Jinx, @DukeTrout
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As a leading edge Gen X male who grew up with âwhiteâ on his birth certificate, I agree. When you grow up in that culture youâre taught that youâre the rational one. That itâs only natural that you should be a leader, and so you forget to second guess your thoughts.
Itâs not just Old White Men that do this, mind, we humans as a rule make our decisions earlier than we realize, and those decisions bias our âlogicâ and âreasonâ. Itâs just that Older White Men arenât used to being called out on it, and donât engage in internal devilâs advocate as much to avoid ridicule.
For the record, I donât think Biden should step down, though I entertain thoughts of him stepping down in early 2027 to let President Harris enjoy the incumbent bonus for reelection and governing for 10 full years, the max allowed by the constitution.
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I agree here:
As a leading edge Gen X male who grew up with âwhiteâ on his birth certificate, I agree. When you grow up in that culture youâre taught that youâre the rational one. That itâs only natural that you should be a leader, and so you forget to second guess your thoughts.
However, this here?
Itâs not just Old White Men that do this, mind, we humans as a rule make our decisions earlier than we realize, and those decisions bias our âlogicâ and âreasonâ.
Thatâs⌠something else. Youâre suddenly overlooking whatâs significant about what men versus women are usually trained to do.
No matter when a decision gets made, men tend to think more often than women do that the decisions they make on the basis of emotions are instead made on the basis of logic.
As a result, Iâm sure, men are indeed much less likely than women to second guess their thoughts.
As for women, they often go too far in second guessing their thoughts, and in not even verbalizing them, since the patriarchyâs constant messaging is that theyâre too emotional, that men are smarter and more logical, and more.
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And just like all things rooted in misogyny, itâs total baloneyshit. In too many of my workplaces, the chatty people have been men. The people most likely to spread false rumors have been men. The people most likely to have emotional outbursts in meetings, even with clients present have been men. At work, Iâm 7 of 9, not Ensign Paris because I am not a man. 
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Thereâs also just the fact that one of the things that can make men very emotional and unable to stop themselves from saying something they probably shouldnât is the simple act of a woman saying something at all. Particularly if this is an opinion or advice on how to do something or some kind of performance where men are expected to be quiet and listen.
It is a whole other world when your voice being heard AT ALL FOR ANY REASON is itself contentious. Men having to listen to women is a really uncomfortable space for some of them that feels like they are being âemasculated.â
And it still very much is contentious. I doubt you will find many women who are legitimately trying for a ban on male public speech or who want to legislate male clothing under penalty of death, or who openly argue for exceptions to laws against rape or incest to be made to protect the rapist if the victim is male. But you will always find some support for these things even among US born white men even if they are put nicely with appeals to purity and chivalrous protection of the vulnerable and you can find members of Congress right now who espouse such ideas about women.
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So highly intelligent women have two layers of impostor syndrome: one societal and one self-imposed.
Ouch.
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Hmm?
I think all of that sexist imposter syndrome is societally imposedâŚ
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Highly intelligent people tend to have imposter syndrome regardless of sex or gender, though. It might also be societal, then, but itâs another layer, maybe?
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More like I didnât trust myself to say what you just did, and better than I could have. I was hoping for your insight, as I am all too aware of my failings as an observer. Thank you for saying what I was thinking but couldnât put into text.
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Well, canât argue with the sexist part, but I certainly agree with @DukeTrout that a lot of pretty intelligent people ( 
) who absolutely do not have the societal imposter syndrome imposed from without have a lot of internal imposter syndrome shrieking at us all the time. I can only imagine (being a man-of-all-privileges) what it is like to have the added burden of society agreeing with the inner voice and saying that you are not competent to be voicing that opinion or doing that thing. It has got to be exhausting to have to overcome shit that guys like me never even have to think about.
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WellâŚI donât have to imagine. As a trans woman who transitioned in my 30s, I have experienced imposter syndrome that was entirely my own doing, and imposter syndrome that has been created and/or exacerbated by society, and I gotta sayâŚthey are not the same thing at all. Self doubt is a normal human emotion. But when the rest of the world, both by word and by action, treats you as inherently competent, that self doubt doesnât really do much. At least for me it didnât. After I transitioned, though, the world, sometimes by word but especially by action, started treating me as if I werenât competent and needed to prove myself. Having to do that constantly wears away at your self esteem, especially if you arenât prepared to recognize it and deal with it, which I wasnât.
