It’s crystal clear.
The past few days have seen extensive international discussion of an incident (known online as #shirtstorm or #shirtgate) in which a participant in a European Space Agency media conference wore a shirt with sexualized images of gun-toting women and made an unfortunate remark comparing the featured spacecraft to a woman. Viewers responded critically to these inappropriate statements, especially jarring in such a highly visible setting (one in which very few women appeared), and the scientist apologized sincerely. But in the meantime, unacceptable abuse has been directed toward the critics, from criticism of “over-active feminism” to personal insults and more dire threats.
We wish to express our support for members of the community who rightly brought this issue to the fore, and we condemn the unreasonable attacks they experienced as a result, which caused deep distress in our community. We do appreciate the scientist’s sincere and unqualified apology.
The AAS has a clear anti-harassment policy, which prohibits “verbal comments or physical actions of a sexual nature” and “a display of sexually suggestive objects or pictures.” Had the offending images appeared and comments been made under the auspices of the AAS, they would be in clear violation of our policy.
If you’re still trying to argue that it was unfair bullying by SJWs/feminists, as so many are doing, you are on the wrong side. A professional astronomical society has come out with a strong statement that the shirt was in violation of their anti-harassment policy.
Clearly the American Astronomical Society has been infested with feminist cooties.
By now I actually pity Dr. Taylor.
Not because he was criticised by feminists, but for the people who defend him.
Did you know he had a mini-breakdown in that second interview and that this was emotionally devastating for him? Honestly, if anything should tell him that he made a mistake it’s the people who came to his “rescue”
P Z’s neighbor and mine:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/witchcraft-obsessed-gop-county-chair-muslims-must-accept-jesus-or-leave-the-united-states/
That’s honestly how I feel. He made a mistake, he was called on it, he apologized. That should have been the end of it. Now he’s got an entire brigade of vile morons rallying around him like he’s some sort of banner. That’s gotta sting.
Poll on shirt gate has broken strongly one direction with >650 responses so far. http://www.ipscell.com/2014/11/weigh-in-on-shirtgate-with-poll/
Interesting geographic patterns developing in metadata too that I will blog on later.
Paul
I’m glad the AAS included the fact that few women were visible in the coverage of the event. The sexualized images of women were more represented than actual, real women who are involved with the project. The face of women in STEM shouldn’t be as a decoration on a shirt, and that’s what the broadcast did.
So now that the AAS has commented, will the ESA finally make a comment about their policies on this? And apologize, of course.
It’s funny how the anti-feminist crowd clings to these incidents more tightly than the feminists they protest, from Rebecca Watson’s passing mention of a clueless and circumstantially unnerving coffee invitation to Dr. Taylor’s workplace-inappropriate shirt.
An old Buddhist story tells of an older and younger monk walking down a road when they meet a woman trying to get across the road without wading into a puddle. The older monk promptly carried the woman across, set her down on the other side, and continued walking. The younger monk scolded the older one for breaking his vows against interacting with let alone touching women. The older monk replied, “I left the woman behind us. Why are you still carrying her?”
Why indeed? Really, who’s playing victim?
Ahh, but anti-harassment policies are themselves authoritarian bullying. How will women ever know what a great guy I am if I can’t be a jackass toward them? Wait….
if anything should tell him that he made a mistake it’s the people who came to his “rescue”
^^ Quite right!!!
Last night I watched To catch a Comet on my local PBS station. Matt Taylor was prominently featured (but not the shirt). He definitely seemed to be seriously interested in the mission and in being an ambassador of the mission to the rest of the world. I don’t presume to say I understand why he wore the shirt in the first place, but I do think he truly regrets doing it, and not merely because teh wimminz wuz mean to him.
The American Astronomical Society did exceptionally well with that statement. Kudos to them.
Sometimes I wish there was a way of voting comments up or down. Some comments are so good I’d really like to compliment the person who made them but that makes for boring reading for others. I honestly try to restrain myself (but fmitchel I love your story about the monks.)
@2: Yup. (Fun fact: the comic’s own site apparently went down for a few hours after this was posted. Now, it’s gone from the archives.)
I heard he received death threats and such (ala gamergate). Was that simply false? I could not substantiate the threats, but my Google Fu sucks. I saw some references along the lines of “wtf?”, but nothing more.
The Australian Astronomical Society also put out a similar statement a couple of days ago… Link
Thank you, AAS, for your positive statement on feminism and for slapping down the sexists.
Oh, wait – Actually, it was the Astronomical Society of Australia.
Ok – obligatory…
“Whatever happened to the Australian Astronomical Society?”
“That’s him over there…”
*pause*
“SPLITTERS!”
To me it’s also rather odd that what I think was a sincere apology, is actually diametrically opposed to what all those who’ve sprung a leak on the apparent feminazi dominion believe. So here we have a man, who is saying he is sorry and admitting he was wrong being ‘defended’ by those who very strongly disagree with him on that very point…
The AAS got this totally right in our opinion. The shirt was a poor choice. Indicative of a larger problem of casual sexism (at best) or deliberate misogyny and harassment (at worst). The guy apologized sincerely. All of the MRA dudebros who are upset that he was righteously chastised need to go do something useful now.
To re-iterate what Professor Myers explained above: to anyone still arguing that the shirt was “zero-bad” (to use the MRA vernacular) you need to shut up and listen to what the AAS had to say. They are a scientific and professional astronomical society and if they say the shirt was wrong then we have an obligation to accept that, else we stray into the territory of science denialism like the Ken Hams of the world.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I was with you right up until that lest statement. What if they’d said the shirt was fine? Would it still be science denialism to disagree?
What about all the various scientific societies of the 19th century that wouldn’t even admit female members? Was it anti-science to oppose them?
Scientists are human beings first. They are not the Pope, and are not infallible on social issues (or even on scientific issues for that matter). No deification, please.
This is insane.
Guy makes a mistake.
Guy is criticized.
Guy admits mistake and apologizes, as any normal and intelligent person would do and that’s the end of it.
Instead an army of idiots had to come to his “rescue”, threatening death and rape and making a huge fuss.
I’m really sorry for Taylor, he didn’t deserve all this toxic drama.
I’m getting super sick of people on my fb feed, who I thought knew better, falling hard for this crap. One example I saw earlier this evening was comparing criticism of an inappropriate for work shirt – to blaming victims of rape for their clothing choices. What the flying fuck is this bullshit? I’m also very bored of the claim that Taylor was bullied or forced into apologising. They’re falling over themselves to claim they support the guy yet they can’t accept his own goddamn decision to admit he made a mistake. I don’t think they even really support him, they support the ebil feminists narrative they can manufacture from the situation. That is the only reason this got so huge, coupled with the gamergate circus. The gators are opportunistically pushing this story hard with the exact same style of dishonest wording and false equivalence tactics they use to smear “SJWs”(but remember it’s totes about ethics).
“Darn those uppity feminist women, overreacting to nothing and overshadowing the greatest science thing ever(and everyone knows you can’t talk about or care about more than one thing at once) that Matt Taylor singlehandedly made happen, thus granting him immunity from any and all criticism. Let’s brigade the crap out of them, harass them with slurs and threats, accuse them of bullying, and show them how to really overreact and overshadow science! Those amateurs.”
Yeah I feel sorry for Taylor, too.
That’s one thing I think is a little telling. They refuse to accept that the man maybe just might have felt bad and apologize. No, that remorse he felt was forced on him by evil feminazis, never mind that there was effectively no mechanism by which anyone could do that. ‘Cause men don’t feel emotion or empathy, right? There’s no way he could have thought he did wrong and taken steps to correct it, no, it was the feminazis fault.
@19 We Are Plethora
You just broke my sarcasm meter.
I really like the statement. I like that it mentions the remark about comparing the spacecraft to a woman (wasn’t it the comet that was compared, though, in “sexy but not easy”? but whatever), and not just the shirt. I like that it is not only about abuse like insults or threats, but explicitly states that criticism of “over-active feminism” is also unacceptable. It would be great if the ESA came up with an apology as clear, direct, and sincere as this statement. Well, it would be great if they came up with an apology at all…
Quoth Rumtopf:
Yeah, I have a friend who was supporting that line of bullshit, too. Worst part is she’s a woman in STEM. She’s also very good friends with one of the more odious characters on the internet. And…I don’t know how to approach this issue at all, because in all other respects she’s a highly likeable person. I really want to smack her and shout, “I’m glad you’re a Cool Girl allowed in the boys’ clubhouse, but what the fuck is wrong with you?”
