[Please note: Sam has posted an updated/corrected edit of this comment below. Leaving this one in place to keep us all honest—Brock, June 6, 2012]
There's no way you have a right to demand that someone at a Drupalcon booth provide you with proof of employment (where are your papers!?!?!), so that's not actually a good criteria.
First of all, no one said that any arbitrary individual should go to a booth and ask anyone for papers and the idea that this is all that could be employed is less than imaginative. This is just rhetoric that you are creating and these are straw men for you to attack. You never asked me for what I would suggest we do, and I get to that below. From your ramblings, it's difficult to tell whether you are against the concept of booth babes, or against the implementation of any rules against them as that would be sexist.
I can put words in your mouth about why I think you or your company might be interested in hiring women to sexually coerce men into showing interest for your products or services. And if this is not the case, then there must be some other reason other than purely altruistic ones of why you would choose to go on a crusade about this. However, I will not delve here. Whether I am sexist, which is a rhetorically loaded term, or not, is irrelevant because we don't even know what that means and no the Wikipedia article is not the authority on sexism and neither is a feminist college professor – everyone has their own biases and takes on the issue. What matters is that the issue is understood well enough for someone to have an opinion on it. Your style of argumentation has not be conducive to that.
Personally, I don't see any difference between your rhetoric and that which would provide justification for any business to employ other people in a similar direction as it's a slippery slope. I mean why stop at booth babes, I think I want to bring strippers to the next DrupalCon. Now it's probably the case, Alex, with your ideals there is definitely a point to which strippers are okay, perhaps if they leave on pasties and the thong that would be acceptable behaviour and I also have absolutely no right to ask them what they are they doing there. And why stop at strippers, let's go all the way and bring prostitutes to Drupalcon to serve the needs of nerds and then argue for the fact that no one has the right to ask them about what their commercial relationship is to the event. These are all jobs, we're talking about here.
And yes economic coercion is a job, that's how I meant it. There are socio-economic reasons why people end up in these professions, there may also be personal choices involved. There are also some theories that attempt to justify the idea that a job given to a booth babe might go to someone more qualified if the company had not spent the money on a booth babes and it makes sense – an actual developer may still market the product without using sexual coercion, and that's a different game to play than a booth babe. And really that's what we want to encourage, for more women to be in the actual business of Drupal, rather than in the business of looking pretty and sexually exciting men in the public sphere to increase their interest in the product -- men who they have no sexual interest in whatsoever. And that's the rub. To economically coerce people to be sexual objects, is sexist in some people's books -- but your definition runs counter to that; most likely because your argument is that being a booth babe is a personal choice, and to deny them that would be sexist. That's really where the divide is. The truth is that either position is a simply a theory, you may be sexist either way. And that creating an economic environment changes people's behaviour – so we have these memes about fuck it, I'll be a stripper: see http://memearchive.net/memerial.net/2564/ill-be-a-stripper.jpg .
Another consideration outside of general economic freedom is a question of harassment. At some point people visiting the event are going to feel harassed by other people's actions because they may not have come to be sexually stimulated. We choose our venues, for instance going to a strip club or not depending on what we want. By saying anything goes, you take that choice and personal freedom away.
It is simple to put a policy in place that says if a company employs someone in such a capacity they, the company and not the individual, will be banned from exhibiting at DrupalCon in the future. Now you could be totalitarian about this and police it, but why bother. The policy is in place, and you take it on good faith that people are not going to violate it. It much like the law, there are all sorts of laws on the book that are extremely broad with harsh punishments, but most of the time they are not enforced. Once in a while it's so blatantly obvious that it's easy to bring down the hammer and solve the problem. The point is to foster a culture that is about business, commerce, and development. Not about sex and marketing, at least that's my position on it. I do not want a sexualized public sphere and I want policies that try to encourage companies not to do that. Not to make people feel harassed for the way that they dress. And again if in the case where it's obvious, and we are wrong, like I said it's easy enough for the organisers to ask them for them to disclose the nature of employment relationships with the company -- privately and confidentially. To me it's no more than saying all visitors must declare if they are visiting for a company and what's their role with the said company and I have no problem disclosing that to anyone and would not feel harassed if so asked.
