There are no angels and demons here

A friend pointed out that with all this STEM stuff, when I ranted on facebook, I'm getting angry at the wrong people. I'm getting angry at the people who encourage girls to go into STEM without realising the huge emotional cost this could potentially be to those girls personally, even if it is to some greater society benefit.

She points out that the people to get angry with are the perpetrators. But it's just not that easy.

Sexism in the workplace for the most part is like the death of a thousand paper cuts. You barely realise it's happening - either to yourself or to others. Most of the time it is the sum of many, many little things. Perpetrators and the managers and organisations under which this happen quite rightly see all these things as very minor. Because they are.

So I'm still at this job where all this stuff happened that has made me take this stance - things having settled down as everyone is polite to one another now and I'm respectfully given separate types of work. We have a reorganisation coming up though which means I should be given exactly the same type of work as my colleagues. Should be an interesting comparison. But anyway, I was chatting to one colleague in my team, and she mentioned a slight annoyance that she says happens from time to time but most times she can just laugh it off, and this particular annoyance she mentioned to anyone who hasn't been through this may have seemed like absolutely nothing.

But my blood ran cold. What she said is exactly the kind of thing that happened to me.

And it's happening to her. Right in front of me. She gets the top rating in performance reviews and it's still happening to her.

For the most part they are all nice people. And this is no big deal. You can't demonise these people, and there are many good things about them. But this is why people don't understand how sexism happens here.

My facebook friend says I should write about it. Still thinking about this. Because frankly even if I give you a lot of examples you, dear reader, will tell me that they are minor and nothing. And for the most part I will have to agree with you.

So why am I in tears? Why am I ripping myself apart over this stuff? Why am I trying to tell the world (and girls in particular as more and more I suspect this is gendered), if you are in a workplace or industry like this, GET OUT.

Ok I'll say it

I keep wanting to say this in public, going to say it, and then retracting it.

So screw it I'll say it here.

I regret doing engineering.

I am not 'naturally brilliant' at engineering. I didn't think I would end up STILL being in an engineering job after all these years. I thought you know, I love English, but I can always have that as a hobby, but if I do engineering I'll always have a job. Engineering will be a good base degree that I can do to launch off into other things.

But then I found myself with a job in engineering. Bullied my self confidence, never very high, plummeted so I was convinced I was totally unemployable any where else and that I would never get a job anywhere else, and so I'm still here.

From a period from about the year 2000 to the year 2009 I was bullied and victimised. And because I was in such a bad mental state I didn't really realise I was being bullied as they never used that term. It was "difference of personality". I couldn't really clearly tick any specific boxes on it being bullying until the rules changed in February last year. What is more as I glanced down the next list which was victimisation I realised I had been victimised too. I'm not a victim. I don't think of myself as a victim. But according to the way the rules have changed to my bemusement apparently I am because I can tick off so much on that list too.

Sexism? Most likely. With a lot of these things it's hard to say and again I don't tend to think in those terms. Do I think it would have happened the same if I was a guy? Of course not. But as people will tell you that proves nothing.

At least the bullying stopped. And the victimisation stopped too. Although is it actually victimisation if you don't know it is? I just knew it was unfair when they took work and responsibilities away from me. And then they took more away when I said it was unfair. And then they gave me managed work.

If I had been technically brilliant they wouldn't have been able to do that to me. But instead I've always just been average as I've always just been an all rounder. I mean, that's ok because a lot of guys are too. But when you're female and you don't fit in though you have to prove yourself. At a bare minimum that requires a certain level of technical flair above and beyond your peers or else they have an actual reason to dismiss or target you rather than that they don't actually like you. If I had been brilliant then my complaints about unfair treatment would have stood. As I wasn't brilliant my flaws and ordinariness were just useful hooks. Better to have no hooks.

I'm trying to work out what exactly about engineering it is that I regret. I mean the profession itself is pretty damn cool. It's science and technology and making it useful for people and solving real life things. I mean, it's hard to argue with the awesome if you get a total buzz out of tech. And I definitely do. And I can do maths. Well enough maths to get by. And I can do the sciences enough to get by and understand what is important.

Does it mean you shouldn't do engineering though if you're not totally brilliant and maths and science? I mean, I passed all my subjects. I even had a female supervisor for my thesis so there can not be complaints of bias. I didn't choose her - I just liked the elective as I liked the real world applications of error control coding. I scraped passes but I passed. We got sympathy from other degrees because engineering was so hard compared to theirs. I am actually pretty damn proud of the fact that I got an engineering degree. (And a science degree but really that was an extra year of fun in comparison to the difficulty of engineering. Oh and all while very very medically depressed.)

So I get a buzz out of tech and love the usefulness of engineering - I think that's what hooked me in actually. And that could be a bit of my gender in that hook - the usefulness. Wanting to fix the world. Wanting to make the world a better place. To care for the world. Not that guys don't want that too. But some of that nurturing maybe?

And then the call to 'all girls come do engineering as we need more female engineers!'. Another hook to be 'useful'. At what ended up being huge personal cost.

I mean seriously, and I do mean seriously, it's kind of lucky I am still here to type this. Because the bullying I received because I was a female engineer combined with my medical depression was very almost the end of me.

