A user (I'll leave them unstated) deleted a reply with a metaphor along the lines of "what do you expect if someone wears a clown suit when speaking at a technical conference?" Well, here's her speaking at a tech conference, in "context-appropriate" attire that is neither skimpy nor a clown suit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt1OLgGIqhc In "She wears skimpy outfits sometimes", sometimes is really the operative word.
If you have the skills, it generally shouldn't matter what clothes you wear.
Even if you don't have the skills, it generally shouldn't matter what clothes you wear.
Like don't strap knives to your arms, and do wear a good mask, but generally we spend a lot of time policing other folk's bodies and attire, and for what?
Brains run on heuristics and shortcuts. A group of brains will develop shared signals to aid in that energy-conservation. They will then refine their signalling, ie contextual, implicit, misleading, covert, etc.
Some signals are loud and drown out more complex ones. "Sex sells." The more those types of signals are tolerated or incentivized on a platform, the further it will be dominated by noise masking covert signals.
I once attended a round table discussion in a previous job. The topic was women and work. I'm male, and was a manager, and figured that if half my directs are women I should do what I can to listen and support them.
Anyways, the guest of honor proceeded to advise the 100+ female managers in the room to, among other things, "use their assets" to influence people in the organization. This was met with a stunned but approving clamor.
I felt embarrassed, as if I had accidentally crashed a private sleepover. The person sharing the advice had a proven track record. Why hang onto sexuality signals? Because they work.
It depends maybe on the circles you interact with, but in some circles, people are not taken seriously which try too much to adhere to the conservative business dress code by wearing a suite with tie.
How developers dress really depends on the company and the culture there. E.g. in Germany in many of the conservative older companies, wearing a suite is mandatory, and esp also in all those consulting companies. Also in many of the privatized companies like Deutsche Post, Deutsche Bahn, etc. But then, in other more modern software companies, people would make fun of that.
The idea that you must adhere to some clothing dress code rules is really against the open-minded principles of software developers.
I mean if they are trying to make someone else like me wear formal clothes, yeah I wouldn't take them seriously. I wouldn't work for a company which polices what I decide to wear like that.
But if an individual just wear one themselves by choice, it's silly to judge them for that choice. Interviewing is hard, maybe they feel more confident in a suit.
I feel company culture should be less about someone's personal style/clothing/hobbies than if someone, for example, berates and yells at fellow employees who make a mistake or talks calmly through issues without treating others like they are the problem.
Right leaning software developer here. What are you talking about? Why do you think this has anything to do with political alignment? I find a suit as uncomfortable as anybody else. Dress code is more about public image in my experience than political alignment.
The use of "conservative" here doesn't seem to refer to political alignment. It is common to talk about "conservative business culture" and "conservative dress" to refer to cultural factors — exactly around things like expecting suits and ties. The parent post does not appear to be talking about politics.
> There is no general idea of conservatism though.
That’s just untrue and shows a misunderstanding of what conservatism is, which is about small gov and a return to the roots of said gov. While individual beliefs of how this should be achieved will very between the different nations, the general concept is the same.
See, that's the point. That's only _American_ conservatism. It's not what a CDU represents in Germany, nor what Die Mitte represents in Switzerland - both of which are decidedly conservative parties.
And Chinese politics seems to be even more difficult to talk about than Europe, and that's not even accounting for the fact it doesn't have democratic elections and has a one party system.
From the little I understand, it's complex and dynamic and opaque to the point that current scholars and US government entities studying China have difficulty explaining it; I'm not even going to try.
This has never been true and will never be true for one very important reason: limited attention span. No one has an infinite attention span, and there are many stimuli competing for our attention. Thus, when someone shows up looking like a hobo claiming to have discovered the secrets of the universe, or someone decked out like a bimbo wants to talk about their latest art project, people rightly tune out. That doesn't make them bad people, but it does mark the person trying to get their attention as being painfully unaware that having knowledge of rhetoric is not optional if you want to succeed.
What you wear when you're not trying to convince anyone of anything is your own business, but when you're actually trying to reach someone, maybe it's not asking too much to demonstrate some basic self awareness? If you're not willing to go that far then why should anyone listen to you?
Speak to feminist scholars. It's far more entrenched than that. We have numerous systems deeply entrenched in our model for society that encourage this, specifically against women. We create incentives for insecurity and then prey on it. Keeping women under a microscope, consciously or not, maintains the status quo in business, government, public spaces, etc and as you follow the path back, it almost always has roots I'm religious fundamentalism.
So, yes, insecurity but primarily insecurity about losing power and control, by men. That's why we focus so much on what "she" wears but nobody gives two shits if I show up to work in flipflops, board shorts and a tank top. Why would they? I'm a dude.
Feminist scholars do well at diagnosing the problem. but they're terrible when it comes to arguing for good solutions. They mostly talk about ideology, and let's not kid ourselves: ideology (divisive ideology, at that) is not going to improve women's self esteem or lower their insecurity.
I doubt you actually read any feminist scholars. If you did you'd realize that there's no way to characterize them as they are all over the map, especially since they can fall into so many disciplines (philosophy, literature, sociology, political science, history, etc).
Feminism has an extremely broad remit and it's all based on the idea that actual ideology routinely boxes in half of the population in some way or another. It's just a fact, and thus there is endless study that can be undertaken.
Depends on your position as a male. Barack Obama got made fun of for a tan/beige suit he wore once.
Men get made fun of for what they wear all the time. So, I don’t get this argument that no one cares what men wear because we all certainly do. See mens wardrobe options vs womens. Compare the two - look at what is normal for one and normal for another. You’ll see one has far more selection than the other.
Yes but those are memorable and we laugh at them because they stand out. The volume of hate we throw at women is orders of magnitude worse. We don't even really pay attention to how often we slut/fat/ugly/etc shame women any more.
I agree with you that attire doesn't matter, but we're currently in a swing of increasing conformity. Including (or maybe especially) in tech.
It doesn't look like the stereotype of conformity from our parent's generation, so people don't acknowledge it for what it is. Or think that conflict between subcultures with a handful of mutually exclusive standards for conforming somehow nulls it out.
I do know people who have taken swords to programming conferences, and I've personally been given a knife with a belt sheath for presenting at the same programming conference (possibly a different year). Admittedly neither the swords nor the smaller knives were strapped to our arms, just our waists.
I worked for two gay guys that had their office in a flat next to their home. Sometimes they'd forget which side of the partition they were on. In the beginning I was a bit flushed about this, after a while I didn't even notice any more.
It shouldn't matter to whom? The key here is advertisers don't want to be associated with that. You cab very well respect and accept her, but if a private corporation funding or hosting her videos has an issue with it we can't force them on moral grounds. That's policing other folks as well
Not that I know of, but I doubt any company will ever want to come out and say "hey btw we don't like revealing images of women associated with our product". It'd be something they request of their ad partners, in this case Google, and I'd imagine it'd be something companies would want to keep under wraps. No need to expose themselves to unneeded controversy.
But we do know that many companies do feel that way, which is why many companies try to create a "family friendly" image. And as Google has said themselves, why many don't want to be associated with "non family friendly" images
It's by far the most parsimonious explanation when anything halfway popular gets "demonetized". YT is a profit-seeking business, they're always going to work closely with advertisers. Content makers and users are secondary, almost nobody is paying for YouTube Red.
That doesn't mean that advertisers aren't allowed to try to create a family friendly appearance? They're still a private entity they can do what they want even if it makes no sense to others
