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.
Poached furs and skins are a crime; farmed furs and skins are not. You’re an idiot.
*looks over at my bachelor’s in palaeontology and my freelance web design business* You’re an idiot.
You’re an idiot.
I’m Rosalind Franklin.
Citation required.
Nope, no sexism here.
Yes, because if women find STEM fields uninviting due to sexism, then it’s up to women to make those fields inviting.
Every time I think someone can’t be this stupid, a troll turns up and comments.
Sparky – When you like an entire field of knowledge you don’t back away from it because of other’s beliefs. And in the STEM fields, we actually know that women are good at math, because all of the women here are good at math. The cultural belief that women can’t math is not part of STEM.
I agree that the shirt was unprofessional (too colorful), but not sexist. It was even made by a woman (you should look up her reaction to this, BTW). Matt should have anticipated extremist reactions, even if those reactions are biased.
Thanksgiving feast for the blockquote monster.
Hmmm. In case ghostiger or whichever sexist dumbass out there reads this and still has utterly bullshit ideas like “the shirt is not sexist, it glorifies independent women who own their sexuality and don’t need any man”, there was a fairly well-written tumblr post about that recently. Where was it? Ah, yes,here:
http://downtroddendeity.tumblr.com/post/103405441887/shitrichcollegekidssay-the-exercist
tl;dr version: In order for a half-naked woman to be sending a message of embracing their sexuality and not caring what others think, they need to, you know, be real women, not fictional pin-up sex symbols specifically designed to cater to the male gaze.
The women in this shirt have not “chosen” anything, because fictional women can’t make a choice. The only reason they are in those specific clothes, poses and looked at from those specific angles is because their creators chose to make them that way. The only reason one could possibly think they represent real women’s sexuality is if one thinks a woman’s primary objective (even when she’s “independent” and “not in need of any man”) is to look sexually pleasing to the straight male onlooker. And that, my friend, is just one aspect of misogyny.
Everything else in ghostiger’s post has been covered perfectly already, so I suggest ghostiger tries to read and understand what others have written so far before compiling another ignorant post.
And all the women who say otherwise about their own lives are lying or something. But whatever allows you to justify the stats quo, I guess.
Also, I live the claim that “civilization wouldn’t exist without science!”, as though (1) civilization would exist without women, (2) science is a monolith and anyone nominally involved in it can claim each other’s achievements, and (3) excluding half the population based purely on gender couldn’t possibly have held us back.
BTW, James or ghostiger or whatever we’re supposed to call you, if you really are a mechanical engineer you are proving that problematic sexist attitudes exist in your field quite spectacularly.
You mean like the way it’s almost impossible to buy a fancy dress outfit for women that isn’t a sexyfied version of whatever it is? You mean you want to dress like a scientist and for people to not be able to see your knickers? At the same time?! Crazy talk.
James. Dude. YOU ARE MORE UPSET ABOUT CRITICISM OF A SHIRT THAN YOU ARE ABOUT DEATH THREATS IN RESPONSE TO SAID CRITICISM. You do not have the moral or intellectual high ground here.
Alright, game on, James. Let’s gallop this gish off into the sunset!
Correct! The problem is, you fail to understand what is bad. It’s not just the shirt, it’s the combination of the shirt and culture.
Right, all scenarios. Just flipping the genders of the shirt and shirt wearer won’t cut it.
So what?
… no?
The Looney Tunes aren’t being driven away from STEM fields. Anyway, apparently you’re only getting a small part of why the shirt was unprofessional, and pretending that the inappropriate aspects don’t exist.
I like to have sex. Doesn’t mean I’m going to wear a shirt with people fucking on it. Also, you don’t appear to understand the difference between glorification and objectification. And you’ve got a big of “Dear Muslima” going on as well. Dang, you’ve got a knack for packing a single sentence with as much wrong as possible.
If I went to a fancy restaraunt and ordered a steak, and it came out perfectly prepared with just a teaspoon of feces on the top, that would ruin the meal.
But anyway, you’re wrong on the face of it. Lots of attention was paid to the actual scientific achievement, especially among the shirt detractors. “We landed on a frikken comet, something no person has ever done before, and with women and girls watching on and getting excited about science, this guy shows up in a sexist shirt.”
