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[berzeli]

Exactly, does nobody watch Arrow? Felicty Smoak? Come on.

Err, so now you're the second person to bring this up I kind of feel the need to address this. A fictional character in a TV series created by men isn't some stellar example of women in geekdom. Please at least use someone who actually exist like Felicia Day.

But in all seriousness that's not even the argument. It's that women dont like the geek culture, it's just "Women felt that they were less similar to the typical computer science major. "

So less similar. Not unwanted, or harassed, or dismissed or whatever else. Just less similar.

You are misinterpreting the study. Stop it.

Another quote by the article Mumei posted:

So it's a matter of women not liking the nerd stereotype as opposed to making women not feel welcome... because shirt. Thus the argument is essentially "How dare you wear clothes I don't connect with"

In that context, it's easy to see why there is so much blowback.

You are creating strawmen by selectively quoting the study, it is a really disingenuous way to argue.

 

[Irminsul]

This assumes that there isn't a problem with women in geek culture, in my (and many others) opinion there do exist a problem with the treatment of women in geek culture. But that is a discussion for another thread. A point of the study was to illustrate that the surrounding culture influenced how women perceived computer science, not that it was the field itself.

Not necessarily. The problem with women in geek culture could just be smaller than perceived or even the same and my point would still hold. It's just that "perception of a field" maybe isn't a good indicator of things to change within the field. Or to the point: I'd rather change the perception of geek culture being unwelcoming to women than change geek culture itself due to how it is perceived. Because I think there's very little within geek culture that is fundamentally male-only and cannot be adapted to suit everyone. But as you say, that's really another discussion.

If you ask why I'm so keen on perception vs. reality, it's just that I'm personally involved in a subculture where they very much differ (although it's slowly changing). And I don't want any changes within it due to how the subculture is perceived from the outside. But that hasn't even anything to do with genders, so I'll refrain from going deeper into this.

So we agree that public perception matters, which is why the message you are communicating whilst in the public spotlight matters. Wearing a shirt that uses women as decorative objects which is something a lot of women take umbrage with isn't helping the public perception of women and their role in STEM and taking issue with this is a fair response, no?

I'm not quite convinced "taking issue with" is a good description of what happened, but I also don't really know who to blame for it. I still stand by the opinion that the reaction was way overblown, but after thinking about it a bit maybe that's just what today's state of the Internet (or social media) is. Even if nobody wants that, it still happens.

Public perception matters, yes, which is why he probably shouldn't have worn the shirt. But I won't agree with any notion that this was more than an ill-conceived shout-out to his friend without any further thoughts about it. Someone else said many pages ago that you shouldn't use individual cases as evidence of larger systemic issues, and I agree with that. It's pretty unrealistic to expect others to care about topics the same you do, especially when talking about the general public. So at worst, I would describe it as a lack of caring instead of a symptom of the issues.

There has been a bit of talk about empathy here, so maybe that could be used to see why it wasn't that surprising Matt Taylor didn't see issues with his shirt.

 

[Brawndo Addict]

I wasn't trying to present evidence for anything, it was simply an opine based on my observations in my field. I'm curious if the breakdown is similar across the various areas of STEM. When I was in college the ratio of male to female engineers was much higher than that of the biology or chemistry majors.

You said nothing about your 'curiosity' in the first post. This seems to be an ad-hoc addition to try to defend yourself by appealing to the particular STEM segments with higher female participation rather than STEM at large which is what you were talking about originally. Second, you can play the semantics game all day but people understand what you're arguing for even if you don't explicitly say it.

I'm a professional scientist in my late 20s and from my observations, women are very well represented in this industry.

Objectively wrong.

STEM Workforce

Women remain underrepresented in the science and engineering workforce, although to a lesser degree than in the past, with the greatest disparities occurring in engineering, computer science, and the physical sciences (NSF, Science & Engineering Indicators, 2014; NSF, Women, Minorities, and People with Disabilities, 2013).

Female scientists and engineers are concentrated in different occupations than are men, with relatively high shares of women in the social sciences (58%) and biological and medical sciences (48%) and relatively low shares in engineering (13%) and computer and mathematical sciences (25%) (NSF, Science & Engineering Indicators, 2014).

