Manuela MalasañaMar 9

Reflecting on all the times in my career as a software engineer I have been told that, yes, things were a bit unfair to me as a woman, but that I was being a trailblazer, I was the one discovering and establishing the path that would enable others to follow.

But you go back to the 70s and you see the same number of women programmers, being fed that exact same line
And in the 80s
and the 90s
and so on to today. The "trailblazer" narrative is a lie told by managers to make themselves feel better

Show threadManuela MalasañaMar 9

sorry about how everything is kinda fucked up, it's just that you are so unique there is no precedent for people like you existing here

Fascinating how this same line of bullshit is given to me as a female programmer in the tech industry and as a contralto in classical singing when actually there have been people like me for over a hundred years in both

Show threadManuela MalasañaMar 9
The most sickening variation of this to me is how women have been in competitive video gaming scenes since inception, but their history has been completely omitted from cultural memory and women are still being treated as newcomers to the scene. The fact that women existing in that space for decades didn't "pave the way" but were instead erased entirely
Show threadManuela MalasañaMar 9
A comforting lie that a lot of men tell themselves is that sexism exists because some fools don't believe that women are as intelligent or capable as men, so if we just *show* them, when confronted with the evidence, they will stop being sexist. And you see this attitude projected backwards in historical fiction, men 200 years ago must not have known women can do any intellectual task a man can! They did know. They do know. This "just show them the evidence" strat doesn't work bc they've seen it
Show threadLona Theartlav
@Xibanya The example of it that i like is sports. Every time a woman won in a mixed sports discipline, it was noticed. And the immune reaction was to separate the discipline into a male league and a female league often with a deliberately incompatible scoring system. Cause god forbid there be any lasting evidence that we are better at anything!
Mar 9 at 5:19pmWeb