That seems like a fair concern to me. Like you, the piece strikes me as subtly and uncomfortably gendered. As a hacker myself, my emotional intelligence was never that great. But I think this was vastly compounded by being a guy; society didn't expect me to develop much in the way of emotional skills.
A big thing that changed that for me was doing in-person tech support in college. About 10% of the job was knowing facts. The rest was helping humans in very human ways. When, years later, the term "emotional labor" [1] came around, it made a lot of sense to me. I may not have been natively good at it, but you don't have to have talent to get skill. It just takes more work.
So when he talks about emotional radar and her being the mom and whatnot, it all strikes me as a false dichotomy, one I've worked hard to avoid. It's especially odd to me in a piece about society treating a woman as lesser.
"So when he talks about emotional radar and her being the mom and whatnot, it all strikes me as a false dichotomy, one I've worked hard to avoid. It's especially odd to me in a piece about society treating a woman as lesser."
That's so much better articulated than what I said! Exactly this.
A big thing that changed that for me was doing in-person tech support in college. About 10% of the job was knowing facts. The rest was helping humans in very human ways. When, years later, the term "emotional labor" [1] came around, it made a lot of sense to me. I may not have been natively good at it, but you don't have to have talent to get skill. It just takes more work.
So when he talks about emotional radar and her being the mom and whatnot, it all strikes me as a false dichotomy, one I've worked hard to avoid. It's especially odd to me in a piece about society treating a woman as lesser.
[1] Lots of good stuff on the topic in this amazing Metafilter thread: http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emo...