UPDATE: Having made such a positive splash already, organizer Leigh Alexander decided to nix the day itself lest it get out of hand:
#Objectify has gotten much bigger than I expected. At first I was excited, but now I see the scale of the discussion and coverage is creating a number of valid risks — and as a result, I'd like to call off the event. …
The dialogue's been great, but the end result — a day of circulating a hashtag on Twitter — runs the risk of catching fire with people who miss the point. #Objectify is not about celebrating objectification or about making people feel uncomfortable, but I'm increasingly worried that point will be lost and that harm can be done.
The first annual Objectify a Male Tech Writer Day brings attention to the ways, subtle and otherwise, in which female journalists are objectified and trivialized. Here's organizer (and BB contributor) Leigh Alexander, writing in The New Statesman:
The purpose of the exercise isn’t to “get revenge” or to make anyone uncomfortable: simply to help highlight by example what a gendered compliment looks like, and to get people talking in a funny and lighthearted way about how these kinds of comments distract from meaningful dialogues and make writers online feel like their point of view is only as relevant as how attractive they are.
Roll Up For The First Annual Objectify A Man in Tech Day [newstatesman.com]
