• undeadotter@sopuli.xyz
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    3 months ago

    The experiences trans men and women have with misogyny will never not be fascinating to me. Like, for the first time ever we have this huge sample size of people who have experienced how their gender presentation affects how people interact with them, giving tangible proof of misogyny in action. And it can’t just be swept aside with ‘MaYbE tHe wOmEn JuSt miSuNDerStOoD’ or ‘mAYbe tHe mAN diDN’t MeAn iT LiKE tHaT’. I mean idiots will still make idiot arguments but at least it chips away at them a little bit.

    • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      Hello it’s me a trans woman. I knew before transition about some of it but never really understood. When I was masc I didn’t realize how much of it was basically hidden in plain sight because of how I learned to socialize. After transitioning though omg it’s everywhere. I’m in Seattle right now where I don’t have to try too hard to pass and still get treated at least base line okay. Even then I still use my masc voice more than my femme voice because people take me more seriously when I do. Like there’s a cultural acceptance of trans people here but if I behave more masc I get the privilege of being “one of the boys” even if I’m visually in full femme mode. It’s all so weird

    • eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 months ago

      I told one of my friends that I’m being looked at differently in crowds now, and he just said “no you’re imagining it”.

      Many people just do not believe what trans people tell them. At all.

        • adr1an@programming.dev
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          3 months ago

          (I hope not to misgender either but) bro, she knows. No need to mansplain it, read it again:

          Many people just do not believe what trans people tell them. At all.

    • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Religon is probably what initially does this to people’s brains

      Indoctrinating children into religious systems of arbitrary hierarchy gives little boys god complexes and makes little girls into property.

      • ReputedlyDeplorable@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Oh my goodness yes! Not to mention the whole if you don’t dress “modestly” it’s your fault if you get unwanted attention thing. It’s a grooming ground.

      • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
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        3 months ago

        Depends on where you are from, but the sort of thinking that gets people into religion gets people into misogyny even without religion in my experience.

      • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        I feel bad for female-presenting people having experienced being treated worse than their male peers. I didn’t grow up religious or anything, but I can sense where I could be perpetuating that hidden misogyny myself.

        For example: In work and social life, I’ll give my phone number away to people I meet. But I’m not interested in relationships, so I’m far less likely to give it to women, since I don’t want to give anyone the impression I’m making romantic advances by doing that.

        I’m pretty sure for men that aren’t outright misogynist jerks or bullies, it’s stuff like that where they feel as if they might be viewed as awkward providing professional favours to women when they wouldn’t think twice about it for their male peers. That leads to those experiences that women find themselves unable to receive those opportunities to get ahead in their career, or aren’t listened to, or have to advocate their position more when career advancement seems to fall more naturally to men.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          For example: In work and social life, I’ll give my phone number away to people I meet. But I’m not interested in relationships, so I’m far less likely to give it to women, since I don’t want to give anyone the impression I’m making romantic advances by doing that.

          As someone who is relatively active in volunteering/local politics, I’ve been thinking about printing up some old-fashioned “calling cards” (like business cards, but not for a business). Maybe you could do the same, and seeing that giving out your contact info was such a routine habit of yours that you had a ready-made solution for it would stop women from getting the impression that you were leading them on?

          …then again, maybe not. Hmm.

    • OccultIconoclast@reddthat.com
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      3 months ago

      I’m female presenting. I’ve known people who thought I was a cis woman for months, and I don’t keep being nonbinary or trans a secret.

      When I read actual cis women’s accounts of misogyny, and also trans women’s accounts, I can’t relate. I don’t get shut down the same way. Somehow, despite others perceiving me as female, I kept the tiny part of gender presentation that tells people to sit down and shut up when I’m talking as if I were a man. I don’t understand what it is, but I still have it the same as before I transitioned.

      I would love to know what it is so I can share it, but I can’t tell why people respect me as much as they would respect a man. It’s bewildering.

  • SharkWeek@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 months ago

    Yuuup. Woman in engineering here. I once had a supervisor whose behaviour I thought of as normal, but two guys I worked with separately reported him to HR for bullying after seeing how he treated me.

    It’s funny, I had many years with almost no career progression, now my boss is a woman and I’m having to get used to the idea that bonuses and promotions are things that actually happen when I work hard.

    • starlinguk@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      My wife was marked down on her PhD because she “wasn’t nice enough” to her supervisor. All the assessors gave her top marks, but her supervisor vetoed them.

