My point is: people (often, males) like to speak in the name of all women when it comes to Lena.
It’s offensive, it keeps women out of CS, it’s a symbol of the patriarchy, etc...
As woman, I am saying this is not the case, at least not for THIS woman: I’ve never felt excluded because of Lena, my CS studies were not impeded by Lena in any way, I have actually used Lena’s image for a small project.
Of course I would accept someone saying that the image offends someone (better if this point is substantiated by evidence) but I absolutely reject people speaking in the name of all women, an saying that Lena offends all women. This is not true!
Finding a person not offended does not mean an image does not contribute to a particular environment, or is an example of it. The image need not be offensive to most or even many for it to be true.
Also, be careful not to attack a strawman: the issue is of course not just the image.
As a man I experienced plenty of unpleasant conversation about women, conversation which might be referred to as men-talk or some such. Also, I'm not competitive at all, while many men would identify that as manly behavior. One of the few women in my university program confided that this (usually unfounded) self-assuredness was very annoying and a huge turn-off, a feeling we both shared, but would have been regarded as an essential ingredient to participating in that program.
Of course, such issues are also present in the reverse. My wife had similar conversations but about men amongst some female colleagues. Fortunately, we've met enough people to not have to settle for such juvenile views/conversations. I can absolutely see how a woman would find it very difficult to be comfortable in such an environment however, when I didn't even feel part of that mildly macho culture.
Just because something is 'anti-women', does not mean it can only bother women. Our cultures associate many things to gender, which in my view is a leftover of centuries past and we would do well to remove that sort of association. Maybe then, a picture of Lena wouldn't represent a (sub)culture so accurately and be therefore an indicator of the problem.
I have my evidence that Lena is not harmful to women, at least to this woman. It’s one data point, but better than zero.
You are making a much stronger claim without evidence. How is Lena harmful? How many women did Lena drive out of CS?
Do you have some proof, some data, besides neo-Marxist crap such a intersectionalized mysoginistic oppression?
It reminds me of that video that showed that college students are outraged by stereotypical Mexican Halloween costumes, but actual Mexicans are fine with it.
I don't have any hard stats, but I'm going to try to talk about my experiences. I took a programming class in highschool - it was almost all boys at the time. This resembles my programming classes in college, and the professional environments I've worked in. Crucially, none of us back in highschool had ever even heard of Lena when we signed up for the class, and I doubt very many of the girls who decided not to take it had heard of Lena either.
It feels to me like there's some deeper reason for the gender disparity in tech than Lena. I don't have any issue with changing the picture whatsoever - I'm sure we can find some other picture to use as a baseline (big buck bunny?). But I would be willing to bet that it will do precisely nothing to change the fact that there aren't very many women in CS.
I can think of many other factors that seem more plausible to me. Me and my friends were into minecraft - at the time, you installed minecraft mods by overwriting files inside the minecraft.jar. If you wanted to set up a minecraft sever, you were given some command-line program to run and you had to set up port-forwarding in your router. Just doing this stuff makes you more comfortable with computers, and makes the jump to "I want to start programming" seem much smaller than someone who has never stepped outside Chrome and MS Office. And PC gaming is much more popular among young men than young women, so this avenue of becoming comfortable with the computer is going to be much more accessible to men. Not to mention, if you like games, eventually you'll want to make one - I think every PC gamer has at least thought about installing Unreal and trying to make their dreams into reality. I think if we actually want to increase how many women are in CS (and nothing would make me happier), this is the kind of stuff we should be thinking about, not whether image processing programmers use a picture of an attractive woman with bare shoulders too often.
I don't think the argument I'd that stopping using Lena is a silver bullet. The argument is that the image reflects a particular culture, one that not only women, but women in particular on average find uninviting. Personally I have similar feelings about the sexy calenders in some car workshops. It's just a bit too much irrelevant display of ones preferences.
But is it appropriate in context? Is it welcoming? If you have a choice of jobs, is it the kind of environment you prefer?
Or is it contributing to an image of "we're a bunch of immature boys who think it's funny to use a Playboy centerfold, har har, wait till you hear the sexist jokes we tell at lunch".
It's not the end of the world. But a welcoming and inclusive work environment is the sum of hundreds of little things. This is one of those things.
And come on -- the old line "what's the matter, can't you handle a joke?" is the oldest line in the book for "defending" sexist behavior. Expecting women to just "handle something" is not the right approach. We can be better than that.
Depends on whether you would consider an image very similar to many, many others that get compressed to JPEG is "appropriate" (i.e. relevant, representative), or whether you are asking as a prude.
> Is it welcoming?
I can't see anything unwelcoming about that picture, at least not in any other way than many people's flattering profile pictures on social media. It's just a head of an attractive woman, shot by a professional photographer.
I guess the flip-side is that CS is so welcoming and inclusive that tech conferences will invite former sex workers and celebrate them. No slut-shaming from the techies!
I was referring to Lena being invited to conferences like IS&T's[0] or the ICIP[1]. At photos of both events she is rather older and more modestly dressed (unlike booth babes).
Unfortunately, your type of attitude is precisely the problem. You deny a problem exists, attack anyone who suggests fixing it, and resort to questioning character and intelligence.
I'm sorry that this topic is making you angry. But sometimes it's important to hear other voices. In your case, instead of making a wager, why don't you simply talk to some of your female friends. You don't need to "poll" them, just have a friendly conversation. Don't ask them whether they can "handle" it, but what they would prefer.
Your eyes might be opened.
I'm talking from actual diverse workplace experiences with issues like this. You don't appear to be, or else I don't think you'd be saying the things you are.
