I am, personally, very good at telling malignant men to fuck off. The trick is to not make that an exercise in ladder-pulling.
There are a lot of different types of women in the world. Most of them would not feel comfortable approaching the problem of male toxicity with my attitude, which is, "I've pegged tougher men than you and half of them were little babies about it." Critically, *those women shouldn't have to.* That should not be the cover charge for participating in society as a woman. I do not accept being put on a pedestal like "see, it *is* possible to be a woman in software, you just have to be like Maddie!"
No, we only have equality when women can be not-like-Maddie and still be treated with a baseline expectation of competence and worthiness. We need lots of not-like-Maddie women here.
We do not need the men bullying them. Which is why I think part of my value is chasing those dudes out.
@MaddieM4 this. It’s survivor bias. I can also say that I grew up with a lot of racist bullies so I don’t have any issues telling them off but it usually doesn’t go well. Men don’t like being told off. Sometimes those men are (in one instance) my manager and things didn’t go well when I told him off. It was only ok because the rest of my group was there and would have backed me up but no one should have to be in that situation.