'Titstare' app at TechCrunch: women in tech deserve better

//"rockstars" wash up, burn out, fade away or simply die and the fall is as quick as the rise."//

So exactly as most of us have come to know the industry over the last two decades. :/

As an Australian, I was disappointed to see the team attempt to use "Aussie humour" as a shield. What would have been more Australian would be to harden up and apologise.

Really, men in tech need to stop thinking that they're somehow not part of the problem and are therefore free to make jokes about it.

You become part of the problem when you do stuff like this.

You don't see white people going around using the word "nigga" lightly, why should it be OK for this sort of joke to be made at a tech conference? It's not OK. It may never be OK. So just stop doing it. You're not Louis CK, you didn't make a career of comedy. Don't think you can tread the line of these social issues and not have it blow up in your face.

Not everything is. Sexist things in tech get linked to sexism.

> try (as a male) to get a job in a kindergartner or a nursery school.

Problems in other industries are no justification for ignoring our own--is this an argument you are seriously making? Really?

Poor men when will we ever catch a break in this world.

Feminism is about the equality of opportunity and power.

You cannot create a picture of equal sexism by demonstrating a low-power, low-economic status, low opportunity-of-career-advancement role (that has traditionally been a female-only occupation due in-part to traditional gender-specific roles around child-rearing) where men who choose to enter it are viewed with scepticism. Especially if that role includes close, private contact with young children.

Feminists like me want an equal share of the good jobs for women throughout all strata of all industries. Men will undoubtably have to take up some of the low-paid shit jobs to compensate—but that is equality.

Sexism is a female only problem and will continue to be as long as men hold most of the power and are afforded most of the best opportunities.

The cure is more feminism. Why did you think that "nurturing" jobs are given disproportionately to women?

You're playing devil's advocate, right?

Rubbish. It was about objectifying women. It had nothing to do with lonely developers. These were two boofhead Australians who sadly exist in my part of the world who used women's bodies as a joke so they could get a quick laugh.

There are too many "men" like this in Sydney. I use the word "men" loosely.

It's more about objectification of women it doesn't matter if it is lonely developers doing it. It is disrespectful. What are the women who attended this hackathon supposed to think. Do you think they would feel like they are valued for the ideas and knowledge they bring, or their tits?

You need to learn that what is considered (possibly socially) acceptable behaviour amongst your friends, is not necessarily acceptable in the workplace.

If you want a definition of the workplace, it includes hacker meetups, youtube videos, presentations etc. where people of all social groups come together to discuss or create code. I have a very twisted sense of humour that many would find offensive. At work though I keep that side of myself under wraps, not out of a sense of fear but of respect.

The bottom line is this: by collectively changing our behaviour to be less offensive (from the point of view of gender, sexuality, race, religion etc.) then people from those groups feel more safe and secure in that environment. If women truly felt comfortable to enter into the currently male dominated tech industry we get a bigger talent pool to choose from - the competition and skillset increases. Now re-read that sentence substituting 'women' and 'male dominated' with any minority/majority pairing and we start to see how much bigger we can make the number of available programmers.

It may seem dull to have a workplace that's so sterile and inoffensively humourless, but it's work, not a bar.

> i can't see how a woman could find it offensive

Irrelevant. If you want to know if women find it offensive, ask women. Stop dismissing things because you manage to fail to see them.

This is an area in which you should probably check your intuition with other people.

//i can't see how a woman could find it offensive //

Feminism won't be required the day men understand why a woman would find it offensive. Imagine being a man in a room full of women in a society ruled over by women and all women are laughing at a penis stare app. Today you'd say "Oh I would find it funny too", but that's male privilege. We live in a male dominated society so you fail to see why women would not find a tit stare app funny.

Really? It's impossible for you to see how women at a tech conference could get the impression that they aren't valued for their ideas and skills when an app to look at tits gets a prominent spot?

I sometimes think that the persistent claims of sex discrimination in tech are a bit over-the-top, but in this instance it's quite obvious. This stunt was very poorly thought out.

Let me preface this by saying that I'm frustrated on a regular basis by the claim that everything is sexist, because labeling someone who isn't with that word can be just as harmful. Especially in the tech industry and gaming and geekery. Even more, I'm put off by the almost constant misuse of the word "misogyny". It is never used for what the word really means. It just sounds good, so people throw it around.

However, as thick headed and unapologetically thick-skinned I assert myself to be and expect others to be, I can absolutely see why women would have a problem with this in this particular environment.

Let me present a really shoddy analogy (but it's all I've got at the moment):

I am obese. I attend a tech conference full of professionals in my industry. Friends, colleagues, potential connections, people I admire. Someone then comes on stage and does a presentation about fat people. It's an app that focuses on how fat people are. For humor. And they attempt to make a lot of humor about it. And the audience around me is laughing.

Now, I'm super fat. I'm more than aware of that. I know that people around me are, too. I have a good sense of humor. I'm even happy to make myself the ass-end of a joke about my weight. However, when I am in a huge room full of people laughing at a presentation making light of people like me, I suddenly feel incredibly awkward, self-aware, embarrassed, and like I'm not wanted there. Maybe that I don't even belong there. So, I stop going. I stop supporting. I stop participating.

It's all about context and having a little tact. These guys used pretty poor judgement. I don't think they should be strung up or driven out of town for it. They should just be an example of how people with no ill-intentions can end up making other people really uncomfortable and how that is something you need to be sensitive to when acting in any professionally related capacity.

This app has a high probability of making people in the audience uncomfortable on the basis of their gender. That is pretty much never cool.

And that would actually seem to be a really reasonable progression for this whole thing. The presenters say "we made an unfortunate judgement call and we apologize" and the conference says "so from now on, here's our short list of rules to avoid uncertainties in the future" and then we all grow up and move on with our lives.

