A COLLECTION OF DISTRACTIONS

The point of all this is that when women do things, there’s a certain sort of person who wants to put them down and silence them. Not because what they’re doing is bad or wrong, but because they’re daring to do it at all. Sometimes it’s because they’re discussing sexism directly and working towards better awareness of how it pervades the culture. Other times it’s because they’re making things in fields men feel entitled to be the arbiters of, and their sheer presence neatly undermines a lot of common sexist stereotypes people don’t appreciate being made to re-think. Bonus if they have the audacity to be accomplished and good at it, too. Whoops. That’s a big old no-no, apparently.