On our dumb luck

(Taken from a series of tweets written October 14, 2014)

You say it’s not about women, but women are overwhelmingly getting doxxed and threatened by people who look and sound like you.

You say it’s about corruption and not harassment, yet people talk of you like you’re He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but your side is “right.”

Is it in the least possible that the movement that you’re part of has problems with people who are not like you?

Is it possible that maybe you’ve been lied to? Cheated? Ascribing to reason what is really parroting a party line?

Because, well, an increasingly disorganized movement is acting like a mob, but yet organizing around the loudest voices.

And those loudest voices tell you one thing, then go off on other things in other rooms, saying things that are contra to civil society.

Maybe you don’t want to give up on your precious hashtag. Fine. But maybe acknowledge the people you are with say and do awful things.

Because we are judged, right or not, by the company we keep.

And the company of that hashtag is conspiracy theorists, misogynists, and bomb throwers.

There is a problem with how the system works. Attacking women is not the solution.

It is Ada Lovelace Day, after all. The day we celebrate the women that helped get us to where we are.

For me, I’ve had enough of the misogyny in the tech industry. And the racism. And the classism. And the ableism, and the homophobia, and the elitism, and our inability to lead with empathy.

We were the bullied nerds and geeks, most of us. Played video games and D&D. Band geeks. Comic book geeks.

And then we won. We actually won. We built this web, got rich, got partners, bought houses, and live on the coasts.

But once we won, it’s like we shut the door behind us, waving Ayn Rand at the people we left behind.

We deluded ourselves into believing we got here on merit. We didn’t. We were just really fucking lucky.

We were born at the right time. The skills we needed, combined with hard work and a lot of luck, got us right here.

Most of all, we got here because most of us had the benefits of privilege. We had advantages that affected our odds.

You are not special. You are lucky. And your dice are loaded, even if you don’t think they are.

Your job, lucky person, is to help others less lucky than you to improve their odds.

So, fuck karma. Fuck Ayn Rand. You just have a better THAC0 than most other people, and you’ve not rolled a lot of 20s.

Now, reach over and start changing someone else’s table of odds. Hand them better equipment. Let them get the XP from the kill.

But most of all, DO SOMETHING. This system wants us to fight one another. Fuck that.