We know that women students and staff remain underrepresented in Higher Education STEM disciplines. Even in subjects where equivalent numbers of men and women participate, however, many women are still disadvantaged by everyday sexism. Our recent research found that women who study STEM subjects at undergraduate level in England were up to twice as likely as non-STEM students to have experienced sexism. The main perpetrators of this sexism were not university staff, however, but were men STEM degree students.
The undergrad boys in STEM I swear have never met a woman aside from their mothers. No, please don’t follow me home. Please don’t buy me food because I was next to you in line. Please don’t follow me into a store so you can buy me anything I’m purchasing. You are not invited into my conversation because you think I’m pretty, even if you just want to interrupt to tell me I’m pretty and you want to take me on a date. You are not allowed to hug me and hold me as long as you want just because you want to and it feels good for you, I didn’t want a hug and I didn’t know you. It isn’t cute for you to take things from me and play keep away because you are stronger and taller, it makes you a bully.
Teachers: please don’t ignore me when I try and participate or ask a question. I’ve gotten Cs with no explanation, no marks aside from the grade itself. When I check other’s work, theirs is written up with mistakes and they have a higher grade. Honestly that was just one teacher in an undergrad, the rest were pretty awesome, or at least not sexist.
My CS classes were 90% male, and every professor was male, too. They all genuinely enjoyed my participation, and it was the only environment where I wasn’t objectified or disrespected. Same with my coworkers (again 90% male) when I went into the FAANG workforce; the men were happy to see women excel in a previously male-only field.
The general public was a different story until recently. Women were thrilled, a disturbing number of men refused to listen to me.
It probably depends on the university. There are definitely dregs of “incel” culture that get in but they can’t socialize and are usually left alone. In the workforce, interviews stop them from getting much further then that.
Are they less likely to behave this way after meeting you or is this sentence the essence of how you would react to their behavior?
(I haven’t done any of the things mentioned and they are inappropriate, but in retrospective think that maybe I should have, since being too polite and shy at the same time is apparently even less attractive, and reduces experience in communication, which is the only way one can learn to communicate.)
Just like there are lots of jerks and incels, there are lots of really nice shy guys that would make the world a better place by opening up a little more. Being brave at making contact is totally acceptable, and probably good for you, if you do it in a respectful manner. Actual nice guys should drown out the jerks that are self proclaimed nice guys by treating women, men and themselves with respect.
Should, yes. They don’t always. And there are still far more than enough guys (and people) who do nothing when they see women (or others) treated very poorly but men/boys. I sort of understand college and high school, everyone is exploring and unsure what’s ok, and observers may be entirely unsure what to do.
It’s pretty common for a bunch of people to see something bad happen and everyone think someone should do something without realizing they are someone who could do something.
The bystander effect is really common. I remember when I got first aid training, they told us that in an emergency, you have to tell a specific person to do something rather than ask “someone call an ambulance”.
I think bystander effect should be regularly discussed in schools so people will be aware of it. Getting people to automatically respond and do something and offer help is a pretty important step to making our society safer and healthier.
So you first said they try to do/offer to do something like walk you home, buy you something, etc. and you said you don’t want that. Now here you say you want them to do something, in particular when they see something bad happening (i think you meant when they see girl treated poorly by a boy/man). That seems kind of confusing.
If someone wants to try making friends, it’s reasonable for them to try and start a conversation. If the person they are pursuing isn’t interested, LEAVE THEM ALONE. CONSENT IS IMPORTANT.
If I’m screaming for help, if I’m being attacked, if I cannot defend myself, even if you see someone not respecting someone else’s consent, help the person who’s consent is not being respected. CONSENT IS IMPORTANT.
Hope this helps.
In real life what “respectful manner” is becomes a matter of whether another person (and their friends) likes you or not. Sometimes retroactive.
I don’t like this attribution of some kind of affinity to justice to “people” or “men” or “women” or whatever. “People” are a rather cruel and fallacious substance most of the time.
Also jerks and incels may be that not entirely through their own fault. There may be wrong upbringing, or some trauma, which others consciously or unconsciously trigger, or whatever else, humans are complex and putting labels in such a way is disgusting.
I always hope people learn from their experience. I have no idea if they learned anything after interacting with me or assumed I’m some crazy female.
I meant that this quote is extremely humiliating, especially to people for whom it’s true. It’s hard to learn from cruelty, even if it’s unintended.
From your perspective, what was cruel? I’m interested in how different people interpret the same scenarios. What would be a more constructive way to address the situation?
I assumed quite a few things. If I guessed correctly, then:
Telling somebody that they are not good enough to talk to because of not knowing how to do that is cruel because it gives them no escape, since they can’t change their past, and can’t catch on since you won’t talk to them.
A constructive way to address the situation would be telling them something more rude and direct, but also less humiliating, like “I didn’t ask you to do that”, “I wasn’t talking to you” or just telling them to fsck off. Just imagining what you’d say if it were a girl behaving this way and reacting accordingly.
That quote doesn’t simply lose gender roles in conversation, it uses them to say that the other side is inferior in that regard.
Not really… First, I don’t think they ever said that those people “weren’t good enough” to talk to. Those are your words.
But also, there is a very obvious “escape” when you’re ignorant or uneducated about something. It’s called learning.