Andreas: This might also be a case for
Andreas submitted:
This might also be a case for Escher Girls: http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/13/7213819/your-bowling-shirt-is-holding-back-progress
….at least I had to think of this blog the moment I saw the picture….
(Photo from The Guardian)
You’re not the only one. A lot of people have sent me links or pictures about this since it happened.
For those confused: this is one of the scientists involved in the project of landing the Philae spacecraft on a comet. He was interviewed in the hours leading to the event, and for whatever reason, chose to wear that shirt for the interviews.
It’s created a backlash from women in the sciences as an example of how a negative environment for women can be created that discourages women and girls from joining the sciences, or feeling welcome in them.
From the above article:
This is the sort of casual misogyny that stops women from entering certain scientific fields. They see a guy like that on TV and they don’t feel welcome. They see a poster of greased up women in a colleague’s office and they know they aren’t respected. They hear comments about “bitches” while out at a bar with fellow science students, and they decide to change majors. And those are the women who actually make it that far. Those are the few who persevered even when they were discouraged from pursuing degrees in physics, chemistry, and math throughout high school. These are the women who forged on despite the fact that they were told by elementary school classmates and the media at large that girls who like science are nerdy and unattractive. This is the climate women who dream of working at NASA or the ESA come up against, every single day. This shirt is representative of all of that, whether Taylor meant it to be or not.
Since running this blog, I get a lot of messages from women telling me what a turn off some of the art in video games & comics depicting women are, and how it marks certain spaces as being for straight men, and they feel unwelcome in it, like they could be guests, but never an equal participant. Many won’t even take a chance on a book with this kind of art no the cover or advertising for the same reason, it says “this is not for you”, and if there’s a lot of these depictions in a community, it suggests (even inadvertently) that the community is not for them.
So, I completely understand how women in the sciences would feel the same way about that shirt, especially when it’s merely one example of the ways the environment makes them feel uncomfortable (as eluded to above.) This is less about that one specific shirt, than what it stands for in the larger picture of what they’ve experienced in the field, and the effects that kind of environment might have in dissuading women from entering or staying in the field. It’s not that the shirt is BAD, or the guy is bad, or that the one shirt is the issue, it’s the appropriateness, the lack of professionalism to wear such a shirt to an interview, and how it’s not an isolated example as many women in sciences have pointed out.
It also doesn’t help when a woman talks about it, they get attacked and threatened, and told that they need to get laid, either (which also happens to women who talk about similar sorts of issues in other environments, including gaming & comics, as has been talked about in the news a lot recently. Even running this blog, I get some of that. :\ I recently had somebody send me a song they wrote about raping me in fairly explicit detail.)
Edit: He has now apologized and admitted he “made a big mistake.”
The woman who received all the harassment for tweeting about the shirt is glad he apologized and is hoping she and he can both move on with their lives.