Women make up 47% of the total U.S. workforce, but are much less represented in particular science and engineering occupations (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Women in the Labor Force: A Databook, 2013). For example:

• 44.2% of chemists and material scientists are women;
• 25.7% of environmental scientists and geoscientists are women;
• 17.7% of chemical engineers are women;
• 13.7% of civil engineers are women;
• 8.8% of electrical and electronics engineers are women;
• 18.8% of industrial engineers are women; and
• 4.5% of mechanical engineers are women.

Then you say...

Both of my previous bosses were women, incredibly smart, and very well respected within the company and our new executive director of research who is female is also brilliant and has company wide influence and respect. The great thing about STEM is that at the end of the day your data, techniques, and research are a tangible thing and represents how good of a scientist you are regardless of gender, creed, or anything else.

Again untrue.

And finally...

In response to the story, his shirt was tacky and unprofessional under any circumstance, and he should have known better pHd physicist or not. But does his shirt say anything about the state of women in STEM careers? IMO, absolutely not.

Untrue again.

These stereotypes also extend into how we portray male scientists. Research has indicated that when females are exposed to nerdy white-guy stereotypes, it discourages them from STEM fields.

Clearly you haven't read much of the thread otherwise none of this would be news to you and you would have seen Mumei's detailed walk-through post.

 

[RedShift]

People are pissed off at The Verge article because they have poor reading comprehension. The article even says "we don't know why he chose to wear it", and it's mostly about a climate of insensitivity toward the gender representation disparity.

From the 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." They also include Rose Evelyth's tweet, that they endorse as her 'brilliantly capturing' the situation: "No no women are toooootally welcome in our community, just ask the dude in this shirt."

If you don't think that's blaming him for women not feeling welcome in STEM fields then you might be the one with poor reading comprehension.

And what makes his feeling of success so sacrosanct anyway? Why is him being happy on one day more important than the many people he made unhappy? Nobody's taken away his accomplishment, he's going to be super in-demand to lecture at every space agency and engineering department around for a long time to come. His image is totally fine right now.

Google "Matt Taylor". Might be different depending where you're searching from, but for me on the front page apart from 2 links about different Matt Taylors and his wiki article (which does mention the shirt thing but it obviously isn't the main focus), every link is about the shirt he wore. Does that not count as damaging his image? I agree he'll be fine professionally but still.

And yeah I think he was more deserving of happiness on Wednesday than people who'd get so upset by a shirt they feel the need to take it out on others like that.

 

[Irminsul]

Yeah, reducing data to one dimension of your choosing and trying to explain everything with it, that's a really good way of applying statistics. There isn't even any information whether these results are statistically significant (which maybe isn't so surprising seeing it is in the "comment" section of Nature).

 

[berzeli]

Not necessarily. The problem with women in geek culture could just be smaller than perceived or even the same and my point would still hold. It's just that "perception of a field" maybe isn't a good indicator of things to change within the field. Or to the point: I'd rather change the perception of geek culture being unwelcoming to women than change geek culture itself due to how it is perceived. Because I think there's very little within geek culture that is fundamentally male-only and cannot be adapted to suit everyone. But as you say, that's really another discussion.

Your point being? Because you seemed to be arguing that there weren't problems in the geek culture. You admitting that there are problems in geek culture kind of nullifies that point.

But if there is a chronic issue within geek culture and its treatment of women you can't change the public perception. The perception exists because there exists a problem, you can't magically change one without changing the other.

The fact that conventions have to issue a campaign about how cosplay isn't consent, the underrepresentation of women both in geek media and as creators of geek media, the horrific reactions and harassment campaigns that occur when women speak up about issues or experiences, the sexist deceptions of women in geek media, etc. are all things that alienates women from it. But yes that is another topic.

If you ask why I'm so keen on perception vs. reality, it's just that I'm personally involved in a subculture where they very much differ (although it's slowly changing). And I don't want any changes within it due to how the subculture is perceived from the outside. But that hasn't even anything to do with genders, so I'll refrain from going deeper into this.

