Hey guys, Katy here, just wanted to thank everybody for the support and super insightful feedback. I will continue to edit the post and post here with clarifications, mostly after work hours :)
And yes, I know everybody's probably sick of gender issues, and that's why I almost didn't bring it up, but I hoped it would be a chance for a good civil discussion, and I'm really glad to see it turning into that. Hopefully someday soon everything can be awesome, we'll never have occasion to talk about this garbage again, and we can all go back to nerding. I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to that day.
But, seriously, the civility and respect here have totally blown me away. Really proud to be a part of this community. Thanks everybody, you give a lady hope!
Never stop blogging about it, please. Did you see the post the other day from the woman who works at Game Informer (http://meagan-marie.tumblr.com/post/46396481491/what-would-y...)? Her experience at PAX East was one thing, but her work stories were even worse. I'd recommend it to everyone here.
Personally, I'm glad you did. I'm a male engineer, but there are two women engineers in my family (mom and sister). They always bring up these situations to me that few seem to notice. And honestly its really difficult for them at times to be in this industry. More discussion is good.
I am not sick of gender issues. I have recently been enlightened (mostly by Bob Martin's recent blog post) about language that I use at work (eg military analogies) that could be alienating to anyone (eg females) who didn't grow up idealizing warfare. This is an incredibly important point in history, and you are at the epicenter. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Wait, I don't get it. I'm at GDC. A very large portion (maybe even a majority) of either gender is non-technical. It's an industry event so there are lots of salespeople, hr, biz-dev, etc. I wouldn't assume a man I met here was a developer.
There are some pretty obvious booth babes (the energy drink girls, ones with swords, etc.) There are women who, while perhaps non-technical, legitimately work for the companies they're hawking. I don't get the impression they're hired guns, though I haven't done a survey.
Perhaps it's easy to say because I'm not a woman, but I think I'd feel less uncomfortable here than anywhere else where I was outnumbered 10:1.
I think the problem I have with your comments is that you haven't put yourself in her shoes. You've simply related how you see things and drawn your conclusion from that alone. Her point was that women engineers seem to have a hard time at GDC -- so yeah, as a male engineer, it's not shocking that things seemed fine to you. She took the time to put up a sincere blog post about her experience; she's probably not doing it to be contrary or to troll. The least any of us can do is to factor in her perspective.
Well, her point was that she felt more uncomfortable at GDC than other conventions because there are female employees. I put myself in her shoes as much as I can, but I just can't imagine why GDC having female employees working in booths in biz dev is a bad thing for other females. I don't think she's trolling either but it's just a strange sentiment.
But his point is that the problem she's writing about (people assuming she's non-technical) is true of both male and female devs, because there are so many non-technical people of both genders. Him being right doesn't make her "contrary or [a] troll".
I think the issue is what it takes to convince a person you are technical. As a man, if I join a conversation while other people are talking technical, I will generally be assumed to be technical. I can easily imagine women not having the "technical" bit default to true.
You highlight a real issue, though. Given the percentages, if a technical conference has a large percentage of non-technical attendees, it is likely women will be seen to have the "technical" bit off. Certainly more women in tech would fix it, but that isn't the solution, because we won't get more women in tech if they continually feel uncomfortable.
Conference organizers could do more. Instead of "attendee"- and "vendor"-type badges, they could have more detailed badges that are noticeable quickly and easily. I know I would appreciate knowing at a glance, in any technical conference, how technical the person I'm talking to is. Saves us time talking past each other or covering ground we both already know.
GDC badges have your job title on them and the size isn't tiny so it is readable. You can generally tell if someone is technical or not that way, though it's not 100%.
The trick is that when people you talk to universally assume you're not technical due to your gender, it is simultaneously:
a) exhausting to have to change every person's perception of you prior to being able to really engage in conversation
b) demoralizing when your male peers are treated with more respect automatically based on their gender
c) a sad loss of opportunity to engage in the discussion, when no opportune moment arises where you can comfortably communicate that you are qualified to participate
The author cited conversations where men she was with did not have the same experience as her. She essentially had to work harder in order to be seen as an equal participant.
E3 targets the consumer/sales end of the game market. GDC targets the developer (in the general sense, designers, 3d modelers, etc.) ... so there are marketing and sales types trying to sell developer tools (maya, perforce, etc.)
Yeah. It's more technical and less consumer than E3 for sure. So instead of ads for games, you see ads for game development tools. The ecosystem is huge now that there are multiple platforms (console, pc, mobile, web, etc.), ad channels, payment methods, etc.
All of those tools are still b2b companies, and b2b software companies have lots of non-technical people. Sales, support, execs, etc. I haven't done a poll but I'd bet even here the non-technical people are at least 50%.
It's the Game Developer Conference. Marketing and sales are sort of baked into the very idea of a major conference, these days. It may not be ideal, but it's reality.
Sending people to do product promotional is perfectly legitimate depending on the type of event. Even if you weren't deliberately targeting a male audience with attractive females (although I'm sure that was the case), odds are that if you were recruiting for that kind of work 90% would be outgoing and attractive young women. Just like recruiting programmers will get you 90% geeky white males.
As a 31 year old male, here is my message to tech companies with products to sell:
If you have "booth babes" (I think she did a great job in the article of defining what that term means), I'm not going to buy your product. I hate it and always have. Its trashy and demeaning, and I resent being grouped into the lowest common denominator when I go to view a product I actually care about. As demeaning as it is to women, I think a lot of men would agree that its demeaning to be treated like a dog who can be baited with a doggy treat.
If you have a good product, you don't need to lure in knuckle draggers who let themselves be led around by their reproductive instincts.
