If a ripped 6'4" male model called himself @sexyengineer and posted pictures of him building things shirtless, I would roll my eyes and call his legitimacy into question. Doing the same to a woman isn't some sexist conspiracy.
Edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain? I don't see the flaw in my logic.
The flaw in your logic is that sexuality has nothing to do with being "legitimate."
Furthermore the tech in question is more about creativity than skill, the entire maker movement is about abstracting away the more difficult concepts into easier to use pieces.
>If a ripped 6'4" male model called himself @sexyengineer and posted pictures of him building things shirtless, I would roll my eyes and call his legitimacy into question.
I was considering posting a comment along the lines of this. I decided not to, because I am somewhat terrified of discussing these topics in public, even behind the anonymity of an HN handle. There needs to be a way to talk about these things without people demonizing you for having a discussion. No, sexuality may not have anything to do with 'legitimacy', but I would think the same thing that the quoted parents said (re: the sexy male engineer). Why is that? I'm not sure. Certainly, you have the right to portray yourself in any light you see fit. But since engineering skill and sexuality have nothing to do with eachother, as we all agree afaict, then I don't see how its wrong to be skeptical when the two are presented together.
edit: to clarify, as Bunnie mentioned in his post, its often both more comfortable and completely appropriate to sit half-naked at your desk coding. But the next time Bunnie turns to social media to talk about something he's done, I don't expect to see a picture of him in his underwear next to the product.
> "I am somewhat terrified of discussing these topics in public, even behind the anonymity of an HN handle"
Thank you for facing your fears.
> "Why is that? I'm not sure. Certainly, you have the right to portray yourself in any light you see fit. But since engineering skill and sexuality have nothing to do with eachother, as we all agree afaict, then I don't see how its wrong to be skeptical when the two are presented together."
Let's be real, attractiveness doesn't hurt YouTube view counts. However, does the fact that not all of those views were motivated by the content being discussed call into question the validity of the content itself? In other words, if someone clicked on a SexyCyborg video because they found her attractive, but ended up enjoying the technical content, was the content effective?
What I'd be cautious of is promoting the idea that dressing a certain way was the only way to get ahead, but as long as people can get ahead based on their own effort, it doesn't seem like much of a problem. Clearly you think differently, and I would be interested in better understanding your point of view.
> "edit: to clarify, as Bunnie mentioned in his post, its often both more comfortable and completely appropriate to sit half-naked at your desk coding. But the next time Bunnie turns to social media to talk about something he's done, I don't expect to see a picture of him in his underwear next to the product."
It would be surprising, sure, but fundamentally I don't see what would be wrong about it.
To give a counter example, there's a high level player in the Street Fighter community called Poongko who's infamous for taking off his shirt whilst playing:
I'm not suggesting that this is an exact mirror for what we're talking about, as the context isn't sexual. The point I'm trying to make is that, even if a behaviour is unusual, it doesn't have to have negative connotations.
I think the argument is more that sex is often used to sell things so people are wary when it is used in what they see in an unrelated manner.
If I'm out shopping for an online course and I see one presented by a woman in a bikini vs one that is fully dressed I would be way more wary of the bikini one. I would think its content was not good enough to stand on its own and therefore they resorted to trying to sell it with sex.
Of course that does not give me the right to attack or make groundless accusations against the bikini course.
If you were researching ideas in DIY tech fashion and wearables - and one blog was full of pics of a generic bay area brodude in a conference schwag tshirt and hoodie telling you how good his fashion ideas were going to look, and the other was Naomi's blog - which of those would you be more wary of?
There's a quite important reason why Paris and Milan fashion shows don't use middle aged white men like Dougherty to stroll down the runways showcasing this season's ideas.
> The flaw in your logic is that sexuality has nothing to do with being "legitimate."
Yes it does. PR companies have the opinion that sex sells, so if someone in a technical conference is overtly oversexualized, that makes me suspicious of their true motives.
>If a ripped 6'4" male model called himself @sexyengineer and posted pictures of him building things shirtless, I would roll my eyes and call his legitimacy into question. Doing the same to a woman isn't some sexist conspiracy.
