speculawyer
Member
I think harassment of deceased equine is unacceptable speciesism. I apologize for my uncouth behavior.Who is "us" and what in your opinion is the particular dead horse here?
I think harassment of deceased equine is unacceptable speciesism. I apologize for my uncouth behavior.Who is "us" and what in your opinion is the particular dead horse here?
This still going on...can someone sum up why this thread is 30 pages long
Why can't we have female president? Because she'll spend 30 pages going over someone wearing the wrong shirt.
This is like "WHAT IS HARASSMENT" all over again.
Do I, personally, have an issue with that shirt? No. Does that mean I'm unable to understand that the shirt, itself, in a vacuum, might offend some people? No. Does me being a woman, not having a problem with that shirt, suddenly mean that it's okay for all women and any woman that doesn't agree with me should stfu? NO.
However, i'm pretty sure that the last few pages have been discussing CONTEXT. From the last pages I've been reading, it's been about how wearing THAT shirt on TV, representing partially the field of STEM, is sexism. Yes, it IS sexism. Some people will even argue that the shirt, by itself, hanging in the closet, is sexism, but I didn't see that being argued in this thread. It seemed like the majority of the people saying this is sexism is talking about context, and the history of sexism in the STEM fields.
Yes. I think a lot of people come in here like "haha this is stupid, you're stupid for caring" and don't even realize they're dismissing every valid opinion in one clean sweep. People just want these things to be basically accepted as existing at all in the face of wave after wave of dismissals and handwaving. We don't have to have agreement on every single part.edit: You don't have to agree with them. You don't have to agree with me. I don't think anyone is trying to force you to agree that YES THIS SHIRT CREATES EXCLUSION. But, I do think that many people here are saying-- hey, can you at least realize that even if you don't think that, some others (like us) do, and because we do feel it creates a culture of exclusion.. it does.. at least for some people (or else, people wouldn't be saying this).
This has been a good thread.
For the upteenth time
The shirt is symptomatic of the problems with being inclusive to women in STEM fields. It, specifically, does not produce all of the toxicity and other things that is found to be problematic in the fields. It is the straw that broke the camel's back. It's the drop in the bucket that made it run over.
Wearing a shirt with partially naked space bondage babes is VERY different from a real, living woman choosing to present her self as sexy. One is an object, and the other is a person with agency.
The creator has been noted, but then you go on to say their gender is irrelevant. Also, no, a shirt is an object. You can't argue that. Yes, women are just as capable of being sexist like men can be, even out of ignorance. But the crux of the controversy is not that the man has this shirt, or that this shirt exists. It is that this man, by representing the ESA, wore a shirt that struck a nerve for women in STEM fields, and women with awareness of sexism in said fields. It reminded them of a constant exposure to behavior that turns women off from wanting to enter these fieldsThe creator of the depiction of these females doesn't seem to be important. Because if it did, we could say "oh, the designer of the shirt was a woman" and move on.
You could just as well dismiss it and say "a woman is just a susceptible of perpetuating sexist stereotypes" or any number of arguments. In any case, the sex of the creator, or the "quality" of the female depicted ("one is an object"? That's arguable) is irrelevant.
As an aside, I think a lot of the female forms that men create and celebrate are coming from just as innocent and celebratory of a place as backslash's avatar. A lot of what feminists have torn to pieces as being harmful trash for society are conceived in a designer's mind from a very happy place of "let's make beauty". It doesn't mean they can't unintentionally perpetuate sexism... but remember that sometimes. Everything that's been criticized comes from people making what they would like to see.... It must be especially easy to rag on it if you don't share the appeal.
The creator has been noted, but then you go on to say their gender is irrelevant. Also, no, a shirt is an object. You can't argue that. Yes, women are just as capable of being sexist like men can be, even out of ignorance. But the crux of the controversy is not that the man has this shirt, or that this shirt exists. It is that this man, by representing the ESA, wore a shirt that struck a nerve for women in STEM fields, and women with awareness of sexism in said fields. It reminded them of a constant exposure to behavior that turns women off from wanting to enter these fields
Please do not compare a man's drawings of women as the same as a woman taking a flattering picture of herself. They are NOT the same. (Backslash is a person, the drawings are not).