And I hate to say that I’m kind of afraid of my friend turning on me if I point out to her the problems with her stance on this issue. She hasn’t in the previous 15 years shown any indication of being the sort to go off rabid, but I’m starting to distance myself from her. I judge a person by the company they keep, and some of her pals are shitbags.
And what if his apology was a trifle insincere, and he felt forced to do it because of adverse public reaction? How is that any different from any corporate leader/spokesperson or politician or celebrity or preacher who says or does something asshole-ish, gets called on it, and does their mea culpa routine for the nightly news or Conan O’Brien? Even if he didn’t mean one single syllable of his apology, and his tears were summoned from acting classes in 9th grade, nobody forced a bloody thing upon him. This instinct to blame women (who, like Obama, are weak and feckless and incapable of independent thought and only in their positions because of liberal favoritism toward faux-victims, while, like Obama, are running an international mastermind conspiracy to ruin everything for dude-bros, calculating their way toward massive divorce settlements, and outfoxing helpless he-men at every corner) for any time a dude fucks up is almost risible. Were it not….so…..not risible. And then wemust ask, if heis not the agent of his own free will, which is clearly controlled by feminazis, then which demonic possession forced him to choose that shirt in the first place. They mysteries just keep aggregating.
This seems to be yet another thing that anti-feminists claim is trivial and something that feminists shouldn’t be worried about at all and insist that feminists are being petty by bringing it up….and then they continue to obsess and gnash their teeth and howl about this supposedly trivial, petty, non-concern for days, weeks, months, years, playing martyr being victimized by feminists who try to control them….
Elevatorgate, the game criticism of Anita Sarkeesian, Dawks’ rape rankings and various twittery, god knows how many things fit the pattern.
Wait…
Are the anti-feminists trying to gaslight Dr. Taylor?
That’s just layers of, wow. That is some toxic shit.
Fucking awesome! I would love to hear Ana Kasparian admit she was on the wrong side of matters. I still have hopes that she may understand what’s actually going on here.
*PLUG ALERT*
This is the last time I’m pluggin my own work on this topic. I promise!
Earlier, I discovered a really stupid cartoon on Tickld about this issue:
“I thought I would try my hand at this comic game (matt taylor / commet landing)”
The cartoon was so annoyingly stupid that I fired up on MS Paint and Photofiltre and made a fixed version of it:
Shirtgate – The actual discussion
I apologize again for this shameless plugging and spamming, but my cartoon is currently losing the like-war, so I was hoping for a little support. I will stop now.
What worries me the most is that this internet culture against “feminists” is so pervasive that even, otherwise good people, are jumping on the band wagon and not realizing the real issues here. I had a few short talks with my teenage daughter on the topic of Anita Sarkeesian and Shirtgate, but to my utter surprise she seems to be taking sides with the “bad guys”. She saw some YouTube video’s and internet memes, which basically convinced her that these “feminist” people are really stoopid. I think there may be a task for me here, preparing her for the real world, especially since she’s actually interested in science and technology. Fortunately, we live in Denmark, where misogyny is almost a non-issue, really. Still, it worries me…
Wonderful :)
Also, extremely unsurprising, which is a good thing. This is the kind of statement that ought to be expected from any such society, university or scientific institution.
@Giliell, 2
Same here… part of me wants to tweet at him, say “hey, just so you know, we’re not holding you accountable for those guys” but the rest knows that it’d get a response from those guys that I’d SIWOTIS myself into responding to, and I seem to suffer from Dawkins’ Syndrome on twitter… something about limited space totally screws with my filters, proof reading abilities, and implication detection, apparently.
The thing that pisses me off is that there are so many who were completely unaware of the whole thing before the shirt and comments were mentioned. That thing was Christmas for me, but apparently I’m just a man-hating feminist for the headdesking that happened when I watched the stream? It’s not even as if I even slightly dislike Dr Taylor – nothing from him has led me to feel any animosity toward him; only that “c’moooon!” feeling. Granted I don’t know him, but he seems like a decent guy, just, you know, a bit clueless about this which, honestly, is kind of understandable, given our culture.
Wait, no. The thing that really pisses me off? It’s that showing those losers who’re whining about the femifascist shitstorm the evidence that the majority of the criticism came from the scientific community and teachers, they still rant about women’s studies majors who never contributed anything to anything trying to tear down a great man. They’re utterly immune to facts here… and these are mostly atheists that I’m talking to. I know the boat has long since sailed on atheism making you rational, but ffs! Can’t they even pretend?
Oh yeah, meant to mention; great statements from the AAS and ASA.
Well good on the AAS. My dad is retired from there, but I like to think he had a part in building (or more likely, maintaining) their culture of acceptance. I do remember a study they did in the 80’s finding that most women in astronomy thought discrimination was not much of a problem at levels they hadn’t yet experienced. But not at the levels they had.
One of the most chilling things I’ve ever read about rape culture and online harassment is still Kate Harding’s post on blogging under her real name. It was the first time I saw the clear connection between the casual misogyny and actual rape, the continuum across the culture.
I don’t feel bad for Taylor, I think he’s a case study for every man in the world who aspires to not be an asshole. These rabid mouthbreathers threatening people for Taylor’s supposed sake, or for gamergate, or whatever? When you stay silent in the face of this kind of violence, the threats, the street harassment, the casual rape jokes, the general sexism? You’re the ally of these dudes. If you won’t speak up for the sake of the women in your life, consider your own sense of self worth. Is this the side you want to be on?
It is my (admittedly second hand) understanding that Dr. Taylor really wishes his “defenders” would shut the fuck up and go away.
I had no idea what the heck this was supposed to mean either. It was all over the comments to Phil Plait’s article over at Slate. It finally dawned on me that it’s really just the MRA crowd reinforcing their own delusions. You see, the MRAs say that the mean old feminists attacked Doc Taylor, making him cry and trying to destroy him. Then the MRAs respond to their own bullshit with the whole “He got what he deserved because of what he was wearing, right feminazis!?” like they just totally scored this huge gotcha moment. But in fact, nothing even happened to the guy beyond an apology and a few benign tweets. This imaginary damage he supposedly suffered is entirely an MRA invention. It’s really just incredibly fucking stupid and totally indicative of the amount of self-delusion these people operate under.
It was linked in another thread I think, but this Onion article isn’t really all that satirical…
If we’re going to be honest, we have to acknowledge that there were a few comments in the first after-apology blog post over here that were less-than-forgiving. A few “fire hims” and “not enoughs” and etc. And from regulars, not drive-bys.
However, that was a pretty short-lived burst, and those voices either changed their minds or were drowned out by others pointing out that Taylor’s apology was exactly the sort of thing that ‘our side’ was asking of Sam Harris for his insensitive “women don’t do thinky” comment.
When the standard that has been elucidated is “all you needed to do was admit you were wrong, and that would be the end of it”, then when someone admits they’re wrong, that should be the end of it. But for some, all of the layers of the onion had to be peeled back to discern if the apology was made with the purest of pure intentions — otherwise it didn’t count.
I saw people saying “there’s no need to feel sorry for him” and arguing whether or not the apology was genuine; I don’t recall there being calls for his being fired from any regular. And surely, in terms of the apology it remains true that he shouldn’t be pitied for having to make it – that’s rather different from being taken up as a campaign icon for bigots of MRA caliber.
checking out the comments on the poll that was posted @ #5, that is actually the essence of the very first comment there.
apples and oranges indeed.
I think maybe this poll, posted at #5, needs to be Pharyngulated.
What do y’all say? Should we raise the Cephalopod Signal?
hkdharmon @14
I have no knowledge of him receiving any threats. I saw a post on the GamerGhazi reddit that gathered tweets trying to find examples of harassment, even. They managed to find three and they really had to fucking stretch their definition of harassment to “calling people rude names”.
If he has received worse treatment from the side that was criticizing him to begin with, I haven’t been able to find it.