      • SharkWeek@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        3 months ago

        Please give her a hug from me. And if you happen to get a chance to stab her supervisor … well, I’ll not say do it, because that would be illegal. But sometimes accidents happen …

    • Dr_Nik@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I also am glad you got the support. I’m constantly reminded of a friend in college who was going through an electrical engineering undergrad with me. She got all the material so easily and literally dragged me through the classes. I wouldn’t have passed some key topics without her help. Fast forward a few years and I’m getting my PhD and I decide to see what she is up to: she ended up quitting her PhD program because of the insane abuse and misogyny she experienced in the department and instead changed to a masters in music. This was a woman who could easily have made field changing discoveries but was shut down because of close minded individuals. It still makes me rage and is the reason I work so much harder now to ensure my female colleagues and employees have an equal voice at the table.

      • SharkWeek@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        3 months ago

        Yeah, that’s the thing, the majority if guys are OK or better … it’s just there’s enough arseholes to hold women and minorities back when there’s no or unenforced DEI

  • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Stem is still heavily dominated by Men, biology might be different as more woman are in bio than men are, and becoming more common in other stems. engineer and programming sitll gear towards men.

    • Kamsaa@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I was actually joining the chat to write that things are not that different in biology. I have a PhD and 7 years of postdocs behind me. Over the years I have :

      • been denied a management position because “the team was only men, who wouldn’t listen to me” (spoiler alert, they put an incompetent guy in charge who screwed up massively and I ended up taking over, successfully).
      • had a boss who systematically doubted my opinion (while he was not a specialist of the topic) but listened to the very same argument from a male colleague
      • had male Masters students who could speak uninterrupted during meetings when I couldn’t
      • got denied a tenure position for a guy with the same profile (literally the same topic and same labs) but much less experience than mine (like 5 years younger) This last one broke me, I ended up quitting academia
      • Danquebec@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Patriarchy is not only cruel towards women, it’s also dumb. It’s like corruption. We’re hurting ourselves, all of society, including men, by not giving the fitting positions and proper compensation and recognition to people who merit them.

  • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    When I was a freshman before transition, I had a guy save my number and call me like 2 years after we had an intro engineering class (we spoke maybe once?) to ask me out on a date.

    • SharkWeek@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 months ago

      I had that with a contractor who had had my number for work purposes. He kept trying for 5 years.

      I’m a butch lesbian, my mistake was being polite and chatty with him.

      • aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        My sister has a similar issue with a former classmate but for some reason she refuses to block/mark him as spam. it’s been years now and he’s persistent

    • sudneo@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Is that … a bad thing? I am missing something, did he take the number from somewhere or you gave it to him? But otherwise calling someone and asking out is a pretty harmless thing to do.

      • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Not when it was a number used once to arrange a group project meeting and that we had not connected otherwise? Two years later - I had dropped out?

        One thing I noticed as in my progress through as STEM major was the decline in number of female classmates. Calc 3 might have a reasonable number, but the drop off was exponential. The college run that got me through was done as a man, so I didn’t experience the stuff but I heard rumors. Worse than rumors from post docs in the lab I worked in.

        • sudneo@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Yep, if the number was not given specifically to connect that is what makes it inappropriate for me. But overall, an invite to a date besides being old fashioned is not necessarily creepy, even after long time. Of course, I don’t know if there were additional clues that made the whole thing creepy (tone of voice, phrasing etc.).

          I studied computer engineering in Italy, and I can relate with the number of women being very low. I think there were maybe <10 women in the whole class on a ~60 people total after the first semester (starting with 250 people). Most of them were top of the class, which to me always suggested that while many men signed up and then “see how it goes”, only women who knew exactly what they wanted signed up.

  • Allero@lemmy.today
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    3 months ago

    One observation I made is that when women get to comprise a significant part of workforce in science, those things seem to be flattened out.

    Working in the place and field (Russia, food technology) where women are about 50% of the workforce, I’ve never witnessed anything talked about here. Women are taken just as seriously on the position, they are promoted on par with men, they are in charge of many high-profile projects, and actively taking male and female students under scientific supervision. Any sort of workplace harassment will not just contribute to your potential termination, but will earn you very bad reputation - you’ll be seen as a dangerous weirdo no one wants to deal with.

    One other observation I made is that international scientists often come from the position of entitlement, which is also weird to me. Male scientists tend to flaunt their position any time they can, and many of the female scientists tend to sort of mimic this behavior, but it feels different, like if they try to claw the attention they were consistently denied.

