Privilege and Postmodern Feminism Against the Backdrop of Technology

The misuse of sociological terms and the toxicity of binary worldviews in the tech industry

This article I aim to keep concise and to the point. It is not an in-depth criticism of any social justice movements, and it is absolutely not meant to downplay human suffering at the hands of prejudice, or try to belittle those who are taking a stand against it. This is because I will not be talking about those people, but rather a subset who consider themselves to be a part of the same group, but whose motivations and understandings are phenomenally different and extreme.

Fundamentally this is not specifically related to the tech industry and programming culture, but it is written primarily in the context of those two settings. I will try to be as nonconfrontational and unaggressive as possible, but I reserve the right to be assertive and to potentially offend the sensibilities of the oversensitive.

The ideals and theory of far-left postmodern social justice appear to have permeated all across technology, particularly programming. They have been getting particularly potent as of relatively recent. It’s almost dogmatic at this point that the lack of women in computing is a direct result of a highly ingrained culture of sexism and misogyny that pervades the tech industry in its very essence. A problem has been unearthed: not enough women. A solution… has yet to be proposed. But the amount of directionless discussion on the web, the scandalizing of minor and inconsequential events (the dongle case, the libuv pronoun controversy, the Emacs virgin joke and many others) and the creation of women’s advocacy organizations and stipends for women seeking to penetrate into computer science is all rising. Not that I oppose the latter, and the entire topic is far too complex to touch in a single Medium entry, but I will address some concepts.

The tech community continuously and persistently undergoes this vicious cycle of debate and drama, never reaching a consensus. Just go to Hacker News, where you’ll have a provocative social justice topic emerge frequently. One not of horrid and detestable oppression, but of social anxieties and subtleties blamed on an ostensibly much larger underlying cause. Or of offensive jokes. These stories tend to attract very heated discussions, with lots of comments. However, as the comment-to-upvote ratio becomes imbalanced, the story sinks further down the pages. This technical fact is then used by ignorant commentators as “evidence” of sexism and lack of desire to face uncomfortable topics in the industry.

In any event, let us begin with the magic word that will be the main focus of this: privilege.

It exists. I do not doubt this.

However it is so grossly misused in contemporary discourse that it inadvertently becomes parodic and has its meaning tainted. To invoke one’s privilege is practically an insult at this point. A sort of “Fuck you straight cis white male, you didn’t do shit, your success is based entirely on your privilege.”

It’s brought up by postmodernists to trivialize achievements. It implies that the person it is being used against has not reached their position (regardless of whether they have any high position in the first place) through hard work, dedication and an undying interest, but through privilege: the social machinations and institutions working for him due to the favorable way they were born, at the expense of others.

Privilege can certainly help. After all, it is called “privilege” for a reason.

But it is not the powerful gamebreaker some people perceive it to be.

The reality is that privilege is highly dependent on a variety of factors, and does not automatically occur by merely possessing given biological birth factors.

These variables include culture, socioeconomic status, family background, environment, reputation and one’s own personality and determination.

What is that? A personally controllable variable? Certainly. One of the postmodern feminist movement’s greatest fallacies lies in their treating of minorities as completely helpless souls that require pampering and help from all aspects of society, to make up for the systematic and institutional oppression that comes from their birth.

But even assuming that as an axiom, privilege is still quite limited in what it can do. It can range from moderately useful to virtually useless depending on the aforementioned variables.

The world is not black and white. Yet this is how the postmodern feminist thinks. It’s a convenient worldview to their agenda, I will acknowledge that, but it is one that has no basis in reality.

To the postmodern feminist, everything is an absolute. If you are male, you are inherently privileged. If you are female, you are inherently disadvantaged. If you’re white, you’re set for life. If you’re a person of color (for some reason “colored person” is insensitive, but “person of color” is not), you’ll be at constant struggle. Then, if in addition to the privileged characteristics, you are also heterosexual and cisgendered, then congratulations, you are lord of this world.

I am sure every person who is at the top of the privilege lottery wished it worked that way. Unfortunately, it does not.

Being born with certain privileges gives you some advantages on average and in given areas. It is by no means a rocket to success, and to invoke one’s privilege in a conversation often has little bearing.

