But he can be a useful hack. In his recent column in which he sneered at feminists, he distilled down the entirety of his complaint to a single paragraph. This is the part where he described ALL THE TERRIBLE THINGS feminists had done to Matt Taylor. ALL OF THEM.
The Atlantic’s Rose Eveleth tweeted, "No no women are toooootally welcome in our community, just ask the dude in this shirt." Astrophysicist Katie Mack commented: "I don’t care what scientists wear. But a shirt featuring women in lingerie isn’t appropriate for a broadcast if you care about women in STEM." And from there, the online feminist lynch mob took off until Taylor was forced to deliver a tearful apology on camera.
Oh My Gourd, the feminists lynched him? Dragged him out to a nearby tree and hanged him until he was dead?
No, actually, they didn’t. All that happened is that a woman said the shirt made people feel unwelcome in the scientific community, using that tool of satan, sarcasm, and another said the shirt was inappropriate. They tweeted short sentences expressing their opinion! To a pissy-pants fearful conservative like Reynolds, stating a criticism is exactly like lynching a man. It’s remarkable. The “Guys, don’t do that” phenomenon wasn’t a one-off event, was it? Men freaking out over women making mild rebukes is beginning to look a little more universal, sad to say.
Reynolds gets the moral of the story completely backwards, though.
It seems to me that if you care about women in STEM, maybe you shouldn’t want to communicate the notion that they’re so delicate that they can’t handle pictures of comic-book women. Will we stock our Mars spacecraft with fainting couches?
Wait. In Reynolds’ version of the story, he has the feminists standing strong and making the burly bearded engineer cry (I actually prefer a more charitable interpretation, that he felt genuine remorse at his thoughtless choice of attire). Since a Mars mission would require a cooperative team effort, I think the clear message is that we better not send any men at all, because they’ll buckle and fold and have temper tantrums if a teammate should criticize anything they do.
“Hey, Hank, you over-rotated that antenna. Could you back it off about 5°?”
“You bitch, Sharon. Don’t you judge me. You fucking feminists are all out to bust my balls.” <smashes antenna with a wrench> <breaks down in tears, sobbing>
“This is Mission Control. Glenn Reynolds wants to know why you are murdering Hank, Sharon.”
I have to conclude that if the first manned Mars mission is staffed with the very best, most stable people, it’s going to have to be an all-woman crew.
You’re such a man-hater, PZ.
I approve.
i love the way Ophelia describes it – it’s not about feeling fragile or hurt, it’s about deciding where and how we want to spend our time. Some women; not all, but some, look at a sexist environment and decide nope, don’t want to spend my career dealing with that, so they don’t. They go do something else instead. That’s a loss for the field they decided to take a pass on. Hey, know that brilliant woman who would have made huge discoveries in your field? She went and did something else instead because she didn’t want to put up with your crap. Doesn’t matter if you care about that woman; you should be concerned about that if you care about the success of the field. Or, if you want to be more competitive about it, she’ll go work in the same field, but for a different less sexist company, who will then bury yours. It’s not about hurt feelings, it’s a cold, calculated cost-benefit analysis. As Melissa McEwan says: I’m not offended, I’m contemptuous.
Odd, his link to an unnamed female scientists who disagrrees comment on twitter returns a page not found error. His final paragraph is a real triumph of bullshit.
What an ass. You would think Matt Taylor would have noticed that he has been mobbed and lynched by the mean girl gang. Maybe the real MT was lynched and the clever mean girls at ESA have replaced him with an android?
Who is Glenn Reynolds?
I made exactly the same point about the over-the-top ravings of right-wing hero David Gelernter, who got all hissy because some folks dared! dared! to take issue with philosopher Thomas Nagel.
Gelernter described the fairly mild criticism of Nagel a “lynch mob” and a “mass attack of killer hyenas”.
What is it with these right-wingers? Are they all so timid that they can’t handle a little mild criticism without yelling “lynch mob” ?
