This is just evidence of how narrow-minded the education system is, and how little the wiggle room for disagreement. There's no room for nuance or discussion within an institution when the smallest deviation will be judged as heresy, and hence there is no room to "hide" by pretending to go along with the main narrative while trying to reform the system from within; someday the narrative shifts and you may blurt something out that will get you excommunicated. Thousands of young women who weren't comfortable supported LGBT because they were afraid to get excommunicated and they still got called TERFs when they suggested it was wrong for pre-op men with a rap sheet to use the same bathroom as them.

In the case of men like Mr. Biltszto, they are (in my experience) conditioned to keep their heads down and act as submissive as a woman under the Taliban. It was already common back when I volunteered at a school for male teachers to make self-deprecating statements about themselves to get along with their feminist female colleagues, for example, much to the discomfort of male students. This isn't to dunk male teachers. Most of them are excellent at their jobs. Many are also true believers and sincerely care about getting that immigrant girl who comes from a conservative country and thinks she is destined to become a housewife to care about her math score; in this way they have probably done more for girls than their feminist counterparts who focused on pushing politics. But after years of living like that, and having that be your life, I think it is difficult to not internalize the self-hating element of the politics in some way. What might have been poor Richard's mistake is also feeling proud of his achievements. He was happy that his country was improving, by the standards he believed were the right ones, and to the people who hated him for his skin that was unacceptable.