But if there are issues with a culture, people should be allowed to voice their concerns about it. You wanting things to remain the same doesn't override their opinion, nor does things have to drastically change to the point of being unrecognisable for these problems to be solved.

I'm not quite convinced "taking issue with" is a good description of what happened, but I also don't really know who to blame for it. I still stand by the opinion that the reaction was way overblown, but after thinking about it a bit maybe that's just what today's state of the Internet (or social media) is. Even if nobody wants that, it still happens.

I would like to point out that the woman who was slightly rude when calling Matt Taylor an asshole has had her life threatened. I have compared her commentary to that of a sports event and if you look at things in that context her language is tame. The escalation of the criticism isn't something you can blame on anyone in particular.

Public perception matters, yes, which is why he probably shouldn't have worn the shirt. But I won't agree with any notion that this was more than an ill-conceived shout-out to his friend without any further thoughts about it. Someone else said many pages ago that you shouldn't use individual cases as evidence of larger systemic issues, and I agree with that. It's pretty unrealistic to expect others to care about topics the same you do, especially when talking about the general public. So at worst, I would describe it as a lack of caring instead of a symptom of the issues.

There has been a bit of talk about empathy here, so maybe that could be used to see why it wasn't that surprising Matt Taylor didn't see issues with his shirt.

Are you ignoring every single person in this thread who have said that Matt seems like a great guy that made a mistake? Because that is the general perception of him in this thread by the people who find the shirt problematic.

 

[dramatis]

But this is all double talk. You and the people I quoted are in fact saying this shirt is emblematic, representative, whatever word you want to use, of a problem. And because you have hurt feelings, he shouldn't wear the shirt. The shirt helps make women feel unwelcome. So we need to censor it. And of course, true to their objective, the guy apologized. After which we got the comment that the woman who made the initial comment was glad he "recognized his mistake".

That mistake, yet again, was ... wait for it... wearing a shirt. So again, it's petty garbage and only serves to further push the term Feminism further away from legitimacy.

Censoring those you disagree with is not empowering, this is the false path you're trying to go down.

I think what is lacking on your part is an empathy with a female perspective.

From your perspective and perhaps also Matt Taylor's perspective, it was just a shirt. But when it is explained to you that the shirt is a symbol of the culture that forms a barrier against participation in important fields of science, you insist it is just a shirt and claim that the problem is just a problem of "hurt feelings". No matter what other suggest to you, you're stuck in the mindset of it being a harmless shirt, legitimized by it being a present from a lady friend.

From a different perspective, it's probably similar to seeing new female character designs with copious amounts of cleavage, skintight clothes, and provocative poses. That is, the internal exasperation of having yet another female character representative of casual, perhaps even unconscious, sexism, and wondering when it will change if at all.

It is not a question of censorship, but rather: do men have no way to express themselves and their identity through anything else? Or is it because those things men are expressing themselves in are their free speech, so women should endure their careless attitude and not complain? Is it always going to be 'just a shirt' or 'just a design' or 'just a catcall', "quit whining"?

The reason feminists speak out now, even if harshly, is because if they don't speak out at all now, nobody will notice or care. It will be simply accepted as the normal. It speaks volumes about the culture there right now if nobody told Matt Taylor, "It's probably a bad idea to wear that shirt on camera." Because they had accepted something like that as the normal. Even if your daughter would not be insulted by a shirt, what could she do against a workplace (or many workplaces) unconsciously discriminating against her? Especially when these people might not realize what they're doing, and possibly even reject the idea that they are doing it?

I haven't followed the 'shirtstorm' very closely, but it seems like the complaints were very intense. I don't agree with the intensity of the response, but I think the apology was correct. Perhaps to you it was censorship; to me it was hopefully a realization on the part of Matt Taylor (and possibly others in his field) so that he can reflect a bit on disparities in his line of work.

 

[GaimeGuy]

It took me a moment or 2 to find what was wrong with the shirt after being shown the picture. but my initial reaction was "Yeah, that's not work appropriate, too lewd." not "Yeah, that's sexist. Such disrespect for women" The thought of sexism never crossed my mind, so the outrage over the "sexist" shirt makes no sense to me.

