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The myth that programming is masculine
Dec. 17th, 2018 02:42 amvia https://ift.tt/2SQjLtF
laryna6:
…and now I want Avengers fanfic, because the kind of magic that Loki does was seen as womanly to the Vikings, to the point that any man who used it was considered feminine and probably an uke, and Captain America… is not a sexist person in the original movie, but he’d still have his era’s ideas of what’s masculine and what’s feminine.
Tony Stark? He programs, when programming was originally women’s work, advertised as just like planning a meal. He designs colorful, elaborate outfits. Using power that isn’t raw strength, he’s as blatantly, flamboyantly non-masculine to the eyes of someone from Steve’s time as a seidr-user like Loki was to the Vikings.
So Tony Stark reads as absolutely, flamboyantly gay because he’s a computer programmer, and computer programming is feminine.
Homosexuality, situational and otherwise, was pretty darn common in a conscript army (which is part of how the Kinsey Report fucked up). I like the idea of a Steve who doesn’t hold it against Tony that he’s “Gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide,” because he’s met good people who were gay, but he’s not going to cut Tony any slack because of it because assuming that gay people can’t be held to the same standards of bravery and so on as everyone else is insulting to the people he served with, just like not expecting Natasha to be perfectly capable of pulling her weight would be an insult to Peggy Carter.
It would be nice to read fic where Steve is seriously surprised that Tony and Pepper are dating instead of Pepper just being a good friend protecting Tony’s reputation (although Steve’d be happy that units are racially integrated – his people were, and that wasn’t standard at the time – and he’d be for getting rid of don’t ask, don’t tell, because seriously? After all these decades?), and the whole culture shock for Tony of ‘Wait, you thought I was gay because I hacked Shield’s computers?’
Steve is probably going to be very upset to find out about the marketing programs and deliberate hiring policies used to reverse the gender demographics of programming and create the myth that women aren’t good at it. Because programming requires logical thought and ‘everyone knows’ women aren’t capable of logical thought. Despite the fact that women were doing most of the programming for decades before that bullshit, and it was a woman who invented the first compiler.
Then there’s Thor, who would probably nod when Steve tells him about how programmer used to generally = woman and compare that to seidr (Jane! How brilliantly she forces the universe to submit to her will! Ah, a true flower of womanhood.) and yes, if the Man of Iron hadn’t challenged him to that macho (stupid) contest of arms when they first met, he would have assumed that he was gay instead of bi.
The Iron Man movies try to make Tony out to be so macho, but a hell of a lot of his power is traditionally female-associated power: see The Empress tarot card. The idea that science and computers are masculine is bullshit, and people need to be called out on it.
laryna6:
…and now I want Avengers fanfic, because the kind of magic that Loki does was seen as womanly to the Vikings, to the point that any man who used it was considered feminine and probably an uke, and Captain America… is not a sexist person in the original movie, but he’d still have his era’s ideas of what’s masculine and what’s feminine.
Tony Stark? He programs, when programming was originally women’s work, advertised as just like planning a meal. He designs colorful, elaborate outfits. Using power that isn’t raw strength, he’s as blatantly, flamboyantly non-masculine to the eyes of someone from Steve’s time as a seidr-user like Loki was to the Vikings.
So Tony Stark reads as absolutely, flamboyantly gay because he’s a computer programmer, and computer programming is feminine.
Homosexuality, situational and otherwise, was pretty darn common in a conscript army (which is part of how the Kinsey Report fucked up). I like the idea of a Steve who doesn’t hold it against Tony that he’s “Gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide,” because he’s met good people who were gay, but he’s not going to cut Tony any slack because of it because assuming that gay people can’t be held to the same standards of bravery and so on as everyone else is insulting to the people he served with, just like not expecting Natasha to be perfectly capable of pulling her weight would be an insult to Peggy Carter.
It would be nice to read fic where Steve is seriously surprised that Tony and Pepper are dating instead of Pepper just being a good friend protecting Tony’s reputation (although Steve’d be happy that units are racially integrated – his people were, and that wasn’t standard at the time – and he’d be for getting rid of don’t ask, don’t tell, because seriously? After all these decades?), and the whole culture shock for Tony of ‘Wait, you thought I was gay because I hacked Shield’s computers?’
Steve is probably going to be very upset to find out about the marketing programs and deliberate hiring policies used to reverse the gender demographics of programming and create the myth that women aren’t good at it. Because programming requires logical thought and ‘everyone knows’ women aren’t capable of logical thought. Despite the fact that women were doing most of the programming for decades before that bullshit, and it was a woman who invented the first compiler.
Then there’s Thor, who would probably nod when Steve tells him about how programmer used to generally = woman and compare that to seidr (Jane! How brilliantly she forces the universe to submit to her will! Ah, a true flower of womanhood.) and yes, if the Man of Iron hadn’t challenged him to that macho (stupid) contest of arms when they first met, he would have assumed that he was gay instead of bi.
The Iron Man movies try to make Tony out to be so macho, but a hell of a lot of his power is traditionally female-associated power: see The Empress tarot card. The idea that science and computers are masculine is bullshit, and people need to be called out on it.
