They have done studies that show that what cats are exposed to early in life shapes what they are capable of seeing. You can actually create blind spots where they cannot see certain kinds of things by controlling their environment.
Cats raised with only vertical lines but no horizontal will walk around chair legs and bump into the railings. Cats raised with only horizontal lines but no vertical will avoid the railings but bump into the legs. Men and women are socialized differently from birth. There are lots of studies on that and I'm not going to cite anything. If you are a human being living in human society, that should be something you know anyway, even without studies pinpointing specific details.
The mental framework that I have found most useful in trying to sort my problems is that women are socialized to be part of a private sphere and men are socialized to be part of a public sphere. Girls get raised to be wives and moms and boys get raised to have a career.
I haven't found it especially helpful to go "I'm a woman and people are just misogynistic assholes intentionally excluding women!" That may be true and at times certainly is but it mostly gives me no place to go.
I'm not going to magically stop being female. Under some circumstances, you can convince people the things they are doing are rooted in gender bias and it needs to change but it's usually counterproductive to just go around telling people "You are a sexist pig!" (There are exceptions, of course.)
That doesn't tend to open doors.
There are differences between female-only groups and male-only groups in terms of how you gain status. Women start with respecting you and then tear you down to see what is left standing. Men start with treating you as NOTHING and you have to gain respect. You have to earn it.
So for starters, I think when women go into male-dominated spaces (such as many serious professions), women feel mistreated from the get go when it's more like a cultural difference. And I find it helpful to see that cultural difference as about public spaces versus private spaces rather than about gender per se. It makes it a lot more palatable for me.
So I concluded that in male spaces, I need to prove myself and that's not because they are sexist pigs. It's the same standard they apply to the men. It's NOT because I'm a girl.
At some point, I decided that at least in some cases, men reacting negatively to a woman being there is not sexism per se. I came up with this mental model of a woman from a prior era in her long dress with many petticoats going into a factory with lots of dangerous moving parts and little to no safety features and she is not only walking places where her skirts could get caught and get her and other people maimed or killed, she's also running around punching buttons and going "Oh! What does THIS do!!!" and the men are just FREAKING the fuck out because what she is doing is dangerous.
And the only thing the men can really do is go "Get her OUT of here!" because social decorum requires them to galantly protect her from her own stupidity and also NOT educate her. It's not socially acceptable to let her get hurt and it's not socially acceptable to train her. And in their experience, if you TRY to train her, she won't listen and will just call you a sexist pig interfering with her right to do as she pleases.
So the guys do everything they can to just block her from engaging with the equipment and try to get her out the door as fast as they can because it's the least worst solution available to them. But it's not per se that they don't want a woman in there.
So I joined a particular male space and it rapidly turned into drama because I had no idea this was a serious space. To me it was just fun conversation and that was it.
Because like a cat raised with only vertical lines who can't see the horizontal ones, I was raised with girly things and didn't see what was going on in this male space. Even if someone TOLD me, I just didn't get it.
This was further complicated by the fact that a lot of people were giving me positive feedback and NOT signaling "You can't DO that here!!!" But I think delving into that detail is an issue for a different post on a different day.
So the value of my human safety cage was that his role was kind of like letting me know "Oh, god, woman! QUIT putting your long skirts near the cutting machines!!!! Oh, god, woman! Stop running around punching buttons for FUN! Those things put dangerous machinery into motion! This is NOT a game, damn it!"
And he just so happened to be in a position where I would take that feedback seriously as "This is something I need to quit doing" even though I didn't know why and didn't see why it was a problem. And I took him seriously even though it wasn't what I THOUGHT he should be doing for me and I was mad he wasn't doing the things I THOUGHT he should be doing for me.
I had these ideas that he should be vouching for me and making introductions and telling people I'm smart and trustworthy and yadda. And I was wrong.
Those things DO happen in male spaces but I first needed to meet some baseline of not being a giant walking disaster waiting to happen. And I wasn't meeting that standard. I simply wasn't and it kind of didn't matter WHY I wasn't.