I have a real example. I was a mechanical design engineer for HVAC manufacturers for 15 years. I have a BS and an MS in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University. When I first interviewed for jobs, my qualifications were never questioned. After I got some experience, and some promotions, they really werenât questioned. After Iâd been at my first job for about 4 years, I started to interview occasionally with other companies, when I heard about an opportunity. The interviews always felt more like me interviewing them. No one ever doubted or questioned my qualifications. At all. They took the information on my resume at face value and acted like, âWow. We need this guy. Heâll be great.â The interview would be more about us figuring out if we were a good fit culturally and as far as my career goals went. ThenâŚI transitioned. I quit my job and moved to a new town, and after a few months, I started trying to find a new job. I got an interview with an HVAC manufacturer in Kansas City. The job was for a lab manager/design engineer, the same job I had been doing at my last company for 10 years. I went into that interview, this time presenting as a woman, fully expecting the interview to be like all my others. I was clearly qualified for this job, and, frankly, there was no way they were going to find anyone better than me. And the engineering manager who interviewed me ⌠grilled me on basic engineering principles. Asking me questions about how certain things would affect pressure measurementsâŚand I fucking blanked and answered a couple of questions wrong because I was not expecting that and wasnât prepared for that kind of interview. I didnât get the job, and I felt stupid. I started to question my own competence. It happened that fast. One bad interview, and bam. Huge hit to my self esteem. It was about a year before it really hit me what had happened, and it was an epiphany. I was like, âOooohhhhhhh, this is what women have been talking about forever! Oh shit.â
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I was hoping for your insight, as I am all too aware of my failings as an observer. Thank you for saying what I was thinking but couldnât put into text.
Youâre welcome! Thank you in return for trying to parse out some oppressive forces that masculine dominance tends to impose on women.
I think men do tend to have trouble seeing such forces unless they try, and unless they listen to others who try to point them out.
This discussion is making me think! For one thing, itâs interesting that two other thoughtful men here have brought up the idea of highly intelligent people who suffer from the imposter syndrome. Im trying to figure out why intelligence is relevant here.
For one thing, might bringing that up have been a way of subconsciously inserting men into a budding discussion of forms of imposter syndrome that are inflicted upon and endured by women? (That could also just make sense since this is, after all, a thread about masculinity.) I mean, who gets presumed more often to be highly intelligent, and is thus more likely to think of themselves as that? (men, of course) I find it difficult to imagine high intelligence being brought up in this context by a woman.
Also interesting to me is why it was brought up at all. Not that it shouldnât have been, but âimposter syndromeâ is usually (always?) discussed within high-income, high-education, and âprofessionalâ contexts. Itâs tough to imagine the term being used to describe someone whoâs, say, washing dishes at a restaurant. And yet, couldnât someone doing that kind of work be âhighly intelligentâ? Is âhighly intelligentâ in this context class-based code being used for certain âprofessionalsâ?
More to the point, or topic at hand, if highly intelligent people feel imposter syndrome, thatâs supposedly internally imposed. Is it, though?
I can think of a lot of reasons why a highly intelligent man or woman might feel it, but reasons that are also imposed socially. Examples include being a younger sibling who was lorded over by an older one, or having a constantly disapproving parent, or being conventionally unattracive and thus teased a lot. Those are also socially imposed. And I donât see how being highly intelligent (or not) is relevant to feeling imposter syndrome as a result of them.
@danimagoo, I appreciate your story and anecdote, so true, ugh. Being doubted because youâre a woman really can trip you up. And eventually, âImposter syndromeâ grows, a sense of doubt that you belong, because maybe itâs true that you donât measure up to certain standards. Many influences or forces instill that kind of doubt in a person, including for women, all sorts of patriarchal messages that their gender supposedly makes them inferior â no matter how intelligent they are.
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or being conventionally attractive. Nothing like being sexually proposed to constantly by people with power over you and then told you only got hired because people want to have sex with you.
Being told it doesnât matter what you are good at because your sexual currency is more valuable than anything you could ever accomplish is a great way to make any accomplishments feel worthless and unappreciated.
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Bingo!
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If only someone had been able to predict that! Sadly, none of us could⌠/SUPER S!
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*not_that_shocked, etc.
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I want to be clear: Iâm not trying to hijack the societal pressure on women to see themselves as lesser-than men. Thatâs real, and itâs insidious and horrible. Iâve witnessed it first hand in so many contexts and fight against it wherever and whenever I can.
I do believe it is separate from imposter syndrome, which, as I understand the term, is an internalized feeling that tends to manifest in people with a deep enough understanding of the world, or at least their field of expertise, to know just how much they do not know. It has no socioeconomic baggage in my mind. It is the polar opposite of the Dunning-Krueger effect, where people with very little knowledge of a given subject vastly overestimate their understanding of it, and thus are often very confident in their wrongness. People exhibiting impostor syndrome (itâs not a condition, per se, but a behavior that anyone could exhibit) are often understate their assertions and downplay their competence. I think both behaviors can be exhibited at different times by the same person (engineerâs disease comes to mine).
I hope that makes my earlier post more clear? That I empathize with women who might not only deal with internalized doubts of their own competence but also have that societal pressure telling them that, no matter how freaking amazing they are, itâs never good enough. Overcoming toxic masculinity is one part of the solution to the problem; making sure women are recognized for their achievements and competence, and that their voices are heard, is another part.
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