The problem she described is a bit tougher to solve than simply saying, "don't hire booth babes." "[W]omen who are pretty but not models, dressed in normal street clothes" describes a pretty big percentage of the general population. Under her definition, "If you have 'booth babes' ..., I'm not going to buy your product" is essentially the same as saying "If you have women selling your product, I'm not going to buy it," which isn't exactly an enlightened position to take.
The problem the OP faced was that people at the conference were generally sorting people into the general categories of "technical and worth talking to" or "just trying to sell me something" and would make the Bayesian inference that a random woman they came across was in the latter category.
I can see two solutions here, neither of which is very good:
1) In order to promote gender equality, everyone at a conference should avoid judging people based on their gender. This would be ideal, but it's hard to fight casual statistical inference.
2) The conference could make sure that the people selling stuff at the booths and the people attending the conference have similar demographic profiles, so a random woman you encounter at the conference is as likely to be technical as a random man. In practice, though, this would mean preferential hiring of men for the promotional jobs.
Really, we need an option (3) of "get more women to be developers" but that's hardly news, and not something that can be solved in short order.
Under her definition, "If you have 'booth babes' ..., I'm not going to buy your product" is essentially the same as saying "If you have women selling your product, I'm not going to buy it," which isn't exactly an enlightened position to take.
It's almost as though you need to get ugly women - if the women are too attractive, then they are written off as "booth babes". Which is kind of sexist in its own way.
It is entirely sexist to see an attractive woman and assume that she isn't intelligent.
It's one of the hidden sides of sexism in our society that annoy me. I try to catch myself whenever I find myself doing that, and have been pleasantly surprised.
A side effect of this is that those women that are attractive and intelligent tend to begin to hide it. So you get self-reinforcing behavior from society. Things like guys belittling smart women etc... The whole thing is annoying from the perspective of a guy that loves talking to non-white guys about programming or almost anything interesting. /squirrel banter mode off.
She's talking about "women who are pretty but not models, dressed in normal street clothes to push whatever product they have." Is that what you think of for "booth babes"?
I misread and thought jiggy2011 was talking about not being sure if she worked there. I would assume someone hired to work a booth would know something about the product, and know who to point me to if they don't have an answer to my questions.
That's not really good for the booth babes or the technical women. The booth babes all get thrown out of their depth repeatedly, while the technical women have to deal with every single conversation starting out by getting quizzed live to make sure they belong in the club, which sounds totally stressful.
Let me suggest that this is an impossible problem to solve.
Here are our options:
1. Require a strict dress code for booth babes as to not offend anyone with scantily clad women. Result: we can't tell booth babes from technical females.
2. Require everyone working at the conference to be an active and knowledgable employee of the company which has purchase the booth space. Result: number of females on the show floor drops precipitously.
3. Require a 1:1 ratio of males to females. Result: booths are understaffed or companies don't even bother showing up.
4. Wait until ratio of males to females in the given industry is 1:1. Result: conferences cancelled.
If I was a female, and I'm not, I would be insulted that other females were trying to stop me from getting a job. I know a lot of girls who work as "booth babes" and they are busting their asses just as much as any of us are. It's not easy traveling around and standing all day long in uncomfortable shoes for pay that is slightly better than peanuts.
I cannot actually see a problem with #2, it would be my preferred solution. When I go to trade shows / conferences it is to talk to brains, not bodies, the sex of the brain is immaterial to me.
To me, making sure the bodies are 50% equal in gender means nothing if 80% of the female bodies are only there to make up a body quota but have no interest / knowledge of what is going on.
Maybe change it slightly so that the rules state anyone at the booth must be a full-time employee or a contract employee with X months at the company.
Could you go into a bit more detail about your reasoning for #2 not being suitable?
Why assume that anyone who isn't deeply expert in the technical details of a product isn't a full-time employee of the company? Many companies hire sales/marketing people of both genders that may have a relatively superficial understanding of the inner details but are more enthusiastic and outgoing than the engineering staff.
With the idea I stated above there is nothing stopping sales / marketing people from going. While they may not be techies per se I expect them to be knowledgeable out their products.
My proposal is purely to get rid of the "Pretty face, no knowledge, hired solely for the event" style of "booth-babe".
Of course companies could hire people for the require X months but I am hoping the monetary aspects of that would discourage them.
Also, enforcing the proposal would be tricky I think.
If I go to a technical conference, I am not interested in talking to sales and marketing people of any gender or dimensions. That is something which the sales and marketing people want, not something I want.
I agree that it's a hard problem, but I think you're looking at the wrong one.
The problematic assumption here is that a given woman was paid to be there. This was a reasonable assumption on the part of the other attendees, only because there are so few women in the games industry.
So rather than the problem-to-tackle being a cat-and-mouse with vendors trying to get the most-effective promotions' staff to the venue, the problem-to-tackle is women in gaming.
If women could hit even a respectably-sized minority of the attendee audience, the assumption would no longer be safe.
I don't think that assumption is safe of the women who aren't in costume. I think they're just female employees in non-technical roles. They're not eye candy.
That's what I find so strange about the original post. She's assuming they're there as eye candy and they sure don't seem to be. It's odd to hear a woman assume that other women (especially since they're pretty average) are there for their looks. The few I've talked to were far too knowledgeable to be some sort of incognito booth babes.
Booth babes are usually given a few talking points and know little to nothing else about the product beyond that. They pass you off to the nerd the second you appear interested.
I've seen the booth-babe role performed exactly as you've described, by dressed-down but attractive women at other conferences and trade shows.
And, yes, I'm distinguishing from actual staff who do know the product/service/industry and aren't just contracted short-term to draw people in.
Given the article's description, I figured that's what was going on. But, not having been there, I could definitely be getting the wrong idea from an unfair characterization.
