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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6206148" data-attributes="member: 4937">I would never advice returning evil for evil.  I would advice responding to challenges to whether you belong to group with presenting your credentials and an attitude of calm assurance (if only feigned because you are hurting inside) and good natured humor that you do belong and your belongingness is so great that it can weather any challenge.  I can't claim to know how it feels to be excluded or marginalized because you are a woman.  I do claim that I can know how it feels to be excluded or marginalized or belittled because I am me, and that I would like to believe that people are not so far different that we can't empathize with each other's common pain.   I believe that ultimately, whatever the proximate cause of the belittling or marginalizing behavior, there is a common root and that the sorts of things that work in one situation are likely to work to some degree in others.When I say, don't focus on the 'sexism', I don't mean don't notice it or to pretend its not an issue.  I mean don't dwell on it like an insolvable problem that is going to forever characterize how you experience the world and all your relationships with other people.  Don't let it become the source of your own low sense of self-worth as if that jerk is the one to decide what value you have.   I say this not because I'm 'male privileged', but because I've seen over dwelling on the problem of sexism become itself something that women let define them and become a source of continual anxiety and fear.  I don't say it with the slightest sense that I'm asking anything easy of someone, and even if I was telling someone to do something harder than anything I've had to do, so what?   It's not like I'm saying that out of a low faith in anyone's capacity or out of any belittlement of the degree of the problem.  I'm saying that because I truly believe it can be done and that you'll be happier for it.  If I tell a person from a broken home whose suffered terribly in ways I can hardly imagine, "Yes, I've had it easier than you.  You are right to wallow in your misfortune.  Don't bother trying to overcome." or "Of course you can't succeed given all you've got to face.", I'm not really being very sympathetic at all.  Regardless of what someone was facing I would tell them, "Don't focus on your misfortune or the size of the obstacles you must face."</blockquote>

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