The boys’ club that no one was supposed to write about

If you work in tech, Wired’s new cover story won’t shatter your worldview, but it’s a really great read nonetheless.

Reporter Zoe Bernard spent months speaking to 51 people (31 of them gay men) to map a subculture that has been an open secret in Silicon Valley for years: gay men, in the upper echelons of technology, quietly raising their private networks the way powerful people always do.

One angel investor puts it plainly: “Gay people in tech are having tremendous success… They support each other, whether it’s hiring someone, angel investing in their companies, or leading their own funding rounds.” Another source puts it almost philosophically: “Straight guys have the golf course. Gay guys have orgies. That doesn’t mean it’s a problem. It’s a way we bond and communicate.”

The piece doesn’t completely let culture off the hook. As is the case wherever power dynamics exist, nine of the gay men interviewed described experiencing unwanted advances from more senior colleagues – and Bernard is not shy about examining where networking ends and coercion begins. But her sources are cautious about what that means: “This is a complex topic and I don’t think readers can differentiate between some men being bad being gay and all gay men being bad. It could be a slippery slope toward homophobia.”