Silicon Valley needs to give Women Equal Respect.
Article written for VRMA Virtual Reality Media by Micah Blumberg (Note: This article was previously titled: “Silicon Valley needs to do more to change because Women deserve equal respect in VR, in AR in technology, in the Investment world and in the world in general.”
Update: So after I posted this more than a dozen men slammed me for writing this article in which I laid out my case that women should get equal respect. An example of what I am saying is simply that a woman entrepreneur should have her pitch heard with the same respect you would give to a male entrepreneur. It sounds like I could be talking to a five year old right? This is super basic stuff. Fortunately zero women have been upset by my call for equal respect for women (so far). Men also challenged me on the idea that the anti-diversity tech bro culture only exists in the past. Why then are articles like this coming out today?
A short while back I heard about this Google engineer, James Damore, who was fired for writing an anti-diversity memo at Google and “perpetuating gender stereotypes.”
James made the wrong headed argument that men are biologically more suited to writing code than women. James was ignorant of the history of computer science because the first programmers were all women.
I read about this history and I learned that originally the word computer was a job description, for the women who wrote the first code on the first computers. These women were called computers and they were super smart.
Very quickly after Damore was fired from Google the alt right movement, the movement that marches with Donald Trump and marches with nazis quickly embraced Damore as one of their own, even though later on he tried to say he was not with the alt right, but that opened my eyes a bit to what the alt right really represents, and to what white nationalism and what republican conservatism really represents.
You see in the history of women losing out on the top tech jobs there was a lot of propoganda that was made, a lot of anti-women proproganda was manufactured by networks of mostly white men, who were intent on getting the top jobs not only for themselves, but also for the white bros in their own fraternities that they new would back them.
The alt right and other white bro supremacists movements have for centuries up until the present been spinning out lies against women, against minorities, and against queer folk and members of the LGBTQ community for the purpose of getting the best jobs for their all white male fraternities.
You should read the story called Hidden Figures: It’s “the phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA at the leading edge of the feminist and civil rights movement, whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space — a powerful, revelatory contribution that is as essential to our understanding of race, discrimination, and achievement in modern America as Between the World and Me and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The basis for the smash Academy Award-nominated film starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner.”
The discrimination against people who are different is really spurred on by the competition for the best jobs, how do you get the best job? Maybe it helps to talk some trash about your competitors, but specifically to ridicule anything that makes your potential competitor different from you. “Oh they are a woman, oh they are gay, oh they are black, you can’t hire them, you have a duty to hire white boys” that’s the real message behind Hitler, behind the nazis, behind Trump, behind Republicans & Conservatives, and behind the Boys clubs in the technology industry, and the investment industry. Hitler would love Trump’s tech bro supremacy and Hitler would love James Damore’s anti-diversity speech, because Hitler was all about the white boys club fraternity that bad mouthed anyone who was different in order to BULLY FOR itself and get its members into the top jobs.
The thing you need to understand is that the biological supremacy of white tech bros is a total lie. History tells says this is a lie, but so does neuroscience, ask an expert neuroscience and she or he may explain that the evidence for white tech bro supremacy just doesn’t exist. Today tech companies hire people from every country in the world, that means that smart people come from every country of the world, from every background, including women, gays, transgender people, and people from every possible religion and every possible cultural back ground.
97 Companies spoke out against Trump’s travel ban because in overwhelming numbers tech companies have realized that smart people come from every country, and that the human brain is not that different from person to person. It’s about your nurture, about your fraternal social network, and not about nature. If you work at a tech company it’s mostly likely because you had a social network that got you there, one step at a time. You are smart because your social network managed to give your brain the right messages over time, that led you to succeed in school, and led you to get the right job, but your social network also bashed people who were different from you. That’s what history tells us. Your brain is not special, your fraternity was special.
Yet today white tech bros dominate the tech world, not because they have superior brains, but because they have a fraternity of mostly white men, supporting mostly white men, to get through college, to learn coding, and to get their white tech bros into the best jobs. I am making the argument that it’s not nature it’s nurture and anti-diversity propaganda. So lets end the anti-diversity messaging.