And you would be wrong to do so. You could call their fashion sense into doubt, but questioning their competency in unrelated areas is falling prey to the ad hominem fallacy. Picking one undesirable trait and generalizing outwards from that is the definition of ad hominem.
@realsexycyborg might have a nontraditional taste in style but this literally has nothing to do with her skills as a maker or ability as an engineer. To conflate the two is bias and reflects the core problem here.
I think the reason OP listed "sexism, slutshaming" separately is because they're separate issues. The downvotes are coming from your erroneous conflation of the two (and possibly being perceived as purposeful conflation to strawman the argument).
That said, I think the slutshaming you pointed out is just as damaging as what's going on in Wu's case. Who gives a shit if @sexyengineer is wearing a speedo in all of his tutorials? The point is the information and if he's not sharing bad info I don't see the problem other than the fact that you and I have differences in taste.
Don't have a problem with that phrase in a vacuum but in context of this discussion I find it highly problematic. Who decides the standard? Which standards actually matter?
I guess I see information (esp with regards to video tutorials/demos) as agnostic. If you're reading a tutorial online, there's no telling whether the person who wrote it was completely naked while doing so. Does the information change simply because you thought they should at least throw a robe on before trying to share info? As long as she's sharing good info, I don't see why it matters what she's wearing. And no, I cannot see what issue other people have other than a difference in taste (which, again, has no bearing whatsoever on whether what she's sharing is factual and helpful or not...).
This is how answered to that same comment a few months ago:
And if I promote myself as a Star Trek fan to bring attention to my engineering work, nerd-shaming is also in scope. Or a body-builder programmer shamed for being a "bro" by us nerds. Why do we need to shame each other about our quirks? (as long as those quirks do no harm, but as far as I know, Sexy Cyborg does not flaunt herself around kindergartens)
Whenever you leverage things outside of a field to become well known/get recognition within a field, people are going to push back on it and call it inauthentic. Those other traits could be sex appeal, it could be celebrity in another area, it could be wealth, whatever.
Of course having those other traits doesn't mean that you are necessarily incapable or inauthentic in that space. It doesn't "prove" anything. I doubt that Sexy Cyborg would be as well known without the sexual aspect, but fame doesn't correspond perfectly to competence either.
To me it's leveraging those traits to gain recognition that stirs people up - which, with a name like "SexyCyborg", she's pretty clearly doing. I don't mind it myself, don't think it says anything about her competence on its own.
> Why do we need to shame each other about our quirks?
Everyone judges everyone else. If absolutely everyone just keeps to themselves and has their own standards of right and wrong, no sense of community ever has a chance of forming.
I'm not saying OP is right or wrong, but I also don't think that social standards and expectations are 100% evil or harmful to society.
> "If absolutely everyone just keeps to themselves and has their own standards of right and wrong, no sense of community ever has a chance of forming."
Judgement of the personal lives of others does not have to be the cornerstone of a community, especially one that has nothing to do with the personality of others. How someone chooses to dress out of their own free will is completely unrelated to their interest in tech.
What I find to be disappointing is when people who can't/won't see past looks. Yes, our first reaction is likely to be visual, but if a hacker can't recognise a fellow hacker just because they look different to what they expect, that's a real shame. When I look at a video like this, I don't just see an attractive woman, I see a hacker:
>To those downvoting me, can you please explain? I don't see the flaw in my logic.
That's just the point, you have a worldview and assume it is correct and should apply to everyone else. But no one worldview will encompass everyone's thoughts and feelings. Why should someone's fashion choices tell us anything about their technical ability? Was Einstein less trustworthy on the days he forgot his pants?
You're misunderstanding; it's not about the fashion telling us anything about their technical ability. That thing about Einstein is a complete non-sequitur. Here's a comment in this thread by deeg that outlines one of the issues with the fashion:
> Our industry is (rightfully) going through a lot of self-examination on how we treat women as sex objects and here is a technically savvy woman projecting herself (among other things) as...a sex object. While it is certainly her right to do so it seems that a bit of push-back is expected (and potentially warranted).
> That said, being called "fake" may be wrong. I have no knowledge one way or the other.
> If a ripped 6'4" male model called himself @sexyengineer and posted pictures of him building things shirtless, I would roll my eyes and call his legitimacy into question
That's the flaw in your logic right here: rolling your eyes is one thing, call the legitimacy of people who don't conform to completely arbitrary (and historically and geographically moving) social norms is ANOTHER.