We don't live in a Bugs Bunny world where gravity doesn't apply if you never studied the law of gravity. This stuff matters and has to be taken seriously. Period.
So his feedback let me be less of a shit show long enough to be tolerated by the men to some degree and to let me figure out a few things. So they didn't PROMPTLY show me the door and the fact that I was a shit show without meaning to be was accepted because everyone has a learning curve -- even the guys -- and with his feedback I was making enough progress for people to go "Okay. We will allow this. Just give her a WIDE berth lest she set you on fire or something."
And it was a long process in part because things work different for girls than for guys and I had no female role models so I had to figure it out from scratch. He couldn't provide me those solutions of what I SHOULD do. He, himself, didn't know.
All he could do was signal "(EXPLETIVE!) My hair is on FIRE here! You are freaking me out!!!! STOP that!" and I would go "Stop WHAT? What am I doing wrong????" and I had to figure it out for myself how a GIRL navigates this space when no girl had done before what I was doing.
And my metric was "How freaked out is this guy?" And I had to guess what he was freaking out about and find my own solutions for how to have him not bursting a blood vessel because I was opening my mouth. He couldn't explain it. That didn't work. He no doubt had tried at times.
So it was kind of like "How do I walk through the factory dressed like a girl without putting myself and other people in danger?" And I had to figure out which outfits got less freakout reactions and were less likely to get caught in the machinery because they were less frilly or something.
I still needed to "dress like a girl" but somehow find answers that weren't a danger to me and others while walking through a factory full of dangerous machinery with little to no safety features. There were no other girls I could take cues from. Other girls were less accepted there than I was.
Over time, it became less drama and people gradually were more willing to engage with me because it was no longer a case of "Give her a wide berth lest she set you on fire or something!"
And I'm not sure where I stand currently and I'm not sure I can go any further at this point. I feel like I have hit a point where if no one vouches for me, then I'm basically viewed as "All hat, no cattle" so to speak.
But I could be wrong. I no doubt still have a lot to learn and more blind spots to uncover.
Cats raised with only vertical lines but no horizontal will walk around chair legs and bump into the railings. Cats raised with only horizontal lines but no vertical will avoid the railings but bump into the legs. Men and women are socialized differently from birth. There are lots of studies on that and I'm not going to cite anything. If you are a human being living in human society, that should be something you know anyway, even without studies pinpointing specific details.
The mental framework that I have found most useful in trying to sort my problems is that women are socialized to be part of a private sphere and men are socialized to be part of a public sphere. Girls get raised to be wives and moms and boys get raised to have a career.
I haven't found it especially helpful to go "I'm a woman and people are just misogynistic assholes intentionally excluding women!" That may be true and at times certainly is but it mostly gives me no place to go.
I'm not going to magically stop being female. Under some circumstances, you can convince people the things they are doing are rooted in gender bias and it needs to change but it's usually counterproductive to just go around telling people "You are a sexist pig!" (There are exceptions, of course.)
That doesn't tend to open doors.
There are differences between female-only groups and male-only groups in terms of how you gain status. Women start with respecting you and then tear you down to see what is left standing. Men start with treating you as NOTHING and you have to gain respect. You have to earn it.
So for starters, I think when women go into male-dominated spaces (such as many serious professions), women feel mistreated from the get go when it's more like a cultural difference. And I find it helpful to see that cultural difference as about public spaces versus private spaces rather than about gender per se. It makes it a lot more palatable for me.
So I concluded that in male spaces, I need to prove myself and that's not because they are sexist pigs. It's the same standard they apply to the men. It's NOT because I'm a girl.
At some point, I decided that at least in some cases, men reacting negatively to a woman being there is not sexism per se. I came up with this mental model of a woman from a prior era in her long dress with many petticoats going into a factory with lots of dangerous moving parts and little to no safety features and she is not only walking places where her skirts could get caught and get her and other people maimed or killed, she's also running around punching buttons and going "Oh! What does THIS do!!!" and the men are just FREAKING the fuck out because what she is doing is dangerous.
