r/TwoXChromosomes: You are the community. You have all the power of the internet to mold it.

I recently got into a discussion with my boyfriend about how exhausting my workplace is. For context, I work in a tech start-up, and our team is less than 10 people. However, I am the only woman there to no fault of the company. We have tried to hire more women but we're in a more niche field and in a small close minded country.

Today, I had a discussion with my boyfriend about how exhausting it is to work with just men. I told him about a scenario where I had recently established boundaries with the team about letting me finish my train of thought before jumping in and interrupting me. Now one of the guys on the team gestures when he has an idea and I'm speaking; the best way I could describe it is the overeager ''I know!'' student which is not necessarily a bad thing but it is distracting when I'm speaking. Today, I had a little less patience and stopped mid-sentence to ask him if he was okay to which he replied that he wants to add to the topic but doesn't want to interrupt me and I get emotional about the whole thing.

I didn't know how to respond, if I replied with any emotion I'd be seen as exactly what he described even though I know I have every right to be upset I just couldn't. Instead, I simply told him it is the bare minimum for him to listen to everyone in the room before he contributes, and apparently, this was also ''an emotional response''

I spoke to my boyfriend about it and we got into a discussion about how the guy is wrong and ''petty'' I felt relieved until he said ''it's funny because pettiness is a feminine trait and a feminine emotion''... and I had not realized that emotions are gendered. This led to another discussion about women being more emotional than men.

I love my boyfriend and I respect his viewpoint so much but I hate the way that conversation makes me feel and now I feel bad FOR HAVING FEELINGS and not being a freaking robot. I don't think women are any more emotional than men and I brought up the fact that anger is an emotion... but apparently, anger is a masculine emotion. He stated he believes everyone is capable of feminine and masculine emotions. We all feel them but they're gendered?

I'm mentally exhausted from being around men.