We landed a machine on a comet and all you idiots can talk about is a stupid shirt that was design by a women who was show casing classical Scifi pinup artwork
Oh look, a Donny.
Ranzoid
You’re a bit late with that comment.
Where have you been?
And that’s all you talk about. I left it days ago with the apology from MT. What an arrogant, stubborn, and ignorant fuckwit you are…
Ranzoid:
All you, gibbering fuckwit that you are, can talk about, by contrast, is what we are talking about.
It was very nice of you to come in and prove my point I made at comment 28. Excellent job. You are exactly the illustration I was thinking of.
You can fuck off now, you hypocritical self-parody.
“we” landed a probe on a comet.
I love it.
“Us”.
NOT “you”.
“Us”.
Ah, the addition of self-righteous indignation that has been fueling modern Feminism, a noble cause that was highjacked by a buck of junkies who get off on saying “I am mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!” I never even notice what was on the shirt until jokers on this sight started whining about it. i thought it was a Hawaiian. How come you are not attacking the women who deigned that shirt? http://www.newsweek.com/interview-woman-behind-shirtgate-shirt-285877
Honestly, when people on Earth cannot be counted on to treat each other and the planet that sustains them with humanity, then I remain rather unexcited about some flashy comet dealie.
Ranzoid
Neither have I.
So have I. I noticed colorful shapes, my mind went to tacky and didn’t even notice what the shapes were.
And yet, somehow I don’t automatically assume everyone’s observation skills regarding people’s clothing are as lacking as mine. Of course, you are also conflating not noticing the design with being critical of it. Not the same.
The rest of your non-point has been refuted many times in the past days.
Shorter Greg Ranzoni: “I didn’t observe it, therefore nobody else should have”. Man, you are an idiot.
Ranzoid, $52
That was discussed too. You just didn’t notice it.
$52… that reminds me… gotta pay my bills today
I really do feel bad for Taylor a little bit at this point. I’m sure he didn’t mean for all THIS shit to happen. This is quite similar to Gamergate in a way in that maybe there were a couple of sexist gamers who really did make the remark about games journalism being unethical, but they probably didn’t realize how many utterly vile misogynists they were surrounded by.
Why should women continue to take your shit you give them? Loser talk by a loser, who can’t compete and must keep down the competition with ridicule and microaggressions.
Thanks for showing us your abject stupidity. You are nobody to be listened to, just pointed at and laughed at.
I was surprised by the shirt (immediately noticed it) because I work and have been a manager in an aerospace company that has had an harassment policy like AAS for decades. I would have had to send a guy home to change for that shirt at work. It took time for some guys to come around, and some still don’t get it but comply. The overt harassment of the early 80’s is gone and we get annual required training to educate about less overt harassment. Are we perfect, I doubt it. Being a white male it may still be hard for me to spot. But when I was a manager, I never had a harassment complaint come to me. But then I made it pretty clear I supported the policy. Good for AAS for speaking up. Has Dr Taylor had any more to say about it since his apology?
Sorry for the kwoky goodness here, but yes, Matt Taylor has done something that definitely distances him from his “defenders”. I’d say more but I’m not sure how much is for public distribution (though it’s apparently gossip in the astronomy community). Will say more if I get cleared to do so. For now, yes, he has removed himself, IMHO, from the “part of the problem” column.
Cool, good, thanks!
Because that shit is so incredible minor few people noticed it. The women over at the Young Turks are laughing at you. It is not worth having it overshadow such a huge accomplishment. I also came across this line while reading about an abortion debate at Oxford “The minute feminism becomes hypercritical and humorless, it becomes too easy for the mainstream to dismiss our more valid complaints”. ( http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/21/feminism-has-gone-too-far.html ) If Feminist are going to flip their collective lids of a shirt of pinup girls that was easily mistaken for a Hawaiian shirt, will the media take them seriously when they have a real complaint?
And what stupidity are you referring to? My inability to use HTML tags? Guilty, my rig is very cranky when it comes to HTML codes, even when I do fallow the most noob instructions. So far the simple q cite is the only one that is working.
BTW. Tell me something, while you all where crying fowl over a stupid t-shirt that was made by another women how come nobody was complaining about Kim Kardashian new photo spread? Is it not reinforcing sexist stereotypes that women are nothing but prop pieces to be put on display? Or is it only sexist and misogynist if men do it.
The Young Turks have proven themselves to be a remarkably blind lot when it comes to issues like this. While I do indeed appreciate what they’ve done for news (although Democracy Now!, Citizen Radio, Radio Dispatch, and This Week in Blackness do it better, thanks), and WolfPac has been pretty incredible, they seem to fall more conservative on some social issues, unfortunately.
Oh look! A quote from a stupid debate! Debate’s over, everyone. Feminists lose.
What… didn’t you get the memo?
The complaint was so not serious that the American Astronomical Society felt the need to put out a statement on it. Matt Taylor himself has apparently taken steps (though what they are has not yet been made public) to show that his apology, which was completely accepted, by the way, was completely sincere, and that he’s not very appreciative of all you blind, raging assholes “defending” him.
I honestly could not care less about Kim Kardashian. She can do whatever she wants. It’s no skin off my back. Do she agree to the she? Did she consent to the pictures?
Then whatever. As long as she consented, then it’s fine.
Consent is the important part here.
Still not getting it?
Consent
As far as this shirt… you do realize that we feminists have actually let it go, right? We’re not actually talking about the shirt anymore. Because Matt Taylor apologized, and everyone who I saw complain about the shirt accepted that apology and got back to oohing and awing over the incredible scientific achievement.
It’s you lot… those of you who fancy yourselves Matt Taylor’s “defenders” (he doesn’t need, and apparently doesn’t want, defenders, by the way) who won’t let it fucking go.
It could have been over the second Matt Taylor apologized. For us who thought the shirt was problematic, that is exactly when it was over.
Yet here you are, continuing to make it a big deal.
Why do you continue to make it a big deal?
We let it go. Why can’t you?
Ranzoid,
It’s almost like you’ve taken every weak ass complaint (a woman made it really?) brought up by people who don’t like the shirt being criticized, that have been dealt with, on this site an other places and combined them into 2 stupid posts. So congrats on that. You can educate yourself if you so desire.
If you don’t see the difference in a male wearing an inappropriate shirt to work and a woman choosing to pose naked, well we can add you to the, amazingly large, group of people who don’t know the difference between sexist and sexy.
You not figuring out the html is not what makes you stupid.
Lie one.
Lie two, no link, assertion dismissed as fuckwittery.
Not academic third party evidence, just an opinion like yours. Dismissed without academic evidence.
Only in your misogynist/MRA fuckwitted, stupid and ignorant opinion that is dismissed without evidence. Try again, with real evidence, not the equivalent of Reddit or Faux News.
Your inability to see the shirt as prima facie evidence of potential sexual harassment in the workplace, where MT was that day, if EVEN ONE WOMAN WORKING FOR ESA FINDS IT OFFENSIVE. You don’t make that decision, and if you think you do, you are terminally stupid.
Prima facie evidence you are stupid, and should shut the fuck up. It isn’t a tee-shirt, which anybody examining the EVIDENCE, not your presuppositions, would see.
Stupidly ignoring the WORKPLACE/SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN THE WORKPLACE issues. What a stupid idjit you are. Why don’t you just fade into the bandwidth with the rest of the bigots?
I gave up on this days ago. Why can’t you, unless you are a misogynist bigot????
… the fuck was that? Should say “did she agree to the shoot”…
Also… I just realized that I wrote that response in a British voice. I’ve been binging on Doctor Who fandom. That’s my excuse. :p
HTML is hard?
type <
type blockquote
type >
paste copied words
type <
type /blockquote
type >
Rey Fox @53
Same here.
dianne @60 – that’s good news! :)
Am I the only one amused by the chicken-brained ranzoid talking about “crying fowl” instead of “crying foul”?
He has told the person who started an Indiegogo funding campaign to buy him an uber-expensive watch that he cannot accept, and that any proceeds should be donated to his chosen charity. I cannot find the exact name, but it is a charity that works to get children excited about careers in STEM. IMO, that was a pretty classy move on his part. It is cool that money donated by people who would defend sexism will instead be used to benefit kids.
