Women Still Face Too Much Bullshit—in Silicon Valley and Beyond
Women Still Face Too Much Bullshit—in Silicon Valley and Beyond
无论是在硅谷还是其他地方，女性依然面临着太多的荒唐事
It didn’t take more than a few sessions for my new therapist to ask me a delicate question. “Katie … do you have a problem with men?” 我的新心理咨询师没用几次咨询就问了我一个微妙的问题：“凯蒂……你对男性有意见吗？”
I wanted to say no. After all, brilliant, kind, fantastic men have long surrounded me at home and at work. The therapist in question was himself a man, and one I didn’t think twice about confiding in. 我本想说没有。毕竟，无论是在家里还是工作中，我身边一直不乏才华横溢、善良且出色的男性。这位咨询师本人也是男性，我对他倾诉时甚至没有丝毫犹豫。
But if I’m being honest with myself, my therapist, and you? I do have a problem with some men. And it started with WIRED. In 2009, I got my first job interning and later reporting for WIRED.com. The publication in that era was enthusiastic about technology, and about the innovators and visionaries defining the future. For decades, WIRED eagerly reinforced the narrative that the vast majority of those geniuses were men: One 2010 analysis found that since its founding in 1993, WIRED had published 70 covers featuring at least one man. In that same span, the magazine published four covers—yes, four—that celebrate women for their professional accomplishments. I can’t remember working with a single female editor during my first stint at WIRED. I do, however, remember a 40-something male editor asking “where’d the legs go?” when I opted to wear pants instead of a skirt to the office. 但如果我要对自己、对咨询师、也对你们诚实的话？我确实对某些男性有意见。而这一切始于《连线》（WIRED）。2009年，我得到了第一份工作，在WIRED.com实习，后来成为了一名记者。那个时代的《连线》对技术以及定义未来的创新者和远见者充满热情。几十年来，《连线》一直热衷于强化一种叙事：这些天才绝大多数都是男性。2010年的一项分析发现，自1993年创刊以来，《连线》出版的70期封面中至少有一位男性。而在同一时期，该杂志仅有四期——没错，只有四期——是为庆祝女性的职业成就而制作的。我不记得在《连线》工作的初期曾与任何一位女性编辑共事过。但我确实记得，当我选择穿裤子而不是裙子去办公室时，一位40多岁的男编辑问我：“你的腿去哪儿了？”
It turned out to be just a preview. Off the top of my head, and across a 17-year career: There was the boss who, upon learning that I wanted kids, said that I seemed “too cold” to be a parent. I held my tears long enough to make it to the bathroom. A few years later, I remember being visibly pregnant in another employer’s office, as he joked that a woman as intense as me would probably keep her baby locked in a closet. One boss tried to pay me exponentially less than my male predecessor, because, he said, I was younger and less authoritative. A highly regarded media company enrolled me in its internal program for promising female leaders, which was being run by two male executives. I stood last year among a crowd of my peers at a packed event, listening to a prominent think-tank leader (male) credit WIRED’s previous editor in chief (also male) with the magazine’s successes during my tenure. Let’s not forget the cofounder of this very publication, who suggested via email following the 2024 election that I might “seppuku” myself because he disagreed with an editor’s letter I’d written. And in 2023, The New York Times published a story about my appointment as WIRED’s global editorial director—then had to issue a correction for inaccurately stating that I was the first woman to run the magazine. In fact, Katrina Heron ran WIRED from 1997 to 2001. 这仅仅是个预演。在我的17年职业生涯中，随手就能列举出这些事：有位老板在得知我想要孩子时，说我看起来“太冷漠”，不适合做母亲。我强忍泪水，直到冲进洗手间才敢哭出来。几年后，我记得在另一位雇主的办公室里，当时我已明显怀孕，他却开玩笑说，像我这样强势的女人可能会把孩子锁在衣柜里。有一位老板试图给我开出远低于我男性前任的薪水，理由是我更年轻、更缺乏权威感。一家备受推崇的媒体公司让我参加了其内部的女性领导力培养计划，而该计划竟由两名男性高管负责。去年，我在一场拥挤的活动中站在同行中间，听着一位著名的智库领导者（男性）将我任职期间《连线》取得的成功归功于前任主编（也是男性）。别忘了这家杂志的联合创始人，他在2024年大选后通过电子邮件建议我“切腹自尽”，仅仅因为他不同意我写的一篇编辑手记。2023年，《纽约时报》报道了我被任命为《连线》全球编辑总监的消息，随后不得不发布更正声明，因为他们错误地称我是第一位执掌该杂志的女性。事实上，卡特里娜·赫伦（Katrina Heron）曾在1997年至2001年间执掌《连线》。
