I'm seeing a fair amount of response to this tweet from a well-known believer that misogyny is everywhere. Some are unrealistically rosy (that yes, that IS all that ALL women have to do) but I find the rosy position FAR closer to my 'lived experience' so here's a thread. 1/x

I have a degree in mathematics from a state university. The department was decently mixed, something like 40% female (high for mathematics), but the faculty was almost all male. I think there's one tenured woman professor and a handful of lecturers. It's easy to take that and 2/x

immediately think that the girls in the department must've had trouble, but guess what? The department bent over backwards to do everything they possibly could to support and encourage us. It was so common and regular a part of my experience that it was actually somewhat 3/x

counterproductive. I don't think any two-week period elapsed without my getting some sort of reassurance -- a flier, a meeting, a concerned inquiry from a professor or TA -- that despite my possession of a vulva, the department believed fully in my ability to learn partial 4/x

derivatives, produce a proof by contrapositive, plot a regression line, analyze time series data, etc. They also provided me with resources to address any perceived harassment or discrimination, and again, to the point that it was more than a little overbearing. At the very 5/x

beginning, I wondered if perhaps a previous professor had been convicted of raping female students or something. The level of hypervigilance seemed of the sort that had to relate to *something happening*. To my knowledge, this was a false perception on my part. They just were 6/x

EXTREMELY proactive about even the POSSIBILITY of these things. As to whether or not merely excelling was enough to win me acceptance and respect? Yes, it was. I didn't even have to excel, actually. My work ethic and intense struggle to make up for deficits in my past level 7/x

of education won me acceptance and respect. Did I get any sexist bullshit from professors? In four years, one remark (about 'girly' handwriting). From fellow students? Four remarks, and only one was unambiguously sexist. Giving the 'misogyny is everywhere' thesis the benefit 8/x

of the doubt, that was five sexist remarks and zero sexist actions in eight semesters. Was I influenced negatively by the lack of female role models? Yes, somewhat. I grew up in extremely deprived circumstances (the pastor's wife was the highest status woman I knew as a kid) 9/x

and my first female mathematics professor did make me feel that math was achievable for me in a way that nobody and nothing had, previously. How much that related to normal 'identification' psychological dynamic and how much to deprivation, I can't say. Returning to Manne's 10/x

thesis that merely excelling does not provide respect and acceptance, my lived experience is the precise opposite. I had five (high end) sexist remarks in eight semesters. Their total effect was vastly outweighed by the doubts inculcated by the ongoing message that I must, 11/x

by virtue of having a vulva, require extra support and encouragement, and the fear that STEM was a hellpit full of rapists just waiting to pounce, hence the need for eleventy anonymous reporting methods. Does sexism still exist? Yes. I did in fact hear five (high end) sexist 12/x

remarks during my time earning a mathematics degree. Are things perfect? No. Are we close to a state where excelling IS all a woman needs to do for respect and acceptance? Yes. Are we close enough that in some situations some women are already having that experience? Yes. 13/x

Did several male mathematicians extend themselves to be kind, invest in me, help me through difficulty, and make clear their belief in and support of me? Yes. This is my lived experience as a (deaf, also disabled--PTSD) woman who earned my mathematics degree in 2020. /end

Addendum: I minored in psych. 7 courses, most huge and team-taught, a total of 16 professors and at least 30 TA's. The total number of males? Two. One prof, one TA. Nobody has ever brought that up as a potential sign of discrimination or roadblock for male students.