The Road To Discovering That I'm Not A Sexist Pig

It's the Year of the Pig, and thus talking about sexist pigs today seems awfully apt.

We've heard of the brogrammer culture in the USA. The sexual propositions of those in power towards female coders. The chauvinistic remarks of guys who think some girls are "too pretty to code". The list goes on. Tech is rife with sexism in Silicon Valley, and as far removed as I am from that hotbed of tech innovation, there are few things that repulse me more in tech.

I've always thought of tech work as a meritocracy. Those who are good enough need to work, and those who aren't, need to work... on themselves. When I say "good enough", I don't mean purely in terms of technical knowledge, but also in ethics, communication skills and everything a professional should have, not just a tech professional. And that is why hiring practice based on gender, whether they discriminate against males (the Affirmative Action bullshit) or females (the more traditional kind of gender discrimination), or negative stereotypes of tech workers based on gender, annoy me. None of this has any place in tech. Tech is not a male thing or a female thing. Tech is about how much value you can bring to the table regardless of race, gender or whatever.

In fact, I'm so disturbed at the thought of being sexist, that at one time, I experienced a little BSOD of my own when I suspected that some negative thoughts I had about a female co-worker, were rooted in sexism. (I've written a little about her before in The Development Process - Are you Engine Grease or a Spanner? and Five Comparisons Between Contract and Permanent Roles.)

My thoughts about this co-worker

I felt that she was opinionated and bossy. There didn't seem to be any issue within the department that she didn't want to weigh in on. She didn't play well with the team and tried way too hard to prove she was better than us. As far as I was concerned, she didn't need to prove jackshit - if management had asked, I would have given my honest assessment that she was. That didn't mean I thought she was good. I was of the opinion that I sucked, and she happened to suck significantly less.

But you see, in this day and age, a man calling a woman "bossy" reflects badly on the man. The general narrative is, men who describe women as "bossy" are insecure and unable to cope with the challenge that strong and assertive women bring to their fragile egos. I agreed with that assessment, and still do. Therefore, I tried very hard not to even think of her as "bossy". God damn it, I was a tech and I should hold myself to higher standards of behavior. If someone was better than me, that was the end of the story and the gender of that person should not matter at all.

I am woman, hear me roar.

Once she got promoted, however, it soon became apparent that I wasn't the only one who thought she was a pain in the ass. She pretty much rubbed the other people in other departments the wrong way when she tried to impose regulations on workflow. Not that the idea was wrong, but some tact and delicacy is generally required when dealing with other human beings, especially human beings who don't answer to you.

Still, I thought, maybe these other guys who had a problem with her were sexist pigs. Not my problem either way, I was out of the company in a month, and good riddance!

Four years later....

I ended up working as a contractor in a large tech firm, posted as onsite vendor to a Government Statutory Board. Among my colleagues was this insufferable dude from India. (He has a cameo in one of my previous posts, My Year in Training and Assessment.) He kept acting like he was in charge, self-promoted constantly, threw little temper tantrums and his code fucking stank. All this was probably a lot of posturing to cover up some pretty heavy insecurity. I mean, if you feel the need to toot your own horn that frequently, you're probably paranoid that no one will notice you exist.

Blow that trumpet, bro.

Boy, did I detest working with this clown. But I wasn't here to make friends. I was here to work and by God I was going to work. Like a pro, I hid my feelings well, knuckled down and did my job.

Besides, I had the nagging feeling that this wasn't the first time I had encountered someone like that.

My epiphany

These two colleagues were starting to feel very similar. Both disagreeable and authoritative, both prone to fits of drama, both determined to assert themselves and prove how good they were. Except one was female and the other male. One Chinese, the other, Indian.

And it struck me that, if I could have the same negative feelings towards a man who exhibited the same traits as the woman, then I was quite definitely not a sexist. I had considered my former female colleague an overcompensating self-promoter with self-esteem issues not because I was sexist, but because that was precisely what she was. My feelings of revulsion were consistent when the data was applied on someone of another gender. Of course, there's the possibility that I am both a sexist and a racist... but at this moment I'm quite confident that I'm not. At least, not to the point that it would affect my judgement this significantly.

And if I had to choose between these two? I'd choose the former. Her code was actually decent. And no matter how much disdain I had for her politicking, she had least had a legit reason - there was promotion up for grabs, and all. The Indian dude had no such excuse because we were both contractors. No amount of politicking would have improved his position. He was not only obnoxious, but a fucking time-waster.

The stunning conclusion

Sometimes you gotta call a spade a spade. Being conscious of sexism and implicit bias is nice and all that, but if someone is objectionable, their gender is irrelevant. That's the lesson I learned from all this - to stop letting "wokeness" cloud my judgement.

Male you live in interesting times,
T___T