Yahoo! Brings in Lap Dancers for Taiwan Hack Day
Tech Giant Yahoo covering their tracks and writing up hasty apologizes after their recent Taiwan Hack Day event featured a lap dancing number that resulted in a spate of bad publicity.
Hack Day, which was hosted on 17-18th October, is a much-hyped about affair where developers and coders mingled to talk about emerging trends in the IT field as well as indulging in events like the creation of a net application in 24 hours.
However, innovative web-based applications was not the talk of the day when pictures of this coding weekend was made public over the internet.
A number of folks were outraged when they discovered that developers were taken on stage and offered lap dances by women in skimpy outfits.
The main objections from the opposing front was that because of this women coders, especially ones present at Hack Day, would feel unwelcome. Some in this group also asserted that such incidents were insulting to women in general.
On the other hand, there were a large percentage of the public who were dismissive of these objections, stating that these objections were an overreaction.
In the end, because of the furor surrounding the event, Chris Yeh, a spokesperson for Yahoo penned an apology on the Yahoo Developer Network.
“As many folks have rightly pointed out, the “Hack Girls” aspect of our Taiwan Hack Day is not reflective of that spirit or purpose. And it’s certainly not the message we want to send about our values here at Yahoo!. Hack Days are about making everyone feel welcome, including women coders and technologists,” Yeh said.
Incidentally, folks keeping tabs on Hack Day alerts have pointed out that this was the second year in a row when Hack Day has offered jiggling entertainment.
By shinigami on 27-10-2009
Comment by Bob
October 27th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Man, those Taiwanese coders are lucky! Corporate sponsored lap dance? You don't get that here in the US. hahaha. I think next time, to be fair to the many fine ladies who work in IT (and who might attend this event), they should get some male entertainers too. Nothing wrong with rewarding hard working geeks with some fun during an event designed for them anyway. Heck, knowing geeks and nerds, that lap dancer was probably the first real woman that went anywhere near many of them in a long time. I'm sure they mingle with girls (real or fake) and might have some online girlfriends/relationships, but having a real warm blooded woman dancing in your lap, in the real world, now that gets the blood pumping. hahaha
-from an IT geek who is now married to a real woman I met online.
Comment by Freddy
October 28th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
doesn't seem so bad… in the west it's very taboo, but Asia is a totally different place. What's done in fun is just that, as long as no one gets hurt! Here in Thailand I work as a performer and have been to countless private parties for businesses or high-society people (high enough to afford various performers for their parties anyway). Oftentimes there are scantily clad female singers and dancers. Sometimes there are sexy "coyote" dancers (as in Coyote Ugly). And every once in a while there's strippers or even a naked "fashion show"! The same is true for most major clubs. At first it was shocking to me to see how much some of the women enjoy these shows. If not more than the men, they sure show it more. And yes, I've also seen the male version of this, although it's far less common. Maybe that would be the appropriate solution to this problem, just have both sexes offering the opposite sex sexy dances. Yeah! Sexuality should be celebrated, not shunned!
Comment by fdfafa
October 29th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Why women coders would not like also a lapdance ?
Comment by Mr X
October 31st, 2009 at 12:08 pm
ugh, the west is so saturated by feminism.
i'm a liberal 20 something male and so long as nobody is getting hurt or the women were forced into doing the lap dances then whats the problem? so long as a guy in Asia looks after his wife she could be the best wife ever. unfortunately dudes in the west took their doting wives for granted and this was a contributing factor the feminism movement.
Comment by Sara
November 2nd, 2009 at 9:44 am
The problem is it only caters to the male coders which furthers the stereotype that the only people who work in this industry are male. Like Freddy and Bob said, it would be fine if they got some male lap dancers to cater to the female coders. Feminism is the struggle for equality, sorry if that ruins your male privilege fun…
Comment by Noona
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:51 pm
I agree with Sara. Men who have a problem with feminism are just sore about their loss of being able to mistreat and abuse women. You think feminism doesn't exist in Asia? Think again. There are a lot of feminist movements which were not fomented by western feminist groups, these were groups that advocated feminism created within Asia to save women from prostitution, human trafficking and inequality.
Comment by Casey
December 4th, 2009 at 9:55 am
They probably only did this for the men, I didn't see any male strippers
Comment by Casey
December 4th, 2009 at 9:58 am
This is gross. I bet a lot of those guys were married. People should do this on their own accord, the fact that the company sponsored this is really disgusting, the fact that there weren't any male strippers makes it worse. Yahoo already tried to ban sexual content from its auctions then they pull shit like this? They're fucking hypocrites, IM GLAD I USE GOOGLE SEARCH!!!!!
"Men who have a problem with feminism are just sore about their loss of being able to mistreat and abuse women." >> well said.