kpthinksalot:

madgastronomer:

robothugscomic:

New comic! (link)

This week I am very happy to present a collaboration comic with my friend Chrissie, who has been generous in sharing with me her experiences of gender dynamics in a technical field, and then helping me craft them into a comic narrative.

Whenever I see Chrissie’s work I’m always impressed at the cool, creative things she does. When we were discussing this comic, she told me: “I find men persistently try to direct me lots now too, which is probably the biggest problem I consistently run into”, and my feelings around that fact are a terrible and familiar blend of frustration, sadness, and lack of surprise.

When we talk about the differences in how men and women are treated professionally, especially in technical fields, we are often dismissed with ‘everyone has to deal with that’, or ‘women need to demonstrate more confidence with their skills’, or ‘they’re just trying to be helpful’, or ‘it’s all in your head’.

It’s frustrating when we know something like this is happening, but we spend so much of our time actually trying to get people to believe that it’s a real phenomenon. I find narratives like Chrissie’s validating in that she has a comparative set of experiences and is like ‘oh yeah, people totally think I’m less competent at my job now. it’s totally a thing’.  So, can guys just believe us already and get on helping it not happen?

When my wife transitioned, working in tech, she found that her coworkers and subordinates did start treating her differently. She even had one guy working under her who tried to tell her how to use a piece of software that she herself had taught him only three months before.

So far I’ve been lucky and this hasn’t really happened to me. Here’s hoping it stays that way.