These days, I’ve seen many breathless posts about how 'we' "need" to encourage girls to study math so eventually they become computer or other sorts of geeks.
Personally, I don't think technology is the only valuable thing in the world; writing, music, and the rest of the arts, medicine, human relations, politics, and so on are pretty important things too, and let’s face it content was, is, and will always be king.
That said, if men continue to act like jerks, it is no wonder women will go into anything but technology.
Over the past few days, there were numerous reports out of the Blackhat / DEFCON gatherings in Las Vegas about blatant sexism.
The first, that CISCO had a 'pose with a babe' opportunity
@CiscoSecurity: Tweet us a picture with our Raven girls at Booth 101! #BlackHat
The tweet, and the picture have since been deleted, after the denizens of Twitter tore them a new one.
However, it didn’t stop there. Apparently there were presentation slides filled with comely women, and the best yet! Some idiot hired STRIPPERS to play a public game of 'Hacker Jeopardy'.
This has to stop now.
Beyond the women in attendance being rightfully horrified (personally, I'd never attend again, until Blackhat makes an unmitigated, solid commitment to change and apologizes for past indiscretions), there are probably other men, such as myself, who find this offensive, prurient, and degrading to women, and, in fact, all attendees, indeed to our entire industry. The people behind this have the emotional age of 14. If you feel the need to see a half-naked girl who will never willingly sleep with you, GO TO A STRIP CLUB.
By the way: I can count the number of times I've been to a strip-club on my fingers, I've never had a good time at places like that, I feel degraded going there. Don't get me wrong, I think attractive women are the best thing on the planet, but there is a time and place to enjoy such interests, and at work isn't the place nor the time for masturbatory fantasies, and yes, when I attend conferences, it is to work. Someone pays my way, they get to expect something in return, and that something isn't me thinking of half-naked women.
(Just for a real quick second allow me to establish my street-cred by noting that I worked in the music industry for many years, so any claims of me being puritanical will be met with gales of laughter.)
MAAWG.org and other conferences have recently come up with Codes of Conduct which, while good, are depressing in the necessity to even have them. Do we really need to remind people to keep their petty prurient prejudices to themselves? Apparently so.
I can’t help but wonder what the reaction would be was these bigots to express themselves on Blacks or Jews at conferences. I’m pretty sure we’d have put an immediate and total stop to such things, and ostracized the perpetrators, instead of turning a blind eye, and passively tolerating this.
When I posted this rant on Facebook, in a more, plainly spoken manner (read: passionate and profanity-laced) version, a friend of mine reacted to thusly:
"The problem with making the decision, as a woman, to stay home and not go to places where this [stuff] happens, is that if you stay home, you then lose some/most/any of your status in the group.
Yeah, there's [crap] (like the time someone in the delivery industry said on a mailing list "we'll take you to the strip club, then you get to be a part of delivery.") but if women just avoid the people perpetrating the [crap], then women lose opportunity and access.
On the other hand, if women call it out, then we also risk losing status as "one of the guys" or "not one of *those* women" (usually "feminist") or whatever. "Swallow [crap], or ruin the entire afternoon?" with a side of "and struggle in the field because I've now asserted that I am human too and expect respect."
I'm not sure there is one answer, but men speaking up about how the sexism [that clearly] exists in the tech sector is inappropriate is certainly part of the solution."
I think she is dead right. One need only look back at the Adria Richards debacle to see what happened to a woman who spoke up.
For those who don’t know, Ms. Richards overheard a couple of men at a conference prattling on in what she took to be a sexist manner. She snapped a picture of them, and tweeted it. Apparently the conference she was attending had a harassment policy, and they took her to task for not following protocol.
Some say she reacted or over-reacted inappropriately; I’m not one of those. Tolerate sexism and it is degrading. Speak up, and you are labeled a bitch. (The developer nomenclature to which she objected, ‘forking’ and 'dongles' isn’t accidental either. It is juvenile.)
I think it is noteworthy that Ms. Richards has not posted to Twitter since the incident in March, and her employer, Sendgrid, took the coward’s way out and fired her because of a small DDoS. They even made themselves out to be victimized by the situation.
Well, enough is enough.
We all, as leaders in this industry need to speak out loudly, and clearly that we, as adult men, will not tolerate this bigotry towards our colleagues and friends any longer. Conferences need to put an end to objectification of any sort, immediately, and we all need to grow up.
Neil Schwartzman, Executive Director