I love how this manly men are saying that Real Women in STEM should be tough and be able to handle such trivialities as being constantly bombarded with a “boy’s club” atmosphere that is specifically hostile to them in THEIR FUCKING JOBS, but at the same time go all hiperbolically dramatic and throw pathetic tantrums because they are incapable of handling people making mild criticisms on FUCKING TWITTER.
I’m starting to get really annoyed at the image of stupid, infantile irrationality that these manly men are giving my gender.
From reading the article, I’d say an overly emotional toddler who needs a nap.
How to demonstrate that sexism is over and we’re now in the age of misandry:
1. Woman/women voices some criticism about a guy’s behaviour, however mild
2. Dudes yell at her how she’s totally unreasonable
3. Dudes make death and rape threats
4. Other people express solidarity with woman
5. Dudes cry about how they are being lynced, witch hunted, prosecuted by the very nazis
6. Dudes also declare that women are totally overreacting and emotional
7. Rinse and repeat
This is typical bully behavior. If they can’t intimidate you, which you show by criticizing them and their ideas, the defensive mechanism kicks in. So they try to play the victim, over acting with overwrought emotion, which makes them look ridiculous. If they could only see that.
Glen Reynolds wrote:
Aaaaannnnndddd …. just leave all the porn hanging on the walls all over? Cuz “they gotta be tuff enuff to disregard it? The menz just put those pictures up “out of respect”, cuz it is just naturalz for menz to find womenz bodies the most beautiful sight in the universe. Why force the menz to look at plain walls when they can seez beauty instead?
*cough* , *cough* , *blech* , *ahem* ….
And, Mr. Reynolds, feminists aren’t telling girls to avoid STEM because there are comic book pictures of scantily clad women on shirts in the STEM fields. Can you not hear the clamor telling the STEM guy that his shirt is “inappropriate”. They are not telling girls that they are too delicate to see such vulgarity, they are telling the menz to be less vulgar if they want women to join the field. That allegory of PZ’s about pointing the antenna in the wrong direction is perfect analogy of Reynolds hackjob.
Yep, in order for women to prove that they are as good as any man they have to overcome a shitton of obstacles men never face in the first place but happily leave all over the place.
It’s psychologically called “projection”. They can only conceive of what they would do (if God didn’t stand in the way), so naturally, they project their desired behavior on people criticizing them as “lynch mobs”
I have started using crewed instead of manned…
Consider the reaction to possibly the mildest criticism ever uttered: “Guys, don’t do that.”
I’m trying to figure out how delicate women on fainting couches lynched Taylor. It’s not going so well. I had to stop at the robot arms coming out of the couches. Too much crazy and it’s only the morning.
I don’t know for sure how Taylor took the criticism. But for both scientists and engineers, being able to cope with people saying “that thing you did is a bit wrong” is part of the job.
I bet Reynolds is the same sort of tedious bigot who complains about “political correctness” and how society is sooo oversensitive. But some women saying “that shirt is inappropriate” is EXACTLY like lynch mobs, witch hunts and other horrors of human history. For some reason this absurd over reaction is never a sign of professional victimhood or oversensitivity. Do these hypocritical gobshites ever do any self introspection?
@ospalh #13:
I have started using crewed instead of manned…
I’ve used “crewed” in writing, too, but it does sound peculiar when spoken.
I have learned to associate a person who generally communicates ‘I am smart, look at my credentials’ with medium intelligence. Another specific dog-whistle is ‘in my professional opinion’.
Are we expecting to encounter a lot of pictures of comic book women on Mars? Because even if you accept the stated premises of his position, it would still make no sense unless that was the case.
Sounds like Ana Kasparian! She just put out another video about how this whole shirt-gate “belittles feminism”. Probably just like people said the Ferguson protests belittled racism.
