tech ethics: a rant
Technically Wrong by Sara Wachter-Boettcher is a good read for people who want to be reminded of all the face-palmy flops that have happened and are continually happening in the tech world. And for people who are so privileged that they have never seen all the incidents and/or don’t understand why people make a big deal out of these things. Maybe these people are looking for ways to tackle this and they get that out of this book. But for me, a snowflake (that has been triggered for the past 2-ish weeks from ptsd) it was quite a frustrating read. Not just because of all the actual cringey examples, but more so because Wachter-Boettcher’s commentary and criticism felt too surface-level–basically dumbed down for people who let these things fly past their heads (aka not “woke”). The entire experience so far I’ve had of this book isn’t great; I admit I haven’t finished reading/skimmed through it but I don’t think I can come back to it any time in the near future.
Here are several things I wish Wachter-Boettcher addressed in addition to her points:
1. Cisnormativity in Glow
Wachter-Boettcher brought up good points about the flaws in the Glow app for menstruation. The onboarding for the app gave pregnancy- and fertility-related choices in selecting the “journey”, and the logging is extremely heteronormative (although I do see an option of “banana free” with two peaches…? what does that even mean? lesbian sex? butts? why are all of these fruit though like if you’re old enough to be tracking your sex life shouldn’t you be old enough to refer to penises as PENISES and not bananas? say it loud and proud theres nothing to be embarrassed about. i can go on about taboo in sexual language but i’ll leave that for another time).
Wachter-Boettcher writes, “If you’re an adult woman in a relationship with anyone who’s not a man, you’re probably still going to feel left out.” and my first thought was, what about people who menstruate who aren’t women? I had this kind of “yes, and…” voice in my head many times while reading this book.
Thankfully I was able to find the original article that Maggie Delano wrote, whose experience Wachter-Boettcher was referring to, and she writes in the end:
Women are also not the only people who have periods. The coding of period tracking technology as feminine, cis, and straight is also harmful to other people such as trans men with periods.
I really wish Wachter-Boettcher included that, and more about cisnormativity in addition to the heteronormativity that was discussed. As I just typed that sentence, cisnormativity is indicated as a spelling error while heteronormativity is not, which further proves my point I think?
This happens everywhere. Generally if you’re in a women’s restroom you’ll find a menstruation waste bin and sometimes a sign on the wall that tells you what to put in or what you shouldn’t flush.
If you‘re in a restroom at CCA though, you will almost always see scribbles or words crossed out on those signs. The products, mostly pads and tampons, are referred to as feminine hygiene products–pretty common, but as you can guess, the word ‘feminine’ gets covered or destroyed.
Menstruation isn’t really feminine, it’s just happens to roughly half the population for certain years of their life. Trans men can get periods, trans women may not have periods (and they can still be feminine!), and not even all cis women have periods due to health conditions. It’s cissexist and ableist to be only catering toward “women” and even more discriminatory to assume that they’re interested in pregnancy (should not be default), into people who have “bananas” (cis+heteronormative), and are sexually active (excluding asexual people).
I guarantee you that many people at this point (if they’re reading my rant) would be like, “thats kinda taking it too far just chill” or something but I think it’s something that needs to be challenged and not dismissed. Let’s have menstrual bins in men’s restrooms too. And let’s call the products what they are, PADS and TAMPONS (and other things) and not ~feminine hygiene products~ like why are people so afraid of using those words?? penis! not banana! we’re grown adults!
2. Ableism
Check this out
How can you write about inequality/exclusion/criticize what is default and not write about disability !> !>>zf.dFlsjf
This saddens me a lot. I apologize if she did and I missed it while I was skimming, but I wish it were at least searchable.
And while I mean all kinds of disability and accessibility for all, I want to also highlight invisible disabilities, neuroatypicality, chronic illnesses, and all the other conditions that tend to get forgotten or not taken seriously. (I’ve done a talk on this a couple years ago and have yet to polish it so I can comfortably share it with a wider audience.)
I’d also like to suggest an adjustment in vocab choice:
Using the word ‘blind’ while not referring to blind people is often ableist, and I know this is suuuper controversial and people hate word-policing but personally I stay away from using words and expressions that marginalized people feel are discriminatory. Here’s a convenient article/reference.
I really hope Wachter-Boettcher can write a second edition to this book with more in-depth “wokeness” (for lack of a better word) and perhaps in more collaboration, or maybe even co-writing with others. I feel like that’s really the point of this book: if you have a limited demographic making decisions, it’s easy to overlook the needs of those who are not in that demographic. That’s why it’s no surprise that tech fuck-ups tend to come from places where cis-het-white-males are predominantly in power. That’s why diversity is important. I’m being pretty critical in my rant but I genuinely want this book & discussion to be more widespread; I just wanted the author to have taken things further and deeper.
In terms of my thesis (part II of assignment):
My topic of interest is assisting the process of self-improvement through inner reflection, and have been focusing on building a system that would supplement therapy. I understand that this can be an extremely sensitive area, and while growth often comes from getting out of one’s comfort zone, I don’t want to be pushing them to do something they’re not ready for. I know too well from personal experience how uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous it is for people to tell or suggest what you could/should think about when they have no idea what state of safety and security you are in at that moment. This happens even with professionals and close loved ones, and it’s especially difficult when that happens because you know that they don’t mean any harm. The anxiety builds up even more because you don’t know how to communicate that to them and reestablish your trust.
The most I want to do is gently nudge. The language and copy used in my prototype will have to be carefully thought out in order for that to happen. I would be extremely hesitant to call this idea a good one if it is ever a source of trigger.
I’m also aware of the fact that therapy is not accessible to most people. It’s costly, sometimes difficult to find, and it’s even hard in the first place to admit that therapy is something you need or could benefit from. If I keep going in my direction, I would only be designing for people who 1. established that they want to/should see a therapist, 2. have found a good one that they want to continue working with, and 3. can afford it.
Whenever I think about design and accessibility (in terms of privilege), I always get stuck in this mindset that everything we do in IxD / UX generally involves screens, often personal, therefore we’re essentially making things for people who can afford these things, have access to internet, electricity, etc. This depresses me and makes me question why I’m even in this field at all, but at the same time I know what great things technology can achieve in this world and how UX plays an important role in that. At the same time these things are getting more common: public libraries have computers with internet, Google has their balloon wifi concept, and in San Francisco you see homeless people with smartphones.
Back to the point. Although I’ve narrowed my concept to supplementing therapy, I’m very much considering a way to make this work for people who don’t/can’t see therapists. It can also even be non-tech, non-digital, but I do have valid reasons why some aspects would work best in a digital device with internet. For the sake of getting the first prototype out, I will be focusing on the digitally dependent experience, but I won’t let these other considerations slip out of the picture.
Ok, I think that’s all for now. Thank you for reading and considering my thoughts (especially Christina since she kind of has to read this lol). I know a lot of what I talked about can be controversial and people might think I’m being too nit-picky or “too offended” or whatever but these things should not be overlooked. After all we’re designers who are full of ~empathy~ right?
If anyone that I know or don’t know (since this is public) wants to comment or leave feedback please do it nicely bc im still in a fragile mental health state.