And here's a newsflash for you: the author is dead. The intent of a work does not make that the work's received message.
Honestly, from that phrase alone, it seems like you think that these evil "feminists" are just a bunch of fun-hating, sex-hating prudes that want all women to cover up their bodies 24/7 in burkas. It reminds me of how personally some people take discussing sexism in videogames (GamerGate, anyone?)... with the whole "OMIGOD YOU EVIL FEMINAZIS JUST WANNA COME IN AND TAKE AWAY MY BOOBS IN VIDEOGAMES." :
Wait, what? I might be wrong since academically, I only took a couple undergraduate women's studies classes.. but to my knowledge, we generally don't criticize how the models present themselves.
We criticize how the women's bodies are being positioned to objectify them. We criticize the "male gaze," the idea that most photos of women are taken with the straight male gaze in mind-- that is, hypersexualized. We criticize that women's bodies broken down, sometimes literally, and reduced to really being things, not people... things used to sell, things used as "prizes."
Yeah I see your point there. Of course, someone could then say their intent was to empower the submissive role.It's really not a stretch to imagine that comically exaggerated depictions of the female body in poses and positions that are "objectifying," is not going to be criticized. Yes, traditionally someone being bound nude like that has an element of objectification to it. It may not be obvious, but if you are at all familiar with kink, you'll probably be familiar with it. If you're not familiar with kink.. well.. now you know !
What are you talking about? Can you give some examples? Because I'm not sure anything you've described fits anything anyone has said throughout this entire thread, so why bring it up now?Meanwhile we see white Twitter feminism shot outrageous in the foot again in its desperation to push its anti-sexual expression narrative, espousing notions of objectification based on Mulvey's theory of gaze that were laughable even back in 1975. And it continues to not give a shit about all the minorities that such a narrative shits on, because none of them actually understand intersectionality.
And then they wonder why women are rejecting feminism as a label.
It's really not a stretch to imagine that comically exaggerated depictions of the female body in poses and positions that are "objectifying," is not going to be criticized. Yes, traditionally someone being bound nude like that has an element of objectification to it. It may not be obvious, but if you are at all familiar with kink, you'll probably be familiar with it. If you're not familiar with kink.. well.. now you know !
Wait, what? I might be wrong since academically, I only took a couple undergraduate women's studies classes.. but to my knowledge, we generally don't criticize how the models present themselves.
We criticize how the women's bodies are being positioned to objectify them. We criticize the "male gaze," the idea that most photos of women are taken with the straight male gaze in mind-- that is, hypersexualized. We criticize that women's bodies broken down, sometimes literally, and reduced to really being things, not people... things used to sell, things used as "prizes."
Here are some images:
I realize this isn't in the field of science, and it's about selling things... but it's the same concept. The same idea that women's bodies are... things. Objects. etc.
Some people believe that attitude is reflected on that man's shirt. Based on the history of how women's bodies are depicted, even from a quick google search I pulled up... it should be more obvious why people feel that way,
Intent matters a lot, but not in the way you are describing it, I think.
TBH, anyone could criticize my avatar and say that I'm contributing to sexism in videogames by panning to a culture that's been historically sexist towards women. Even if I don't agree with them, it doesn't mean their opinion isn't valid... and I made this avatar.
It's really not a stretch to imagine that comically exaggerated depictions of the female body in poses and positions that are "objectifying," is not going to be criticized. Yes, traditionally someone being bound nude like that has an element of objectification to it. It may not be obvious, but if you are at all familiar with kink, you'll probably be familiar with it. If you're not familiar with kink.. well.. now you know !
What are you talking about? Can you give some examples? Because I'm not sure anything you've described fits anything anyone has said throughout this entire thread, so why bring it up now?
:x
This thread really saps my faith in humanity.
