Drupal Dork - drupalcon

Let's Talk About Sex

Brock — Mon, 28 May 2012 20:59:54 +0000

As it often is, sexism in the tech industry was the topic of a lot of back-and-forth on Twitter this past week. It started with the revelation¹ that a modeling agency in Denver had been contracted to staff "booth babes" in the DrupalCon exhibit hall back in March, and continued (as it so often does) with debate over what behavior is appropriate at professional-ish industry events like DrupalCon.

The issue of "booth babes"² is the one that got under my skin the most, so let's talk about that. First, allow me outline my basic position on the issue:

I have no problem with sex. Sex can be a natural, zesty enterprise, but that doesn't mean it has a place at professional events.
I believe that the mere presence of "booth babes" is actively detrimental to the gender equality of any event or the industry in which it takes place.
I do not think a dress code for booth staff or event attendees is appropriate, nor am I convinced (yet) that this is a problem that should be addressed by an official code of conduct or exhibitor agreement or anything like that.

The problem with booth babes is simple: hiring sexy ladies to stand at a booth and attract men to it results in those men assuming that beautiful women in the booths are only there to attract them.

That's it. It's not some puritanical view of sex, as was suggested to me, nor a problem with sexiness, as was suggested to others.

I don't know why this is so hard to get one's head around. Booth babes are there only to sexually arouse men³ and draw them into the booth. They cannot answer questions about the product or provide deep information about it.

Their knowledge of the company or product is not the problem, though; the problem is that everyone comes to assume that the sexy ladies in the booths are just that: sexy ladies who don't know anything about the product. Women who are actually active in the community and industry (and who already have a hard enough time being taken seriously in said) are then brushed aside by those who assume that they're just there as eye candy.

This fact was driven home for me when I was talking to a guy at DrupalCamp Maryland a few months ago. The topic came up, and he proudly announced that when he's interested in a company in an exhibit hall, he'll walk straight past any women to the nerdy-looking dude at the back of the booth, figuring that he's the guy who actually knows what he's talking about.

He could not have made my point better for me, but I still had to slowly spell it out for him: this exactly problem. The women you walk past may well be the lead developer(s) on the product, but you assume they're just there as eye candy because of the fact that booth babes are around.

This is why some of the conversation on Twitter this week infuriated me so. It's not about any puritanical view of sex. It's not about being uncomfortable with sexiness. It's entirely about further marginalizing women in an industry where gender equality is a long-standing issue that needs to be addressed. There's no way that this is hard to comprehend, nor did anyone actually answer to this point on Twitter, so I can only assume that they would rather pretend that it's not a real issue.

The closest thing I got to a real response on this was the assertion that the person I was talking to had sexy guys at his booth, and I was being sexist for assuming that "booth babes" had to mean women.

Seriously, dude?

This point—and the long conversation that followed the next day, about what constitutes appropriate behavior among people who are attracted to others at tech events—points to an incredible blind spot that plagues members of our community who refuse to see this as a problem:

There is not gender equality in our world right now.

You can argue that it's sexist to assume that "booth babes" refers to women. You can argue from the position that men and women should be treated equally, and that women can hit on men just as men can hit on women, and there's no difference between the two. I can understand why one would take this position, from a logical standpoint, but it simply has no bearing on reality. Behaving as if we have achieved gender equality—and thus, that these issues do not exist—does nothing to rectify those existing inequalities. We can't just pretend that treating everyone equally will eventually make it so; it's going to take more than that.

As I noted earlier, I don't believe that an official code of conduct is the best way to address these problems: tech events should have one in place, but it will take more than that to make a real difference, and there are issues that cannot be adequately addressed by rules and regulations. For example, I was also told I was being sexist for proposing that women at these events should be held to a dress code, to prevent the kind of outfits that booth babes might wear. To be clear, I never proposed nor inferred this, but it indicates the problem with addressing this by official means: should there be a dress code in place? Should exhibit hall staff be limited to full-time employees of each company exhibiting? How can you regulate stuff like that?

I maintain that peer pressure is going to be a much more effective solution. We need to make it clear that we will not do business with the kind of company that thinks women are only good for attracting horny geeks to their booth. We need to call out colleagues who behave inappropriately, who make sexist jokes or harass other attendees or staff at these events. We need to explain—again and again and with small words when necessary—why "booth babes" and "booth dudes" are inherently unequal.

We'd all like to believe that gender inequality is a thing of the past, but people are so willing to demonstrate, time after time, that we aren't there yet.

