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.
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.