Hawken Publisher CEO Pranked into Learning a Lesson About Sexism

Over at The Hawkeye Initiative, a clever Tumblr that features pictures of Hawkeye drawn in the same poses as various female comic book characters, an employee at Meteor Entertainment (publisher of multiplayer mech combat game Hawken) has written a guest post about the time she orchestrated a Hawkeye Initiative-style prank of her own against her CEO. The reason for the prank? This picture, so loved by the CEO that he had it blown up and framed and displayed for all in the office to see:

Male and female employees alike suffered from exposure to this poster on a daily basis, because it's just not the kind of thing that is appropriate for a work environment, especially one that apparently has high gender awareness standards compared to the rest of the games industry. But the CEO didn't see that, not because he was unkind or a sexist but because he just didn't know what it felt like.

Until.

The anonymous employee in question had a friend at the company, an artist called Sam who shared her disdain for the poster. Through bribery with “feminist indignation, hysterical giggling, and two $90 bottles of anejo tequila”, she convinced Sam to create an alternative version of the poster, featuring a man they dubbed “Bro-sie The Riveter”, with which they secretly replaced the female original:

Of course, once the CEO saw the poster he was able to understand something of what it was like for his female employees and others to see the original poster. So it was that instead of reacting with anger he approached the anonymous employee and said this:

“That was a brilliant prank. You called me on exactly the bullshit I need to be called on. I put up pictures of half-naked girls around the office all the time and I never think about it. I’m taking you and Sam to lunch. And after that, we’re going to hang both prints, side by side.”

The point here is not to fight sexism with sexism, but to provide a way for those who find it difficult to do so to understand a little of what it feels like from the other side. And this is a pretty awesome demonstration of that.