Though it still sounds as though the core problem is the low number of women in the games industry, rather than what marketing departments may have done to skirt 'booth babe' rules.
"I've seen the booth-babe role performed exactly as you've described, by dressed-down but attractive women at other conferences and trade shows."
That's not a "booth babe", if they're being dressed down they've generally been giving training on the actual products. In that case, they're just spokespersons like the attractive marketing dudes with the excellent veneers.
The few I've talked to were far too knowledgeable to be some sort of incognito booth babes.
Perhaps it's because of the negative stereotype that the more attractive a women is, the less intelligent she is, or at least less likely that she's a technical person. And perhaps it's not just men that make this assumption.
I didn't say they were dumb, just that they aren't very knowledgeable about their product. They don't work for the companies they promote and don't get much training. They work for an agency that is hired by the company. They're given some talking points and then told who to point anyone to who needs to know more.
How about: Highly visible conference badges that differentiate spokespersons from developers?
There would be motivation for companies to game this, so that they could have spokespersons with "female geek cred." I think that this could be handled to within reason. Also, it might motivate companies to send their actual female employees, thus giving females more exposure at GDC.
This is a game developer conference, not a game programming conference. there are a dozen non-technical jobs between "spokesperson" and "developer." Game designer, level designer, UI artist, CGI artist, Producer, QA - these are just a few jobs that do not qualify as technical positions.
I suppose you could have everybody wear a badge that lists their job title, except not everybody is there representing a company. Large buckets, then? Artists, engineers, management, product, technical other, non-technical other?
Odds are, if you were recruiting for [promotional ] work 90% would be outgoing and attractive young women, just like recruiting programmers will get you 90% geeky white males.
Absolutely not true. There is no shortage of male actors and models. Whatsoever. And the prettier they are, the bigger the pay delta vis-a-vis the female actors and models. Whoever is hiring booth babes is actively excluding men, and paying through the nose to do it.
Think you are missing the point, the women in question are not "booth babes" but women dressed in street clothes doing promotional work. My gut tells me that the pool of applicants for these jobs skews attractive female.
And my several years of experience that involved hiring actors and models tell me that there is an endless supply of pretty people of either gender happy to wear a variety of outfits.
Oh I agree on the ROR. I was addressing the silly notion that there is anything remotely hard about finding he-babes to do promotional work. If you are going to say, screw any moral considerations, I am just going to do what's best for my bottom line, that's fine... it's the dishonesty that I find distasteful.
>1. Do not hire eye candy as eye candy. Of either sex. Dressed up or dressed down.
Eye candy is extremely effective in marketing. That's like saying "don't hire smart programmers". Why would companies handicap their marketing efforts?
Sure, that's why you retaliate against such advertisers. Boycotts, public campaigns, etc. Through such efforts, corporations have become noticeably less overt about using people of color and women as inferior objects for the amusement of the dominating classes.
When orchestras started doing tryouts behind an opaque screen, they found that their previous insistence that women couldn't play as well as men was bogus, because the interviewees that got the job were 50/50 male and female. You could get a third party to white out the gender cues on resumes before you sort them into the shortlist, and then conduct interviews over text skype.
But honestly, someone who uses the concept "ugly women" is failing so hard at sexism already they might as well be a character from "Mad Men".
But honestly, someone who uses the concept "ugly women" is failing so hard at sexism already they might as well be a character from "Mad Men".
I suspect you mean they are succeeding at being sexist?
Also, why is it sexist to acknowledge that some people are better looking than others? Clearly, making this sort of judgment about a non-customer-facing role is inappropriate, but is it wrong to acknowledge that looks play a part in customer contact[1] roles?
[1] In person, obviously. No one care what the call center person looks like as long as they speak English.
Don't be an ass. Today you learned, at most, that at least one person thinks that finding a woman ugly is hardcore sexism.
More generally, calling things "PC" is a lazy shortcut, a straw man attack.
I mean, unless someone actually sincerely says to you "oh, reinhardt, you mustn't say XYZ, I want you to be politically correct". In that case, mock away.
I absolutely disagree with JulianMorrison (that "us[ing] the concept 'ugly women' is failing so hard at sexism ..."). My disagreement has nothing to do with suspecting him of being "PC", nor do I dismiss other related claims from other people because of the existence of this statement.
No need for body-shaming terms like "ugly women". In any case, the US civil rights, feminist and leftist movements have all sorts of successful case studies, if you are seriously interested in helping pursue this.
The idea that men pay attention to supermodel shaped women is (1) sexist (2) very mistaken. Sexist men pay horny attention to them. Horniness is a distraction from a product pitch. "I'm sorry, what did you say again? I was staring at your chest."
Do you know how to distinguish attention from horndogging? Hint: attention is that which is paid to the subject of the conversation. If all you can remember afterwards is "bow chicka wow wow", you're doing it wrong.
Years ago I worked at a gas station, one night they sent down 2 Miller Lite girls to do promo. If you bought a case of miller light you got to take your picture with the girls and got a free magnet etc. They were there for one hour before moving on, we emptied our entire stock of Miller in that hour.Guys were coming in for weeks asking about when they'd be back. "Horndogging" or not, sex sells and it isn't going anywhere.
If you think it's a black and white "HURR TITS" vs "Quite interesting, madam. Please tell me where I might subscribe to your newsletter." rather than a spectrum therebetween, you're sorely mistaken.
Marketers have (I can only assume) found that triggering the former to lead to the latter is a working strategy (they do tend to at least try to base their actions on observed results). Even if that's not the case the concept that there's a dual throw switch for power between the gonads and the brain seems pretty silly and needlessly underestimates men (though it sort of overestimates them at the same time I guess...).
