New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.

@iris_meredith Can confirm considerable cognitive dissonance between what I think creates value in the world and what "tech" is asked/made to build most of the time.

Can also confirm strong conflicts of this line of work with needs of body and soul. Some of that applies to any desk job, I think. On top of that, there's definitely many people who invest most of their free time to "stay on top" of developments (which of course normalizes that behaviour and creates expectations of techies to always know their way around the new stuff).

And _of course_ we make up narratives in an effort to make all of that make sense. How could we go on otherwise?

Are these narratives more malleable in tech than elsewhere? Interesting thought. "Strong opinions loosely held" _is_ a meme, and adjusting opinions in the face of evidence _is_ a strength (imho).

Problem is: There's so little science behind software "engineering" it's almost embarrassing. I can see how in a field of low-evidence best practice, any new idea can shift opinions with little evidence in turn. Not sure how that's necessarily related to the cognitive dissonance / dysphoria line of thought, though.

@iris_meredith I would also add that while definitely many loud people jump on hype trains in tech -- maybe because of some internal malleability as you propose, maybe out of cynical financial tactics -- it's not been my impression that _most_ people follow along, not really. Most people seem to just keep doing their jobs; keeping your head down and letting the hype pass is in many ways safer (and easier) compared to voicing loud disagreement with the Cool Kids.

Come to think of it, _that's_ a lesson nerds learn in school, isn't it? Go along, shut up, or be isolated.

@iris_meredith oh... oh so that's why things went the way they did. we didn't even connect some of our experiences to gender dysphoria despite having known that we're trans for over 8 years now. okay.

@iris_meredith we're still kinda working on the whole having desires and such again. honestly I think a fair amount was also crushed out of us by the realities of capitalism. things we legitimately wanted seemed completely unattainable.

@iris_meredith A really thoughtful post. I think it makes sense.

I am definately going to need to read it a few more times.

@iris_meredith Imo the common denominator here, as you mentioned several times in the piece, is repressed feelings and societal pressure. Geeky/nerdy types — and I count myself among them — were often not allowed to express themselves as kids, and told to enjoy things they simply didn't. I'm obviously not saying it's the same, but... sound familiar? Being taught that your feelings aren't valid and that others dictate what you like is quite an awful blueprint for a healthy emotional life

1/2

@iris_meredith

The result is sad, but now, they're adults who need to take responsibility for their actions. A position of power and change, which is especially true of people working in AI, also comes with responsibility and accountability.

That's my take, anyway

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@iris_meredith fascinating observations (thanks a lot for sharing your experience of gender dysphoria as a trans person!) and well written, thank you so much for writing!

I do relate to some of it, having alexithymia definitely doesn't help with embodiment.

But I also kept wondering if a lot of this is the oppression of the increasingly fascist hypercapitalism in big tech? I've been working in much more feminine startups in London and people and culture in these companies are much more healthy and humane.

@iris_meredith humanity dysphoria

@iris_meredith This is brilliant, and very much gives voice to many issues I've been grappling with lately -- and connects them to larger trends in tech.

For me, the issue was not gender dysphoria (I'm fine with my original plumbing), but I still struggled with all the symptoms of dysphoria you mention -- feeling disconnected, not knowing what I wanted, alienation from my body, alienation from my work. Not feeling like *me*.

Turns out there was a critical part of me that I sent away long ago, because there simply wasn't a safe place for it in this world. For various complicated reasons, that part of me strongly identifies as a horse. (Yes, species dysphoria is a thing.) Which makes a lot of sense in your thesis -- horses are deeply embodied and sensous creatures, so it makes sense that part of my soul latched on to it.

The past few months have been all about connecting and celebrating that part of me. Alas, transitioning is off the table, but there are many other outlets that let it shine.

@iris_meredith There are two fantasy tropes that I keep coming back to: the Horcrux (from Harry Potter) and Recission (from The Golden Compass).

Both involve a splitting of the soul. In the horcrux, the soul is split to hide part of it away, for survival. In recission, half the soul is destroyed. Both create monsters.

Long ago, I chose the path of the horcrux. I sent half my soul away to go live with the horses, because the other option was recission and soul death. I still remember doing it, too. Soul magic is weird. And I spent the next decade disconnected from myself.

