Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Sexism at theregister.co.uk

I think it's fair to say that The Register has always been the red top of tech publishing, I haven't minded in the past, I'm partial to a bit of puerile humour myself, but their sexist and sexualised headlines seem to have been particularly bad over the last few months. It also seems to have been a very bad year for women in tech, as they say, although maybe every year is a bad year for women in tech.
There sometimes comes a point where you have to vote with your feet, I've tried to give up Google, and now I'm giving up The Register. It's a shame, I mostly like the content, it's only the headlines and the odd Andrew Orlowski polemic that I object to.
The examples below are a few stories I've noticed, ranging from genuine IT stories with arguably offensive innuendo crowbarred into their headlines (the first one is a good example), through vaguely IT-y stories with a sexual element (see the Oracle story for example) to non-IT non-stories that allow a titillating headline and/or picture (take Pamela Anderson, please). There's a bit of everyday sexism too.
Incidentally Bridget Christie Minds the Gap has been excellent.
UPDATE: Ok, they're just trying to rile me now.
UPDATE 22-Jan-2014 : I've been keeping an eye on it and they really seem to have cleaned up their act, both in respects of the images and the headlines.