You can roll your eyes all you want, that's your problem. You can even decide for yourself that you will not listen to people who don't dress according to some code -- your loss.
But when you decide to project and impose your prejudice to the world then you become part of the problem.
> "If a ripped 6'4" male model called himself @sexyengineer and posted pictures of him building things shirtless, I would roll my eyes and call his legitimacy into question."
What difference does it make? Do you feel offended if other men are seen as sexy? If you're concerned about painting someone as a role model, what do you find offensive about what @RealSexyCyborg is doing? Is being comfortable being sexy something bad? Is she sending a message that the only way to be a female maker is to emphasize your looks?
Speaking personally, I'm a straight man, but if @sexyengineer ever shows up, I would have zero problems with that. If a male model or a female model shows an interest in engineering, good for them, if they decide to break conventions about what an engineer is supposed to look like, good for them.
Hey, I’d love to live in a world that operated the way you suggest. There’s actually a group of people who work towards that aim. They’re called (intersectional) feminists. You might find what they’re saying interesting.
Excuse me if I'm making an incorrect assumption here, but China is not your country, right?
Naomi explains that the fashion she wears is while perhaps not "mainstream", at least fairly unremarkable in her culture - and she's got video of herself walking around in public that supports that claim.
If _you_ are not capable of seeing and accepting other cultures, that's surely not Naomi's problem. It's no different from insisting your local library removes National Geographic magazines because they have images of cultures where breasts are not taboo.
"Social standards" are fine, and while you and I probably disagree on what those standards should and shouldn't allow in our respective cultures, imposing _your_ opinions of social standards on a culture you've never even visited (again, apologies if I'm making a poor assumption there) is the height of self important superiority.
And while I don't know where you're from, Doughtery's business runs out of Sebastopol - literally 50 miles away from where Folsom Street Fair is held every year. Tell me again how different his society's "social standards on how to interact socially and sexually" are from Naomi's?
Having sex or being sexy are not things that you should shame other people for. Sex is normal, and it's not right to punish women for not being virginal.
In the US "slutshaming" is part of the progressive stack so in a sense of unity, and voting on HN is often used to enforce political norms. So people who would downvote someone for using the N-word, for example, are attacking you to earn their good boy points because they're all in it together, etc.
There are other interesting examples along your example of @sexyengineer.
One is in the area of cooking your example has long existed where theoretically the genre is "cooking" but in practice there are two distinct types of shows, the shows were the woman is in a revealing cocktail dress or date night attire while cooking with fantastic hair and makeup and by cis hetro standards is extremely hot, while the cooking knowledge and recipes are on the level of "cooking" a pb&j sandwich, vs real "cooking" shows where an average looking person, often below average in appearance due to being an older experienced teacher, educate you about cooking. For a variety of TV formula risk minimization strategies there is in practice essentially no overlap. Online, without hollywood execs, things can get weird and cross over. This is actually very comical in the foodie world, there are well known sayings about cooking shows where you can tell within seconds what kind of show you're watching by either seeing a lacy lingerie bra or a (dirty) apron, although they're all categorized as "cooking" shows.
Another interesting example is in woodworking there are real woodworking educational TV shows with average to below average older shop teacher type human bodies where you'll actually learn something, and there's one PBS woodworking show with a tall highly muscular male model from Boston who my wife finds very handsome but I've stopped watching because the carpentry content level is low.
Its fundamentally a difference between people who are looking for a strong attractive personality perhaps with a theme they enjoy; essentially this is every pr0n movie plot, ever. Meanwhile there are people looking for content and information. Do you want to hang out with a beautiful and stylish woman in her kitchen for a half hour, or are you looking for the official USDA food safety heating temp in deg F for ground pork? There's nothing wrong with either in any moral or ethical sense, but you'll see lots of weird lashing out and anger from people who want/need one and get accidentally stuck with the other, and people REALLY freak out when there's trans content bridging the gap and its hard to tell from second to second whats titillating pr0n and what is a reference manual.
There is likely an analogy for hard vs soft sci fi.