Unfortunately the tech industry seems to be enamoured with not merely being offended, but being offended by the potential that they could have been offended. So we'll circle the drain with everyone beating the drum in support of their own personal agendas for awhile more before this is over.

By that time, someone else will have done something dumb and we'll be ready to have another go.

This is probably the best comment in this discussion. Thank you.

1. Quite the opposite, the woman may feel included, but it's a farce, she isn't one of the guys as long as the guys can't be themselves while she is around. Resentment can form this way

2. Objectification it is, but I don't agree that that is wrong. You're trying to force a societal expectation over a natural process. More or less it's 'you should have interest in me because of all my qualities, not the sexual ones'. That is a bizarre rewiring of male sexual psychology pushed by non-males, I don't buy it.

3. keyword 'ironic' if a group of men 'ironically' made anything then it isn't automatically sexist. A group of women non-ironically a pack-track app that tracks penises IS sexist. Why? By the same definition you used above, objectification and a supposedly male belief that I am more than a penis and testicles. (Ironic that men have blow up dolls for sex, and women have a disembodied penis known as a dildo: talking about objectification and not considering the whole of a human!)

4. No feminism WAS a civil rights movement. If anything it is an ever shifting term that has evolved since it's inception. It is no longer about equality and opportunity, it is now about special rights and privileges (family court system, maternity leave etc.) (my view) You're right, an example of an unbalanced gender work force is not indicative of sexism. Which goes both ways! That means that just because women hold most teaching jobs doesn't mean men are actively pushed away from it, maybe they don't want to teach. Much like your counter point. Just because men hold powerful jobs doesn't mean that women are actively barred from it, they may not want to be in it! I have yet to see one well done study that has convinced me of this. Anecdotes aren't effective. Equality is about opportunity, that may not be reflected in a statistically perfect 50%. Men and women are different, and they can like different jobs. The end goal is freedom, not an enforced literal numbered equality. That was tried in communist systems and people were much more miserable because of it. 5. Most sexism is silent. We do it without knowing we are doing it. Women appoint women because the other women are women like themselves. Women know how to talk to women; Social women more-so. We fill our conferences with women, our panels with women, our keynotes with women because it is an easy thing to do. We promote bright young women because they remind us of ourselves. We tell ourselves that we are simply picking the best. Combating this silent sexism is hard. As long as all we see is women everywhere then we will continue to be silently sexist and men will continue to silently vote with their feet.

You see what I did there? It can easily be applied to Nursing. So now, do we have a sexist epidemic in nursing, on the eve of a geriatrics explosion? I don't hear ANYONE complaining about that and I am sure that is because of some very sexist reasons.

6.Women make up 51% of the population... they should therefore be over 50% of our community. Bad assertion. Really bad assertion. You're equating numeric equality with actual equality. You're assuming that women want these jobs enough to be 50%. You're assuming they are like men. I for one think they are individuals, not automatons and can have their own interests. This is somebody's fault and most probably ours. Also a bad assertion. With what unbiased reasoned study did you find this?

    If we are throwing away half the talent how can we possibly be hiring the best?
     Half of whom we hire must be sub-standard!

    Say the top 1% is 'the best'. The entire industry cannot hire the best, unless you want 99% of the workforce unemployable for IT related fields. 
    
    2nd. Half of whom we hire must be substandard? No that isn't the case at all, probably the majority of whom you hire is standard (assuming a typical skill distribution)
    
    More women in the field certainly would help, there would be more of the best, and more standard, and more substandard. You increased the supply of workers, which is a good thing
    from certain view points. Your rhetoric is pretty awful though.
    

7. Positive discrimination is one way to change the numbers, but as with affirmative action, the same arguments for and against apply.

It is a very manly gesture that implies a mental image of the someone else being the subject of the gesture.

But first of all, it is very immature and tasteless and shouldn't be done on stage.

  It's not about women at all.

sigh

In an already male-biased community the non-inclusivity of demos like these put out a very specific message to women: this is not for you.

The tit staring demo puts out a worse message: this is not for you—you are just a sex object to us.

If you were a female hacker how would that make you feel your work will be judged by your male peers?

Turn it around in your head, if you can, to a position where all industry and powerful roles are controlled by women and an important industry is dominated by women. It holds a conference where there are demonstrations of things that are women-only and where a man's role is reduced to that of sex object. Add to that a lot of cliquey female sex jokes where men are often the but but you are expected to laugh along and shrug it off. Is that a conference you would want to attend? What if you felt you had to to further your career?

If that doesn't work turn it around to Jocks vs Geeks. Imagine you had to go to a Jock conference to further your career. Where the demos were all about football and the jokes were about weedy geeky types. Now imagine that you had to go to conferences like this if you wanted to further your career and you had to put up with an undercurrent of secret sexuality where jocks joked about having sex with geeky boys and demonstrated technology to spy on their genitalia. Even if I was gay I'm sure I'd find that intimidating.

The world of tech needs to move away from this stupidity and be at the forefront of gender equality like it is at the forefront of a lot of new thinking.

Technology can only bring about a better world if the people who create it understand what a better world looks like.

While I agree with your point, I don't see how being physically attracted to a person's symmetry is any different than being attracted to the dimensions of their hips or the size of their breasts other than being more presentable to an audience. It would be more sensible from the standpoint of the presentation, but any of those people pitchforking over focusing on physical attraction to physical attributes of human beings in this thread would have to maintain the same incredulity over one measuring each body part for symmetry.

Who's saying that? Certainly not the article this post links to.

Genuine question: Is there a dickstare app? And if so, is it not also considered sexist?