A bare breast on a t-shirt at a conference

[poopsqueak]

I was at a conference yesterday with many speakers.

The audience was of a digital nature.

One speaker came on stage with a t-shirt with a woman with a bare breast on (faded and 'artsy') and I didn't think much of it. He was 35, male and talking about an organisation he had founded. The talk was very interesting.

When the next speaker started the conference organiser came on stage and apologised for the t-shirt of the previous speaker and said he hadn't seen it prior to the speaker going on stage and mentioned a 'Twitter incident'

When the next speaker started half the audience were on their phones seeing what the 'incident' was. I found this very rude to the speaker who was speaking while lots of people were looking at their phones.

Turns out a person had left in the prior speaker posting on Twitter saying that they were 'shaking with anger' at the t-shirt and 'crying in the toilet'. They used the official conference hash so people could see. People began discussing and the person who was upset sent a lot of tweets about it.

I'm really in two minds about this. I don't think the t-shirt was great, but the guy said he was jet lagged and had come straight from the plane so maybe hadn't changed. I feel torn between the sides of a speaker wearing a sexualised t shirt on stage and what I see as a another person who I think has had gross overreaction that has cause upset for the conference runners.

I feel like the guy who ran the conference apologised as soon as he could and did what needed.

To further confuse me, the person who was upset then accosted the guy with the shirt outside and they had words. The person then tweeted that they had felt victimised by the shirt wearers language.

Really I just want some others perspectives on this incident as I am I two minds. I am all for (and talk actions to ensure) the progression of women in tech, but feel the slightly hysterical reaction to a t-shirt mire the message? What do you think?

@Teacuphiccup

I went to a Christmas party a couple of years back with a tech client I was working for, massive amounts of start up cash , run by two sleazeballs. I know, why was I working there huh, well a shit hot switched on zero tolerance woman made me do it. If we don't get in at the coal face there is no chance for anyone.

Anyway as the event progressed and everyone got very drunk it all got raunchier and I stood watching the Chief Legal Officer on the dance floor grab a very drunk junior young woman dancing with her back to him, by the crotch and grind his groin into her bottom with his had and fingers completely cupping her lower pelvis and vagina. This man should have been putting this drunk women into a taxi and paying for her to get home in his position as Chief Legal Officer.

I went home, and heard the next day that three women appeared later on a podium naked barring g-strings and smeared neon paint all over each others breasts whilst writhing.

The shit hot HR woman I worked for forced a written apology out of the CEO. The CLO was eventually fired.

Joining in with this baying of "hysteria" and "offended" and "PC gone mad" makes life really hard for me and the shit hot HR women that want to fix this, to fix this.

@Picassospaintbrush I can't speak for support and admin staff, but a major driver of academic pay gaps is the fixed-term contract culture that really punishes anyone who takes maternity leave or needs to settle in one place to raise kids. Part time positions offer less promotion chance as well, which again tends to hit women. It's great once you've got past that postdoc stage to a lectureship, but you need postdoc experience to become a lecturer and it's during the postdoc phase that women get left behind. There are also issues in some institutions with men negotiating higher salaries for the same work, but where institutions have adopted transparent pay grades, that doesn't happen.

Something that I do see distressingly often is postdocs working for free between contracts, to finish up a project or to continue with work whilst waiting for grant funding to come through. If you live cheaply and have savings, you can do this for a couple of months. If you have kids, not so much, and you end up quitting the research project to take a different job. If principal investigators would actually sort funding out on time to renew postdocs' contracts, this wouldn't happen.

Get a THE subscription for the duration of your consulting work (the employer might already have an institutional sub that you can use). THE has a lot of articles about this stuff.

@starzig I buy my OH t-shirts like this all the time. Complainer WAS being hysterical. A floral shirt will be giving people hayfever next.

Well you obviously aren't trying to work in a notoriously misogynist industry whilst having boobs. Would you be happy for your daughter to attend an industry event and see a presenter wearing such a shirt? Don't you see how that would put women and girls off working in that industry?

@Picassospaintbrush The shit hot HR woman I worked for forced a written apology out of the CEO. The CLO was eventually fired.

Joining in with this baying of "hysteria" and "offended" and "PC gone mad" makes life really hard for me and the shit hot HR women that want to fix this, to fix this.

