I'd be inclined to give the author the benefit of the doubt, and take serious the problem she's chosen to flag. She's saying that the attitude of "lighten up" is a problem in and of itself. To say that the "meat of the problem" is something else is really kind of like saying "lighten up."
One thing would be to discuss, as a startup owner, how would one prevent this kind of thing happening in their startup. How to create a culture where women aren't treated like that so that highly talented women are more likely to join and stay. Or is this something that we shouldn't hope to achieve because nerds will always be like that?
Judging by other comments here (and recent sexism issues in tech), it seems like her treatment isn't an isolated case.
You simply assume that she is right, but you have only heard her part of the story. Obviously I don't want to defend the right to leer at work, but it seems impossible to accommodate everybody's preferences for a workplace. Therefore just raising one persons preferences above the preferences of all other people seems questionable to me.
For example in other sexism threads the ubiquitous Star Wars posters and stuff like that came up. Should Star Wars posters really be banned in programmers offices, just so that some more women programmers might feel more at home. I don't know...
>I don't want to defend the right to leer at work, //
This sort of thing is often in the eye of the offended though. Fat slob with a beer-belly and greasy hair glances at you - bleurgh, X is leering at you. Six-packed, chisel-chinned near-divine human that drives a Ferrari checks you out - phwoar.
>Should Star Wars posters really be banned //
Can anyone give a cogent argument as to how a film poster bearing fantasy sci-fi imagery is sexist aside from specific content like an image of a man with their top off that is intended to objectify them?
Your theory here is that being treated fairly and equally is some sort of quirky personal preference? How is that different than just telling her to lighten up?
