Posting this here because I am sick of hearing about reddit and I want something new on my feed, so here’s a story.

My GF got her barchelors in psych in May, and after seeing what classes she will be taking for grad school we rejoiced that there were no anthropology classes. I hope she never has to deal with that anthropology professor again. He got the class to bully her and ostracized her, just because she isn’t inclined to acting like a bobblehead in class.

Her problems started when the professor was discussing gender discrimination in society, and asked the class “Is there any difference between men and women?” The class was silent. Then my gf decides to sacrifice herself and answer first. Her response was essentially “There’s enough of a difference to mess with our research if we don’t control for it, but it’s complicated enough to point to why, since our experience with gender is informed by societal expectations and our poorly understood biochemistry. So yeah there is a difference but we don’t fully understand how much of that is society’s fault.”

She got booed. Other people raised their hands after this, said there was no difference. There was some clapping for the other people.

From this point forward, my GF was sorted into a group of four conservatives. One was a alt-right truther who said in a socratic dialog session that African countries were “shitholes” because they are “barely humans”, another was a libertarian who talked like a redditor irl, and the third was an evangelical conservative who had thankfully learned to keep her mouth shut. The rest of the class (with one exception) treated her like she was radioactive. Whenever she would say something reflecting her actual beliefs, such as advocating for socialist policies or universal healthcare, the professor would shut her down with “That’s an unusual opinion for someone with your beliefs”, the class would move on, and someone would repeat what she said and get applause.

Now, I don’t know how many of you are in or have been to college, but echo chambers don’t normally happen irl, especially in science classes. My GF found out later from one of her classmates that this was because she was the only person in that room who wasn’t an anthropology major, and the rest had learned that if you did not perfectly follow the PC script you would be singled out and bullied just like she was. Turns out a good chunk of the class actually liked her, but wouldn’t express that in the classroom or they would get put in permanent time-out with her.

What kills me is that there was an autistic kid in the classroom. He was the variety who wouldn’t sit still for very long, brought stuffed animals to class, had no inside voice, etc. The professor clearly hated having to be in his presence. But he was a good worker and a very nice person. He would take notes on what his classmates liked, and would try to learn about that thing so he could talk to them about that. For example, he learned how to read tarot cards because the girl sitting next to him liked Astrology. The professor limited his bullying to extremely stringent grades, likely because it’s not generally acceptable to bully SPED kids, although he did try to snipe at him socially but of course the autistic kid didn’t notice.

This whole ordeal was extremely stressful for my GF, and I am quite happy that now she will not have to take classes from a professor who has such a similar personality to her mother.