All the flowers in my garden would not be enough to thank you.

three women appeared later on a podium naked barring g-strings and smeared neon paint all over each others breasts whilst writhing.

I think I mentioned BSD daemonettes upthread? Also www.flickr.com/photos/gisuser/112518409/ (nsfw, topless apart from body paint, at CeBIT). This shit isn't a bug as far as the men involved are concerned, it's a feature.

@metrorider
I have followed the conversation about this precariat situation in work including HE for years, I understand the structural stuff, plus I have been daily rate paid for 20 years now, as the main (only) earner.

I was also an OU - Open Business School Lecturer for four years when I was having babies, paid an hourly rate capped at x hours for y hours work 20 years ago. The maths made no sense. The OU has been trashed by the fees and loan fiasco

The model you describe exists in many sectors, it is subsidised by corporate welfare via income tax credits set up by Gordon Brown for the lowest paid, a fact which the last Health and Social care firm I consulted for had zero knowledge of, despite their entire business model and income being dependent on it. Another appalling story. I was actually invited to speak to a KPMG/Gov consultation on it but the old man I met in Portcullis House could barely keep his eyes open during the conversation.

I could go on and on. I would like to start a thread of women interested in examine this properly, the threads on gender pay gap get trolled sadly, so that is not the right title.

There is scope for joint business funded/HE research and I would be happy to engage on that.

Have we not yet reached the part where it's womens' fault a man wore a tit t-shirt to deliver a talk on gangland teen crime yet?

You know.. teens gangs encouraged by violent, misogynistic, sexually offensive music that degrades women..? Or is there going to be a denial that this exists?

Putting an idiot like that on stage is endemic re the problem of those who claim oh so earnestly to want to help, but get it completely wrong. They're so invested in being 'cool', and right of course, that their stupidity doesn't even occur to them.

You can guarantee they're swerved by many in the field they claim to be expert in, and they don't do the real hands on work. Privilege gives them an opportunity to get up on stage and chat shit.

OP I find it odd that you're a woman in tech but are struggling with how problematic his behaviour was. You must be aware of the everyday sexism. You must be aware of revenge porn. You must be aware of rates of sexual harrasment. And yet you are making consistent attempts to minimise how inappropriate the man was.
Are you a woman? Because if so, you are falling into the trap of siding with misogyny instead of calling it out.

you are falling into the trap of siding with misogyny instead of calling it out.

And it's the calling it out that gets you sobbing and shaking in the toilet. The OP has seemingly never challenged sexism before or they'd have way more empathy for the woman who had the courage to do so.

Google "PTSD trigger" and maybe you will be able to dredge up some empathy.

A t-shirt can trigger PTSD?
If a t-shirt results in "crying and shaking" I'd suggest that any job is too much and perhaps they should consider a job working from home

Thought provoking reading this thread.
My initial reaction was that while a boob tshirt is inappropriate in any professional setting, the way that he was called out seemed extreme.

However, I haven’t had to deal blatant sexism within my working life (well not very often) and I haven’t had to make a public complaint, like the woman in this case, so I hadn’t thought through what that must feel like. In addition to the fact that the digital/ tech industry seems to have a huge problem with misogyny and sexism

I'm utterly bewildered that any man would want to walk around openly advertising images they masturbate to. If shirts like that don't scream wanker, I really don't know what else does.

I have worked in tech for 25 years. If a speaker had worn that t shirt I would have stood up and walked out and then spoken to them about it.

That shit isn't acceptable. I probably would have tweeted about it too. This is sexism and needs calling out every time.

I'm not too interested in her reaction. Sometimes things like this are the straw that breaks the camels back. Maybe it was her last straw.

What a knobhead. He knew what he was doing wearing it. Why would you even buy or keep such a t shirt anyway.

I dont appreciate the tone of some posts, "hysteric pmsing dramatic woman vs poor jet lagged interesting innocent geek". Its pure misogyny. He wore it because he felt he could.

In fairness a couple of others tweeted about the shirt along the lines of eye rolls/is this still acceptable?/who thought this was ok? Way

The medium IS the message. The fact is that he chose to wear that t-shirt and disrespect every female in that audience.