 

[Dash27]

Err, so now you're the second person to bring this up I kind of feel the need to address this. A fictional character in a TV series created by men isn't some stellar example of women in geekdom. Please at least use someone who actually exist like Felicia Day.

I haven't gone through all of them but so far 95% of the women on that guys shirt are also fictional. (I'm pretty sure one of them is Annika Hansen)

*Trigger warning, the above name is a reference to an actress who played a character on Star Trek. If nerd culture offends you, you may experience feelings of unwelcomeness.*

 

[Brawndo Addict]

Yeah, reducing data to one dimension of your choosing and trying to explain everything with it, that's a really good way of applying statistics. There isn't even any information whether these results are statistically significant (which maybe isn't so surprising seeing it is in the "comment" section of Nature).

Oh please, how did I attempt to 'explain everything' with that graph/stat? Did you somehow miss see the other stats/graphs I posted? Besides, there is no single statistic that could possibly prove discrimination/bias and its origins and impacts to such a degree that would satisfy detractors. That's not a reason to ignore gender differences and research what may be causing them. And if you had actually examined the article I linked to, you'd see they have an entire section about limitations:

There are several limitations to the conclusions that can be drawn from our findings. Foremost among them is that age indisputably has a role — perhaps even the major role — in explaining gender differences in scientific output, collaboration and impact. As is well known, the academic pipeline from junior to senior faculty leaks female scientists, and the senior ranks of science bear the imprint of previous generations' barriers to the progression of women. Thus it is likely that many of the trends we observed can be explained by the under-representation of women among the elders of science. After all, seniority, authorship position, collaboration and citation are all highly interlinked variables.

Another key limitation is that authorship of papers is only one of many indicators of research activity. Our analysis includes only journal articles, not books, conference proceedings, database construction or code, for example. Also problematic is the lack of universal norms associated with authorship attribution and position. For example, it is possible that some women do not appear as authors despite their contribution to research activities, and there are fields in which authors are listed alphabetically. There is also a concern that gender-assignment techniques can introduce errors (see Supplementary Information). We have tried to mitigate this with validation exercises, but there is always room for improvement.

Future research should drill into questions raised by this analysis. What distinguishes pockets of anomalously high parity? Are there characteristics of the work itself that contribute to disparities in output and citation? Are there other, perhaps less quantitative, aspects of scholarship that reveal a different story regarding gender balance in science? Furthermore, is there anything intrinsic to certain disciplines or cultures that make them more or less appealing to scientists of a particular gender?

But part of how we look at and respond to this kind of limited data is recognizing the difference and asking yourself:

Do I really think this has a non-gendered explanation?



But perhaps you want a more 'directly harmful' statistic:

Young Scientists Say They're Sexually Abused In The Field

In a survey of scientists engaged in field research, the majority — 64 percent — said they had personally experienced sexual harassment while at a field site, and 22 percent reported being the victim of sexual assault.

Most of the people reporting harassment or assault were women, and the vast majority were still students or postdocs.

And for female victims, the perpetrator was more likely to be a superior, not a peer. "This is happening to them when they are trainees, when they are most vulnerable within the academic hierarchy," says evolutionary biologist Katie Hinde,

 

[KHarvey16]

I haven't gone through all of them but so far 95% of the women on that guys shirt are also fictional. (I'm pretty sure one of them is Annika Hansen)

*Trigger warning, the above name is a reference to an actress who played a character on Star Trek. If nerd culture offends you, you may experience feelings of unwelcomeness.*

You know how I know you aren't paying attention to what people are telling you?

 

[unround]

From the 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." They also include Rose Evelyth's tweet, that they endorse as her 'brilliantly capturing' the situation: "No no women are toooootally welcome in our community, just ask the dude in this shirt."

If you don't think that's blaming him for women not feeling welcome in STEM fields then you might be the one with poor reading comprehension.

Saying that there was casual misogyny there does not necessarily imply that he himself is misogynistic. This is a pretty key part of the discourse surrounding sexism that some people don't seem to get. A misogynistic society does not necessarily require any ill intent on the part of those that propagate it, unconscious biases and a lack of knowledge about these issues can do the job just fine. An unwelcoming atmosphere does not seem as such to someone already steeped in it, and who benefits from it without their knowledge.