    For me, it is weird and unnatural. Where I live and work, some baseline respect towards your more experienced superiors, male or female, is to be expected, is taught since school, and doesn’t require such performances. Since most school teachers are female, the role of woman as a potential superior to be respected is clearly defined and doesn’t cause questions. Students are not afraid to contact their superiors, but do it respectfully and with full understanding they take valuable time of a high-profile scientist. Why do people have to constantly fight for attention and respect in many other cultures is beyond me.

    • sureok@lemmy.sdf.org
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      3 months ago

      I share what others have said about your likely difficulty in seeing what’s going on around you. However.

      I have a couple of female friends who moved as adults to US from Russia in the 80s. Both said they were shocked when they found out the things that weren’t soviet propaganda, like how women were treated day to day, and the systemic discrimination against racialized people. Neither of them is immune to racist or sexist bevahior, and now having lived here for so long even moreso, but there is a difference in baseline expectations at the macro scale. Years later they still express surprise when even the pretense of attempting equality is absent or made a joke.

      That said I’ve met women and men from elsewhere in the former USSR (both older and especially younger than the above) who are very heteronormative and accept their “place” in hierarchy. I understand there was post-soviet backlash culturally. How do you view that? In the past 2-4 decades is there progress, regression or what? My point of view could be tainted by selection bias in terms of who chooses to move countries, and where they land.

      The fact that Russia underwent a revolutionary transformation in the 20th C, from serf to industrial, when it could benefit from an existing articulation of gender inequalities, must take some credit for present equality, no? To have such a big material shake up, and at least with the goal of addressing the patriarchy. I dont think in the anglosphere we ever had that.

      • Allero@lemmy.today
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        3 months ago

        On your question: I haven’t lived in USSR (born in Russia already), but from what I could gather from relatives and older acquaintances, it was quite similar.

        Generally good on workplace equality, quite some everyday/domestic sexism going both ways. One negative change in the workplace since the fall of USSR and rise in private enterprises is reluctancy of some bosses to select female employees, as they are feared to take maternity leave and be on the company’s budget. I wouldn’t say this happens everywhere, but it’s common enough to be notable.

        The positive shift in the domestic part started about 2010’s, as new wave of feminism has been accepted by many in the Russian youth. Still, there are some issues on that front, particularly outside big cities.

        In any case, the Soviet legacy clearly shows, and it sure has helped immensely, especially in the workplace.

  • sureok@lemmy.sdf.org
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    3 months ago

    I transitioned to male 15 years ago, I was already well into adulthood by that time so had experience to compare. 100% agree with the post. It was night and day. (I’m not in Stem; just generally in life.)

    The weirdest thing was some of the individual people who changed how they treat me over time, for the better. After I started transitioning. Its cool they are so trans positive and affirming I guess. But if you can turn that shit on like a tap why not do for everyone?

    Now as a man I struggle to notice when I’m getting special treatment. Even with my prior experience. Sometimes I have been oblivious for years until I finally clocked it or it was pointed out by a woman.

    It has made me much more respect cis men who manage to have a keen eye on sexism. Especially those who are masc presenting. It is so easy to not notice. It’s very comfortable. People are polite. You have good luck. To all the guys commenting here that it doesn’t go on around them: it sure as fuck does.

    • UpperBroccoli@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 months ago

      I think this is a huge problem even with people that would say about themselves that they respect women, or even that they are feminist. A lot of men on the left suffer from a total absence of introspection. They may not want to treat women differently, but then they just repeat patterns they have learned without any reflection, and end up doing just that - talk over women, mansplaining to them and so on. It’s the same with any privileged group of people.

      Men/white people/other privileged groups: if you do not reflect your actions and question your own thought patterns and influences, you will likely discriminate against others. Because the wold that influences us is total dogshite. Strife to be better.

    • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I think people get defense around the idea of “male privilege” because they think it’s getting them something extra. It’s more all of the shit you don’t have to deal with.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Exactly. As a teenager I hated the concept. Partly because I’d been bullied for failing to perform masculinity as a child, partly because I was not happy with the whole boy thing, but also because all the shit so many cis men say.

        But when I transitioned I saw it. And I saw trans men starting to receive the privilege I was losing.

    • fossilesque@mander.xyzOPM
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      3 months ago

      Sometimes we should just, I dk, listen to what people that have different experiences to us say. I figure, I have no idea what it is like to question my gender, so maybe I should shut the fuck up and listen to what people who do tell me. The problem is, a lot of men do not listen.

