Toxic STEM

I’m at a work event at a National Lab for the annual meeting of the big scientific collaboration that funds my advisor’s grant that pays my research, i.e. pays my bills. I arrived Sunday evening, the meeting started yesterday morning, very early, and finished late yesterday evening, and again another long, tour-de-force day today. 

I’ve been feeling horribly uncomfortable the whole time. 

For many reasons, both personal and professional, I’m new to this meeting and hardly know anyone. Moreover, I’m one of the few people wearing a face-mask and I still feeling uncomfortable/unsafe in closed spaces with lots of persons so I often sneak outside during the breaks and other times meant to “socialize” around food (& thus unmasked). But it’s not just the fear of getting sick and the unsafe feeling around crowds that leads me to sneak out and seek solitude as often as possible. It’s also, and mostly, deeper and more complicated feelings, like the returning impostor syndrome, a feeling of not belonging here, of being “too different” and/or out of place. The fact that one academic acquaintance recognized me from a couple other interactions/events, remembered me and said “Yes, you asked tons of good questions”; or the fact that my poster, the poster presenting my research work done over the past year with my advisor and our student, almost won the best-poster award last night (the judges told me) — these facts don’t sink in. These facts that somehow prove that I am good at my job, that I am smart, that I do know science and am also able to communicate/present it well — all these positive facts don’t register for me, I don’t believe them, they roll off me as if they had never happened or had never been said to me. What sticks with me is all the things I don’t know, all the people I don’t know and all the barriers I feel in going up to them to start a conversation. What sticks with me is that feeling — that assumption which might even be wrong — of being the only or one of the very few queer person(s) here, of being the only non-cis person, the only person struggling to find a restroom where I can feel comfortable, the only person who feels alienated or othered. What sticks with me is the feeling of not being wholly American — or not being seen as such — but also of not being wholly European — there are so many Italians at this meeting and yet they don’t recognize that in me anymore, in half of my name, and I cannot speak to them in Italian because I wouldn’t know what gender to use for myself (Italian, as many other Indo-european languages, has a much more “gender-heavy” grammar than English). What sticks with me is how old I am to still be a postdoc or to be a postdoc again, over a decade after the failure of my first postdoc. What sticks with me is that the wonderful results I presented in my nearly-award-winning poster still remain unpublished — and are still unpublished because I cannot harness enough respect from our student running the simulations to prioritize this work and my advisor somehow blames me for the delay while not really putting pressure on the student. Where did I go wrong? How can I be unable to have enough authority both with our student and with my advisor? 

And then there’s all this toxic (male?) STEM attitude, this toxic dick-measuring between the “big guys” (including some of the women who’ve made it to the “top”). It’s awful. 

At the lunch break yesterday I was inadvertently rude to one of the (female) organizers. I had been struggling all morning with this sense of not belonging, of otherness & alienation, of impostor syndrome, of isolation. From the practical viewpoint, I had had my usual lack of pronouns on badges and bathroom struggle of not having an all-gender restroom to use. Then, at lunch I got to the food bar when all the vegan food was gone and there was only meat and salad (the latter with cheese) left. That was the last drop. I went to this organizer and asked, exasperated, if there was no vegan options. She said more food, including rice&beans, was on its way. I also vented with her about the restrooms. I truly didn’t mean to be rude, I was just exasperated. But somehow word got around to my advisor that I had been rude to her so he came and talked to me and I then went to apologize to her. This caused a deluge of difficult emotions for me. I felt awful for having been rude at her — at anyone. But I also felt attacked/threatened and misjudged for having been considered rude. And I felt humiliated for having been told off (& talked about negatively at the meeting). I apologized sincerely to the organizer and also tried to explain to her where my frustration was coming from; but while she seemed to accept my apology, she seemed to not be open to hearing my “human side” of things. So I dropped it and apologized one last time, thanking her for hearing me out. While I feel awful for venting with her and coming across as rude in the first place, which was simply wrong on my side, I also believe it would be important to understand where my frustration was coming from — not because it was mine, per se, but because I think it’s an example of how people who are othered/marginalized have a harder time to navigate the world and thus might “flare up” more easily (or shut down and hide to try and disappear). Her brushing off the reasons of my feeling uncomfortable felt like gaslighting. And while I know I shouldn’t have vented to her and I truly did not mean to be rude and I meant my apologies sincerely, I find it unfair that my venting for not having a restroom to use is not OK while a famous male or “macho-acting” scientist can have his know-it-all, dick-measuring, condescending attitude towards everyone around him without anyone criticizing him or asking him to apologize. On the contrary, everyone is looking up to him, considering him a “big shot” and trying to get within his graces. And by the way, didn’t anybody notice all these “big shots” going overtime with their talks and that the few women or non-macho-acting-persons presenting were also the few people meekly staying within the (short) time allotted them for their presentations? What the fuck?!