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 think some people are losing sight of the fact that this was one idiot, doing one crass and inappropriate presentation, in one small and otherwise largely unknown conference, and which was subsequently roundly condemned by people of both genders (and rightly so).

I don't believe it is the tip of any enormous icebergs of secret misogynistic thought across the IT industry as a whole.

Yes, you can, but you can also take it too far and blow it out of proportion for what it actually was. It wasn't reminding anyone of women's place in IT; it was reminding everyone that there are, sadly, still a few real immature idiots out there.

No snorbs I don't suppose it is representative of the IT industry as a whole. I work in IT and by and large I work with agreable civilized men in suits who don't leer, wolf-whistle or display porn images on their screen savers (well perhaps apart from one or two ). I am the only woman and that is how it has been for the majority of my working life. I have grown a thicker skin about some things but my gender is irrelevant in our work place as far as I am concerned. It is a grown-up relationship related to work and not much else. But there was a time when someone in the dept started sending 'funny' images and video clips around the department. These became more and more explicit until they were stopped and he was given a verbal warning. Those 'funny' emails changed the nature of the relationships within the department for a period of time - it became a more uncomfortable place for me. Because the nature of my gender difference had been underlined in what was quite an unpleasant and threatening manner.

But I don't think the issue was just the one individual: there were many men there who accepted the presentation without protest, and when the women did complain, had a go at them (via Twitter) for being uptight. That shows that it was not just one person. The other issue was that the individual who made the presentation knew that it would be acceptable (to an extent) to the audience. I cannot for the life of me imagine someone in say, the banking industry, creating a presentation for clients or anyone else containing pornographic and lewd images. They would no doubt lose their jobs or receive a massive telling off from HR. This shows that such material is more acceptable in the IT industry than in others.

All these images do have a terrible effect. I've noticed with some male friends (though they may not be typical, and they are relatively unexperienced) that they have incredibly unrealistic expectations of what normal women look like. One is desperate to have a girlfriend, but refuses to even consider going out with a girl who doesn't look like a Pussycat doll. It is immaturity on his part, but I also think that the media is partly to blame, creating this idea that all women should have pneumatic breasts, heavily made up faces and constantly be up for it.

Deathworm, there's an easy experiment that can be run - get a woman to write a blog under an obviously female name, and a separate one with the same content under a male name and see which gets the most links. My best guess is that they'll be roughly equal but it would be fascinating to see it proven either way.

Incidentally, the biggest share of Internet traffic is peer-to-peer sharing of box-office movies, not porn. Which is missing the point anyway, as bandwidth-consumed is a poor indicator of popularity. Movies take up a lot of bandwidth even if they're only watched by one person.

If we look at site popularity based on visits (eg, the sort of stats that Alexa provides) and ignore the search engines, the top three are:

1. Youtube, which is porn-free
2. Facebook, which has more female users than male
3. Wikipedia, which has a strict and heavily policed equality policy on content

"it makes me look humourless"

That strikes a chord with me too.

LeninGrad, I absolutely agree. The organiser should've pulled the plug. That was one of the things that he (the organiser) apologised about.

I take the point about bandwidth. There are estimates that put porn at 25% of all web searches and 14% of all web sites. And the estimated traffic thing was in fact 40%-80%, for what that is worth. I accept that all these figures are open to question, but even on the more conservative one it is clear that porn is a BIG thing on the internet.

It has also been the most reliably profitable commercial content, and as such it has lead the development of new technology and business practices. I can't see how that wouldn't wrongfoot women who wanted toplay a poineering part or a commerciallly significant part in the dev of the internet. And my point about gaming still stands -- and the point about political blogs, which is apparently based on a good deal of research.

... i other words you can't simply assert that the internet is egalitarian.

Very interesting thread. Not much to add other than Youtube, porn free? you're having a laugh.

It is supposed to be, there is a difference.

Deathworm, I'm starting to suspect we have subtly different mental images over what the phrase "the Internet" represents. To me, it's a transport network that connects systems together and that is used by people. I get the feeling (and, please, correct me if I am wrong on this) that you see it as both that communications system and its users together. In other words, I think you see it more as a primarily social construct where I see it more as an exercise in global network engineering over which society happens to conduct some of its business.

My view of the Internet, then, is egalitarian in the same way that the road network is egalitarian. The road network offers no particular help or hindrance based on the gender of the user (with the exception of the more repressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia). That some people use that road network to travel to strip clubs is no more the responsibility of the network itself than other people using it to travel to the Women's Institute. Moreover, the one use doesn't preclude the other.

Does that clarify where I'm coming from?

Tomarto, I'll be honest - I've never searched for porn on YouTube. That being said, I've never come across it accidentally on YouTube and I know their T&Cs say that porn's not supposed to be uploaded so I based my comments on that. Apologies if I got it wrong.

Dittany, I have just as much right to claim that, in my view, the Internet is egalitarian as you have to claim that porn is being used as "a weapon" in some huge, clandestine misogynistic war with legions of men just itching for the opportunity to put women down.

I don't know if you're a man or a woman and, quite frankly, I don't care. Which was rather the point.

re your question to me snorbs:

I don't think that the dichotomy that you mention between communications-system and comunnications-system-plus-users is quite realistic.

There might be some sort of sufficiently pared-down concept of the 'pipes that the digits go through' such that you could say that pipes don't recognise gender so don't discriminate. But that is too pared-down a notion of what the internet is to have much significance -- it is a little like saying that paper can hold images/words of whatever nature, so that hard-copy publishing is by definition gender-egalitarian.

At the least I would say that the internet is the pipe thingies plus relevant law and regulation plus the huge variety of platforms etc, plus the nexus of ownership, plus business models. And that is before you start talking about what we generally regard as content, or end users. It isn't meaningful to talk about the hard basic technology in isolation when you are discussing a social phenomenon like equality or gender.

If there is a pared-down basic technology which is equally accessible by men and women, is it dsomething relevant to the actual equality or inequality of women's access? Is it actually relevant to anything other than some purely technical issues?