To think that women 'people' - shouldn't be subjected to porn at a professional conference

[onebatmother]

Sweet Jeezum, would you have a look at this description of a mainstream, non-adult-industry tech developers conference in the states.

Porn (as it has always done) is powering tech development.

This guy's attitude speaks volumes both about what porn says about imaginary, abstract women, and - crucially - the real women who had paid to attend the conference.

I too am wondering how and whether GO can sustain the analogy he is trying to make.

blueshoes, I think everyone self-censors to a certain extent depending on the situation. The way I talk to my close friends is subtly, or maybe not so subtly, different to the way I talk to acquaintances at the school gate or clients. Some women, when in an all-female group, will happily relate non-PC jokes about men and vice-versa.

But I think you're absolutely right that outright porn in that kind of context is very unusual.

Because I remember when people use to talk about gay people like that "I don't care what they do in private but I dont want to see 'em sticking their tongues down each others throats in front of me."

It was a shocking reminder of those people when you said that and I thought all that effort to put a stop to the prejudice was for nothing if you repeat it.

I let it pass then because I didn't really want to post on that thread, but when I saw you telling us here that you are the guardian of morals and inclusiveness it hit me again.

But on the other thread that comment was made to indicate the importance, when in a minority (or part of a marginalised group which finds itself a minority voice in lots of arenas), of having a space where you can defensively marginalise the majority groups. It's a question of asserting a set of values that enable you, in some contexts, to be that-in-relation-to-which-others-are-defined -- instead of being the deviant group forced to define itself by its failure to measure up to a socially imposed norm. We don't achieve equality by being relentlessly even-handed in realtationships between powerful and less powerful groups. We achieve it by challenging power.

Lenin's point was that in a gay pub, you could for a rarity turn the tables. Of course the point was aggressively made: I felt taken aback and hurt for a second by the 'heterophobia'. In the same way I suppose that the men on that thread felt taken aback by the hostility to them. But that is good isn't it? For a member of a majority to feel challenged in that way? I valued it.

Anyway, I took the hostility of the remark to be demonstrative of the need for a similar norm-challenging robustness here, in a mostly female forum, which the gay bar was an analogy to. I don't Lenin would actually make that remark to a straight couple in a gay bar -- unless they were being pretty vile in some way.

Sorry to speak for you Lenin: its just that the LGBT point you made was meant as illustration of the gender points being made on that other thread, which still exercise me.

Gosh, no smilie needed lenin. Was only a microsecond of teeny-hurt, only acknowledged or even noticed because of what I thought of as the appropriatenessness of your remark in the context -- the occasional appropiateness of giving offence. I only gave it a second thought because of the current debates on gender here.

slightly confused bcs missed the other thread - but yr even-handedness point v well made worm.

The thread title is supposed to say 'to think that women - "people" - should not be..

ie to think that women - no, not just women, people - should not be..

but in fact it just sound loony.

How are you all, you womenpeople you?

last week i took down a calendar behind our work bar which showed a naked woman holding bowling balls in front of her ample breasts and an expression of sheer orgasmic delight on her face. (i don't work in a bowling alley...)

hopefully the organiser has now removed hoss from the 2010 bookings list, and sent an apology to all who attended.

i can't imagine sitting still in the audience for that long - but faced with it in reality i'm sure i would have been (presumably as you were) paralysed by disbelief. i've seen less overt uses of naked women used as attention grabbers halfway through boring powerpoint, but nothing at quite this level...

is he married? fascinated.

Oh madwoman, no, I wasn't there, just read about it on an industry blog.

If I had been there I would have walked out. I would like to think I would also have booed, but I can imagine that if you were sitting there with your boss it would be hard to do so.

oops, misread op lol! too busy getting on my high horse obviously

i am stunned though. it also makes me slightly uncomfortable about the number of times i have let lower-level stuff go, believing it to say more about the chap involved than any woman. just goes to show where that sort of nonchalence ends up.

I'm just trying to think what I would have done. Prob just walked out quietly. Sometimes I crave being in a situation where someone is just so utterly, uncontroversially, life-threateningly unreasonable that is is ok or perhaps obligatory to punch them till they look like tenderised beefsteak. Now that would be cathartic. It is bothersome having to be reasonable.

Indeed it is Worm.

Oh, good. Thought had killed thread with my psychokiller fantasy.

No. I am fellow-fantasist.

mine involves large scale weapons of mass destruction. tis a hangover from work that i find it hard to get past. i'd rather be removed from the actual bloodshed, but be able to press the button and watch at a safe distance, with photographic evidence.

by the way onebat - you were the first ever person i 'spoke' to on mn i think... i was romy7 at the time and you thought you knew me from RL... i saw your career-change thread the other day, does this work-based thread mean that you have solved your dilemma, or that it has deepened lol?

YANBU. I doubt that a presentation like that would be accepted in most other professional settings; only in the IT world.

As you were

That is grim.

I think that is completely inappropriate for the context unless the subject matter of that particular seminar was 'how porn has driven the development of new technology' in which case it would have been reasonable to expect some porn to be on display.

However I am slightly uneasy at the suggestion that people are entitled to forbid other people their thoughts because these thoughts might be offensive. You can insist that people speak courteously and don't display offensive pictures (though standards vary from workplace to workplace) but what they think, and what private communications they make, are their own business.

No-one's forbidding thoughts, I don't think, SGB. Difficult to enforce.

I think what's being pointed out is that occasionally/frequently one suspects that what is being said is not what is being thought, and that is a depressing reality check.

OBM: but what has it got to do with you or anyone else what another person is thinking as long as that person is moderating his/her behaviour in order to get along reasonably well with other human beings?