But that ad was beyond sexist. It was totally inappropirate.

If that’s what they have to do to get a sale, then perhaps they should re-think thier product?

Of course pleia2’s right on one thing: if a publisher promises one or more reader(s) not to publish a certain kind of ad or content again, he should keep that promise.

I just wish he didn’t promise you that. If I were a reader, I might just ask him to apologise for the apologie. Then again, maybe I don’t care that much.

We simply disagree on the point of whether it’s sexist.

My reaction when i saw the ad was “oh noooo” i wasn’t shocked, sex is natural-fun and a part of relationship between alduts.
But i couldn’t believe that a modern company could use such old mecanism of advertissement.

Guess what the wanted to shock with this, and they pass.
We now all know the name of their company.

It isn’t sexist, but yes it’s shocking
It won’t help us to get more women coming to computing and FLOSS but it’s not about reducing you as an object.

Just don’t pay attention next time, time will tell that those kind of ad won’t work in the future …

nyahah!

If I don’t like an advertisement for whatever reason (whether you or anyone else respects my opinion and experience or not), I complain the company and don’t buy from them. That’s business too.

But when it boils down to it, my primary point by posting this is that the president of the company broke a promise. If you want to do business with a company that doesn’t keep promises that’s perfectly fine with me, but I won’t.

As for the “objectification of women” argument, I don’t really buy it. It’s an advertisement. She’s a model. In the abstract sense, yes, she’s an object. But so is anyone else who models for an advertisement. You don’t get the backstory for that guy in the Gucci sunglasses ad, do you?

(Successful) Advertisements are designed to be attention-getting. To that end, the contents of an ad are props. Be they a bowl of fruit, a flashy car, or an attractive human. Props, objects. Part of designing an ad is knowing the target audience, and ensuring that your ad will be looked at instead of skipped.

Would you argue with the assertion that the majority of this company’s target audience is straight white males with IT-decision-making responsibilities? QSOL’s agenda is to sell product, and in order to do that, they need to reach the largest number of people who could make a decision to buy their products. They try to do that by designing ads are are likely to be looked at by their target audience.

That’s not sexism; it’s business. Sure, they could have designed an ad to be completely sex-neutral, but it wouldn’t have been as attention-catching. They could have used a picture of some hunky guy instead, but given the overwhelming majority of straight white males in IT, that would have been stupid.

I’m not unsympathetic to the plight of geek girls — I just hate to see misdirected energy. Self-righteousness is never pretty, and it’s definitely not fun.

It’s advertisements like this in tech magazines that further the stereotype that computing is for men, not women. It compounds the idea that as a woman I am clearly not the target audience. I should probably give up on tech entirely and resume my accounting career, or, better yet, just get back in bed.

Many people not intimately familiar with issues facing women in IT might not know this, but many women have left IT because of the overwhelming feeling that they don’t fit in, are constantly reduced to sexual objects, and are discriminated against mercilessly. I would like to see MORE women get into IT and things like this don’t help at all.