The day is the brainchild of writer Leigh Alexander. “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.”
I’d love to go out of my way to target Jim Dalrymple, but I probably won’t unless I have no other occasion to mention a male tech writer.