:3

an advisor humiliated me in front of an entire lab group because of a call I made in his place when he wouldn't reply to my e-mails for months

he later delegated part of my master's thesis work to a 19-year old male undergrad without my approval

a male scientist at a NASA conference looked me up and down and asked when i was graduating and if i was open to a job at his company. right before inquiring what my ethnicity was because i "looked exotic"

a random male member of the public began talking over me and my female advisor, an oceanographer with a pHD and decades of experience, saying he knew more about oceanography than us

things that have happened to me since becoming a man in STEM:

being asked consistently for advice on projects despite being completely new to a position

male colleagues approaching me to drop candid information regarding our partners / higher ups that I was not privy to before

lenience toward my work in a way I haven't experienced before. incredible understanding when I need to take time off to care for my family.

conference rooms go silent when I start talking. no side chatter. I get a baseline level of attention and focus from people that's very unfamiliar and genuinely difficult for me to wrap my head around.

Context: April Fools :]

What if we’re still cruel and spiteful, and warring constantly against each other, horrible and despicable… what if they find us at our worst?

What if we react with wary show of force, every weapon primed, just a minute ago pointed at our own brethren, then pointed to the sky almost as one, like cornered animals baring their teeth.

What if the first thing the aliens see is the worst humanity has to offer?

What if our first greeting is full of fear and grim resolve? Because what outsider would come to us in peace? What outsider would remain willing to speak to us after they see how horrible we can be to each other, after they see it takes an existential threat to make us stop killing each other?

But what if they do?

And what if that’s what wins them over?

What if, in the galaxies, humans are unique in that we will band together in the face of a common enemy, even if we’ve all just been fighting.

Sure. Humans fight each other all the time, aliens would probably think we’re the worst, right?

But what if we’re not?

What if the aliens come, and the first thing they say is, “Hello! We are so glad we found you! We are so pleased to meet you!” Similar to how humans greet puppies that we really want to meet and not scare, except it’s aliens that have been following radio messages across light years to find us.

We’ve spent so long wondering about what’s out there, and we see ourselves almost as a blight on our own planet, when we’re probably just fine. We’re trying. Maybe, just maybe, we’re okay. Maybe an outsider would look at us and think, “Look at them! They’re trying to be good! They name rocks and waters and cleaning robots! I love them for it!”

We tend to think that we must be the worst, the most backward, the blandest, least interesting or intelligent creatures in the galaxy.

I wonder how aliens would actually look at us.

We play whale noises into the black. We send greetings. We send probes with videos and audio tracks out explaining who we are and what we do on earth, just in case there’s someone else out there wondering if they’re alone in the universe. We tame predators to be companions because we are compassionate and we want to be friends with anything that will have us.

Maybe we’re not so bad.