Thanks for writing this. As a female developer with 60K followers on Instagram, I went through all this:
– “Programmers don’t look like that!” – “You’re fake. Some dude writes your content.” – “Are you a model or a coder?”
Bullies are not happiest people on the planet: some of them have been harassed or bullied by their parents, in schools etc. I discovered the hard way that when I pay back with the hate, it makes me feel bad and also feeds their hate. The hardest and probably wisest solution is to respond with love to those unhappy folks. Or not responding at all. It's very hard, but it works.
– Julia