1. Holier-than-thou Dudes, cut the self-righteous crap

   

   Eric

   February 10, 2012

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2. I would crack the fuck up. And it wouldn’t be less modest than much of what I hear people say about themselves at conferences almost non-stop.

   

   Guest

   February 10, 2012

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3. You’re confusing “treating everyone the same” with “treating everyone with respect.”

   The “what if it was the other way around” game misses the fundamental point that there is an asymmetry here that extends beyond the remarks in question. It’s the very definition of unexamined privilege.

   

   Matt

   February 10, 2012

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4. It was a straightforward correction, not too much different from pointing out a typo or small factual mistake. If others hadn’t felt the need to flip out about it, there would have been no derail.

   

   Nina

   February 10, 2012

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5. Tell that to my cousin who was born with XY chromosomes and female gonads! She has Swyer Syndrome, is one of several genetic disorders that cause a person to be “intersex.” Since you seem to be sadly uninformed of these conditions, I’ll leave this link here for you: http://www.isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex

   tl;dr, Scientifically speaking, you are definitely incorrect. 

   

   ∆ndre∆

   February 10, 2012

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6. no more double spaced sentences, bro

   

   A Dude

   February 10, 2012

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7. Because what’s most important is how men would hypothetically feel, not how women actually do feel? Why are men’s feelings the benchmark here?

   I don’t think most men actually understand how ubiquitous this kind of sexualizing treatment is for women. I wouldn’t classify myself as particularly sexy, but men started making these kinds of unsolicited comments about my body just before puberty, and if what other women tell me is true, it’ll stop sometime after menopause. Maybe it would be flattering if it only happened once or twice, but that’s a pretty naive assumption to make about a woman you don’t know really, really well. 

   

   Nina

   February 10, 2012

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8. Death by a thousand cuts.

   

   Nina

   February 10, 2012

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9. I’m struggling to see the big problem with this. After listening to the audio it’s pretty clear she was selected for her capabilities as a professional. Did anyone walk away from that intro thinking “the reason she’s up there is because she’s attractive, and she has little value beyond that”? It felt like an attempt to lighten the mood, and judging from the laughing it worked. Are professional women not allowed to be sexy too?

   

   Greg Hemphill

   February 10, 2012

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10. Great, now he knows better and so does everybody else who read this post, so it won’t happen again. I wonder how many blog posts until sexism in tech dies entirely.

    

    Nina

    February 10, 2012

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11. Great, now he knows better and so does everybody else who read this post, so it won’t happen again. I wonder how many blog posts until sexism in tech dies entirely.

    

    Nina

    February 10, 2012

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12. Source? I know of many women who’ve dropped out of tech because they get sick of the demeaning and ridiculous culture.

    

    Nina

    February 10, 2012

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13. Source? I know of many women who’ve dropped out of tech because they get sick of the demeaning and ridiculous culture.

    

    Nina

    February 10, 2012

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14. Woman who is a trans here.

    I read it as an implicit derivative of women. I may not have two X chromosomes, but felt it was inclusive of me as the overall tone of the article was making light of the larger problem of the way women are treated in the tech industry.

    Tim is overreacting…

    My sincerest apologies on behalf of the trans community.

    

    Elovis

    February 10, 2012

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15. Woman who is a trans here.

    I read it as an implicit derivative of women. I may not have two X chromosomes, but felt it was inclusive of me as the overall tone of the article was making light of the larger problem of the way women are treated in the tech industry.

    Tim is overreacting…

    My sincerest apologies on behalf of the trans community.

    

    Elovis

    February 10, 2012

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16. Josh, I love you.

    

    Anonymous

    February 10, 2012

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17. Have you seen the comments about this post on Hacker News (arguably comprising a large cut of your target audience, startup dudes). You couldn’t pick a more oblivious, tone deaf group of buffoons to address.

    

    Jesse Dhillon

    February 10, 2012

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18. Greg, I’d be willing to bet Rebecca wasn’t that offended. She probably has faced that kind of groan-worthy empty-headedness in her career a few times before. As Dan wrote, she handled it gracefully and didn’t lend it credence by allowing a dumb remark to disrupt the panel. 

    However, I would like to point out that it is totally inappropriate to suggest that we subscribe to the bullcrap litmus test of whether “the woman in question” (her name is Rebecca, her credentials were listed at the top of the post) was offended in order to judge if a remark should be considered sexist or offensive.

