I took off the gloves in my newest post for ZDNet, 2010: The Year of Whining About Women In Tech. I just couldn’t stand seeing people say that women in tech, or lack thereof, is a problem – without telling me WHY this is a problem. How the hell do you solve a problem if you can’t tell me exactly why it’s a problem?
The trolls have gone to work on it, but so have some really incredible commenters. I’ve had this post in my brain since the TechCrunch debacle about women in tech – and Mike Arrington called women “you people.” I spanked him in the article, along with Wired Magazine and Kara Swisher, who is probably one of those people who thinks women like me are of a lower class. I get that sense from Wired too, but I just don’t give a fuck anymore. And this is why I love ZDNet/CBSi. You won’t see a woman writing like this anywhere else in the tech sector. If I had my own blog on ZDNet I’d write on it every day.
I can’t wait to write my personal end of the year post for you. Still can’t believe I got the phrase “sex positive” on Fox News and went up against Libya.
So – hey, please give it a click, it’s got a lot of my passion in it. Snip:
Every few months in 2010, someone posted about whose fault it is that there are not enough of us in the tech sectors, and then everyone got upset. Everyone pointed fingers.
It’s gender. It’s biology. It’s brain wiring. The trolls are blamed in equal measure as their victims.
She done it. He done it. No one does anything.
Everyone always takes a position. Blowhards blow harder in the face of confrontation. In August when TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington was accused by the Wall Street Journal’s Rachel Sklar of not doing enough to support women in technology, he responded with this post saying that the real problem was that we women should quit complaining and start blaming ourselves for not wanting it bad enough.
Seriously: Who Cares?
I know, like we ladies should care what some creepy old dude thinks. (…read more, zdnet.com)
* Please know that no insult is meant to any of my friends who are female and don’t have a “working vagina” as per one of my phrases in the article. This conflict was heavy on my mind when I wrote that line, yet I knew that is a nuanced POV for a 1000-word piece.
Image by Greatestdancer; buy his glorious prints.
Here’s my first reaction to “Tell me why we should have more women in tech”. To be blunt: Technology Fucking Matters. I think that we could find agreement to that statement from Arrington, Wired, and yourself. And to the extent that Technology Fucking Matters – has an important impact on our past, present, and future – we ought to seek to have more women in technology, because they have as big a stake in the outcomes. What new technologies are developed, and how technology is used, affects every last one of us on this planet, so I would like to see women have an equal stake. Technology as an industry and process may be flawed – not a true meritocracy – but is that supposed to be an argument _against_ more women being in it, or the argument for? Just like with democracy: it’s the worst system we have, except for all the rest. Why should it all be left to the old geeks club?