And the only thing the men can really do is go "Get her OUT of here!" because social decorum requires them to galantly protect her from her own stupidity and also NOT educate her. It's not socially acceptable to let her get hurt and it's not socially acceptable to train her. And in their experience, if you TRY to train her, she won't listen and will just call you a sexist pig interfering with her right to do as she pleases.
So the guys do everything they can to just block her from engaging with the equipment and try to get her out the door as fast as they can because it's the least worst solution available to them. But it's not per se that they don't want a woman in there.
So I joined a particular male space and it rapidly turned into drama because I had no idea this was a serious space. To me it was just fun conversation and that was it.
Because like a cat raised with only vertical lines who can't see the horizontal ones, I was raised with girly things and didn't see what was going on in this male space. Even if someone TOLD me, I just didn't get it.
This was further complicated by the fact that a lot of people were giving me positive feedback and NOT signaling "You can't DO that here!!!" But I think delving into that detail is an issue for a different post on a different day.
So the value of my human safety cage was that his role was kind of like letting me know "Oh, god, woman! QUIT putting your long skirts near the cutting machines!!!! Oh, god, woman! Stop running around punching buttons for FUN! Those things put dangerous machinery into motion! This is NOT a game, damn it!"
And he just so happened to be in a position where I would take that feedback seriously as "This is something I need to quit doing" even though I didn't know why and didn't see why it was a problem. And I took him seriously even though it wasn't what I THOUGHT he should be doing for me and I was mad he wasn't doing the things I THOUGHT he should be doing for me.
I had these ideas that he should be vouching for me and making introductions and telling people I'm smart and trustworthy and yadda. And I was wrong.
Those things DO happen in male spaces but I first needed to meet some baseline of not being a giant walking disaster waiting to happen. And I wasn't meeting that standard. I simply wasn't and it kind of didn't matter WHY I wasn't.
We don't live in a Bugs Bunny world where gravity doesn't apply if you never studied the law of gravity. This stuff matters and has to be taken seriously. Period.
So his feedback let me be less of a shit show long enough to be tolerated by the men to some degree and to let me figure out a few things. So they didn't PROMPTLY show me the door and the fact that I was a shit show without meaning to be was accepted because everyone has a learning curve -- even the guys -- and with his feedback I was making enough progress for people to go "Okay. We will allow this. Just give her a WIDE berth lest she set you on fire or something."
And it was a long process in part because things work different for girls than for guys and I had no female role models so I had to figure it out from scratch. He couldn't provide me those solutions of what I SHOULD do. He, himself, didn't know.
All he could do was signal "(EXPLETIVE!) My hair is on FIRE here! You are freaking me out!!!! STOP that!" and I would go "Stop WHAT? What am I doing wrong????" and I had to figure it out for myself how a GIRL navigates this space when no girl had done before what I was doing.
And my metric was "How freaked out is this guy?" And I had to guess what he was freaking out about and find my own solutions for how to have him not bursting a blood vessel because I was opening my mouth. He couldn't explain it. That didn't work. He no doubt had tried at times.
So it was kind of like "How do I walk through the factory dressed like a girl without putting myself and other people in danger?" And I had to figure out which outfits got less freakout reactions and were less likely to get caught in the machinery because they were less frilly or something.
I still needed to "dress like a girl" but somehow find answers that weren't a danger to me and others while walking through a factory full of dangerous machinery with little to no safety features. There were no other girls I could take cues from. Other girls were less accepted there than I was.
Over time, it became less drama and people gradually were more willing to engage with me because it was no longer a case of "Give her a wide berth lest she set you on fire or something!"
And I'm not sure where I stand currently and I'm not sure I can go any further at this point. I feel like I have hit a point where if no one vouches for me, then I'm basically viewed as "All hat, no cattle" so to speak.
But I could be wrong. I no doubt still have a lot to learn and more blind spots to uncover.