First: This isn't acceptable, especially in the current ecosystem where we are all working incredibly hard to change a sexist tech culture, and when women have very solid reasons to feel like an objectified minority.

Second: Since part of having an open mind is attempting to empathize with people even when they make mistakes (And understand the mentality behind the mistake, since we are ALL IN THIS TOGETHER), I would like to try to un-demonize this guy at an individual level -- again, not trying to detract the larger, meta picture: jokes at the expense of women are NOT OK.

I think a lot of the outrage here comes from the fact that we are reading his slide as though he said "Maven is like a woman." He didn't, he said his girlfriend. The issue is that on a public presentation the goal is to say things others can relate to, so the natural conclusion is that he was indeed making a generalization.

I'm curious if we would have read it as a more appropriate joke if he had replaced "girlfriend" with a genderless noun like "significant other" or "schnuckums."

Really, though, next time you're making a slide like this spare yourself and all of us a lot of trouble and say "my cat" instead.