For whatever it's worth, I'll just share how I made my own peace with something somewhat similar. I think to myself something like "Aaaannnd, welcome yet again to the long fight against prejudice and discrimination. That I once thought <bemused head shake> I was somehow insulated from it burning me, that my participation in the fight was somehow optional, was the obliviousness of male white professional privilege. Thank you person/institution/life for the reminder. And the reminder that so many face so worse." Works for me. As frequency increases, that might need a different form.
I wonder if some occurrences might be teachable moments for some? Leaving people better than you found them.
Sometimes one can dodge prejudice with subgroup membership signalling, as people seem to do a lot of profile matching. I remember baby throw-up stains having that effect. And sometimes "unrelated" prejudices can be leveraged - when doing child care, I tended to button-downs and not T shirts, if only for potentially improving response time in an emergency, as they seem to toggle many between "how may I help you sir; yes sir" and "what'da you want bud; well, let's see". You might find professional-class signalling might alter peoples' male-threat profiling?
I expect there's how-to literature about all this. Both on coping with discrimination in its various forms, and for male primary caregivers in particular.
For whatever it's worth, I'll just share how I made my own peace with something somewhat similar. I think to myself something like "Aaaannnd, welcome yet again to the long fight against prejudice and discrimination. That I once thought <bemused head shake> I was somehow insulated from it burning me, that my participation in the fight was somehow optional, was the obliviousness of male white professional privilege. Thank you person/institution/life for the reminder. And the reminder that so many face so worse." Works for me. As frequency increases, that might need a different form.
I wonder if some occurrences might be teachable moments for some? Leaving people better than you found them.
Sometimes one can dodge prejudice with subgroup membership signalling, as people seem to do a lot of profile matching. I remember baby throw-up stains having that effect. And sometimes "unrelated" prejudices can be leveraged - when doing child care, I tended to button-downs and not T shirts, if only for potentially improving response time in an emergency, as they seem to toggle many between "how may I help you sir; yes sir" and "what'da you want bud; well, let's see". You might find professional-class signalling might alter peoples' male-threat profiling?
I expect there's how-to literature about all this. Both on coping with discrimination in its various forms, and for male primary caregivers in particular.