On Nerd Entitlement: Those who feel underprivileged are now the privileged

Interesting blog post about a discussion going on with MIT Professor Scott Aaronson on his blog (see here). The point of the post linked below is that some white males may feel underprivileged, attacked because of their geekiness as kids, but are actually in-charge now. Those who felt underprivileged are now privileged and may not realize it, and that might be what’s making it so hard to change computing culture.  (Later update in The Chronicle blog here.)

Scott, imagine what it’s like to have all the problems you had and then putting up with structural misogyny on top of that. Or how about a triple whammy: you have to go through your entire school years again but this time you’re a lonely nerd who also faces sexism and racism. This is why Silicon Valley is fucked up. Because it’s built and run by some of the most privileged people in the world who are convinced that they are among the least. People whose received trauma makes them disinclined to listen to pleas from people whose trauma was compounded by structural oppression. People who don’t want to hear that there is anyone more oppressed than them, who definitely don’t want to hear that maybe women and people of colour had to go through the hell of nerd puberty as well, because they haven’t recovered from their own appalling nerdolescence. People who definitely don’t want to hear that, smart as they are, there might be basic things about society that they haven’t understood, because they have been prevented from understanding by the very forces that caused them such pain as children.

via On Nerd Entitlement.