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Hi, I'm the author of this article, and reading these comments made me just think "wow, there is so much pain here." I assume I'll get made fun of/trolled/what

Hi, I'm the author of this article, and reading these comments made me just think "wow, there is so much pain here." I assume I'll get made fun of/trolled/whatever for this, but I guess all I really wanted to say in my article was "There were some difficult things I experienced as a woman in tech - but these are not independent of the difficult things men experience. We are all in this mess together." Sexism is not men discriminating against women, it's a complicated interplay between the roles we are expected to act, and roles we want to act, and all genders suffer for it. Maybe, also, I wished someone had said "I see how hard it is," when I was a woman programmer. So, in that spirit, to all the male programmers out there "I see how hard it is for you too." <3

selmnoo 13y ago
Thanks. <3 Speaking as a male for a moment here: in my earlier years, the reason I would have had trouble saying something like "I see how hard it is" to a woman would have been because I was not 'man' enough to come out and say something like that. I'd have been afraid the woman might take it the wrong way, like as if I was belittling her. That's how a lot of us do feel, I bet. When I went back to school for software engineering and talked to my peers via chat late in the night, I really just found that a lot of them are broken. They have low self-esteem, they feel women aren't interested in them because they're nerdy. And so, their interactions with woman -- like walking on eggshells, trying not to embarrass themselves or get humiliated, be outed as "clumsy-with-women", they behave in a rigid way that could possibly be interpreted as being cold and mean to women. I really do think you're onto something here. If more people took the initiative in communicating feelings of care and love, things would improve.

selmnoo 13y ago

Thanks. <3 Speaking as a male for a moment here: in my earlier years, the reason I would have had trouble saying something like "I see how hard it is" to a woman would have been because I was not 'man' enough to come out and say something like that. I'd have been afraid the woman might take it the wrong way, like as if I was belittling her. That's how a lot of us do feel, I bet. When I went back to school for software engineering and talked to my peers via chat late in the night, I really just found that a lot of them are broken. They have low self-esteem, they feel women aren't interested in them because they're nerdy. And so, their interactions with woman -- like walking on eggshells, trying not to embarrass themselves or get humiliated, be outed as "clumsy-with-women", they behave in a rigid way that could possibly be interpreted as being cold and mean to women. I really do think you're onto something here. If more people took the initiative in communicating feelings of care and love, things would improve.