Misogynist stereotypes on Valleywag

I don't care what Sandy Montenegro Littlefield is actually like; I don't know her, and I've never met her. Also, I am not intrinsically fond of superwealthy society people. Who knew that "Gentry" magazine even existed! Not me! Gentry. Wow. Weird. Lifestyles of upper class philanthropists; really beyond my comprehension - they're like aliens.

Anyway. Gossip is fun and I love to hear it. Dirty gossip is great. I would love to see Dirty Friendster with all the possible totally sophomoric sex gossip charts of who slept with whom and who just made out in the conference room.

That said, I think that Valleywag's post on Littlefield deserves to be called out on its misogynist rhetoric about Ms. Littlefield. The article says she "used to go to tech conferences in search of husband material" and, worse:

She'd arrive on her own and return on someone's private jet. She is absolutely gorgeous in person, but I don't think it took people too long to figure out she was a gold-digger.

I'd like to look at what stereotypes this gossip plays into and what reactions it can possibly evoke.

Here, who a woman sleeps with or marries is used to throw her competence as a tech executive into question. It is strongly implied that she is not a real geek, or maybe has no "real" skills at all other than her looks. When an article like this gets written, it also by association casts aspersions on all women in tech. Would this article be written about a man, a senior executive? Would there be any equivalent way to devalue and slander and ridicule a man?

It's very strange because while men are always whining about reverse sexism, and how everything should be genderblind and we should all just be human and be judged on our skills and not our gender... Then they whip out this sort of rhetoric and use it against women. The stereotypes are built in and waiting, ready to be used against any woman, from the most successful and visible to the least important. As women, none of us are immune to being objectified by exactly the sort of rhetoric used against Ms. Littlefield.

Notice the way that the quote above suggests that Ms. Littlefield habitually went to tech conferences alone and then left with different rich guys - and that she went to the conferences solely for the reason of wanting to pick up rich geek guys. And also implying that's how she got her jobs - by being a jet-set slut.

Again, I'm no expert on the upper class. But don't quite a lot of rich people work off their personal networks and backgrounds and friendships? The woman has an MBA from Harvard and she speaks five languages. What's so odd about her getting a good executive job? Didn't like 5 gazillion MBAs descend on Silicon Valley during the boom? Why shouldn't one of them be a multilingual cosmopolitan Guatemalan beauty queen from Harvard?

But no... instead Valleywag points to Montenegro's past achievements as a beauty pageant winner and the fact that she's from Guatemala as something further to objectify and sexualize her. Then they make fun of a newspaper article quoted on her homepage that calls her a "Latina who defies stereotype." (See Common stereotypes of Latinas for more explanation.) Hey, if you are a Latina who defies stereotype, and you're a successful senior executive in high tech, and a VC person and a bigshot international philanthropist, why not be proud of it? Valleywag evokes a stereotype in response, and stuffs her right back into it.

Waaah! Women in tech are toooooo sexay! That sucks! It ruins our whole homosocial male bonding geek guy thing! Get them out! Or, quick, give Sandy a reverse makeover, a pair of glasses with electrical tape on the nosepiece, and some penny loafers!

Everyone needs to keep in mind that when women, sluts or not, sleep with geek guys, it might just be because they like geek guys a lot. Sleeping with geek guys doesn't invalidate one's geek credentials. It's not like they have to be *rich* geek guys and the women have to be brainless bimbos going after their money. Trust me, geek guys, you are often super cute all on your own. It's the devastatingly sexy unhealthiness caused by hours of late night hacking, and how you get all passionate about open source, and the way that you probably got pushed around by those jock dudes in the locker room long ago. We love it. It gives you a mysterious aura, like consumptive bohemian poets from 1890 who smoked too much opium and thought they were in touch with the Divine. Heterosexual nerd chicks go for that kind of thing. It's completely natural.

Anyway, Valleywag tries to preempt any criticism by saying they don't really care, and they don't think Montenegro is "evil". Just mockable. Misogyny is automatically funny. Sexy women are automatically dumb golddiggers. We're supposed to read that post and laugh and nod knowingly... as if we know the type. Do we really? Or do we know them from the idiotic stereotypes made up by and perpetuated in Hollywood movies?

It's not uncommon for writers to evoke sexist and racist stereotypes for a cheap laugh. But not all of us are laughing when we read that stuff. Instead, we're pissed off and alienated. Or we might respond by laughing at the writers for their cluelessness.

Technorati Tags: ranting, women