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My husband spends practically 24/7 around me as he works next to me, but he still rarely sees that behavior directly or aimed at me until I copypaste/screenshot
by silencio 12y ago
My husband spends practically 24/7 around me as he works next to me, but he still rarely sees that behavior directly or aimed at me until I copypaste/screenshot/link it to him. And I get a lot of direct and indirect bs in general that some people would have mental breakdowns over, mainly cause I help moderate /r/twoxchromosomes and I help with a yearly event or two for women in tech. All he hears until I bring it up is me muttering to myself about misogyny/misandry, me going 'for fucks sake' at yet another doxxing, or me rage-typing on irc (thankfully for him I don't have a clicky keyboard). One of my closer friends too, works at Big Name Dating Co., didn't understand it too much until he created a female test account for development. Ha. So don't worry about not seeing it.
Moral support is a lot more than many are offering, so don't feel bad in the slightest. Do exactly what you pointed out. Ask around and help people around you. They may not just be women, they may come from all kinds of backgrounds. Don't be silent, because some of the worst people are assuming that silence means support.
After you feel comfortable doing that, there's a lot of other hard questions to ask. How do you know that your workplace or community or product/service isn't complicit in similar problems? How do you do what you can to help others before a problem occurs? What if you make a mistake? What if you do see something awful but there's no good way to call it out? They're questions I struggle with all the time, and I think the biggest misconception with tech folks is that they're one-off problems easily/already solved when they're not. People going "why don't you report it to Twitter" that have never actually used Twitter's abuse/harassment reporting form. People going "ignore that" like it's not a problem that rears its ugly head for me daily given how many other women I know. People going "you could just not say anything" but then I wouldn't be moral support for even a single other person out there.
It's tough, welcome to the club ;) Making an effort to do anything is a good thing.
- undersuit 12y ago>I help moderate /r/twoxchromosomes So the sexism definitely existed before you entered this position, but maybe the fact that you've exposed yourself is why you receive so much vitriol? Look at Obama, do you think all the racism directed at him would have ever been as prominent if he stayed a Senator or a Chicago Lawyer? People in positions of power always have their detractors. Could you provide some anecdotes of people attacking the normal users of twoxchromosomes seeing as you've probably dealt with quite a few.