It is possible to do both - e.g. talk to a hot chick who is also technical about C++ templates ... and simultaneously about how to bang her.
A man has both brains and balls, to expect that he can switch one of those off or pretend it does not exist is unrealistic. (Obviously, this does not excuse a man if he sexually harasses a woman or otherwise behaves badly.)
Men pay attention to whatever they like, and not all men are attracted to supermodel shaped women, and not all men are equally engaged sexually in situations which have nothing to do with sex or courting.
If I have learned one thing the past couple weeks it is this: It seems to be a common thought that it is not possible to discriminate against a privileged class. :/
Yeah, and now look at them - all middle aged hags and gay dudes.
At least first class seems to skew toward the younger and hotter (but still competent). (Especially in Asian and Middle Eastern airlines where they haven't gone all PC yet.)
Because what you really need on an aircraft, is someone to leer at, who has been instructed to smile and be nice even when you're a sexist pig. Those were the days, huh?
I completely disagree. I'm not happy with the situation, but it is what it is. I hired a very pretty, and smart, lady to promote my board game at a small convention. The crowd was HUGE when she was doing her job, and missing when I had a less attractive female friend doing the same thing.
While trying to learn how to sell I once tried to sell charity on the street for a single day.
Already in that first day one of the less attractive, but probably more skilled, co-workers told me that in most cases you're actually selling 'having an attractive person be very friendly to me for a while.'
> I once tried to sell charity on the street for a single day.
This sentence intrigues me. Were you working for a specific charitable organization or were you out there trying to sell one of the cardinal virtues as an abstract concept?
> in most cases you're actually selling 'having an attractive person be very friendly to me for a while.'
This is true, and it has been rediscovered over and over again in many industries in many ways. Some industries are really that and nothing else, and they have long, honored, and storied traditions in some cultures (so denigrating them means you're an ethnocentric swine, in case you missed my hint).
I don't know if it exists everywhere in the world, but this was basically an organization that would run campaigns for specific charities.
One week you'd try to get people to donate to a child cancer charity and the next to WWF and the sales company would get the first few months to half a year of that person's donations.
I'm not talking about PR people, I'm talking about promotional staff usually hired on a temporary basis. Most of what they do is hand out leaflets and goodies, and persuade people to visit the company's booth were the companies actual PR/marketing/sales people are.
At every place i've worked, people in marketing/sales are significantly better looking than in engineering jobs (by that I mean a significant number of people are significantly more attractive). The easy way to explain this is that being attractive is enough to get your foot in the door for a sales position. It also is worth noting that they are, on average, making much less money than the engineers, so it would be a resonable hypothesis that they are less driven to learn because they are good looking, thus end up in an easier job.
Its an interesting human trait that people who are attractive to us are able to sell us things easier than people who don't fit that quality.
Heck, an attractive woman can stop more people on the street and ask directions, and the person they stop will spend more time talking to them and helping them than they would with an average person.
And I think this behavior is true for men and women. It's not just a small segment of society that behaves that way, it's all of society.
So yes, it's true in PR and Advertising in general.
Attractive is subjective, but a (female) friend in PR told me that 80% of PR people are female. And given the well documented ageism in tech, young seems probable.
As was mentioned on this site before, burqa or bikini, there is always someone telling OTHER women how they must dress, how they must act, what they must be. It does not matter which sex the speaker is, they should respect the choice another makes.
These saleswomens' employers are giving them dress-code guidelines already - " telling OTHER women how they must dress". That was true with "booth babe" dress and presently. The woman's blog post was clearly addressed to GDC which seems to have set the tone for the companies at the booth who hired their saleswomen/demonstrators. There's no situation of a woman commenting about another woman's clothing choice on, say, her day off.
You're addressing an issue -- 'booth babes' in 'sexualized' clothing -- different from the article and the comment to which you've replied. They're talking about a more subtle phenomenon, one which the PyCon policy doesn't address (and perhaps is too subtle and subjective to be addressed with any set policy).
But maybe then, this isn't a 'problem' to be 'solved', just a thing that happens and should be understood, and the original article is more an impressionistic lament than call for solving-action.
Wasn't at a booth, and I'm not very comfortable with the solution to this problem being "dress differently."
Also, lots of gentlemen are highly trained to keep their eyes up so they aren't accused of staring at boobs. I'm not sure if any of them would read my shirt anyway.
If I'm understanding correctly, the author would prefer it if non-technical female expo floor workers were scantily-clad so she would be less likely to be assumed by other conference-goers to be non-technical herself..? I'm sorry, but I find that pretty offensive.
I don't claim to know what it's like to be a woman in a heavily male-dominated field (or just your de facto patriarchy, for that matter), but I also don't assume anyone I'm talking to at a conference has any reason to believe I possess any sort of prowess or authority without my convincing them of such even while donning my geekiest T-shirts.
More importantly, I assume anyone representing a product or service at a show is knowledgeable about its inner-workings until they give me some reason to believe otherwise regardless of their gender or attire.
While I appreciate that it is often difficult dealing with misogyny at conferences, I think it's unfair to lump a proper PR employee in with a model in a Princess Leia slave bikini who knows nothing about the product.
The author is simply pointing out that ending the booth babe situation isn't a panacea. The real issue is the shortage of actual technical contributors who are also women:
> Goodness knows, if I had the power to bring tons of other technical women at the conference that would be an optimal solution
You're discounting the second half of the sentence you quoted:
> but barring that, selfish as it may sound, if I could have substituted all the plain-clothes promoters for traditional booth babes, I would have done it in a heartbeat.
Of course, progress isn't a panacea, but I'd take progress over the "old days," myself. I've personally seen the number of confidently technical women at conferences increase year over year for the past decade (please note, I'm not saying that the status quo is optimal, just that, in my experience, there _has_ been progress).