@ Ranzoid
Because she’s not the one who wore it and made a crude, sexist joke on international television while representing the ESA to talk about a major scientific/technical accomplishment. Do keep up.
Kim Kardashian is allowed to have her picture taken however she fucking wants to. As is any other person. Because a woman having her picture taken isn’t automatically sexist, even if she’s nekkid.
Further, assuming you’re talking about the Paper photos…from a quick Google it looks very much to me like Kim Kardashian taking a shot at all the body policing, sexist shitheads constantly joking about the size of her ass. In which case, it’s a woman refusing, in a playful, joking way, to buy into all the body shaming that she is constantly subjected to. So *high fives* to Kim Kardashian i.e. a woman using her own agency to fight back against a particular kind of misogyny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFdsq96Aa98
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/21/feminism-has-gone-too-far.html
So it’s only sexist if man do it? Women have all the freedom to create the most exploitative, pornographic matter because it is liberating, but if a man dose it, is suppressive mysogony. You are the one who is the fuck wit, fuckwit.
Refer to the Ana Kasparian video to see how stupid you sound.
What prima fucking evidence you sheep! No one is entitle to their opinion, they are only entitled to their INFORMED opinion, and a lot of the information out there is shitty.
Would a misogynist read Ursa La Guinn? Would a Misogynist worship the grown that the likes that Chun Li and Sarah Connor have walked on? Would a Misogynist on every one of his playthroughs for a BioWare game play as a women? Would a misogynist scratch his head in confusion at the casting of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and not Gina Carano?
honestly
<blockquote>paste copied text here</blockquote>
I think I could teach a 3-year-old to do this.
Ursula Le Guin
Spelnig iz haard
Oh no, he’s got credentials. Very confusing credentials, mostly involving fictional characters. What ever will we do.
think their opinions on feminism are anything but boring trolling ? Yes. Any other stupid questions?
Ah! There we go. The instructions below the comment box where not at all helpful.
I don’t know? Be grateful for that’s how many male feminist are born? Being exposed to strong female characters in novels, comic books, video games, and of course real life women in professional and colegac…colleeg….colegic…academic athletics.
Matt Taylor can pose nude and slathered in oil without being sexist.
Ranzoid @71,
Nope, you don’t get to tell Nerd of Readhead what to do. First need to show third-party evidence proving that refering to the Ana Kasparian video will in fact reveal what you claim it will reveal. What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
You don’t get to decide whether or not you are a misogynist. That’s not how it works. Others will decide that based on your words and actions. And so far the evidence is pointing to “yeah probably.”
But under what definition is it sexist? How do you define sexism that all sides can agree with? You can’t! Or at least not yet. What may be totally insulting sexist for one person might just be ‘meh’ for someone else. I find He-man to be violently sexist because it reinforces the idea that male heroes are super strong beef cakes. I’m annoyed at many female super heroes for the same reason, except Power Girl who uses her beyond god like curves to distract her mostly male adversaries (which in turn begs the question what happens when she comes up against a female adversary).
Ranzoid @79,
That’s like saying we can’t get everyone to agree what racism really means so then there’s no such thing as racism.
If even one woman is offended or feels that it’s sexist, then it is. Not everyone has to agree. Feelings aren’t up for vote and they don’t depend on others agreeing.
@ Ranzoid
Are you actually this stupid? Really? Out of this:
You get: “because a man did it?” If the woman who created it had also been the one one who wore it and made a crude, sexist joke on international television while representing the ESA to talk about a major scientific/technical accomplishment, she would be the one receiving the criticism. The problem is not the shirt itself. The problem is bringing it to work. The problem is wearing it while representing the ESA on international television.
You’re a cartoon at this point. What is it about any of these things that you think precludes being misogynist?
So you don’t see anything sexist about a female superhero defeating male villains with her curves. You don’t have a problem then with the stereotype that men are motivated primarily by sex? What about the stereotype that attractive women use their beauty to manipulate men?
Here’s a simple one for you, Raznoid, which doesn’t depend on your defining sexism or anything much besides up and down.
When women’s hairstyles were like the ones on the shirt – have you seen the shirt? – real women were doing this sort of thing – http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/15504 – while their sisters on the Eastern Front, half-starved and dressed in rags, were using actual heavy weapons (not plastic phallic symbols) in the defence of Stalingrad. Why? Well, supposedly to protect a system of civilisation, one you don’t seem to be taking much advantage of.
Whatever their reasons, you dishonour them.
You don’t have to.
There is NOTHING in this world that can be defined in a way that ALL sides agree with it.
What a disgustingly dishonest argument to make.
Totally irrelevant to the issue, and yet another disgustingly dishonest type of argument.
As long as one person considers it sexist then it’s sexist. You may say “meh” or even “hooray” but you’re just one other person. You don’t get to dictate that others not find something sexist.
Pot kettle black misogynist fool. By the way opinion pieces aren’t evidence, only more opinion. Evidence, which is found in places like this: Google Scholar, and is written by academics. That makes you a fuckwitted idjit with prima facie evidence if you don’t understand that fact.
Prima facie evidence means your opinion shows you are out of touch with reality, which refutes your opinion seven ways from Sunday. You can have an opinion, but I will dismiss it without proper evidence. Which misogynist fuckwits like youself don’t have. Just one vile opinion that women aren’t human and can be dismissed.
Any reasonable one. Not the misogynist defintion, where they can do anything they want to demean an give women mirco and macro agressions to keep them in their place. As your attitude does idjit.
Doesn’t work that way in the real world. That definition in the workplace is any behavior or displays by a male co-worker that makes them uncomfortable. YOU aren’t consulted on the issue, and nobody cares about your definitions. YOU are irrelevant to that facts. And that is your problem. You can’t have your opinions dismissed as irrelevant to what is perceived as sexism.
Again unevidenced fool, who gives a shit about and must listen to your opinion.? NOBODY. You may speak, but we can wave it way and/or refute it with our free speech. It is obvious you are a proponent of Freeze Peach. Where your opinion cannot be refuted/or dismissed no matter what our freedom of speech allows.
Ranzoid,
Hahaha, what the fuck…
Serious answer: Yes… maybe?
Things that effect people’s course of lives in real life. For example, a workplace environment in which wearing a shirt with half-naked overly sexual proportioned women is considered perfectly fine, even when broadcasting a huge event to the world.
That’s sexist.
Aspects of He-man may be sexist too. But they’re not a big part of the problem, merely a symptom of the larger problem.
You honestly don’t see that?
How about this: a comic book where a black character is shown to be lazy or shown to be a criminal vs a scientist wearing a shirt with a black stereotype on it to work in a world where science already has marginalization of black people.
Hopefully that gets through. You stupid fuck.
Ranzoid:
Can you please expand on this? I’m having trouble reading this in any charitable way.
Actually it is a very honest and clean cut argument because no one can get through life without being pissed off by something. I could say that you all are guilty of religious bigotry, perpetrating an atmosphere of hate towards people of faith, trying to oppress and metaphorically spitting in the faces of the people who believe in a sky daddy. No one, absolutely no one, has the right not to be offended by something. If that were the case, we would live in the most culturally sterile environment every create because someone will always find something offensive.
A Lot. You have at least two generations of males who raise on that kind of entertainment. Where would feminism be without Ellen Ripley and Wonder Woman? Do you think the movement would of survived on it’s own through academic debate and protest without the screening of film that is basically a haunted house movie set in outer space? Hell even Foxy Brown could be considered a feminist icon. How? She took no shit. On the surface that film is exploitative trash, but underneath is a story about a minority woman with a will of iron who will decapitate you with a 12 gauge if you so much as look at her wrong and is totally unapologetic about her sexuality. Look at some of the later versions of Star Trek! Since the mid 80s Star Trek has been at the forefront of showcasing feminism to latter Gen Xers and adolescence millennials. Tasha Yar, Jadzia Dax, Kathrine Janeway, all these women have shown young boys that women can strong, fierce and independent. Do you want me go into how even video games have the same positive effect as well?
We are all motivated by sex because that what mammals are wired to do. That goes away with age and experience.
