Thread by @paigestanley_ag

Happy Friday - let's talk about sexism in academic culture. I've been afraid to be specific about it on social media + have mostly gone silent on here bc of it, but this week was my last straw.

Here's a few examples of blatantly sexist interactions I've had in the past >2 years:

1. When my WOP paper came out last year, I was attacked by white male twitter. I responded relentlessly to their critiques, but it mostly came down to white dudes who a) knew next to nothing about soil C, b) didn't agree with the paper, and c) couldn't fathom being wrong

1a. They collectively had larger followings than me & managed to rally their troops to aid in their attack. They posted multiple rounds of YouTube videos, back-of-the envelope calculations, & threads that were completely inaccurate. But it didn't matter - they had the following.

1b. I couldn't keep up with all the attacks -- it was all day every single day for months. How do they do any work?!?

My continued responses only egged them on, and my silence was evidence to them that I didn't have a counterargument. It was a lose-lose on my end

2. Not limited to my twitter exchanges about the paper, I've been called "naive" a "damsel in distress," an "insecure snob," etc. The list goes on. Most of those tweets have since been deleted, but here's one example.

3. I organized a rancher event to present my dissertation results back in April. First, a private email was leaked to me where 2 older white males in admin roles blatantly questioned my credibility, assuming that I had no science to support the topic I planned the event around

3a. I paid for the event with my own grant money, organized it with them for over a year, sent draft docs & solicited feedback more than once. They'd never even reached out to ask me about my methods, the strength of my data, etc etc. All assumptions on their part.

3b. Two weeks before the event, I had this nice little email exchange (separate dude)

The funny part? He was completely wrong about the report that he cited & the state of the science around grazing & SOC. & he had no publications on rangeland SOC + grazing to speak of. Lovely

3c. He repeatedly called me "Ms." and lashed out after I responded to his email by calling him by his first name and answering his questions calmly and casually. PS I've been repeatedly asked by professors to call them by their first name in post-undergrad settings.

4. In the past 8 months, I've been repeatedly asked what year of grad school I'm in 😐 You guessed it - by all dudes

5. Most recently, I was presenting on my post-doc work at #AGU22. I explicitly spoke on issues of rangeland spatial heterogeneity + sample size-& what we did to overcome it. After my talk, a guy got up &, in a V condescending tone, asked why I *believed* we had enough samples

5a. I explained that I did preliminary power analyses + that the statistic used to determine minimum sample size was different than what he was describing. He just raised his eyebrows + stormed off.

He did this to every female speaker in every session I saw him in this week

6. All of my experiences have one thing in common: white dudes.

I'll also nuance this to say I've had several incredible white male advisors and colleagues, so this isn't unilateral. But it is a commonality that I'm sure isn't limited to just me.

5a. Why...I mean WHY is this the case? The inflated egos, absolute inability to be wrong, & righteousness have become unbearable. As a grad student, I chalked it up to my rank in the hierarchy, but now it's just blatant.

What advice do my lady/female identifying academics have?