Offensive comments ruining Twitter
Why don’t women feel welcome in the world of technology?
If you look for it — and even when you don’t — every week brings at least a couple news items in which someone spouts a horribly offensive, racist or sexist thing on Twitter.
Twitter — the most self-centered thing to come out of the Internet so far — is a venue where people who probably shouldn’t have an audience get one. And to get that audience, and to keep it, some people resort to saying racist, sexist things in a bid to be that week’s most “controversial.”
They think that by pushing boundaries, they get to brand themselves as “rule-breakers” or “bad boys” who don’t care about the rules of polite society — and like-minded people who also hate the idea of censoring their racism and misogyny will flock to them as their new heroes.
Then everyone will retweet, and then bloggers and writers — angered by the offensive tweets — will write about their authors and before you know it, an Internet “star” is born, for all the wrong reasons.
Recently, for example, chief technology officer of Business Insider (a popular tech/finance website) Pax Dickinson lost his job because he used Twitter to say some horrible things about women in the field of technology.
For a long time, the lack of women in technology has been a chicken-and-egg problem: though they are just as qualified, women don’t feel welcome in the tech world because it’s overwhelmingly run by men. So, they don’t go for the tech jobs, to spare their own sanity, and tech continues to be male-dominated. Aside from the women of public relations in the tech sector, that is, who are often young and beautiful.
And then there are guys like Pax Dickinson (his name just sounds like he’d be a giant jerk) who do everything they can to make sure women don’t feel welcome except when it comes to being a beautiful PR face. Some of his tweets include: “Tech managers spend as much time worrying about how to hire talented female developers as they do worrying about how to hire a unicorn” (in other words, of course, talented female web developers are as rare as unicorns) and “feminism in tech remains the champion topic for my block list. My finger is getting tired.”
He’s essentially, and very publicly, saying that women don’t belong. No wonder there’s an imbalance in genders in this world that essentially shapes everything we do.
Though it should be said that it probably also starts at the socialization level: boys play with blocks and interactive robots and video games; girls play with dolls that don’t do anything. Though, thankfully, this is getting better: the number one toy across all genders from age one to age 10 right now is probably the iPhone. (Maybe that’s bad for other reasons, but no one can say that young girls don’t know their technology; maybe that will transfer to their choices later.)
If you’re searching for a bright side, at least there’s backlash. Pax Dickinson lost his job. It started a conversation, too, of why it’s important that everyone be represented in the tech world.
As one technology writer, Nitasha Tiku, puts it, “[The big wigs of technology and development] help decide which apps or services get attention and funding. They will play a role in what technology you use and by extension how culture is shaped. They are building their values into the infrastructure of your life.”
Though I find new reasons to dislike Twitter every day, this whole thing isn’t Twitter’s fault, really. All Twitter does is bring to light the sort of people who would otherwise inflict their tastelessness only on their office mates and maybe their friends … if they have any.
And the world of technology and all that involves — Twitter included — is here to stay. The goal should be to make it accessible to everyone, no matter their race or gender.