Sexism and the ISC West Party Girls(ipvm.com)
ipvm.com
Sexism and the ISC West Party Girls
http://ipvm.com/report/sexism_domewizard_girls
1 comments
Could someone please explain to me how this is sexist?
It's using women as passive objects instead of as participants in the show. Women and men have different roles in the show. The men are taken seriously and the women are not. That's why it's sexist.
So it would be fine if the scarcely dressed participants in the show were of the same gender as the main characters?
Furthermore, I don’t think that the ‘passive objects’ were chosen based on gender, but rather on appeal to the assumed audience, possibly complementing the main presenters as to offer likeable elements to every member of the audience.
Or are you saying that the visitors of this show are sexist because they only like women (assuming that this is true)?
Furthermore, I don’t think that the ‘passive objects’ were chosen based on gender, but rather on appeal to the assumed audience, possibly complementing the main presenters as to offer likeable elements to every member of the audience.
Or are you saying that the visitors of this show are sexist because they only like women (assuming that this is true)?
> So it would be fine if the scarcely dressed participants in the show were of the same gender as the main characters?
It would be less sexist, but it would remain stupid.
Anyway, let's return to the main point of the argument: employing "party girls" to sell services and software at trade shows is a practice that reinforces a particular culture of discrimination that is actively creating difficulties for professional women in our field.
Do you disagree?
It would be less sexist, but it would remain stupid.
Anyway, let's return to the main point of the argument: employing "party girls" to sell services and software at trade shows is a practice that reinforces a particular culture of discrimination that is actively creating difficulties for professional women in our field.
Do you disagree?
I think the main problem is that women are already a minority. So when they look around, the women they are most likely to see are the ones who are not being taken seriously. This will discourage women from participating, and continue to ensure that the audience in future events is mostly male.
A larger issue is that attendees will stop taking all women at the event seriously. It's like a spam filter for the brain: if you want to talk seriously about a product, find a man. Please note that even women attendees do this to each other.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2963733 especially the comments
A larger issue is that attendees will stop taking all women at the event seriously. It's like a spam filter for the brain: if you want to talk seriously about a product, find a man. Please note that even women attendees do this to each other.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2963733 especially the comments
So clearly if the general population was less heterosexual[0] and/or more women in tech[1], this wouldn’t be a problem. However, it is rather difficult for me to understand that an action (employing scarcely dressed women) can be sexist depending on external factors such as the percentage of people interested in women/men.
[0] Such that more men would be interested in men and hence scarcely dressed men were around as well.
[1] So that the link female ⇔ booth babe breaks down.
[0] Such that more men would be interested in men and hence scarcely dressed men were around as well.
[1] So that the link female ⇔ booth babe breaks down.
Mostly, yes. Of course inviting only scantily-clad women makes women attendees feel a little less welcomed/catered to/pandered to than the men.
The 'passive objects' were chosen to be women because 90%+ of the attendees are men. The organizers know that this will appeal to them.
Would it remove the problem to have men in revealing clothes, too?
If they had men in revealing clothes, it would kill the event as most men don't want to mingle with other men in revealing clothes. They do this because they know men want to mingle with women in revealing clothes.
It might help. What would really remove the problem is to have knowledgeable women as well as men because that would be much more appropriate for an industry event. At least advertise the women as something helpful first, and ready to party second.
The definition of sexist:
".. prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex. Sexist attitudes may stem from traditional stereotypes of gender roles, and may include the belief that a person of one sex is intrinsically superior to a person of the other."
PAX eliminated booth babes for a couple of reasons: they detracted from the primary objective of the event, they made other women actually working at booths look like they were just there for show - causing men to walk past them (prominent female blogger Violet Blue actually managed to publicly humiliate a woman at an app conference because she was doing a 'bad job' at being a "babe") and they did little to sell the product they were there to promote.
As a female attendee for three years before they instated the rule, the ones I saw were always awkwardly walking around or fiddling with controllers to avoid talking to people. It also made me feel that if I ever wanted to get into game development, this is how my company felt best represented all of my hard work.
It's just all-around bad taste to have female centerpieces at a male-heavy event.
PAX eliminated booth babes for a couple of reasons: they detracted from the primary objective of the event, they made other women actually working at booths look like they were just there for show - causing men to walk past them (prominent female blogger Violet Blue actually managed to publicly humiliate a woman at an app conference because she was doing a 'bad job' at being a "babe") and they did little to sell the product they were there to promote.
As a female attendee for three years before they instated the rule, the ones I saw were always awkwardly walking around or fiddling with controllers to avoid talking to people. It also made me feel that if I ever wanted to get into game development, this is how my company felt best represented all of my hard work.
It's just all-around bad taste to have female centerpieces at a male-heavy event.
Bad taste and inefficient, sure, but sexist? I don’t see any prejudice or discrimination here on the part of the presenter, apart from possibly discriminating men for not considering them as ‘booth boys’.
My point is really that it is absolutely trivial to shout ‘sexism/sexist’ every time something isn’t the way people would want it to be and one can possibly create a link to women, but overusing the designation won’t help equalising genders and judging people independently of their X and Y chromosomes – much the same way that claims of ‘racism’ whenever a black person is involved don’t help the cause against racism either.
My point is really that it is absolutely trivial to shout ‘sexism/sexist’ every time something isn’t the way people would want it to be and one can possibly create a link to women, but overusing the designation won’t help equalising genders and judging people independently of their X and Y chromosomes – much the same way that claims of ‘racism’ whenever a black person is involved don’t help the cause against racism either.
Men aren't walking around the event floor because they aren't seen as sex objects. That is sexist in itself. But yes it's also discriminatory towards men for not having the same privilege if you want to view it that way instead (which is still sexism).
Wish the other commenter hadn't deleted his post; in it he said that he doesn't like booth babes because they imply that he is dumb enough to be fooled by it, which brings up another great point about the type of people that are in favor of this type of advertising.
Wish the other commenter hadn't deleted his post; in it he said that he doesn't like booth babes because they imply that he is dumb enough to be fooled by it, which brings up another great point about the type of people that are in favor of this type of advertising.
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