How are people so afraid of acknowledging that some people in the world may find the shirt problematic? How is the basic response is "tough shit, this is how things are, and this is how things gonna be, so learn how to deal" instead of "oh, maybe we can tone down a little of our communication when it's under public attention / televised interview" ??
... also, >__< ... are we at the point where we are contending "how to feminism right, let me tell you ladiez"
really?
>___<
bunbuns, you are stronger than i <3 also liu kang, kharvey, opto, dice o7
Oh, right that stuff, not sexism.
Like this: http://www.npr.org/2012/07/12/156664337/stereotype-threat-why-women-quit-science-jobs
Or this: http://digitool.library.colostate.e...zL2R0bC9kM18xL2FwYWNoZV9tZWRpYS8xMTkzOTQ=.pdf
Or this:
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/12/07/emily-graslie-on-sex-bias-and-sexism-in-stem-outreach/
Or this:
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2013/oct/17/women-in-science-ada-lovelace-gender
That's all good, but then what's the story for how real women in astronomy have felt about it?Huh? It describes the entire narrative that the shirt is problematic at all. It can only be problematic if gaze theory has some merit. It doesn't.
Gaze theory is inherently problematic, because it discriminates against the expression of minority groups and is based on clumsy generalisations.
Huh? It describes the entire narrative that the shirt is problematic at all. It can only be problematic if gaze theory has some merit. It doesn't.
Gaze theory is inherently problematic, because it discriminates against the expression of minority groups and is based on clumsy generalisations.
Yes, actual meaningful structural issues that hurt women, and not a handful of polemics with only self declared validity.
(That colostate paper is hilarious. 20 qualitative interviews with the examples cherry picked to fit the author's argument? Yeesh.)
Ignorance.. or innocence, as you called it.. doesn't dismiss something from criticism. My mom makes "innocent" comments about black people all the time. It's still wrong.
No one did that.
What? I honestly have no idea what you're trying to argue here.
This message may fall on deaf ears. It may not have a lot to do with the topic at hand. I just felt like inputting my opinion. I don't think anyone is against equality, but if you keep crying wolf, eventually people will start looking at the movement of feminist in a bad light. I don't post on here much, though I do read a lot. From what I gather, it seems a majority need a cause to get behind to be a part of something. Whatever happened to individuality? Anyways, I'm pretty sure I'll be banned for not viweing things as others. The article below I feel sums up the disdain people are starting to feel...... I'm sure some slick comments will come forth to refute me and the article. But take a step back and realize you aren't helping the cause. You're harming it.
www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/11/15/shirt-comet-girls-feminism-column/19083607/?showmenu=true
I don't know if I did this right. I'm not that internet savy, but you'll get the gist.
Glenn Reynolds said:So how are things going for feminism? Well, last week, some feminists took one of the great achievements of human history landing a probe from Earth on a comet hundreds of millions of miles away and made it all about the clothes.
Glenn Reynolds said:Yes, that's right. After years of effort, the European Space Agency's lander Philaelanded on a comet 300 million miles away. At first, people were excited. Then some women noticed that one of the space scientists, Matt Taylor, was wearing a shirt, made for him by a female "close pal," featuring comic-book depictions of semi-naked women. And suddenly, the triumph of the comet landing was drowned out by shouts of feminist outrage about ... what people were wearing. It was one small shirt for a man, one giant leap backward for womankind.
The Atlantic's Rose Eveleth tweeted, "No no women are toooootally welcome in our community, just ask the dude in this shirt." Astrophysicist Katie Mack commented: "I don't care what scientists wear. But a shirt featuring women in lingerie isn't appropriate for a broadcast if you care about women in STEM." And from there, the online feminist lynch mob took off until Taylor was forced to deliver a tearful apology on camera.
Glenn Reynolds said:It seems to me that if you care about women in STEM, maybe you shouldn't want to communicate the notion that they're so delicate that they can't handle pictures of comic-book women. Will we stock our Mars spacecraft with fainting couches?
