Her words ought to have some weight, I think, and they represent a rational response to the issue.
His remarks at first seemed to me just a drop in the bucket of millions of similar ones made every day about women in the workplace, often by decent men who would be horrified to be regarded as misogynists. For me they confirmed an age old stereotype of women as trouble, so old that it goes back to Adam and Eve. But they were the drop that finally caused the bucket to flow over. They became a catalyst for a deep-seated bitterness to pour out of people, not only women, who simply felt that enough was enough. This was an outpouring waiting to happen. It needed just that little drop.
What is the bitterness about? Injustice, plain and simple. And it coincides with my own anxieties as chair of the Diversity committee. The bitterness is sustained by the strong feeling that women have not had a fair chance to succeed in science. This is a serious problem in science in general, but it is also a problem for the Royal Society. It is a fact that only 105 out of 1569 Fellows are women (6.7%). It is a fact that only 22 out of 106 of the awards and medals given by the Society over the last 5 years were given to women and that over those five years only 22% of the successful candidates on the Royal Society’s University Research Fellows and Sir Henry Dale Fellows were women.
They have a responsibility to respond to biased remarks by their representatives.
As the case of Tim Hunt has shown, prejudice is unacceptable even if meant in jest. The Royal Society as an institution quickly dissociated itself from his remarks. It was necessary to affirm the truth of its genuine wish to do away with the obstacles that stand in the way of women’s careers in science. To do nothing would send a signal that it is acceptable to trivialise women’s achievement in science. Institutions can do things that individuals can’t. As individuals, whether we are Fellows of the Royal Society or anyone else, we are all capable of saying things that are inappropriate and foolish. Without being aware of it, we favour our ingroup, and are ready to disrespect outgroups, often in rather subtle ways. We are human and we are fallible. Institutions try to transcend this weakness, even if they don’t always succeed.
That’s the thing — I’m seeing a lot of people saying his remarks were OK, because he meant them as a joke, and there’s been an amazing amount of bizarre finger-pointing at lines remembered after the fact that indicate he wasn’t being serious. It doesn’t matter. It was a bad joke, and he flubbed it completely. The Korea Federation of Women’s Science and Technology Associations thought it was tasteless and required an apology, which Hunt gave, so all this floundering about and trying to find an excuse in humor is irrelevant.
The comments at the Royal Society are just as bad. There is the perennial “witch hunt” accusation, and my favorite example of hysterical hyperbole so far:
I don’t think that institutionalising presumed guilt, of a mere thought crime (unconscious bias), sets a very enlightened example at all. We also learn that the Tim Hunt story is more complex and nuanced than many people wish to acknowledge. Nor do Maoist style re-education schemes set a very enlightened example – based on public humiliation-confession-brainwashing. “Nulls in verba” – my bottom !
Thought crime! Complex and nuanced! (No, it wasn’t: he peddled tired stereotypes for a cheap laugh). Maoist style re-education schemes! Brainwashing!
The Royal Society: a radical hotbed of Maoists. Right. It’s always so affirming when the nutters rage against you so intemperately.
This is good advice for all institutions. Resistance to tribalism is necessary in all human endeavors. It is one of the hardest things to remain aware of and the easiest trap to fall into.
If only Mao’s eponymous jacket had been white, it could have swept the lab world – provided it was always kept buttoned up to the collar so that no distracting skin was ever visible!
A comedian-juggler that I know has a joke he uses often. He will invite a child up to the stage and offer to make them a balloon animal. During this he will say, “Do you like animals, Suzy? Yes? I do too – they’re delicious!”
Now, maybe you think this is funny, or maybe you don’t, but even though it is clearly said as a joke he still means it truthfully. I have eaten with him and he definitely enjoys eating meat.
So even though Tim Hunt was joking, that certainly doesn’t prove that he was not telling his true views. And since in his “apology’ he specifically said he meant what he said, it is asinine to try to wave away his sexism under the cover that his remarks were said in a joking manner.
If there isn’t a bingo card for this stuff yet, it’s a mite overdue.
… also, as far as I’m concerned, anyone who hasn’t been called a ‘feminazi’ at some point in the past few years need not speak to me. Thank you, foaming antifeminist cranks of the net for providing this useful litmus test.
(/… and remember: those who have learned only hilariously dishonest epithets for their political enemies from The History Channel are doomed to be snarkily retweeted.)
Agree! Also, things like control groups, double-blind and the like should be done away with, because they presuppose the researcher is guilty of yet other unconscious biases. As we have established, this is akin to accusing them of thought crimes. That’s reversing the burden of proof! And ethics committees? Why do you want ethics committees? Are you suggesting researchers are unethical? Why are you so prejudiced against them? What did they ever do to you?
In order for it to be a “thought crime,” wouldn’t there have to actually be some thinking involved?
I would like to thank Professor Frith for this rational and levelheaded response. If you still don’t get why this was a big deal, please crawl under a rock somewhere far out of sight.
