Which they have no right to do.
If someone is offended, they have no right to retaliate against the offender.
Nobody has a right not to have their feelings hurt.
There is a difference in voicing your opinion and retaliating.
Scorning and embarrassing someone is not offering a dissenting opinion, that is retaliation
See above.
Maybe my wording was off in my previous post?
One does not have the right to scorn, embarrass, retaliate because their feelings were hurt.
I think the shirt was inappropriate for a televised airing and not a very smart decision on his part, although his cultural background is going to be different from what I'm used to.
Was it also sexist? There are arguments that can be made about gender sensitivity and how this reflects on greater social issues. I don't think there's anything wrong with making these arguments, and I'd probably agree with at least some of these points on some level. But I think that some people blew this situation way out of proportion by saying that the shirt was an example of casual sexism in STEM that's setting back women's rights by decades, or is scaring off women from these careers. These statements are really presumptuous and accusatory, and are frequently delivered with a lot of anger. And it's not something that comes primarily from women, plenty of men have as well. A few people actually in STEM fields, but mostly those who are not.
What bothers me is no one really seems interested in how his coworkers actually feel about this, either in asking them or just plain bringing it up. There's an assumption that they hate the atmosphere that the scientist is creating but are too cowed and oppressed to say anything about it. But this is something I feel needs to be a bigger component of social activism: encouraging people to (calmly, politely, and with empathy) voice concerns directly to the people who are offending them. Instead of acting with passive aggression, which often boils over to the media picking it up and pushing it on the court of public opinion. A court that often seems to care more about gaining more lines on its oppression portfolio than actually asserting positive change.
lol That is America - outraged over first world problems. Now apparently it is Europe as well.Hush you. We're outraged!
It SHOULD, yes. Outraging over someone's choice of clothing to the point of ignoring their work is the epitome of shallow political correctness.One doesn't really excuse the other.
If I do a bunch of charity work in a "Bitches be trippin'" T-shirt, does it make my shirt any less offensive?
Evidently.wait..I want to make sure i got this right.
Feminist are upset about what the guy wore? They are calling and harassing him? read even a few threats on his life.
so ..he asked for the harassment based on what he wore then eh?
for the record the guy wore the shirt because a FEMALE friend of his made it for him. though..i do think it was a bad idea.
That is incorrect because graphic print shirts were never in style. However, dude is a top level rocket scientist, a 0.000001% level brain. That does not come with a dress code.I think the real issue here is that people think the shirt looks good.
I thought graphic print shirts went out of style in the late 90's.
Um, no. He has repeatedly demonstrated that he is anything but an idiot. He simply has a different opinion that you and I. Insisting that others are not entitled to differing opinions is neither better nor worse than insisting that others are not entitled to wear clothing you don't think they should wear.You don't know because you are an idiot.
Yup. Proper answer would have been "Oh, my shirt offends you? Be sure and write that down, because as soon as you accomplish literally one single thing of significance I'm going to want to hear your opinion."I would not have apologized.
Screw em, it was his day.
He's a rocket scientist. He doesn't work with any women. Which of his coworkers was offended?
It SHOULD, yes. Outraging over someone's choice of clothing to the point of ignoring their work is the epitome of shallow political correctness.
That is incorrect because graphic print shirts were never in style.
However, dude is a top level rocket scientist, a 0.000001% level brain. That does not come with a dress code.
He's a rocket scientist. He doesn't work with any women. Which of his coworkers was offended?
This might surprise you, but NASA for example has several women in high positions of management.
Last week, the European Space Agency landed a space probe on a comet. It was big newshistoric, even.
But another event caused a stir at the same time, tangentially related to the event. Matt Taylor, the Rosetta missions project scientist, went on the air to talk about the successful landing. However, his choice of attire was unfortunate.
He was wearing a bowling shirt covered in pinup-style drawings of scantily clad women.
This upset a lot of people. A lot. It was compounded by his extremely poorly thought-out description of the difficulty of the Rosetta mission: Shes sexy, but I never said she was easy.
Yikes. To be clear, I dont think Taylor is a raging misogynist or anything like that; I think he was just clueless about how his words might sound and his shirt might be interpreted. We all live in an atmosphere steeped in sexism, and we hardly notice it; a fish doesnt notice the water in which it swims. Ive lived in that environment my whole life, and I was well into adulthood before I started becoming aware of it and figuring out how to counter it. Im still learning.