DrupalCon Chicago

Brock — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 19:44:24 +0000

I know it's been over a week, but I'm finally getting caught up on sleep and email after Drupalcon.

This was my first DrupalCon - well, my first anything-con, really - and it wasn't quite what I was expecting. I don't mean that in a bad way: I just didn't really know what to expect, I guess, so reality wasn't quite what I was imagining. I had a lot of fun and learned all sorts of things, but I definitely learned some important lessons for next year.

Sleep more the week before the con. This one is obvious, and I even had fair warning that it would be a sleep-deprived week, but because of other projects I didn't get to stock up as much as I should have. Frankly, I got a solid 6 or 7 hours every night I was there, but there was so much going on all week that it was far more exhausting than a regular week at home.

Meet more people. My one disappointment is that I didn't get to meet more people. I did meet some new folks and spend more time with people I had met briefly at the DC Drupal meetup, but I was expecting to get to know a lot more people. When I arrived at the Sheraton on Monday, I wandered around the hotel a bit to see what was where, and found tons of people working on their latops. I thought that on that first day, everyone would be catching up with old friends and hanging out, not elbow-deep in code. I'm not sure how that observation really applies to my "meet more people" plan, but I'll have to keep it in mind next year.

Find more time for community. This one is less about DrupalCon specifically, and something that I need to focus on year-round. For DrupalCon specifically, I'd like to take part in more BoF's and get involved in more projects next time around. On the morning of the second day, Ben and I were talking about deciding between sessions that were in the same time slot, and he pointed out that we could attend one and watch the video from the other one after the con. That's when I realized, we could watch all of the videos later on, and spend the rest of the day in BoF's, since those wouldn't be taped and it was the only chance to experience them. I only wound up attending a few BoF's, but it was enough to show me that the sessions are for people that want to learn someting, while the BoF's are for people that want to contribute and get some work done. I definitely want to attend plenty of these next year.

Similarly, I want to make more time for the community in the time between cons, too. There is so much happening on groups.drupal.org and in the project issue queues, and I've barely scratched the surface in terms of involvement. I honestly don't know how anyone can keep up on groups, maintain a couple projects, and still follow conversations on IRC, but I would like to start including them at least a little bit.

Find more time to contribute code. I now have two contrib modules available on drupal.org, and would like to add more. There are a few other modules that I need to clean up and document before releasing them, and a couple more ideas that I haven't started yet. Furthermore, I know that I should be submitting and reviewing patches a lot more than I have been again.

For both code and community, I need to make more time: not find time, but make time. Something else is going to have to be displaced in order for me to do those things, and that's always the tough part for me. I had dinner a couple evenings with my coworkers at the con, and had an encouraging conversation with them the one evening. I'm hoping that we as a company can allow a little bit of time to contribute code and maintain some modules, but I know it's difficult to work that in around client work.

So: it was a good week. I learned a lot, both about Drupal, and about what I can be doing for Drupal. I hope that by the time the Denver con rolls around, I'll be a lot more involved and have a couple more modules under my belt - and certainly, I'll get more sleep beforehand.

DrupalCon Chicago Prep

Brock — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 05:49:27 +0000

I never did get around to writing anything about the Webchick Drupal 7 Tour after the Lullabots came through DC a few weeks ago, but at this point, DrupalCon looms much larger on everyone's mind.

I couldn't be more excited. Even though I worked for four years at an event management company, and handled on-site IT for several technology conferences during that time, I've never actually attended a conference. I started working with Drupal just a few months before San Francisco, so it was too late to make arrangements to go by the time I really got into the project, and I couldn't afford a trip to Europe for Copenhagen. But, I have spent the past year attending the Drupal meetups here in town and occasional training events (like the Webchick tour), and from everything I've seen, next week is going to be a big hotel full of 3000 people that I'd really like to hang out with. They say, "Come for the code, stay for the community," and it's true: the Drupal community is so much friendlier and more welcoming than that of any other open source project I've dealt with.

I think I'm just about ready to head to Chicago for the week. I definitely wanted to make time to get a module in contrib before DrupalCon, and I managed to post two. I know what sessions I want to attend. I figured out how to get to my airport here, and to the hotel in Chicago. This weekend, I'm going to knock out a good chunk of a freelancing project I've been working on so that I don't have to worry too much about that. The only thing I'm concerned about right now is striking a balance between the scheduled sessions, and the BOFs, code sprints, and other ad hoc goings-on that I don't want to miss out on. It's shaping up to be a pretty incredible week.

And now that it's nearly 1 AM, I should really get to bed and stock up on sleep, because I sure won't be getting any in Chicago.