So why do I regret engineering? I regret doing engineering for me personally for the years and year s of demoralising funk that I didn't even realise I was in because I thought it was just me. I regret that right now as we're starting to talk about sexism and bullying and equality and all that, that there is this huge rage in me. I find myself really angry at people trying to encourage girls into engineering while not warning them that at least for some it's a really toxic place to be. High school girls don't know. They haven't had the life experience. And yet adults and encouraging them just for some sort of societal justice? Don't they know what might happen to those girls?

I regret that the younger me wasn't told 'this is what might happen'. I regret that I wasn't given skills to know what to do with bullies and with people who discriminate against you. I regret that no one was there to me to say 'it's not you - it's the people around you - get out before it makes you think even less of yourself than you already do'.

Not sayin' nuthin'

I'm finding it hilarious all these threads and posts and tweets and news items on women either not being heard when they speak or being dismissed as bossy and unlikeable if they speak.

How to win? Don't speak!

And quietly wander out the door and do something else. Plenty of other things to do elsewhere. With and for better people.

Voicelessness is a funny thing. You can have no voice on the outside but be content with your voice on the inside. And develop a great sense of humour. Which no one knows about.

We all experience voicelessness in a lot of different ways - unless we are amazingly blessed people are entire lives and thoroughly spoiled. But even then...

You know those feel good postcards about life?

Once upon a time I really wanted to be popular,
    because I thought that if I was popular I would be happy because everyone would like me.

Then some years later I thought, only if I would be super smart,
   because then I would get my work done really quickly, have lots of time to do more stuff, and be more useful to people. And then I would be happy.

And then I went through that stage when I thought if only I was really beautiful, and neat, and impeccably well presented, people would accept me then, and I would be happy.

I almost went through a stage thinking if I would just be super kind and nice to people then they would like me... and I would be happy. But I figured that is manipulative and I despise that. And besides we should all be nice and kind and gentle to one another any way because that is what God's ultimate will is.

I guess the big realisation is... that while all these things have some truth to them, which makes them so attractive, the thread going through all of them is me and my happiness.

And then the penny dropped.... happiness has to come from within me. And since I suffer the scars from decades of depression, I still haven't found a solution.

Life postcards are lame 5 second feel good hits.

This blog post?  I got nuthin' sorry.

Interconnected Life

So lately I've been getting into the whole - how much can I automate or remotely control thing?

My brother has been exceptionally helpful in this in that he's played with this physically and actually for years and has done a lot of research in what's out there. Whereas I've just always thought and dreamed about it.

So lately I've had this idea. And it's kind of shocking how big it is. But I'm wondering how nebulous it is and how much I can make it real. So it's been fascinating to explore the practical realities of what is there right now today. How much we can do. And every day there is an app or a device to feed into this. It's like the whole world is on the cusp of this idea. And I would not be at all surprised if others have come up with the same idea because it's kind of simple.

So right now you are wondering, what's this idea? And... at this stage I'm not going to say. Business opportunities and all that.

Let's just say I'm super excited by the future.

When running away means people think that they've won

I always keep in mind a saying that I think I first heard Tolkein quote "a man convinced against his will, is of his own mind still".

So, I pick my battles. I only have so much emotional energy and there are some things I will stand up and fight for, and other things that I'll let through to the keeper.

Just because I let some things through does not mean I agree with them.

How often is that people think they've "won" an argument. By what measure do they take this victory? People's words?

Unless you've won people's hearts, you've won nothing - you've just won words. And even then only the words that are spoken not the words in people's hearts and minds. And often just your own words. The other party may not have even spoken them.

That's winning nothing. Why are you wasting your energy speaking in the first place?

I run away, I save energy for other battles, I win and you don't even know it.

If I was to run a 'How to lose weight' class..

Instead I'll just write a blogpost. 'Cos that's what you do these days.

It would go like this...

1. Learn a fundamental physics law  ie the law of energy conservation. Bastardised into popular parlance that's 'energy in equals energy out'. After all the airy fairy pouncing around some of the eyeroll exercise inducing things I've read, let's start and finish with that.

2. Learn basic self awareness and philosophical obviousness. ie ask yourself a very basic question 'Am I hungry?'

Ok the second one could be teased out a bit but pretty much anyone can do this for themselves - it does not require a shrink degree, just some acceptance of responsibility for self.

So like, you're standing in front of the refrigerator, with the refrigerator door open, looking at the refrigerator contents.

Why?

Here is THE question that matters:

Are you hungry?

Maybe it's just me, but a lot of the time I find myself doing this because, I'm bored, or I just happened to be over there, or I know there is something particularly yummy in there, or actually I haven't really thought about it at all. But if I were to ACTUALLY ASK THAT QUESTION... the answer would be...

No.

Ok... so this is step one for taking responsibility for my actions. ***realising that I am doing this***. It is a **super** useful question. Because, and actually it's another physics thing (cause and effect)... if I eat something at this time, most likely I do not actually need to eat. And if I'm eating something that I don't need to eat, then number 1 comes into play - I will not by living burn off the energy I have consumed.

The other part of when to ask this question is half way through eating stuff. So that is, portion sizes. I would suggest that for a lot of us in the Western world our portion sizes are between 2x to 4x what we need. And we eat too fast.