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Sexist Presentations At Startup Competition Prompt TechCrunch Apology
beaverdownunder writes "Silicon Valley technology conference organizers TechCrunch have been forced to apologize after two Australian men pitched a smartphone app called "Titstare" in front of a nine-year-old girl. The Sydney duo's presentation had the mainly male audience laughing, but angered Twitter users and reignited a debate about sexism in the technology sector. The two entrepreneurs — Jethro Batts, 28, and David Boulton, 24 — pitched their 'tongue in cheek' idea at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco on Sunday after winning expenses for the trip to the US in a similar competition, AngelHack Sydney. In their pitch, Boulton explained to an audience of hundreds (plus thousands online) that it would allow users to 'take photos of yourself, looking at tits'. 'It's science my good friend, science,' Boulton said. TechCrunch also apologized for another pitch for a product called Circle Shake, in which a man simulated masturbation."
Congratulations Jethro Batts, 28, and David Boulton, 24 for showing young women interested in technology exactly what assholes they have to look forward to growing up. Your joke was real funny and we're all impressed, and this totally isn't going to ostracize either of you in the worst possible way.
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
What are these people? 10 years old?
the people offended by this. Grow up!
I would have thought that their talk was satirical with an ironic twist, thereby not being sexist at all in the given context.
How wrong the political correctness freaks have proved me once more!
That is not sexism, poor taste at best.
So it's wrong for a guy to talk about "taking a picture of yourself staring at tits" and to simulate masturbation in public, but it's perfectly all right for Miley Cyrus to do the same (and more!) on national television in front of millions of people? I guess they should have done it on MTV; then it would have been ok.
Blood and gore are one thing. Now TITs... how could you?
Although I do believe that overt sexism is a real problem, I think this particular case (as well as many others) is more an example of immaturity. We would not accuse a 10 year old of being "sexist" because he repeats dumb sex jokes to his friends at school, but we DO expect that 10 year old to learn what is appropriate and when. Unfortunately since tech companies overwhelmingly rely on young males as both developers and customers, it tends to amplify and support the worst qualities of that demographic.
It would have been just as sexist without her there.
I'm not sure this is sexist. I see it as just plain stupid to present something like this to a conference. It's two young programmers who didn't really think things through.
Whenever any instance of misogyny is usually reported in the tech industry, the usual thing to happen is that the woman gets vilified and constantly harassed via social media. Fortunately, I can't quite imagine that happening to the nine-year-old girl in the audience.
About two weeks ago we had this story Silicon Valleys Loony Cheerleading Culture is Out Of Control.
Titstare just seems like a satire on the completely pointless app genre that seems to be the new popular thing to do if you are a young hip coder looking to score big in the new social/app bubble we are in.
Didn't Facebook start as a way to rank girl's appearance at Harvard? Who's to fault these guys, they could be the next Zuckerberg. Titstare is (however tongue-in-cheek) indicative of the trend of creating valueless apps and hyping them up to billion dollar status and then selling to the highest bidder trying to reinvigorate their failing business. (example: AOL/MySpace/HuffPost).
Yes, women need a dickstare app for balance.
where it would have been ok if the app was called splatstare, making pictures of yourself while shooting someones face off.
Submitted by beaverdownunder Perhaps!
Silence is a state of mime.
Women have boobs. People jerk off. Stop trying to hide obvious human sexuality issues from everyone. EVERYONE does this stuff. Why hide it? This puritan crap needs to go away.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
we need more women in the technology sector. This kind of display often surfaces when large groups of people that are 80-100 percent male gather together to celebrate and get 'faced. Then you start to realize that that mentality is still there during working hours, just somewhat muted.
Breaking news: men are fascinated with breasts. It is pretty much universal and isn't sexist.
Obviosuly their display in front of children was uncalled for.
But something to do with gender doesn't mean it is sexist. It is killing what true sexism is, real discrimination.
Here is her story and app.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
While I don't approve of either act, there's a difference for what an entertainer does onstage and what happens in a supposedly "professional" environment.
Entertainers do crazy stuff onstage for attention all the time. This is the industry that gave us Lady Gaga and Kylie Minogue, and introduced the term "wardrobe malfunction." It's a show. It's designed to provoke, and entertain. If you're not into it, don't watch MTV (I don't understand why anyone would have in the last 10 years, but there I go being old again).
A professional technology conference is not an entertainment venue. It's for serious business. Sure, you can inject humor into a presentation or two to make people smile and keep it light. But it's not a venue for shock or "look at me!" attention grabbing. It's where we as an industry come together to share our knowledge with each other. It's where we showcase the best of what being in technology is.
