Anne Truitt Zelenka

Shelley at Burningbird has finally noticed my blog! I’m sad to say it was to slap me down for girlish behavior. I didn’t call out Adam Green on his use of the word chick. Worse, I seemed to celebrate it. I hate the word chick. Yeah! But I loved the idea of talking about BlogHer more. So I used it as an opening. It’s just another case of where we women never have a totally positive choice to make. I could say nothing at all and lose my chance to talk. I could express how offended I felt. Or I could just use it as positively as possible. Like I did.

Shelley, as usual, has powerful things to say. I feel chastened. I’m not going to argue with her. She’s right in so many ways. Adam responds and suggests we might all hug. One thing I agree with is that we learn by going through this. My main priority is learning, so I’m trying to feel good about it all instead of going off and crying… how girly.

Once you have kids, you really understand how hard it is for women to ever feel totally positive about their decisions. If you stay home, your mind will rot and you’ll give up any claim you had to an intellectual life. If you work, you destroy your kids. Scylla and Charybdis.

I feel frustrated. I get what I want but it’s got a bitter taste. Yesterday Anne 2.0 showed up on tech.memeorandum for the first time. I wanted to make a screen capture, print it out, and post it on my wall, like my first dollar or something. I want to be in the conversation. I love tech. I love new ideas. I love men. I love women too. I love being in conversation about new ideas with women and men.

Why do I call myself a girl geek? Why do I diminish myself with the word “girl”? Because I want that word back. I like being girly–I like pink and ruffles and flowers. I like talking makeup and hair color with my girlfriends. I like playing Barbie Fashion Show with my five-year-old daughter. I want the word girl back like the mommybloggers want mommy back. If people are going to call them mommys, they want to own the word. I want to own the word girl. I wish anyone–XX or XY–who wanted to be girly could be so without it being a bad thing. I wish it didn’t have the connotation of weakness. But I’m not willing to give it up, yet.

As I told Shelley in my comments, my priorities are to have fun, to learn, and to connect with the tech community. I recognize how difficult women have it. Goddamn, I spent ten years working almost always with men, being told to smile, being called a peach, being told I was too aggressive, having to act in ways that didn’t suit me. This time around I want to do it on my own terms. That’s why I’m a part of BlogHer. That’s why I proudly say, I’m a girl. That’s why I used Adam’s post as a way to talk about what I’m excited about.

I greatly respect Shelley, and I have told her that. I feel ashamed that I’m not a better example for other women. It’s kind of how I felt when I read the Hirshman piece in American Prospect saying that smart women staying home with kids are letting down their sisters and keeping women out of power.

But this is just business as usual, being a woman in tech. It’s never totally positive for me. There’s always something negative about it. I wonder how much I and other women could accomplish if we didn’t have to pick our way through this.