Well, probably Dawkins, first secretary of the Central Comitee of True Feminism™, just made her the official spokesperson.
Brony wrote:
Don’t worry, since consistent analogies are not their strong suit, I’m sure we can look forward to whiny babies strong-arming people in the future.
Of course we all know what some of these people will call women who do behave in the tough way they supposedly want. Yeah, that good ole B word.
Yesterday I completed an online sexual harassment training for the community college (in the US) where I am currently teaching. I was thinking about this while I was going through the course and this shirt would ABSOLUTELY fall under sexual harassment. That’s not to say that the person would lose their job over it, if it was a one time thing, but a complaint to HR would be valid. Most likely in this scenario (if it happened where I teach) the person wearing the shirt would be told by their supervisor that the shirt is inappropriate and may be brought in for a talk with HR. Either way the incident would be noted in case any further incidents with that same person occurred in the future. This outcome does also depend on if there were any previous incidences of sexual harassment complaints.
Well, sure, for the Science, which is the pure and unsullied part of their job. Acting diplomatically towards, *snort* people? Shall not be a concern for the Manly Men of Science and Skepticism.
w00dview 17:
No.
Hope this is helpful.
I’m sure this will surprise exactly no one, but the “Actually, it’s about ethics in game journalism” folks have jumped into this one, too. Guess it was actually about misogyny after all.
As opposed to “crude,” if the Reynolds types have their way.
How to demonstrate that sexism is over and we’re now in the age of misandry:
1. Woman/women voices some criticism about a guy’s behaviour, however mild
2. Dudes yell at her how she’s totally unreasonable
3. Dudes make death and rape threats
4. Other people express solidarity with woman
5. Dudes cry about how they are being lynced, witch hunted, prosecuted by the very nazis
6. Dudes also declare that women are totally overreacting and emotional
7. Rinse and repeat
The solution is obvious: stop criticizing these guys. It’s interesting that it’s exactly the same solution put forth by those calling for burqas to be worn to (supposedly) stop men from having sexual thoughts and/or committing rape, or by the Georgia town which recently proposed banning abortion clinics as the solution to the problems caused by protesters at abortion clinics.
Just as pseudoscientists all use the same set of logical fallacies, these morality police wannabes all propose the same solution for the problems they themselves cause: restrict the rights of their victims.
I hereby propose that we take up a collection, and get Glenn Reynolds a Tom of Finland shirt for him to wear to press functions. I’m sure he’ll love it.
WHTM encapsulated all the angry manly-man whining in one sentence.
The dood who wrote the enraged letter proclaiming that he stands with Matt Taylor is particularly logic impaired. Matt Taylor has apologized, and gotten back to the awesome science like a rational adult. Too bad these wankers can’t do the same.
White men telling other people to toughen up while comparing mere criticism of them to actual violence done to women and minorities continues to piss me off.
These men have now compared criticism of men’s bigoted words and actions to lynching, rape and witch hunts.
They use violence directed at minorities primarily by privileged men like them to describe how horrible uppity minorities are to speak up to them. Unironically.
Then they tell us that we are trivializing that violence by talking about the attitudes that allow them to happen.
I’m waiting for one of them to claim that women complaining about sexism is just like FGM, forced marriage or being gunned down in the street for carrying skittles. It’s only a matter of time.
I am again reminded of the following Gavin de Becker line (paraphrasing an anecdote relayed by Margaret Atwood and often misattributed to Atwood herself): “At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.”
So much sexism feeds on insecure dudebros’ tenuous grip on a fragile, toxic masculinity.
I do not want to change the subject but you know just to address the “what is it with the right wingers” in general. I see little real difference with this reaction to any criticism as being attacked tha is also reflected in congress and the grid lock there.
The new leader of the senate majority mr turtle says that now maybe there would be some compromising on the dems and the president position when what they mean is that they should now agree with them when nothing has been preventing them from doing some compromising up to now.
