Fragile Technologists
Picture the scene. You're in a pub and order, say, a cider or a cocktail. The local pub bore pipes up "What are you drinking that for? Real men drink..." and then names a brand of generic, piss-weak lager that is his substitute for a personality.
He's the same guy who insists that "real men" watch football, and can't quite believe that you have no opinion on last night's cup final.
This sort of behaviour is sometimes terms "fragile masculinity". It isn't that masculinity itself is a weak and feeble proposition - but that some people feel that masculinity needs defending because it is a brittle and narrow concept.
Think of it like this. I like X. I am a Real Man. Therefore Real Men like X. Therefore masculinity depends on X. If there is a man who doesn't like X, either he is not a man, or masculinity doesn't require X. If masculinity doesn't require X, and I like X, that would imply I am not a real man.
It isn't logical, of course, but it is a powerful idea.
This isn't solely an issue with concepts of masculinity. Gatekeeping happens everywhere. A real Star Trek fan hates all that gay stuff in the new season. Oh, you like Shakespeare? Recite your top ten sonnets! You claim to be aligned with this political party, but your stance on metrification reveals you to be a dirty traitor! And on and on it goes.
The same thing, sadly, happens in computing. Real programmers know a language intimately and never need to look up the docs. Real technologists never admit their ignorance. Real developers can recite Knuth.
I don't get it. If you're a man, you're a man. There's no "real" about it. What you drink and how you drink it has no bearing on your masculinity and - even if it did - it would have no bearing on my masculinity.
Same with technology. If you've made a computer do something - anything - in a logical fashion, you're a programmer. Scratch? Programmer! CSS? Programmer? Conditional formatting in Excel? Programmer!
Asking for help? Damn straight you're a programmer.
We have to find a way to help these people caught up in the trap of Fragile Technologism to see that there is a better, more inclusive way forward.
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zerogrip says:
Much research has followed, but like most personality traits, we know little about how to change them. Altemeyer's own longitudinal (meaning tracking a group through their life, in his case his alumni) studies have found stable but small effect reducing RWA by higher education, and stable but smaller effect increasing RWA by becoming a parent. All in all not much change is observed.
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nanu-nanu says:
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