Yahoo! leaders and bloggers have roundly criticized and roundly blasted these events as being demeaning to women and inappropriate for a corporate venue - I wholeheartedly agree with both of these points. When I did a little deeper, it's interesting how this raised questions of cultural sensitivity and relativism.
One of the attendees cited in article, Simon Willison wrote in his blog:
I’ve heard arguments that this kind of thing is culturally acceptable in Taiwan—in fact it may even be expected for technology events, though I’d love to hear further confirmation. I don’t care. The technology industry has a serious, widely recognised problem attracting female talent. The ratio of male to female attendants at most conferences I attend is embarassing —An Event Apart last week in Chicago was a notable and commendable exception.
Let's just say for argument's sake that what Simon says is accurate - that Taiwanese trade shows and events feature scantily clad women and it's culturally accepted, but it's morally wrong, so it should cease. Or put another way "I don't care what the local cultural norms are, I'm going to impose my value system upon others because I'm clearly right and it's good for the industry. By the way, the 'civilized' people in the United States do these events right."
To be clear, I don't think Simon is being culturally insensitive (in fact, I agree with him 100%) but I think it's interesting how some of his sentiments, just used in a different context, can often be blasted as bigoted, Western-imperialist, arrogant, and culturally narrow.
Tough to do unless there's some sort of universal objective moral worldview, such as, let's say Christian ethics centered on a biblical foundation. But ironically, liberal-minded secularists who rightfully condemn sexist and women-objectifying acts would rather self-immolate themselves before submitting to a defined moral standard. I guess they'll have to settle for arbitrarily imposing their arbitrary values on people who don't agree with them. They've ironically become the people they think they hate most.
As for the Taiwanese, what concerns me is that they're being targeted unfairly as sex-crazed weirdos, or somehow more deviant than other cultures. The last time I visited the motherland in 1999, I vaguely recall passing by these weird roadside barber shop-looking things which were fronted by scantily-clad women (my father had trouble articulating what these were - maybe he just didn't know). But was this any worse than New York City, Tokyo, or Amsterdam? Seems to me that sex is prevalent all over. But to be fair, I haven't seen lap-dances at any recent conferences I've been to.
Maybe it's a techie thing.
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