I would bet a large amount of money that if you could get an accurate poll of the conservatives generally as to all the issues including these social justice issues and the “morality issues” that they would over lap to a considerable degree with these MRA’s and climate change deniers.
It is not like they are separate people just that they are vocal in different areas.
the feeling I get from them is they just do not accept that anyone who disagrees with them has any right to exist at all. They are very adept at rationalizing their beliefs and desires about reality, they are deeply irrational and do not like it pointed out at all.
it would be funny if they did not have negative effects on real people and actual events.
uncle frogy
It seems hard for these people to believe that Taylor really did feel remorseful. They’re disturbingly close to the Conspiracist mindset, where anything that contradicts their narrative is a deception.
Just in case: trigger warning for paraphrase of reality.
*a woman criticises a sexist attitude*
Too many men (and some women): Stop with the witch hunt lynching party, you nazi. You need to be less sensitive.
*men threatening to rape and/or kill the woman for said criticism*
Too many men (and some women): That’s just trolls, which obviously totally excuses it. You need to be less sensitive or get off this wonderful communication method (internet/twitter/facebook/…) that is now essential to many jobs and social connections and thus become a digital social recluse.
*A man rapes a woman*
Too many men (and some women): What did she expect wearing those clothes, doesn’t she know that men are mindless animals that have no control whatsoever on their libido?
*A woman criticises a man*
Too many men (and some women): I have no idea whatsoever what the difference is between rape and free speech and therefore I will equate them to point out what my ignorance makes me think is a contradiction in your position which I think totally undermines your point and in no way at all exposes me as an ignorant fuckwit who is unwilling to spend more than 5 seconds to think about whether what I am about to say makes any sense at all.
that’s the really sad thing, right there.
Yes, of course. And I have been wondering, what would be the reaction (from his supervisors, or from social issue spokespeople of any stripe) if a gay engineer and mission expert were to wear such a shirt, and then add bits to his technical explanation about the intrepid little lander first feeling a mild attraction, and then grappling with the big butch comet.. ?
I really can’t even imagine something so crass .. but I can imagine young straight male engineers-to-be (among others) deciding that this crude crew would not be comfortable company. Are Reynolds and his ilk incapable of such a thought experiment?
The Prince and the Pea, a tale of equality
A fine prince was once informed that he had most of the mattresses in the kingdom and certainly the finest. This made some of the people restless (literally). Some of them began to question whether or not it was right that others had so little while the prince had so much. Sleeping on the ground and losing sleep left the people in the kingdom sore, cold and grumpy. They sent word to the castle that they were unhappy and wanted change.
“Whiners! Ingrates! They need to toughen up and accept their place!”, said the prince upon his pile of eider down mattresses. “This aggression against me is unfair, impolite and probably something Hitler would do! They are selfish, decadent sluggabeds and wastrels trying to reduce me to lying in the dirt! Tell the people to stifle or I shall send men to threaten to burn the meager piles of straw their families sleep on.” Then the righteous prince added, “And someone do something about this pea. It’s killing me!”
Zimmerle wrote:
Close? I guess you didn’t see the infographic at we Hunted the Mammoth that I linked above. They’re full-on in conspiracy mode.
They are coming, and they want to take our guns, games, and shirts!!1!eleventy1!
It’s the same WHTM post that Tethys pulled that fun little quote from. Definitely worth reading.
parasiteboy:
Maybe in your part of the world HR departments are effective, but at the universities I’ve worked at, they’ve been largely useless. I might even say they’re just for decoration, because of a curious feature I’ve noticed at more than one employer: HR department staff are noticeably more attractive than other university staff. It’s almost as if the department which is supposed to police the institution’s employment practices is not appointing on merit!
Ah, how the mighty has fallen. He used to be probably the premier right-winged blogger, back when people started paying attention to blogs.
I disagree with PZ though. In the beginning, Instapundit wasn’t a hack, or at least not always.
