> Bluntly, if a male says I can't be inspired by females isn't that because they're sexist?
Not necessarily. It could be, but I wouldn't attribute it to malice as much as I'd attribute it to difficulty in relating to the person.
> Do they have to consider separation of humans by characteristics to be important in order to get you that position where they feel alone with other humans?
Your error in this is that you assume the behaviour is conscious and deliberate. Our brains do many calculations before we are even aware of them. I recommend Gladwell's book "Blink" on the topic [1].
Humans are by all means social beings, and we use heuristics and mental shortcuts to simplify our world, leading to fast and unconscious decisions often to our own detriment. We construct in and out groups before we are aware them, and said groups affect our decisions. This is why people growing in mixed communities are far less likely to be or exhibit racist behaviour.
I am expressing this only as a testament to our innate fallibility, this isn't targeted towards any specific group of people because there are all sorts of communities that are isolated and have very few interactions with others.
I experienced awe and inspiration when I realized that I was sitting at the same benches, and studying at the same place as Heisenberg when he came up with QM. But it was only when I stopped and thought about it, when I thought about the place I was sitting and the history behind it.
Sometimes all we have is superficial information, and our brains try to make the most of it. It's in our nature after all, we are all fallible humans, so why not help alleviate it and enable people to become their best selves?
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Blink-Power-Thinking-Without/dp/03160...