It’s gotten easier to be an ambitious woman, but if my own personal experience is any indication, not by nearly enough. The steady reminders of sexism and deeply ingrained gender dynamics have had consequences: I wonder, often, if I was granted certain jobs or opportunities for less-than-professional reasons; on the flip side, I also wonder if I got them to fulfill some kind of quota. I second-guess my decisions. I apologize endlessly. For years, I dressed as sloppily as possible—it was easier to show up unprofessionally than risk attracting any attention. In a bid to command the respect at work that a man would, I’ve often felt the need to behave more like a stereotypical one: meaner, louder, less empathetic. I hate that. And I’ve got it relatively easy: If a white, straight woman working in media and technology deals with this much bullshit, imagine the experience of a woman who happens to be a person of color, or gay, or transgender. 成为一名有抱负的女性变得容易了一些，但如果以我的个人经历来看，这还远远不够。对性别歧视和根深蒂固的性别动态的不断提醒带来了后果：我经常怀疑，我获得某些工作或机会是否并非出于专业原因；反过来，我也怀疑自己是否只是为了填补某种配额。我对自己做出的决定反复质疑。我不断地道歉。多年来，我尽可能穿得邋遢——因为以不专业的形象出现，总比冒着引起任何关注的风险要容易得多。为了在工作中获得男性那样的尊重，我常常觉得必须表现得更像刻板印象中的男性：更刻薄、更大声、更缺乏同理心。我讨厌这样。而且我的处境相对还算轻松：如果一个在媒体和科技行业工作的白人异性恋女性都要面对这么多荒唐事，试想一下，那些有色人种、同性恋或跨性别女性的经历会是怎样。
WIRED Women started as a joke at our weekly San Francisco happy hour; we laughed at the idea of turning a historically dude-loving publication into a women’s rag, complete with over-the-top pink design and outrageous cover lines—a tongue-in-cheek way to highlight the sorry state of women’s advancement in fields like tech and science. We soon found ourselves inspired, full of ideas, and ultimately pretty damn angry. But could we do it? Should we? Deciding in 2026 to commit an entire issue to all things women might seem regressive, or too obvious, or even unnecessary in an era where many people—and plenty in tech—are happy to wave off the notion that gender is still “a thing” to contend with. “WIRED女性”最初只是我们在旧金山每周一次的欢乐时光里的一个玩笑；我们嘲笑着将一份历史上偏爱男性的刊物变成女性杂志的想法，配上夸张的粉色设计和离谱的封面标题——这是一种半开玩笑的方式，旨在凸显女性在科技和科学等领域进步缓慢的悲哀现状。我们很快发现自己深受启发，充满了想法，最终感到非常愤怒。但我们能这样做吗？我们应该这样做吗？在2026年决定将整整一期杂志献给女性相关议题，在某些人——包括许多科技界人士——乐于否认性别仍是一个需要面对的“问题”的时代，这看起来可能显得倒退、过于显眼，甚至是不必要的。
I disagree. A convicted sex predator, after all, is in the White House; the tech industry executives in his ear are virtually all men. Women do wield power in Silicon Valley, but far too many still serve at the pleasure of a man above them. When Mark Zuckerberg bemoans the loss of “masculine energy” in his workforce, and Pete Hegseth says that the military is too “effeminate,” and Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts impact Black female civil servants above all other groups—it can seem like they want to erase women altogether. And it’s infuriating. The world deserves better heroes, women deserve better colleagues, and my daughter—who sleeps in a bed, not a locked closet—deserves to be less furious than I am when she’s 40. My therapist, God bless him, was onto something. 我不同意。毕竟，一位被定罪的性掠夺者正入主白宫；在他耳边出谋划策的科技行业高管几乎全是男性。女性确实在硅谷掌握着权力，但太多人依然是在男性的庇护下工作。当马克·扎克伯格哀叹员工队伍中“阳刚之气”的丧失，当皮特·海格塞斯称军队太“女性化”，当埃隆·马斯克的政府效率部（DOGE）的削减措施对黑人女性公务员的影响超过其他任何群体时——这看起来就像他们想要彻底抹去女性的存在。这令人愤怒。世界值得拥有更好的英雄，女性值得拥有更好的同事，而我的女儿——她睡在床上，而不是锁着的衣柜里——当她40岁时，她应该不必像我这样愤怒。我的心理咨询师，愿上帝保佑他，确实说到了点子上。