Very cool: We humans have landed a space probe on a goddamned comet!
Not cool: when one European Space Agency dude gave an interview about the landing, he was wearing a shirt festooned with cheesecake images of scantily clad women.
Even less cool: when Atlantic magazine science writer Rose Eveleth pointed out that this choice of attire doesn’t exactly broadcast the message that women (other than scantily clad ones) are welcome in STEM, she received a torrent of abuse from angry Twitter dudes, including requests for her to kill herself.
The cherry atop this crap sundae? The nastiest Twitterer of the bunch, who not only went after Eveleth but her defenders as well, is a regular contributor to A Voice for Men.
The whole thing started off with a couple of tweets from Eveleth about the shirt. Here’s one of them:
https://twitter.com/roseveleth/status/532538957490561024
After this, the deluge:
And those are just some of the harassing tweets Eveleth retweeted. (I’ve highlighted the explicit death wishes for your convenience.)
You’ll notice that one of the death wishes (“Please kill yourself”) comes from a fellow named Christopher Cantwell.
If you take a look at his Twitter profile, you’ll see that this self-described “Anarchist, Atheist, Asshole” and Bitcoin fan had similar advice for a number of others who found the shirt troubling.
To wit:
Cantwell has also been sharing some of his charming thoughts about women in STEM.
So how does A Voice for Men respond to this sort of behavior by one of their regular contributors? They repost his blog entry on the, er, controversy, deriding concerns about the shirt as “feminist hysteria” and arguing that the real reason more women aren’t in STEM fields is that, well, they’re just not as smart as he is.
No, really:
The reason you don’t see women in highly technical fields nearly as often as you see men is not because of sexism. It certainly isn’t because of Matt Taylor’s shirt. You can’t even blame this on education anymore, since more women attend college than men. The issue at hand is one of simple aptitude and the choices people make as a result of that aptitude.
You gals remember choices, right? I seem to recall you caring about those things once upon a time.
If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. A society needs leaders and followers. In men, we see very high IQs figuring things out and working out these complex ideas. They document them in easy-to-understand ways for those of lesser intelligence in society and make technology available to all of us. We also see these low IQs, which are more suited to, say, mining the resources that this technology requires and operating the machines the geniuses designed. Women, traditionally carrying the role of raising children and supporting the men who designed and operated the machinery, needed to be somewhere in the middle. They couldn’t well manage the many complex tasks their role in society required of them without being smarter than the worker drones, but there wasn’t any need for them to be super geniuses who could land spacecraft on comets hundreds of millions of miles away either. …
For those of us at the upper end of the IQ spectrum, we are sentenced to a lifetime of watching stupidity like this run rampant. We will watch in horror for all of eternity as idiots dominate the headlines with their hysteria, responsibility avoidance, and demands for state privilege disguised as “equality.” We’ll see brilliant men like Matt Taylor smeared as being the worst type of bigot, simply because he’s smarter than the people who accuse him.
Yeah, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would complain about sexism in STEM.
Catherine von Uberwald – thanks for that link. I had heard part of the story, and it sounded appalling. Now I know the rest, and it’s somehow even worse.
The phrase ‘smell like peaches and taste like Diet Coke’ is part of that. Uck.
Shorter James – when I wank to visual images that vaguely resemble you do you not feel glorified? I don’t know the difference between pictures and people, at least not if either have boobies.
Well that is an immature answer, no one ever said anything about wanking. The girls in the pictures are not that different from girls’ Halloween costumes recently. Those girls look like heroines from an 80’s cyberpunk film, they are powerful.
Cassandrakitty – Also that shirt is the equivalent of a shirt with pictures of topless men like Ryan Goslings and Hugh Jackman, but no one would be offended by that. It seems the most illogical and uneducated are the most easily offended. #DoubleStandards #EgalitarianismFTW
Hardly – guys aren’t bothered by it whereas women are. That in and of itself makes it different. Also I’ve never seen anyone wear clothes with topless Hugh Jackman on. I imagine it’d look as tacky as “the shirt” did though.
