In case you hadn’t heard yet, Science magazine is making a play to reach the supermarket checkout aisle and tabloid market, with exciting new covers featuring sexy womanly body parts and leaving out pointless details like their faces.
I don’t know, they could have taken it a step further and featured dramatically posed dead sexy women.
It should be obvious that this photo is problematic. Seelix has a good summary of the concerns. The via Science Editor-in-Chief has apologized, strangely, on a blog that apparently was set up for just this purpose that contains only one post, the apology.
The cover showing transgender sex workers in Jarkarta was selected after much discussion by a large group and was not intended to offend anyone, but rather to highlight the fact that there are solutions for the AIDS crisis for this forgotten but at-risk group.
I have one question: how does a photo of the bodies of women “highlight the fact that there are solutions”? So, if they publish an article on elements of the JAK/STAT signaling pathway, will they splash of photo of George Clooney on the cover to hightlight the fact that he carries genes of this pathway?
None of this makes sense. But then the @SciCareerEditor piped up on twitter, and it all became clear: the management at Science includes many oblivious jerks.
@JacquelynGill @LSU_FISH @AAASmember You realize they are transgender? Does it matter? That at least colors things, no?
— Jim Austin (@SciCareerEditor) July 16, 2014
Weird. So the @SciCareerEditor thinks transgender women don’t have problems with objectification? What planet is he from?
He might want to read this personal account of a transgender woman in science. It seems to me that assuming it’s OK to focus on the sexual attractiveness of women in a study is a good part of the problem.
Especially when they see it as a joke.
https://twitter.com/SciCareerEditor/status/489522658455715842
Oh. Ha ha, they’ll sure be shocked when they find out that chick has a penis! So, it was some kind of gotcha cover?
But he was able to top that.
https://twitter.com/SciCareerEditor/status/489528456783224833
Oh, man, he should have followed through with how much he hates drama-blogging, and they only do it for the hits. The only thing becoming boring is how repetitive privileged people can be, always making the same tired excuses for belittling other people’s problems.
I do wish the people who express disinterest in the moral concerns of others would carry through and say what they really think: that in this case the plight of transgender sex workers is unimportant to them. Or that they think abuse of women is simply an unimportant problem. Or that if it’s not about rich white men, it’s not a problem that warrants moral indignation.