She posted online and immediately men everywhere told her to shut up

They didn’t know it, but they proved her point.

Have you ever been super frustrated by the realities of the world? You want the world to be one way but you realize it’s just… not.

That’s how I felt at the end of last week. I was super frustrated with the realities of the world.

What was I so frustrated with? I’ll tell you, but bear with me and don’t just close this article because this is important.

Here’s what happened.

This is not what I expected to happen.

Last week a group of ambitious women launched a non-profit that provides opportunities in the Virtual Reality industry for women and underrepresented groups (it’s called SH//FT).

Awesome, right? Well not everyone thought so.

Actually a lot of people got quite upset.

People got so angry.

A lot of men on Facebook and reddit got incredibly defensive in response to the launch of SH//FT.

In SH//FT’s blog post, which you can read here, they stated that less than 20% of the workforce in tech are women (true). They didn’t say that it was men’s fault, they didn’t whine, they didn’t do anything like that.

All SH//FT said was:

• There aren’t a lot of women in tech.
• They are actively working with Virtual Reality industry leaders to become a foundation that breaks down barriers to create equal opportunity for women working in VR (and eventually all underrepresented groups) and have more announcements to come.

The guys weren’t having any of it.

What the angry men on the internet don’t understand.

Or maybe more correctly, what they don’t want to understand.

Sure, maybe in some world it could be annoying to watch women support each other.

NOT. Women supporting each other is awesome.

I wish these guys understood what these women are really talking about. It’s not just about women trying hard.

It’s about much more than that.

Tech, and many other industries, have been male dominated for so long, there are a lot of nuances, traditions, and interactions that are catered for males (like Microsoft having scantily clad female dancers at one of their parties).

These things can make women understandably uncomfortable. It’s not how a welcoming environment is created.

A lot of people don’t seem to understand this. It’s not as simple as women trying harder, it’s about everyone coming to the realization that maybe we aren’t as welcoming towards women as we need to be.

Maybe we need to try harder.