People acting shocked surprised about @JasonWardNY fail to understand that often it is the successful men (yeah, women do this too) who take advantage of their position and behave this way. Like do y’all not remember Harvey Weinstein?? Bill Cosby?

Off the top of my head I personally know a #birder who has made me uncomfortable multiple times by making comments about my appearance. The #birding community is in no way immune to this type of behavior.

This guy has invited me to go birding with him multiple times and I decline despite wanting someone to do this with because I don’t need to be alone in the woods with a man who feels the need to compliment my lipstick multiple times the one time I wore it in front of him.

As a woman who plays video games popular with toxic male players, I see parallels between the behavior of asshole gamers and birder guys. I can’t tell you how often a #birder dude has mansplained an identification to me before, just like gamer dudes assume I can’t play.

Anyway this is all just to say that sexual predators are literally everywhere and whatever niche community you exist in has people who do this stuff and are either ignored or people are oblivious as to why it SEEMS like there aren’t more women into the hobby.

Spoiler alert: Women are probably into the hobby and driven out by creeps who latch onto us the second they see an opportunity for sex and/or to make us feel badly about ourselves. So, we exit the community. Do better #birders and other natural history dudes.

I wish this shit would get retweeted but it won’t go anywhere because I have an audience of like 5 people. Oh well.