If you can not agree with me, go back and check your own flickr to see how many booth babe photos in your albums.

Indeed, the performance is no problem, the problem is performers overdo I think.

However, in my post. I simply ask you to see this thing in a different angle as native. I am saying in the local distorted culture, that’s common. The SG and dancing girl are hired as professional like programmers, to deliver their works.

And it becomes so, mostly because the sick media culture. Most of these media may report the debate and also promote other IT event with SGs at the same. And hire SG for IT events has been accepted as kind of popular culture, which can not be denied.

And even local female programmers are getting used to it (sadly). The lap dancing is more like a result for satisfy the media, the local people might see it naturally only for marketing benefit. Before Simon Willison covered this, all the local news are only reported this event with a SG in photos.

It’s a big PR mistake for Yahoo as global company. But it’s even big mistake for the local feminism communities who has been ignored this for years.

Imagine, men, if you were at a tech event, and there was a woman emcee who kept cracking jokes which had lines like, “You know how your boobs get sore right before your period?”

Or that instead of giving away XL t-shirts with the name of the sponsors on it, gave away bras with logos? Or if the entertainment consisted of male strippers? You would pretty quickly start to feel like you were not in the right place.

[D]on’t blame Yahoo, it’s totally not an issue of sexism of the event, you idiot. It’s about the sicked (local and global) media.

Are you saying that an event isn’t sexist if it simply doesn’t intend to be? Behavior does not extend from intention alone. Regardless of how innocent Yahoo’s intentions might be, I think an event that featured sexualized portrayals of one gender and not another in a context that, as you say, is completely inappropriate to do so (I would get annoyed if I was coding for hours and someone told me to get up and dance, too), is sexist.

Whether you were offended is not is another matter. (Sexism !== offensive) evaluates to true, but (innocent intent !== non-sexist behavior) also evaluates to true.

Please go fight with them if you think the media is sexism, and many Taiwanese is already doing so.

I think by speaking up about the sexism that was displayed by Yahoo!’s actions, they are doing exactly that. How else would you have people protest the idea that objectifying women in the industry is inappropriate, if you don’t want to see them do so in the industry itself?