Moreover, the _title_ of the piece concludes with "Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse" which contradicts what you said.
>More importantly, I assume anyone representing a product or service at a show is knowledgeable about its inner-workings until they give me some reason to believe otherwise regardless of their gender or attire.
That must get pretty tiring at a conference like this (assuming the description in the post is accurate). People don't stereotype for fun, they do it because it's effective.
In general, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt that they're knowledgeable about things they purport to be knowledgeable about. I don't think that's so different from the instant situation here.
Walking a crowded expo floor is a chore in and of itself (maybe more-so for introverts like myself :) ), but the '10 GDC I attended wasn't particularly challenging in this regard.
I find this challenging. I want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but when you get let down over and over, you start taking mental shortcuts, even unfair ones. Humans are good at that. I was at PAX East, and there were a lot of hired-gun women doing hired-gun women stuff, mixed in with a small number of women who actually worked at those companies. It was really hard not to start assuming things.
Women were being very clearly, intentionally objectified with the "booth babe" thing. Now, rather than something obnoxious and sexually overt, we have something that I'd call far worse in its subtlety: Using women for exactly the same purpose but in a much more approachable, casual, and probably effectively interactive way.
How did this happen? I seriously doubt it's because girls in bikinis stopped being effective. But when you can't get away with sexualized advertisement without being martyred, you're going to look for similarly effective marketing that won't offend the people throwing the stones, and in my opinion they've done exactly what we should have expected in this situation.
I'm not saying it's right or that women shouldn't expect to be treated as equals. I am saying that the tech community (and several others) have tried and are trying so hard to reject sex and sexuality and any application of it that might possibly offend someone that we're finally making it worse. Before it was just an obnoxious inability to be comfortable with ourselves. Now that we've gotten to the point where everyone knows how prudish and hyperconservative we are, they've also figured out how to keep marketing to us effectively without offending our delicate sensibilities. And we're still upset.
It's a shame that so many men have such a hard time conducting themselves well in mixed professional company. It's also a shame that we are so utterly unable to be men and women without pigeonholing ourselves and harassing each other over it. It's a sad situation.
> we have something that I'd call far worse in its subtlety: Using women for exactly the same purpose
Let's get this straight: It's not a sin. Objectification is just a particular functional state.
There is only a problem when there is a systemic imbalance that either consistently robs a particular group of agency. There is nothing inherently wrong with objectification. When you are being a spokesperson, you are voluntarily being objectified. You have basically taken on the role of an information appliance -- one with a friendly face and engaging manner, hopefully. This is fine. What would be wrong is if everyone treated you this way depending on some trait, like your gender or race. (Which is what happens when people assume female developers are paid shills or when people assume that the females in the current context are just decorative.)
The notion that "Objectification = Sin" is onerous nonsense. Denizens of a complex multicultural world need to turn on the brains and understand functional implications. We should stop using labels and tribal knee-jerks. Our new world is too complicated for those old heuristics.
I'm not sure if you're just adding your two cents, which is cool, or wherever you're trying to suggest that I made or agree with the assertion that objectification is a "sin." I do not, and never suggested as much, I simply stated that it was clearly happening.
I think the major source of OPs discomfort at the conference was that she is surrounding herself with gamers. I'm just saying gamers spend time playing video games they could be spending interacting with other human beings, going out. Two things that many gamers significantly undervalue. So they get weird.
I mean I don't really know how else to put it. No group of grown ups standing around at a conference would notice the number of "booth babes" and then get upset. Something which happened to gamers a little while ago.
So a bunch of pretty girls who probably didn't like being there in those places very much to begin with lost their jobs. The hyper insecurity of attendees at these conferences and previously mentioned "weirdness" are contributors. Many, from my research of the opposition to "booth babes" are insecure that they are not regarded as adults due to "booth babes" being around. Even some people in this thread have stated that they don't like being marketed to as knuckle draggers.
Well. The gaming industry is largely populated by adolescents, that is why the marketing that is chosen gets chosen. If they were adult enough to not mind the presence of "booth babes" and just enjoy themselves at the conferences, investigating the technologies they are interested in things could be a lot better.
But they're not. Things are weird. Interactions are stressful and now marketers need to awkwardly conceal their attempts at marketing.
Beautiful people, both male and female, work well in sales positions because they can draw you in by faking interest in you (the fake interest may be in the form of a question, familiarity, body language, etc.)
A lot of people find it hard to resist sales pitches from attractive people. Very few people can stay aloof of the social advances of attractive people.
Believe it or not, most companies with an attractive sales person, also have a technical sales engineer on hand to talk to you once you are hooked. I used to be a technical sales engineer, so I'm familiar with the hustle at the GDC. You have the attractive woman pull people in, and then she stands around while the engineers talk about the product. A lot of times the people have no interest in the product, but sometimes someone who came for the girl stays to hear about the product, and three months later is a client, because it turns out he needs your software after all.
It sucks, but its just the way most males work.
I'm used to this hustle, that is why at trade shows I avoid eye contact with the marketing/sales people and make a beeline directly for the materials/people I'm interested in.
Hmmm ... I'm not sure I can agree with the idea of dressing more of the booth babes in bikinis (seems like a step backwards), but I can understand the need to be viewed as technical. And at a conference like GDC, it can be hard for the guys to know who is technical and who isn't.
I propose the people that want to talk technical and be treated as "nerds" all wear propeller beanies from now on. That way we'll be able to tell our fellow hackers, and it will also root out those annoying fashion conscious nerds.
