#male postdoc

[mansplained]

Knitting

I am a doctoral student in engineering at a prestigious university. I've been experiencing migraines which make it difficult to stare at computer screens or other bright lights for extended periods of time. For group meeting we have a power point presentation every week. To combat my migraines, I've been knitting during group meeting so that I can listen and participate while not having to stare at the screen the whole time.

One time, before group meeting, the post-doc that I work with asked me how many needles I was knitting with. I showed him that I was knitting in the round on double-pointed needles, which meant that there were five needles total, but I only work with two at a time.

"You should only knit with three. It will be much smoother that way."

Well, thanks. I didn't know that! Never mind that the sock is half-finished, and that I've knit a hundred other projects (which I wear on a regular basis), or that the number of stitches that I currently have would never fit on three needles (and that number is going to increase). I definitely needed you to tell me how to knit my sock.

This is only the most minor of problems that I have with him, sadly.

[mansplained]

Evolutionary biology is all made up

I am a graduate student in engineering, but I also have a BS in biology from a great school.  My male friend is a postdoc in astronomy who has never studied biology in his life.  He excitedly tells me about an evolutionary biology study he read about in a popular science article.  Based on his explanation, the study's conclusion doesn't make sense to me and actually reflects a common misconception about evolution and population genetics.  Thinking my friend (or perhaps the article's author) may have misunderstood the original study, I express my doubts.  My friend (again, a physicist with no background in biology!) argues persistently that he must be correct.  Most frustratingly, he does so by repeating his interpretation over and over as if I didn't understand it.  I continue to explain my position. 

My friend dismisses the argument by saying, "Well, it's evolutionary biology!  It's not like it's proven-they just make stuff up!"

Sure, dude.  It was a really cool, exciting study until I questioned it.  THEN it became unproven crap.

[mansplained]

Thanks for clarifying this

I'm a Ph.D student working on neurological disorders. I had my first experience of teaching and I did well. The class subject was about specific disorders and how to plan an intervention. The class I was teaching was exactly my thesis and my work experience. The other teacher is a post-doc in my lab who wrote his thesis on other disorders, but he never had to actually plan an intervention with anyone - he didn't even do his undergrads/master in that field, so he has no practical knowledge of how to work as a profesional, only theoretical, and none whatsoever about what I was teaching.

After class, he starts asking if I made X point very clear, and really noted the difference between Y and Z. I tell him that this point is one of the most repeated in the class, as half of the lecture was about these biological processes. He kept on talking about his point, and how he should have been the one teaching the class so the students wouldn't be confused. When I pointed out that the purpose of the class was to guide future professionals in an intervention with a specific populations and that practical knowledge is as much important as theoretical, he just dismissed me and repeated his point.

Of course, I don't know what I'm talking about. I haven't spent the last 3 years researching that topic and working part-time in that exact field.

[mansplained]

Conference chair or conference maid?

I have spent several years of my academic career as a lecturer and senior researcher at a young but well regarded European university. During my tenure there, I chaired quite a few international conferences and events and very often other colleagues in the process of organising similar events asked me for advice and help. Once, I received a phone call from a male postdoctoral researcher in another department asking me for advice on conference chairing on the recommendation of a mutual colleague. I asked him what kind of event he was working on and gave him suggestions regarding services and other local facilities he could have used to improve the process. As the conversation progressed, it became clear that he didn't want advice - he wanted me to prepare him spreadsheets, a web template and a presentation for his conference.

At that point, I told him that this was not my role, that I was an academic just like him (actually, senior to him - although I didn't mention it) and that all I could provide was advice. Undeterred he started insisting that I do the work for him, because he needed someone to help him and it sounded like I had helped other organisers before. I told him that I had advised other organisers, but that I did actual work for certain events only because I was the academic chair of those events; I did not do so as a conference assistant. At that point he hung up the phone in my face, without even apologizing or saying goodbye.

[mansplained]

What's more valuable in the lab: experience or a man?

Before starting physics graduate school I had spent 2 1/2 years at an Aerospace company where my specialty/primary job was to find, document and diagnose parts that had failed to meet the 14 year life-time stress tests. (Naively, I thought academia would be better, more fair, less discriminatory than industry. It's the same. Except I get paid much less and there are absolutely no consequences for the perpetrators.)

Here is one recent, more minor, offense: 

This past summer, nearly 4 years into my PhD and already tired of the blatant sexism in the field of academic physics. We had a semi-catastrophic electronics failure on the experiment I'm working on. The primary Electronics expert was across the atlantic and someone needed to go into the lab to diagnose the failures. Before going I get emails from my 2 male advisors telling me that I should take the male post-doc ("I TA'ed a physics electronics class one semester"). The male post doc invites new male summer-grad student. New grad student says he has tons of experience soldering and the like. 

The symptom of the failure was a blown fuse. I located the blown fuse on our ~2ftx2ft circuit board which contained >500 parts ranging in size from 2"x3" to smaller than 1/8th of your pinky nail. 

I get New Male Grad Student set up to solder a fuse and he told me "I like to just melt the solder and let it drip down onto the fuse and Printed Circuit Board"... Great, yes, do this. Considering that solder tends to bead and won't bond to a cold surface, that is exactly correct. 

So, later, I put the ohm-meter across the fuse to test it and it reads MAX Resistance. 

Post-Doc:"So it's working!" 

Me: "No, the fuse is blown. It's not working."

So, glad I took them into the lab to help out.