Comment by jblz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jblz | Hacker News Reader

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If I'm understanding correctly, the author would prefer it if non-technical female expo floor workers were scantily-clad so she would be less likely to be assumed by other conference-goers to be non-technical herself..? I'm sorry, but I find that pretty offensive.

I don't claim to know what it's like to be a woman in a heavily male-dominated field (or just your de facto patriarchy, for that matter), but I also don't assume anyone I'm talking to at a conference has any reason to believe I possess any sort of prowess or authority without my convincing them of such even while donning my geekiest T-shirts.

More importantly, I assume anyone representing a product or service at a show is knowledgeable about its inner-workings until they give me some reason to believe otherwise regardless of their gender or attire.

While I appreciate that it is often difficult dealing with misogyny at conferences, I think it's unfair to lump a proper PR employee in with a model in a Princess Leia slave bikini who knows nothing about the product.

> If I'm understanding correctly

You most certainly are not.

The author is simply pointing out that ending the booth babe situation isn't a panacea. The real issue is the shortage of actual technical contributors who are also women:

> Goodness knows, if I had the power to bring tons of other technical women at the conference that would be an optimal solution

You're discounting the second half of the sentence you quoted:

> but barring that, selfish as it may sound, if I could have substituted all the plain-clothes promoters for traditional booth babes, I would have done it in a heartbeat.

Of course, progress isn't a panacea, but I'd take progress over the "old days," myself. I've personally seen the number of confidently technical women at conferences increase year over year for the past decade (please note, I'm not saying that the status quo is optimal, just that, in my experience, there _has_ been progress).

Moreover, the _title_ of the piece concludes with "Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse" which contradicts what you said.

(I added that after he posted, because s/he brought up a good point.)

Could you mark your edits in the article as such? It's making the discussion here difficult to follow as people are referring to outdated versions.

Done, edits are italics, thanks

>More importantly, I assume anyone representing a product or service at a show is knowledgeable about its inner-workings until they give me some reason to believe otherwise regardless of their gender or attire.

That must get pretty tiring at a conference like this (assuming the description in the post is accurate). People don't stereotype for fun, they do it because it's effective.

In general, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt that they're knowledgeable about things they purport to be knowledgeable about. I don't think that's so different from the instant situation here.

Walking a crowded expo floor is a chore in and of itself (maybe more-so for introverts like myself :) ), but the '10 GDC I attended wasn't particularly challenging in this regard.

I find this challenging. I want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but when you get let down over and over, you start taking mental shortcuts, even unfair ones. Humans are good at that. I was at PAX East, and there were a lot of hired-gun women doing hired-gun women stuff, mixed in with a small number of women who actually worked at those companies. It was really hard not to start assuming things.

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