So to inject something fairly deliberately offensive into that environment reflects on the industry. And not just the presenters. It's everyone who didn't walk out. Who laughed. Who applauded at the end. They, more than the presenters, are the problem.
If you're in the industry, you can't "opt out" of going to events like this without hurting yourself professionally. Unlike pure entertainment, it shouldn't be incumbent on the audience to "just don't come if you're offended" in CASE something like this is presented. Either this is who we are as a technology industry, or it's not.
I don't get it 'take photos of yourself, looking at tits' so someone else hold your phone and snaps a pic of you when you stare at boobs of the girl across the street? How is that different from an app? or how would they app that concept?
Just another second banana
These guys aren't retarded, they know it's sexism.
It's supposed to be funny. Laugh.
Seriously, why is everybody always crying like a baby when things aren't 100% polically correct.
Go live on an island with other stuck-up people that can't handle life.
have no sense of humor.
You're late to the party, white knight. The village has already been pillaged.
If you thought that link looked suspicious, your instincts are right. You will quickly find yourself looking at disgusting and sexist photos if you click on the link.
Anybody else catch this? Where I come from, forced apologies aren't apologies.
Great technology, it is very Freudian to think this is simulated masturbation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYxP0LDEsV0
Maybe the people that complained should look at themselves.
Yes, women need a dickstare app for balance.
By all accounts, the whole audience was staring at two of them...
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
The real problem is that we have reached the point where the puritanical values have caused men's reactions to breasts to become national news, and to where breastfeeding mothers are made to feel they are doing something shameful.
Stupid, stupid Americans. I doubt the Aussies even considered America's hypersensitivity in the process.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
When did it become the ethical equivalent of a hate crime?
But I'm not in the process of making this point telling those same people that they're not welcome in this discussion. Approvingly presenting a product about staring at women's chests in a technology conference very much is.
Being offended is nothing but a power trip. Get offended, well the OTHER person has to change according to the fucked up mores of our society. Offended people get to exert power over another person - if they allow it.
If one doesn't like what one says, you ignore it. If your precious little snowflake hears something that you want to shelter her from, then you need to discuss with her about what she heard and get a grip because she WILL hear things that are going to offend you time and time again and there's not a damn thing you can do to stop it.
Now, get a fucking grip.
I like big tits and I can not lie
You other brothers can't deny
That when a girl walks in with an itty bitty blouse
And round things in your face
You get sprung
Wanna pull up tough
'cause you notice those tits was stuffed
Deep in the blouse she's wearing
I'm hooked and I can't stop staring
Don't like sexism in the tech industry?
How about getting an engineering degree and making yourselves visible; because more women in the industry, the more visibility women will have, and the less sexism there will be.
Otherwise its just a bunch of whining.
And I have never seen sexism in an workplace that employed a substantial number of women. so fix this garbage by actually stopping the whining, getting jobs and actually making a difference.
Political correctness is inextricably linked with hypocrisy. It is impossible to be politically correct without becoming a hypocrite.
One cannot take a stand against "exclusion" or "intolerance" without becoming exactly that which they stand against. Not tolerating those who are intolerant is in itself a form of intolerance. Excluding those who wish to engage in exclusionary behavior is in itself a form of exclusion.
The inherently hypocritical and contradictory nature of political correctness means that it is an intellectually invalid position to take. Anyone who professes to embrace political correctness cannot be taken seriously.
As said by a previous poster, a crotch stare would balance things. Of course the app would not be widely used because we all know that when women stare at men, it's the hands they look at...
Right ladies ?
Women can display all their sexual characteristics all the time with no problem. A part of men's sexuality is looking at women. But somehow receiving photons is evil.
I've worked in a few different settings in my career, and there's no denying the fact that there is a subset of the "IT crowd" that is described quite well by the show of the same name. Reasons can be debated for ages, and there are lots of theories -- lack of exposure to appropriate models of behavior, the silly "brogrammer" meme, etc. etc. etc. But the fact is that people like this who can't keep that side of them from showing and even coming through in their work make it impossible for IT to ever graduate to a "professional" field.
Some stereotypes (and actual real world examples I've seen) of IT folks would have you thinking that there are no people in the field who are married or who have normal relationships, have kids, etc. I can't tell you how many IT people I've met who have Asian mail-order brides and other not-normal relationship patterns. But there are a lot of us who wouldn't dream of getting up on stage and demoing an app like these guys made. Not because we're Puritans, or PC, or whatever, but because it's rude. I'm married and have two kids, one of whom is a girl. Normal relationships aren't compatible with being the drooling idiot in the strip club.
