Anatomy of An Incident
Or, The Story of How A Great Man Came to Open Some Dialogue on A Topic He Knows Nothing About, And We Are All Just So Grateful
To open our story, let us start on One Fine Day (yesterday), in which our protagonist decides that, being an expert in subjects such as The Internet and Making Computers Do Things, and considering himself to be A Very Important Person, and furthermore having the Utmost Confidence that comes with being a White Man in Computing, that he will share his thoughts about women in technology, and why there are so few of them.
This is wonderful. After all, what we really need, in this situation, is a white man to tell us what things are and what should be done about it.
Our hero thus prefaces his post by admitting that he has almost no experience in the matter, and further, has not much to offer by way of explanation, either. And further, has really never worked with anyone of the type he is about to speak regarding. The dear reader, of course, must be forgiven for thinking that the post should stop there. After all, the writer even likes women — and that is expertise enough!
Of course, despite not knowing the answer, and having now dispensed with the formality of acknowledging such, we can get to the real work to be done here: providing the answer anyway.
But no! One more small point of business first. Of course our author would be simply remiss not to mention the ways in which women are systematically oppressed, stereotyped, harassed and denied access to the privilege that White Men enjoy and that has led them to dominate utterly the technology community!!! Yes, there may even be a lot of that going on here. But certainly this explanation is too simple, too pedestrian, even, to bear further examination. No, certainly there must be another reason, one that no one has yet discovered or documented!! Enter our dear author.
Ah, when you say it that way, it seems so simple, so obvious!!! Of course programming requires certain special skills and cognitive abilities!!! Such as, perhaps, being very extremely patient and very able to focus!! All traits that are well-understood and medically documented to be traits unique to men!!!
Perhaps, indeed, women are inherently different and less able to program!! Perhaps, even, they have smaller brains. But certainly, our dear reader MUST UNDERSTAND that not being a doctor, or even, as was earlier admitted, not having any experience or knowledge of the matter, the author cannot be expected to indulge in such theories of gender essentialism!!
Happily, despite this, he is benevolent enough to extend the vast arms of his comments section to entertain the opinions of such persons of which we speak!!
But of course, dear reader, we must be very very careful not to make generalizations about gender…. especially the male gender!! And indeed, you will be forgiven for questioning what exactly in the fuck the writer was doing if NOT making generalizations about the ability of an entire gender for programming!!
Very good.
This is wonderful. Our author has now contributed much great learning on the topic. It is ready to be shared with the internet. Ship it!!
Oh no!! What has gone wrong? Could it be that you have been discovered by the feminists, the great censoring mass that forbids men from talking about gender?!?!?!
Luckily, there are women on the internet to rush to our precious writer’s aid. LET THE MAN TALK ABOUT GENDER, Goddamnit. To do anything else is simply, well, exclusionary!!! BORDERING ON SEXIST, the very thing we have come to stand against!
At last, we have arrived at the heart of the matter — men are not allowed to speak in today’s oppressive feminist environment!!!
Luckily, no one gives a fuck about what those actual woman programmers think… they’re nobodies. Certainly they don’t have 64,000 followers, almost 65,000 followers!!!
But then again, those women programmers were never really the point, were they.
