Science: It’s a Girl Thing!

The European Commission is trying to get more women involved in science, which is good, except…look at their Science: It’s a Girl Thing campaign. Jesus wept.

Serious man sits at microscope. Fashionable, slender girls slink in on ridiculous high heels and vogue to shots of bubbling flasks, splashes of makeup, twirling skirts, and giggling hot chicks. Seriously, this is not how you get women excited about science, by masquerading it as an exercise shallow catwalking. This is a campaign that perpetuates myths about women’s preferences. The lab is not a place where you strut in 3″ heels.

How do you get people excited about science and science careers? By talking about science. Ben Goldacre made some excellent comments on twitter about this.

The EU have funded a campaign to make women in science wear shorter skirts. http://bit.ly/KYRkBk #sciencegirlthing

Time and again with these high budget state funded science communication activities, they dumb down, shoot for the mainstream, and miss.

Meanwhile I can’t help noticing that the really nerdy stuff done by ppl like me and @robinince is commercially successful in the marketplace

I realise that sounds cocklike, but it’s true. Dumbed down state funded sci comms is patronising and fails to meet its stated objectives.

People – not just nerds – like nerd stuff. They like the details. They’re not thick.

@flypie @robinince we fill out rock venues, my book sold 400,000 copies, i dont know what more metrics you want. Nerd detail sells.

@edyong209 @robinince we make, a fucking, profit. we sell nerd details, and people buy it, while state £ sci comms patronises tiny audiences

The real tragedy is that somewhere, a marketing cock is celebrating that their “controversial” campaign is being discussed #sciencegirlthing

Also, to my vast surprise, for once the youtube comments are actually intelligent.

Oh wow, I can’t remember when I last felt this patronised. I’m pretty sure the message “scientists think that women are giggly, superficial and obsessed with fashion” isn’t going to get more of us doing science. Just eww. I have a physics degree. I managed to get it without strutting around a lab in a minidress and stupid shoes and doing ‘sexy’ pouts.

Rachael Borek

Please tell me that this is a sad joke. Being female and working in a laboratory I find it patronising in the extreme. I can’t believe that any intelligent woman watching this would not want to punch the advert-makers in the face. Is this REALLY what you think women interested in science want?? Go look at clips of Kari Byron hosting Mythbusters and then come back and apologise to everyone.

Catherine Du-Rose

Oh my god. I haven’t been this revolted by something since I heard about the human caterpillar. This is so insulting! I can’t find the words to properly articulate how irritated I am by this. Please tell me this isn’t a trailer – I mean, there’s not going to be more like this? I cannot imagine anything that would turn an intelligent girl off a subject faster than being patronised.

littlelixie

I’m a girl and I’m a scientist. I definitely do not go prancing around making make up. I work on a computer and do processing. Science is not a girl thing, it’s an everyone thing, everyone who is passionate enough about doing what they love. This is a terrible, terrible video, and I feel very offended, and I know my male colleagues do not see me like this. I feel rather disgusted.

chandratap

Hey, next time an organization tries to do the right thing and encourage more diverse people to participate in science, how about if you actually talk to scientists and try to understand what motivates them, rather than dragging some refugee from the fashion and music video world to tell women how to be scientists?

Why everyone should be pro-choice

Maggie Koerth-Baker has an amazingly heartfelt post up about her abortion. You ought to read it, especially if you’re one of those people who wants to take her choices away or make her feel even worse about what she’s got to do.

There is no universal good option. There is no universal bad option. But for each individual there is an option that is the least bad. Here is why I am pro-choice. If someone has to make a decision and the best they can hope for is the least-bad option, I don’t believe I have any business making that choice for them.

My abortion is not a good abortion. It’s just an abortion. And there’s no reason to treat the decision I have to make any differently than the decisions made by any other woman.

(Also, Maggie Koerth-Baker will be joining the Skepchicks at Convergence in two weeks. Be there to learn.)

Victim Blaming 101

Talk about missing the point — now we’ve got someone declaring the TAM harassment problem solved — why, just call casino security, and they’ll take care of it!

Uh, yes. We know. We can go to a meeting, and if there is a jerk causing problems, we can seek out authorities and maybe get it resolved (although, in the case of women complaining of harassment, we’re more likely to see the problem treated dismissively). That’s always been an option, and it’s really patronizing to bring it up as if no other person on the planet ever even thought of it.

It’s not the issue. What’s wanted is a recognition of the fact that no one has the right to harass others at a public meeting, and that the meeting organizers have a zero tolerance policy towards sexual harassment, to discourage harassment before it happens.

Why is this so hard to understand?

These events are safe: they are well-bounded, contain security staff, and all the organizers want them to proceed with little disruption. Nobody has complained that there was no available recourse to deal with jerkwads.

The problem is that they are not safe spaces, which means a place where women can feel comfortable speaking without risk of unwelcome advances. You can’t just announce that there are security guards outside the door to create a safe space; it takes a bit more effort than that.

The author of that blog actually hit on the real problem by accident in a comment on that thread.

Honestly, if your a woman at an event like TAM, expect to be hit on.

EXACTLY!

