TL;DR - it's spreading RAPIDLY to the leadership of STEM, both academic and industrial; major universities and large manufacturing and tech companies

Relatively new to this subreddit, but /u/Jack-Browser (did I do that right?) suggested that I post here when I get a chance. I will try to leave out most details that could lead someone to figure out who I am, and if you know me, I would ask you to kindly shut it, as I am certain you know that I would do for you.

Awhile back, I worked for the NSF to help increase the numbers of and encourage under represented minorities (URMs) in the STEM fields, specifically engineering. This is something I had done for years prior to this, but in less "official" ways. For years, I have worked with many different folks in a variety of settings to advance several prongs to improve diversity, retention, and self-efficacy of URM STEM students (just to prove I know the vernacular there). To me, there aren't enough engineers in the world, and we need to be training more, and training them better. I have collected data on self-efficacy and retention of STEM students and presented this data and our conclusions at a national forum (although I am sure I could have presented it more had I cared to). What I would like to discuss here is my experience with this field of work.

I have continually seen the bullshit identity politics being played right from the start, and while I knew that was likely to exist, the longer I have worked in the field and made my way higher in the field, the more I have seen it move from a fringe couple of advisers or directors to a norm that cannot be questioned. This has been incredibly disheartening to me. Some rage bait for those so inclined, I have experienced: * being told I was unlikely to get a position because of my sex (male) and skin color (white), with the stated rationale "people are more easily able to find role models in others that look like them" * accusations of sexism (what's new, right?) * reprimanding for expressing my views, which were contrary to the groupthink at diversity center (the irony was not lost on me) * seeing struggling STEM students removed from these centers for "making others uncomfortable" * being told, I'm "one of the good ones" in the STEM field that were ending discrimination, under the assumption that most were not * being held to higher standards than my female colleagues

the list could go on, but suffice it to say, STEM can be a "chilly environment" for anyone. I persevere, however, because there are not enough engineers in the world, and as Rudyard wrote in If : "Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,/And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools" there will always be denizens in engineering (and any field) who are absolute snakes and know only to tear down everything around them, and it is our duty to keep building in spite of them.

So here are some fun anecdotes from my experience at a national forum to proactively network for women in engineering, which was attended by hundreds of academic and industry leaders to help improve the field of engineering. This is where I learned about "micro aggressions", and I have talked with some top-notch ethics philosophers about this idea, and I am still of an understanding that this is hokum and intellectual bilge water. This forum was led by a self-described "radical feminist". Seriously. Have a look at that sentence again. A fucking social RADICAL is leading a forum on the direction that upcoming policies should take, not a moderate, not a well some might say I'm radical. No, a PhD holder from a well-known, prestigious academic institution in California described herself as a radical feminist and came to preach to this forum of people who are only trying to help. Alarm bells were ringing, at least for me.

The keynote speaker talked about how a multitude of diverse views are more effective at solving highly complex problems (but how much diversity is needed? and how complex must these "highly complex" problems need to be? These topics were not covered in depth, my guess is that the types of scientists and engineers that go to these talks don't really care to probe the concepts or are smart enough to know that questioning it brings trouble).

When discussing microaggressions, I found that any mention that there are prestigious men in the field will make women think they cannot succeed, that having a display of prominent faculty and alumni must forsake any sense of temporal or alphabetical order and must place women at the forefront, lest we commit another microaggression....and fucking so on. Seriously, it was about an hour on this. We learned that even good-hearted leaders that want to improve diversity and see greater numbers of URMs in STEM commit microaggressions daily that undermine their cause. These zealots are fucking mental, and they are going for the leadership to enact new policies to protect fee-fees at all costs. I'm fairly confident I could have pushed them to say that my being a man could be construed as a microaggression (I was able to pin them on saying "as much as it matters what is said, it matters who says it" and stopped digging to keep myself from getting heated).

They see it in all fields, and employ fuck all critical thinking. I was told that women are less likely to go into STEM because they are underrepresented in national sports media coverage. I know, sounds like complete bullshit, so I pressed back on this, making economic, viewer demand, marketing, and other arguments, until I hit the raw physical ability argument: that men are stronger and faster, and women cannot compete at the same level as men. Then I was outright "sushed", by adult scientists. They had no argument, no contradiction, just flatly told me to shut the fuck up. It really can be a chilly environment for some people.

The good news, hashtag not all scientists, some see that this is bullshit, but there seem to be fewer as time goes on.

AMA and all that jazz (^{andallthatjazz} ) I'll get to responses just as soon as I'm able.