@ Ranzoid
Have you ever interacted with any real, human women? All you’ve done here is show your ass. You think Star Trek is a paragon of feminist programming? Star Trek is more inclusive than most TV but it’s still not great and sexism is one of its major failings, even the most recent ones. And yes. I’ve watched every episode of every Star Trek live series except the original. Multiple times. Tasha Yar constantly let her emotions get the best of her, Deanna Troi and Beverly Crusher both had nurturing roles. Troi’s purpose was to look pretty on the bridge. Gene Roddenberry’s original idea for Betazoids involved them having four breasts. Fortunately he was talked out of that at least. I could go on listing sexist crap from TNG for quite a long time. DS9 and Enterprise are better, but there are still moments. Voyager started out good but then the handling of the 7 of 9 character set the franchise back 30 years.
Also, you’re not answering my question. There’s nothing whatsoever about liking the things you listed that precludes misogyny. They may be effective in countering misogyny but there’s no reason you can’t like them and still be misogynist.
Ranzoid, #88
You could do that, dumb shit, but you’d be strawmaning.
The shirt is in-your-face sexism. It can’t be avoided. A woman (or a non-misogynist man unlike you) walks into work and sees that and has to be around that. It invades her/his life.
Ranzoid:
You could say that. Wouldn’t make it true though. Theists are not oppressed in any way by atheists. They face no discrimination from atheists. Give up you raging pus bag. We know you revel in your misogyny. Now take it elsewhere.
Ranzoid the MRA fuckwit
Yes, you could, and in doing so, would show prima facie evidence for your stupidity, excessive hyperbole, and bullying attitude. You don’t win with such an assertion. Simply because there is no way in hell you can show with conclusive evidence atheists are systematically interrupting worship services. Saying “leave your religion at your church and home” is not the same as oppressing religion. Only a better more tolerant workplace and society.
Spoken like a true MRA who believes in evo-psych. Human society is above certain primal hard-wired behavior due to the plastic brain, that is constantly adapting to new learning. You don’t want to learn.
I was extremely introverted throughout my entire childhood and adolescent, i didn’t start developing any serious kind of social life until high school with track and wrestling (seriously middle schools should be run like prisons, 13 year olds are fucking sadists). Before that it was watching how people interact with each other and steady diet of scifi books, Aliens, and DS9. By college life i was able to branch out into a table top RPG group that was run by an LGBT couple and we did many other thing aside from rolling dice.
Now I’ve tried to show how how a moderate feminist was born, being raised by a single mother and fed a steady diet of pop culture that feature strong female role models has led me to see females are equal humans. And what did you do? You broke my nose and grown the fragments into my skull because i didn’t fit in to what i see as an ultra narrow hypersensitive definition. It could be that i completely failed at what is called the Paraphrase Challenge, ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYXCx09u2I8) and that is my bad. But it could also be that the only reason you are angry is that you literally get high off of it. Once again from David Brin:
http://www.davidbrin.com/addiction.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i275AvgVvow#t=26 point starts at the 10 minute mark.
Call me a fuckwit isn’t helping, in fact it makes me feel even more right in my potion because you immediately head straight to the name calling because someone has the audacity to disagree with you. I want to see more women in STEM as well in uniform and gaming (you can thank Jennifer Hale for that).
Ranzoid
You want to talk hypersensitive? Look at the overly dramatic post you just wrote. No one is physically attacking you. They are criticizing your words.
Then why won’t you listen to the women on these threads about the shirt (many of us are women in STEM) who are telling you that the shirt is a representation of some of the attitudes that keep women out or force us to work in a hostile environment? Broadcasting that representation as acceptable to an international audience is harmful. That is what we are saying. And you know what? Matt Taylor apologized, and most feminists and women in STEM seem to have accepted the apology. People like you are the ones who keep carrying on about it.
Ranzoid the pseudo-feminist @
Everyone here had listened to Dr. Taylor’s apology for wearing a blatantly sexist shirt and we accepted it. We dropped the matter and went on to other subjects. Then, literally days later, you rode up on your high horse, whining about how mean we were being to the poor sexists and didn’t we realize the shirt was made by a woman? You and you alone ignited the whole controversy again. Did you notice that we didn’t talk about the shirt or Taylor except in passing. Instead we concentrated on your fuckwitted support of sexism. Yeah, asshole, despite your protestations about being A Real Feminist™, you support sexism. That tells us that you’re not a feminist except in your own mind.
If you haven’t figured it out already, and frankly I you may not be smart enough to have figured it out, tone trolling will get you nowhere on this blog.
There’s an old story about a linguistics professor explaining to his class: “In English, a double negative becomes a positive. In Russian a double negative becomes an emphatic negative. But I know of no language where a double positive becomes a negative.” One of the students said sarcastically : “Yeah, right!”
I can only echo the student’s reply to your last statement.
Nobody broke your nose…that kind of completely inapropriate hyperbole is ridiculous…
We are telling you you are wrong, that is quite different from breaking your nose.
In one of your first posts you said this:
Two things about that. The frist one, it’s nice of you to recognise that it is indeed, shit. The second one is that you are wrong about few people noticing it. LOTS of people noticed it, and noticed it right away just as the stream was happening. That you didn’t, doesn’t mean others haven’t. Also, that you think that shit is trivial, doesn’t mean others think is that trivial. By recognising that it’s sexist shit but trivialising it, you are basically telling other poepl “hey, that shit that’s happening to you, and totally not to me, at all, could you stop complaining about it? It’s bumming me out that you won’t keep your mouth shut when people do shit that affects you”, and that makes you a gigantic arsehole, ranzoid. You may think that shirt was trivial….but let’s see if we manage to put this point across…ahem…..WE DISAGREE. Why, you ask? Because first of all, it was not just the shity, it was also the sexist commentary he made on that interview, but most importantly, because this is just a symtom of a much larger, huge in fact, problem, a problem that has very real effects on very real people.
You say ours is a ultra sensitive narrow position, so basically you think women should shut up and put up with this shit because YOU deem it too trivial to bother…Mean while, there are women telling you, and the rest of us, that this shit is not trivial, this is but one of countless microaggressions that they face in their daily lives. And you wonder why we call you a fuckwit? You don’t get to tell others that the shit they are complaining about is not important enough….particularly since apparently it is ok for you to complain about what others are doing even though it has absolutely nothing to do with you and it doesn’t affect you in any way. Not only that, you are going as far as preteneding that some people saying things on a blog is important enough that for you this is like someone breaking your nose…..but a scientist wearing a completely inapropriate shirt and making a sexist comment on an internationally broadcast, very significant event that is part of history, is too trivial to complain at all…..
If you can’t see how this makes you a complete hypocrite and an arsehole, you are just a lost cause…
As for your last comment about you feeling more right about your position because someone called you a fuckwit, that is so irrational and absurd that i’m lost for words….
I once heard about a thing called proofreading, i wonder what that is…
Sorry for the many mistakes :S
Your angry hyperbole is prima facie evidence you are angry and aren’t arguing correctly. Nobody has touched you, so it is nothing but lies and bullshit, and if you lie and bullshit about that, what else will you lie and bullshit about?
If you want a discussion, stop the anger, and stop the hyperbole, and stop thinking your unevidenced opinion is meaningful to us. You need to shut the fuck up and listen to women and their problems with sexism in life. Since you are so busy mansplainin’, you can’t listen to how inane you sound, much less listen to women.
You always have the option to fade into the bandwidth, but if you are going to argue stupidly, then you are a fuckwit. What I see is a bully who can’t stand to be ignored and ridiculed. Your attempts at ridicule, hyperbole, and bullying aren’t working here. Either try a new approach, or fuck off.
Until you shut the fuck up and listen to the years of evidence of sexism in the STEM fields, you aren’t helping. You’re only mansplainin’.
Ranzoid #88
Do you actually believe that feminism has been driven by movies and comic books?
Really?
chigau,
Before Ellen Ripley, women didn’t even think to try to fight for the right to vote, much less equal rights!
Oh wait….
Because, as far as I have observed, only a few women are complaining about it. If a large number of people are not upset, then what is the fus about? Can you show me that this is indeed leading to a hostile work environment? Show me the complaints and testimonies of women who felt they where deliberate harassed and i’ll change my tune. As butt clenching as it is, show me the data that i am wrong (and i really need to show my data as well).
