Misogyny in Mexico’s Tech Scene

This week, my city is the host for the Campus Party, a technology festival that is the most popular tech happening in Latin America. This is, for the most part, a great event. Our tech infustry is not very big, and our community is tight but scattered, so we cherish every chance we got of gathering.

Sadly, two two horrible things happened yesterday:

In the morning, MiPC, decided that the best way to advertise their crappy computer shops is the crass objectification of women. One would think that, in light of the recent controversies around booth babes in tech, the organisers would take a clue. Nope, they took it to the next level instead.

But, if this incident was not horrible enough, that same night an awful talk titled “Hacking Women” was presented. A sorry pickup-artistry attempt disguised as life-hacking advice.

If you don’t read spanish, this are the points in the slide at the left:

• Don’t try to understand the woman… (just love her)
• Women don’t even understand themselves.
• The only constant with women is that they are extremely variable.
• Personal hacking methodology can be applied to every thing, activity and person [smiley]
• Be and behave like an alpha male.

How offensive is this? I don’t even bother with the second slide. But do you see the logos? those are government logos. This dude works for the government.

I don’t want to berate the work of Campus Party. I’ve been invited to talk in past years and the sheer size and quality of the event is impressive. If fingers has to be pointed, I think the community is at fault.

People, we need to regulate ourselves. If we want to achieve greatness we need to up our standards.