I can hear from here all the women nodding from shared experience and a remarkable plethora of men claiming they’ve ‘definitely never done exactly that except for that one time when there was this girl, and she was really dumb right so I had to tell her’ … and we’re off to the races.

What pisses me off to no end is so many men think they should be able to question my personal experience or test my intelligence. My male colleagues just roll up and go, “I’m Dr. Such-and-Such,” but I do it and they want to see my diploma. And of course I’ve passed their dumb “intelligence tests” but rather than apologising for demanding I prove myself they usually go, “oh, okay. Well I guess you are actually smart.”

Theoretically, I understand why guys do this. It’s status threat. I’m scary because I challenge male hegemony. But practically it’s just insanely annoying. I’ve got stuff to do. You’ve got stuff to do. Having to waste our time explaining to random internet men that — yes actually — we are allowed to talk and exist and it’s even codified in places is just so irritating.

I’ve actually just straight up started calling them idiots to their faces. Probably not going to score me any points in my career, but it does save time.