That said, I am aware that there's a difference between IT in an established company and the startup culture, especially in software development. I don't know what it is, but it's similar to the culture of sales organizations. Startups have a unique mix of type-A fraternity types with development nerds, and that culture creates a pretty big echo chamber for behavior like this.
Look at the very public examples of this kind of behavior in the last few years -- this thing, the "Twitter shaming" of a couple of nerds making a stupid joke at a conference, and this thing that totally boggles my mind. The behavior is surprising, but so is some of the reaction to it. It ranges from "that's really stupid" to "F you, PC police. If you're offended, I don't care."
I'm well aware that everyone has a right to free speech. But the IT industry will never shed its stereotype of being the nerds in the basement if we continue to allow things like this to be what the management class associates with us.
It was only six sentences. Surely you can point out to me where that statement was made. False equivalence much?
Yes, it was mostly about the racial implications but many feminists shared strong opinions about the sexist aspect of the show. It's both/and.
Apparently females need to be barred from technical conferences. It seems to be the only way to avoid these tempests in tea pots over perceived sleights.
Captcha says: Insipid. How does it know?
..instead. Much better than looking at tits.
You Americans are disgusting.
Specifically, why are they there? Since when is the event for children?
> EVERYONE does this stuff. Why hide it?
Because it is good manners to do so. Good manners exist for a good reason: we have to constantly be around other people and behaving well in public eliminates unnecessary interpersonal conflict. Good manners help you put your best foot forward, while poor taste, crudeness, and indecency will always lower other people's opinion of you and damage your reputation, your job prospects, and your chances of getting what you want when dealing with others.
Good manners have nothing to do specifically with hiding sexuality, boobs, or the fact that people masturbate. We do not expose these in public because they are unflattering, not because they are shameful. Society has reasonably well defined expectations of what is and is not acceptable to do in public. These expectations are there to help you by telling you how to behave in order to be perceived as a person worth dealing with.
Good manners also help other people to go through their day without having to deal with things they find offensive, ugly, or just in plain bad taste. People who spend their days surrounded by what they like and enjoy are happier, more productive, and easier to deal with.
Society's standard of good manners does change with time, but the reason for having them does not. As long as you always try to show your best side in public, you'll be ok. The problem with the situation in the article, Miley Cyrus, or whoever is currently getting on your nerves, is that these people do not try. Not only do they fail to show their best, but they flaunt their worst - this is the real tragedy and a sign of the decline of our civilization.
Who gives a fuck about this ?
No one with a brain.
This has been said like a thousand times already but why is this sexist? It isn't. Sexist is saying and believing in something like women should serve man, but it's also part of most religion and way of life in general, so even that is hard to even say it's sexist. I think people should stop focusing so much about what is sexist and what it isn't and just focus on their own lives. Yeah, groping a woman or a man randomly in public is sexual harassment, not sexist but a lot of people claim that it's sexist. These guys have an idea, which is quite honestly a good idea if you want the internet to be more about porn but they have to realize that san francisco is a part of a nanny sate which is part of a nanny country. You can't just say the word "tits" to anyone or showing them off without people going batshit crazy. Somehow that causes trauma to little kids or pissed off women that want to label everything as sexist, so avoid doing these kind of things in the US because the nanny state says that you are allowed to walk around topless by law but you're not allowed to show them because it'll traumatize little kids. Now, I'm sure it would if you had flapjack aureolas but that's beside the point.
" TechCrunch also apologized for another pitch for a product called Circle Shake, in which a man simulated masturbation." - as Nintendo patented this for the Wii.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Well, it's an app for men to take pictures of themselves while looking at a woman's...balloons!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Good lord
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
Didn't Tech Crunch get in trouble before for throwing a "industry" party with strippers giving lap dances?
His white mother was far more important to his life than his black father.
man... and children aren't harmed by see a pair of tits. I most societies in fact children are breastfed from birth! And in others there are nudge beaches. And holly crap- changing rooms in the rest.
Forget getting worked up about sexism. That problem, at least for those two men, is buried under another problem: arrested adolescence.
It was vulgar and inappropriate, but not sexist.
One might wonder though if its a good idea to seek to suppress all expressions of sexuality and attraction. Its not healthy.
Political Correctness is WRONG.
People don't have a right not to be offended. Fuck em if they can't take a joke, or don't like someone else's opinion or agenda.
Anyone who sues because they were offended need to have their suit thrown out with prejudice as the 1st amendment overrides, period.
