It happened to me hundreds of time before but it still pisses me off as much as the first time.

I’ve been interested in feminist ideas and started seriously reading about them when I was about 15. I later did feminist studies at university and am continuing to do so as a grad student. So I can say that my expertise on gender issues is starting to be quite impressive by now. But very often, when I meet some random guy for the first time and tell them what I do, they inevitably start THE conversation about how biological that whole thing is, as if they know better and I am just irrationally blinded by my convictions.

It happened to me again this week. That guy started telling me about how women want to settle down in their early 30s because of biology and human evolution telling their bodies to do so. I stopped him and told him this conversation would probably end badly (as I often do when it happens). But, of course, he insisted on going on about it. And, of course, no matter what argument I would say, based on more than 10 years of learning, collecting and creating new knowledge about these issues, it would just be treated as silly and irrational. I am told that the racist biological assumptions that were relying on evolutionary crap that were mainstream knowledge a few decades ago were not true, but the ones we still have about women are solid objective truths.

He finally gave up and changed subject because he had nothing left to say but even after all those years, it strikes me that anybody who heard about an article on biology thinks he is an expert on gender differences and can lecture me about it… The guy later blamed me for not being patient enough with him. As if it was my job to stay calm and teach them about what they don’t want to hear…