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.

> Shop talk and banter are fairly universal. Any difference is going to be a target.

Can be exhausting. You have to either join in, be a target, or both.

It makes me think it's a somewhat innate way to foster relationships. It definitely seems to break down walls. I've come to learn that the more a group roasts you the more they like you.

My strongest lifelong work friends definitely came from grad school where none of that happened. Or from research work where it didn't either. But there it was pressure and performance and cooperation that helped. It breeds trust.

In blue collar work, esp team oriented which it often is, I'm not sure it's the shop talk or the team/trust environment. Either way i felt the same bond to people making pizza 5 busy nights in a row as I did late night coding sprints while pair programming, or contorting under the steel hull of a target boat to reach a bad CPU while my colleague watched the terminal while seasick and we are both drinking diesel funes.

It's about shared trust I think. The level of casualness of shop talk is just an indicator and kind of a stress test of bonds.