Which is why we should be letting as many people as possible feel welcome in science, women included. And women don’t feel welcome in a field where a guy can show up on TV in a sexist shirt (which is just one more straw in the haystack of other ways women are discouraged from the field).
(BTW, you meant “and generally scientifically illiterate,” right?)
Funny you should mention income, because STEM fields pay extremely well, so fighting for better income partially means fighting for more inclusivity in those higher paying fields. Anyway, it’s not our fault if you refuse to acknowledge the wolf’s existance simply because it’s still wearing sheep’s clothing.
This whole diatribe of yours has been nothing but one long mish-mash of bad arguments and manfeels. “He likes women, big deal,” “the shirt is actually glorification of women,” “the shirt is actually nothing more than a cartoon shirt,” “criticizing the shirt is a crime against science,” “criticizing the shirt detracts from the REAL problems,” blah blah blah blah blah.
I’ll take this sentence seriously when you do.
Mmhm. And I’m sure you are in the best position to judge whether or not the argument is petty, not like all those dumb emotional broads, right? All the women telling you that it isn’t petty at all, that this is one of the things that prevents gender equaltiy, they aren’t being objective.
Oh,and forgot to add: The fact that the shirt was made by a woman matters squat. It was made for this man specifically, which is saying something. It’s possible she didn’t believe the guy would be wearing that shirt to such an important event.
It wouldn’t matter anyway, since contrary to anti-feminist mantras, feminists do, in fact, believe that women can do wrong. They can make bad choices, they can have lapses in judgement, they can feel pressured to act in a certain way, they may want to be one of the “cool girls”, they may have whatever motivation, but their actions still speak for them. Not all women are aware of (or care) how damaging misogynistic attitudes are to women as a group, so “a woman agrees with me so it can’t be sexist!” is not going to fly here. There are plenty of misogynistic women in existence. David frequently writes articles about some of them, too.
Of course it matters. If men and women are equally objectified and if women and men are equally likely to objectify the opposite sex, shirts depicting sexualized men and sexualized women would exist and be worn in roughly equal numbers.
That would be true in a vacuum. But we don’t live in a vacuum. We live in a culture in which men have the privilege and the power and women are treated as sex objects, sexually harassed, and pushed out of prestigious and highly paid fields. The only field in which women are paid more than men is modeling. A job in which you use beauty and sex appeal to sell things.
Women grow up in our sexist culture too. Google “internalized misogyny” and educate yourself a little bit.
Pointing out that a shirt is offensive isn’t censorship. It’s not as if we were calling for his head.
Looney Tunes are children’s cartoon animals. That’s not the same as depictions of highly sexualized women. If you’re going to hold yourself up as someone who is intellectually superior to the commenters on this blog, you’re going to have to prove it. Stop making false equivalencies and actually make a logical argument showing that this shirt is not offensive. We’ve already explained to you why this shirt doesn’t glorify it. Instead of addressing our arguments, you are simply restating your opinion. That’s not an argument.
What is? Your writing is unfocused and unclear.
Once again, this isn’t a science news blog. This a mocking misogyny blog. The entire internet doesn’t have to be devoted to science news. This post wasn’t even about the shirt. It was about misogynists telling women to kill themselves because they criticized the shirt.
How do you know we are scientifically illiterate? Actually, many of commenters here have education in STEM fields. For example, I’ve studied neuroscience. Stop trying to mansplain science to us. You don’t even seem to know how to apply scientific or analytical thought to social issues. You’re just stating your opinion and assuming that they’re the truth because you feel that they are.
Also, all of civilization does not come from science. Don’t get me wrong, scientific advancements are great and I appreciate them. However, civilization depends on people getting along and working together well. There’s no time or opportunity to do science if we’re too busy killing each other. Societal norms can sometimes be flawed, but they are crucial.
Feminism is a movement by women and for women. How dare you, as a man tell us who is a true feminist? It’s not your call. It’s pretty hilarious that you think true feminism is fighting for better incomes for women but you don’t realize that part of that fight is keeping workplaces free from hostility against women. As people have mentioned upthread, the placement of sexualized depictions of women around the workspace is a time honored method of making female employees feel unwelcome.
Also, I don’t think you know what “false flag” means.
