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Look at them ladies, trying to do science: 2 of 2

Moving on! Just a couple of weeks ago, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Tim Hunt let the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul, South Korea, in on the secret of successful science, and it’s get them skirts out of the lab. Not out of research entirely of course — just into their own, segregated lab, because of the possibility for hot lab bench lovin’. “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls,” he reportedly said (in a speech that was tragically unrecorded, but which took place in front of a big crowd of people who agree that yeah, he totally said that). “You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them, they cry!”

Bitches, amiright?

But again, he doesn’t want to stand in the way of their research — that’s why he wants them to have their own labs, so everyone can get their work done without worrying about the romance. And the crying.

Lest you think that poor Dr. Hunt is being slandered, and that his remarks are being mischaracterized, he assured BBC Radio 4 that while he was “really sorry that [he] said what [he] said,” but that he “did mean” part of his remarks and that he was “just trying to be honest.” Again: You try to be honest, and bitches cry. (This, and their lack of male co-authors on their research manuscripts, is why women will never truly succeed in scientific fields.) He told the interviewer that he had, in fact, fallen in love with people in his lab, and that people had fallen in love with him (primo catch that he is), and that it’s “disruptive to science.”

Hunt resigned his teaching position at University College London and his position on the European Research Council. In the meantime, female scientists took to Twitter to express their displeasure. Astrophysicist Sarah Tuttle gave ‘er in a series of tweets criticizing his “backwards, draconian, and inappropriate” attitudes.

Every one of her tweets on the subject is worth reading. Possibly out loud, as a monologue, with swelling music and applause afterward, if you can arrange it.

Also readable, although slightly less monologuable, are the female scientists who tweeted pictures of themselves on the job, apologizing for being #distractinglysexy. (And yes, before your boner starts writing any notes, I’m sure that a woman in a Hazmat bunny suit can, in fact, be desperately sexy. They’re just going for an effect here.)

(Whatever you do, don’t check out the SkyNews debate between Dr. Emily Grossman and smug bastard Milo Yiannopoulos in which he says that “the science is very much still out” on the question of whether men’s brains are better suited to science than women’s; argues that women are actually “structurally advantaged,” not disadvantaged, in science; argues that if Hunt’s comments discouraged you from a career in science, “um, how committed were you really in the first place…?”; throws in some bizarre comment about how gay people can “basically get away with murder” and can be “bitchy” and “nobody complains”; and says that none of this is a big deal because if Hunt was your granddad at dinner, no one would even notice what he said; and then commenters deluge Dr. Grossman with sexism, antisemitism, bad science, and suggestions that she get back in the kitchen, the existence of which Yiannopoulos denies, saying it’s “right out of the damsel in distress playbook.” Don’t watch that. Just stop after the #distractinglysexy tweets.)


6 thoughts on Look at them ladies, trying to do science: 2 of 2

  1. I have to wonder how much of that “criticism” that the dude was referring to that makes female scientists cry is really just ongoing harassment, belittling, creepy jokes and misogynistic insults from male peers and superiors. I mean, if I had to work in a field in which I was totally underrepresented as a woman and was surrounded by asshole dudes who constantly violated my boundaries and treated me like garbage, I would cry at some point as well.

  2. Aaaaand…it’s a month later, recording was released…

    Turns out he was actually sending up sexism using satire. The audience was laughing and they applauded. The original quote was lifted in the OPPOSITE context of which it was intended and Connie St. Louis blatantly LIED about everything.

    Apologies…? Nope. Instead everyone is just doubling down on their original opinions instead.

    This is classic internet outrage BS. A story is pretty much fabricated, the outrage begins, people’s lives are ruined…and then the REAL story comes out and by that time everyone has moved on. No apologies, no regrets, right?

    1. I hadn’t heard anything about it until your comment. Don’t you think you should have maybe waited for someone to actually do what you’ve highlighted in the comment before berating people for things that haven’t happened yet?

    2. Citation? Pardon me for being skeptical of your assertion that it was intended as satire. “Satirical” misogyny or racism or homophobia or transphobia that’s indistinguishable from the original isn’t what I’d call genuine satire. The claim that it is, is usually just an after-the-fact excuse.

    3. Yeah, a transcript of the talk was released pretty recently in which he was emphatically encouraging women to pursue science, despite “all the obstacles, and despite chauvinists like me.”

      It was a really weird, awkward way of making his point, and I absolutely think he should have apologized. As the old refrain goes, intent is not magic, and I totally get why his comments offended at least one of the women there. That said, reading them now, it seems pretty clear that it was a case of an awkward person trying to make a pro-feminist point in a convoluted way, not a misogynist trying to denigrate female scientists.

      On the other hand, I wasn’t there.

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