This is part of why women entrepreneurs for example today do not get equal respect when they go in front of investors or work at tech companies in the bay area.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/policedrones/
I want to help change the culture in the Global Silicon Valley, inside the big tech companies, and the very small tech companies so we are no longer share false stories about the biological supremacy of white tech bros, and false negative anti-diversity stories that are embedded into our culture creating anger towards Women for example for allegedly taking a job from a white tech bro, fuck the white tech bros and all the people who support them. Fuck that culture that screws women, and queer folk like myself, and minorities like myself and all people who are different.
Is it possible to make a VR training simulation to teach humans how to have equal respect for all humans, but especially for women, the LGBTQ community, and minorities? What can I do to help take the promise of VR empathy machine to the next level?
Business Insider put together a list of technology companies that have been accused of sexual harassment recently
My view is that there needs to be a conclusion to all this alt right alt white tech bro supremacy. It needs to end because it’s wrong, it’s evil, its false, and it makes the world less rich, less beautiful, and less lovely. Companies stand to make a lot more money when they start giving women equal respect, when investors start treating women led startups with equal respect investors will make more money!
There was a study recently that said that Women-led companies make more money!
We need to usher in equal opportunity and equal respect for women, minorities, queers, and other under represented folks.
Not just because it’s the right thing, but also because the economy will thrive with more diversity.
California is suing the Trump administration right now because Trump’s order to end DACA will cost the California economy a massive amount of money. Trump like the alt right alt white white boy supremacists wants to kick out the people who are different, he wants to reduce diversity, that will make the United States more poor over all if Trump is successful.
We need to end the anti-diversity culture and support equal respect for women because doing this is not only moral, it’s not only aligned with facts and truth, but it will also boost the financials of these tech companies and help make this world a place of equal respect, because talented super smart folks come from all countries, all genders, all orientations, all cultures, all backgrounds.
I am asking the executives and office managers of all these tech companies that represent our global Silicon Valley community to pledge to install a culture of diversity, a tone of inclusiveness, equal respect for all humans, and not blame evidence of gender discrepancies in the work force on biology because that is just an ignorant lie from the alt right tech bro status quo. No tech bros no! We demand equal respect for all people! End tech bro supremacy at tech companies! Black lives matter and love is love!
Consider the evidence, realize that women could be 50 percent of all tech companies, realize that reason white tech bros are 80 percent of the tech companies is not because of a biology based brain supremacy but instead that it is because of the fraternity of computer coders sharing anti-diversity stories over centuries into the present day, into even today. Realize that to help correct the imbalance here we need to support women and minorities and the GLBTQ community when they speak out against problems in the workplace environment whether it’s at a Venture Capitalist company, or a Virtual Reality tech company, or whether it’s about a workspace collective that does VR events.
To do my part I have integrated a very clear anti-harassment policy in all the groups I admin: We have adopted Google’s Event Community Guidelines and Anti-Harassment Policy which you can read here https://www.google.com/events/policy/anti-harassmentpolicy.html
Including the 17 thousand member Gear VR group that I founded and the 17 thousand member SteamVR group that I founded which can be found here and here
Gear VR, Daydream Tango, Magic Leap, Apple ARkit, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Playstation VR, Daydream/Tango, Magic Leap! https://www.facebook.com/groups/gearvr/
Steam VR https://www.facebook.com/groups/htcvive/
Sexual Harassment is not cool, it’s not acceptable, but we need to go beyond that to be inclusive in our planning, to plan on creating a safe and diverse community from the get go.
San Francisco Virtual Reality 360 is a new monthly event that takes place every month at River Ecosystem and we care about diversity and inclusion and we are welcoming that discussion with companies and offering to contribute where we can to making this world better for all the people who have been oppressed over the last few centuries or more.
We hope you join us this Friday, September 15th to hear interesting talks on VR, AR, and more science and technology topics beyond that. Everyone is welcome, especially women, queer folk like myself (gay pride), minorities like myself (I am descended from Creole people in New Orleans and Ashkenazi Jews from Histonia) So you can bet on the fact that I want to create a safe space for people who are different.