Yes, I would. Be offended by that. If someone gave an important science interview in a shirt like that. But I think that has never happened anywhere in the history of all of everything, and probably isn’t about to.
You’re really silly.
“If this thing that never happens happened, the reaction would completely prove my point!” How convenient to hang your entire thesis on an untestable premise.
You mean like the MRAs who got offended over this (and over women who play video games, and women in the workplace, and women not wanting to sleep with them, and domestic violence and laws, and rape laws, and the age of consent, and women voting, and women existing…)?
*And domestic violence laws. Extra word in there.
A closer example would be a shirt with half-naked men in fetish-wear, but it still wouldn’t be equivalent. In fact, there is no hypothetical equivalent. There isn’t much of a history of “pin-up boys,” especially ones being displayed in good-old-girls clubs that inhabit the more prestigious areas of society. There isn’t a history of dudes facing micro-agressions that drive them out of STEM fields. To create a hypothetical equivalent, you’d need to flip the whole culture around; the shirt in and of itself isn’t the issue.
A woman wearing a shirt full of half-naked guys isn’t going to send a message that guys aren’t welcome, it’s going to send a message that the woman wearing it doesn’t belong.
Huh… I think I used to have an alternate version of ghostiger’s avatar as a login page on an old computer. Weird.
you seem pretty offended, by this article and by the general conversation about the sexism embodied by this shirt.
Also, I’m quite sure their are no non-doctored photos of Gosling and Jackman wearing lingerie and posing like the very not photo realist and not individualized women on that shirt, FYI. So your hypothetical counter-example is extra-detached from real life things that actually happen.
I do enjoy how you see the fact that many women openly like looking at physically attractive men, aka express their sexuality in a benign way (gasp!), as a way to dismissively wave away mild criticism of unthinking male sexism in the workplace and the public sphere.
You’re also ignoring the actual point of the original post, which is focused on how some anti-feminists acted like mild criticism of unthinking male sexism in the workplace and the public sphere was a crime against (male) humanity that must by hysterically denounced at length. Way to pay attention sport.
Totally immature. Unlike wearing an inappropriate shirt while representing your work. That’s the most mature thing you could do.
Funny. When I was a girl I would dress as things like a pumpkin, a sheet ghost or Princess Ozma for Halloween. Oh wait. You were talking about adult women. Do you expect us to believe you are not sexist when you simultaneously objectify and infantilize women?
Also, there’s a difference between a what is appropriate to wear to a Halloween party and what to wear when you’re at work and representing your employer to the entire world. Do you really not see that? Do you also not see the difference between a woman choosing to wear a sexy outfit to a party and a man wearing a shirt with sexy scantily women on it in the work place where it might make people uncomfortable?
Women get scrutinized, sometimes unbelievably harshly for our appearance and clothes. How could you possibly make the claim that a woman would get away with wearing a shirt like that in any professional setting, let alone one this high profile? As Emilygoddess said, you are making an untested claim. Can you point me to an example of a woman wearing a shirt like this in a similar situation and not being criticized?
Of course, that still completely misses the point. STEM fields have not typically been hostile towards men so a man would be a whole lot less likely to be harmed by a shirt that depicts scantily clad men. Men have always been viewed as people first by the culture as a whole. Women are the ones viewed as sex objects. Your little thought exercise fails on many levels. But sure, we’re the uneducated and illogical ones.
Quiet now. A man is speaking. He understands STEM and logic. You just can’t comprehend his advanced views because of your ladybrains.
So powerful. Like OMG I am staggered at how powerful and empowered these women are. Like Barb Wire empowered. Just look at how empowered she is! So powerful.
Ok, ok, that was a 90s cyberpunk film. Mea Culpa.
But seriously, pointing to women’s halloween costumes and heroines from the 80s is so far away from being the best way to demonstrate how not-sexist something is.
Right??
Doesn’t matter if it there are those t-shirts I say or not. If it’s bad against women then it’s bad against men, even if men are not offended, that’s equality. Equality doesn’t depend on anyone’s feelings or preferences, it is absolute (you just have to swap men and women in all scenarios).
