I blame the Patriarchy for my technical incompetence.
I’m bitter that I was such an Internet noob in my first year of university, that I spammed other students I wanted to befriend with useless e-mail chain letters. I’m bitter that I still didn’t understand the intricacies of using a web browser, that a fellow student from a CS course had to tell me that I could right-click on a link and choose “Save As…”. I’m bitter that I probably made women in CS look bad. My programming assignments in my intro programming course were still perfect, but people usually don’t understand that someone can be an Internet noob who knows how to code. It’s not that I was technically incompetent because of female brain hard-wiring. It’s that I was technically incompetent because of sexism; because of the patriarchal structure of my household where my father’s opinion overrides the majority vote; and because my father is a special kind of luddite.
Male geeks often say that the geek community is a meritocracy, and that there are no barriers to girls learning technology except for our choices (or our brains), but I faced extra hurdles because of my gender. Not everyone has the same access to technology, because technology does not exist in the ether; it has physical and social components that grant and deny access. I was privileged, because I had a shared family computer before most of my peers. I was also disadvantaged, because I was a girl.
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sigflup:
October 25th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Gah!! This makes me angry. When you’re a kid and people discourage you, even from things that you have talent for, just because of your gender it’s one of the most hurtful things in the world. Way to go dad, start putting up that barrier at the earliest age possible. Thank you for your blog post about it.
Eivind:
October 25th, 2010 at 11:30 pm
A strong story, and I can well understand your anger at your fathers actions, and the system that gave him those sexist opinions. I notice the same thing, though my kids are younger. My son gets electronic experiment-sets, while my twin girls get pink doll-clothes. I try my best to counter it, both by getting the girls more technical toys, and by encouraging them to try out what they WANT to try, rather than let themselves be limited by the tiny world so many expect girls to want to live in.
It makes me angry too. And it starts before the kid can say ‘mama’, I’ve seen mothers verbally slap down sons aged 8 months for playing with “girl stuff” (waiting room at the docs), and try asking anyone running a baby-clothes-shop who gets more clothing, girls aged 6 months, or boys aged 6 months. (answer: for a girl, mothers generally by $120 worth of clothes for every $100 they would spend on a boy)
lala:
October 26th, 2010 at 4:34 am
Some years back I wrote a paper on childrens’ access to technology and I still have some of the research.
Parents give boys priority over girls in granting them access to computer use, buying them technology, ane encouraging them to experiment with computers. Children and Their Changing Media Environment. by Sonia Livingstone and Moira Bovil. (eds.) Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (2001).
Girls feel alienated and turned off from video games due to minimally dressed hypersexualized characters. Girls and Gaming: Gender and Video Game Marketing. (2000) Children Now.
The above is significant because the number one root of boys’ interest in computing and programming is video games. Berger, Rose Marie and Jodi Hochstedler (2002). Reality Bytes, Sojourners, 31 (3), May-June, p.11.
According to a UNESCO study, more than twice as many boys under 18 have a computer of their own than girls. One of the leading reasons that parents give for purchasing internet access is that there is a male teenager in the household. This is interesting because when schools provide access to computers, girls and boys use them equally and in the same manner. The gender gap is in no way reflective of a gendered difference in desire to use technology. Feilitzen, Cecilia and Ulla Carlsson (eds.) (2000). Children in the New Media Landscape. Göteborg, Sweden: The UNESCO International Clearinghouse on Children and Violence on the Screen.
This research is all nearly ten years old, so it doesn’t tell us about children and teenagers today. It does, however, tell us plenty about the background of people who are in the job market today and points out some of the privileges that men have over women in the field of IT.
As for me, I actually did have a PC in my home but it was my dad’s and I was not allowed to touch it, much as I was fascinated by it. I was 22 when I got my first computer. I’m so jealous of the men I meet who have been programming since they were 5. I am familiar with the shame you felt. I remember my boyfriend teaching me to drag with the right mouse button and feeling so stupid.
Restructure!:
October 26th, 2010 at 7:15 am
Thanks for all this and providing citations! That’s extremely interesting. I would like to read your paper.
Nonny:
October 26th, 2010 at 10:34 am
There’s also the inherent privileged expectation that young people just entering university will be familiar with computers and the Internet, because they should have had access to these as children and teenagers. That’s really not always the case, and so people who are just learning computers at age 18 or 19 because they never had access before, for whatever reason, get treated like they’re stupid. It’s incredibly anger-inducing.
I’m upset at the way your dad treated you, too. It sounds like there still would have been issues over computers and the Internet even if you were a boy, but because you were a girl, that just gave him even more reason to “protect” you from its “evils”. How screwed up is that? My dad is plenty sexist in his own way, but even he thought enough of me that I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize my safety. Sigh.
namae nanka:
October 27th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
and my father didn’t get me a computer because boys only play video games on it.
Emily:
November 3rd, 2010 at 7:37 am
What about attributing it to porn? I think one major reason why so many young males are so attracted to the internet is the access to porn. My brother had an extra reason than me to hang around the computer and when I went to college, I noticed that all the guys had so much more experience with handling computers because of all the porn.