Why CodeBabes hurts everyone
Today the internet discovered a site called CodeBabes. You’ve probably already figured out what it is based on the name. You learn code from a series of videos featuring tall, slim, scantily clad women, a concept that purports to make learning code more “fun” and “entertaining” instead of the boring hard work that it is everywhere else.
It’s also really disgusting.
Their philosophy page, badly written and juvenile, includes plenty of sexual jokes and statements like “pause it when it gets to [sic] fast, or…. ya know, FAP.”
That’s right, gentlemen (let’s not kid ourselves about who this is for), if you get stuck in your PHP lesson, just pause it, jerk off, and come back to try again! We’ll still be here. Wink wink.
I assume I don’t have to explain what’s wrong with that part. Here’s another statement from their philosophy, which I hate to link to, but you might need to see it for yourself.
If we’ve offended anyone, well, let’s just say there are a lot bigger problems in the world to worry about.
Not only is CodeBabes sexist and gross, it knows that about itself, and it understands that a lot of people feel that way. It is unapologetic, arrogant, and fully inconsiderate of that fact. A real charming package.
Women are the eye candy of this operation. Nowhere are their credentials listed, nor are they touted as being good instructors or smart or knowledgeable. Instead, the page of “babes” shows many of the women in clichéd suggestive poses and emphasizes attraction again:
Not your typical programming instructors. Remember that Van Halen music video, ‘Hot for Teacher’? Yeah…. It’s kind of like that! Except you’re actually learning something..
They’re really sexy! Oh, yeah, and you learn I guess. But they’re so sexy.
This, and the “pause to fap” bit (really?) create this uncomfortable idea that on the surface they want you to learn code, but it’s the outer layer to what could be described as functional porn. Maybe these lessons are terrific and all the instructors are fantastic developers, but you don’t know that from the start, because the important thing is that they look hot! Maybe they’re not great at explaining things and you aren’t going to learn as much as you wanted, but it doesn’t matter! They look hot!
This is the sort of thing that is a constant in tech. You, as an individual, may never have encountered this before. You might open CodeBabes and think it’s funny for a split second (some people might interpret it as parody or a joke). You might think it’s funny for longer than that. If you did, are you a dude? Chances are you might be.
It’s easy to brush this stuff off when you don’t encounter it constantly. For the women in this industry, it’s a different story. Women working in tech get asked if they’re someone’s girlfriend at conferences, because it’s assumed that women wouldn’t actually code. Women are sexually harassed and then shamed publicly for speaking up. We encounter people who are surprised we know what we’re talking about despite our job titles being “Developer” or “Sysadmin” or “Analyst”. Conferences employ “booth babes,” who are hired to … can you guess? … just look hot. All of these things emphasize that women don’t really belong in tech—the men are there to do the coding, the women are there to titillate the men.
So before you share things like this, or before you lambast anyone getting angry about it as a humourless fun-squashing bitch, consider that your experiences are not the only ones out there. CodeBabes, TitStare, Hot Tech Today, and the litany of others reinforce why “brogrammer” culture is so toxic: if you’re a woman, you’re expected to be hot and ornamental, and if you’re a man, you’re expected to accept and engage in sexist and predatory behaviour. Neither of these are helpful.
We should be squashing sexual harassment in workplaces. We should have codes of conduct at conferences that make women and underrepresented groups feel welcome and safe. We should spend time with code schools that don’t rely on cleavage and sexual jokes to appeal to people (here are one, two, three). We need to be more inclusive. We need to stop laughing at “jerk off at your desk” and “get back in the kitchen”.
It doesn’t matter how much you or I have done to fix this problem; if someone thinks making a site like this is a cool thing to do, there’s work left to be done.