Honest question, I have not been at CES.

The number of female booth babes was in the hundreds each year.

No attractive people who are not experts allowed at your booth. You can only profit off of the approved set of genetic lottery traits.

Unbanning sex toys was a big step forward, but creating morality bylaws will inevitably result in, eg, women engineers (like me) being potentially harrassed for showing "unacceptable" skin.

We have been here many times before. Rules that mandate appearance requirements for women in the name of protecting women in general inevitably hurt some women in particular, and create a schism between women who can make money with their noodles and women who make money with, ahem, various other assets.

Banning making money by being attractive amounts to yet another wealth transfer away from vulnerable, often marginalized, women.

I stand with sex workers, and booth babes are just that.

Booth babes are not sex workers. They are generally actresses or models. The fact that people think they are sex workers is one of the reasons for banning them.

Of course, people should have every right to work in this way. But just because I don't judge a woman for being a stripper doesn't mean I wouldn't judge my employer for hiring one. It's unprofessional.

Of course, there's a whole continuum here - you could argue that a flouncy woman whose job is to turn over tiles on a game show (wordlessly, naturally) is also a sex worker. Rule of thumb - could an ugly woman get the job? If not, it's sex work.

Sex work is not a continuum. Sex work involves (a) sex or (b) deliberate titillation, which is what strippers do by removing their clothes and miming sexual acts. Booth babes and Vanna White do neither. To claim that they are even remotely similar to sex workers is, quite frankly, insulting to women because you're suggesting quite loudly that the mere act of performing activities in tight clothing constitutes sex work.

Comments like yours likening booth babes to strippers and sex workers is precisely why they are now banned from CES. Because too many people assume they are sex workers and not actresses/models who are just doing a marketing gig.

Their goal is to bring attention to their employer’s product by titillating passers-by.

That's the whole reason they are called “booth babes” and they are selected for their ability to succeed in that modality of attention-getting.

They don't generally wear revealing clothing and act provocatively just out of personal preference unconnected to their specific job duties.

They usually are (which is fairly specifically indicated by the label “babe” for the job) by common definitions of sex work (which include labor whose role is indirect, including visual, sexual stimulation as well as that involving direct sexual contact.)

> They are generally actresses or models.

Both acting and modeling overlap with sex work rather than excluding it.

Words mean things.

What you are uncomfortable with is adjacency, and it points to internal work you need to do.

Booth babes are not about sex positivity. Their presence does not correlate with sex positivity, and the people and industries that hire them are not sex positive industries.

Only the degree has changed.

It hasn't happened. Or, if there exists a counter-example, it very unambiguously hasn't happened at a scale that would imply equality.

So no. Since it's clearly a sexist practice, getting rid of it is more equal than leaving it.

The point of a tech conference is to enjoy exciting new tech and network with people in the industry. Having your sex appeal cast in stark relief to a bunch of models is not part of that.

I can see the history as proceeding like this: finance (and similar industries) used to have a Mad Men style sexist office culture. Then PC rules and HR regulations moved in to make the office a neutral ground. Then the power brokers moved the serious networking old boys' club to the 'after dark' part.

I can't say the goal of this was to exclude women from power all along, but that's the effect of it.

It's not a clear-cut win/loss either way on the whole, sure. But there's no way you can argue that it's not a sexist practice as it exists right now. What you do with that info is always a tradeoff, and I suspect we're on different sides.

... that's a fairly unfortunate context to misuse "literally" in.

(insightful comment though)

I think you should spend some time learning what "virtue signaling" means before you use it again.

I bet all the people presenting products are still attractive models and salesmen though, so to an extent they're still using sex to sell things just in a less titillating manner.

And why is it bad to use sex to manipulate a customer into buying an item, but it is good to use free samples or pretty pictures to manipulate a customer into buying the same item?

Deriving cultural moral values from first principles is hairy :/

Or was it just a way to appeal to straight males in the attendance while reminding everybody else that they are not supposed to exist ?

Not to mention that in an industry that is already pretty sexist, re-enforcing the idea that women are just a pair a tits is just what is needed.