As long as people are talking / writing, it's covered.
As soon as some takes action based on writing / statements and the action is illegal, then by all means, go with due process.
But for God's sake, the 1st amendment is there for a reason, to keep the idiots who want to restrict what they read/hear from having the power to do so.
Sexism would be asserting that women are inferior.
This is just men acknowledging the fact that most men like tits. It's a fact, not talking about it is silly. By all means, make a "dongstare" app if you want, I won't be offended.
Well 9 years old seems like a good time to me to learn how some people can behave and too see why you shouldn't act like that.
Isn't it enough that the men look foolish and juvenile?
Did the sexism complaint really have to happen?
People complaining seem to forget that this video and the men's behaviour are going to be on record forever, could you imagine one of them applying for a job in 20 years and the interviewer plays the video.
"We don't think so show the kind of judgement we want at CORPO corporation."
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
What's sexiest about this? Pervented, raunchy, lude, innappropriate, sure. But where's the sexist behaviour?
~ChibiSkuld~
Aussies have an extremely childish sense of humour, just saying "tits" in a comedy show is considered hardcore!
It also used to be good manners not to show your breasts in public.
Now that women do show them, why shouldn't men stare at them?
The feminists like to cry foul even when it's the other way around. Who's killing babies after all?? Feminist women.
Sexual != sexist
Making fun of staring at boobs is not sexist, reminding everyone that women are inferior is.
You've heard of Hugo, haven't you? sigh
Also, I'm going to pick a little at your relating to women "exactly" the same as men. I don't think it should be the same. It depends on circumstances, but... you know what I mean? Not everyone has the same background and experiences and challenges, but yeah I'm going to make some basic adjustments--like maybe paying attention a bit more to whether I'm talking too much or taking up an aggressive physical posture, that sort of thing. It's just a matter of paying attention and using your head.
On the whole though, I agree with what you're saying here. Feminism isn't something you play along with to get what you want. It's something you incorporate because it's part of being a decent person.
I agree with your position about Adria Richards, but in her case, the jokes weren't about women, they were about penises and sex. She just assumed they were about women, and for whatever reason, asserted that they were degrading to women.
In this case, the jokes *were* about women, and they weren't some guys in the back of the room talking to eachother, they were two guys on the stage. They were selling an app which encourages voyeurism and harassment. It should have been weeded out by the conference before it reached the stage.
I'm not sure this would even be okay for a porn conference... the voyeur and harassment aspects are... really bad.
It's like all men and all women on earth are engaged in a virtual, metaphorical couple relationship. You observe the same things happening between men and women globally as you might observe in your average couple. I was going to cite examples, but I don't want to upset any feminists...
Word.
If anybody's still reading this thread, can somebody explain what the app was supposed to do? Ignoring the issue of taste, it doesn't make any sense. Does the app display pictures of women and then use the front camera to take pics of you while you're looking at a pic of a woman's tits? That seems hugely lame and pointless. If it's supposed to somehow catch guys staring at women's chests in public that's a vaguely amusing idea, but still hard to see logistically how that's supposed to work. Anybody have an explanation for what the joke-app here even really is?
Married means to become master of. You are master of nothing.
9 years old is old enough to be married in old testament religion. Old enough by far.
(in God's religion one can marry children (see uriah and his little lamb, also see the law on rape in deuteronomy, in hebrew)
A woman's country asks "is she old enough"
A maaallleeeessss nation "is she young enough"
The two apps were stupid. Funny, but stupid. You wouldn't expect those apps to show up at a professional tech conference. If two women programmers made an app called "Dickstare," would anyone call it sexist?
An avalanche of dudes trying to explain why this isn't sexism. Maybe y'all should STFU and listen for once.
I'm in the "just bad taste" boat.
Objectification is a misrepresentation of what these 'fuctional' pictures are.
Having the producers create this app has the same defensive posture as them (or you or me) using the app; they condone it's use, or find it usefull for themselves, and are simply providing implementation as an option for others to use. Having said that, attacking them in this instance is like you attacking personal use of pornography and I would be very up in arms if anyone told me I was not allowed to. In this light few would seriously debate pornography as sexist but "objectifying"? Really it's just a matter of knowing what stimulates you as a person, a result of sexuality, not choice. As for objectification...
"Objectification" is a fuzzy definition and an understated moral accusation all in one, and almost always globbed together with sexism. I find it's a useless word. By the definition that people seem to so liberally use, corporate stock photos would be objectifying, as would calendars of puppies. They all express some quality with no intent to show the express of the individuality of the target in question. But what picture really can? Who really expects photos to be a medium to get to know a person. Is any picture of a person you don't intend to know inherently objectifying?
