<p>^^ very well said. I would add – to your last paragraph – that if anybody ever accused me or my colleagues of racism or sexism when we knew the real reason was something simple and background-independent (“she didn’t have the engineering skills to manipulate this light and magnetism machine”) that person would forever be blacklisted as (a) irrational; (b) flaky; and (c) someone you’d never want to work with.</p>
<p>(Just imagine, after all, how fun it would be to work with someone who took every small unpleasant happening as sex- or race-related … "professor! you told me to wash these test tubes because i’m a Hispanic woman, didn’t you? <em>pokes out professor’s eyes with test tubes</em> ")</p>