12/28/13 17:39
Maybe I'm only starting to wise up to the nature of the Internet, or there is indeed a rising tide of vitriol. I'm pretty sure it's both.
Another day, another warlock burning. This time, celebrity VC Paul Graham
got into hot water for saying that the lack of women in STEM education is a major problem in the tech industry.
Personally, I don't quite follow Nitasha Tiku's logic in attacking Paul Graham. He said that the lack of STEM skills (specifically programming skills) can be a barrier to tech success. And women have been terribly underrepresented in those programs. Is that an “anti-women" statement?
Nor do I see why Paul Graham himself would harbor any kind of misogynistic agenda. He's a VC. He makes big bucks when there is an abundance of talent to invest in. I'm sure he's doing everything he can to get more people applying for Y-Combinator, regardless of gender, race, age, or anything else.
But that's not the main lesson here.
This is a Gawker column. Their job is to get page views, and trolling famous people is part of the job. It's a game. What’s more insightful is to read through the comments.
A large number of comments are basically of the format “I can’t believe his nerve! F**k this guy!”.
Slightly more insightful are those that go something like: “No women in tech? Harrumph! How about Ada Lovelace/Grace Hopper/My niece? We're doing quite well thank you!”
People are clearly outraged that anyone
would suggest there is a problem, and (
gasp!) dare hint that part of the problem might be affected by social or individual choices made decades ago.
People are so ready to be outraged in fact, that they will even attack someone who would clearly be
a proponent of their own cause.
But what exactly is the offense that people are outraged about?
This made me think back to the
Ben Noordhuis episode, and realize that there is something much more tragic underneath it all.
Ben was ostracized from an open-source project for under-appreciating the gravity of using gender-neutral pronouns in two code comments (he didn't grow up in the U.S.). In a project few outside of tech have heard of nor care about.
Think about that for a moment.
The outrage is
not that Ben said or did anything even remotely discriminating, it's that he didn't
enthusiastically promote a facade that there
was no discrimination.
Ever since Star Trek
changed their iconic intro voice-over, we've understood the obvious need for using gender-neutral pronouns. It sounds silly to do it any other way.
We even try our best to over-correct for previous bias wherever we find it. At least on paper, that is. When referring to roles or jobs with “traditional" gender bias for example, we will make it a point to use the opposite gender. What's an extra letter for the cause of social justice?
That's all good and fine. But all the pronoun whitewashing in the world doesn’t do much to affect real change.
In fact, it can very well do the opposite.
By presenting the illusion that there is no real bias present, we are more inclined to ignore the real structural problems, and invest our time and energy elsewhere.
What we're witnessing is the dark side of the
Political Correctness movement. As a society, we have deemed that
breaching the illusion of a level playing field is worse than even rigging the actual field itself.
In practically all the examples of online outrage we've seen recently, the unfortunate protagonists have been individuals who were clearly on the
winning side of an unfair system.
Their mistake was to point that out. Even if (in some cases) their intent was to help fix the inequity.
This is exactly like that story of the
bird in warm poo. Perhaps we should all just keep quiet when things go our way. Unfortunately the reality is no laughing matter.
There is real and systemic unfairness in all our socio-economic systems. In things that really do matter. The problem is that we've tied ourselves in a corner. We don't even permit, let alone support intelligent conversations about these issues. Instead, we stand ready to shoot down anyone who would tell us that there is a problem, and do worse to those who (god forbid) actually try to do anything constructive about them.
Here's the tragic danger: That our readiness to tear down just about anyone is going to stifle real conversations and action.
How many tech leaders saw this particular episode and decided they were simply not going to touch gender issues because of it? Why poke your finger in something that is so ready to bite your hand off? How many genuinely sympathetic people were turned off?
Right now there seems to be far more vitriol out there than constructive dialog. Even less actual action. How many more people do we need to burn to a crisp before we realize the actual problems lie elsewhere?
A couple of well written posts clarifying both sides of the debate over the Valleywag article:
Katie Siegel takes issue with the insinuation that it's “too late" for people/women who pick up coding after high school.
Taylor Rose accepts the idea that having the proverbial 10,000 hours of experience is essential, and those who start earlier obviously gain a huge advantage.
Fred Wilson weighs in. Lots of high quality comments on his page too. In particular
this one by sigmaalgebra on why coding skills matter so much in startup economics.
Another analysis by
Evan Solomon.
And now Paul Graham himself has written a
blog post clarifying what he said and didn't say. As you probably guessed, it was all just a mountain out of a poorly edited molehill.
Again, the point isn't the linkbaiting. What this shows is how prepared we all are to flame someone, on even the thinnest, most contorted hint of “discrimination”, even when said person has the right intentions and is doing nothing more than stating facts.
1/11/14: Paul Graham has posted a longer
blog article clarifying his beliefs and stand in the matter. He includes this insightful stat:
- In 2013, 13% of series A rounds went to companies with female founders.
Related: Society.