But I'm thankful, too. Because that part of me managed to survive, even if hidden. And now that I've rediscovered it, I've found something else -- that part of me was my heart. Something I was sorely missing. And something that our industry seems to have forgotten.

I love living from my heart. I love feeling it in my chest. I love trusting that it knows what it wants. It's wonderful. ️

@tinybird @iris_meredith i also sometimes get those two things confused and i think that’s because they’re related (awareness of where you are in space requires awareness of what signals your senses are giving you, which manifest as internal bodily sensations)

@iris_meredith This article really captures the feeling that society is just structured to generate a general dysphoria. Just constantly putting everyone in a state of massive discomfort and listlessness. You simply do not get to be who you want to be. Especially in America.

• You are prescribe to drive a car and the values it brings.
• You must find life-long employment in a field you will have minimal chance to leave once selected.
• The career you pick will bring prescribed notions of how you will act
• etc. etc. things you've articulated very well.

Careers are kinda a gender. I felt more or less prescribed to pursue a high-paying respectable job. My parents were super against career tech at my school cause they saw it as the place all the inept went to go straight to a job then fail in life. I choose the IT route over the Digital Design route cause I felt it was The Choice They'd Expect. And then I learned nobody in this field really gives a shit about when I was quiet passionate ._.

My desire has always been to pursue art, but the income simply doesn't exist so I'm stuck at a desk gig that pays vastly better for a fraction of the work and for work I just do not care about and simply perform the motions of.

Also, the segment about "tech works often having literally no interest outside of tech" is so painfully true. It can almost be unnerving when engaged upon en masse.

@iris_meredith Also, most of my work is erotic arts, which just adds a whole extra wall I depersonalize behind regularly.

Thank you for this perspective!

@iris_meredith

What is described here sounds very much like the culmination of the very specific flavor of masculinity that was being performed in tech in the 90s.

What myself have described as the "wounded masculinity" of a generation for whom being socially abused for being geeky or nerdy was still very fresh. (Something that, later in life, myself came to recognize as akin to the religious woundedness one encounters at a UU coffee klatch.)

Now that we're the other side of "nerds rule the world", that triumphant enthusiasm having been fully corporatized, all the steam of having proven the bullies wrong having long since been expended, what remains is a performance of masculinity.

Yet a masculinity that is a husk of the wounded masculinity that preceded it. Hollowed out of the deep yearning to prove oneself superior to one's tormentors, leaving only a faint echo in the drive to prove... something, to someone, whatever and whomever that might be.

@iris_meredith

Thank you for an insightful post.

I have the feeling that most of what you describe can also be traced back to a very deficient educational system.

We don't provide enough diversity, enough culture in education, we do not teach people that curiosity, reading and a life-long desire to know more are desirable. The results are staring at us now...

@iris_meredith

Tangentially, thinking there might be some intersection here with Cyberlyra's discussion of the notion, absent in Usian language, of a "keener":

https://hachyderm.io/@cyberlyra/116074966881545815

To wit, doing something for the joy of it, with no other motive, does not compute. Dysphoria as being what cannot be named, let alone bodily embraced.

@iris_meredith It's interesting to see the connections you make, but overall I'd say the inhumanity of the tech industry is due to the capitalist superstructure rather than attributes of information workers.

As a programmer that does think of myself more of a mental being than a body, I can't relate to the ideas that studying complex systems leads to a weaker sense of self or that body disassociation is an indicator for sociopathic violence (cf. heightened sensuality may fuel racial animus).

Very interesting read!

It has me thinking about those ricers who build this elitist culture around hprland (or whichever one is trending) being the superior way to interact with your system, all other DEs are inferior and you're a loser for using them, yadda yadda yadda. Very masculine performing.

But then the other side of this, subculture I guess, is creating beautiful, aesthetic setups. Posting screencaps of your ricing. Getting the colors of the UI to match the wallpaper. Making a custom fastfetch with custom ASCII art and colors. Getting the window animations to smoothly move things across your screen.

It struck me as very feminine. (Or at least culturally feminine.) And it felt weird to me because what these folks are actually doing is so diametrically opposed to the atmosphere they give off. There's a mismatch. I bet many of these ricers would frown at interior design or visual art, dismissing it as womanly, as part of the outside world that doesn't matter. They are artists, but label it as something else to feel distant from it, and I can't imagine that being good for their psyche. I had trouble wrapping my head around this, but your article gave me a new lens to view this through.