As for my intuition as to what is at the heart of the debate, I would not say the producers are guilty of any objective fault, just most people instead feel the developers have some unspoken ill-will towards women and that are trying to publicly express and validate this. They certainly are not doing a great job of preventing this image, though. However I agree it is in 'bad taste' (for me). Though, taste is just a personal preference and nothing more.
You should leave it at "I personally feel they are sleazy" and not something as objective as "sexist" or "objectifying".
Oh. They already did.
Insert gratuitous mammalian protuberance pun, here.
"Filter error" defeat: I can and did type more than (nothing) for my comment.
As long as this is the dominant notion of sexism, heterosexuals will associate pleasure with guilt. But just like good Catholics, they are allowed to keep sinning if only they confess on a regular basis.
Enlighten me: what is sexist about someone "simulating masturbation"? That it's a male person? If anything, it objectifies males. But I doubt that is what they mean.
These are jokes about sex, not sexist jokes. Specifically, these apps are jokes about male responses to sex. Who are these women that think they have a monopoly on sex? Men are involved as well, and I think that gives them some right to talk (or joke) about it.
I taught a Cisco course three weeks ago. I bring beer for late lab session on Wednesdays. I sometimes play YouTube videos in front of the class and when a link came up for "Naked men doing the Harlem Shake in the snow." the female student said "I wouldn't mind that one.", so I played it in front of the class.
This obviously was not in the U.S.. If it had been, I'd have been fired and sued.
The behavior mentioned in a civilized country would have spawned boos or jokes at the expense of the presenters. Their comments weren't sexism, it was bad humor. And if you're upset about the issue of the 9 year old. I'm pretty sure the parent should have know that at a conference for adults, a kid didn't really belong there.
Usually I like to stay out of debates when it comes to sexism in Tech. There is no way to really win as there are two polarizing sides to the argument and they are the loudest. Somewhere though there is a happy medium that is often missed in the debates.
After reading a lot of comments you start to see a pattern. The supporters point to the product and it being natural male behaviour and that it is satirical. The other side point to the fact that it was presented to an audience that contained a 9 year old girl and made people uncomfortable. They're both right.
If this was presented as a satirical piece in a stand up show at some comedy club - would anyone have raised an eyebrow? The fact is there was nothing sexist about the actual presentation, the issue is where the presentation was given and to whom. Obviously the two presenters want to get themselves out there and who can blame them? They still have to take some blame though for marginalizing members of the audience, but who is really to blame are the conference organizers for not screening (something which they say they'll be taking more seriously in future.
So what makes this sexist is not the actual product but where it was given. The presentation assumes a vast majority of male members which is sexist. We shouldn't be able to assume that members of a tech conference will mostly be male - and if we do we shouldn't target them separately in a manner which would make the female portion uncomfortable and feel apart from the rest.
Sad to think this sophomoric humour won an Australian competition, and money was spent paying for their trip.
A client of mine in Australia relayed to me once about his views on US vs Australia in that : " You guys were settled by puritans, we were settled by convicts..I think we got the better end of the deal. "
... and commercialise it to the female pre-teen market so that they can tell ma and pa exactly how they want their silicon tits to look like for their birthdays.
Perfect!!!
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Yes a goalpost shift due to be pretending to have poor reading comprehension and using semantics to justify it. You win! You found a petty mistake, pretended not to understand it was and mistake and exploited it by pretending to be stupid - you are master at mass debate and don't even care if you look retarded so long as you win. Now please let the others get on with it.
False accusation? Unfortunately not.
hang on, the 9 year old's parents are responsible for the 9 year old. tech presenters should not have to self-censor because there might be a 9 year old in the audience. this app is just soft porn. loads of them put there. so it's not particularly innovative. but suggesting it should be censored because of its content seems puritanical
I cannot give offense: only you can take offense. The choice is yours not mine.
'It's not sexist!'
'But what if women did something like that?!'
'Waah get over it, it's just an app!'
'I don't know any women who have a problem with this/have experienced sexism, therefore it's not real.'
'Political correctness run amok means no fun allowed anymore.'
'WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ?!'
Every time an article suggests that maybe, just maybe, the tech sector has have a problem with sexism that consistently makes women feel uncomfortable and alienated, a horde of bleating yahoos (most of which work in the tech sector, by all accounts) descend upon it in order to spout this kind of crap.
Which makes women feel uncomfortable and alienated.
The irony is so think I can taste it.