But she realized she’d need a new approach in order to help her material resonate with her conservative students. Several years ago, she changed the way she conducted her class. She started launching each new semester with an introductory lecture in which she would acknowledge that some students might be alarmed by what she tells them. They might not feel that gender inequality is real, she admitted, and that’s okay. She tells the students they are allowed to bring up the Bible, but that she can’t personally comment on its teachings.

When her students claim study findings don’t fit their personal experiences, she seizes on the opportunity to talk about the difference between anecdotes and aggregate data. Early on, a few men in her class complained that the course devoted too much time to women’s issues. Now, Beverly spends the entire first half on men and masculinity, before moving to some of the more female-centric gender-studies topics, like makeup or household chores. Gradually, she introduces the big f-bomb: feminism.

Beverly’s strategy reminded me of a nonconformist survival mechanism called “idiosyncrasy credits.” If an outsider yearns to be accepted by a group without surrendering their individuality, idiosyncrasy credits are the way to do it. The idea was pioneered by the psychologist Edwin Hollander in the 1950s. By studying the way people interact in groups, Hollander theorized that newcomers to a group are better accepted if they first pay homage to its established values and goals, then start to deviate in small ways. At first, conform; then innovate.

Think of these credits as little tokens you gather for acting like you belong within the group. Go to the meeting and smile along to the useless presentation, that’s a credit. Go to the boring baby shower and coo at the onesies, that’s another. Later, you can “spend” those credits by deviating from the group norms, say, by telling your boss what you really think of the project, or sitting out the baby’s first birthday party. It’s a way of gently reassuring people that you can be normal, in theory, before you fully unleash your weirdness.

This strategy worked for no less than the Beatles, as the sociologist Ian Inglis described in the journal Popular Music and Society.285 In the late 1950s, most of the top British performers had antiseptic images, and the nascent Beatles were considered too wild. During those infamous nights in Hamburg during which they racked up their ten thousand hours of practice, the Beatles would taunt the crowd and call them Nazis.