Nor does it imply the exclusion of sexual behaviour/discussion in every possible context. (assuming here you meant to say "sex-positive")
This conference was a big event with lots of people and lots of talking. I think it would be odd if in all those countless discussions someone didn't mention something sexual just by accident.
Whilst I don't think sexual innuendo's are particularly witty, I would hardly count 2 of them in a conference with hundreds of people as a grotesque and unnecessary insertion of sexuality into a non-sexual context.
This incident does reek of sex-negativity. If this was any other form of joke someone didn't find funny, it would be a non-issue. But peoples uncomfortability with anything remotely sexual means it gets perceived as sexist. I mean, sex kind sounds like sexist right?
Why is no one in these stories even questioning the concept of whether any joke about sex or sexual innuendo is inherently sexist?
Whilst not my personal comedic cup of tea, sexual innuendo is just a pun. Puns might be uninspired non-comedy, but a sexual pun is no more inherently sexist than a non-sexual pun.
Is the idea that because it was a woman who felt uncomfortable about a sexual innuendo, it was an inherently sexist act? People feel uncomfortable and offended with jokes all the time, that doesn't define their sexism or lack thereof.
This whole thing smacks of artificial controversy. It's a shame two people had to lose their jobs over what appears to be a total non-issue.
If this is the most blatant example of sexism in the tech industry / "start ups", one might think there are other more important things to focus on and get people fired for.
Generalizing over bad personal experiences with no mention of positive experiences? Check.
Grandiose sense of entitlement? Check.
Complete failure to make any kind of insightful commentary that might transcend her own personal experience? Check.
From the form and content of this writing, its impossible to tell whether :
A) The author is making legitimate observations about personal experiences that don't extend to anyone else.
B) The author is making legitimate observations about problems in the SF dating scene that would bear out for a significant amount of people in SF.
C) The author is as socially maladjusted as the guys she's complaining about, and is therefore the source of her poor social experiences.
D) The author is fabricating a polemic piece to try and garner attention online (a lot of the anecdotes seem too convenient to the narrative, and the whole piece looks suspiciously like what one might engineer to deliberately divide opinion/spark controversy)
Oh I know, like the last time government pumped massive amounts of money into biofuels and there was a massive food crisis in the 3rd world due to rocketing food prices which was caused by the government buying up massive amounts of corn for ethanol fuel.
How about a guide to hiring the best person for the job? Given that's what actually matters and not the gender of the person.
If your workplace culture is getting in the way of hiring the best person for the job, then that's a problem that transcends gender. By the logic that women won't be comfortable taking a job where there aren't other women, then businesses should make sure to have someone of every race, gender, religion and age so they don't put off any potential applicants.
I'd love to see any empirical evidence whatsoever to support the myriad assumptions made in this article.
Don't say that "we only hire the top 1% of candidates" because women aren't confident enough to apply to those jobs? Female tech workers don't know/like what the word "hacker/hack" means?
This quote in particular seems to sum up a bizarre focus on gender above all issues:
"If you can’t find potential female candidates, you’re just being lazy."
An employer being lazy about hiring people? We live in a society where there are often hundreds or even thousands of applications for a single position because of a massive labor surplus.
The vastly disproportionate effort that's being recommended towards hiring women smacks of rank tokenism.
It's hard to see how the women that Cristina Cordova envisions inhabit the tech industry have the necessary metacognitive skills to be an effective/assertive member of any workforce. If they're so insecure as to be put off from a good position by the term "hacker", or so intimidated by groups who don't look like them, how can they be expected to handle other tasks that require confidence, assertiveness, and ability to deal with people different from yourself?
Thankfully all the women I've met in the tech industry seem to be a far cry from this stereotype. They've all been perfectly capable and confident, and the only effort I needed to extend to them is the same I'd extend to any colleague; respectful professionalism, aka not being an asshole and not letting other people down.
"If Jeff keeps making that annoying noise I'm gonna kill him."
"Traffic was absolute murder today..."
"Being stuck in a stuffy office on a day like this is torture."
Are these example's of insensitive trivialization of murder and torture?
Only if you're completely incapable (or unwilling) of making the distinction between words and their intended meaning.
If hearing someone saying "murder", "kill", "torture" or "rape" in a non-serious context can make you take those ACTS less seriously then you're a a worryingly gullible/amoral person, then the problem lies with you, not with people who don't happen to have a joyless, unerringly literal approach to language that they use to make themselves self-appointed sensitivity police (i.e enjoy that practise humans enjoy so much that is telling other people they're doing stuff wrong).
Of course, you'd never take murder or rape less seriously just because it was used non-seriously as word; only stupid people would do that. It's only those other people who would be influenced so easily by language, and its for them language has to be regulated.
"Wait, someone is using the word rape in relation to the result of a trivial sports result? That must mean raping people isn't a serious issue! Thank god society has given me permission to violate other people through non-literal use of language!"
This is the same kind of nonsense that makes people say videogames with fantasy violence in them are bad because they desensitize people to violence. Sorry, us intelligent, compassionate people are actually capable of distinguishing between fantasy, hyperbole, metaphor, and real life immoral acts.
Even young children are capable of making this distinction when they play soldiers or whatever and pretend to kill each other and die. If you're abilities in sensitivity are being surpassed by children, you may want to redress your values instead of focussing on what you see as faults in others.
This conference was a big event with lots of people and lots of talking. I think it would be odd if in all those countless discussions someone didn't mention something sexual just by accident.
Whilst I don't think sexual innuendo's are particularly witty, I would hardly count 2 of them in a conference with hundreds of people as a grotesque and unnecessary insertion of sexuality into a non-sexual context.
This incident does reek of sex-negativity. If this was any other form of joke someone didn't find funny, it would be a non-issue. But peoples uncomfortability with anything remotely sexual means it gets perceived as sexist. I mean, sex kind sounds like sexist right?