In Sheryl Sandberg(COO of Facebook)’s  awesome talk on women trying to climb the industrial ladder, she told a little anecdote that I found quite compelling. Where she declared the session over and the women put their hands down while the men continued to ask questions. Even though she tries to be conscious of these things, even she did not notice until a woman in the audience pointed it out later.

The story particularly resonated with me because I suffered from the same problem for many, many eons. And I think the ‘keeping your hand up’ phenomenon plagues many male and female scientists alike, so don’t worry boysicles can come read too.

Figure 1: But next time you have to put on the secret girl-women-boy-hater uniform

Why can't I put a hard break here? Only Jesus knows.
I spent some time introspecting in meditation (7-11 slurpees really help you get into that mental fugue state), to try to remember what helped me get past this issue. And I totally decided that it was gaming, and not just because I wanted to make another gaming makes me an ubersauce grad student post*.

In any situation that requires some sort of group discussion, you will always have opinionated fuckers (OFs). This is doubly true both in academia and gaming**, because you have a lot of people who like to hear themselves talk and think they know more than everyone else.  Another issue with OFs is that they tend to only hear each other, so when you make a point in a perfectly reasonable way you will be ignored, or shunned. But then an OF will translate it into ‘fuckwad’ and suddenly it’s a great idea/point.

How do you translate things into something an OF might understand, you might ask? IMO, the major defining factor in who gets listened to and who doesn’t, is the self-confidence with which a statement is conveyed. It doesn’t matter if it’s their opinion, or fact, or what they hazard is a fact, OFs always speak in timbre of voice that what they said was explored and confirmed using 2000 years of scientific method. Even when an OF says ‘well, I’m not sure’ it comes out sounding more like ‘I’m not 100% sure on this particular topic but it’s totally a hard question, and I’m a total genius most of the time so it’s no biggie’. There are no question marks in OF, you would do well to try to do the same more often.

Why should you engage in such fuckwittery, you might also ask? Because in any situation, from running a raid, to playing a round of co-op Halo, to attending a lecture,  to participating in an academic working-group meeting, it is not unusual to have a swarm of peeps constantly talking over each other, cutting off ideas midstream, and generally sharting all over good manners while you politely wait for a lull in the storm to make your point.

Guess what? It ain’t coming.

You can not depend on your PI, your discussion moderator, your guild leader, or team captain to wade into the lion’s den and filch your butt out to stand behind the ‘I’m Talking Now’ podium. You have to be ok with raising your hand, physically, and doing so verbally, if that’s what it takes to get the spotlight on you. You have to be ok with entering the discussion when someone stops to inhale, rather when they finish their thought. You have to be comfortable with coolly informing someone you’re not done talking when an OF tries to Detrail train you. You have to be ok with being a little aggressive and not caring what the OFs around you think.

Now get in there and start swinging, young padawans (after you leave me comments, this e-whore don’t panhandle for free!).