Absolutely. In fact, this exact type of joke – where you talk disparagingly about another group of people – is usually made only by people who actually hold that opinion. Stating your opinion in a joke format is a way of building in plausible denial, while still making sure that everybody knows exactly what you mean.
Saying sexist shite in the middle of an event is not thought-crime…..although it should be a crime to say such odious bollocks…
And you have to love the idea that pointing out an unconscious bias is persecution for thought-crime. It’s ok to be a raging racist, but pointing out or critisizing it….persecution! Thought-crime! My, they condemned him just for thinking that gypsies are *insert prejudicial remark*…the monsters…
So we’re “Maoists” now? I guess the MRAs and their apologists are starting to realize the Hitler references are getting old…
Thought crimes don’t exist in a world where we cannot actually read thoughts. Nobody cares what Tim Hunt or anybody else thinks about women in science or blueberry muffins. Because all that is important is deeds and speaking is a deed, an action.
@8:
It’s always a dog whistle. Always.
Of course, the people who support Tim Hunt likely also believe that “diversity committees” are a waste of time.
But maybe this statement will reach some of the people (men) in the “middle” who are still unaware of the misogyny underlying the whole of academia (and society as a whole.)
That…I just can’t find the words…It would help if I wasn’t pounding my head into my desk, I suppose. I just find it funny (pun not intended) that the Hunt story is “complex and nuanced” but the reaction is “Maoist style re-education.” Well…I really know precisely what’s going on here. It’s the whole charade of presenting oneself as reasonable while their opponents are unreasonable. Is there a name for this sort of thing? It would seem to be a cousin of the straw man fallacy.
Leo Buzalsky:
Gaslighting
Hunt’s joke was punching down. This is a concept in which someone has a measurable level of power and they’re looking for a fight. Now, they can either go after the big guy who might hurt them, or go after the little guy who has absolutely no shot. Either way, they’ve picked a fight, but one fight is much more socially acceptable than the other. Going after the big guy, punching up, is acceptable. Going after the little guy, punching down, is bullying.
*testerical hyperbole, you mean.
oolon @ ^ Thank You.
I just twooted at Monsignor Dawkins, asking if this statement makes the RS’s Diversity Chair a jackbooted lynchy witch-hunter. I fully expect no response, because obviously I want nothing less than to subject Hunt and all others who make thoughtless sexist “jokes” to a Stalinesque kristallnacht of political-correctness-gone-mad Maoist re-education.
Good 1984 reference, allusion to courtroom Presumption of Innocence, and insinuating that the people complaining are after pure humiliation (as if Hunt didn’t humiliate himself) and that they are akin to some sort of dictatorship. And pretentious Latin inserted in is a good touch (though it is, as far as I can tell, “Nullius in verba” ). But, alas, you forgot obvious allusions to lynch mobs and witch hunts, and there was no explicit mention of Censorship and/or Teh Freeze Peach. “Complex and nuanced” is just obvious handwaving, “enlightened” is over-used and it isn’t even clear what you mean by it, and there is a severe over-use of hy-phens for the purpose of rhetoric-bloviating-chest-puffery.
Grade: C-
Effort poor, see me after class.
Yeah, the “witch hunt”, “Mao” etc. exaggerations aren’t exactly lending credibility to the critics there. Not to mention the exaggerations of the consequences for Hunt himself.
I’ll agree with Frith that the reaction is indeed larger than one might otherwise expect, but that’s only because such jokes have been tolerated, nay, accepted for far too long. Is Hunt’s individual behaviour that much more egregious than a lot of other people’s? No, but he’s also in a particularly elevated position and his relative prominence enabled the “outpouring” to take place on the scale that it did.
Frankly, sometimes a – compared to the sum of all the connected problems combined, relatively small – trigger is needed to get change started. Had it not happened with Hunt, it would’ve happened the next time. Or the time after that. It needed to happen.
As a woman who worked in a very male dominated field, I knew many guys who would jokingly say sexist stuff, looking to get a rise out of me. These were (mostly) friends, and i know (most of them) didnt actually think that way. It was uncomfortable, I didn’t know how to respond, and could never figure out why they would think this was funny. But now, here what I think: when men (at least in the USA) are uncomfortable, they make an ironic disparaging joke at their buddy. These guys were not comfortable with me, I was a new element, but they didn’t dislike me. They just didn’t know how to be comfortable with me, and they reverted to saying shit from a sexist past that they were trying to be ironic about, to show that they knew guys like this, but THEY weren’t “that guy”.
The big problem was that some of them actually did NOT like me because of my gender, and this style of interaction gave them cover to actually be quite cruel. And, honestly, there was some bleedover of guys who would deny to themselves that they thought this way, but it seems in retrospect that these digs allowed their inner gender bigot to take a surreptitious breath of air every once in a while.
Doofus of the day: Jonathan Dimbleby (British broadcaster and vaguely liberal public figure from a well-known family of broadcasters):
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/30/jonathan-dimbleby-resigns-ucl-sir-tim-hunt