Dear two clueless nitwits I have to work with,
Let me explain something. I know that you view women as some strange, fascinating, foreign species. I get that members of that species are something you desperately want to possess, possibly to stuff and mount and admire in your living rooms or something. I get that your interactions with that strange and wonderful species have been limited, perhaps even non-existant, since the only way I can understand your behaviour is to assume your mother abandoned you, hoping you would be raised by wolves, only, instead to be raised by some solitary social-skills lacking creature, like alligators or something.
Now, let’s get a couple of things straight between us. Women: I’m a fan. Boobs? Yeah, as it happens, I like them. That said, I manage, somehow, not to go around the entire office inviting my coworkers to go to Hooters with me for lunch. And, in the utterly unlikely event that I ever did, I would not, in point of fact, giggle like a nervous 12-year-old who had just learned a naughty word.
Now, while I’m a fan, as I mentioned, of women generally, and, you know, boobs, and in fact am pretty damn indiscriminate about that fandom, I admit I’m not a fan of Hooters. But hey, if you, clueless twit, are, then knock your bad self out. Go forth, and drink cheap beer and generally be around comely women. Different strokes for different folks. Just, and I realize this is going to be a huge infringement on your right to be a little greasy little fucking creepy thing (did mommy alligator not give you enough food while she was busy not giving you enough affection?) , but, try, very hard, to set aside the being fucking creepy around the office while you are within earshot of me. And, when I tell you that this is not, as you may have learned while whatever reptilian life form was basically failing on the parenting front in what we might jokingly call your “upbringing”, appropriate office behaviour, do not (and this is gonna be a challenge, but challenges are how we grow) then giggle nervously and say “I can’t say what? Hooters?!”. No, you can’t. Nice work, growing a brain when I told you I’d be dragging you over to HR by your ear if you said it again.
Is this a real problem? No, of course not. However, my second problem child is more aggravating.
I get that, since the ink is actually still wet on your diploma, and you’ve successfully written what could well be scores of lines of code for your own app, you think you have All The Answers (and as a bonus, thanks to that hour of my life I’ll never get back, you now have All The Answers about how pointers work). I get that an application that will be maintained by more than one person, that will be expanded year after year while despite the best efforts of better people than you it slowly turns to a big ball of mud is beyond not only your experience but your imagination. You, sir, are an idiot, and I know that. It is my sad lot in this life, one can only assume for horrific sins committed in a past one, to educate you in the finer points of software development, including, but not limited to, yes, sadly, pointers, and inheritance, and protocols and design patterns and all sorts of stuff that you seem, sadly, to have badly misunderstood. Misunderstood in ways that cause me actual ongoing physical pain. However, that you are a dumbass with delusions of adequacy is not the problem. That is to be expected.
When however, you are told that a developer will be joining the team, you do not refer to him as “the new girl”.
Now, as it happens, that developer is vastly better and more qualified than you will ever hope to be, especially since your life is increasingly likely to be cut short in a tragic and inexplicable paper shredding incident that will occur at a time when I am engaged in activity known as “making sure I have an air-tight alibi”.
That new team member is also, as it happens, our team member. In software, as you would know if you had ever written more than trivial applications, we are handed enough shit without taking it out on each other. We always, always, always, stand up for and assist our teammates. Even those who, like you, should have been fed to the alligator who did such a bad job with your friend. That, however, is not the point.
The point is that your statement is a bit like your code: nothing about it okay. The attitude about women expressed (in this country, the entreaty “play like a girl” is meant to inspire one to be like the hockey team. Not an insult) is so troublesome it seems its actually more cost-effective to render you down for the 89 cents worth of chemicals than it is to go to the trouble of educating you, but, well, past life sins or something. Maybe I was a mass murderer? However, I wish to assure you, it is not an insult. Which leads me to the problem: it’s a stupid statement on every possible level. There is nothing particularly effeminate about him. He’s…a normal guy. And, and this is the problem - I don’t fucking care. His sex isn’t a thing. We don’t attempt to denigrate people for that, many because we just don’t. We don’t attempt to denigrate people by referring to them as girls. It isn’t okay. That you care, that you notice, actually sort of makes you a creepy fuck. Words actually fail me. And anyone who has made it to this point knows that doesn’t happen often.
But, I am your tech lead (be honest with me here - did I attempt genocide or something in a past life?) you decided you would, apparently because of some congenital clue-deficinecy, tell me this in writing in a Skype conversation. Now I have to do something about it, and apparently there are “laws” “preventing” me from “cutting up your body and using it for fish bait” EVEN THOUGH there is a lake not 2 km from the office. See, being clueless isn’t inherently a bad thing, until you start doing stupid, asinine stuff that bugs me. Then, it is.