Because other women feel like that was a copout, for the lack of a better term. Women like Ana Kasparian and various female vloggers on youtube feel that, and I’m paraphrasing here, that Taylors apology was more or less forced and completely overshadow a major achievement because of a silly t-shirt that many of us didn’t even realize what it actually was until someone else pointed it out. It’s not a case of insensitivity, but something way more important. The implications like resource gathering are vastly staggering, if done correctly we could get all the gold, lithium and other rare elements without going to war. That’s more important then one doofu’s fashion flub.
Ranzoid @ 88;
But that would be a clear false equivalency. Religious belief is a choice, it is an expression of an ideology, an ideology that runs entirely counter to all that we know about the universe, and that has caused immense suffering and bloodshed throughout history. Conversely, being born a woman and living as a woman in our society is most certainly not a choice (and please don’t cite gender reassignment surgeries – transpeople change their bodies to correctly reflect their gender identity, the gender their minds already are. They do not have a choice in that gender identity any more than a cis person does). Critiquing the many toxic effects and attitudes promoted and replicated by religion is fundamentally different from engaging in the misogynistic marginalisation of women as mere living sex toys existing solely for the gratification of men.
@ 93;
(Emphasis added)
Don’t you think this might be just a little on the hyperbolic side? All that has happened on this thread is that people have called you on attitudes that frankly are problematic (like writing off any assertive expression of feminism as simply “whining”), and have been angered enough by your dismissal of feminist issues, and the concerns of women who experience sexism, to issue a few insults, none of which come close to the harm caused by the dehumanising attitude expressed by the shirt and sexist joke in question. That is all; a little light name-calling (that doesn’t punch down any social power gradient) used to underscore solid arguments about why your attitude is wrong and harmful, and you choose to characterise that as ‘breaking your nose and grinding the fragments into your skull?’ Really? That sounds an awful lot like whining to me, and the kind of whining often associated with the false martyr attitude seen in many misogynists when they find their arguments met with evidence and superior feminist arguments.
And then you reiterate this unsupported assertion that people invested in feminism only pretend to care about the issue because they derive some satisfaction from becoming anrgy, which is well known as a silencing technique used to try to delegitimise the anger, and at the same time the concerns, of women and those men who support them – the notion that male anger is somehow powerful and to be respected, but women’s anger is shrill and inappropriate. We have seen that particular script many times before, and always from misogynists and ‘men’s rights activists’. So either you came in hear with a faux feminist air to troll the place and promote misogynistic attitudes, or you have had the misfortune to wonder into Pharyngula repeating misogynist talking points word-for-word while earnestly (but, frankly, mistakenly) believing yourself to be a feminist, all just by accident. If the former, then you are simply getting what you deserve. If the latter, then you are walking like a duck and quacking like a duck to such a degree that you are not in much of a position to complain if everyone thinks you are a duck – don’t call yourself a feminist until you have taken the time to educate yourself about what the term actually means.
Happily, Pharyngula is a good place to start learning the basics, so long as you are prepared to listen and accept that what you think you know about feminism may not be as accurate as you imagine. If you show a genuine good faith desire to learn, you will find many people here very able and willing to help you, but first you have to convince us that you are not the misogynist you very much currently appear to be.
Are you prepared to make the effort to do that? Or does believing yourself to be right matter more to you than actually learning about the issues at hand?
Yes. Pop entertainment, even niche entertainment, can have a huge impact on a population. If Ellen DeGelerance didn’t come out when she did, LGBT civil rights would of been stunted.
Ranzoid @ 103;
Would you care to explain which comic book and/or movie drove the Suffragette movement?
If a large number of people weren’t upset, why has it gone viral? Why did Matt Taylor publicly apologize if no one was upset?
You can research “chilly climate,” and I can give you my perspective as a women in a STEM career. I work with all men, and sexualization of women is a common theme of conversations in the office, and it makes me uncomfortable. It makes me aware that my coworkers all value women as decorations first, people second. When I have brought up the fact that it makes me uncomfortable, I get dog piled on until I shut up. It is a hostile work environment. It is hostile enough that even though I love every other aspect of my job, I consider quitting about once a month. And it all comes from the same attitude that made someone thing it’s ok to wear a shirt that sexualizes women to work, and on top of that, on international television while representing a science agency.
First of all, harassment and sexism does not have to be deliberate for it to be harmful.
Second of all, as I said in my previous paragraph, speaking up about sexism in the workplace gets women no where. Sometimes they get a verbal backlash like I do, sometimes their jobs actually become endangered. Often they will be viewed as the problem because they were the ones who complained. So there are many reasons women do not feel comfortable speaking out about this, especially in such a publicized case. But there are tons of examples of women speaking out about similar examples of a sexist climate in their workplace. Apparently you are not open to listening to them.
*Sigh* All hail the great and glorious Borkquotia, eldest daughter of Typyos…
Ranzoid
You have a serious problem of confusing cause and effect.
Ranzoid @ 103
You can just fuck right off with this shit. Ellen was certainly influential and her coming out when she did was important but acting like the LGBT rights movement owes it’s success entirely to her is just staggeringly ignorant. This apparently is difficult for you to wrap your brain around but pop culture is not the entirety of human existence. It’s like you think that what you’ve picked up in passing about a given topic is all there is to know. Go fucking educate yourself. Jesus fuck.
Ranziod
Which bits of them, their tits or their brains? It doesn’t appear that you are genuinely interested in what they are saying to you, in the here and now.
feminism means to me that men are women are more or less equal. What do i mean by more or less? There are some physiological difference, but they can be over come with enough handwork and determination. It’s been my observation that women, or at the very least mothers can deal with extreme pain better then men. I’ve read somewhere and i wish i could cite the article, that giving birth is like having twenty bones broken at once. Doing something like that more then once demands respect. And despite having less muscle mass on average, women have far better stamina, my reasoning, women far out number the men in almost every track and cross country team I’ve seen. Yes personal experience is not the best way to start opinions on various things, but one needs to start somewhere.
Ranzoid,
As Lofty said in #109:
Yes, why do the testimonies of the women in this thread not count? Only women who agree with you count? What about Carolyn Porco, the leader of the Cassini Project? She spoke out and said the shirt was inappropriate multiple times. Here’s an example:
https://twitter.com/carolynporco/status/533369797367857154
Then you aren’t paying attention. Shut the fuck up and listen.
Any behavior, pictures, or shirts in view of the public that make any woman feel offended, is by definition a form of sexual harassment. Whether you think so or not. Your opinion doesn’t count. Besides, sexual harassment is like back injuries. There is often no one cause, just a series of micro injuries/offenses that add up over time. You are one fuckwitted idjit if you don’t understand that concept, and you don’t understand why feminists must speak out about the little things.
Already been done, but you won’t pay any attention, since it will be women speaking their minds. You dismiss women.
It wasn’t a teeshirt, which shows those who you are paraphrasing lack of honesty, factualizing, and integrity. Any tee-shirt would have been inappropriate attire in the workplace, and doesn’t fit into the concept of “business casual”, which was the dress code. So, you have nothing but the opinions of those averse to feminism to back up your misogynist claims. Tata. Prima facie evidence you are stupid.
Nice attempt at manspainin’ misdirection, but you failed to back up your claims with anything substantial. Just more bullshit. If you won’t stop bullshitting, and following MRA script # 13 for this incident, why do you expect us to do anything other than refute and laugh at you? You can’t evidence your point from academia, but we can. Also from blogs after the incident where women described similar inappropriate things and comments from their male colleagues.
I don’t think so Tim. You are still mansplainin’, and not shutting the fuck up and listening.
In order to build women in STEM, the microagressions and microoffenses like the shirt must cease. Until you get that, all you have is mansplainin’.
A couple more examples of Carolyn Porco speaking about this:
https://twitter.com/carolynporco/status/533774693296115712
https://twitter.com/carolynporco/status/533774874657841152
https://twitter.com/carolynporco/status/533775053561663488
well see, there’s your problem.
projecting ignorance doesn’t work well as an observational technique.
that’s an interesting narrative.
one unsupported by ANY actual evidence, but hey, there’s that projection at work again.
And yet, somehow here in Spain where most people don’t have a fucking clue who Ellen is or who she likes to sleep with, we’ve managed to afford equal rights to LGBT people almost a decade before most of the US. How could that be?
