Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

<i>Othering</i>. Get that word into your head, and keep it there. <i>Othering</i>.<p><i>Othering</i> is when you make someone feel as if they don't belong in a community, that they're <i>different</i> from other people there. Making stupid (racist) Asian jokes about the only Chinese-American member of your team. Writing flyers that assume that your entire audience consists of a certain type of heterosexual man. Even something small, like constantly poking at the fact that one of your fellow hackers also has an MBA. The list is endless.<p>Usually it's best to not call attention to such things at all, <i>even in a positive way</i>. Telling someone how awesome they are for being different is still making a big deal about how different they are, as opposed to helping them fit into your group.<p>All of these things make those people feel as if they <i>don't belong on your team or in your community</i>. It doesn't matter if you think it's "in good fun" or "just a joke". It doesn't matter if you think "oh, it's not really sexist". It <i>makes people feel unwelcome</i>. It's dumb, pointless, and it's the responsibility of any hacker to just not do it.<p>Othering can happen in any community that is dominated by a relative homogenous group. It turns off many hackers who might want to work with you. There is nothing inherently "straight upper-middle-class Caucasian male" about wanting to build a working product; stop acting like there is.

So. Much. Brogramming.<p>Anyways, in addition to the annoying beer plug, let us observe their other typos:<p><i>"Massages: take a brake [sic] from hacking to unwind."</i><p><i>"NO Idea Guys: security is on strick [sic] instructions to bounce anyone who can't code."</i><p><i>"NO Slow Internet: Let's make buffering a thing of the paste [sic]."</i><p>Fucking clowns.

Here's more coverage: <a href="http://bostinno.com/2012/03/20/boston-api-jam-publishes-eventbrite-with-sexist-language-enrages-community-sponsors-quick-to-pull-out/" rel="nofollow">http://bostinno.com/2012/03/20/boston-api-jam-publishes-even...</a><p>The organizers' apology is:<p>"While we thought this was a fun, harmless comment poking fun at the fact that hack-a-thons are typically male-dominated, others were offended. That was not our intention and thus we changed it."<p>Which completely misses the fact that the other items on the announcement seem to be written by a 11 year old or someone after downing quite a few beers.<p>Here's the point though: Getting super worked up about this idiocy and saying "THIS is why there are few women in tech", as some tweeters did, is not constructive either and trivializes the problem of women (and minorities) in tech.

Although that line has a bit stupid to put on there, the entire flyer stinks of meatheadedness in general.<p><i>Recommendation &#38; personalization technologies are acquired as fast as they are launched. You could be next!</i><p>^that made me laugh harder than the women statement.

This is insulting to everyone... Why would I take a break from a two day Hackathon to drink beer, work out, and chase women? It is only two days. Presumably, if I wanted to do that, I would go to a bar or the gym. Who the hell do they think their target audience is?

There's something discomforting about seeing an apology "for any offense" from a party who is not the offender. A common derailing technique is the non-apology-apology: rather than apologizing for what I did, I apologize for your taking offense, which makes it look like you're the one who has a problem. Here, Cloudmine does this <i>on behalf</i> of the creeps at Boston API Jam!<p>Why? It seems clear to me, based on their actions, that Cloudmine's intentions are good and that they don't mean to blame the victims. Comparing this post to other blogs and Twitter messages, I think I see why, and it's the same reason the post doesn't quote or directly link to API Jam: it's written in a different register -- "professional" communication.<p>It's absolutely necessary to do that if your company takes a public action, like pulling sponsorship, and needs to publicly address it. What interests me here is that the non-apology-apology is creeping into the English language by sounding "more formal", because our ruling classes use it so much (and no one seems to care when they're called out on it). So, I hypothesize that whoever wrote this up was trying to stay calm, detached, and respectful, and unconsciously hit on this rhetorical device because of it.<p>Note, I do not think that CloudMine is under any obligation to apologize for other people's actions, or that the writer is stupid. I'm just rubbernecking a collective lingustic maladaptation.

With all the hubbub over sexism in tech over the past year or two, what kind of idiot uses language like that in the description? It shows a tremendous lack of a clue more than it shows sexism (though it shows that too).

What a crappy thing to write.<p><a href="https://img.skitch.com/20120320-fmsc5mciy8e7n3nxhakmegxxg9.png" rel="nofollow">https://img.skitch.com/20120320-fmsc5mciy8e7n3nxhakmegxxg9.p...</a><p>It says under 'Great Perks': Women: Need another beer? Let one of our friendly (female) event staff get that for you.

What was the sexist language in question?

Super-dumb thing to write. Plus the other misspellings indicate the writer had little other writing talent, as well. Maybe he was drunk.<p>But, enthusiastic young event promoters aren't the most enlightened crew. (Indeed, too much enlightenment could kill your chances of launching a hot new bar, 'energy drink', or various other kinds of youth-oriented events/venues/local-deals.)<p>So there's a message here about culture and the reckless generalizations of youth, but not especially one about tech events. (Other than: at a tech event, this sort of thing is noted and corrected very quickly.)<p>As with a dog and a carpet, sometimes shit happens. The dog only learns slowly, and by the time it learns: there's another puppy making the same mistakes. Give quick and firm feedback – one wap with the newspaper! – and get a correction/apology, but don't dwell on it. It's not something that stains everyone vaguely associated to the Nth-degree.

