Yahoo! Taiwan's Hack Girls
Simon Willison has written about the latest viral outrage: the appearance of a "Hack Girls" dancing troupe at a Yahoo! Hack Day Taiwan. I've been trying to take into account the views of women who think this is no big deal as well as those who are saying it's in keeping with local culture. I personally found the event in poor taste and extremely ill-advised.
I came up with a couple questions that are my personal acid test for this situation. What we're being asked to accept is whether girls doing a lap dance for a male geek-oriented audience is an acceptable "bit of fun." The insensitivity question boils down to: When does "a bit of fun" within a social norm cross the line into being alienating to those outside that norm? And I formulated the exclusion question as: When does a "social norm" itself cause offense and alienation and therefore need to be re-evaluated?In other words, would seeing straight male geeks receive a lap dance on stage at an inclusive, corporate event cause some offense to those who are present that aren't straight male geeks? And how normal is it to assume that the audience of geeks are straight males (who naturally need to be brought out of their shells with this enforced fun)? To a world audience, presumably those whom Yahoo! wants to impress with their openness of their Hack Days, those answers would probably be, "Yes, some offense," and "No, not really normal." To the local audience, I can't presume to know for them, but I suspect that it (ahem) straddled a line. The Hack Girls apparently made an appearance at the event a year ago, but all evidence I've seen suggests it was tamer, and clearly it wasn't called into question at a corporate level. I get the sense that people with thicker skin or thought there was no big deal locally have been applying the first question. It's not personally offensive to them, and is unlikely to have been obviously insensitive in Taiwan, so where's the problem? I suspect what has bothered people about the event is the second question, on exclusion. Regardless of whether or not it's a form of valid local entertainment, it throws light on the questions: "Should we assume that hackers are horny males? Do we want to propagate that idea and force others outside that group to adjust for that community?" I say no.
Update: Just after I posted this, I noted that Yahoo! tweeted an apology. This post was much more about the different way people saw the event and treated it as a case of sexist/cultural insensitivity vs political correctness run amok.
Update 2: Now a post on the YDN blog.
2 comments
Oct 23, 2009
Roger said...
Y'know, the whole thing feels sexist to me, but not because there were women giving lap-dances to guys... it's because no one (apparently) even thought to provide male dancers for the women/gay men in the audience. Even if no one stepped up to avail themselves of the service, it would have demonstrated that someone in charge was aware that there is more than one variety of geek.
Oct 25, 2009
perseph said...
yeah, I'd like to see company reaction if a male stripper came into the local meeting room