Look, i get it, i grew up watching Xena and Buffy and they were very significant influences for me but they were not the driving forces behind the civil rights movements as a whole and they were emphatically not perfect. There is sexism in these pop culture that you like to consider the epitome of feminism. That’s because your concept of feminism, as well as the concept of the people involved in those pop culture creations, is flawed…what you think makes you a “moderate feminism” in actuality makes you a “not as bad as many others, but not quite a feminist either”. And this is not because we are extremists, this is because you are wrong.
No, your definition is like that of “egalitarians”, who think that equal opportunity laws are in place then society is equal. No, it isn’t equal until there is equality in results. Which means any microaggressions against women, POC, LGBT, etc., must cease, which means ALL of those microaggressions need to be brought to light of day and exposed, so they cease once the cis-white-males understand what their words, actions, and attitudes do to others.
You don’t get it.
Seven why in the name of holy hell are you shitting on whole generation of men who could easily be your allies? Are you saying that pop culture and nerd culture has absolutely no impact on how a population formulates it’s stance on any given position. That men that have development feminist leaning views should immediately dismiss as not being worthy of being even consider inclusion into the movement because they haven’t sat down and read the literature and been to the lectures?
Ranzoid @ 110;
And that is perhaps the crux of your problem – your understanding and definition of feminism is too narrow by far. You can’t really understand the issues raised by feminist thought without grasping concepts like the patriarchy, societal and institutional expressions of sexism, sexualisation and how it differs from a woman choosing to express her own sexuality, rape culture, the effect of silencing techniques on women’s vocies, the internalisation of misogyist discourses within women and the ways women can maintain and enforce the patriachy upon one another, processes of marginalisation and the widespread exclusion of women from many aspects of the social dialogue, and intersectionality to name only a few – this list is far from exhaustive, and only really constitutes the bare bones of a beginning.
While at its heart feminism really is simply the radical notion that women are people too, the ways and social mechanisms by which misogyny and patriarchal power structures oppress women (and men, in a more oblique manner – sexism hurts men too, afterall) are many and varied, and cannot be understood without first familiarising oneself with the feminist lexicon and the concepts it conveys.
It’s called the American Southeast. While i have no hard numbers on this, if it wasn’t for them, the US would be completely secular country that would of, at least on social issues, look more like Western Europe.
Ranzoid:
*Gives a couple examples*
Ranzoid:
*completely ignores examples*
because nobody wants ignorant asshats for allies.
pretty simple, really.
color me shocked.
get lost, fuckwit.
it’s Degeneres, btw.
As someone from the Northwest, nope. Not even close.
Didn’t we just address this misconception in another thread? Oh yeah. square101, comment #40
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/11/21/we-can-do-without-you-wisconsin/comment-page-1/#comment-881075
what’s the real irony in little Randroid’s pop culture hypothesis?
the images on that shirt… WERE FROM POP CULTURE.
fucking.
idiot.
Imagining that it is true that only a few women
are complainingcomplained about it at the time, there’s a question you might want to ask – how many of those women are working in the relevant field? It seems to me that it’s most of them. Basically, you seem to be saying that casual sexism in the astronomy world isn’t a big deal, because the women in the financial industry aren’t complaining about it.Why are you claiming to be an ally, when you are belittling and dismissing the obvious inappropriate shirt for that time and place? We don’t need such allies. They are the “allies” MLK complained about in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, where he said the problem wasn’t the KKK, but rather those white’s who kept saying, I’m your friend, but no isn’t the time, and this isn’t the way to do this (just as you do with this shirt issue). They were wrong and MLK was right. You are no friend, and never will be, unless you change your attitudes.
No, men that understand feminists are those who have shut the fuck up and listened, and understand the privileges that being male gives them, and then doesn’t exercise those privileges. You won’t give up your privileges.
Nope, it occurred all over the nation. It was those who had to have somebody to sneer at, and from what I see, since it couldn’t be women, it couldn’t be POC (until lately, thanks to Faux News and rethuglicans), so that left the LGBT to be sneered at. Giving up needing to sneer at others, to make yourself feel good, is a sign of maturity.
You know, this is pretty rich coming from somebody who set out to deny that an item of pop culture (i.e. that fuckin’ shirt) could have any inpact on how girls and women perceive STEM as a workplace…
Ranzoid @ 118
You don’t deserve inclusion as a feminist because you seem to think your fucking pop culture references are the entirety of what there is to know. You’re trying to speak with authority on things that you only have the most superficial exposure to. You’re trying to fucking contradict literally CENTURIES worth of academic study on these subjects based on what you’ve gleaned from pop culture. You’re actually sitting there saying “I’m qualified to speak authoritatively on feminism because I play as FemShep in Mass Effect”. I’m not shitting on an entire generation of men; I’m shitting on YOU because you’re arguing from abject ignorance but think you’re an expert.
Ranzoid @ 120
Jesus fuck you’re an idiot. Apart from utterly misunderstanding the question, if you think the US southeast is significantly more bigoted than the rest of the country, you are…there aren’t even words for how ignorant you are. It takes a profound ignorance of US history to believe this shit. You seriously need to shut the fuck up and go read something other than comic books.
And perhaps it would be silly to point it out by now, but the Kasparian video on the subject has already been blogged about and discussed. So it’s not a trump card.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/11/15/the-young-turks-sound-a-bit-like-old-codgers/
Ranzoid, you know who is NOT a feminist?
A man who sees various women expressing their feelings on a subject regarding women and for some fucking reason considers their opinions less serious than his own on the topic. He often decides to interject with shit like “you shouldn’t be saying things like that” or “it’s such a minor issue” or “some women don’t feel that way, so you need to reconsider your stance”.
Go ahead and keep doing it. You’re coming across like a grade A MRA at this point so it really can’t get any worse.
That whole north vs. south racism thing is just so much bullshit. It’s not just that people in the north are just as racist it’s that the entire disgusting racist history of this country is largely a product of wealthy, landed, powerful NORTHERN men actively cultivating racism to get poor whites to support their own exploitation; they’d vote with the landed elite just to vote against the icky black people and Indians. Slavery is the big thing that was mostly southern that is inescapably racist but there’s not a square inch of this country where white people as a group haven’t been perfectly happy to support themselves by grinding black people and Indians into dust.
I love the line about “You’re driving away potential allies!” It’s wonderful because it’s disingenuous on its face and crumbles into dust given the slightest prod. If pointing out a sexist thing as being sexist is driving away allies guess what? They weren’t really allies. If a person is only on my side if I don’t push the envelope and don’t make noise in a civil rights movement then they aren’t on my side. No major civil rights issue has ever happened without people pushing the envelope and making noise and driving right past all those people who would so totally be with you on civil rights, if only you didn’t push the envelope and make so much noise.
Go back through history Ranzoid and find me a single major civil rights movement EVER that succeeded without offending people or being loud and angry or without any firebrands to push on and I will go buy a hat so I can upload a video of me eating it.
I won’t go back to that awful thread, but this is a gross misrepresentation of my poorly worded comment. I am of mixed white/mideast asian ethnicity, and I had an awful migraine and shouldn’t have started that. (sorry horde) I have lived in every state in the northern midwest, MO, NC, and FL in the southeast and I generally pass for white in most of the US as long as I straighten my hair. IME the casual proud anti-black racism is far worse in the rural southeast, aka Dixieland. The north is certainly not some racism free utopia, but no white Minnesotan has ever noted any racial difference much less looked pointedly at my dark frizzy hair and referred to me as “that”, or casually mentioned that “ya’ll uppity folk” were known to disappear into the swamps. /derail Carry on with the education of Ranzoid. Perhaps he will eventually be able to differentiate between actual human beings, and fictional characters in comic books.
At work now, but I am itching to tackle Ranzoid’s Wonder Woman influenced feminism bullshit. Suffice to say it was exactly the opposite of that.
Guss I too am wordlessly ignorant.
In the last 30 years I have lived in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Alabama, California, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, and California (again). I’ve also spent significant time visiting family in North Carolina, Wyoming, and southwest Virginia. And there’s no question that in my lived experience racial bigotry is certainly more commonly and openly expressed in the Southeast; it was my subjective impression also that it is both more prevalent and (on average) more virulent.
On what are you basing your pronouncements to the contrary?
