A day or so after publishing Diversity and Justice, I received the following comment from a female acquaintance:

I appreciate you offering this patch! Some code comments from a more senior developer in the area:

Good start with “there are traits which matter and traits which don’t”! Your error is that you’re assuming the only variables that matter are the ones in your Engineering function, but you’re using classes that are defined globally. Banana-gorilla-jungle stuff. 

That’s why you’ve got the common misconception “since ‘female’ doesn’t directly come into play in ‘Engineer’, an object descended from both ‘female’ and ‘Engineer’ is the same as an object descended from both ‘male’ and ‘Engineer’.” In fact, because female is a trait that matters globally, anyone in the female Engineer group has had to pass through a filtering function “stand_up_to_assumption_of_incompetence” that requires that engineer be confident in their knowledge, or patient, or stubborn, or lucky, or sociopathic, or possessing some other extra trait; most of which are favorable for Engineering prowess.

If you have two pools of engineers and one is pre-screened, it makes logical sense to exhaust the pre-screened pool before turning to the random pool!

Also, most people who work in this field use a fork of the Justice framework that comes with a bunch of open source tools specifically for working with these filtering functions; like Feminism or Anti-Racism.

Again, thanks for weighing in on the project!

To be honest, my first reaction was to feel annoyed and patronized. I was tempted to ignore the comment and just move along with my day. But I couldn’t, in good conscious, let it go so easily.

First, while my first reaction was to view this as a “negative” comment, I’m not 100% sure that was the intention. I’m perfectly willing to accept a well-reasoned and friendly rebuttal to my ideas. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I publish things publicly, instead of just keeping them to myself. However, I’m a lot less interested in debating a point with someone who is already hostile. But, knowing the person who posted the comment (I attended her wedding!), and being good friends with her husband, I am much more willing to give her the benefit of the doubt as to her intentions.

Second, if you look past the tone of the message to its actual argument, I think there’s validity to her point. That is, any woman who is still in the software field after any length of time has had to put up with a certain amount of bullshit which gives her a certain talent and toughness above the average candidate. That being the case, you could consider female candidates even more attractive than the average male candidate. I think there’s some truth there, and I was even considering various similar ideas when I wrote the original article. But, to keep things concise, I decided to exclude them.

However, the reason I ultimately decided to respond with a new post is because I think this comment actually demonstrates the third part of the trap, as I outlined in my original post:

Finally, it’s a trap for everyone trying to correct the problem. By framing the situation as one group oppressing the other, it creates a powerful “us vs. them” mentality which is hard to overcome. People in the minority group are tempted to identify all people in the majority group as oppressors. Allies in the majority group feel unfairly accused, and are less likely to want to remain allies. Progress in correcting the situation is impeded to no one’s benefit.

Andrew Miner

Whether it was the commenter’s intention or not, my reaction to the comment was exactly what I described: an ally who was being unfairly attacked. To put it more bluntly, I felt I was effectively being told: “Get out of here; you don’t know what you’re talking about.” with a little pat on the head for at least trying not to be a sexist asshole.

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While I wish the comment were more unambiguously friendly in tone, I appreciate the time my acquaintance took to write it, and I think she makes a good point. I would prefer, though, if we all were to follow Lori Lakin Hutcherson’s admirable example when she (a black woman) responded to her friend (a white man) who was struggling with the idea of “white privilege”:

I truly thank you for wanting to understand what you are having a hard time understanding… because I realized many of my friends—especially the white ones—have no idea what I’ve experienced/dealt with…

Lori Lakin Hutcherson

Lori embraced her friend’s attempt to figure things out and be an ally. She was willing to accept his professed good intention (despite his ignorance), and help him understand her own point of view in a friendly, sincere, and very powerfully honest way. I think we should all aspire to follow her example.