No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
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> Looks like its time to close our Mastodon account and go someplace safer (whiter)
Wow, racist much?
@avi_2022 there was no racism in this reply, only sarcasm.
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit Well, I know who I'm not buying components from again. This is really disgusting and weird LLM apologia that completely misunderstands the actual struggle of disrespect and abuse that women go through in labour.
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@adafruit amusingly though: @cstross blocked me a couple years ago, because he was (if I recall correctly, can't be arsed to dig up the toot but it's back there somewhere) either boosting or else posting AI slop images and laughing at how bad they were. I had been an avid follower, but I expressed my surprise that he, an author no less, would be playing with the plagiarism machine in public.
As much as I tend to agree with the mob that using this planet killer was a terrible idea that you should be ashamed about, rather than what you're doing right here, Stross seems like he's mostly concerned with building up some sort of "profile" on here, and does not like to have his hypocrisy pointed out.
I think there are going to be some incredible strides made in education with this tech, but not until these psychopaths are devoured by angry street mobs and we start using it judiciously and without murdering towns and communities.
People in America have brown tap water so you could avoid work of which you are perfectly capable. You didn't need the help. There's no justifying it. Brown tap water.
@jpaskaruk stross doesn't need to build a profile; he has a profile high and large enough, that he blocks drive-by admonishments and aggressive replies to third parties just to keep his feed readable. this is not new.
(and before you ask, i was blocked by him because of the latter; there's no need to imagine nefarious reasons for his actions.)
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit we don't hate women for using tools that make their lives easier because something something lazy, we hate anybody who uses the plagiarism machine that bulldozes indie websites *because it's the goddamn plagiarism machine that bulldozes indie websites*
we are just as hostile to straight white male vibe coders, if not more so.
also don't think we didn't notice you AI generated about half this blog post too
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit "When a man uses an LLM to generate boilerplate code, he’s a savvy early adopter, a start up founder, a guy ahead of the curve" no lol it's just universally embarrassing.
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@adafruit Fedi is just AI-phobic and sometimes hateful a la Twitter... I really doubt this is sexism.
@golemwire a platform full of artists and indie webdevs and other people generally on the political left hating on the art theft machine that regularly knocks indie websites offline and has as its stated goal the concentration of power in the hands of the wealthy through the threat of automating creatives out of a job, and destroys the environment and leaves whole communities without reliable electricity and water while doing so. who'da thunk it
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit@fosstodon.org quit pinkwashing slop you shitlibs
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit do you understand than token and fake feminism is worse than simply being serenaded into shoving LLM everywhere ?
How many women are up there profiting of the AI bubble ? Hard mode, if they only are CEO and shareholder it doesn't count.
Absolutely nobody in Silicon Valley (decision makers) try to liberate women. Faking it in a blog post is bad propaganda on your part adafruit -
@adafruit ah yes, ignoring all the women and nonbinary people who criticize your use of fascist software to make a smug point, go fuck yourself
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
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@adafruit@fosstodon.org jesus fucking christ i thought adafruit was chill
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit yeah I’m a queer woman and this is baloney, y’all
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit This was almost certainly written by AI. No thinking person with a functioning brain could possibly have written this nonsense.
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@adafruit@fosstodon.org Have you lost your fucking minds?
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
I'm a woman in science, and I have ordered stuff from Adafruit before. But knowing you're using AI to design it DOES make me less likely to order from you in the future. Not because "women shouldn't use tools," but because AI is not a trustworthy tool.
Tell me you built a house with a glue gun instead of a nail gun, and I won't want to buy the house. Nothing to do with the gender of the person holding the glue gun.
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit Weird hill to die on, but you do you.
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit the lengths people go to to defend fascist American slop machines, wow
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit this is as wrongheaded a post as i can imagine, not least because the author seems to be unaware of decades of feminist critique of how commercial tools aimed at women homemakers in the 20th century were often marketed in exploitative ways and did not end up fulfilling their promise of efficiency. critique of AI has always been rooted in feminist thought, and many prominent AI critics are women, some of whom have lost jobs and faced harassment for publicly discussing the harms of AI
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I'm a woman in science, and I have ordered stuff from Adafruit before. But knowing you're using AI to design it DOES make me less likely to order from you in the future. Not because "women shouldn't use tools," but because AI is not a trustworthy tool.
Tell me you built a house with a glue gun instead of a nail gun, and I won't want to buy the house. Nothing to do with the gender of the person holding the glue gun.
@marymessall will try to reply to some of the replyguys and more today... for this specifically, we publish everything as open source, document it, and share it under open licenses. you will not see this from all other companies that do what we do. you can ask them if they use any tools like autorouter, or CUDA, or OpenCV, or if they use any LLM... they will not say. totally up to the customer to choose. we are showing all our work in the open, and guys piling on is part of the experience for us
