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Red Team, Blue Team: the Only Woman On the Team
ancientribe writes "Cyber security pro Kerstyn Clover in this Dark Reading post shares some rare insight into what it's like to be a woman in the field. She ultimately found her way to her current post as a member of the incident response and forensics team at SecureState, despite the common societal hurdles women face today in the STEM field: 'I taught myself some coding and computer repair in probably the most painstaking ways possible, but my experiences growing up put me at a disadvantage that I am still working to overcome,' she writes."
"Women can do just as much mental heavy lifting as men."
Bullshit because if they could, they would. I think it's pretty naïve to think that while nature made fairly substantially different hardware for substantially different purposes that it loaded exactly the same control software because it got lazy all of a sudden. Now maybe women can perform mental heavy lifting of a different sort but honestly, when they talk about patriarchy, when they talk about barriers to entry that they (for lack of understanding) call "bias," what they really mean is "our brain processes don't fit into these fields created and run by male thought processes." The proof to the fallacy of your statement is your statement needing to be made in the first place. Women can't do as much (male type) mental heavy lifting as men because if they could they would and if they were, they wouldn't be complaining about the difficulty of competing in male intellectual endeavors. The "bias" they perceive is the bias of the square peg not fitting in the round hole.
This is an early twenty-something, so I'm going to be reasonably gentle. The bulk of the most cringeworthy comments can be as likely put down to the age as to the gender, and I'm going to try to be as charitable as possible.
"...there is something to be said for finally seeing someone you can relate to, who looks like you..." - Might want to steer clear of explicitly saying that you want to work with someone that LOOKS like you. I get your meaning, but since you're pretty much writing the essay to criticize males for acting exclusionary, the answer isn't to be equally tribalistic in turn. You might imagine, with some empathy, that men TOO like to work with someone THEY can relate to, who looks like them, without the (let's be frank, as we're talking about 20-somethings who are still relatively awash in hormones) distraction of a woman in the largely-male, mostly-hetero environment.
"...the long list of people (mostly women) who have published ...about the gender disparity in STEM/tech fields and faced incredible backlash..."
ANYONE that posits a position, right or wrong, faces incredible backlash today. Welcome to the world. Take a political position: you can pretty much be assured that the number and vehemence of threats is directly related to the size of your audience and how broadly your message is reaching. See it as a compliment. (That is, unless you want special protection from 'stalking' or 'come-ons' because you're female - you know, the 'weaker' sex?)
"...I taught myself some coding and computer repair in probably the most painstaking ways possible..." Really? Like, well, teaching yourself in your room, in the garage, in the basement? I'm going to bet that at least 80% of your male peers learned the same way. And none of them would call it 'painstaking'. Generally, it would be seen as a mark of honor that you earned your knowledge the hard way.
Meh, it's not worth dissecting the essay further.
Stop walking around with a chip on your shoulder. Women can do anything a man can do, and pretty much any man under 40 (and most of them over that) would consider utterly without question. The others you can just disregard.
Tip for Kerstyn, as I'm nearly certain she'll read these comments: I know you think you're grown up. It feels like it, I'm sure. You aren't. You have nearly zero life experience outside the cloistered halls of academia. Keep fighting, keep struggling, but understand that you are very young and have likely earned nothing of note in the eyes of your peers....you get that through time served.
Fighting assholes in the workplace is part of life, as well. Various people will like you or resent you for a myriad of reasons - who you are friends with, where you park, what you like to eat, who you vote for, etc. But the truth is this: If you feel marginalized or disregarded, understand that it is most probably everything to do with your (real) inexperience, and nothing to do with your reproductive organs.
-Styopa