Let me tell you a story dedicated to two douchebags in an unidentified astronomy course.

~~A long time ago~~ Three days ago in a ~~galaxy far away~~ classroom somewhere on campus, a graduate student friend of mine (and someone I advise on projects, who is doing well for herself in her research) was substitute lecturing for a certain astronomy course unnamed to protect the innocent. After the lecture, two douchebags came up to her, and they had the following exchange. I am paraphrasing:

Douchebag 1: “So, we have a question. How old do you think the Universe is?”


Grad student guest lecturer: “[caught off guard since the lecture wasn’t about cosmology at all] well it’s in the teens of billions of years.” (the precise answer, which she knew, is 13.7 billion years)


Douchebag 2: “Ah okay, well, we were thinking that you would say 13 trillion years. It was kind of a weird bet.”


Grad student guest lecturer: *blankly stares at the two undergrads who she clearly bests in astronomy knowledge.*


Douchebag 1/2: exeunt, dickishly

Now, let me tell you why this pissed me off. I hear stories like this a lot. They’re from women in the sciences whose knowledge is questioned for no apparent reason other than the fact that they’re women. It happens *all* *the* *time*. It happens in real life interactions like this, it happens in overly confrontational emails about research, it’s reflected in teaching evaluations, etc., etc., etc. The fact that these dickheads would think that someone *who has a bachelor’s degree in the field they are studying at the sophomore level* would be orders of magnitude off on a simple fact that fucking everyone in the field knows is mind-boggling. I find it hard to believe that, if I were the one guest lecturing, they would come to me, a ~205 lb guy with a huge-ass beard and a scowl, and ask the same question in the same shitty way.

In conclusion, if you are guy and are tempted to go up to your lady TAs or lecturers or professors and say shit like that, go ahead and really ponder if you would say it to a man, and then go ahead and fucking cram it regardless.