Current State: Misogynist Discourse in Computing

The past two decades have seen the emergence of particularly virulent strains of misogyny in the computer technology sector. Some of these reflect issues common to many large corporations in a patriarchal and capitalist society, such as pay-equity issues at Google, LinkedIn and Microsoft. Other ongoing problems, however, include harassment, hostile conduct in the workplace, and sexual assault.1 . These extreme examples of misogyny are often associated with the emergence of a new, younger group of male software developers known collectively as "brogrammers".2 While the "bro" phenomenon may be historically recent, its roots reach into the troubled history of men—and patriarchal corporate culture—coming to grips with the social ambiguity and indeterminate gender of computing expertise.3

Recent examples

Gamergate: Mob violence in the Twitterverse

Sometime in 2013, Zoë Quinn, a computer game programmer released an intentionally difficult and unsatisfying game called Depression Quest to the market. The game, largely reflecting her personal experience living with clinical depression, did not draw a friendly response from the gaming community at large. 4 In August, 2014, her ex-boyfriend posted an online screed accusing her of having an affair with a video-game journalist who had made a passing reference to the game.

Almost immediately the microblogging service Twitter exploded with attacks on Quinn. She and two other women—media critic Anita Sarkeesian and game developer Brianna Wu—were subjected to ongoing harassment, doxxing (publishing private information such a personal phone numbers, bank accounts and residential addresses) as well as threats of rape, murder and mayhem.5   Men who spoke out against the campaign of bullying and threats were rhetorically discounted as "social justice warriors" in the lingo of the mob.6  

A hashtag—#GamerGate—and specious cover narrative quickly emerged: that the twitter campaign was about corruption in gaming journalism. 7  This narrative did not, of course, map onto the actual pattern of hate speech and threatening behavior. It quickly became impossible to hide that the online mob was  men reacting violently to increasing gender diversity in the computer game industry.8 Several mob tactics developed during Gamergate, such as gathering in one online community to plan attacks and harassment in another, were later incorporated in right-wing political actions during the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential campaigns.9

"Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber"

James Damore’s 2017 "Google Memo"—also known by its title, "Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber"—was written as a response to Google’s attempts to remedy gender bias. Damore's text is an example of what Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca would refer to as "argumentation".10 Its intent is epideictic, but confusedly so: it proposes actions to address gender inequality at Google without acknowledging the impact anti-female bias and misogyny have had in the computer technology field.

Instead, Damore attempts to explain employment discrepancies between men and woman at Google as the outcome of differences in inherent traits between men and women. Curiously, some of the traits he (negatively) attributes to women—a preference for other humans over machines, gregariousness—are merely inversions of traits attributed (negatively) to computer programmers in the 1970’s.11 He uses a jumble of hyperlinks to dubious or misinterpreted psychological studies and anti-feminist websites to support these attributions12 –and the links to the latter undermine his credibility as a neutral interpreter of the former.

Where logos fails him, he turns to ethos—"I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes."13 His arguments from pathos, however—Google’s corporate-level actions a influenced by unconscious "Left Biases" and silence conservative men—make this, and other claims less persuasive. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Damore’s memo raised a furor which eventually cost him his job at Google but made him a favorite in some conservative circles.14

The two cases above were, of course, egregious and widely publicized. As is often the case, they were largely attributed to "bad actors" rather than what O'Donnell (2020) refers to as "militant meninism".15  Alarming as these examples of misogyny are by themselves, they also reflect profound historical ignorance –the programming ecosystem in which Damore worked, as well as the social media/networking systems underlying Twitter would not exist at all without women's contributions to computing. I take this up as the subject of the 'Archetechnology' section of the site.

• 1Chang, 2018; Gershgorn, 2019; Lukpat, 2022; Rubin, 2022
• 2 (Hicks, 2013; Porter, 2014)
• 3Ensmenger, 2010; Abbate, 2012
• 4Parkin, 2014
• 5Lees, 2016; O’Donnell, 2020
• 6Chess & Shaw, 2015
• 7Heron, Belford, & Goker (2014)
• 8Salter, 2017; Nieborg & Foxman, 2018
• 9Johnston, 2014; Bezio, 2018; O’Donnell, 2020
• 10Perelman & Albrechts-Tolteca, 1969; Perelman, 2001
• 11Ensmenger,2010
• 12Molteni & Rogers 2018
• 13 Damore, 2017, p. 1
• 14 Lee, 2018
• 15O'Donnell, 2020