Sexism in the PHP Community

The typeface is blatantly offensive, but it took me a while to see what was supposed to be sexist about the shirt. You have to read it out loud to get it: the last two syllables of "PHP-ness" are supposed to be pronounced like the word "penis". So it's not just an ugly shirt, but an ugly shirt which associates an ugly language with ugly ripoff-marketing spam email.

It took me a really long time to understand why that shirt (apart from simply being ugly) would be considered offensive to women. I think the author of this article should engage in some introspective self-criticism and try to pinpoint the psychological factors that cause her to get so upset at trivial externalities that dont completely synch with her worldview.

I never quite know what to think of posts like this. They usually strike me as really missing the mark, which I hesitate to say in part because I know that "not pc language" (for lack of a better term) <i>can</i> be a serious issue. But I really think these kinds of posts don't help women. I suspect they probably hurt women in tech, but I am not quite sure how to express my reasons for feeling that way.

Were there other tee shirts on sale at the conference or was this the sole piece merch?