"Grace Hopper and the psychological drain on the gender minority"

"of the perhaps 100 people in line that I could see, I couldn’t see another man. My normally logical brain switched off and gave way to a much more neurotic amygdala, flooding me with questions of self-doubt and a tinge of panic. Had I misjudged this conference? Maybe men weren’t actually welcome to attend? Maybe the fact that I got a ticket was a mistake, and now all the women were looking at me wondering what tricks I had pulled to get in? I glanced down at my conference badge — clearly it had my name, I was supposed to be there. Maybe I had just chosen the wrong line, some sort of privileged line for women?...

My natural habitat is as far from the spotlight as I can reasonably be. Except that for the next three days, not only was I a minority, but I was a very visible minority. I stuck out. I was easily noticed, easily remembered. There was no way I could participate in one of my favorite and most comforting activities: fading well into the background."

https://code.likeagirl.io/grace-hopper-and-the-psychological-drain-on-the-gender-minority-be3ff348f2ff

This is it, though. This is literally the default background feeling of many of my days. 

FB: a man at the Grace Hopper Conference "A feeling of distinct visibility is one thing, and it’s certainly not all bad. But I found that things inside me started to get a bit more insidious. I started feeling, and treating myself, like a second-class citizen. When there was limited time for questions after a talk, I felt like I shouldn’t ask questions since there were more than enough questions from women to fill the time — and I didn’t. When there was a long line for a particularly popular session that was certain to fill up, I wondered whether I should be taking up a spot in that session when a real participant of the conference could have it. And when I watched a woman obviously and intentionally cut in that same line, directly in front of me, I stopped myself from calling her out — partly because I felt she deserved the spot more than me, but more because of a fear that the other women around me would immediately side with her and assume I was being an aggressive, entitled man."