MC - Post Class Post That I Wasn't There For

According to my fellow classmates, I missed a controversial class. The males were not allowed to speak in class without the consent of the females. I'm sure this produced all kinds of debate (and whining) from both sexes. The experiment made me consider feminism and perceptions of the female role in our progressively techonlogic culture.

One would think, that with the wide availablity of myspace, youtube and blogs, the internet and all it's related components (hardware and software) would provide a somewhat level playing field for both sexes. That females can Google just as well as males or dicuss CSS coding just as fluently. This isn't necessarily the case. As a young, female Instructional Techonology Specialist (for all you dumb chicks who couldn't possibly understand what all that globbidty gook means, this means I fix computers), I experience a unique kind of discrimination that I can only conclude is a result of my age and, more specifically, my sex.

I work at a community college in an audio visual department. I sit at my own desk, at my own computer with my own telephone extension and my job is help people with IT related problems. I open up computers, replace and repair hard drives, remove or add memory, and (if I may indulge in an age-old stereotype) I do not, in fact, live in my mother's basement.

It doesn't matter how hard I try to look older or more professional I am still recieved with skepticism from male and female students/faculty requesting IT assistance:

"I'm not sure if you can answer my question but..."

"Can I speak with someone else who might understand?"

"I need to access wireless internet...do you know what I'm talking about?"

"I didn't know girls were into this stuff..."

Perhaps I'm experiencing the annoying and lasting effects of the stereotype that women don't know how to program VCRs, CD players or remote controls. Perhaps this is a result of conditioning small boys to play with electronic cars while girls are encouraged to play with Barbies.

Outside of work, I'm greeted with surprise at my ability to use Photoshop to create graphic designs or the fact that I own and play Call of Duty 2 makes so-called gamers chuckle at the very idea that behold, a girl can manuver a mouse and she does not, in fact, live in her mother's basement. It's silly, discouraging and enormously degrading to imply any kind of superiority to a sex, especially in an environment where it clearly doesn't matter.

It seems we haven't really shaken off these silly notions in a world where information is digital and, by golly, why can't females be too.