A personal situation (you don't have to read this, this gets a bit off-topic and I thought about starting a new thread but... don't want to seem feminist by starting so many sexism-related threads):
I'm in computer sciences at college, and my classes are usually about 30:4 or so male:female. I'm usually one of the best in the class, and I feel like the teacher I keep getting, who happens to be female, latches on to that. I don't know whether it's just in my mind or not, but I feel like she pays special attention to me because I'm female. I can't get rid of the suspicion that most of the males in the class judge me to be some angry man-hating feminist, and I fear that I'm getting a better mark in the class than I would be getting if I were male. I got a scholarship last semester, and am paranoid (or do I have reason to be suspicious?) that there were others more deserving and part of the reason I got it was because I'm female. I don't doubt I'm good at it, I just think there are probably others who are equally good or a bit better. I don't want special attention paid to me because I'm female, and want to have actually earned whatever I achieve.
I suppose I've gone off-track from the original topic. I guess I want to know whether I'm being paranoid or have reason to think people are judging me negatively. How would you judge a female in the class? Where I live, there are a lot of Asian people, and that's another thing. I don't think I've seen another Caucasian female in one of my CS classes, and about half of the males are Asian too, so that's another attention-drawer. I used to raise my hand a lot in class, so it was obvious I knew what I was talking about, but have stopped now.
I suppose this situation relates to the original post in this way: As far as I'm concerned, I'm going into computer programming because I'm good at it and enjoy it. My reasons have nothing to do with my gender. But I feel like even being there makes other people assume that I'm some crazy feminist.
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