A New York Times article about a sex discrimination case in Silicon Valley opens with this paragraph:
MEN invented the Internet. And not just any men. Men with pocket protectors. Men who idolized Mr. Spock and cried when Steve Jobs died. Nerds. Geeks. Give them their due. Without men, we would never know what our friends were doing five minutes ago.
But are these men trapped in the past even as they create the future?
And history has been written! Now we know who invented the Internet. It was not the US government, it was not certain named individuals. It was the menz! With pocket protectors.
What an odd beginning for a piece about possible sexual harassment. It's almost as if the ground is laid to suggest that men have the right to sexually harass women if those women dare to enter their tree house! Almost as if the Internet belongs to men because they invented it and that should be taken into account in any discussion of a sexual harassment suit. Of course those men who were involved in the development of the Internet are not the men currently working in the firm the article discusses ("But are these men trapped in the past even as they create the future?")
Never mind that. Note how that quoted paragraph sweeps away all women who have ever worked in the field. Xeni Jardin's righteously angry response:
You guys, ladies suck at technology and the New York Times is ON IT.
Radia "Mother of the Internet" Perlman and the ghosts of RADM Grace Hopper, Ada Lovelace and every woman who worked in technology for the past 150 years frown upon you, sir. Women may have been invisible, but the work we did laid the groundwork for more visible advancements now credited to more famous men.
The creators of the Internet have been mostly male (in numbers) but not universally so. In any case, the inventors were specific individuals and the role of the US government was considerable in all that. But that's not the reason why that opening paragraph is a bit like being tickled in the belly with a dagger. It's what Jardin said in her rant:
You guys, ladies suck at technology and the New York Times is ON IT.
Add the stereotype threat to that and you see why it might be important not to sweep away every single vagina-human just to create a good feeling among the brotherhood of geeks.
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Added later: More from Deanna and Soraya.