Glenn Reynolds said:No, they don't. Or, if they do, their reservations are overcome by the desire to feel important and powerful at others' expense. Thus, what should have been the greatest day in a man's life accomplishing something never before done in the history of humanity was instead derailed by people with their own axes to grind. As Chloe Price observed: "Imagine the ... storm if the scientist had been a woman and everyone focused solely on her clothes and not her achievements."
Yes, feminists have been telling us for years that women can wear whatever they want, and for men to comment in any way is sexism. But that's obviously a double standard, since they evidently feel no compunction whatsoever in criticizing what men wear. News flash: Geeks don't dress like Don Draper.
Glenn Reynolds said:Whatever feminists say, their true priorities are revealed in what they do, and what they do is, mostly, man-bashing and special pleading.
:x
This thread really saps my faith in humanity.
o7
Cant it just be problematic because it makes some people uncomfortable?...and it may perpetuate a certain notion about women's bodies as objects of decoration to younger generation?
I'm not trying to create a care-bear world here :x But in professional capacity, I think certain standards should be expected.
Also, full disclosure: I dont find the shirt offensive and I'm a woman. But I acknowledge others may feel differently and I am willing to take steps to make sure that other people's boundaries are observed, specially in public settings.
Cant it just be problematic because it makes some people uncomfortable?
...and it may perpetuate a certain notion about women's bodies as objects of decoration to younger generation?
I'm not trying to create a care-bear world here :x But in professional capacity, I think certain standards should be expected.
Also, full disclosure: I dont find the shirt offensive and I'm a woman. But I acknowledge others may feel differently and I am willing to take steps to make sure that other people's boundaries are observed, specially in public settings.
yup...for the opossite reasons of your post
"[M]inimizing the complaint is step one in dismissing it. Someone can't just be annoyed, they have to be OUTRAGED. And then, to make that claim seem even more poorly-thought-out and reactionary, you have to suggest the "outrage" is false somehow, implying the person expressing this "outrage" is simply an attention whore grabbing the nearest possible opportunity to have attention paid to them.
Once you've neatly, succinctly established that someone commenting negatively on the obvious sexism is an overemotional liar who doesn't actually believe what they're saying, you can easily tell yourself and others that everything's okay."
I don't think anyone is.
Really, most of these posts seem to be about how this shirt is but a demonstration of the male-dominated, and sexist-towards-women culture of STEM.
._.
(Though MindWiper is presenting a different argument, so I suppose you have that? But s/he isn't arguing that it's a bunch of male brutes making the shirt, s/he is actually arguing that it's NOT sexism demonstrated in certain ways in STEM keeping women out of STEM.)
BocoDragon said:As an aside, I think a lot of the female forms that men create and celebrate are coming from just as innocent and celebratory of a place as backslash's avatar. A lot of what feminists have torn to pieces as being harmful trash for society are conceived in a designer's mind from a very happy place of "let's make beauty". It doesn't mean they can't unintentionally perpetuate sexism... but remember that sometimes. Everything that's been criticized comes from people making what they would like to see.... It must be especially easy to rag on it if you don't share the appeal.
No, and it's actually quite vital that society rejects any notions of people's comfort as being important.
If "it makes some people uncomfortable" is a valid test for being problematic, then all feminism of any kind is problematic, because clearly there are people uncomfortable with it.
The whole point is that's nonsense. It's a reductio ad absurdum, in much the same way the game violence debate was (and twenty years later we have our evidence in abundance - they were wrong, people can distinguish portrayals from real human beings, and the theory has no merit).
"Certain standards" are, as I pointed out above, designed to be inherently damaging to the general populace, as a basic piece of class prejudice that disproportionately affects women.
I'm not - my entire career has been about trying to make sure that other people's boundaries are destroyed, because they are inherently destructive cultural concepts. These are all reruns of the arguments run by the Church in favour of religious censorship, then the Mary Whitehouses of this world, then the anti-gay censors. "This makes me uncomfortable, so it must be ghettoised."
No, and it's actually quite vital that society rejects any notions of people's comfort as being important.
If "it makes some people uncomfortable" is a valid test for being problematic, then all feminism of any kind is problematic, because clearly there are people uncomfortable with it.