I don't suggest that you take my opinion as the final word, either. It's a complex issue, and nuanced discussion is necessary and should not be vetoed by a single voice.
And to be sure, I largely
agree with the woman in question: there are much bigger problems at hand. But as stated, the effort level required to discontinue using lena.jpg is zero.
My first programming job was for a media processing company, and we used the Lena image, and it’s origin was well known, and we were mostly young men so we all found copies of the entire shoot, and they were occasionally involved in office pranks. None of us learned it from HN/Reddit because those weren’t things in 2000.
I cannot imagine it was a welcoming environment for women.
As a woman in tech, it's actually the discussions surrounding this proposal that I find most telling. The use of Lena is a waterline. Most women (my personal standpoint bias) probably find it inoffensive at face value, and vaguely grating when they learn that it's a centerfold. It's a reminder of a time when porn in the workplace was rather common; one component of a baseline of inescapable sexual harrassment.
We've made progress, and sexual harrassment is less socially acceptable now. Some of us would like to erase that waterline, because it's a reminder of an ugly past. But what of the people, mostly men, who cling furiously to using that image? They make me uncomfortable, because it's an indicator of where they stand on pervasive sexual harrassment.
Unlike changing terms like master/slave etc, this is a zero-cost proposal (where those are very nearly zero themselves, but more pervasive). Replace the image with something that's got high contrast and color variation. I'd say you can even keep the old name so it won't impact your tooling.
I hope I can weigh in here as a woman (and I do not think my opinion carries any special weight). I don't mind the image, but I definitely do not cling to it - in fact, I wouldn't mind if it's gone at all, and I would treat as suspect someone who continually argues for its place in tech. Engineering is engineering, and porn is porn.
That doesn't stop the bizarre campaign linked in your post from being rather hyperbolic. The entire premise is that by removing this one image from common use, "millions of women" (their own phrasing in the trailer) will be empowered to pursue and feel welcomed in tech.
The presence of the image (some arguments can be put aside for a moment[0]) is a symptom, not (as far as I can tell) a cause. A campaign like this (and what methods and to whom it is addressed is not clear) would serve better to give a false sense of victory over sexism in tech. Getting the image unused isn't a "small win", I'd say it's detached completely from the battle. A total inversion of the problem, almost comically.
[0] Often people argue for things out of sheer principle, not caring much for the specifics of the matter. This is especially common, in my experience, in tech circles. However, there are interesting questions raised vis-a-vis the intersection of meaning, intention, and purpose. It is suspect to cling to 'original meanings' and intentions, and on the basis of that argument, some could well make the argument that the image is empowering as an inversion of traditional morality against sexual expression which still holds sway in conservative groups today. Just as a slave from the 19th c. would understand 'slave' in Git to refer to them, the Victorian puritan would consider the cropped Lena an abhorrent and obscene reference. They would be happy to see the terminology and image gone, but totally miss out on their situational context.
It's telling that you think this is something that would even annoy most women, especially in a professional non-dating context. The women I know would feel creeped out if someone did that at work. Honestly, even in dating if you're "racing" to open the door it looks desperate. When done naturally some women like it and some think it's archaic.
I'm sorry you have to endure such an antagonistic social environment. Where I live (midwest US), it's considered polite for all people hold the door open for all others, regardless of gender.
I'm a male and if I worked in a place where women sneered at me for holding the door for them, I guess I would start only holding the door for men.
Holding the door open for all genders is widely seen as polite and fine, for whoever arrives at the door first, man or woman. It's an optional courtesy.
Having a man "race over" to hold a door, and doing so because they're a woman where he wouldn't for another man, in a professional context, is creepy and weird.
Do you see the difference? What you're describing in the midwest is fine. But it's not what the parent was responding to. The "antagonistic social environment" with "women sneering" you're describing is a total straw-man of your own imagination.
It's not the picture itself that creates an obstacle. It's that emotionally-aware people want to go into a career where they like being around their co-workers.
So if they get the impression that many of the people in the field are completely tone-deaf about basic stuff, they start asking themselves questions like, "Since I have limited time on this planet, why would I want to spend it where a good percentage of the people around me are insufferable asshats?" And then they pick some other field. Not because they can't handle it. Because they know they can do better for themselves.
It is astonishing that we can't even agree that the photo is erotic.
Or that there's a meaningful difference between media you choose to consume for entertainment (which may be honest-to-goodness porn and that's _fine_) and irrelevant eroticism casually sprinkled in tech demos that don't explicitly involve sex.
I wish we could at least be real about the facts in evidence.
> Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit, qui inea voluptate velit esse, quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum, qui dolorem eum fugiat, quo voluptas nulla pariatur?
Translation: Who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
This text could very well be the first page of a softcore erotica (or even hardcore!). The rest of the text is not usually visible. But then again, neither is the rest of lena!
According to Wikipedia[0], "[t]he placeholder text is taken from parts of the first book's discourse on hedonism." The first book being the first book of Cicero's De finibus bonorum et malorum.
To be honest I'm sure it isn't erotica just as the Holy Bible is not despite verses like Ezekiel 23:20. I must also confess I did find the revelation a little amusing. It certainly says something about men (whether that's just the men of 70s from when both originate).
I would humbly note that, by volume, almost all of what generic lossy image compression algorithms are applied on, is in fact some form of erotica. A better compressor specifically in the domain of pornography—if widely applied—would probably do more to save total global Internet bandwidth usage than, say, better compression for YouTube videos would.
How about you respect women in tech more and stop assuming they're so fragile that they need men to change an industry so they don't get their feelings hurt.