    Even if she wasn’t personally hurt by it, the entire audience witnessed a male professional diminish a female peer on stage with chauvinist humor. The audience clearly felt the discomfort as is echoed in comments here. That it’s a “mild” offense is not evidence that, like it’s been argued about Abu Ghraib, “a few bad apples” are ruining it for the rest of us. It’s a culture, one that is enabled by our collective inaction or unwillingness to discipline our peers when they make asses of themselves, that Dan rightfully is calling attention to and ought to be stopped.

    Such as it is, it’s appropriate in instances like this to roll our eyes and yell, “Really???”

    

    Cori Johnson

    February 10, 2012

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19. What exactly is absurd here? The fact that I want to hear from the person in question or the fact that you yourself are being completely idiotic and insulting with you little quip, eh mother? I guess its okay to do such things when your anonymous, but God forbid someone make a mistake in public when it’s being recorded, then everyone should just forget we’re all human and fire away…

    

    Ralph Miller

    February 10, 2012

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20. Shades of gray? Baloney. If the comment had been racist, or homophobic, or anti-XYZ religion there would have been a rumble.
    But a clearly sexist comment is calibrated in some presumed ‘context?’
    Um, no.
    We would no agree to highlight someone’s weight, religion, disability, nationality in this setting. And we would not hesitate to call out someone who made such a gaffe with the trite “he means well.” 
    I lived in SGI world and in MSFT world. Clueless 20-somethings were esp. tone-deaf to sexism and there is no excuse for it. Their sophisticated technical knowledge is proof they can learn and retain material.
    Learn this: sexism is not cool.

    

    Anonymous

    February 10, 2012

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21. The feeling is mutual, random stranger.

    

    Josh Bob

    February 10, 2012

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22. Now I’m just curious, Kristen – why is your boyfriend so interesting that your intro needed to be about him?

    

    Josh Bob

    February 10, 2012

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23. ‘Jim is one of the smartest lads I know, he’s but the perfect pick for the role of moderator. When Jim agreed to be the moderator he was one handsome bachelor, now turned into one handsome husband, I can’t but congratulate his lucky half. So we’ve got not only a very talented, but a happy moderator.’

    I don’t get it, what’s wrong with this?

    

    pax

    February 10, 2012

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24. Thanks for your comments. If you knew me, you would know I am no apologist for sexism in any form. And because it is so insidious I feel it particularly important to call it out in all its forms. Language is loaded. My appearance as a topic of discussion at all lies on a spectrum of behavior that must be addressed. And there are good people– including your new hero Josh Bob– who make gaffes that need to be addressed. Josh– I’m guessing I don’t have to remind you about the September 2010 Startup Weekend in Kansas City— you were there when, 20 minutes before I was scheduled to address a crowd of 200 on the topic of angel investing, that same crowd circulated a picture of me in a t-shirt. Teachable moment- at my behest Marc Nager addressed the crowd- explained the impropriety to these clueless startup dudes– and I gave my talk. I am not going to stop looking good in a t-shirt anytime soon, so I sincerely hope that before that day comes, I can step up to a podium and drop some knowledge without having to overcome perceptions associated with my appearance.

    

    Anonymous

    February 10, 2012

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25. That’s like saying “This post is about Perl and instead you’ve decided to mention programming!”

    Derailing is expecting everyone to stop talking about this issue and focus on something else: that’s not what going on here.  A single, polite, highlighting of specific language isn’t using the blog post as “a platform”: it is about not implicitly supporting alienating assumptions.

    The appropriate reaction is “you’re right: thanks for bringing that to my attention” and a quick edit before returning to the topic at hand.  Not to rail against the person who pointed it out, which has actually done far more to derail the discussion than just addressing the problem and moving on.

    

    Anonymous

    February 10, 2012

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26. Except that a woman would never say that. To be short, it doesn’t have anything to do with the panel in the first place.

    

    Anonymous

    February 10, 2012

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27. Sex is not a binary switch.  We multiplier together about sixteen floats, subtract some unknown constants, divide by environmental factors and then attempt to cast to a boolean: it is no wonder that information is lost, and I do wish people would stop investing so much in whether it turns up 1 or 0.

