The usual Social Justice Warrior types have been talking about how High tech is a “hostile environment” for women. But as this piece by a woman who learned her chops in the hacker culture makes clear, the people who really ruined women’s careers in programming were feminists.
Open source was my refuge because it was a place were nobody cared what my pedigree was or what I looked like—they cared only about what I did. I ingratiated myself to people who could help me learn by doing dull scutwork: triaging issues to keep the issue queues neat and orderly, writing documentation and fixing code comments. I was the helpful kid, so when I needed help, the community was there. I’d never met another programmer in real life at this point, but I knew more about programming than some college students.
But then feminists ruined everything. Some choice quotes:
I disagree with some points (I think the influence of fashion dolls and like like in shaping girl’s choices (rather that reflecting existing preferences) somewhat overrated), but it’s still worth reading the whole thing.
Tags: Democrats, feminism, Social Justice Warriors, technology