It's for selling sex tech, and against using appeal to sex to sell not-sex tech. So, it'd both more for sex and more for honesty.

Can anybody explain what they mean in this sentence? Clothing that "hugs genitalia"? Is it to ban the tight trousers for men or tight trousers in general or what?

I'm not taking a position for or against, simple observing the seeming contradiction...

Besides, it's not possible to ban "booth babes" -- how can you tell if it's a paid model or just an attractive company employee? And if they banned paid models the companies would just hire them.

Banning suggestive clothing? I mean, OK, congrats, I guess. Not sure how much of a difference that will make. A model is still a model, even in a pantsuit.

Suggestive by whose standards? I wonder if the CES dress code will end up being more conservative than that of a university campus or even your average tech company.

EDIT: the TechCrunch article quotes CES policy:

> Booth personnel may not wear clothing that is sexually revealing or that could be interpreted as undergarments. Clothing that reveals an excess of bare skin, or body-conforming clothing that hugs genitalia must not be worn.

This is less draconian than "body-hugging or suggestive clothing" led me to believe.

Ummm, where is the proof that any of these sex techs are good for human health?

Where's proof that every other consumer electronic is good for anything?

Found the name for my new AI-powered sex robots startup. Who's in?

Has that ever been a CTA requirement for the health and wellness category? If not, why should it be for sex tech in th category?

You might as well be quoting "But the magical fairie text says...".

Also, there are many different "Christian" traditions, it's not a single homogenous group. Also, are they not allowed to evolve and improve over time?

>magical fairie text

The Bible was not written by magical fairies, but by regular people.

>it's not a single homogenous group

True, but most of the teachings remain the same throughout the different denominations. Sexual immorality is condemned constantly throughout the Bible, both in old and new testaments.

>are they not allowed to evolve and improve over time

Yes, Christianity has evolved over time. If by improve, you mean turning things that are sins into things that are not, then I will disagree and say that you can not do that. You can not simply go against God's word. If God said that something is a sin, you can't just reply back that it's 2019 and He should get with the times.

Why? It's just a random work of text. There are several variants of it, and other people like theirs better. Why should yours get special treatment?

You can assign more importance to your particular flavour if you want, no stress. But me... I'm not going to.

Personally speaking, I rather like this book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasm_City

If you felt inclined to capitalise that too, then sure, go for it.

But again, like the book you're taking about... it's just a work of fiction. Nothing more. Don't read too much into it. ;)

> fiction books are based off the animation

???

> ... then I will disagree and say that you can not do that.

No worries. I'm just going to point out the "then I will disagree" bit. That's very clearly your opinion. As such, it's of equal weight to your preferred magical fairie text, and everyone else's opinion. No more.

Or if you think your opinion is of more importance than the above magical fairie text... well hmmm. That seems to be the opposite of what you've been saying before.

I'm sure you learned in an English class that you should capitalized the name of books.

>It's just a random work of text

It is anything but random. It is a holy text.

>There are several variants of it

Yes, this is because of the difficulty of reproducing books and from creating translations of it.

>Why should yours get special treatment?

I did not create the Bible. The names of any other book is capitalized, so I do not see it as special treatment.

>If you felt inclined to capitalized that too

If you even looked at the Wikipedia link, you would see that it is capitalized.

>it's just a work of fiction

No, it is not. It is a collection of actual events and actual writings produced.

>animation

This was a mistake. I meant to say imagination. A work of fiction comes from the imagination, not real life like the Bible.

>[it is] your opinion

Yes, it is my opinion based off mine and many others interpretation of the Bible. It is wrong to insult the Lord, thinking you know better than Him about what is and what is not a sin.

>magical fairie text

Again I want to point out that the Bible was composed and written by humans and not magical fairies.

>Or if you think your opinion is of more importance than the above magical fairie text...

No, I am sharing my interpretation of the Bible. I would prefer you to address the text as the Bible and not as a, "magical fairie text." To me, it seems like your are making these mistakes intentionally.