Microaggressions are hard to deal with.

I’m familiar the them in regards to race, but as a male, I have obviously never endured the ones used on women.

One girl, sitting across from me at the table mentioned how, in her bio class, during a group project, one man in her group after divying up the tasks to the other men in her group, said something to her the effect of “Don’t worry- we’ll get it done and then you can just copy”. There are two different assumptions this guy could have made: 1) this girl wasn’t smart and could therefore not handle doing any of the work involved in the project or 2) as a man, he was somehow responsible for this helpless girl. Obviously, neither are true, and both are insulting. Particularly the second one, because I think we have grown up with this toxic idea that women are to be cared for, that a true gentleman doesn’t let a girl lift a finger. Though its always nice to be courteous, there is fine line between that and falling into the fallacy that women can’t do things on their own. Men aren’t needed. We don’t have to do a girl’s homework for her.

I walked away a little more concious about how my words could convey these sentiments, and hoped to aware of that going forward.