Huh, i guess there is no reasoning with addicts who find the rush of self-indignation more satisfying then any hit of heroin, it’s a hard abdication to break because it makes you feel so right. It makes you feel so good to stomp on people who are not your ideological equals. I don’t need to post evidence, you’ve all proved it.
Sorry fuckwit, you’ve shown you are nothing but a troll, and a tone troll at that. MRA script #13. You aren’t anything to be taken seriously. Dismissed.
Followed by (checks) 13 more comments. Why didn’t you do something useful, like talk about a fact of which literally the entire commentariat is already aware? I get that landing the probe was difficult, and years in the making, but there’s really not much to say about it. There wouldn’t be much to say about the shirt, either, but legions of whiny turds felt the need to freak the fuck over some mild rebukes.
Is that what you call what you were doing? Reasoning?
well then, there’s your problem right there.
@ Chas
Well I didn’t actually say anything about how openly that bigotry is expressed, now did I? And I said “significantly more” not “any more”. I allowed that the southeast is more bigoted than other parts of the country. But the idea that the rest of the country is significantly less bigoted is bullshit. Less likely to say it straight out, but still full of the same implicit biases. The idea that, as Ranzoid claims, that the southeast is what’s keeping the US from being as progressive as western Europe is bullshit. I know this because I’ve read history books outside of my high school text books. All these unarmed black people being shot by cops on an almost daily basis? That’s not all happening in Mississippi.
@ Ranzoid
This shit always cracks me up. Look at how hyperbolic your language is while you accuse other people of self-indignation? If you were the objective, rational one, our indignation would be no impediment to you actually addressing our arguments and defending your own position with something other than “well I watched a movie with a woman in it once”.
I don’t know what self-indignation and hard abdications to break are. This might be just me being linguistically superior (instead of ideologically superior), but how can anyone here possibly engage with sentences that don’t make sense?
On the other hand, let it be known that my bemusement in the face of linguistic failure makes me feel ever so right.
And @Chas, in echo of @SevenOfMine:
I’ve definitely heard the N-word more in the South. On the other hand, I invite you to look up these cities in the San Francisco Bay Area called “Richmond” and “Oakland”. Try coupling both of those names with “Ferguson”, and you’ll find out just how much our great nation is committed to equal opportunity police repression, regardless of geographic location. As a Californian, I would also invite you to visit the Central Valley if you want to find out just how virulently expressive racism can be outside of the South. I’m sure others could weigh in with their anecdotal (excuse me, “lived”) experience in the same way you have, but well, there’s mine.
I think there was even a post along these lines right here on this blog, just a short while ago.
Wow, Ranzoid, i think i can actually touch the irony, it being so thick. How you keep missing it is utterly beyond me, but then again i shouldn’t be surprised since you seem to live in a tiny little bubble anyway.
Go away and stop making such a fuss about nothing. Also, stop milking this thread to feed your fucked up sense of righteousness. You could have listened and learned from what women have said, but instead, that’s all you are doing here…
@Seven, 129
Yeah, I never quite got this line of reasoning either. I play almost exclusively as FemShep too (*holds up a placard: “It’s She-pard NOT He-pard!!”* (This is also why I don’t play Mass Effect as the hidden easter egg Leopard character.)) but, uh… you know that complaint about how some women in pop culture are just men with boobs? Yeah. She actually is that. Everything she does? ManShep does that stuff too. Word for word, gesture for gesture, it’s all the same. Hell, in ME2, they even walk the same way. The only real differences are the romance options and, while you could paint that as sorta feminist because FS makes all the moves, that’s only because you’re assuming direct control. So… yeah.
@Ranzoid, 137
I’ll never understand why people who can’t deal with criticism bother to come here… I was once shown an article, as proof that atheism+ was teh ebils, that explained why someone was done with secular woman, or somesuch group; it all came down to her vicious – VICIOUS, I say! – treatment here and the fact that the group wouldn’t let her talk about it in their space for talking about relationship and sexual abuse. I don’t remember if she linked to the thread in question, but I did find and read it, and it came down to the fact that she was victim blaming and was called out on it. Meh. Seems like there might be some people who need to feel so right all the time, but I’m not convinced it’s this lot.
@PatrickG, 142
Surely it’s obvious? Self-indignation is when you say something, and then you’re like “I can’t believe I said that! The monster! RARGH!!” Hard abdication, on the other hand, is differentiated from soft abdication, in that it’s possible to prove that a king or queen can step down from the throne, but to demonstrate that one ever actually did is utterly impossible. Yes, it is claimed that Edward VIII of the UK stepped down, but can we truly reach this conclusion from first principles? No. We must rely on presuppositions and inferences, and cannot conclusively state that it really happened. For all we really know, Wallis Simpson is just Bart’s elder sister.
The bit about video games and comic characters was the best.
I don’t like Wonder Woman. I played as male Shepard and male characters in the Baldur’s Gate and Dragon Age series.
What a misogynist I must be!
@Saad
You only play as men so you can watch their bums wiggle as they walk!!
/s
Athywren @ 145
Well…The thing about characters like FemShep (which also applies to Ripley since the character was originally written as male) is the vast majority of life experiences aren’t gendered and that men and women react to them largely the same way, as evidenced by the fact that nobody thinks these characters are not believable. When people talk about how strong female characters are men with boobs, IMO they mean they’re more stereotypical men with boobs. Rambo with boobs. I think that strikes people as off because, as caricatured as those type of characters are when they’re male, it’s even more absurd when you gender swap them. I think the feminist message in FemShep is that you don’t actually have to write characters as male or female at all because the genders are far more similar than they are different even with the disparate social conditioning.
@Seven
Well, fair point, this is true, there’s certainly nothing gendered in snarking at the Blue Suns merc with a nosebleed who thinks he’s bleeding out, and the majority of Shep’s dialogue is fairly gender neutral. They did a decent job of not caricaturing Shepard, but there are a lot of moments – and I’d have to play through it again to be able to even point to any of them, because they’re pretty small – where it becomes kind of clear that they were writing for John, not Jane, and it kind of shakes the suspension of disbelief a bit.
But yeah, FemShep’s definitely not a Rambo with boobs character, so, point taken.
#138, Nerd of Redhead
Not just that, but it also appears to be a rather poor attempt to lift some of David Brin’s writing in an attempt to sound erudite.
http://www.davidbrin.com/addiction.html
Could be a load of nonsense for all I know, but it made a momentarily interesting plot point in one of his recent bits of fiction.
Ranzoid:
The irony. “Look at how little I care! LOOK. PAY ATTENTION TO ME AND HOW LITTLE I CARE!!! I CARE SO LITTLE!!! I CARE NOT AT ALL!!! WATCH ME NOT CARING BEFORE I EXPLODE!!”
Ranzoid’s non-self-righteous non-indignation that he could totally quit any time if he wanted to:
“We landed a machine on a comet and all you idiots can talk about is a stupid shirt that was design by a women who was show casing classical Scifi pinup artwork”
“modern Feminism, a noble cause that was highjacked by a buck of junkies who get off on saying “I am mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!” I never even notice what was on the shirt until jokers on this sight started whining about it.”
“. I also came across this line while reading about an abortion debate at Oxford “The minute feminism becomes hypercritical and humorless, it becomes too easy for the mainstream to dismiss our more valid complaints”.”
“So it’s only sexist if man do it? Women have all the freedom to create the most exploitative, pornographic matter because it is liberating, but if a man dose it, is suppressive mysogony. You are the one who is the fuck wit, fuckwit.”
“Now I’ve tried to show how how a moderate feminist was born, being raised by a single mother and fed a steady diet of pop culture that feature strong female role models has led me to see females are equal humans. And what did you do? You broke my nose and grown the fragments into my skull because i didn’t fit in to what i see as an ultra narrow hypersensitive definition.”
“Seven why in the name of holy hell are you shitting on whole generation of men who could easily be your allies? ”
——————-
This is why people laugh at anti-feminists.
BWAHAHAHA. Well played, Athyren. Well played.
As to self-indignation, yes, well, your definition seems to be the obvious one to me, but surely Ranzoid wouldn’t be so silly as to apply it to himself… never mind. I can’t find a bottom to the stupid here, so who knows? Maybe it was meant exactly that way.