Hey, Linda, I don't mind at all that you quoted so extensively from my article or that you didn't edit it for language, but the MDC user agreement says not to quote >100 words of someone else's writing from another site and not to post profanity...just keep that in mind so you don't get in trouble with the moderators.
I think you may have confused that article with a comprehensive account of my college experience. It isn't. It's about what went wrong in my original major and why I left it, so it only very briefly addresses the many things that were right and good about the first half of my university experience and the even more things that went well in the second half and in my career after graduation. I referred to the article initially because I feel like I can never say I was an architecture student without explaining that I didn't become an architect, and later because I hoped it might be helpful to you as a parent of a student who's very driven and certain about a particular field--NOT because I meant it as support for what I wrote here about my university not being sexist, so I'm sorry if you misunderstood that.
It's very weird to me that you don't consider sexism as one of the possible causes of your being given bad grades, having your opinions discounted, sabotaged by your peers, or told to leave.
Of course I considered sexism as a possible cause. I was raised by a very feminist mother who pointed out sexism at every turn--sometimes she was right about it, sometimes not. She was very concerned about my going to a college with any men at all, let alone a male majority, because she was certain I would experience discrimination. The moment I started having problems in architecture, she started blaming sexism.
But here's the thing: That architecture department, like many others, got rid of about half its students by the end of the second year. Lots of people left voluntarily because they couldn't take the insane workload or the jury crits (where you present your project to a panel of professors and all the students in your year, and they say whatever they want about it, often extremely tactlessly) or because one of the courses led them to discover a love for history or physics or some other major. Other people were cut from the program directly. The only thing unusual about my story is that I managed to get just good enough grades every other semester that I squeaked through into the third year and they had to pull that "we will fail you no matter how good your work is if you don't agree to leave" thing to get rid of me--and that still wasn't unique; I had a friend two years ahead in the program who told me that two guys in his year had been cut that way.
Yet the gender balance in the department was almost the same among graduates as among entering students. More women than men left voluntarily, but nearly all of the students who were cut against their will were men. The struggling students who often got D's and got slammed in jury crits, and the golden ones who nearly always got good grades and glowing jury crits, had gender ratios indistinguishable from the department as a whole. The opinions for which I was criticized were unpopular IDEAS no matter who was promoting them--the male professor who was obsessed with Queen Anne houses, and who took us on a field trip to see a cutting-edge modern house that was just about unlivable because of its poor planning and structural flaws and encouraged us to listen to the occupant's experience actually living real life there, was scathingly criticized behind his back, with other profs telling us to ignore him.
As for being sabotaged by my peers, that didn't seem to be a thing that happened to women; it was a thing that happened to me, only me, as far as I'm aware. The other women mostly were part of the social camaraderie that included about half the men in our year. I don't think I was victimized because I was a woman. I think I was victimized because I was me. That still doesn't justify or even explain it, but I had been bullied to some extent all the way through school up to that point (and I'd say 5th-9th grades were worse than the architecture department) so it was not much of a surprise to me.
It was a tough program and a horrible experience in many ways. But it was just as tough and horrible for men as for women. I really saw no evidence that women were being treated badly for being women.
Just because I was treated badly and I am female, doesn't mean that the reason I was treated badly was sexism.
The last part you quoted and bolded
That's what being an architect, nay, being a person, is all about. Oh, and women like to be raped; it fulfills them.
you quoted out of context--I'm talking here about my understanding of the message of the novel The Fountainhead. Yes, the idea that Howard Roark was the kind of architect we should aspire to be was prevalent. But the female character was never discussed in any way by anyone in the architecture department that I ever heard--her thoughts and behavior, and the (female) author's attitude toward her, were among the things that infuriated me about the book, but I don't mean to say that any of that was characteristic of the architecture students or faculty. We watched the Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas hearings in architecture studio--had the TV on while we were working--and everyone who voiced an opinion was on her side.
Your story isn't one of going into a male dominated career and school, being treated as an equal, and being successful. You don't have a story about how being in a male dominated school prepared you to work side by side with your male colleagues after university.
I do not have a story of going into a male-dominated career because I didn't--psychology is about 50/50. But I do have a story of going to a male-dominated university, being treated as an equal, and being successful: In the architecture department, I was treated equally with the men who also had the "wrong" ideas and lacked artistic drawing talent, but in my other classes and outside the classroom and then as a psych major, I was treated well and I did succeed. I do have a story, actually multiple stories, of working side by side with male colleagues in my career. "The Path at the End of the Road" is not those stories, because it's the story of why I'm not an architect, not the story of what I am instead. I have a lot of stories you haven't heard yet.
Those subjective D and Fs you got at school might have been because you weren't cut out for the field, or they might be because your professors were sexist and thought less of your work because YOU were the one submitting it. It's impossible to say, and it's quite possible that if sexism was a part of it, they didn't even realize it. Some of this stuff is so subconscious, than unless a person or organization is working against, it just sort of happens.
I do understand what you mean, and I guess it is impossible to be absolutely certain that they were biased against me because I had opinions and skill deficits that would bias them against men as well, and/or because they disliked me as an individual, and/or because I was the only student from Oklahoma and they were all virulent anti-Okies, rather than because I'm female. But I tried to explain earlier that the university WAS working against sexism by having a culture in which it (and racism and homophobia) was very uncool and everyone was supposed to be constantly checking their attitudes. Also, I didn't mention that the adjunct professors--practicing architects who also taught a studio course--were almost half female; I don't know if that resulted from a conscious affirmative action program or if women architects are more likely than men to accept adjunct positions, which pay poorly and take time away from work but give you an opportunity to mentor.
Anyway, of course it's important to help your daughter find a school where her gender is no barrier to her success, and I hope that as she does her research it becomes clear which schools are really like that.