Hear me roar?

Someone asked me today how teaching was going. I gave my standard answer that it's okay, but the students talk a lot. And do you know what his reply was? He said "They don't respect you because you're a girl." What do I do with that? The first time I taught my own class, I was worried the students wouldn't take me seriously because I'm young. But they were great, so I stopped worrying about stuff like that. It never even occurred to me that my gender would have anything to do with anything. Does that sound horribly naive? I really thought we were beyond all that shit. With some exceptions, sure, but a whole class full of otherwise intelligent people? What a disappointment.

Anyway. I'm reading a biography of Trotsky right now. While making a "wholesale condemnation" of Lenin in 1902, Trotsky apparently called him, among other things, an "adroit statistician." Is that really a putdown?