P.S. This conflict is not contained to the feminine icons. Some of my most healing dialogues on the subject have been with male nurses, male caregivers, elementary teachers and stay-at-home dads.

I'm a self-confessed nerd who is among those devoted to the sci fi series Firefly. One of the reasons is how it breaks stereotypes. On Star Trek, of which of course I'm fond as an official nerd, the engine room guy was "Scottie," the guy always shouting at Capt. Kirk that we were exceeding warp speed and the ship was about to crack up.

On Firefly, though, the engineer was a woman, Kaylee, played by actress Jewel Staite. Her most memorable quote on the show is to a friend she's trying to prepare for going into an unfamiliar big city: "Don't pay anybody in advance. And don't ride in anything with a Capissen 38 engine, they fall right out of the sky."

In the future, arfie, these silly gender stereotypes will be a fond memory. We'll be smart enough to heed a woman's advice re Capissen 38 engines without questioning her expertise because she her body has ovaries instead of the other thingies.

Good luck with the job hunt. Let me know if you run into that other stereotype based on age-ism as well. In my 2011 job hunt I faced that one for the first time. Somehow experience makes you dumber in the estimation of certain hiring interviewers. Don't know exactly how that logic supposedly works.

I had an experience in which I flew across country for an interview. Once there I realized I was put on the short list just for appearances. I was "interviewed" by the boss's wife instead of the boss. Meanwhile in the same office the real interview by the boss went on within my line of sight with the much younger applicant who really got the job. We were introduced later. Personally, I would have appreciated it if they'd at least had the consideration to make an effort to conceal the age-ism at work there.

But I got a job, a job for less pay, mind you, but a job I love. I'm believing you will, too. With full pay.

Sort away. I wanted to build Disney sets, To build what I can dream up. Also not a "woman's" profession at the time. Taking 3D ideas to 2D schematics and blue prints, no opening for girls, guys would benefit more. So I took what they offered. My family of nieces and nephews have always had the best costumes at holloween. If I can draw it I can make it. Learned wood working and carpentry alone for setts in local theater groups and ballet, volunteer work. But it felt so good to see my dreams on stage even with no pay.

Sci-fi fanatic here.Beam me up Scotty.

I hear you. I've almost always worked in careers dominated by men. I've been in classes, and jobs, where I've been the only female. And guess what, Voc Rehab once tested me and my mechanical aptitude was way past the mens average scores. Don't you hate it when the men won't listen to you, just because you're female and assumed to not know what you're talking about?

In my last FT job, I was sexually assaulted, and harassed, because of my gender AND told by another, younger, employee that I was "as old as dirt". Stupidly I thought he was teasing, until he took over my job [because he didn't approve of me telling him that he made an error] and I was let go. So, I got a double whammy there.

Just be what you are Arfie.

I always was drawn to male dominated environments, after being a tom-boy as a kid. I spent decades living w/ the stupid gender expectations of male colleagues and at times having to work harder than them to be perceived as equal - common type of tokenism. My work was academic, but now that I've left formal work I love playing with tools. I love making things. Doing ocean sail boat racing was my big delight when I was stronger.

We contain all potentials within us. Just favor the ones you find fulfilling.

very interesting post and replies.

i have thought about this a lot over the years as well.

i just came to the conclusion that i don't believe in gender anyways, beyond basic and primal propagation of the species.

in truth, i am as much the egg as i am the sperm. the inherent feminine is built in. the whole macho male stereotype has always bothered me, and i feel for those too insecure to embrace all facets of their beings. thus when i see the misogynist caveman, i see their outward hatred as simply (and disgustingly) a person scapegoating what they're not brave enough to admit they hate in themselves.

I, too am a big Firefly fan. I call it, "Star Trek with dirty faces. Kaylee is the engineer I always dreamed of being. She is the only TV lady engineer I have ever identified with, starting from the way she got the job to her big, open heart and loving strokes of her beloved machine. Personally, I think of my machines as masculine. Personal attraction bias... The heart goes where it goes.

But, springing from the mid-20th century to early 21st century training I have to work with... I do often feel like I am trying to torque nuts with my mammary glands.

