This reminds me of a party I went to last year. I was standing with some friends, chatting, and someone said something that indirectly implied that sexism exists. Some trivial recounting of the basic facts of daily life for most women. Something so mild, so uncontroversial, so mundane that I don’t even remember what it was.
Suddenly, this man standing on the outskirts of our conversational circle piped up with “actually, I think men are more discriminated against than women these days.”
All conversation died.
I turned to look at him and he had this smug, insufferable grin on his face, relishing this moment, expecting us to waste our time and energy refuting this ridiculous thing he had just said.
The Devil’s Advocate was among us.
And, in my mind, I saw the next 15+ minutes playing out. The parade of facts and statistics in a vain attempt to defend ourselves, our gender, and to prove that misogyny is real. The glib, snide denials from some shithead who is getting off on our pain and frustration. The Gish Gallop of bullshit that would take a whole evening to properly dismantle. It was depressing and overwhelming. I hated it. I had to kill it before it began.
So I looked him dead in the eye and I said “OK,“ shrugged, and just walked away.
Nothing I have ever said to another human being has ever been so crushing. As I walked away, I watched the smug grin vanish and confusion and anxiety set in. The rest of the group turned their backs to him and carried on as if he had never spoken – as if he was invisible. He was still staring at me when I walked over to another friend and told her what he had said. I pointed him out for her and made direct eye contact with him while we both laughed.
tl;dr: Don’t feed the troll. Let it perish, cold and hungry, in the wasteland of your indifference. It is weak and you are strong. Live your best life.
In college one of my postdoc friends collected teas. In his office he had an entire floor to ceiling bookshelf of teas from all over the world. Whenever profs/grad students/other postdocs went home for the holidays, they would bring back popular or unique teas from their country. He would share the tea with anyone that asked, like he’d even make the tea for us in his office and we all had brought in our own tea mugs to our office. He’d come around every afternoon asking if anyone wanted to do teatime and okay. So this guy is a 6’4 Romanian man that looks like he could be Hagrid. He became the tea wizard of the physics department and also the cool uncle for all the undergrads
This is also the same guy that went out and brought my roommate and I food when the city flooded and we couldn’t leave our house. This is the guy that hosted the physics department bbq every year.
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