STORY TIME! This bullshit take is going around. Guess what? Sexism in STEM is not an evil spirit that only a prophet can identify and only the Holy Spirit of Wokeness can cast out. Here's a true story from Calc 1. Being a first generation, dirt poor, disabled (deaf, PTSD) 1/x

student, I had no idea how to pick a professor. So I got stuck with a mean, grumpy, verge-of-retirement bastard. Most mathematics classes were close to 50/50 during my time in college. Calc 1, my first, was an outlier--it was about 75% male. Being deaf, I was getting some 2/x

accommodations that the prof found annoying and he was downright nasty. He was fond of embarrassing people who couldn't answer questions, and the other girls in class avoided him--an option I didn't have, since the TA didn't handle accommodations. One day he made a very snide 3/x

remark about my "girly handwriting." I was already petrified, what with all the obstacles I was facing, and that remark brought up all the brainwashing from my mandatory diversity class that semester. Would he fail me? Should I change my handwriting? Was having a vulva the 4/x

death of my dream to earn a degree in mathematics? I was scared to death. I told @ConceptualJames about the asshole's comment. He laughed and said that when he was in college for maths, professors gave him shit because his handwriting was "chicken scratch." I thought about 5/x

that for a solid week. WHAT IF assholes are assholes to everyone? WHAT IF there's *zero* reason to take a comment about "girly" handwriting any more personally than guys take comments about "chicken scratch"? WHAT IF the STEM fields, having objective right or wrong answers, 6/x

are really hard, and would require grit and resilience? WHAT IF the locus of control was INSIDE ME? It hit me that the asshole's remark didn't have to mean a single fucking thing, didn't have to have any scrap of power that I didn't CHOOSE to give it, or him. I made him 7/x

grade my calculus tests with my BEAUTIFUL, GIRLY handwriting, did not run crying to the Title IX office, persevered, got a B in Calc 1, and have a degree in mathematics. The bastard retired. The "leaky pipeline" didn't leak me. Because even a blatantly sexist remark doesn't 8/x

have to be earth-shattering. Because grievance peddlers are too fucking weak for real life and certainly for STEM fields. Being mollycoddled for being female in a STEM field is Dumbo's magic feather: ladies, you don't actually need it. YOU CAN FLY ON YOUR OWN.

P.S. -- if you have a computer science professor who refuses to show you their algorithm when you ask? Especially if they're using it to make sweeping generalizations about your possibilities for success? RUN! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM THEM!