MacIver wrote:Really, that's quite interesting. I wonder what's the cause of that?
There are a couple of hypotheses. One I credit to my old colleague Susan X. Ying. She moved from Florida to Iowa and then invited me to give a talk in Iowa, and we sat and talked about it. Her hypothesis was that life is harder here, and so people naturally gather together and get to know and support each other. I've made some observations that confirm this hypothesis.
I've also noticed that, in a practical sense, men and women are far more equal here than any place I've ever been. I mean, if the field needs ploughed, you plough the damn field. You don't automatically hire a man to do it and then write an article whining about how much men get paid.
Now, I was enlisted to cut down the huge tree with the chainsaw, but that was because my prissy coastal existence has left me with no joint problems. My sex and/or gender wasn't even mentioned. It didn't matter. Whereas, a coastal woman who asks for help from a man would probably make some ostentatious comment.
I suffer from social phobia so I'm very paranoid in public social situations anyway but if a stranger's child comes up to me I feel awful.
It's not my job to tell you what to do, but you might consider overcoming this. I had what I still call crippling shyness, which would certainly be called "severe social phobia" nowadays. Sometimes to the point of agorophobia. I overcame it approximately between the years 1993 and 1996. It was hard work, but I've never regretted it. I'm writing an iPhone app to help people who want to do it, but it's written from the perspective of someone who has been there and gotten through it, not from the bullshit pseudo-sympathetic yet patronizing and pathologizing perspective that people who have never been there generally assume. If I ever get the damned thing done, you can be a beta tester, if you like.