Spring break. I was sitting in the airport, lamenting that three of my professors had assigned work due the week after break, but delighted that there was enough WiFi to squeeze in a half hour of work. I was focused, writing something in C++ for my Computer Vision class when I noticed a girl peering over my shoulder, maybe 7 or 8 years old & with a ponytail.
Me: "Hi"
Girl: "Um, are you a hacker?"
I was outwardly very amused and inwardly very pleased at the question.
Me: "No, not exactly. I'm in college & I study Computer Science. I write code to ask my computer to make things like websites or Candy Crush. So it's kind of like being a nice hacker."
The girl was thoughtful for a second, ignoring her mom's call that it was time to board. Then she said "OK" & ran off to her mom, who smiled apologetically to me as her daughter jumped up and down in front of her & informed her of important news.
Girl: "Mom, when I grow up I want to be a hacker"
Mom: "A hacker? This morning you wanted to be a princess!"
Girl: "Yeah! Both! I mean, I want- I want to be a ummmmm nice hacker princess"
A Nice. Hacker. Princess.
As I watched them leave, my heart swelled full of hope. There was something so pure, so quietly radical about her statement. She could be a hacker even though she was a princess, dammit. The two did not involve an XOR* in her book.
I used to want to be a software engineer or a researcher or a data scientist, but my aspirations changed in that moment: I, too, wanna be a nice hacker princess. I want to revel in my CS femmeness, I want to break things & fix them & get elbow-deep in code in a hella cute dress. I want to taste the satisfaction of functional code, admire it's resemblance to magic. I want to hack my IDE's into having glitter font. (jk, mostly) I want to do all of this while being nice- contributing my hacker-princess talents to something meaningful, something kind & impactful & clever.
I found a role model in a 7yr old, a small blonde creature who saw no limit in her potential, no paradox in her newfound dream. I refuse to use XOR's in my vernacular, to limit my princessliness with real or self-imposed expectations and inhibitions. I will forever find power in what femmetech means to me. And whether you are woman, man, fluid, trans, all of the above, or none of the above, I invite you to find power in whatever that means to you.
Yrs truly,
*XOR = "exclusive or". Either this or that, but not both.
