Node.js LGBTQIA+ Stories: Emelia Smith

Node.js LGBTQIA+ Stories: Emelia Smith

Carl put it rather elegantly in the opening blog post for this series, when he said “When we were young, the rules for many of us were simple.”, and that resonates with my own experiences. I grew up in a very rural part of Australia, it was incredibly hot in the summers, and there wasn't a whole lot to do. Growing up, I knew people could be gay, but didn't know anyone who was actually gay, I knew transgender people existed but didn't know how because society wasn't as accepting then as it is now.

I was always a little bit different, friendly with many of my peers but not truly friends with many people. I knew I had differences to my peers but could never quite place my finger on what was what.

As there was little else to do in that part of Australia, besides play football, I ended up seeking refuge in online communities. Originally I wanted to be a graphic designer, because I loved art, that took me to DeviantART.com, where I found my way into internet chat rooms, one of which was a tech support chat — I liked computers, so why not help people with them? One thing lead to another, and I found myself doing programming and learning all about the web.

It was 2008 when I first realized that maybe this web development stuff could be a career, when a recruiter had seen some blog posts of mine about the chat client I'd been building using XULRunner for DeviantART's chatrooms. I was 15 at the time, and couldn't quite believe it, and ultimately it didn't pan out. The chat client I'd been working on was my first taste of asynchronous network i/o, and I liked it.

Fast-forward a year, and Node.js was announced by Ryan at JSConf.eu, once I watched the video, I immediately wanted to try to use it, it seemed so much better than the APIs I was used to working with in XULRunner for network i/o. One thing lead to another, and I began contributing to Node.js, back then, this was pretty easy as the code was still new and there were plenty of bugs to fix. I was there from pretty early on, I saw the birth of npm and package managers for JavaScript, and watched the project grow. It was an exciting time!

My early contributions to Node.js were adding the fs.readdirSync method, adding chmod support, then implementing the upgrade event that enabled implementing Websockets in Node.js, I kept contributing regularly and learned a lot from the early community. The largest change I made to Node.js was splitting up the documentation into multiple files and pages, this lifted me up to be within the top ten contributors to the project due to the sheer number of lines of code changed.

That led to me receiving a job offer just as I was finishing high school in 2010, which took me to San Francisco for a bit, where I finally met mikeal, isaacs, ry, rauchg, and polotek in person. These were people I'd previously only known from IRC chats, hence using their handles, or from the Node.js podcast I hosted in 2010 with Mikeal Rogers (it was called The Noded, I have no idea if it's still online somewhere).

I didn't realise I was queer until much later in life, after I'd moved to London. I was 24 going on 25, and had been going through some things. I started with just the question of "are men's and women's clothes really that different?", it was an odd question for someone who at the time still considered themselves straight and cisgender, but it was something I explored on my own and it was really just me trying to give myself permission to try dressing differently. I the time, I did not recognize myself in the mirror, and I needed to try something. I came out as genderqueer on New Years Eve of 2014/2015.

I met some more wonderful queer people (thank you so much to Jess Rose for organising the meet up that first helped me get out of my closet), and that continued me on my journey. I decided London wasn't the place to be for me, so I moved to Berlin, and continued working with Node.js and building startups. After a year, I realised that I wasn't just genderqueer, but actually a transgender woman, who was also a lesbian.

Now, I've been out and proud for a decade, I still contribute to Open Source frequently, in fact, I mostly work full time on open-source software. I'm still using Node.js, but no longer contributing, as my time is taken up with my own open-source projects and contributing to projects like Mastodon, Hollo and using the Adonis.js Framework. Chances are, you've probably used software I've contributed to in one way or another. You've probably used code that myself and other LGBTQIA+ individuals have written.

Node.js always has had a strong participation for LGBTQIA+ community members, and without Node.js, I doubt I'd have had the experiences I've had, met the wonderful people I have, nor gotten out of that dusty small town and broadened my horizons. Node.js is very much so to thank for introducing me to who I needed to become to be happy.

You can find me on Mastodon as @thisismissem@hachyderm.io, and support my open-source work financially at: https://support.thisismissem.social. I'm also on Bluesky if that's more your thing.