On the other hand, I’m wondering, when I talk to other women who are interested in physical science, how do I communicate to them that life isn’t all fun, all the time, without causing my advice to trigger a Stereotype Threat and have them lose interest/confidence? It seems like there’s a fine line to walk there, especially if you don’t know of a lot of support resources. I don’t want “Life in science is hard sometimes,” to come off like, “Science is hard.”–>”Well, I’ll never be good at it, so I guess I’ll just do something else.”

The betrayal is even worse when it’s teenagers and young women brought in to be thrown into the deep end of the pool. So often I see well-intentioned guys conclude that the solution to “not enough women in the field” is “go invite in some 13 year old girls”. Hello… might some things be wrong with that picture? And IMHO while they have good intentions they look to teaching younger women and girls because they can’t cope with a power dynamic that is anything other than them firmly ensconced in a position of maximum personal power and authority. They could focus on working with the adult women already in their field. Also, men who don’t believe there is actual sexism are not equipped to prepare young women how to react to harassment and sexist bullshit. Instead, as soon as women grow up and complain these same men are ready to throw them under the bus and start anew with fresh “material”. That trend worries me a lot.

The throwing-mud-at-the-wall idea is the kind of thing you get when you pay too much attention to game theory and too little attention to people.