I had no idea there were actually people who would defend sexual harassment.

Maybe I’m a little naive, but I really believe most people aren’t deliberately being sexist jerks when they make fun of a man for knitting, or a woman for working on an oil rig. There are these cultural norms, ya know? They get embedded in your head whether you want them to or not. You have to fight against your own sexism sometimes, and sometimes, you slip.

And while the gaming communities I’ve been a part of have been majority-male, they’ve been fair and decent.

By contrast, there’s this ugly incident in which a gamer actually defended sexual harassment and said it was “part of the culture.” Worse, this person was supposed to be coaching a team of gamers, one of whom was female. She was shouted down when she tried to protest, and she was told to “let the man speak.”

This incident, and how people reacted to it, goes well beyond the vague feeling that booth babes are creepy, or that the gaming community should be, in general, nicer and less sexist.

Yes, free speech in America means you can say just about anything you want. This person has every right to his opinion, and every right to state it.

And other people have every, every right to be horrified by his sexist, creepy behavior, call him out on it, and try to stop it through civilized means. That’s what real communities do, whether online or in meatspace.

Look, it’s pretty girls in tight clothing at a tech trade show!

Now tell me what product they’re selling. Or whether it matters.

I’ve never been to a trade show, like the one shown at left, or to a convention. I would very much like to. At the same time, the prevalence of so-called “booth babes” would be off-putting to me. These women are typically models hired for the day to hang around a booth hawking a product. Because they’re only there for the day, their knowledge about said product is generally pretty sketchy, and the women are really only there to get people to the booth.

If there are male booth babes, I haven’t ever heard of it, but I wouldn’t be surprised. That said, the term is generally understood to refer to the female of the species.

The photo above is from a great post by Glenn Fleishman, who wrote a piece detailing the problem. (Check it out.) Do booth babes attract enough people to make it worth repelling other people?

I’m not just talking about women here–the audience for this particular trade show is apparently about 60-40 male/female split. Some men avoid booths with booth babes because they feel uncomfortable around them. They might feel uncomfortable with that level of objectification, or they may simply dislike being blatantly manipulated. Some people feel companies that hire booth babes are sleazy.

And yes, it can make women feel uncomfortable, too.

Is that any different from hiring attractive people on a permanent basis and putting them in ordinary (but still attractive) business attire?

I’m just wondering if booth babes might not be counterproductive in the long run, especially given that 40 percent of the intended audience is female anyway. And it seems that more and more women are making technology purchasing decisions.