In tech industry-heavy cities, there’s a running joke that goes like this: “I have been displaced from my residence because rent has gone up 200 percent and insanely wealthy young tech workers are moving into my place.”
“Urr, what are you, stupid!? Just learn to code.”
Okay, it’s not much of a joke and it’s not even that funny, because it’s a little too close to reality for many people. But it’s often a punchline to many conversations about the tech industry.
Here’s another one: “There’s a fine line between clever and stupid.”
That leads us directly to CodeBabes.com, an offensive site making the rounds of the outraged today.
We’ve developed a revolutionary learning program that leverages sexual desire and turns it into the most powerful learning mechanism known ever known to mankind!
A self-proclaimed 50/50 entertainment and education site (“Learning doesn’t have to be boring :)”) that sits firmly on the stupid side of the previously-mentioned line. Code Babes claims to teach the basics of HTML, PHP, CSS and other coding practices whilst scantily-dressed women promise to become more scantily undressed as you progress.
Is this satire? It’s incredibly tone-deaf for satire, and from a tone-deaf industry that brought the world a cringe-inducing apps like Titstare, and meat heads like Tony Shih and Pax Dickinson, probably not. Code Babes states that all the women on the site have CS degrees or equivalents.
If we’ve offended anyone, well, let’s just say there are bigger problems in the world to worry about.
That familiar verbal version of someone putting fingers in his ears comes from Code Babes’s philosophy page.
feminism in tech remains the champion topic for my block list. my finger is getting tired.
~ Pax Dickinson (@paxdickinson) September 9, 2013
That tweet, and many more like it, cost Dickinson his job as the Chief Technology Officer for Business Insider. So, acting like a sexist jerk on the internet can have offline repercussions.
Is this sexist? Why is this even a question, I don’t even!? Yes. Would this be less sexist if hot guys were offered as choices along with the women? There’s a whole discussion to be had there about if the act of offering equal time for all sexes in something that’s clearly using sexuality to sell a product makes something less or more offensive. It’s not a discussion that’s happening though, because the option isn’t currently being offered, to no one’s surprise.
What happens next? That depends on the response by the public and other tech media. For now, it’s not looking so good for Code Babes.
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