One way of looking at it is we very poorly label and identify content in TV and online such that we lump personality and appearance shows in the same named genre. Is the setting of a carpenters workroom merely the background of a pr0n flick or is the carpentry the main point and the actor is merely there as voice talent? Its the same for cooking, and in this weird case, engineering.
> If a ripped 6'4" male model called himself @sexyengineer and posted pictures of him building things shirtless, I would roll my eyes and call his legitimacy into question. Doing the same to a woman isn't some sexist conspiracy. To those downvoting me, can you please explain? I don't see the flaw in my logic.
The flaw in your reasoning is that it doesn't match reality. That example of the male engineer actually does exist (@aphyr), and he is (very justifiably!) well respected and not shamed.
In general, the key to understanding sexism (and social dynamics in general) is that the question is not one of what-ifs, thought experiments, or spherical-cow sociology, but an empirical one about a real-world system. Whether people behave in the way you hypothesize or not is an empirical question, and, in this case your hypothesis is false.
My high school cliques were the nerds and the band. Generally speaking, the nerds were not attractive people, maxing out at about a "6". Our group identity mostly came from our self-perceived intelligence, dedication, and skill.
So when an obvious candidate for the dolls clique presents himself or herself as a nerd, I know I am not the only one who might question their "qualifications". The hot bodies had far better options for clique membership, so we tended to get paranoid whenever one showed up. What do they want from us? Why would they choose to hang out with us? Most people didn't like us, so we held our noses, lowered our standards, and made do with liking each other.
Out in the real world, it turns out that being a nerd any time after 1970 can make you quite a lot of money from jobs that require knowledge of math, science, technology, and engineering: our presumed forte. Because of that money, one of the motives for hanging out with nerds could be to get at some of it. It's bad enough when the broheimer partyboys crash our con, but if the pro cosplayers and booth babes also turn out to be more than just eye candy, that means the nerdity wasn't about being smart, but was actually just being ugly, awkward losers with no social value. That hurts, psychologically.
It might feel like every time we make something nice for ourselves, the beautiful people just strut right in and take it away from us.
So yeah, I'm prejudiced too. It comes from a lifetime of the pretty and popular people being inhumanly rude to me and "my people". If you must insist on being born beautiful, at least do me the courtesy of making yourself morbidly obese, or giving yourself some disfiguring scars, before pretending to be an insider of my social caste. If you can't shim yourself down below a "7", you're just going to make us feel suspicious and uncomfortable.
How do you know your suspicions are warranted? It sounds like you could simply be letting people's outward appearance cloud your estimation of who is genuinely interested in a topic.
This attitude is so weird to me. I play in a local poker group with 80 or so regular members. We get all kinds, both genders, an age range from probably 20 to 80, and a diverse mix of races. The only commonality is we all share an interest in the game. We have veteran players and also see new people show up all the time. When a new player happens to also be, for example, a beautiful woman, nobody is going to care as long as she also knows how to play (even knowing how to play is optional, we'll help you learn). In fact, as a player, if you do assume someone is a phony just because they are good looking, that's a pretty reliable way to lose your money at the table.
The only people unwelcome are assholes and people who intend to cheat. Those folks can get lost. I've never felt "suspicious" of someone who wanted to join and have fun, regardless of their appearance.
> "It's bad enough when the broheimer partyboys crash our con, but if the pro cosplayers and booth babes also turn out to be more than just eye candy, that means the nerdity wasn't about being smart, but was actually just being ugly, awkward losers with no social value. That hurts, psychologically."
Do you not see that the issue isn't really "them", but that it's rather about perceived self-worth? If others put you down and made you feel like you lacked social value, I'm sorry, I wouldn't wish that on anybody, but your perceived value is something you have some degree of control of, as it's up to you how you wish to view yourself.
I fundamentally disagree with putting numbers on attractiveness, or even putting it on a scale, but let's say for the sake of argument that I'm not expecting a modelling contract any time soon. That doesn't mean I can't be friends with people who are "better" looking than me, or that I can't see them as my peers. If you've got something interesting to say, it's all good.
Perhaps you have never been ugly enough, or fat enough, or black enough, or xeno enough to catch flak from the beautiful people. But I have had enough of it that I simply avoid being out in public.
