Jokes are fun and that’s why we love them. However, not all of them are so fun, since a joke is never just a joke and the intentions behind the joke can vary greatly.

While some jokes are meant to release tension or express one’s feelings, others are only meant to hurt other people, possibly by spreading lies about them. This woman was faced with the latter in her university environment and was asking online if she was right to take the measures she took.

More info: Reddit

The woman’s classmates kept putting her down with “pretty privilege” jokes until she had to do something about it

Image credits:  Anastasiya Gepp (not the actual photo)

After she topped two out of four students, her classmates became outright rude to her

Image credits: Maleficent-Day4476

Image credits: Pixabay (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Maleficent-Day4476

The never-ending remarks about “pretty privilege” and the woman’s boyfriend helping her were causing her a lot of anxiety

Image credits:  ICSA (not the actual photo)

The student asked her supervisor for advice and was convinced to let her email her classmates’ supervisors

This woman (23) is one of only a few female students in a male-dominated course at a highly prestigious university. She shared that her classmates are very competitive in an unhealthy manner, where everything turns into a “p*****g contest”. In addition to that, she feels they take her less seriously just because she’s a woman. For the reasons just mentioned, the student hasn’t enjoyed her classmates’ company from the very beginning and has chosen to hang out with other people instead. 

However, the woman’s relationship with her classmates went from pretty much neutral to somewhat worse. It all started after she did well in her recent exams by topping two out of four and got congratulated by a professor during the class. The woman shares that while they were initially only unfriendly, now her classmates have become outright rude to her and started challenging her aggressively in class discussions. 

After one of the woman’s classmates did a presentation about “pretty privilege”, the other guys snickered, while one of them even gave her a wink. Afterward, she heard them joking that “they had experience with that themselves”. In addition to joking about “pretty privilege”, the woman’s classmates started asking her if “her boyfriend” helped her with exams, referring to a Ph.D. student she was seeing for a month and who had nothing to do with their course. Such remarks were made in front of the professor, even bringing up the man’s name.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a one-time thing. The woman was told this topic was brought up a few more times, implying that she got help from this Ph.D. student, even though she wasn’t even seeing him back then. The woman didn’t confront her classmates about it; however, it was causing her a lot of anxiety. She says she worked hard to get the results she did and did not want to be misleadingly known around the faculty for her “profitable” dating life. 

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The woman raised this issue with her supervisor. She says, she wanted her advice as a woman in academia and initially it wasn’t her intention to take it any further.

The complaint wasn’t formal, but classmates’ supervisors became very cold towards them and less interested in helping

Image credits: RODNAE Productions (not the actual photo)

The woman’s classmate told her she will be to blame if he loses his scholarship

However, the supervisor convinced her to let her email the classmates’ supervisors “to remind them of proper conduct”, and described their treatment of this student without mentioning her name. The woman’s classmates could, of course, tell who their supervisors were referring to, and confronted the woman about why she reported their “silly joke”.

It wasn’t a formal complaint and only the classmates’ supervisors knew about it. However, as a result, the woman’s classmates’ supervisors became very cold towards them and were less interested in helping. Additionally, one of the classmates told her that his supervisor gets to write reports for him getting his financial aid/ scholarship and he said it would be her fault if he lost it. She shared that after all this, she felt a bit embarrassed, especially after her friend told her she took it too far.

The possible problem with calling someone out for “privilege” is discussed by T. Fortgang. Often the problem lies in assuming that one might know someone’s history simply by looking at that person’s appearance, while in reality, the person’s history might involve a lot of sacrifices and hard work that got them where they are. In this case, undermining the student’s achievements just because one sees her as beautiful is unfair and ignorant.

The post went viral with 29K upvotes, and many people could relate to what this woman went through. The verdict was univocal – the woman was right to act the way she did. Commenters on Reddit brought up several aspects – the tendency of such “jokers” to undermine your accomplishments, question your abilities, and then act shocked when you stand up for yourself. 

It was also raised that it wasn’t a “silly joke”, but repeated and intentional harassment implying that the woman was not worthy of her grades and hasn’t earned her current position. People were commenting that the insecure and jealous classmates should have thought about treating her with respect and professionalism before it had to come from a place of authority. People agreed these students earned whatever consequences befall them and people were happy that the woman’s supervisor took the problem seriously.

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The verdict by commenters on Reddit was univocal – the woman was right to act the way she did, as it wasn’t a “silly joke”, but repeated and intentional harassment

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