This. Completely agree. Once I had a conversation with a female designer who organizes "Design hackathons" who said that she "gets disrespected on a regular ba

This. Completely agree. Once I had a conversation with a female designer who organizes "Design hackathons" who said that she "gets disrespected on a regular basis" during meetup with "male participants." I actually agree with her on that point and can empathize with her. However later on, she went on in a different context of conversation, to discount someone in her coding school program and justified how he is fast learner by his background: "he is just one of those computer nerds" and derided some job opportunities the group was discussing as some "stupid code monkey job". IMHO, American society's left coast isn't progressive nor liberal but wants to feel progressive. I attended a extremely liberal and elite school in New England, and everyone on campus said the right things and some even did the right superficial things - but when it came to most sensitive things, dating/career/loyalty, everyone instinctively reverted back to the most base human tribal instinct. In my early twenties, I used to feel upset and somewhat betrayed by my sullied idealism. But I got over it and realized that I am not special snowflake, and whatever difficulties, prejudices against me is nothing in context to other people's in history, better time could be used for me to learn and better myself (than sulking and railing with the "misery loves company" "social justice warrior"/"MRA"crowd on Facebook); and accumulate skills every day. The same people who think a person is "just a 120lb nerd" or a "dumb jock" will be the same crowd that will "like" Facebook post about a "Science is Cool" post about a paper that the said nerd publishes later on, and likewise for the "jock"'s accomplishment dumbed down for the social media format. Hence people's need to "feel good," and need to not want to "feel bad" during the years it takes to be actually "good."