As a man I've been fielded with condescending remarks for the same thing though. Its shitty, but it isn't restricted to women, I think.

But if you want to go into STEM why did you take gender studies (etc...)

Also on that single point, I find it insulting that you "wanted" to go into stem, but a little goddamned condescension threw you off?

No, the world is full of people who are assholes to other people, this is a fine example of this, but if you couldn't deal with this, then it makes me question whether or not it was to fill the gender gap alone.

I think I may have been rude in this, let me apologize for that. Unfortunately I find myself irritated with this sentiment that you express, not that it is invalid, but because it denies the fact that as human beings surrounded by other humans that we can only interfere with so much. Adversity is an obstacle that comes in all forms, unfortunately, our social systems are flawed, and thus may present as adversity. We must work against adversity.

Your choices are your own, you may be influenced by the environment that you are in, but you can change the environment, but not by leaving it.

So please, if someone is condescending to you like this, particularly a man, emotionally stunted as we may be, please, consider telling us to our face that our response is not something acceptable from a professional point of view.

If whatever person, man, woman that you confront with the issues that you perceive in their communication towards you ignores it, then they are an obstacle that you must deal with.

Stick it to them by persisting, don't give in, don't let them get away with calling you cute, don't let them get away with anything less than politely and neutrally informing you that you are incorrect in some way.

By fighting behavior that we cannot stand or fathom, we give the other person a chance to see that their means of interaction is affecting others in negative ways.

If they bloody our noses, then we can't simply give up. There are times when we shouldn't or can't fight them, but these are losses that are destined by the structure of the society that we live in.

I do not believe that this issue you have with this man or woman or otherwise gendered is one of these issues.

Even it is, these losses can be reversed given time.

We can change what we are, we can change what society has in store for us.

We can't give up at adversity, regardless of its form, if we've given up, we've consigned another generation to struggle the same way.

We can't ever win completely, but we can win for our time and our children's time. Not that either of us will necessarily have children, you and I can choose that one thing.

I'm sorry if I came across exactly the same way as the people that discouraged you from entering into STEM did. I hope that I communicated this thought in a way that you can see that I did not intend that outcome. I will try to correct it if I am informed as such.

It's just that I refuse to believe that you can't break that damned glass ceiling(if that is the appropriate term), if Grace Hopper did it in the fifties, creating a programming language that is influential to this very day. If the barriers to her were significantly higher than they are today, you can do it today.