    

    Anonymous

    February 10, 2012

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28. Sex is not a binary switch.  We multiplier together about sixteen floats, subtract some unknown constants, divide by environmental factors and then attempt to cast to a boolean: it is no wonder that information is lost, and I do wish people would stop investing so much in whether it turns up 1 or 0.

    

    Anonymous

    February 10, 2012

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29. The cost for a man of speaking up is so much lower I don’t really understand the “White Knight” complaint as long as the woman sitting there hasn’t asked the guy to stop (in which case continuing anyway would be disrespectful) and the general approach isn’t creepily chauvinistic (“Don’t talk to a lady that way!” = probably not the best approach ;-))  For example, not a single comment that I can see suggests you deserve any kind of violence and none of them have commented on your appearance.  Perhaps more insidiously, you are getting wide play despite women having been saying exactly these same things for years.  I’m not blaming you: I think it’s fantastic that men now are calling each other on this stuff.  It makes it a hell of a lot easier on me if I don’t have to further point out to everyone just how different I am in order to have a non-demeaning professional environment.  Now we just need to do these things over and over until people become tired enough of hearing us that they stop doing sexist things just so they don’t have to hear someone complain ;-)
    It can be hard, especially in the moment, to think of what to say or how to say it, but articulating your thoughts after the fact is both useful (because it makes other people aware of this stuff) and good practice: next time you’ll have a better idea of what you want to say.

    

    Anonymous

    February 10, 2012

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30. I have recently come up with an analogy, made possible only by the desperate competition for talent where I work:
    “You ever have one of those encounters with a headhunter that was super uncomfortable?  Maybe you just got a new job, and you’re at a business event to talk about cool technology, but instead of talking with people interested in what you’re excited about you end up surrounded by two recruiters and someone from HR asking what languages you know, thrusting cards on you, boasting about their very exciting opportunities and negging your current position in an attempt to get what they want out of you.  They don’t care about your skills because they can’t possibly know anything about your skills: they met you five minutes ago.  All they know is that you are a coder and they want their 6 months of salary when you get that next position.  It’s not that being offered jobs is a *bad* thing: you were just job hunting a month ago after all and you think having a job is awesome.  It’s that right now, in that context, all these people are doing by disrespecting your personal space and rudely pushing themselves on you is forcing you into the uncomfortable position of having to turn them down.  Now imagine if that started when you were 13 and has never stopped and you’ll start to get close to understanding why I am not ‘flattered’ to be hit on at a conference.”

    

    Anonymous

    February 10, 2012

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31. That’s something I’ve noticed too. By referring to groups differently you actually create and reenforce a dichotomy. 

    

    Matthew A. Myers

    February 10, 2012

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32. Telling people they are acting like fucking assholes and to knock it off has as much to do with “protecting” women as grabbing a friend’s arm when he’s about to punch another guy in the face is about “protecting” the other guy.  There is no excuse for sexist behavior: not even “being in tech”.  

    You can’t declare that an entire profession is boy’s only like that makes it okay to act inappropriately: we should not be tolerating this kind of behavior anywhere, for any reason.  And if you want to lay claim to the tech profession I’m not going to let it go without a fight.

    I have reasons and citations, but you probably wouldn’t listen anyway.  So do us all a favor and just STFU about stuff you clearly know nothing about until you’ve done your homework.  You, and all those “aggressors”, need to get some therapy and stop externalizing your personal failings onto an entire gender.  Being a member of that gender, I’m sick and tired of having to deal with people like you.

    

    Anonymous

    February 10, 2012

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33. Telling people they are acting like fucking assholes and to knock it off has as much to do with “protecting” women as grabbing a friend’s arm when he’s about to punch another guy in the face is about “protecting” the other guy.  There is no excuse for sexist behavior: not even “being in tech”.  

    You can’t declare that an entire profession is boy’s only like that makes it okay to act inappropriately: we should not be tolerating this kind of behavior anywhere, for any reason.  And if you want to lay claim to the tech profession I’m not going to let it go without a fight.

    I have reasons and citations, but you probably wouldn’t listen anyway.  So do us all a favor and just STFU about stuff you clearly know nothing about until you’ve done your homework.  You, and all those “aggressors”, need to get some therapy and stop externalizing your personal failings onto an entire gender.  Being a member of that gender, I’m sick and tired of having to deal with people like you.

    

    Anonymous

    February 10, 2012

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34. It is too bad that this happened.  Rebecca is such a nice person and well respected member of the startup community.  She doesn’t deserve this.