The t-shirt was made by Matt Taylor’s friend, a woman. You want to censor someone wearing what they want, sounds familiar? It is tacky, but not more inappropriate than a Looney Tunes shirt. The shirt actually glorifies the female form, he likes powerful and sexy women and sci-fi guns, big crime (when some people actually wear clothing made of dead animals like fur or crocodile skin, which is a real crime).
Also, this is not a crime against “male humanity” it is a crime against science and progress: the lack of attention to the actual scientific achievement only shows how primitive our society is. Matt should have considered that people can be petty and opinionated about anything and generally scientific illiterates, while almost all of civilization comes from science.
I know true feminists that are busy fighting against violence against women and better income, and they recognize that this is a false flag that only takes away credibility to the movement, like the story of the boy who cried “Wolf!”.
It’s time to separate what you feel about something from actual objective analysis.
And again, I’m all for human rights and gender equality (in the good and the bad). But this is only a petty argument.
Yep, your argument is indeed very petty. Well done.
A fact which has also been the subject of feminist criticism. And before you try it: no, it’s not the women wearing those costumes who are the problem.
I’m not sure I believe you, but even if I did, so what? Many of us here can fight for the male-approved feminist causes you mention and think this shirt is tacky and sexist. You, meanwhile, continue to be more upset about the criticism of the shirt than the death threats and blatant misogyny said criticism evoked, which makes me think maybe you’re not in a position to lecture anyone on feminism.
No, you’re totally not sexist at all…
And as for the STEM fields, that is ridiculous. I am a mechanical engineer and in college i have friends (feminist women) who are brilliant and independent. They simply loved math and creativity and hard work. Someone who doesn’t study a STEM is because he or she doesn’t like it or is bad at it. And even so, the number of women that get in engineering alone has been rising steadily each semester. We almost revered women there because they are so rare. They are even in a position of power, as everyone wants to be their friends, and they are also very capable, on average getting better grades than men in an extremely difficult career.
The mere thought of someone who likes STEM but backs away from it to study Communications based on some assholes is laughable. There is no excuse. Get into STEM and improve the World!
wow! you are super offended by the very fact that this discussion is happening at all!
also
it’s weird how you can say this in conjunction with the argument that the shirt in question is actually okay. this is actually an argument for why the shirt is not okay. are you claiming to be logical? you’re not demonstrating any here.
yep, it’s time to separate your outrage that women are talking and move on to the objective analysis (upon which you’ve already touched) that the shirt is not okay. because, as you stated yourself, it would not be okay for a woman to wear a shirt covered in half-naked men, therefore it is not okay for a man to wear one covered with half-naked women. like you said.
It would be nice if the trolls could express coherent thoughts, but anyways:
Yes, workplaces censor what people wear all the damn time. There are workplaces that require staff to wear a uniform, there are workplaces who require staff to wear business attire. Many workplaces “censor” what employees wear, this is business as usual.
Attention was paid to the achievement, which was the result of hundreds – if not thousands – of people working on the project. There were multiple journalism pieces on the landing. But putting this in perspective, they didn’t discover a cure for dementia, or a way to eradiate influenza. The landing of a probe on a comet is only really interesting for a relatively small subset of people. His wearing a shirt depicting sexualised women, on the other hand, demeans 50% of the population. So you can take your implicit criticism about feminists being primitive and shove it.
No, dude, civilization does not come from science. Civilization comes from people deciding to live together as a society, with laws and rules that mean the society is reasonably pleasant. Laws and rules are mainly created without the influence of science – because they are morality-based. There are a bunch of STEM feminists reading and commenting here, so fuck off with your opinion that we are scientific illiterates.
quiet, ladies! a man, who knows more about your lives and motivations and experiences than you do, is ‘splaining your life to you. if your lives and experiences and motivations don’t match his beliefs, then clearly it is you who are wrong, about yourselves. it’s just ridiculous to think that maybe women know more about themselves than a man does.