Thanks for your kind words. I am passionate enough about these topics, and hard-headed enough that I am not going to be driven away from talking about things that I want to. And that being said, it does take a toll to be underestimated and demeaned on a pretty much daily basis. At least I don't get death and rape threats like some of the women writers on Medium (and other places on the internet).
For the men who do that, it is by design - they want us to get too tired, or too scared to continue. They want women to get back in their lane, even if that is only a subconscious thought. And 50 years ago it was a widely held belief by most of society that men were naturally more intelligent than women, that women were designed to be helpmates, not leaders. So, it's not really that big of a surprise that many of these beliefs still exist, much more in the background, but still there. I was in elementary school in the 1970s, so people my age and older really swam in that ocean as children, with it only just starting to be challenged. The people my son's age (25) learned it from our generation.
It's definitely better than it was, but as I noted before, current research indicates that the authority gap and "role incredulity" are still alive and quite well even amongst younger generations.
Role incredulity is a form of gender bias where women are mistakenly assumed to be in a support or stereotypically female role — secretary, administrative assistant, court reporter, nurse, wife, girlfriend — rather than a leadership or stereotypically male role, such as CEO, professor, lawyer, doctor, or engineer.In these instances, women must expend extra energy and time to assert and sometimes prove their role. Their words may lack the credibility and authority inherent in their position.
Role incredulity surfaced as a common theme in our research dataset of women’s stories from interviews, open-ended survey responses, social media posts, and public articles.
Ben Barres is an American neurobiologist who was assigned female at birth. After transitioning to male, he noted that he was given much more deference and gravitas than when he presented as female.
After transitioning, he noticed that people who were not aware of his transgender status treated him with respect much more than when he presented as a woman. After delivering his first seminar as a man, one scientist was overheard to comment, “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but his work is much better than his sister’s [believing work published under his deadname to be his sister’s] work.”
We are leaving in the morning to go to Jamaica for a week. I will be online a little but also much less than normal because part of the "vacation" is taking a break from that as well.
