Nicole Bourbaka chose her pseudonym for the same reason that Eric Blair chose George Orwell as his pseudonym, so that he could live somewhere outside his satire. Nicole Bourbaka plays on the name Nicholas Bourbaki, pseudonym that a group of mathematician pranksters chose for their fictitious persona to write their shared body of published work. Nicole, as an avatar for a global network of women who’ve experienced abuse and survived to tell, brings their stories together in a “coalition of stories,” playing the Trump card in an otherwise stacked deck.

Nicole Bourbaka exemplifies many women, who are so fascinated by their work that they don’t want to waste their time fighting sexism. The MAGA taunt: “File a complaint so we can force you into the ‘abrasive fighting feminist’ channel down to a cesspool with no other option for the rest of your life. Let us destroy your dream.” Ellen Pao had only one option after filing a lawsuit – to leave her career and become a feminist, whether she preferred that option or not. A pseudonym frees many more women to tell their stories without entangling their identities and careers with their MAGA experience – a way for diverse women to contribute their unique stories to a collaborative intelligence network without being diverted from the life paths that fascinate them.

The great significance of George Orwell’s 1984 is generally overlooked. Readers, overwhelmed by his Big Brother surveillance and control metaphor, see only hopelessness for humanity. They miss Orwell’s activist message: Big Brother and the Brotherhood refer to collective intelligence as the consensus achieved by manipulating everyone to hold their prescribed point of view, as powerfully portrayed in Orwell’s story. The solution is  collaborative intelligence, which does not force consensus, values many stories, and diverse points of view (DEI). Collaborative intelligence supports coalition-building that maintains diversity and distinct voices, and distributed power to combat central “top-down, command-and-control.” Ironically, Wikipedia puts collaborative intelligence “under” the masculine paradigm of collective intelligence. Collaborative intelligence should be separate and equal, its complement – this is the resistance that DEI can bring to disrupt the MAGA monolith. The diversity, equity and inclusion that tyranny is trying to abolish is our superpower to fight tyranny.