I think sqoot should also reconsider autospamming their "apology" message to anyone who mentions them on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/sqoot" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/#!/sqoot</a><p>(Not because they shouldn't apologise, but because there are better ways to do it than spam.)

Funny thing, I saw this ad just yesterday. The eventbrite page has been pulled I think now. But I remember seeing the no women point and then also saw other points like 'No Ideas People' or something to that effect. The flyer struck me as somewhat offensive, not that I'm usually that sensitive. But it came across as disparaging quite a few groups of people, don't know what they were trying to do. But it seems like it would end up alienating people. Not being a full time dev, I've been mustering the energy and guts to go to a hackathon with the aim of meeting folks I could possibly learn from. My first impression was, I'd be made fun of if I turned up with nothing to offer...

Sexist comments like the one on the flyer are dumb, and these people deserve to be called out on it, but to imply they are keeping women out of tech careers is ridiculous (and in itself, sounds kind of sexist to me - like we are tender plants who change our career paths because some jerks like to see boobies).<p>If the flyer reflected the spirit of the event and the attitude of the organizers, I'm glad for the heads up so I know not to attend, free beer notwithstanding.

While I don't condone the choice of words used in the ad I am underwhelmed at the "offensive" content.<p>If you are offended by this you need to get some thicker skin.

God. This stuff is beyond tacky. It's not just insulting for females but it reminds other LGBT geeks that they're outliers. Who cares whether a man or woman is delivering my drink? Like seriously, I'm gay and I don't think I've ever thought "Damn, a woman delivered my drink instead of a dude".

Guy in a polo shirt talking about "chicks": Garden-variety moron.<p>Guy in a C++ shirt talking about "chicks": Representative of the RAMPANT MISOGYNY in our industry.

So, they've posted an apology: <a href="http://t.co/h5jZOfb7" rel="nofollow">http://t.co/h5jZOfb7</a><p>It doesn't really make sense to me though. The original does not read as sharp satire or parody at all, just regular old tone-deaf "haha chicks bro!!!!" idiocy.

Well, it looks like @sqoot was unable to weather the storm and has now pulled the event from Eventbrite.

I wouldn't have written this either and it is off-putting, but I always feel funny about criticizing the objectification of a group of women when they themselves accepted it. It feels paternalistic.

I wonder if the brackets were not around the word female if it would be considered as offensive. Regardless it was a stupid thing to put on there. I don't even get why they added "female" to that sentence.

So, one, whoever wrote this is an idiot.<p>Given the free and easy style of the startup eco-verse, it's pretty hard to say exactly what this does or doesn't say about whoever / whatever was behind the event. Maybe the President approved this. Maybe an intern slapped it up. Maybe the VP of Marketing submitted the wrong copy by accident. Want to know why Big Corporate has so much bureaucracy? This is why.<p>But they didn't fix it immediately! Yeah, or perhaps the responsible parties were meeting with investors or home sick or some such.<p>Things move fast on the intertubes but maybe giving management an evening to 1) realize something's wrong and 2) fix it would provide a better signal of who is and isn't completely out of their minds.

Ugh... the reactions to these idiotic, misogynistic statements always feel overblown. Yes, sexism is a pretty big problem in the industry (and adjacent ones). But you're not going to fix it by griping about a horny 20-something saying something stupid about women (surprise!). You're not even going to help. You're just going to walk away with a "there I helped" endorphin rush and go back to not really caring for the vast majority of your life.<p>The response to funkah's "garden-variety moron" objection has brought out the excuse of, "well, this was an <i>official</i> flier, so it's a big deal". IMO, the fact that this happened on something "official" is less an indication of rampant misogyny (not that I'm denying it exists!), and more an indication of our ridiculously informal, fast-and-loose culture. (The poor quality of the rest of the flier bears this interpretation out.) So what it comes down to is, someone decided to turn a massive brain-fart into an "official" flier, and part of that brain fart was a stupid, misogynistic comment. Surprise, surprise.<p>I'm sure everybody's real proud that they've managed to detect and criticize blatant, overbearing misogyny, but I don't see many submissions focusing on the persistent discouragement of young girls from participating in science - a very real, and ultimately more fundamental problem. Lets have some. And lets give them more attention than this "moronic person is moronic" stuff.

I'd like to point out that if we replaced the "Womens" perk with the "Perfect Fuel" perk, nobody would be complaining about how this insulted people who don't eat dark chocolate. Obviously not every guy cares whose serving their drinks, the same way not every guy attending the event cares to eat dark chocolate. They're trying to get people to go to their event. I'd imagine most people going to Hackathon's are heterosexual males. It makes sense for Sqoot, and it's saddening for me to see how we blindly kowtow to the PC police.