I do some social dance in the Bay Area. Basically what that means is that I go to a public space for a few hours with a few female friends, while a succession of nerdy math/science/engineering guys ask us to spend a few minutes touching them in a socially acceptable manner and perhaps making small talk. It’s a great microcosm of the STEM world, or the dating world or something.
What is interesting about this is that I can’t think of a single instance when I or someone I know has been harassed by someone while dancing. Which is not to say that female dancers don’t have complaints. It’s just that those complaints are invariably about guys who are bad dancers or who sweat too much, who smell weird or get out of breath easily, who make too much eye contact or not enough, who respond in monosyllables or who go on long soliloquies without provocation.
“That guy was weird.” “He creeped me out.” These are the phrases people use for stuff like that and if you say those things your feelings are assumed legitimate and to be trusted.
(There are guys who do hold you closer than is standard, whose hands move lower, who turn innocent dances into more suggestive ones without really obtaining your consent in any way and they’re invariably confident and conventionally attractive. And girls recount their dances with those guys while blushing slightly and end with a smiling “Not that I’m complaining …”)
And I don’t want to make this about criticizing something other girls do, I know I do this stuff too. In the first few moments I interact with someone new I form an impression of him, and if that impression is negative then my rationalizing mind will do anything to avoid admitting that that impression might have been tinged by racism or classism or ableism or fatphobia or any of the forms that my low-status-detecting software takes. If I can tell a story where he’s the bad guy, tell myself that he must have done something to make me uncomfortable otherwise why would I be uncomfortable around him, then I win and am allowed to continue feeling virtuous.
Anyway, in conclusion
- I haven’t personally experienced any sexism as a woman in math and computer science
- to the extent I have heard other women complain about barriers to achievement in said areas it is mostly about subconscious bias and structural issues (i.e. work-life balance)
- if STEM culture is more sexist then other cultures I am pretty confident the causal arrow points in the other direction i.e. women aren’t interested in STEM so the culture is male-dominated
- you can be as much of a sexist oppressor as you want if you are a high-status male
- you can be as nice and feminist as possible if you are a low-status male and people will still think you are a sexist oppressor
- the drive to improve your status by punching down is really strong and identifying obvious axes of oppression will probably just make you more likely to punch down on the less obvious axes