There's no way you have a
[Please note: Sam has posted an updated/corrected edit of this comment below. Leaving this one in place to keep us all honest—Brock, June 6, 2012]
First of all, no one said that any arbitrary individual should go to a booth and ask anyone for papers and the idea that this is all that could be employed is less than imaginative. This is just rhetoric that you are creating and these are straw men for you to attack. You never asked me for what I would suggest we do, and I get to that below. From your ramblings, it's difficult to tell whether you are against the concept of booth babes, or against the implementation of any rules against them as that would be sexist.
I can put words in your mouth about why I think you or your company might be interested in hiring women to sexually coerce men into showing interest for your products or services. And if this is not the case, then there must be some other reason other than purely altruistic ones of why you would choose to go on a crusade about this. However, I will not delve here. Whether I am sexist, which is a rhetorically loaded term, or not, is irrelevant because we don't even know what that means and no the Wikipedia article is not the authority on sexism and neither is a feminist college professor – everyone has their own biases and takes on the issue. What matters is that the issue is understood well enough for someone to have an opinion on it. Your style of argumentation has not be conducive to that.
Personally, I don't see any difference between your rhetoric and that which would provide justification for any business to employ other people in a similar direction as it's a slippery slope. I mean why stop at booth babes, I think I want to bring strippers to the next DrupalCon. Now it's probably the case, Alex, with your ideals there is definitely a point to which strippers are okay, perhaps if they leave on pasties and the thong that would be acceptable behaviour and I also have absolutely no right to ask them what they are they doing there. And why stop at strippers, let's go all the way and bring prostitutes to Drupalcon to serve the needs of nerds and then argue for the fact that no one has the right to ask them about what their commercial relationship is to the event. These are all jobs, we're talking about here.
And yes economic coercion is a job, that's how I meant it. There are socio-economic reasons why people end up in these professions, there may also be personal choices involved. There are also some theories that attempt to justify the idea that a job given to a booth babe might go to someone more qualified if the company had not spent the money on a booth babes and it makes sense – an actual developer may still market the product without using sexual coercion, and that's a different game to play than a booth babe. And really that's what we want to encourage, for more women to be in the actual business of Drupal, rather than in the business of looking pretty and sexually exciting men in the public sphere to increase their interest in the product -- men who they have no sexual interest in whatsoever. And that's the rub. To economically coerce people to be sexual objects, is sexist in some people's books -- but your definition runs counter to that; most likely because your argument is that being a booth babe is a personal choice, and to deny them that would be sexist. That's really where the divide is. The truth is that either position is a simply a theory, you may be sexist either way. And that creating an economic environment changes people's behaviour – so we have these memes about fuck it, I'll be a stripper: see http://memearchive.net/memerial.net/2564/ill-be-a-stripper.jpg .
Another consideration outside of general economic freedom is a question of harassment. At some point people visiting the event are going to feel harassed by other people's actions because they may not have come to be sexually stimulated. We choose our venues, for instance going to a strip club or not depending on what we want. By saying anything goes, you take that choice and personal freedom away.
It is simple to put a policy in place that says if a company employs someone in such a capacity they, the company and not the individual, will be banned from exhibiting at DrupalCon in the future. Now you could be totalitarian about this and police it, but why bother. The policy is in place, and you take it on good faith that people are not going to violate it. It much like the law, there are all sorts of laws on the book that are extremely broad with harsh punishments, but most of the time they are not enforced. Once in a while it's so blatantly obvious that it's easy to bring down the hammer and solve the problem. The point is to foster a culture that is about business, commerce, and development. Not about sex and marketing, at least that's my position on it. I do not want a sexualized public sphere and I want policies that try to encourage companies not to do that. Not to make people feel harassed for the way that they dress. And again if in the case where it's obvious, and we are wrong, like I said it's easy enough for the organisers to ask them for them to disclose the nature of employment relationships with the company -- privately and confidentially. To me it's no more than saying all visitors must declare if they are visiting for a company and what's their role with the said company and I have no problem disclosing that to anyone and would not feel harassed if so asked.