That&#x27;s heartening to read! But still, it rather damns with faint praise, doesn&#x27;t it? With its &quot;in the face of all obvious evidence to the contrary&quot; and its &quot;you may be able to get something out of it&quot; and its observation that &quot;we&quot; have never been able to communicate with &quot;the female mind&quot;.<p>Yes, he&#x27;s presumably trying to be lighthearted and cute and speak in a way that might connect with reluctant colleagues. But it&#x27;s still awfully condescending.<p>And yes, I know that Feynman was condescending to everyone who wasn&#x27;t Feynman. Here, though, he continues a trend of being condescending toward women <i>as a group</i>. Just because he could recognize individual women as talented (his wife, too!) doesn&#x27;t mean that he didn&#x27;t have negative (and harmful) attitudes toward them on the whole. And I think that those harmful attitudes have become a more lasting part of his popular image than have the quotes you&#x27;ve shared here.<p>&gt; &quot;...and supporting women in science wasn&#x27;t the popularity contest it is today.&quot;<p>This quote speaks volumes about your own perspective.