Finding Out You’re a Sexist, Misogynistic, Homophobic, Classist, Racist Asshole and Hypocrite

My dear friends and colleagues in the tech industry:

There you will be. In your journey towards becoming a better human being, fighting inequality, standing up for what is good and just in this world.

You are on that journey, I hope. If not, please stop reading immediately and begin that first.

So there, there you will be, learning to understand the system, deconstructing the patriarchy (or your other terrible machine of choice), spending time, money, energy on the cause. Wonderful. Or maybe you’re quite there yet, you’re just going merrily through life assuming that you are a good person and not a part of The Kyriarchy at all. After all, you work in tech, and what are we if not a idealist, world-changing, meritocratic bunch, immune to privilege, cheerily collecting our six-figure salaries, building a shining city on the hill, please ignore the massive wealth gap, yes Sir, right this way, ignore the homeless camp there to your left and the suspicious absence of marginalized persons in positions of power.

But, if you are indeed as smart as you fancy yourself, then at some point it will happen. Yes, the strength of your self-defense mechanisms and your denial, your need to shelter yourself from any cognitive dissonance, will crumble against the undeniable evidence of your own complicity in the very interlocking system of oppression you have fancied yourself fighting (or, not even being a part of. Whatever). In short:

You are a sexist, misoyngistic, homophobic, transphobic, classist, racist asshole. Oh, and possibly even a hypocrite.

or, if you’re feeling precious about it, just acting like those things sometimes, or saying things like that sometimes, or not speaking up when other people act like that, or benefiting from those things without even thinking about it… but let’s not mince words shall we?)

Sorry bro.

But hey, you are not alone. Take me, for example. A feminist, an egalitarian. A community-builder, an advocate, someone who funds women, hires them, mentors them, promotes them, writes about them. Definitely not someone who thinks, says and does sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, classist, racist asshole things. Oh, and certainly not a hypocrite. Not that!

But look. Even though all of the things in the first part of that paragraph are true, I can only cringe and hate myself when I think of all the times I have totally fucked up and became part of the very problems I hate. Yes, I have slut-shamed, body-policed, name-called, bad-joked, appropriated, derailed, co-opted, silenced, objectified, stereotyped, trivialized, slurred, punished, isolated, insulted, benefited, and stayed silent with the worst of them. A highlight reel of my life profiting uncritically and even participating in the systems of misogyny, classism, racism, cis-normativity and homophobia that oppress my friends, my family, my fellow humans would not endear anyone to me, least of all myself.

It fees horrible to talk about. But I am because we all must realize how complete, how intersecting, how deeply fucked up the system is, and the role we play in it. It’s easy to become invested in an image of ourselves as good human beings, without blame or participation in the oppression of other people. Sometimes we even imagine ourselves as a helper to them, a healer, an ally, without even thinking it through.

But the greatest trick the system ever played was making itself out of us.

I have suffered terrible sexual, verbal and physical violence because I am a woman. I’ve lost years of my life to anorexia, lost many nights to fear, lost much of career to the penalties of speaking out, lost many dreams to defeat, and lost much of the joy and love to be found in life to the self-hatred I have been taught to feel about myself because I am female. And still, I catch myself in the mirror. Part of the solution, but also part of the problem.

Yet this is not my personal redemption story. You’ll find, in your own journey, that making the story of your fuckups into a personal redemption story really only serves to make things about you instead of about fixing the problem. So this isn’t about that, and it’s not even about being an ally, because when you are here, in this place of first realizing the extent you are part of the problem (something I hope a lot of men in the tech are doing right now), you probably aren’t ready to be an ally. But here’s where you can start:

Face yourself.

Start by accepting, truly, deeply, inside your heart and mind — or however you must — that you are part of the system, that you say and do things that oppress others, that you are contributing to it, that you are benefiting from it. Think about your words and actions and how they may be contributing to the problem, and why you are doing those things. When I’ve said and done these things, often I did them because I wanted to fit in, because I wanted to seem non-threatening, because I wanted to show I was cool and could fit in with the boys, because I felt scared or jealous, because I was trying to show off, because I was thoughtless and unthinking, because I wasn’t worrying about anyone but myself. Think about your privilege. As people in the tech industry, we have a lot of it — just our presence here shows that we have had opportunities many others haven’t, no matter how hard we worked to succeed. As cheesy as it sounds, it starts here, with you. You will feel angry at yourself, scared, humiliated, ashamed, sad. I do. It’s okay. You’ll make it.

Educate yourself.

Read some fucking books about oppression, racism, sexism and patriarchy by people who don’t have the same skin color, sexuality, background and privilege set you do. Really read them. See, I read a bunch of books about feminism in college, but to be completely honest, most of what stuck was what was relevant to me personally — a middle-class white woman. Going back to see what I missed is a big part of my path. It’s your job to educate yourself. You know how to fucking Google and find things on the internet and on your Kindle and your iPad and all those other things, so do it. Don’t ask marginalized and oppressed people to do your homework for you.

Start listening to other people’s experiences.

Listen. Listen. Listen.

Key word listen.

Don’t show up in other people’s spaces and communities without invitation demanding to receive their time and attention. Don’t derail, defend, complain, cry and carry on and on about yourself.

Just listen.

It’s not enough, and it’s not going to make everything right, and it’s not going to fix you and the people around you. But it will be a start, and we need way more of it around here. We need to, as an industry, face our toxic dishonesty and denial about our privilege and how we oppress others.