      Is there one gender friendlier to trans people? Just wondering. I feel like women may be, but that is my bias from my attitude towards men lol.

      • DrivebyHaiku@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        Trans masc person checking in. Might be my bias or community or something but I get way less misgendering by guys under 30 than basically any other demographic. They seem to pick it up faster and be really chill about it in ways that a lot of the women in my life really don’t seem to get as comfortable with.

        But there is definitely a part of my brain that sees men as being of my tribe in ways that women are not. Like not to say that I don’t have incredible women in my life whom I have incredibly close bonds with… But there’s definitely some kind of cognitive distance that has always kind of been there.

        I think trans femmes might experience a similar situation with feeling accepted by women ( Or maybe not because TERFs tend to look at them as a threat) but to answer your question about if the bros are alright… Yeah, they good.

      • sureok@lemmy.sdf.org
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        3 months ago

        shut the fuck up and listen

        But dont need to turn off your brain. There are plenty of dumb trans people out there and you can find a trans person to represent any position.

        Is there one gender friendlier to trans people?

        I doubt it. It depends. I mean, women are friendlier, in general. It depends. And trans men are more likely to be “passing” living stealth. So its a different thing. I hardly know what anyone thinks of trans people unless I ask, because 99% of interactions I have are as presumed cis.

        One thing I know is that everyone loves men. Cis men, trans men, doesnt matter. People value men. This is why all kinds of anti trans horseshit specifically targets trans women. In the UK recently there was a ruling about the definition of “woman” as it relates to trans women. But no definition of “man”. Why! Why are only women subject to such shit. Trans men are implicitly pulled in and adversely affected but women are the ones who have the law about their bodies.

        • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          In the UK recently there was a ruling about the definition of “woman” as it relates to trans women. But no definition of “man”. Why!

          I think that’s also largely because it’s women who feel vulnerable with men in their ‘intimate’/‘private’ places like bathrooms or sleeping spaces - not so much for men. So questions like, “will the prison rules make this person share a room with me on the basis of their self-identification as a woman” are more of a concern for women than for men.

          And of course efforts aimed at elevating women in e.g. STEM. If you have a women’s tech group, or a women’s gaming group, giving special help to women because their gender puts them at a disadvantage, do you, should you, must you, include trans women? That’s going to come up about women not about men. Men’s groups of these days tend to be much less relevant.

          I agree the ruling should have considered both genders equally though. Actually, does it not? Or was it just the discussion, not the actual ruling, that was all women-focused not men?

          • sureok@lemmy.sdf.org
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            3 months ago

            It is only about trans women. The discussion, the case etc. As usual.

            https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cvgq9ejql39t

            It came about after the Scottish government included transgender women in quotas to ensure gender balance on public sector boards.

            Trans women experience all the opposite of what trans men do. Their status plummets on transition. They experience more violence abuse and harassment than cis men, trans men or cis women. The idea of excluding them from women’s stuff is ignorant.

            As to people “feeling safe”, people “feel unsafe” for lots of reasons. Differences in perceived race, sexual orientation, disabilities so forth. Perceived gender variance is only one reason. Should we segregate sleeping spaces by race?

            On the other hand, I guess I can take advantage of these things and these spaces?? I’m assigned female at birth. I’m a biological woman?? Nobody would guess to look at me. And as I’ve been saying I’ve had many years of male privilege. But if we’re checking documents, well nobody can argue with me if I want to. Nor with the OP.

  • Triasha@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Not in stem but the same thing happened to me. I used to be able to speak to a room and be heard. Now I need to raise my voice, sound a little whiney or bitchy or nobody hears me. Only my closest friend still asks me for advice or to share my knowledge. Used to happen all the time.

    At least I pass. I got that going for me.

  • Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de
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    3 months ago

    As a man, it is insane to me that this is real.

    I have a difficult time imagining malicious intent towards women by all these people. But given how common these stories are, there is something true about it. I just don’t understand why.

    Is it really an unconscious cultural thing? Or am I naive about how my fellow men (I guess maybe women too) feel towards women?

    Something in me refuses to believe that these people knowingly and intentionally harm women. But it sure as hell looks intentional.

    I am not defending them. I am expressing my struggle with the reality of this shit.

    • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Selection bias, the people who don’t discriminate aren’t causing harm so you don’t notice them but since they don’t speak up they aren’t helping either, so the jerks are still setting the tone. The solution is to not just do the right thing but actively call people out the jerks.

