Only 5.3% of US welders are women. After years as a professor, I became one

Shop talk and banter are fairly universal. Any difference is going to be a target. Thin bloke who doesn't look strong enough? Ginger hair? Tall guy, short guy? Weird tattoo, etc. Definitely the one black guy or the one white guy is going to get shit. But is it malicious? Almost certainly not.

The other thing, which in my experience is relatively common worldwide, is that working class communities are more accepting of male-female dynamics. In academia and in highbrow society the tendency is to basically sanitise every social interaction. When you're in an environment where that isn't happening then you can't suddenly ignore it any more.

Honestly, it often will be malicious, or will quickly become malicious if you don't take it graciously. And why should you? It's not acceptable to make fun of people for being skinny, ginger, shy, black, white, female, or any other things that the in group considers non-standard for whatever weird reasons.

How about let people say and do whatever they want amongst themselves and stay out of their conversations.

Dudes in dangerous professions bond by calling each other slurs which is ok because they're all in on it, such that if you can't handle some bad words how are you gonna handle the real dangers of the profession where people need to know you have their backs, so you're either not cut out for the job.

You as an outsider from the nice people bubble don't have a say in this to lecture them since you're not in on it.

Some dickhead flinging racial slurs at me all day doesn't make me feel that they have my back. Quite the opposite, actually.