Louise Mensch (the Sun columnist and failed Tory MP) has been harassing people on Twitter for hours with grandiose claims about a story about to appear that would PROVE Tim Hunt really was joking. She tweeted this implausible promise at Deborah Blum and Connie St Louis and David Colquhoun among others – addressing DC as ‘Professor’ [in scare quotes], which is staggeringly rude even for the staggeringly rude Louise Mensch. She told all these people they would have to resign once the story appeared.
Then the promised story appeared. It’s in the Sun, and it’s ludicrous.
The headline and subhead:
‘Sexist’ Sir Tim WAS joking, photo shows
Picture could prove top scientist was wrongly hounded out of his job
Note the careful “could,” which is a lot more careful than Mensch has been. But note also the stunningly dishonest claim that Hunt was “hounded out of his job” when the Sun must know perfectly well by now that it was not his job.
The supposedly dispositive photo:
Yeaaaaaah that doesn’t “prove” anything. One woman who is looking away from Hunt is smiling slightly. That “proves” nothing whatsoever. You can’t tell what he was saying at that instant, obviously, and you can’t tell why the woman is smiling slightly, either.
From the ridiculous sub-literate body of the story:
THIS is the picture which proves scientist Tim Hunt was joking when he cracked the joke that ended his career — according to a Facebook poster who was there.
The Nobel Prize winner was hounded out of his job after his comments about “the trouble with girls” sparked a sexism row on social media.
It doesn’t prove anything. Hunt’s career has not been ended. He was not hounded out of his job.
They can’t get the most basic things right. Mensch is a columnist for that rag, so that explains a lot.
The outrage forced him to resign from his honorary position at University College London as well as other posts at the Royal Society and the European Research Council.
But this picture appears to show a female conference delegate chuckling at Sir Tim’s humorous speech.
Filippino science journalist Timothy Dimacali posted it on Facebook saying: “Nobel Laureate Sir Tim Hunt at the exact moment he gave his now-infamous ‘Let me tell you about my trouble with girls’ comment.”
At least they finally got the “job” part right, but only after getting it wrong in two places – clearly deliberately, to amp up the fury. But the picture does not even appear to show a female conference delegate chuckling at Sir Tim’s humorous speech, because she looks as if she’s paying attention to something else.
And Dimacali’s claim about the exact moment? I don’t believe he knows that – I think that’s post facto “memory.”
Mr Dimacali added: “As I keep telling people, he said it in a very lighthearted manner with no outward hint of malice, condescension, or derision.
“I’m not defending him, mind you; what he said was wrong and definitely deserved to be called out. But it was, more than anything else, a joke gone horribly wrong.”
Sexist jokes are still sexist. Mensch is wrong about that too. She’s comprehensively wrong about this whole subject.
One of Sir Tim’s most vocal critics was Connie St Louis, a lecturer in science journalism at City University in London, who insisted the comments were not a joke and left women horrified.
She faced calls to resign herself today as the fresh evidence emerged Sir Tim was the victim of a witch hunt.
Sun columnist and former MP Louise Mensch said: “This photo is proof positive that Sir Tim Hunt was falsely accused of being serious.
“We were told nobody smiled and women were hurt, shocked and scandalized. On the BBC, Connie St Louis said ‘Nobody smiled, nobody laughed — everybody was stony faced’.
“Now she should resign from City University — and the other journalists who misreported him should also resign.”
Mensch and Dawkins should set up a Global Sexist Joke Council.
…This can’t be life.
I guess it isn’t sexism if every woman in camera range isn’t making a >:| face now?
This fits with something I heard when I was at a training seminar in the 90s. One of the speakers was a female judge in Oklahoma City. She told us about a case she had recently heard in which she judged that there was no sexual harassment because the woman plaintiff had laughed at dirty jokes in the past. WTF?
I’ll accept that Sir Tim was telling a joke. It was an unfunny joke and was insulting to the audience but it was still a joke. So what? It was a sexist joke, a micro-aggression. A bigoted joke is still bigoted, even if someone in the audience has a slight smile.