You know, there’s a lot of whining that Rebecca Watson or myself have claimed that TAM is unsafe, a claim that we actually haven’t made at all. To the contrary, we’ve both supported TAM and encouraged people to attend. But we’ve also asked that it be better, and I do give DJ credit — it has improved in the representation of women speakers during his tenure.

But if you’re looking to pin the blame on people who have said TAM isn’t a good place for women, who might be spreading the word that women shouldn’t attend, you might want to start with people who declare that women ought to “expect to be hit on”.

Some people seem confused by the phrase “safe space”. They seem to be unaware of the fact that in English, one word in context can modify the meaning of another: like “parkway” is actually a place where cars drive, rather than park. But to help out those poor naive simpletons, here’s an explanation of “safe space”.

As usual, Cuttlefish distills the whole wrangle down nicely.

Women shall not speak

Jebus, Michigan, what is wrong with you? You’ve got a couple of Republican anti-woman bills working their way through your legislature, HB 5711-5713, which include an absolute prohibition on abortion after 20 weeks (with no health exemption for the mother), and some bizarrely morbid provisions that require that doctors issue “fetal death certificates” and arrange for a funeral for the fetus. It’s dumb, it’s wicked, it’s demeaning. And it’s going down straight party lines, Republicans voting in a block for them, Democrats mostly against it with a few crossing the aisle.

So a few Democratic women spoke out. Rashida Tlaib went all Lysistrata on them, suggesting that women refuse to have sex with Republicans for as long as they push these women-hating bills through congress. Lisa Brown called them on what this is: Christian bias and religiously motivated oppression, explaining that there is no objection to these abortions in her Jewish religious traditions, and saying, “I’m flattered that you’re all so interested my vagina, but ‘no’ means ‘no.'” Barb Byrum proposed amendments to the bill that required proof of a medical emergency before a doctor would be allowed to perform a vasectomy.

They fought the good fight. Their reward? The Republican majority has made a decision that Brown and Byrum will not be allowed to speak. The claim was that they deserved it because they’d been gaveled during the previous day’s session: Brown had the hammer brought down on her when she dared to mention her vagina, and Byrum was gaveled when she tried to speak as the legislature proposed shutting down all discussion on the bill.

Damned uppity women with their mouths and their naughty bits.

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There’s a Republican wet-dream in the making: they may have the vote, but by god, let’s create some laws to make women shut up.

Al Stefanelli has more.

Oh. So that’s the truck full of stupid that hit Joycelyn Elders

What is it with these prudish, stupid Americans? They want T&A on their TVs, they want crude humor and nekkidness in their movies, and they rent porn to watch when the kids are staying at grandma’s place, but just the thought of sex education makes them freak out.

The latest hysteria: a teacher in Washington state explained how STDs can be transmitted orally and anally.

According to KCPQ, the principal of Onalaska Elementary School was talking to 11- and 12-year-old students about HIV and sexually transmitted diseases when she was asked about oral and anal sex.

The principal’s answer allegedly included verbal descriptions of those sex acts.

Parent Jean Pannkuk recalled to Fox News Radio what her daughter said she was taught: “You take a man’s penis and you put it in your mouth – that’s what the girls do to the boys. … The boys spread the girls legs apart and put their mouths down on the vaginas.”

“Basically, how I feel and others that I’ve talked to, it’s just the same as raping somebody, but you’re raping their innocence instead of their physical being,” parent James Gilliand explained to KCPQ. “When you hit those levels and the sexual acts, you might as well hand them a Kama Sutra book or something, you know?”

“Just the same as raping somebody”…yeah, James, you’re an amoral asshole. Probably a Christian, too, but I wouldn’t want to get too insulting.

And sure, what’s wrong with handing them the Kama Sutra? Well, it’s a little bit opaque and full of euphemisms, and you’d have to define “yoni” and “lingam” for them…how about just giving them a copy of The Joy of Sex instead? We should have absolutely no problem explaining to children how sex works — why are these slackwitted freaks getting so upset over a dry, mechanical description of how oral sex works, especially when it’s in the context of explaining how scary sexual diseases are transmitted?

Faith is all about acquiescence to the intolerable

What are you going to do if you’re trapped in a loveless marriage with a physically or emotionally abusive spouse? For me, the answer would be straightforward, if not easy: get help to protect yourself, and leave.

If you’re a Christian woman, though, you can do something different: you get to be strong and take the abuse, because you can find refuge in the Lord.

You too, can find contentment, despite the fact that you may be living in an emotionally abusive situation. You can find contentment in the Lord and in yourself.

No one wants to be in an abusive marriage, but if you are a Christian woman the decision to leave or stay is not yours alone. The Lord has a plan for you and if you seek His wisdom, He will show you the way. Just know that if He leads you to remain in the marriage, He will be your strength. In “Our Daily Bread” by RBC Ministries, this sentence brings it home. “Assignments from God always include His enablement.”

Isn’t that sweet how religion complements the patriarchy so well? Abused wives will not resist their degradation, because they’ll have an imaginary friend who will tell them to stick with it and give the abuser everything he wants.

Hey, but I’m being gentle here. Vyckie Garrison tears into it, and she’s not nice at all.