It’s the day after Super Tuesday, and I’m angry

I woke up this morning feeling like the world had, once again, punched me in the gut. I woke up angry, reminded yet again of how deeply ingrained misogyny is—not just in our tech companies or our entertainment industry—but in the fabric of our politics.

I want to talk about ally-ship. An ally is someone wields their own privilege to advance a less-privileged group. This can happen in a variety of ways—signal-boosting messages, ensuring fair hiring practices, and steps aside to allow a less privileged person take the microphone. This is what happens when, during a business meeting, a man stops to reiterate that his non-male colleague originated the idea. This happens when a white woman takes herself off of a panel about diversity in favor of a woman of color. It’s nuanced, it’s hard, and we all get it wrong. A lot. Ally-ship is listening to how we got it wrong, hearing the criticism, and learning from it. An ally proactively seeks out that feedback.

In a comment chain I recently found myself in the center of, the question was posed to me,

“What is it about Warren you like more than Bernie? Other than she’s a woman, what from a policy perspective do you like better? There’s hardly a difference.”

First of all, I don’t know why the fact that she’s a woman should be discounted from this conversation. If they’re saying that the policies are basically the same, then why shouldn’t we pick the underrepresented person in question? Why shouldn’t we make a conscious decision to not just pick the policy we want, but also take a stand to level the playing field? If Bernie was the true ally many claim for him to be, I would’ve expected him to lend his grass-roots abilities and support Elizabeth Warren for the presidency. They’re friends, they agree on almost everything. She’s younger and, let’s face it, in better health. She is less divisive. Why on earth would Bernie not take the step back and get a progressive woman to lead the ticket?

Furthermore, why is policy the only valid way on which to choose a candidate? Certainly it is a very important factor, but it is not and has never been the only factor I consider. I look for leadership qualities, and ability to articulate vision. I look for pragmatism, and the ability to break down long-term visions into shorter-term realistic goals. As a product manager, I know how vital that mix is to leading a company around the work that needs to be done, and ensuring the work actually happens. Enacting medicare for all over night, in a year, in a four years—it’s all a pipe dream. It is NOT realistic. It doesn’t mean that’s not the plan, or that we can’t get there, or that we shouldn’t try. We should. But changing the world takes time.

Any program manager working through a big change knows that change management is vital to the success of any change. This includes so many factors you may never think about.

• Getting support from the people who will be impacted by the change from the bottom, up
• Anticipating concerns and risks
• Mitigating the concerns and risks
• Implementing a feedback mechanism to ensure you’re aware of sentiment and concerns
• Creating a plan and schedule to communicate the change
• Creating a plan to roll-out the change itself

Our country has become obsessed with instant gratification, a constant stream of news and tweets and insanity. We all want things to change and change quickly. We want a short-term solution to a long-term problem. Here’s the thing. There’s always work to be done in the short-term. But you cannot forget a long-term strategy in favor of quick results. I saw this problem so many times in the tech world—leadership often demands new features that will make new revenue streams this quarter. At the same time, they ignore the fact that the database backing the API is so borked that the call is timing out after 60 seconds, causing the page that would even have the new feature never to load. IS THAT TOO TECHNICAL FOR THIS RANT? Probably. But it’s also fucking apt.

You want medicare for all? Sweet. I’m on board, too. But I’m only on board with a detailed plan that will figure out how to communicate it, how to quell concerns from people who aren’t on board yet, how we’re going to pay for it, identify ripple changes, how to help workers whose industries will change, and how to staff the government so that it doesn’t implode under the crush of new paperwork. It is not easy. It will not be fast. And we need to be fucking on board for the long-haul. That means we have to have a president that can and will be around for 8 years. It means we need to give them the support they need in the Senate and House. You want it done in 4 years? Well here are your options:

1. Roll something out in 4 years that causes chaos, uncertainty, and ultimately gets rolled back
2. Don’t try to to get to Medicare for all
3. Roll something out deliberately and meticulously over 8 years that has staying power

Those are your options. You might not like it, but guess what—the world is not actually magical and the things worth doing sometimes take time. Commit.

Alright, let’s move on to our hiring practices, America. If the Democratic Party was a hiring manager and voters were all on the hiring slate, we would be doing some illegal shit that would not fly. Seriously. We had a pretty diverse pool of candidates. We then systematically shoved them out of process after each round of interviews. This is equivalent of meeting some sort of “quota” of percentage of candidates from underrepresented groups, then patting ourselves on the back and hiring the white guy anyway.

No, seriously. Think about.

WE ARE BIASED AS FUCK. This is why the country could never just you know, roll over and be healed from years of slavery and Jim Crow-era bullshit. This is why we began affirmative action to begin with. This is why we have protected classes. When left to our own devices, even the most liberal, progressive, whatever-the-fuck-you-wanna-call-it humans are biased and will not make the right choice if the other option is given ourselves a leg up. Period.

You know why I’m really angry? Yeah, Elizabeth Warren may have been my number one pick the entire time, but there were plenty of other candidates at the start I would’ve been over-the-moon happy to vote for and endorse. Harris. Booker. Castro. One by one they dropped away, and I was bummed. I didn’t like it. But I still had Elizabeth. There was still a chance that our next president would not be AN OLD WHITE MAN PER USUAL. This morning my hopes are dashed.

#NotAllMen but seriously cis-men, ya’ll are yet again on my shit list. We, the women and non-binary and queer folk, feel fucking invisible. Look, I’m glad you’re finally (sort of) believing victims of rape and sexual assault. Now maybe look around and start believing that we are systematically overlooked, under-believed, and expected to fall into the line men have created. I am OVER. IT. You see our words and say, “yes but what you, dear adorable little woman, don’t know is that actually x y z about my candidate would clearly sway you.” FUCK. YOU. If you think we haven’t put just as much fucking thought and energy into our choices as you, you have not been paying attention. Instead you’re complaining that it’s all rigged against your candidate and you want to burn it all down. Guess what, motherfuckers. Nothing has been rigged against your candidate this time around. But this country has always been and is still RIGGED AGAINST WOMEN.

END OF RANT