I mean, I’m sure the Irish were just in glee with their white privilege. It certainly must have helped avoid callous oppression by the British.

I’m also convinced the Slavs were enshrined with white privilege, and as a result were not enslaved by vikings, nor did they serve as the etymological basis for the word “slave”.

The Samis also owe it to their white privilege that their culture and heritage has never historically been suppressed.

The countless men who die in pointless wars and conflicts while women are forbidden from entering combat and thus essentially shielded from directly risking their lives in the battlefield, owe it to their male privilege that they die brutally and languish in obscurity. Being expected to bottle up and show no emotions is also consequently male privilege.

Then, more innocuously, we have the poor, acne-faced kid who lives as a social pariah without any real-life contacts, bullied and tormented daily. His only passion is programming and the web, where he spends most of his existence, practically using it as life support. He might as well be nonexistent outside of a screen name and constructed persona. But surely this invisible kid, whose sole reason of existence is virtual, and who has no motivation for any particular future, is basking in his white male privilege.

The truth is: life is an everlasting struggle. Privilege can definitely be a booster in some situations, but for the most part in contemporary Western society, the benefit it has to offer is to deflect from some microaggressions and annoyances. Ranting about privilege like it’s an absolute modifier, is encouraging docility and weakness, while also being erroneous.

Allow me to share a quote:

Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.

This is a famous quote by Adolf Hitler from Mein Kampf. The reason I am posting it is not out of affiliation with National Socialist ideologies, but because it is relevant to the topic, and because the irony value of using a Hitler quote in an article about social justice, is beyond all human classification.

Note that to fight and to struggle does not mean to show off physical prowess. Rather, it entails showing the quality of perseverance.

The position of women today (in the West) is one that is remarkably different from how it was just a century ago. I have always found it curious how postmodern feminists claim about “the oppression of women in every facet of our lives”, yet are simultaneously able to speak in international conferences, participate in politics, vote, seek career prospects and pretty much live as equal members of society. Except for going to war. But when have you ever seen a feminist campaign for mandatory female conscription or the right for women to fight in the battlefield?

Even taking into account the disadvantages women face, they are still largely conquerable. Most oppression on part of the tech industry I’ve read is jabs and comments from other people, and not serious institutional problems. There is such a thing as having your self-esteem hurt, but a lot of stories seem to speak more about the reader’s intense sensitivity and their inability or lack of desire to fight the struggle.

Once again, I am not here to downplay any suffering. I merely seek to offer an alternative view to the social justice ideologies that are presently very popular. Oppression and privilege absolutely exist, even in the West, but the postmodern feminist’s binary worldview of privileged oppressor and permanently disadvantaged oppressed is a toxic and fallacious one. Affirmative action, censorship and guided attacks for politically incorrect humor are not the ways to fix these hardships.

I would also like to point out the interesting transformation of the nerd stereotype. Computer programmers have long been stereotyped as socially inept geeks, loners and losers. Largely introverted and unable to maintain relationships. An extension of the D&D player and LARP stereotype, minus the ritual Satanism. Yet as of recent, we now have a new figure: that of the sharp-dressed and successful startup founder. It is only when programming became more of a mainstream activity and tech people morphed from basement dwellers to wizards and noble people of the electronic age that feminism massively infiltrated. This leads me to wonder whether a lot of feminists are attracted towards the craft for what it is, or for the financial prospects and the need for women to be into a sphere where money is plentiful.

In conclusion, how many of you have watched Charlie Chaplin films? In particular, The Great Dictator (1940)? Even if you haven’t seen the entire film, you have perhaps seen or heard of the famous final speech where The Tramp, disguised as Adenoid Hynkel, delivers one of the most poignant appeals to humanity in the midst of a devastating world war, one that is still relevant today.

The excerpt I am referring to is:

We think too much and feel too little.

That may have been true, back when we had a highly bitter and pragmatic modernism dominating the cultural sphere. But it seems that now, the role has shifted. For all the ostentatious, pseudoscientific and subjective body of postmodern social justice research, for all the pointless drama and bickering over pronouns in source code comments very few people will ever read, for all the misconstruing of lighthearted gamer trash talk as “rape jokes” and the complete lack of sportsmanship, among countless other examples… it appears that…

We feel too much and think too little.