I don't know if you have been following the brouhaha about women in weightlifting. If not you haven't missed much and you probably can figure out what's being said- yup- it's all about what women should do, be and look like- sound familiar? You may notice there are no links- no way I'm giving that stuff more notice.

What I would like to highlight is the response of these amazing young women- Zoe Smith the 18 year old English had this response. She has some great lines that you younger women in science may want to keep in mind if the need arises (hope it won't but...) like:

The obvious choice of slander when talking about female weightlifting is “how unfeminine, girls shouldn’t be strong or have muscles, this is wrong”...This may sound like a sweeping generalisation, but most of the people that do think like this seem to be chauvinistic, pigheaded blokes who feel emasculated by the fact that we, three small, fairly feminine girls, are stronger than them.

What makes them think that we even WANT them to find us attractive? If you do, thanks very much, we’re flattered. But if you don’t, why do you really need to voice this opinion in the first place, and what makes you think we actually give a toss that you, personally, do not find us attractive? ....

This may be shocking to you, but we actually would rather be attractive to people who aren’t closed-minded and ignorant. Crazy, eh?! We, as any women with an ounce of self-confidence would, prefer our men to be confident enough in themselves to not feel emasculated by the fact that we aren’t weak and feeble.

Salon's piece on this was nice. My take away line:

... if you look at a woman who’s one of the greatest athletes in her field in the entire world and not just have thought that she’s fat or she’s mannish or she’s ugly but have publicly expressed it, stop talking right now, you ridiculous, ridiculous little worm.

You know there are days that I think we women in STEM are way, way, way too polite,