Comment by jgrahamc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jgrahamc | Hacker News Reader

How about a thought from an actual man? Me.

I've flipped through the slides and if I'd been in that presentation I would have had a very low opinion of the speaker. Not because I've got a problem with pornography, but because his presentation shows a complete lack of judgment.

If you are making a public presentation you need to realize that your standards are not shared by everyone in the audience so you need to tailor your presentation to them. There were probably plenty of people happy to see softcore pornography that day, some people who wished it had been hardcore, and others who felt uncomfortable. There's not an obvious male/female mapping to those categories.

Suppose it hadn't been pornography, but had been slides making fun of Christianity, or slides showing graphic depictions of surgery, or jokes aimed at a minority based on skin color. You can imagine the audience splitting into groups that were happy with that, unhappy and indifferent.

But why split your audience? They were there to hear about CouchDB, not to understand the speaker's personal beliefs or preferences.

In addition to having a low opinion of the speaker, I would have been uncomfortable with the images knowing that others in the audience were likely offended and didn't say anything.

And lastly, his metaphor is broken. So CouchDB performs like a porn star? Good to know. To me performing like a porn star means pretending to do something and not doing the real thing. I guess CouchDB is some sort of phony database that looks good at first glance but is just faking it.

Yeah, if CouchDB really performs like a porn star, it should cost $1000 an hour to run and need to get health checks every month. Not quite selling points for an always-up service (pun not originally intended, but I'm going with it now).

OTOH, It's often nice to see people speak who just don't care if everyone likes what they have to say.

I find it quite funny how this is apparently only offensive to women for some unbeknown reason. I think that in itself belittles women.

Agreed. But I get the distinct impression that this speaker figured that everyone was going to like his pornography analogy and imagery.

He should have based it on military - drawings of tanks, ships, missiles etc. Most people seem completely fine with killing people. But sex? oh my god think of the children!!!

I think you are missing the point if you think the issue is about people's attitude towards sexual imagery.

I was just pointing out that we live in a time when some peoples attitudes to sex are ridiculously prudish, compared to other things (Especially in the US).

People should be offended by people being killed. But they aren't. Instead they're offended by some women at the superboll flashing a breast. Or some intern helping to relax the president. Or a tech talk with some scantily clad models in it.

I think pictures of bodies from Iraq with a tagline "CouchDB kills the competition" would be equally if not more frowned upon.

No one ever said that this would be the ONLY thing that was unprofessional and offensive, you are arguing against a point nobody made.

>> pictures of bodies from Iraq with a tagline "CouchDB kills the competition"

I don't think most people would have batted an eyelid at that. If they were 'anonymous' non close-up bodies without any gore. People are pretty desensitized to that sort of thing. Also it's harder to say "This is offensive to <insert minority>".

I think the moral is if you're going to use humor, be very very careful. You might miss the mark for some people, and offend them instead.

Really, I would have been very, very dubious about the speaker if he'd shown pictures of war dead in that context. Actually, I think I would have been more upset than the pornographic imagery situation.

I think your demographic is desensitized to that sort of thing, I would not imply that most people are though. Are you in the 18-34 Male demographic by any chance?

You wouldn't need the gore, just show a few hundred coffins in a airport hanger draped with the US flag and that tagline, and you will have people forming a lynch mob.

Right you are with that last statement, but its how you react when you do offend people that counts, its easy to forgive after all.

Its not the imagery thats upsetting people here, its the fostering of a Macho culture that not everyone wants to opt into that is difficult to accept. And it suggests that if you don't want to constantly get involved in a dick measuring contest to see who can be the most edgy or offensive there is no other alternative than to leave the community (And the community leaders are more than happy to show you the door)

I sort of get your last point, although I can't imagine how it'd work the other way.

Lets say for example I decided to be a primary school teacher/kindergarten - something that is probably about the oposite of 'tech' in terms of males/females. I would be a complete outsider. It's quite likely I'd be the only male teacher in the school. Lets then say maybe the women do a staff presentation about the kids that includes makeup or lingerie as a metaphor. Would I be insulted? I don't think so at all. Is this a good analogy? I don't know. I just can't think of many situations where men can get offended and claim 'sexism'.

Your argument is ineffective. The point is not to swap one potentially controversial topic for another in a presentation, the point is to attempt to appease a majority of the audience in an entertaining way precisely by avoiding abrasive topics.

Interesting comment quoted here: http://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2009/04/28/how-to-be-edgy/

It’s not about whether it’s porn or not porn. Those commenting on people’s supposed hypersensitivity to nudity or bodies are completely missing the point. It’s about presenting women as ‘the other,’ not ‘us.’ It would have been just as offensive if all the women shown were domineering mothers in aprons, shaking their fingers and threatening with rolling pins.

Possibly true, it wouldn't have gotten any attention. It wouldn't be outrageous and very few people would be talking about it, if any.

It wasn't about women (to me) - I would have had the same reaction if it was gay porn. Or if it was a talk on security and featured photos of real life cops and criminals breaking the law. I'm sure it's a great database, but the visual baggage wound up being a major distraction.

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