The whole point is that's nonsense. It's a reductio ad absurdum, in much the same way the game violence debate was (and twenty years later we have our evidence in abundance - they were wrong, people can distinguish portrayals from real human beings, and the theory has no merit).
"Certain standards" are, as I pointed out above, designed to be inherently damaging to the general populace, as a basic piece of class prejudice that disproportionately affects women.
I'm not - my entire career has been about trying to make sure that other people's boundaries are destroyed, because they are inherently destructive cultural concepts. These are all reruns of the arguments run by the Church in favour of religious censorship, then the Mary Whitehouses of this world, then the anti-gay censors. "This makes me uncomfortable, so it must be ghettoised."
I apologize as I did not read all the pages, and just the last few, but like I said before.. I didn't see anyone attacking the shirt in a vacuum. I really felt like most of the posters were referring about how it's sexist towards women (because it could create women feeling uncomfortable/being excluded from STEM, it shows how women are not inclusive in STEM, etc).
The whole point is that's nonsense. It's a reductio ad absurdum, in much the same way the game violence debate was (and twenty years later we have our evidence in abundance - they were wrong, people can distinguish portrayals from real human beings, and the theory has no merit).
I've never seen someone read a paper so quickly, damn. I'm impressed.
What about that paper leads you to conclude the examples are "cherrypicked"? The Methods say ithe subjects were the people who managed to schedule an interview.
It seems like your primary point w/r/t the shirt incident is that you don't believe that images, artworks, etc can be representative of wider cultural trends or affect the way people percieve and engage with the world, yeah? Does this mean that you believe that, say, advertising is totally ineffective?
"Minimizing the complaint is step one in dismissing it. Someone can't just be annoyed, they have to be OUTRAGED. And then, to make that claim seem even more poorly-thought-out and reactionary, you have to suggest the "outrage" is false somehow, implying the person expressing this "outrage" is simply an attention whore grabbing the nearest possible opportunity to have attention paid to them.Where's that "who gives a shit" Harrison Ford gif when you need it.
Jesus Christ, the world has become offended-land. That a woman (not even bought) made that t-shirt as a present for the guy makes it even more hilarious.
This is not quite a valid comparison. When we speak about violence in video games, such as murder, it's fairly simple to show that playing video games does not have a correlation with increased violence towards other people. Sexism, on the other hand, is much more subtle, and largely takes the form of unconscious attitudes. This is why it is useful to listen to the people who have been on the receiving end of sexism in their lives and careers. For many women, the presence of that imagery being casually worn on a global livestream by a head scientist (without being flagged as inappropriate by the PR staff), in addition to the words used to describe the Philae lander ("she's sexy but not easy"), was simply an unwelcome reminder of a society that still values them for their body rather than their mind.
"Minimizing the complaint is step one in dismissing it. Someone can't just be annoyed, they have to be OUTRAGED. And then, to make that claim seem even more poorly-thought-out and reactionary, you have to suggest the "outrage" is false somehow, implying the person expressing this "outrage" is simply an attention whore grabbing the nearest possible opportunity to have attention paid to them.
Once you've neatly, succinctly established that someone commenting negatively on the obvious sexism is an overemotional liar who doesn't actually believe what they're saying, you can easily tell yourself and others that everything's okay."
That's all good, but then what's the story for how real women in astronomy have felt about it?
"Minimizing the complaint is step one in dismissing it. Someone can't just be annoyed, they have to be OUTRAGED. And then, to make that claim seem even more poorly-thought-out and reactionary, you have to suggest the "outrage" is false somehow, implying the person expressing this "outrage" is simply an attention whore grabbing the nearest possible opportunity to have attention paid to them.
Once you've neatly, succinctly established that someone commenting negatively on the obvious sexism is an overemotional liar who doesn't actually believe what they're saying, you can easily tell yourself and others that everything's okay."
Where's that "who gives a shit" Harrison Ford gif when you need it.
Jesus Christ, the world has become offended-land. That a woman (not even bought) made that t-shirt as a present for the guy makes it even more hilarious.