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This is just one anecdote, but I'd like to share my personal experience. Fitting in with the typical boys who took computer classes in high school was really di
by funion 9y ago
This is just one anecdote, but I'd like to share my personal experience. Fitting in with the typical boys who took computer classes in high school was really difficult and unpleasant. I'd been using computers and writing code longer than anyone there thanks to parental encouragement, but as a girl that didn't matter.
Girls in the class got picked on all the time. I got nicknamed "secretary" and singled out every class by the other nerds, getting told to go be a secretary because I could type fast, should input their code for them instead of writing my own, etc etc. People pulled classic bully moves like pulling my chair away when I went to sit down. I felt more bullied by them than I ever did by other kids. In my personal experience, the socially awkward computer boys were actively unwelcoming to girls, and awkwardness did not preclude meanness.
- komarichiii 9y agoThis resonates with my own experience as well. I have been programming since I was 10 in a country where I was the first of my peers whose family got a PC. I got bullied both by the "jocks" and by the "nerds." The jocks bullied me because I was a nerd while the nerds made fun of my ambitions and disparaged my looks. Fun times!