> I'm not sure I can agree with the idea of dressing more of the booth babes in bikinis
I don't think that was OP's point, per se. It's that the bikini-clad "uniform" tended to provide an automatic distinction between the women hired to staff booths from the women attending the conference. Once that distinction was removed an unfortunate bias and/or numbers game kicked in: attendees started implicitly assuming "woman == hired help."
"Out of the frying pan and into the fire" has never been such a depressing turn of phrase. :-P
I'm quite aware of that, thanks. View that sentence as a verbal experiment whilst trying to generalize around the hornet's nest my mind has accrued around the phrase "booth babes."
Buttons, badges that are different colors, or find a sponsor to give t-shirts to the technical people for each day of the show? The propeller beanie isn't really something I picture many of us wearing (well ... until it advances to the point we can use it as a personal transportation device), but anything to differentiate the real techies is good.
I should also point out that meaningful conversations can happen between the marketeer and techies, but what do we do with the non-exibitor PHBs that attend.
She said it would have been easier to be recognized as a techie if all the marketeers were in bikinis (well ... the women anyway). I don't think she actually wished it actually happened. But if she had her beanie on, then we'd all know!
Sex sells. Actually one of the more popular search terms associated with E3 was "booth babes." Are companies willing to sacrifice their "dignity" in order to have their brand appear in more searches? Absolutely. Some of the most visited sites on the internet are pornography sites. Lets not kid ourselves - we were genetically designed to reproduce and value sexual attraction.
The problem is that every one treats women using their sexual attraction like it is a bad thing (or it somehow undervalues their intelligence -- which it does not; just because you value one thing does not mean you don't another). I don't think there is any shame in it. We have been promoting products with sexual appeal since the dawn of advertising. Everybody get off their high horse already and accept that we are beasts of nature. :)
I find it ironic if women fight against sexual attraction, effectively depriving themselves of one of their powers. The same pattern can be seen in lots of feminist positions, like deriding of housewives and thereby eroding the privilege of being able to take time off for family.
Interesting read, but I have to say I'm a little put off by the conclusion
> [...] if I could have substituted them all for traditional booth babes, I would have done it in a heartbeat. Then I’d be free to have a great time being what I normally am at conferences: a curiosity, an anomaly, and an excitable nerd.
In my opinion, this trivializes what was, prior to its inclusion, a worthwhile lament. The conclusion makes it sound as if the author is ultimately dismayed not that she was dismissed as being unworthy of unadulterated engineer-speak, but more so bothered by the fact that she was no longer the center of attention and no longer unique. I'm sure in reality she cares much more about being the former, but it was quite a shallow consummation to an otherwise interesting piece.
Her point was that marketers are hiring people as "developer evangelists" (hint) to show up at conferences in plain clothing, attract male attention, and sell products.
This is a pretty basic marketing technique used by probably every brick-and-mortar on the planet. Look at the way that clothing stores hire employees.
The author's issue is that before this became mainstream, she was easily identifiable as not a marketer. She wasn't in a bikini, and wasn't obviously selling anything. She was just in plain clothes attending a conference.
So while she was, in her words, a curiosity, people could reasonably assume that she was attending because she was a dev, not because she wants to "evangelize" at them.
Now that "hire a pretty, bubbly girl to talk to people for you" has become common in tech, people can reasonably assume that the "curiosity" in the crowd is probably there because she was paid to be there.
I don't think that was the point of her statement. I think she was basically saying "At least before, the booth babes were obvious, and other women were assumed to be engineers who belonged there for their technical merits. Now, companies are sending attractive, non-technical female product promoters and others outside of the engineering field dressed in street clothes. Now, it is harder to tell which women are engineers and which are PR/marketing/booth babes/whatever." Seems a valid observation, though I think the real issue is that women need to vet themselves as engineers at all, while it is assumed that men at a conference are technical unless proven otherwise.
Yeah, but you could (1) wish all non-technical women went back to dressing like hookers, or (2) wish there were more technical women at the conference or that there was some other means to distinguish between techie and non-techie.
OP here. Trust me. I wish there were more technical ladies. I don't enjoy being "an oddity," I've just accepted it as a part of life. Thanks for bringing up the point though, I edited the post.
I'm not familiar with this kind of event, but are there not usually badges that designate different kinds of participants? The writer could have a "attendee" badge, while advertisers and pushers would have a different color/label on their badge.
I just hired a split of both genders for the booth of a client at an event next week. Not sure if it's a coincidence that no-one else around me thinks of doing that and that I'm gay, or not..
Even if you hire a 50/50 split, it doesn't solve the problem because the ratio in conference attendees is far from even. The conditional probabilities still lead to the conclusion the article complains about.
Actually this event is a consumer tech exhibition where ~43% of the visitors will be female - however the vast majority of hired, good-looking booth staff will still be female.
(And my comment wasn't so much addressing the article as the GP comment which said "I wish we had more men who dressed up as booth babes.")
How could you not know if that's a coincidence? You're the one who did the hiring. Attractiveness either was a factor in your selection of booth people or was not.
I made the decision to get a mix, I didn't personally pick out faces. I also won't be spending any time on the booth other than taking a look at it. So attractiveness wasn't relevant. But that doesn't mean my sexuality wasn't relevant to the decision to include men.
I would rather have a talkative, witty, intelligent person at a vendor booth as opposed to an attractive, non-talkative, non-witty, non-intelligent man, but perhaps that's just me.
This problem isn't limited to conferences. I'm a woman and an engineer, and I can't count the number of times I've met someone at a casual tech meetup and the first thing out of their mouths was "You must be in PR." If you want to make a small difference in making the world a nicer place, just ask me what I do.
Booth babes and female sales reps are an interesting thing to discuss, but we can't individually change the whole marketing culture. But we can individually make the tech scene more inclusive just by being more sensitive about the way we interact with other people. So please, please, please don't make assumptions about me or start presumptuously explaining things to me without asking what I do.
