I hear you. I’ve spent the majority of my career as a psychologist working with/studying sexual offenders. I’ve come to understand the grooming process well from an academic standpoint, but I’m quite sad that women have to understand it so clearly and viscerally just to survive their daily lives.
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unless we start talking about algorithmic bias, the internet is going to become an unbearable place to be a woman.
Whoa, that ship sailed a long time ago. We’ve been trying to grab the wheel and change course ever since! 
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I hear you.
Also, yarrrrrr, and hoist the intersectionally appropriate Jolly-Roger-equivalent; I appreciate your contributions to helping us change course.
It’s been the work of my lifetime as a former coder, now married to a cis male coder and now a parent to a cis male coder, to raise the consciousnesses of my nearest and dearest about this issue. They get it.
Of course, so many of these problems were well before GamerGate etc.
I mean, JFC, here’s a cis womxn in the 20th century who changed her name to a man’s just to do business in tech:
On the flipside, airing out and correcting the past has been a breath of much-needed fresh air:
… progress… of a sort… “progress not perfection.”
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That’s the thing, right? Women used to dominate coding, because it wasn’t a high profile job. Once it got sexy, the men swooped in and claimed it was always there domain. Same with the blues or rock-n-roll, genres that were dominated by women - the Blues queens and with rock being STARTED by a woman (Sister Rosetta Tharpe)!
But you’re 100% correct about the history needing to be told correctly… this is why we are constantly revising the past, because assholes are always busy covering that shit up to make themselves look better.
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yes
and
waaaaaay before Nirvana et al.
I have gotten to the point where I do inwardly flinch at talking about history (the word itself has issues for me) and have been working on myself to use the phrase “the past” or “our earlier timeline” and even clumsier circumlocutions.
Aye carumba.
Also: stealing those gifs!
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I always think of this re: cooking, too.
At home, in the lunchroom, etc, it’s always “women’s work” but as soon as Michelin stars are involved or the whole celebrity chef thing came around, swoop!
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Also nursing. The frustrating thing I hear from women in all fields like these is how the salaries change when they become male-dominated. 
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Totally, re: wages. Also, I can’t speak about this in nursing, but the difference in expected duties is noticeable. Everyplace I worked where the cooking was female dominated (nursing homes, cafeterias) the women cooked and also cleaned up the kitchen. When it become male dominated and they’re “chefs” instead of cooks, all of a sudden they have separate staff to do the clean up and often even the prep. Not all men, by any means, but…fucking divas.
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Same in IT, where at the start of my career many women were “encouraged” to go into technical writing/documentation, take support calls, or perform data entry. What I’ve learned about nursing came from people who were changing careers, experiences as a caregiver, or meeting someone with an unfamiliar title during routine check-ups. Part of the marketing for medical tourism was that every nurse in the target country’s medical facility would be an RN, which is less common in the US.
All this complicates the fight for pay equity, too. Nothing derails faster than claiming (or ensuring) the job being performed is different in some way, because a woman is doing it.
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Also film editing. Probably a ton of similar examples out there.
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And the extra-stupid thing about turning cooking into a gender role at all is: it’s a freaking survival skill. Knowing at least some basic cooking will serve you in good stead and can save you a hell of a lot of money.
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Totally. And in the US, at least, it’s way healthier. I had a guy friend in college who lived on fast food. One time he got sick and I went over to make him soup, and he didn’t even know if he had a pot! (He did, likely left behind by a roommate). He was already overweight and likely pre-diabetic in his early twenties. 
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Probably something Kurt would have been well aware of, too.
Wow. I’m sorry. I wish it did not, as it’s critical for us to understand it and engage with it… not just because I’d like gainful employment, either.
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Was going to comment on the act that the root of history is a femine word in both greek and latin, but those guys on that page did it better than I ever could.
BTW Tina Bell is stunning, great voice, super stylish, and beautiful, quite ashamed I just learned about her today.
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Some time ago I was looking at pre-1900s books and found a guide to cooking specifically targeting women. The author explained that although it was usually thought of as the province of men, there was no good reason for that, and with just a little practice women could prove that they did too belong in the kitchen.
I really wish I remembered the title, because that feels like it tells a lot of the story right on its own.
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I knew about women singing Blues, but Rosetta Tharpe’s role in the development rock & roll was news to me. Educational! 
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That’s because of how people write about the history of rock… it’s generally white washed, but even more the Black women who contributed to the genre have been almost completely written out.
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I am hearing you.
So totally hearing you.*
*
That specific issue re standard-issue corporate work environment is the one big reason I ended up taking a job in a woman-owned, woman-staffed, woman-run environmental engineering firm. That was over 25 years ago and we’re still going strong, and at this point we are turning away work because we have more than we can handle. In fact, the principal is nearing retirement age and my own billable time is notably shrinking as the boss is trimming back on her workload. [sigh]
Finding a way or making one has been our “routing around the damage” part of dealing with patriarchal cultures, including IT work.
Does anyone here happen to know of any woman-owned, woman-staffed, woman-run IT businesses, esp. personally? No success story too small! Please post!
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Not sure this is the story you were referring to, but…
… In 1895, French journalist Marthe Distel had the idea of training women in culinary arts, for use in the running of their households. So she started a publication called ‘The Cordon Bleu Cook’ (‘La Cuisinière Cordon Bleu’), which revolutionized the world of culinary arts, until then the preserve of men.
…
In an article on Le Cordon Bleu Paris, the London Daily Mail newspaper at the time was amazed to observe that ‘it is not unusual for as many as eight different nationalities to be represented in the classes’. Julia Child, who would go on to achieve great fame, was one of these foreign students, attending classes at the Paris school in 1948. …
ETA: … just found this and I love it, I love the tone, I love how Child just shines her light throughout this story:
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