He used to try to be fair and his linking was bi-partisan. He was involved with the left-winged bloggers in getting Trent Lott to step down (though most of the work was done by Atrios). He soon changed however, and began to form an echo-chamber, only linking to right-winged sources – I actually did an analysis of this about 10 years ago, and you can measure how his linking pattern rapidly changed over time.
Now he is a hack, and thankfully mostly irrelevant.
At least in one company I have worked at, the attractiveness of a member of the HR department was put to good use in filtering out the creeps during the first job interview. It is amazing how many people would behave inappropriately towards her (staring at her breasts etc.), and thus demonstrate their inability to behave properly.
Years ago I was in the Air Force and was dating an officer who shared an apartment with a fellow pilot. They made a big deal about hanging a Penthouse centerfold on the bathroom wall. Full frontal everything was right at eye level over the towel bar. Fun stuff, huh?!?
Playgirl magazine had just started publishing. My roommate and I decided to play a trick and got a centerfold — a pair of C&W singers standing with their strategically positioned musical instruments — and hung it over the picture of the buxom blond. Then we waited. The reaction was not quite what we had anticipated. My boyfriend was irate and offended. Yes, offended. How dare we hang such a disgusting image in his house?!? We thought he was joking, but it soon became clear he was not. Who knew his sensibilities were so delicate?
Moggie@43
I’ve never had to go through the process myself, just the training at 3 different places (the life of a lecturer). So I cannot honestly speak to the outcome of any actual events, only the training and what should happen.
With that said, my significant other had a graduate student doing a rotation through the lab that she manages at a university and this graduate student was making several females feel uncomfortable with the way he was talking and acting. It was reported to the professor and HR. HR went through the process and talked with the graduate student to explain to him that he was engaging in sexual harassment and that these instances would be recorded in case any further instances of sexual harassment occurred. The HR department actually did what they should have done according to the training.
You would think David Gelernter, of all people, would grasp the essential difference between verbal criticism of someone’s views and physical violence against someone because of their views.
Haven’t read the post nor the comments; I just want to say that I effing hate it that my surname can be used as a slur in English. PZ uses it a lot.
Hack? I had a physics prof named Dr. Haq. All around great guy and prof, but the name made me laugh a little.
—
One thing I see consistently argue is that there’s nothing really wrong with the shirt: that sexualizing women isn’t really a big deal; that women sexualize themselves all the time e.g. Kim Kardashians latest media stunt.
Sure, OK, sexualizing women isn’t inherently wrong. I’ll even grant that this particular guy wasn’t trying to promote degrading views of women. But, knowing that, how can you tell the difference? A dude wearing a shirt covered in near naked women sends a pretty strong message: even unintentionally, there’s a clear undertone of “I think of women as meat.” Sure, he might not have meant to say that, but that is what he’s saying, and I wouldn’t blame women for being uncomfortable around him, not knowing whether the red flag on his torso is to be heeded or if it is ultimately innocuous.*
*I’m ignoring perpetuation of a cultural norm, here, and am only addressing the immediate impact on his workplace.
—
Another amusing argument I’ve seen is the argument that feminists are victim blaming Taylor. Apparently, losts of feminists have said something along the lines of, “He should have seen it coming, where that shirt.” Now, I haven’t actually seen that uttered anywhere, but given that the shirt almost certainly violates some HR standard in his workplace, he really should have seen some sort of criticism coming, if not this much criticism;* it’s a lot easier to avoid such problems when the causes are specifically laid out for you, and are pretty much entirely predictable. Second, I’m not convinced he’s been victimized in any way. It’s only victim blaming if there’s a victim, and you’re not a victim if you’re criticized for you crass behaviour.
* Of course, the amount of criticism would die down if idiots just let his apology stand, and stopped making stupid arguments in support of him: they’re just dragging along the controversy, and potentially making Taylor, who handled the blowback quite well, look worse by association.