That image is much worse than I thought it was going to be....

I'm especially bothered by an element in the original story, per the OP. The presenter apparently brushed off the shirt, citing he had flown in and didn't have time to change, rather "forgetting" he was wearing the item. If this indeed the case, I find it more troubling than if he had purposefully worn the shirt.

I get that sometimes men and women try to be "edgy," (we used to say "cool"), and push buttons to be provocative, seem far more interesting than perhaps they really are. I could definitely see a young, somewhat geeky male presenting at a tech conference thinking along those lines. If that's the case, it was wrong, he clearly showed incredibly poor judgment, the issue should be addressed and it is hopefully a learning experience for all about the importance of speaking out about what is right, choosing professional attire, etc.

However, if alternatively he really does just wear shirts with creepy semi-prepubescent naked females on them regularly, such that it was no big deal or NEVER CROSSED HIS MIND that this might be inappropriate, we have a bigger problem. His likely porn-soaked brain is so used to seeing women in such extreme states of humiliation and abuse, that a mere naked woman means nothing to him. Why would he even think twice about this shirt when he knows that a good majority of the attendees probably have far more graphic images right there on their phones?

The hypersexualization of our culture is fueled by porn. I am getting so damn sick of it. I get harassed for breastfeeding at the zoo and this fucker gets a free pass. NOT OK!

His move was intentional and it seems to me, aimed at making a point to every woman in the room. THAT is how that man sees women- as sex objects laid out on his bed. The intellect of every woman in that room was being dismissed by him and every woman in that room should have been offended by it.
How much more powerful the message he got would have been if every woman in there walked out and refused to accept it.

He humiliated you all OP and you let him.

Metrorider. It would absolutely not bother me for my daughter to see a man wearing a t-shirt like this. As I said her dad has plenty. It doesn't put me off and unless she somehow becomes an overprecious twat growing up, it probably wouldn't put her off either.

The way I see it, if you're asking yourself if the problem in this scenario was the woman's reaction then you are essentially a lobster that's already in the process of being boiled. You've gotten used to the misogyny that permeates the tech industry gradually, and now you're used to a level that would make women outside that industry say "WTF? This is unprofessional and unacceptable". Since you are used to it and you've most likely given up on the hope of the men around you not acting like the scene in Revenge of the Nerds where the nerds go on a panty raid at the sorority house you're attempting to find a way to mitigate the worst effects of their behavior by dividing yourself and other women into the Cool, Reasonable ones who can take it to an extent and the Hysterical Wimmins who just overreact to everything and make you look bad.

This is a sign that the misogyny has already seeped deeply into your view of the world, and other women's reactions here are attempting to help you recalibrate your perspective in a way that holds men responsible for their behavior and doesn't throw other women under the bus. Whether or not you take those suggestions on board is up to you.

How on earth do women these days expect to feel empowered when people like this constantly undermine equality by acting like a stereotypical whinging, easy upset, fragile, precious women . Can nobody see this does more harm than the t-shirt in the first place. I definately don't want to work in a place where men are having to tiptoe around women.

And behold, the fully boiled lobster.

Also, I'm so glad he was called out. We have to find the courage to speak up when it matters.

I have some butcher block counters at home. One area is so heavily stained by coffee and tea that when my son took a brown Sharpie to it and drew Spiderman, I hardly noticed and didn't say anything. Mama was not so cool several days later when the same stick figures appeared in red Sharpie on my antique Stickley sofa. My husband, ever the pragmatist, suggested that my son might not have continued with his art displays had there been a hefty consequence earlier on.

Some may think this shirt is not that bad. Others may say it's in poor taste, but defend his freedom to wear what he wants. I say, no. I'm done with free passes. This is misogyny. Name it. Call him out. Hold him accountable. If we do so, maybe he and others learn something and we change our culture.

@starzig It would absolutely not bother me for my daughter to see a man wearing a t-shirt like this. As I said her dad has plenty.

I pity your daughter that her own mother supports her objectification.

It doesn't put me off and unless she somehow becomes an overprecious twat growing up, it probably wouldn't put her off either

So rape victims who are sick of being reminded that some men think they are sex objects are "overprecious twats"? There's a special place in hell for complicit handmaidens like you.