where an image of an attractive young woman was shared and used extensively by members of a male dominated field and where women involved in the field have told us what they think of it?

Oh yeah, I've heard that one before - its Lena/Lenna:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna

Here is a random example I found of a women talking about her experience

https://www.cmc.edu/news/every-picture-tells-a-story

And another one

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-playboy-centerfold...

Over the last decade or so journals and professional bodies have been trying to stop people using the Lenna image - Nature essentially banned it in their publications in 2018, and IEEE just this year.

You misunderstand me. I’m saying we have a concrete scenario here, so we should discuss that scenario. Not some other different scenario. The Lenna image was literally taken from a porno mag. Its original context is erotic. I agree that it shouldn’t be used as it has. But that’s not what this thread nor my comments are about. If you want to make it about something else then go ahead but I’m not interested.

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