"... you and I can't be equal." A letter from mech. eng. senior to female classmates.

[Matariki]

60. This made me cry

not so much because it's rare for a man to understand the onslaught of subtle slights that women endure, but in the
ways I've failed to understand the effect of them on myself as a woman. This letter, and even more so his response to the letter being praised really hit some unconscious sore spots.

Jared tells the Ms. Blog:

I absolutely consider myself a feminist! Feminism is about establishing equality, not superiority and that is something I am completely behind. … I was married to a feminist for 10 years and though I didn’t see the subtle [sexism] at first, over time she helped me to understand the subtle comments that add up to a net social push. Once you see it, you see how often it really happens, and you can’t take up a position of ignorance anymore.

(My friend Holly Jeanneret motivated me to write the letter). When Holly and I started Calculus 1 I quickly realized that while I was pretty good at math, she was better; a lot better. Holly consistently outscored me on exams and homework assignments, she understood the concepts on a level I couldn’t match. However, I often saw other men walk right past her and wander around the class looking for another partner. If they did partner with her, they were hyper-critical, they talked over her, they talked directly to me and barely acknowledged she was there. If Holly disagreed on an answer, instead of looking at both answers to find out who had done something wrong, as was common when I worked with other men, I saw them jump to the conclusion that she was must be wrong. It wasn’t just Holly. Since then I have seen the same behavior from men in nearly every class.

What happens when we start pushing some of these thinkers to the side? When they opt for other paths not because this isn’t a calling, but because they see the challenges as outweighing the rewards? I want companies to have access the best thinkers and the best ideas available and if we push certain people out of this field for reasons that have nothing to do with ability, we can’t have that result.

We [men] can’t know what it feels like to grow up in a society where these subtle slights are the norm; a society where women have become so accustomed to them that they can only recall the major ones. We cannot empathize, and our experiences are not the same, but we can listen and try to understand. From there, we can act.

I work in computer sciences. This resonated more than I wish it did.