    • yarr@feddit.nl
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      3 months ago

      Something in me refuses to believe that these people knowingly and intentionally harm women.

      One thing I think that goes too far is people either think misogynists represent 0% of 100% of men. It’s neither. There are some men that are extremely prejudiced against women and will cross the street just to bother them, and then there’s a huge slice of men that support women as best they can.

      I mean, if nothing else, incels definitely exist and they would treat the women in this situation wrongly. Do you think no one is an incel?

  • Michal@programming.dev
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    3 months ago

    Is this unique to women? Do men experience anything similar in women-dominated fields? I’m not actually sure what these may be; teaching, childcare, hair stylists? I realise this may make me sound misogynist, but I’m really clueless.

      • Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        For my anecdotal story, I’ve never been treated worse than when I was doing IT for a hospital and working around nurses, who were almost exclusively women. God it felt like I was in a mean girls movie or some campy coming of age story about bullying.

        • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
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          3 months ago

          I don’t think hospitals do count, being burned out could be an official requirement for the job and you wouldn’t notice a difference.

          • Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Being burned out doesn’t mean being catty, intentionally spreading false rumors, forming impenetrable cliques, and just being rude and talking behind each others backs.

            I get it, nurses are over worked and under paid. But so are a ton of other professions and they dont have this same problem.

            • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
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              3 months ago

              Eh, being burned out means exactly (most of) that. Especially being rude is a huge sign of being burned out, because you just can’t muster the energy to be positive, because everything about your work pisses you off, including your coworkers, customers, bosses and the work itself.

  • ZeroOne@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Male’s priviledge huh, that’s new

    Ah well welcome to a man’s world, It’s going to be really fun for you😂

    • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Unironically yes. As a male STEM student, I had a much easier time finding a study group, I didn’t feel singled out and isolated in my classes, and people took the things I said seriously.

      It’s like magic when I go to the doctor - the second they find out a uterus, it’s like their whole body language changes.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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        3 months ago

        My wife had a doctor literally walk out of the room when she mentioned in addition to the abdominal pain she was having post-c-section she also had had a period non stop for 3 months straight. Y’know because she mentioned her period

        • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          I have epilepsy. Controlled, but I had a series of seizures several years ago.

          They basically were like “seizures happen sometimes” and just sent me on my way. I have no idea why, if they’ll return, if I’m supposed to just keep taking this medication for the rest of my life. The neurologist I saw afterwards didn’t give a rats ass.

          I passed a kidney stone without help once - I went to the Urgent Care and the doctor argued with me about where I would be hurting. I was hurting in the wrong place, so it couldn’t have been a kidney stone.

          It was much easier when I had a husband there to repeat everything I said.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    Is it me or is this a uniquely American experience?

    I loved in quite a few countries and I’ve never seen this kind of absurd behavior. Granted, in a man, but I’ve never seen a man cut off a woman like that just because she’s a woman, and I’ve never seen or heard comments even remotely about someone being “exotic”. I’ve heard questions like “ohh, and where are you from?” in genuine curiosity, which is fine, I’ve never noticed overt racism like that.

    Edit: to clarify, I am not talking about myself. Yeah I had idiots treat me like that and you just ignore them. I’m talking about never seeing this behavior in groups. I’ve lived in Mexico (loooasds of high testosterone machismo there) and even there I’ve never seen anyone that a women so disrespectful just because she’s a woman. Same for skin color or sexual discrimination or whatever. I’m sure it’s out there but in Europe, Mexico, Canada, I haven’t seen it.

    Come to think of it: I have seen some of it. A guy who thought that at in company martial arts classes he could grab women’s breasts. I kicked him out immediately, I could not fire him unfortunately as that was not my call. That guy was of course a loud mouth American.

    This just makes me think more and more that this may be a problem in all countries, just that it’s a huge issue in the US.

    • TheSambassador@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Sorry, but this sounds exactly like what male privilege is. Assuming that it doesn’t happen near you because you haven’t noticed it.

      Ask your female friends what sorts of sexism they genuinely face regularly and I think you’ll learn a lot.

      • VitoRobles@lemmy.today
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        3 months ago

        This is why I learned to stfu about experiences I don’t understand.

        I say that as a person of color trying to explain my perspective and be given deer-in-headlights responses, or worse, dismissal and denial.

      • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        That is what I meant. I’ve never seen this behavior in meetings where someone just dismisses a woman/person of color/lgbt/etc just because.

        I think this sort of behavior is especially prevalent in the US because even in Mexico guys didn’t behave like that.