Driving Out Women

Check out Boing Boing on a bunch of nitwits who ran all the females out of giant LAN party by trying to film an amateur “Gone Wild” video with some decidedly unenthused gamer girls. The obvious point: you’d think the kind of guys who go to giant LAN parties would want/need all the women they could get – and not on film.

I’ve been taking a class this semester called Women and Information Technology, an upper level course cross-listed in the Women’s Studies, Computer Science, and Information Systems departments. While a feminist perspective is hardly news to me, it’s clear from our readings and the shared experience of the class (all women, except for me) that this kind of stuff is exactly what keeps women out of IT and geekhood.

Girls interested in technology are frequently told they’re not as good as their male peers or ignored for anything but their sex, and either way it’s a goddamn shame. I know I always like working alongside technical women in the business world, and the geek community benefits in myriad ways from a female perspective.

These idiots should have their cameras shoved down their throats. But then, their next bigass LAN party now devoid of any female presence is, in my book, punishment enough.