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The original was posted on /r/twoxchromosomes by /u/throwaway872_ on 2023-09-13 11:58:48.

Posts on this sub are usually kinda sad so I decided I’d write about my experiences. For context I’m a 27 year old woman and I’ve been studying in a technical field for a year now.

I’d say usually I’m around 95% men and 5% women, sometimes I’m also the only woman in some classes. I’m kinda extroverted and friendly and talk to everybody and it definitely has happened that guys mistook this as me flirting with them but I’ve only had one negative experience with a man in this year but I’ll get to that later.

The experience so far has been nothing but positive. Nobody has ever discriminated me or inappropriately hit on me whatsoever. I know a lot of people by now and all of them have (sorry if that sounds dumb) fully accepted me as “one of them”. Of course the “locker talk” happens sometimes and I speak up when I really think something that was said is not okay but it’s rarely the case. My friends there are very open to talk about gender-related topics and also ask me about my opinion when we talk about these kind of things (for example supporting women in technical fields, how you appropriately ask for a girls number, when it is okay to hit on a woman etc.). They value my opinion and they take me very seriously. 4 guys tried to go on dates with me and when I declined they were super polite about it and backed down and we’re still friends. Nobody has ever made me feel uncomfortable that way. A few weeks ago we had some events with students where I was helping out (including working at a bar so most of them were at least tipsy). And yes, I’ve definitely gotten attention but everybody was super nice and no boundaries were crossed at all. I felt really comfortable being myself. There were probably around 100 men and at most 10 women.

There was this one friend though in my first year who was borderline toxic and frequently made women uncomfortable and he also said things that sounded really bad (for example he once gave advice to somebody who had a date that if you give a woman enough alcohol she will let him fuck her). One day I decided to sit down with him and I told him that I’m not okay with how he talks about women and carefully explained to him why the way he acts is not okay and that I want to stay friends with him but that’s just not acceptable for me. He literally told me that I can have my opinion but “he won’t change for a woman”. We’re not friends anymore.

However, the interesting thing is that I’ve had multiple guys come up to me (without knowing what happened) that told me that he makes them feel uncomfortable and that they don’t think the way he talks about women is okay but that they don’t know how to speak up. They talked to me about specific events with him where he was acting up and elaborated why they have a problem with it. I told them that I think it’s really bad when in these cases the guys that are with him don’t say anything because it just encourages him to keep acting like that. They were SO reflective it was so nice to see that. The guy barely has any friends left right now but he still doesn’t think anything is wrong with his views.

It makes me really sad that a lot of women still have so many bad experiences in male dominated fields and I absolutely understand how exhausting it is but from my perspective I have the feeling that at least where I live there is a massive change going on and I’m super happy to be part of it.