Talking football and quantum mechanics

My mom and dad with my sibs.

The ur-football fan in my life was a woman, my mother, who took immense joy in the nuances of the game whether it was the local Bearcat high school team or her beloved Raiders.  My father wasn't a fan, but Math Man is, so on Sundays in football season, she'd call him from California and they'd watch the game "together," chewing over the plays and their execution.

So I found it, well, funny, to hear Florida Panther's quarterback Cam Newton smirk and say in response to a female reporter' question, "It's funny to hear a female talk about routes like...it's funny."  (After careful thought and 24 hours, he's decided this wasn't an acceptable response to the reporter's question.)

I'm trying to imagine this in my context, asking a question at a seminar or talk only to have the speaker smirk and come back with, "It's funny to hear a female talk about quantum mechanics like...it's funny."

I actually don't have to think all that hard. Two years ago at a dinner before a talk, the female speaker asked me a technical question (what basis sets I preferred to use with a particular density functional, if you must know), and as I started to respond to her, I was interrupted by a young (undergraduate) male researcher at the table.  "Why are you asking her that question?" he demanded of the speaker, clearly irked.  Perhaps because I am one of the people who did the work, and the first author on the original paper?

The whole incident reminds me of Rudyard Kipling comments on visiting Chautauqua (a resort in New York State where women denied educational opportunities in more formal venues gathered each summer to study): “I’m awfully sorry for the girls who take it seriously. I suppose the bulk of them don’t... One never gets to believe in the proper destiny of women until one sees a thousand of ‘em doing something different.  There is something wrong with it.”