    

    Bryan Starbuck

    February 10, 2012

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35. Well said as always Rebecca.  A teachable moment indeed.  And thanks to Dan for taking the time to do the teaching!

    

    Jon Pincus

    February 10, 2012

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36. Your response is full of comments only made to belittle what he was saying, and you’re trying to gain support by putting words into his mouth by saying he’s undermining another group. And then the personal attack at the end re: having a profile picture on a website. There’s no intent at all in his message for that.

    I’m referencing http://www.johntreed.com/debate.html if you’d like to read honest vs. dishonest debate tactics. I’m solely providing the link so you can see how I’m reviewing your response.

    

    Matthew A. Myers

    February 10, 2012

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37. Thanks, Dan!

    

    Piglet

    February 10, 2012

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38. As I said on Google+, there is more than the introduction at play here. The fact that you, Dan, thought the panel was “terrific” and it included three other (white?) guys but no women … is quite telling. Seattle does have women who could talk about “funding and exiting”.

    

    Kathy E Gill

    February 10, 2012

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39. Unless you make people invisible by ignoring their existence, of course.

    

    Ann Burlingham

    February 10, 2012

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40. The fact that there was laughter … either means the audience was also clueless or it laughed out of nervousness.

    

    Kathy E Gill

    February 10, 2012

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41. He’s Batman.

    

    rone

    February 10, 2012

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42. Great message.
    I applaud you for the self-criticism about not calling them out on stage, but I think that this post more than makes up for it.

    Hopefully, this reduces some of the sexism in the startup community. That said, sexism isn’t a tech-startup or tech-specific problem, it is a systemic cultural problem (that is even more widely prevalent in many other industries)

    It is great to see you speak up against sexism, but I also hope that women speak up (in public or at least in private) when/if they are subjected to this type of sexism.

    

    @CascadeRam

    February 10, 2012

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43. I guess don’t hate the person for this kind of comment, but a little shaming is in order. Everyone makes a rude remark sometimes, you’re doing them and yourself a disservice not to call them out on it.

    

    Dean Putney

    February 10, 2012

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44. Well said Rebecca. We are so pumped you are part of team GeekWire. 

    

    johnhcook

    February 10, 2012

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45. One approach is to demand your own equal treatment, with as much or as little humor as you like. For example, “I’m a little disappointed that my intro didn’t mention how sexy I am. I was sexy when I was single, and now that I’m married, I’m sexy and happy, because it really took marriage to complete me. If my spouse was here, you would definitely want her to stand up so she could bask in the glory of marrying Mr. Sexy.”

    I think the guy doing the intro would’ve gotten the point.

    

    Ginsu Yoon

    February 10, 2012

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46. Thank you for speaking up, even after the fact and clearly it’s been valuable. On a wry note, I note as we comment here the default icon silo is of a guy for all disqus discussions. It’s such a strange experience, especially since in the history of design there are dozens of clear neutral human icons. (tempted to post anonymously to make my point, but there are plenty of examples if you scroll down)

    

    jtag

    February 10, 2012

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47.  I struggled with this a lot.  I left his name off deliberately (although you can find it easily enough).  At the end of the day, I know enough to decry the speech, but not enough to decry the person.

    

    Dan Shapiro

    February 10, 2012

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48.  I struggled with this a lot.  I left his name off deliberately (although you can find it easily enough).  At the end of the day, I know enough to decry the speech, but not enough to decry the person.

    

    Dan Shapiro

    February 10, 2012

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49. I’m glad you didn’t share his name, it would have just started a flame war and been far besides the point.

    It think it’s interesting as well that it’s so easy to go back and say “this is wrong, we shouldn’t do this” after the fact, but in the moment it seems an insurmountable task to call someone out on it. Perhaps had anyone done that, this post wouldn’t be necessary at all. Certainly not if it was done regularly.

    

    Dean Putney

    February 10, 2012

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50. I’m glad you didn’t share his name, it would have just started a flame war and been far besides the point.

    It think it’s interesting as well that it’s so easy to go back and say “this is wrong, we shouldn’t do this” after the fact, but in the moment it seems an insurmountable task to call someone out on it. Perhaps had anyone done that, this post wouldn’t be necessary at all. Certainly not if it was done regularly.

    

    Dean Putney

    February 10, 2012

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