My freshman year, I had an advisor that told me I shouldn't take two specific science classes in the same semester because they were, and this is a quote, "hard for girls to do well in both at the same time." I think the classes were biochemistry and evolution (biology major). The worst part? The advisor was a woman. She retired a year later, and I got a much, much better advisor. Luckily, this seemed to be a trend at my university, that the older sexist professors were retiring en masse and being replaced by young hip professors.

I stayed at the same university for my M.S. in biology, and kept the same awesome advisor I'd had for most of undergrad. While I was working on my thesis in biomechanics there, he hired a post-doctoral student to help out in our lab. However, he was the most awful sexist man I've ever met. This guy had already finished a PhD, so he must have been nearing thirty. He constantly flirted with the undergrads that worked in our lab; luckily they were strong women that knew how to handle themselves in the face of his inappropriate comments about how they should hang out in a hot tub together (not joking) or questions about the status of their virginity. I cannot imagine the lawsuits that would have ensued if he had actually been in charge of any of the lecture or lab classes. Several of the lab's graduate students got together and told our advisor (his boss) what he was doing; I don't know what he said to the jerk, but the comments stopped. He was suck an arrogant prick; to this day, I'm sure he thinks he did nothing wrong. Oh, there were so many stories about that asshole, I could tell them all day...

Whew. It was good to get that off my chest. :)

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In undergrad I had a great support network that stomped out the sexism on all levels, from the scientist trying to harass an undergrad (punk got FIRED!!!) to completely eviscerating a dude who walked up to me and said "nice tits."

Ah physics, the land of the good 'ol boys!

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Thus far in my college career, the only male professor I've had was in a huge lecture class, so there was hardly any interaction with him.

But let me tell you, I work occasionally as an assistant to a real estate broker, and he always references how beautiful I look that day and always expresses surprise when I say something smart. It's not sexual, but it's def demeaning and infuriating. I just ignored his phone call because I'm not sure I want to work under those conditions, no matter how good the pay is.

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I guess it was a little like being in a skeevy straight professor's class circa 1956 as a guy. It was still pretty discomfiting.

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Fast forward to recently - in graduate school you have a closer relationship with professors, and as a student member of the hiring committee I saw a lot of old men and their complaints. It didn't help that our department had two professional degrees, one male dominated and one female dominated. One old man in particular was really egregious. He only wanted to hire (less qualified) men and spoke down to the female program head because he thought she didn't know anything.

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I was taking a rigorous math class (think everyday 9 - 5) affectionately termed 'math camp' and we frequently broke into smaller discussion groups of 4 or so.

One day, my group was being run by the head of the math department and we were discussing the usage of the word "or" in a logic problem. I was disagreeing with a member of my group in a conversation that became quite heated (as heated as one can expect when discussing logic) and the prof actually says:

"This is why men are typically more suited to math; they don't allow their emotions to get in the way"

JAW. HITS. FLOOR.

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