In the late 1980s and early 1990s I worked in a community college computer lab with students and teachers. I sat behind a desk and waited for the students to c

In the late 1980s and early 1990s I worked in a community college computer lab with students and teachers. I sat behind a desk and waited for the students to come to me to ask questions or ask for help. I wasn't allowed to go up to the students and ask them if they needed help. I handed out floppy disks, and one of them logged into the Novell Network on a PC or PS/2 DOS machine. We had software on the Novell server and on floppy disks. I debugged programs too, we had a debugger for that but when she couldn't figure something out or it was in a language she didn't know they sent the students to me to figure it out. Lady who was a debugger eventually took over the department. She taught me logical methods when I was a student there. I was let go in 1992 because I graduated (I went half-time and worked half-time there, had to be a student to keep the job). We had women and minorities as well in the computer lab, I helped everyone equally. We didn't seem to have the issues that exists today in hacker spaces with feminists. I don't know what has changed since 1992. What I do know is that not knowing feminism or gender studies terms can make one look like a jerk or people can take things the wrong way. For example transgender people, if you don't know to call a transgender woman as a she or her and respect that she has an identity as a woman you could get into a lot of trouble. The slightest thing you say can be taken out of context and found as offensive. For example we had a professor who told a woman that her method for solving a problem was 'bush league' and that his method was a much better one. He was talking about baseball but the woman complained he was talking about female parts and so he got into trouble for sexual harassment.