"I tried to go to this coding workshop, but it was run by a Silicon Valley-esque tech bro. It was basically teaching you code for business - marketing, and selling your company. And that's all fine, but I just wanted to make an Adoptables website.

Plus on the Facebook event, only guys had signed up.

So I didn’t go."

- Evalena

Meritocracy

is a

myth

Bro-ing out after class

Toxic

Technocultures

Geek masculinity:
According to communications professor Adrienne Massanari, "interactions in geek-friendly spaces [are] racialized and gendered and often presume a white male centrality" (2015). Geek-friendly spaces are online and offline.

Geek masculinity relies on:

- the Othering of women and genderqueer people
- autonomous individualism
- the primacy of intellect over emotional/social intelligence
- meritocratic idealism

Toxic technocultures are the manifestation of toxic masculinity on sociotechnical networks (Massanari, 2015).

Toxic technocultures are enabled by a platform's design and code.

Learning to code is learning to counter technocultures. Learning to code is a form of feminist resistance.

Geek masculinity is prevalent in mainstream coding learning spaces.

Meritocracy:
The myth in the tech scene that anyone can succeed as long as they work for it (Marwick, 2013).

Meritocracy gives credibility to those at the top and forgets institutional gender and racial unbalance.

"I like saying I have 0 expert spaces"