I started laughing when I read that “he was falsely accused of being serious.” Poor Tim Hunt is have to go around making jokes all the time to prove he is innocent of “being serious.”
Caption: “I can’t believe we invited this doofus to speak here.”
The woman with the very very slight smile on her face could well have been responding to someone at her table rolling their eyes or miming making themselves vomit because of what Hunt was saying. This picture would scarcely be dispositive in a “balance of probabilities” civil suit, let alone any higher standard of evidence.
Apart from anything else it’s as if none of these people have ever been to a conference, when you know they must have because of their jobs. People don’t hang on every word of the person holding the mic! Especially not at lunch or dinner. People are doing all sorts of other things, some while also listening to the speaker, others not. It’s ludicrous to treat that photo as “proving” that Tim Hunt had just told a thigh-slapper. Louise Mensch is a ridiculous person.
She doesn’t even look like she’s smiling, to me. She looks like she’s wincing, or trying to blink dust out of her contact lens or something. The body language of the other people in the photo does not indicate amusement, either — no heads tilted back, for example. Looks like a pretty serious group.
It’s so ridiculous to assert that a photo of some random people at some random time supports their fantasy. After all, the record does include the letter from Hunt’s hosts.
I know.
She actually looks like someone in a dust storm or a hail of sideways rain more than like someone smiling at a funny joke.
Brave, Brave Sir Thomas
He was accused of being serious
When he was only a-joking
Brave, Brave Sir Thomas
He was witch-hunted out of honours
While all never turned into a newt.
psanity@8 & Ophelia@9:
Yep. That’s exactly the same face that my cat makes when the wind is blowing into his face. We call it “Finn’s Wind Face” (actually not joking about that at all).
People do smile sometimes at awful jokes they hate. People who are trying to be polite. Especially people who are expected to be conciliatory and make nice, like, for example, women. This may be especially true when the awful joke is being told by a high status person, like, for example, a Nobel Prize winner.
Furtherthereunto: these aforementioned not-entirely sincere or spontaneous smiles tend to look kinda strained. Just sayin.
Remember folks, the Sun is a vile right-wing propaganda rag with a long and well-known history of printing outright lies.
@Dunc #14
The Sun actually makes The Daily Fail look like a reasonable newspaper. It’s not, it’s just not as bad as The Sun.
Disgusting waste of paper and ink.
And the “F” in “Fail” is not a typo.
It is staggering that so many people seem to think that if only we can somehow “prove” that Tim Hunt was “only joking”, then there is no problem and all the people who criticised him will have to commit Seppuku.
If he had cracked a few jokes about jews at a Holocaust memorial event, would these same people still be defending him?
Sadly, I suspect many of them would… There seems to be a pretty big intersection between anti-feminists, gamergaters, and anti-Semites in the great Venn Diagram of internet Assholes.
I’m pretty sure that his more prominent defenders (Dawkins, Cox, etc…) would see the obvious problem there, but there’s a lot of the rank and file that would lap that shit up.
Sadly, I suspect many of them would… There seems to be a pretty big intersection between anti-feminists, gamergaters, and anti-Semites in the great Venn Diagram of internet Assholes.
I’m not so sure. It is certainly true that anti-semitism (or more generally racism), sexism and homophobia often appear together as the Unholy Trinity of bigotry. But in general I think that sexism is far more socially acceptable than anti-semitism. A lot of people would shy away from being seen to support an anti-semite, while they have no such qualms to speak up for a sexist. I might be wrong.
@Dunc
Sorry, quoting has gone terribly wrong…
I think you’re right in general, but when we’re looking at the people who are loudly obsessing over this online, we’re looking at a very specific subset of people, and I think there’s a significant number (although still probably a minority) within the subset who would be fine with naked anti-Semitism. You only have to look at the popularity of anti-Semitic caricatures of Anita Sarkeesian to see how this sort of thing flies with the GG set…