Importantly, the next day, clearly upset he had caused such a fuss, Taylor apologized on air sincerely and graciously for his actions. For the most part, the people who were upset accepted his apology and moved on.
shirt The shirt.
Photo from the ESA news stream, via @RoseVeleth's Twitter feed
But it doesnt end there. As you might expect, when people complained about the casual sexism of the shirt and the mission description, a frothing torrent of backlash misogyny swept over social media, another in a long line of demonstrations of Lewis law (Comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.)
There is much I could say here, but Dr24Hours wrote an excellent summary that aligns fairly well with my thinking. Please go read that right now.
But I have something to add.
If you think this is just women complaining, youre wrong. Certainly many have, and rightly so. But the fact is, Im writing about it. I can point you to many men, friends of mine, scientists and science communicators all, who have spoken up about it. Its important that men speak up, and its important that we listen, too.
If you think this is just complaining from wannabes who cant hold a candle to someone who just landed a probe on a comet, youre wrong. Talk to my friend, the cosmologist Katie Mack. Or the planetary scientist Sarah Horst. Or geologist Mika McKinnon. Or astrophysicist Catherine Q.* Or planetary geologist Emily Lakdawalla. Or radio astronomer Nicole Gugliucci. Or professor and science communicator extraordinaire Pamela Gay. Or Carolyn Porco, who worked on the Voyager mission and is the leader of the Cassini imaging team, the space probe thats been orbiting Saturn for over a decade now.
If you think this is just a bunch of prudes, youre wrong. Its not about the prurience. Its about the atmosphere of denigration.
If you think its OK to use a misogynistic gender-charged word to insult and demean a woman because she used a generic nongender-charged insult about a man, then youre really wrong (and thats one representative tweet from many I saw just like it).
If you think this isnt a big deal, well, by itself, its not a huge one. But its not by itself, is it? This event didnt happen in a vacuum. It comes when there is still a tremendously leaky pipeline for women from undergraduate science classes to professional scientist. It comes when having a female name on a paper makes it less likely to get published, and cited less. It comes when there is still not even close to parity in hiring and retaining women in the sciences.
So yeah, its just a shirt.
And its just an ad.
Its just a saying.
Its just a TV show.
Its just the Internet.
Yes, but you almost make as much as a man does.
Its just a catcall.
Its a compliment!
Its just that boys will be boys.
Its just that shes a slut.
Its just that your dress is too short.
Its just that we want to know what you were wearing at the time, maam.
Its just its just its just.
Its just a death by a thousand cuts. No one cut does the deed. In the end, they all do.
Garbage. "This guy wore a shirt with a naked lady on it so he's equivalent to a rapist." No wonder no one takes them seriously.
Garbage. "This guy wore a shirt with a naked lady on it so he's equivalent to a rapist." No wonder no one takes them seriously.
If that was what the article said, you would have a point. Since it doesn't (not even close), you don't.
Now, what was that about being taken seriously?
Also.
If its OK to harass this guy for the images of the women on his shirt that would mean that those images of women are unacceptable.
Which would mean its equally valid to harass any women who would dress like that.
being taken seriously?
I’m not going to condemn a man for owning an awful shirt with half-naked women on it. That’s his own business, and I couldn’t care less. But it shows a staggering lack of judgement, and callousness to what others might infer, to wear this shirt to work. At all. When grownups go to work, they should dress appropriately for work. And unless you work at a bowling alley/strip club, that shirt is almost certainly not appropriate. It is really not appropriate when you’re going to be on a worldwide live-stream meant to be dedicated to inspirational science and engineering.
Casually throwing around sexually charged language and imagery in a workplace that is not about sex is simply not appropriate behavior. For anyone. And yes, for some men this means losing a tiny measure of freedom. We lose the freedom to be horn-dog dipshits in the workplace, because we need the workplace to be a comfortable place for everyone. (And, while it seems far less common to me, yes, women are also not allowed to be horn-dog dipshits in the workplace.)
However, I am also concerned by the calls I see for him to be fired. Unless he has a history of behaving this way in defiance of request and directive to change, then what he deserves is a reprimand, a dress code, and to hear from people he respects that this is unprofessional and undignified. The leap from “He wore an offensive shirt” to “he must be fired” is an escalation I can’t justify with the information I have.