Feminist technology theory as it is realized in a Guitar Hero III Pro Face-Off

Big news first. There's a vendor booth here where they're running a contest: beat one of their employees at Guitar Hero III Pro Face-Off, win free software (developer tools). I was too chikin yesterday, but today I showed up determined to play. That's when I found out their real GHIII player had to go home, so other booth staff are subbing in for him. The new rules? "You pick the song, you pick the difficulty, but no Expert. And if it's an upper-tier Hard you're pretty much gonna win." Heck. If I'd've known that yesterday....

Anyway, I picked the hardest song I can beat on Hard: Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Pride and Joy". I knew I was in trouble when I didn't complete one single Star Power phrase in the entire song. Beat him anyway, with 80%, which isn't a score I'm happy with, but not bad for a Pro Face-Off in front of strangers with no warm-up. :)

When we were finished, someone from the little group of spectators called out to the booth staffer: "You got beat by a woman!"

Hmm.

Didn't like that.

I prolly should've challenged the heckler to a duel right then & there. You know, on all the afterschool specials they say even if you fail epically, you'll win their respect. I dunno. Not my style. Whatever.

I filled out all the paperwork for my free software, and got my photo taken for the booth's "Wall of Shame" screen saver, which I gotta go back and check out later. That's awesome.

As I walked away, another conference attendee walked alongside and complimented my performance. "You really pounded him! Nice job. Do you play at home with your kids?"

Wait. What?

Super nice guy. Paying me a compliment. Loved it. But I cannot imagine that the hundred developer dudes here who've beaten the booth staff at GHIII got asked if they learned to shred by playing with their kids. The guy before me who pwned him on Iron Maiden didn't get that question from anybody.

At lunch, K & I got talking about assumptions, and how initial assumptions are generally based on past experience, and hell, even I would have to assume that a random girl I meet, even here at TechEd, probably doesn't shred on Guitar Hero and probably doesn't aspire to be a software architect. Can I blame other people for basing their assumptions on what we all observe together as the most common realities? Certainly not.

In our most recent architecture session, I looked back through the roomful of ~300 attendees and saw that I was one of only two females in the entire room. That percentage of women who are here at TechEd at all (you know, the ones in the Women in Technology Luncheon I blew off yesterday), almost none of them are in the 400-level architecture track. I noticed this, and I was proud to be one of the only girls in the room. I have started to feel like the more profoundly outnumbered I am, the more likely I am to find the content rigorous and interesting... the more likely I am to be exactly where I want to be. And that was before Guitar Hero!

I'm very seriously really hoping I'm the only girl on the Wall of Shame screensaver and will be disappointed if I'm not. I'm sure a girl who plays GHIII is perfectly capable of beating the booth staff, but I don't expect the girls, even here, to be likely to play in the first place. Even I make that assumption.

So perhaps it isn't the assumptions that cause the problem... as long as you're open to being wrong, open to individuals being individuals.

"No, I don't have any kids." Random TechEd dude was perfectly delightful after that, rolled with the punches, kept up the conversation. Well done, random TechEd dude. It's true... I only look like a girl. I don't really talk or act like one. I like it that way.

But it isn't really enough to throw "girls" under the bus and argue that I only need concern myself with people's assumptions about me: "sure, girls are lame, but I'm an exception." Not cool.

"Beat by a woman" implies that the crowd expected me to suck... even after I finished playing. In their eyes, the fact that I won didn't prove anything good about me... only something bad about the guy I beat.

And that's why you TechEd dudes are not fully off the hook for how you think about us girls. Even if 95% of the females you've ever met or heard of don't show any interest in actual software development, even if they all end up on the BA or PM or UI tracks, even if they don't game, it doesn't mean girls are bad at the tough technical stuff. It just means they tend to be no-shows. You don't know why that is. You can't actually assume anything from that, and you shouldn't.

And that's why I have to keep being a girl here at TechEd. And that's why I, who am wearing a skirt today and everything, am gonna go see if I can beat that guy again. ;)

Update: it has been brought to my attention that kids, regardless of gender, are generally way better than adults, regardless of gender, at Guitar Hero. This is the sort of thing I would have been in a better position to have known if I had kids... and it is a worthy and valid point to consider. Perhaps developer dudes don't get asked about their kids because the answer ("my kids pwn me at Guitar Hero") is obvious. :)