Atlassian developer apologizes to "all getting offended" by his sexist joke | Hacker News Reader

Atlassian developer apologizes to "all getting offended" by his sexist joke

thetarah.com

6 pointsHerkin16 comments

People who get offended with these sort of jokes, offend me. They must be really sad people.

Stop saying sorry for this sort of things!

http://www.chortle.co.uk/correspondents/2012/09/20/16180/why...

http://10cities10years.com/2012/07/10/so-youre-offended-so-f...

Your links are about comedians getting into trouble by offending people. That is a different issue to gender stereotyping in a professional environment. People do have a right to be offended, call people out on it, and try to improve the world they live in. I don't think that makes then sad.

Yeah, the links are about stand up comedians, because he tried to relax a bit and make the presentation fun!

"Professional environment", as in "Advertising a product". Take 10m and watch some advertising. This is no better or worse!

The world don't need more Drama Queens.

Would it be sexist if this was "Boyfriend", this has nothing to do with gender. The presenter could be a girl.

This "tech sexist" thing, is bullshit! Skills worth more than your balls. No one cares about your gender.

I'm trying to imagine the reverse situation with a female speaker playing on negative male stereotypes with a primarily-female audience. E.g.:

X is my boyfriend: physically strong, just wants sex, doesn't do laundry, generally messy, checks out my friends

Personally I wouldn't be offended if someone presented the slide above, and I have a hard time imagining that there'd be an uprising about it. To me this clearly indicates a double standard. So where should we draw the line on gender stereotypes, to be applied equally to both sexes? I can't answer that, but I think the above analogy shows that people are being hypersensitive.

There is a double standard to a limited degree- I can't remember the source of this, but a good explanation I saw described it thusly - it's the difference between "punching up" and "punching down". When a woman makes a joke about a male stereotype, it's "punching up", the classically lower status individual tweaking the nose of those in power. When a man makes fun of a female stereotype, it's punching down, or picking on someone.

That doesn't necessarily make it right in either direction or represents a set of absolutes, of course, but it does explain the willingness of people to excuse a certain amount of one type of stereotyping and not another.

You'd still have to make it somewhat apply to both Maven and what you're comparing Maven to...Maven wouldn't "be physically strong," "just want sex" or "not do laundry." But you could say Maven, "does the heavy lifting," "screws me whenever possible" and "doesn't clean up after himself" (without my asking...have to type 'mvn clean')

Without the dual meaning, it's not really an attempted joke.

Agreed, this was way overblown - making cheesy-sitcomy-girlfriend/boyfriend jokes shouldn't be treated like a triple homicide hate crime

I don't get it. He made a marginally sexist joke, people took it too seriously, and he apologized for it.

Was he to direct that apology at people who weren't offended?

Apologies are by definition when you apologies for your own actions. To claim that it applies to people based on their reaction or is explicitly for people who reacted a certain way is not IMHO a real apology. This type of conditional apology (called the 'Carey' apology where I'm from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/my-vile-apology/story-e6frf...) is an apology for the reaction in others, not the act itself.

I don't feel like this is incredibly sexist, but then again I'm male.

I don't think this objectifies or belittles women.. though I can see how it's inappropriate in a professional environment. (And will be alienating to a female audience - though honestly the same points might be brought up about men).

I would ask tumblr which parts are offensive and why, but I don't feel like getting death threats this week.

I think it's a worthwhile exercise to look at situations like this and objectively asses the indiscretion. My first response was, 'that's fine, he's just talking about his girlfriend, no issue'. This is an oversimplification. The offence comes from the humour, which relies on the implication that all girlfriends are like this. It's a little subtle but it's there.

I don't really like males (I'm male) being portrayed as domestic buffoons who can't cook, are too lazy to clean, even in the context of light humour. It's a false stereotype.

It's an unfortunate situation. I wonder if perhaps it could have been mitigated by small changes to the wording to make it gender neutral:

"A Relationship with Maven..."

- Looks Great

- Complains A lot

- Demands Attention

- Interrupts Us When We're Working

- Doesn't Play Well With Our Other Friends

Of course, the photo to the right would need to be gender neutral, too. Perhaps just the logo.

I can't imagine that such a slide would have any repercussions, but it would get the same point across. It's often not hard at all to just be inclusive.

A presenter could do that, but the greater specificity – "my girlfriend" – makes for a stronger, more relatable, and mostly self-deprecating joke. After all, he's not saying Maven is "like" his specific, real girlfriend, or girlfriends in general. He's saying Maven "is" his problematic girlfriend.

That makes it an embarrassing confession, about a universally-understandable human situation – having some frustrations with a romantic partner. But he's in a grating relationship with a software tool! The joke's on him!

There's no necessary implication all girlfriends/partners, or all women, fit that model – just that it's a recognizable pattern. Anyone who's ever seen a sitcom, family-comedy-movie, adult-comedy-movie, or stand-up-comic will be familiar with the fact that some SOs/hookups/spouses can sometimes annoy, in the manner of the bullet points.

Every mainstream g-rated American comedy show has jokes like this about husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends etc.

The new "rule" seems to be: don't try to be funny, or else.

Offended?

HN isn't where we talk about this sort of thing.

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