Hacker News Reader

Comment by bdcravens | Hacker News Reader

Totally off-topic and maybe even trollish, but I noticed the cute little illustration here: http://sailsjs.org/#getStarted

Interesting that the female is skinny, with a trendy little mid-riff baring shirt, and attractive (so far as a stylized comic character can be). One of the male characters is a pudgy dude with glasses. It seems the norm in characterizing girls in tech is "you can be a developer, but stay sexy - you don't have to be a nerd!" Does this risk marginalizing normal women?

View on HN

Hm under closer inspection, they don't have any Asian developer on the boat either! Does this mean Asian developers can't use Sails? And why is the Indian man is the one rowing the boat - without the ability to see might I add? Clearly this is racially insensitive. /s

How do you know the man is Indian? The clothing style is more suggestive of him being Hispanic or African-American.

For one thing, that's not really analogous. The analogous situation would be e.g. if they had a drawing of an Asian who was furiously working on solving an equation.

For another thing, I believe you will find that Indians are, in fact, Asians.

The analogy was that the brown person is happily pulling the workload while the Caucasians sit around and do nothing - an appropriate stereotype regardless of whether he is Indian or Hispanic. Amazing how a forum once about tech is now more concerned with pedantic politically correctness.

I wasn't taking issue with the rowing part of the analogy, since that works fine for your purpose of ridiculing "political correctness". I don't agree with you, but that was a fine jab. But the "there isn't an Asian" jab doesn't work because it's not equivalent to a problematic portrayal.

For the record, I don't think that the illustration they used is a huge deal. But it is not a coincidence that the female drawing is the only one that's sexualized, and it's not like it's an isolated case.

One of the two designers who worked on it is a woman-- feel free to ask her:

https://twitter.com/KallunaLovegood

egg, meet face

Whether or not a woman did the design isn't the point. This particular design wasn't even the point. I was questioning what seems to be a trend.

The person you're responding to didn't say that a woman designer was the point.

They said you can feel free to ask her your question.

I wish you would too, because I can't stand coming into a thread about some cool new technology and having it turn into a melodramatic women's study.

If women weren't brainwashed to (generally) serve men, strive to be skinny, pretty and dutiful, they'd soon realise women don't need the male half of the species to survive.

SO, let's leave the stereotypes be, or risk the evolutionary extinction of males...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com