Welcome to our new blog or #Kalendergate

Actually, I didn't want to start the blog so head over heels and as the first article I had imagined something else - but firstly it comes differently and secondly than you think and therefore I start now with a statement about our most opinion-dividing article, the Nerd Dreams Calendarwhich has just achieved unpopularity on Twitter.

For those of you who weren't there, here's a brief summary: At the beginning of January, we added the Nerd Dreams calendar to our range, a calendar with 12 pages featuring not only (fully clothed) models, but also various computers.

For me, this was initially unproblematic, although most of us in the team were of the opinion that the calendar was not particularly beautifully made for various reasons, but like so many things, this is a matter of taste.

I didn't think that anyone might feel offended - as already mentioned, the women are dressed, their poses are for the most part neither sexy nor lascivious, they are simply young women with computers, nothing more. I personally find nothing in the entire calendar to suggest that the women depicted are objectified or even devalued in a demeaning way, but let's discuss this openly, more on that below.

We could possibly be accused of not quite fitting in with the rest of our range, which would certainly not be a completely unfounded accusation.

Incidentally, I (Gesine) wrote the text for the calendar myself. I had the thing lying around in my office and personally found it rather silly and funny, so I thought about the most entertaining way to describe such a product, which is obviously not to be taken seriously - and decided to transfer the irony inherent in the product into the text. The result is what you can read there. I personally like the text and find it amusing, it also fits the calendar. The feedback among my colleagues was good, even my colleague Valerie, who tends to think more feminist, found it funny, so I thought "all good".

So what happened next? Someone on Twitter re-posted it and it was criticized by feminists - the product, the name of the product, the text. I gave it a try, a a few examples to pick out, so that itself hopefully everyone can get a picture.

My job as a social media manager (or manager^^) would have been to deal with it professionally (!) and objectively (!) - unfortunately I failed.

I'm only human and social media is more than just a job, it's a task. Before I get up, I check what's going on on Facebook, Twitter & Co. and before I close my eyes in the evening, I check again in bed. I identify very strongly with the job and with the company (it has to be that way, otherwise you simply can't do this job well). But that's also a problem - if there's criticism (which I don't think is justified to begin with), I take it personally. It's not always easy to act calmly and prudently in the interests of the company and, as a rather impulsive person, I occasionally have difficulties with this. It shouldn't happen, of course, but now it has happened - so I'm writing this explanation - with a little distance from the events and a view to the question of how we can all come to an agreement together.

My boss would also like to say something about this:

I, one of the managing directors of getDigital, Philipp, was responsible for the decision to include the calendar in the range. Basically, it is very important to us that people are treated equally and that no one is disadvantaged or denounced. For example, I am personally in favor of introducing a quota for women and it is very important to me that we have an internal atmosphere at getDigital in which misogynistic comments are clearly unwelcome. We also actively enforce this. However, I am unsure at what point eroticism is too objectifying: I think that the depiction of a scantily clad female or male body is fine and a certain amount of objectification can certainly not always be avoided with eroticism, but of course you have to be careful not to cross the line. I didn't consider this limit to have been crossed with the Nerd Dreams calendar, but perhaps I was too reckless, as it has apparently met with strong criticism from some customers. I also thought the product text we wrote for it was okay, as I thought it used irony to lighten up the difficult subject a little. But I am certainly willing to learn, which I think is also necessary in view of our sometimes satirical products. I would be delighted if we could open a lively discussion on the subject here. I promise that our discussion will be completely open-ended, i.e. I am quite prepared to remove the calendar from the range or change the text. But please bear with me if I'm only able to reply in the evening, there really is a lot to do here :)

Edit at approx. 18:20: Link to tweet from @Throni removed, as he has posted extremely offensive tweets on a similar topic in the past. Thank you very much @tr4nt0r for pointing this out.