You first, buddy.
You do realize that we’ve moved on from the shirt and are no longer talking about it, right? You’re the one who necro’d an old thread to start the argument back up.
Ever wondered why they were so rare? Why they tended to be more capable? I could tell you the secret, if you wish.
Pallygirl – “I’m Rosalind Franklin.” “Citation required.” “Nope, no sexism here.” wow, such a well structured comment based on nothing whereas I use examples, cause and consequence (like something > do it), I speak like a normal respectful adult and actually bust the myth of STEM (and I’m the stupid one here, right?). You are the troll.
STEM fields are uninviting to everyone (but not because of the students, most are friendly towards women, I see it every day), with an impossible admission score threshold and teachers treating us as shit and making us work like crazy.
Not everything has to be inviting. But hey, fuck logic and actual STEM field experience. Everything I say will be used against me, I’ll just get back to interact with non.haters.
“Haters”?
Yeah, he’s not an engineer, he’s a teenager.
I just love how he goes out of his way a blog about mocking misogyny to edumacate us on what’s *really* important. It’s like we’re a herd of blanks just waiting for a smart guy to come teach us about the important things.
I admire all the folks who’ve bothered to respond to this seriously, because his inability to reason his way through his own statements is making my eyes roll.
Seriously, has anyone seen my eyeballs?
Ghostiger wouldn’t know a well-structured comment if it performed a song-and-dance routine in front of him wearing lime-green spandex before biting him in his pretentious ass.
James – science in no way suffered for this, it got plenty of attention as it rightly should.
It’s just that the shirt got attention too, and as many have already said it sends a message that needs to be addressed.
And it does matter if one group is offended even if the other isn’t.
As I’ve said to my kids – it doesn’t matter if you enjoy having water poured over your own head; he’s crying and screaming and that’s your cue to stop it.
Hear what people are saying – right now you’re too busy telling everyone how it is to listen to them telling you it’s not.
your assfax here consists of a second-hand anecdote in which you assume you know the inner lives of other people.
such stem. so logic. wow.
I’d just like to add: ‘glorification’ is problematic too. It’s putting women on a sexy pedestal, not treating them like people.
Oh, God: A “This thing that almost never actually happens to men wouldn’t offend me, why are you hysterical ladies getting all upset about it?” troll.
You all have more patience than I do.
i just want to point out here that social sciences get a lot of “that’s not real science” crap from natural scientists (including engineers, or engineering students as the case may be) but this “i once met a woman in an engineering program, and never experienced it myself because I’m not a woman, therefore misogyny in stem is not a problem” anecdata would get you laughed all the way to the curb in any social science research.
“I busted the STEM myth! Why won’t you give my random assertions mire weight than research or the stated experiences of actual women in STEM?”
Also, dude, stop trying to separate WHTM commenters from STEM professionals; there are plenty of STEM folks commenting here. Some have identified themselves already. It’s like you literally can’t see things that contradict your worldview – something a good scientist should be able to do.
I was addressing your points. Clearly you’re too stupid to see that:
– you asserting you are a mechanical engineer on the internet is just like me asserting I’m Rosalind Franklin – the assertion is evidence-free.
– The citation required was in response to something you asserted as true (Someone who doesn’t study a STEM is because he or she doesn’t like it or is bad at it.) but produced no evidence to support your assertion.
– The nope, no sexism here comment I made was in response to you making a sexist comment that the lived experience of women who choose another field due to the sexism in STEM doesn’t occur in reality (The mere thought of someone who likes STEM but backs away from it to study Communications based on some assholes is laughable.)
You haven’t used any examples, you haven’t linked cause and consequence, you aren’t acting like a normal respectful adult, you haven’t busted any STEM myths. That you think you have done these things in your comments here shows how appallingly bad your logical reasoning and science skills are.
So you’re still in school but you know about how every STEM working environment is for women? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.
No, fuck you. You haven’t used logic. You’ve come in here and mansplained all over the place. I laugh at your – what – couple of months of STEM field placement experience.
Perhaps you mistake what we mean by an inviting field. We don’t mean that women get showered with teacakes every tea break, but simply that there isn’t a hostile work environment that implicitly or explicitly says “you don’t belong here” every fucking minute of the day.