I remember the day they came to give us the road safety talk at the institute. A man in a wheelchair came to speak to us and said a phrase that touched me very deeply. “I had a car accident. That’s why I’m like this now. I saw accidents happen when I was young, but I never thought it would happen to me. I always thought these things only happened to the rest.”

Focusing on your routine and thinking everything will be like this is straightforward. See news about the bad things that happen in the world and calm yourself, thinking this will not happen to you. And I don’t think it isn’t good either. It’s a way to cope with everyday life. The problem is when something that happened to others happens to you.

I often think about posting on social media, sharing things I like or interacting with people I like. But I know there is a risk in that, and thanks to that high school talk, I know it can happen to me. Receiving harassment on social networks as a woman is not something unusual, and I would be lying if I said that I had not received more than one message or photograph that I did not want to see. But receiving harassment in the tech world when you are a woman who spreads these topics… is even more common.

Yesterday, I saw a post from a girl on Twitter who usually talks about cybersecurity. She included screenshots of unpleasant comments. They spoke of her body, about how poorly she explained it, about how “little idea” she had about the subject… Watching her talk, I saw she had the same idea as other content creators, but as I wrote, they are other content creatOrs.

With this post, I do not want to invite reflection; reflecting will not change the situation. With this post, I want to lay my first stone. I will post more on social media and talk about what I like. And if I start with a post as sincere as this one, talking about other less personal topics won’t be so difficult for me.

After all, good things also happen to the rest, right?

Original post (in Spanish) on LinkedIn here