Comment by Cowen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cowen | Hacker News Reader

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There are very few things that are "universally offensive." As nollidge accurately pointed out, just because women were involved doesn't mean it's not sexist.

The fact is that this was widely considered offensive and unnecessary, and the CEOs response only made it worse. No one has the right not to be offended, but everyone has the right to speak out and not buy a product for whatever reasons they choose, which is exactly what happened.

Personally, I don't have a problem with naked people in body paint as part of a display; it does everything you want a display to do, it catches eyes and it sticks in memory.

But why did they only choose naked women? There are no painted male models in their staff photo from the event.[1] Was it decided that including naked men would somehow hurt the effectiveness of the display, and if so, why? Certainly there were willing male models, so it seems that HyperMac just steered clear of hiring men. The accusations of sexism (or more accurately, objectification) all springs from that, and the unwillingness of the CEO to even acknowledge that as a concern is honestly disturbing.

[1] http://www.hyperblog.com/2013/01/thanks-for-an-amazing-ces-2...

The complaint in the article was that the display was degrading to the women. Including men in the display just would have degraded men as well as women. It's not a numbers game.

That's nothing but blind speculation.

There is absolutely no evidence that it would have been considered that way.

I don't follow. How would putting men in the same display change how degraded the women in the display were?

The argument isn't about whether or not they're being degraded, but whether women as a group are being objectified by the people who organized the display. That argument is significantly enhanced by the fact that women were the only "objects" that were on display, especially when women were far from the only "objects" that were appropriate for this display. There's nothing about HyperMac's products that figuratively or literally only applies to naked, painted women. Naked, painted men were just as appropriate as women, but they were completely avoided for reasons that are unknown to the public.

Right now, the display is "naked women in body paint", but with men it would be "naked people in body paint." The gender neutrality of the display would exist in more than just a semantic sense, but also in a deeper sense that gender wasn't considered a factor when they were making this display. Right now, that's not how it looks at all. It looks like they only wanted naked women to be associated with HyperMac's products. And the CEO's comments do absolutely nothing to dissuade that viewpoint.

Would people have still complained about objectification of women if there were men in the display too? Maybe. But they would have a much weaker case than they do now.

I really don't understand how objectifying men makes objectification of women less offensive. It's OK to dehumanize people as long as we do it equally?

Do you see nude, painted models at a trade event as being inherently dehumanizing? Because that would be a separate issue from what's being discussed here.

The problem -- at least as it seems to me -- is not that there were nude, painted people hired for the event, but that there were only nude, painted women hired for the event for no apparent reason other than their presumed sex appeal to the predominantly male attendees.

That's where the objectification argument comes in, at least in my eyes. Like I said from the start, I don't have an inherent issue with using nude, painted models for a display.

No, but I didn't see the display as being degrading to women, which is why I'm looking for other people's perspectives. You make it sound like someone hijacked these women and used them in a degrading way. I don't see any evidence of that. Also I see no basis for presuming that they were hired only for sex appeal.

I have no idea where or how I made it sound like someone hijacked these women. That's obviously not the case. They were paid models who likely have no qualms with this work, and again, that's perfectly fine.

My issue with the display is it that HyperMac only hired female models when males would have sufficed just as well. That's the only real basis for claiming objectification of women in my eyes. Because the CEO gave absolutely no answers -- refusing to acknowledge that could even be a concern -- Occam's razor suggests going with the simplest explanation of why only nude female models were chosen to represent HyperMac, and the simplest explanation (at least in my eyes) is their sex appeal.

Models are chosen primarily for their looks, so why was the look of the nude female body the only one HyperMac had representing them at the show?

OK, actually to me the nude models did not seem to me to be for sex appeal, but the 8 women with "HyperMac" on their breasts convinced me. Given that women were hired for their sex appeal: why is that a problem?

Edited to add: at least the CEO claims they were knowledgeable, which takes care of the main problem with booth babes. Both men and women had been trained to ignore women at the conferences, as a kind of mental spam filter just because many of the booth babes were clueless about the products.

About the depth thing: click the "link" button if you want to reply. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5154055

Thanks for asking. This is a huge topic of research for decades. Here are a few starting points.

http://www.netmagazine.com/features/primer-sexism-tech-indus... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_objectification

Sorry, I asked the wrong question. Given that they were hired for sex appeal, how would hiring more men have helped?

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