WTF? 10
A few days ago, Obie Fernandez:
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commented on the advert found in the current Linux Journal which features a photograph of an attractive woman with the slogan “Don’t feel bad, Our servers won’t go down on you either.” Obie threw together a mock ad for a document management company which showed a bunch of latinos being harrassed by a US Customs and Immigration patrol with the slogan “Don’t worry. We’ll keep all your documents in order.” which made his point rather well I thought.
Then I read the comments.
A couple of respondents thought Obie’s mock ad was genuine and a good, funny ad. There were the usual cries of “Dude! Political Correctness gone mad” and some belittling of a female respondent who had explained how the Linux Journal ad made her feel. Laughing at someone and and telling her she “totally missed the joke” is such a sensitive response to someone’s hurt, don’t you think?
Another commenter wondered why there wasn’t an “obsession… with schemes to get men into teaching or nursing”, and wondered if it was because women were less interested in computers, a question which Obie felt was worth dealing with in a followup post. The response being, essentially, that there are several schemes aimed at improving the gender balance in those professions; the traffic is not all one way.
Now, if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know my opinion: If women in most western cultures are indeed less interested in computers than men, then that’s a purely cultural thing. It’s a bloody embarrassment that our culture is that fucked up. Thankfully, the people who’ve commented here when I’ve sounded off haven’t descended to the fatuity of Obie’s respondents. The second response to Obie’s followup post closes with:
Anyway, on a personal not [sic] after seeing your picture I wonder in which western movie you played the bad guy? Please give me a hint :)
If you want to know why there’s a dearth of women and minorities working in IT, I reckon you’ll find all the evidence you need right there.
Thanks for the follow-up. I was pretty disappointed that so many of the commenters took the “c’mon, it’s funny” attitude. I was especially shocked that some of them didn’t have a problem with the mock ad and even asked if it was real.
BTW, did you happen to understand that “wonder in which western movie you played the bad guy” question? Frankly, I don’t get it. My facial expression?
“It’s a bloody embarrassment that our culture is that fucked up.”
There seems to be some underlying notion of ideal culture at work here. This leaves me as curious as when someone asserts a particular license is “unethical”. Care to develop a theory of the ideal society, if those of Western nations are so purportedly tanked?
Obie: I read it as straightforward racism. See any number of movies with the bandito bad buy with the swarthy complexion and the outrageous Mexican accent.
Chris: Not really, no. I doubt very much that there is such a thing as an ideal society. Certainly the one we’re living in now isn’t that ideal.
Just looking at the microcosm of online culture, I’d rather people like Kathy Sierra didn’t feel that their only possible response to it was to withdraw completely. I’d rather not see the kind of degrading ad that sparked Obie’s original post – not because I think ads like that should be banned, but because the company concerned would realise that the ad would do them more harm than good in the eyes of the people who they were targetting.
I’d rather be working in an environment in which the talents of nearly 50% of the population were lost to my profession because the philistine attitudes of a (I hope) minority of the members of that profession were so offputting. I’d rather not be placed in the position of having to either turn a blind eye to casual misogyny or face the prospect of dealing with the (genuinely) hurt feelings of men who simply don’t understand why their misogyny is a problem and that I should just “get over it”.
Do I have any solutions to those problems? Not really, no. Pretty much all I can do is add my voice to those saying “This is wrong.” Maybe one day there will be enough of us doing that that things change. It’s happened before.
That sort of thing just makes me cringe. Sex sells to me where the thing being sold is in some way relevant to sex (e.g. lingere). With computers and stereos and things of that ilk… not only does it demean women, but it demeans men. I’m not a knuckle-dragging moron and I don’t appreciate being treated like one.
I’m going to make an aside, that shouldn’t be construed as me thinking that there is nothing wrong with the sex imbalance in IT:
ASIDE BEGINS
I’m surprised that you write off men and women’s differing interests as entirely down to culture. What are you basing that on?
If you give some young kids a selection of dolls and tanks, more of the girls will go for dolls and more of the boys for tanks. I can’t dredge up a reference for that, but I think I got it from The Blank Slate by Stephen Pinker.
Perhaps that effect disappears by the time it comes to career decisions, perhaps not. Ultimately (without any pernicious influences) it may be that no profession has a pure 50-50 balance. Would that be a bad thing in itself?
ASIDE ENDS
This is all academic anyway, because a differing inclination is one thing, but a 98-2 divide is quite another. So in terms of your main points, in this and previous posts, I am quite in agreement.
@Chris – no; there’s no “ideal society”. However, I for one would rather not live in a culture where, say, a group of men can organise and perpetrate a DOS and abuse campaign against feminist blogs and have that regarded as youthful high spirits or not even worthy of comment. There are problems that are no pervasive and deeply embedded that they’re effectively invisible – Obie’s technique, substituting “Latino” (or “Black”, or “Jew”) for “Woman”, sometimes works. Sometimes.
I don’t get it… Why do women feel targeted? I pictured my boyfriend as the target of that joke and laughed out loud.
Ah, apparently I didn’t see the original with the woman’s lipsticked face. Yes, that ad is really stupid and exclusionary.
Hypothetically, however, what if that were a man’s face in the ad instead of a woman’s? Would you have the same sort of moral outrage? How about an androgynous face, like Pat from SNL?
Personally, I’d have a problem with objectification of either gender. But let’s be honest here, the alternatives you suggest would never happen.
If they did, it’d be hard not to read the hypothetical ad as homophobic.