Why is it such a problem, though? It is statistically unlikely that a woman is developer, so people react accordingly. Does it really hurt so much to say "no, I'm a developer"?
Yes, it makes the very demographic people are trying to reach out to the most feel very unwelcomed. It also means that many people never challenge their assumptions and the lady doesn't get to correct them.
I can see how this could be a significant problem for women at GDC. I'm a guy who has been going to GDC for over a decade. Pretty much every year there are a few promoters using fairly aggressive "stealth" tactics to hook people walking around the expo floor. As in, reasonably attractive woman in plain clothes glances at your badge, waits a bit, then walks up quickly saying "Hey, Corysama! Good to see you! Hey, what do you think about..." After a few of these highly awkward encounters, the promoters have pretty effectively trained many of the men to insta-dismiss reasonably attractive women in plain clothes at the show.
Maybe a compromise: instead of extremes like latex bikinis or just plain-clothes why don't use a subtle corporate uniform? That way is not sexist nor something that a non-employee might be wearing.
Since in general few women are developers, I rather doubt the hiring of pr women has any bearing on the situation. If it is really so frustrating, maybe dressing accordingly would alleviate the pain - don't know, carry a Linux book, a T- Shirt that says "no, I won't fix your computer", or something like that.
So I like the core of this idea, but since many gentlemen have been trained to not stare at a girl's boobs and make a great point of keeping their eyes up, I'm not sure if they'd read my shirt at all. It would probably have to be a different piece of clothing
I think I'm missing where the friction is in dropping your credentials? You don't have to storm in and say, "Do you know who I am??!". Isn't it easy and actually very polite to introduce yourself and what you do?
"Hi I'm {Name}, This topic fascinates me as I'm also a developer..."
The issue is that as a man, you don't have to. I know it seems weird, but as men we have a blind spot -- there's a lot of bullshit we have to deal with, but there's a lot of bullshit we don't have to deal with by the mere fact that we'r male.
Women in technical fields (and nearly every woman in tech whom I've befriended mentions this) get subtle cues that men don't even notice, because we're not the target.
(Worst yet is that women have a tendency to do it to each other as well!)
It's as if you have the bozo bit dropped on you before you've spoken a word, and you're continually fighting an uphill battle.
Our sales guy came to a conference and between the talks was desperate for people to talk about something other than code, anything else. And everyone seemed happy to oblige once aware.
Seems to me like these are just examples of people taking branch prediction optimisations.
It was an interesting blog post, that puts a new spin on the Booth Babe controversy. Thanks for sharing. Saying that she was less uncomfortable with a bunch of drunk guys yelling "take your shirt off!" at Defcon than at GDC is saying something...
When the guys were shouting, the rest of the crowd and security was frowning at them. It was really easy to see this problem was something everybody knew about, that good people had my back, and something we would solve shortly. It wasn't fun at the time, but I knew it would be done soon.
GDC was a worse experience because it was profoundly isolating, and made me feel like an outsider. Also, I don't see an easy solution coming to fix it, which makes the situation feel more depressing.
That's why I prefer to be an engineer, so I don't have to F#@$ing dress up like anybody! "Dress up like an engineer", WTF is that supposed to be? Am I the only person who is dumbfounded by this? We're all about judging worth based on who someone is and what they've done... The only time I ever "dress up" is when I have to deal with certain business types who are perfectly comfortable with a monocle & a pocket watch.
And therein is the paradox. James Gosling tells a great story about having a visiting professor come in to give a talk, the grad students hosted him for dinner the night before. The professor casually remarked that he was sad he had left his plaid shirt at home. Every grad student was wearing a plaid shirt. It was a completely unconscious thing, but when pointed out very obvious. James tends to wear t-shirts these days with inside jokes on them :-)
When I was working at Google the cafes provided a great place to watch people. Here was a large sample of silicon valley engineers. And looking at the way they chose to wear was fascinating. From really carefully put together outfits, to random sets of things, to carefully selected to appear random but not actually be random. An amazing spectrum.
What I concluded is that if you make no conscious choice at all, your random selection will be biased toward what your eye has seen on others. That leads to a homogeneity in appearance which is both unintentional and obvious when you look for it.
The interesting people for me were the ones who looked like they were part of the random crowd except they didn't have the sort of random mistakes that came with true randomness. Either by design or a natural fashion talent I don't know. But interesting anyway.
Seriously. Engineers don't (shouldn’t) need to dress like anything to have their skills recognized. Like dressing like a hipster? Great. Enjoy wearing bespoke suits? Great. Look like a Abercrombie model? Great. Hoodies? Great.
If you’re competent and honest and work hard, I respect your chops. I don’t care how you dress.
A de facto norm that arises out of any subculture. When you have enough people all hanging around each other all the time, all kinds of things develop, including fashion.
> "We're all about judging worth based on who someone is and what they've done..."
> "is when I have to deal with certain business types who are perfectly comfortable with a monocle & a pocket watch"
So... you balk at being judged on your fashion choices, but you're more than willing to judge others for their fashion choices? These two sentences refute each other.
Monocle & a pocket watch aren't exactly fashion choices. I was hinting at "dress codes" as being more reflective of the 18th-early 19th century thinking and not quite so relevant in the 21st century and the Information Age. I was trying to be succinct.
Those two concepts aren't as separate as you want them to be. At the end of the day you're still suggesting a link between a mode of thinking and a mode of dress - while at the same time objecting to that link being drawn for yourself.
You can't make a post complaining about people stereotyping engineers, while stereotyping "business types" in the same sentence.