Yes, staying true to myself would seem the logical key, but here I am with brain freeze every time I have tried since 1995. Not too long after I left construction, I literally spent 4 days sitting on my tool box in front of a headlight that needed changing, just trying to get my brain to work. Finally got it done, but the brain freeze keeps coming back. Don't care to play the blame game over it. Not even sure it is worth getting past. Just sorting.

Thanks all.

I had a painting/light construction company for a few years when I became a teacher for the first few years. I'd install fences, paving walkways and patios, and design and paint rooms of houses.

It would always get my goat when men presumed I needed help and they'd get really intimidated when I knew more than they did in areas of "their" domain.

I don't let it bother me any more. I'm almost 40 and have got nothing to prove to anybody... except myself. That's the most difficult part, I find.

Good luck. Let us know how everything develops along the way.

Throughout this sorting, my memories have been spinning in that muddy ravine between 3rd grade and 5th grade when I went from the academic classification of "Retarded" to "Gifted." circa mid-60s. My gift was numbers. In the mid-60s there was considerable debate on whether girls should be allowed mathematical training. On the home front I was living in the domestic war zone of my mother confronting her husband's bi-sexual pedophilia.

This morning I find myself an image to ply to the brain freeze which has been crippling me. The image is two simple words:

The Debate

Still sorting...

Interesting 3rd to 5th grade was such a time of decision for you. It brought back memories of my own 3rd to 5th grade, not gender based memories, but memories of children and irresponsible adults.

On my trip back home to South America last month to face PTSD sites, I went by the house I lived in when I was in those same grades. I have the happiest memories of my life there. At that time my 2 parents got so wrapped up in their careers they neglected to abuse us kids as much as they did later when they were home more.

Then since they couldn't play nice with each other as career partners, my mom and dad brought rivalry at work home and beat each other in rather spectacular pitched battles breaking windows in violent fights in the home. Later they would figure out how to be partners and beat us kids.

But while they fought each other and not us, I escaped into the streets. Problem was, the civil war was fought in the streets at that very time., In their neglect I was on the street back then when I shouldn't have been if I'd been under the care of responsible parents.

That's when I was in a car that was bombed, about to enter a building that was bombed, and was around gun battles where people got shot. One, for instance, that led to the shooting of a buddy's dad, a dad I knew when I went on a sleepover to my buddy's house.

Nonetheless, oddly I gained a kind of self confidence from being battle hardened on the streets in the country's civil war. That self confidence and hardening helped me when our parents turned on us kids violently when we kids became teenagers.

Sorry to stray off the topic of gender, but these were powerful fresh memories from last month's visit to that house where I lived from 3rd to 5th grades. That was the period you mentioned facing such extremes of IQ diagnosis and rather sexist policies concerning math education. Wow, that had to be a weird, weird series of conversations for you to sit through as a girl! The common thread from both of our 3rd grade to 5th grade stories might be, I guess, that we were not in the hands of competent adults.

I am not sure it is about gender when I stay true to my own emotions. When I attempt to share about it, it keeps becoming about that eternal debate. Staying true to myself, I do not understand this debate any more than I understand the debates over the unprovable force(s) which shape our lives or how to measure intelligence. At present, I believe the need for debate is the issue, not the topic of debate.

I am also not sure I have regained all my memory function within this era. The tricky part of trauma induced amnesia is that I cannot know what is bubbling to the surface until it finishes surfacing. It seems unlikely that a ten year old child barely emerging from full mutism actually participated in any of these debates or even understood the topics being debated. I believe I was still silently disappearing into the fields when the tones started to gain combative tones. Guess I still do.

Still sorting...

Yes, being there on my trip at the sites of traumas my memory came back piecemeal. It did fit all together, but it was putting a puzzle back together. And not just a puzzle of visual pieces, but of all five senses.

They say smell is the sense most connected to memory, and I experienced that as being very true. After I visited a site in the morning, often in the afternoon the smell of something like diesel fumes from the buses on that street would bring back a memory.

Yes, still sorting...But grateful now there's data to sort.

It is, indeed, like sorting jigsaw puzzles. I liken it to an uncounted number of puzzles thrown into one box with pieces missing from all the boxes and no accurate pictures to work from. Not even the straight edge pieces to form the outlines.

I suspect you will be a long while sorting all the pieces you gathered this summer. How is the book coming along?