I know what I'm worth to me, but I also know that "society" doesn't want me hanging around where I can be seen. That's fine with me, because apparently society is full of nasty people and those who tacitly support their nastiness--people who are ugly on the inside, and people who find it easier to live with ugly on the inside than ugly on the outside.
I certainly could be friends with people much more attractive than myself, but it is rather unlikely that we would ever meet in the first place. And it certainly would be awkward if we went to a party together, and they eventually realized I wasn't allowed through the front door. Or if I did make it in, and then everyone else left, because the party was no longer cool. Or if someone made an insulting joke at my expense, loudly enough for everyone to hear, and they had to either let it go or get involved in a public fracas. These things have actually happened; I am not just imagining things that might happen.
You can be as sorry as you like, but that won't make the human track marks out there any more accepting, or me any more trusting. The only people I feel safe around by default are those who so obviously have something wrong with them that I know that we must share the experience of being crapped on. Everyone else has to prove they are not secretly a jerk trying to pull one over on the nerds.
There's nothing you can do about it, really. Some people are cruel, and it's enough for you to not be one of them.
There are two issues here. One is the "beautiful people" issue, where the people are playing a social game, and if they come to hang out with normal people, they are doing it for some way that it's going to advance them in their manipulative social game. Why should any of the non-"beautiful people" want anything to do with that? The only way we should is if we're dumb enough to want to play their game, because we haven't figured out that it's a game that we're going to lose at. Your instincts to run away are spot on.
But the other issue is, we've got our own communities. Maybe we're part of a community where we care about software, for example. Well, in that community, sure, be careful of people who are trying to use you. But if someone with good physical looks comes around, judge them by their software knowledge (or actual desire to learn); don't judge them (positively or negatively) by their looks.
I think you should wonder how you can be taken seriously while assigning numbers like that. You are a person, they are people, this girl we're talking about is a person. Not a 6 or 7 or 8 or whatever.
In the end, the talk here goes everywhere but fails to mention that bunnie vouched for sexyhacker. The point being that the maker guy knowingly posted something he knew was a lie. The issue could have been skin colour, nationality, anything.
You can rank anything by any arbitrary metric and divide the population into deciles, even subjective judgments of attractiveness. People get ranked and sorted all the time. IQ, FICA, GPA, etc. It doesn't make them any less human; it just quantifies the discussion.
She's a person all right, and likely more attractive than I am in the opinion of any judge you may care to ask. And that's part of the reason why someone wrote an article about her, and we're here discussing it, and why I am a faceless pseudonymous nobody that can only aspire to an upvote or two on HN.
I'm irrationally prejudiced against attractive people. That's somewhat rare for them, so might be disturbing. But it doesn't matter much, as my opinion doesn't really count for anything anyway. I have no power to act on that prejudice. Attractive people get all kinds of preferential treatment from people that can actually make a difference in their lives, so they don't particularly need some sour-grapes ugly to like them, too.
I may give an unattractive person more slack, simply because everyone needs to feel like they belong to some community, and mine might just be the only one willing to accept them. Attractive folk need to do more to signal their commitment, just because they have so many more options. But that's not a high bar for me. Sexyhacker has hacked hardware, and proved it on video, so that's quite enough to consider herself a real hacker, in my opinion. If she were ugly, though, I might just take her word for it. In the end, that's my problem, not hers, and nobody should be trying to make their problems into hers by tearing her down with unwarranted libels.
Honest curiosity, how do you feel about Marketers, Salespeople, and Recruiters (people usually associated with good looks and high-level social skills) joining HN en masse and commenting regularly over the last few years?
Envious, mostly. I can't exactly blame the dice if I got a lower Charisma roll than theirs. It's a mistake to believe that society should be fair when it is so heavily influenced by random factors.
I don't interact with that type very much in person, as they tend to ignore or rebuff me when I approach them, and they only engage or approach me when they think they can make money by doing so. So they're sort of like animatronic people, I guess? You have to buy a ticket, but then they just read to you from a script.
I'm old enough now to know that nothing stays the same forever. Slashdot got sold to Dice. The H in HN got diluted. So what? I can't control it, so I just enjoy it for what it is while it lasts, and will drift away whenever it no longer feels right.