It's a more efficient social protocol - rather than having to ask everyone what their interests are at the start, and abandon 80% of conversations, you dress in a way that indicates what you're interested in, and then can quickly identify the like-minded people you want to talk to. I thought engineers were all about efficiency.
Being able to spend less time talking to the people I don't want to (and more time talking to the people I do) would probably be the single greatest improvement to my life. It's not at all premature to expend a bit of effort on it.
Two things: first, learning how to talk to people with whom you don't have much in common is remarkably valuable. Second, even if you don't care, making that decision on the basis of how someone is dressed is superficial in the extreme.
Holy Shitsnacks! Did I really just read that? We can't fucking win.
Last year: Holy mother of God we have so many hookers at this event. This has to stop! Now!
This year: Holy mother of Dog... we have too many regular looking people. This has to stop. NOW!
I can't keep it all straight. I'm pretty sure the only solution is for everyone to wear the same colored body suit that masks all indications of gender, a mask to cover the face and an auto-tune device to cover the voice. And everyone will just have a number badge so names are not a hint. I guess we should probably have a different color suit for the non-technicals?
But I hate the concept of giving up fighting for yourself. Why not put a few people in their place? If that's just not in your nature, fair enough; but I say make a few guys feel like idiots by stepping up to the plate with your expertise. If they don't like it, that's their problem.
And if that fails, I like davidrobert's idea as well -- maybe wear a shirt that has a really nerdy programming joke on it. Or, better yet, the HN shirt ^_^ -- http://teespring.com/hntees
Fair enough, but don't give up! If someone is going to be put off by your knowledge, that's probably not someone you'd want to spend time with anyways. I hate the concept of having to pretend that you don't have a wealth of knowledge to offer just because you don't match a stereotype.
The shirt comment was more cheeky, not intended as a serious recommendation =)
Engineers are the group I would expect to understand this the best, since we tend to be proud of our disinterest in selling and marketing ourselves constantly. We want to do competent work, make things happen, keep things working, and move along. Our gold standard for correctness is that no one even knows we exist.
And yet on HN, I regularly find engineers who can't seem to grasp any of these things. Maybe it's because we're in the web age, when so much of our work is visible, or maybe it's because we're in the recession/post-recession era, when self-marketing is often essential to staying afloat in the economy. I don't know. We seem to have forgotten those core bits.
I hardly meet any engineers who are proud of their disinterest in selling and marketing themselves. That seems to be the reason to be an engineer anymore. It is sad.
People who want to do their work don't want to spend time "putting people in their place." And once you do, you haven't gained much - there's still many other interactions throughout the day, and are you going to put them all in their place? That's the point, and the frustration: she wants to spend her effort talking about technical things.
Sorry, putting people in their place is probably a bit strong for what I'm trying to say. What I ultimately mean is, it doesn't take long to prove you know what you're talking about in a conversation. Sure, it sucks that she has to do that at all, but I would personally think it's worth it versus the alternative options of just staying silent or playing the role of "just along for the ride with my technical boyfriend."
I feel like you're really missing the point. She did that, and it became tiresome. Then she wished she didn't have to do that, and wrote this post explaining why.
My solution is to (as much as possible) assume that women at technical conferences are technical. If they aren't, it's not awkward, generally. At least it's less awkward than the inverse.
That is something that is in all of our power to do.
Humans of any gender perceive women to be less of a potential threat, and therefore more friendly, than men. This is why onboard computers for US jet fighters, and the American version of Siri, have female-sounding voices. And it is why the employment of women for promotional purposes will no doubt continue: if you want to persuade someone to buy your product in a way that comes off as friendly, hiring an attractive and friendly-seeming woman to promote the product is an easy and effective choice to make.
You are mistaken about the reason for the voice in jet fighters.
"Bitching Betty" [1], the voice warning in aircraft such as the F-16 and F/A-18 was originally female because female pilots, especially in the military were relatively rare, although there were some female controllers. The female voice was more noticeable above the normal male pilots chatter on the radio. The wiki entry is somewhat inaccurate on the historical detail, so I included some info from F-16.net
I hope this is a short term pain point to getting a real sol'n to a better gender equalibrium among developers.
Face it, the only real sol'n is to have really technical women working in our field because we can't go back. GDC has progressed, but as an industry it needs to keep progressing.
Maybe we can highlight booths that go above and beyond for the sake of the GDC? Like a best booth award selected based a set of criteria that includes having technical women available and knowledgeable. Then give them 5 mins to make a presentation.
The state of the industry punishes a sizable amount of people that want to talk about these types of things too. If you really care about tech, you'll care about issues that keep people out that otherwise could have had a profound impact on you.
I went to GDC in 2011. I remember that there was a country trying to talk game companies into opening a branch in their country. It was Germany, I believe. They had a beauty pageant contestant dressed in full garb at their booth. It made absolutely no sense at all.
I feel like there was a time when gender politics wasn't so abrasive in computing. It wasn't healthy, but it didn't make you constantly feel mired in some swamp of unsolvable problems. I preferred the swamp of (un)solvable problems that is computing.
Hacker News: your go-to site for Gender Politics! Bring your grievance to Hacker News, and let our expert commentators put your resentments under the microscope. We've already analyzed dozens of fascinating complaints just like yours, and our appetite for endless debate grows day by day!
And yes, I know everybody's probably sick of gender issues, and that's why I almost didn't bring it up, but I hoped it would be a chance for a good civil discussion, and I'm really glad to see it turning into that. Hopefully someday soon everything can be awesome, we'll never have occasion to talk about this garbage again, and we can all go back to nerding. I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to that day.
But, seriously, the civility and respect here have totally blown me away. Really proud to be a part of this community. Thanks everybody, you give a lady hope!