 

[Entropy912]

I worked at EBGames for 3 years. Despite the allegedly (or close to) 50/50 split between men and women gamers, I can tell you, anecdotally, that most of the customers I served at my store were male and the 'female gamers' were moms or girlfriends buying for their sons or boyfriends. Sooooooo....research or anecdote?

I agere, my post was an anecdote, not research.

 

[berzeli]

I haven't gone through all of them but so far 95% of the women on that guys shirt are also fictional. (I'm pretty sure one of them is Annika Hansen)

*Trigger warning, the above name is a reference to an actress who played a character on Star Trek. If nerd culture offends you, you may experience feelings of unwelcomeness.*

Dude. Stop. Like really, stop.

You are conflating issues, creating strawmen and you don't seem to have read what I wrote.

*snip*

You're doing some really good work.

 

[Dice//]

I haven't gone through all of them but so far 95% of the women on that guys shirt are also fictional. (I'm pretty sure one of them is Annika Hansen)

*Trigger warning, the above name is a reference to an actress who played a character on Star Trek. If nerd culture offends you, you may experience feelings of unwelcomeness.*

You're trying too hard.

 

[stonesak]

Saying that there was casual misogyny there does not necessarily imply that he himself is misogynistic. This is a pretty key part of the discourse surrounding sexism that some people don't seem to get. A misogynistic society does not necessarily require any ill intent on the part of those that propagate it, unconscious biases and a lack of knowledge about these issues can do the job just fine. An unwelcoming atmosphere does not seem as such to someone already steeped in it, and who benefits from it without their knowledge.

It absolutely does, unless you think misogyny is some nefarious evil force that just hovers around.

 

[Irminsul]

Your point being? Because you seemed to be arguing that there weren't problems in the geek culture. You admitting that there are problems in geek culture kind of nullifies that point.

No, I never said that. I can best explain it with referring to...

But if there are issues with a culture, people should be allowed to voice their concerns about it. You wanting things to remain the same doesn't override their opinion, nor does things have to drastically change to the point of being unrecognisable for these problems to be solved.

Okay, to make clearer what I meant: the subculture I was referring to was accused of "Satanism" and even killing people in the past. Obviously bullshit? Yes, but according to you, people were right in "voicing their concerns". Even if they had no fucking idea what the subculture was about (and they still don't, the perception just changed to a harmless kind of wrong).

So no, perception and reality aren't necessarily related. Issues in geek culture have to be addressed, right, but I'm absolutely not convinced changes within the culture itself are enough to change its perception. Oh, and I think if we would get more women into geek culture, many of the problems would solve itself.

I would like to point out that the woman who was slightly rude when calling Matt Taylor an asshole has had her life threatened. I have compared her commentary to that of a sports event and if you look at things in that context her language is tame. The escalation of the criticism isn't something you can blame on anyone in particular.

I know that. I didn't limit my description to any "faction". Why would I? I just wonder if this type of activism (from all involved) isn't destroying more than helping. Although I don't really know what to do against it.

Are you ignoring every single person in this thread who have said that Matt seems like a great guy that made a mistake? Because that is the general perception of him in this thread by the people who find the shirt problematic.

No, that wasn't my point at all. I said it wasn't really surprising that Matt Taylor didn't see the issue you saw.

 

[Dash27]

I think what is lacking on your part is an empathy with a female perspective.

From your perspective and perhaps also Matt Taylor's perspective, it was just a shirt. But when it is explained to you that the shirt is a symbol of the culture that forms a barrier against participation in important fields of science, you insist it is just a shirt and claim that the problem is just a problem of "hurt feelings". No matter what other suggest to you, you're stuck in the mindset of it being a harmless shirt, legitimized by it being a present from a lady friend.

Your suggesting nerd culture exists to keep women out? Or that it's just a side effect. This is like arguing there are not many women in Heavy Metal bands because they all wear t-shirts with zombies and gore on them. So we need to get them to stop wearing those shirts.

From a different perspective, it's probably similar to seeing new female character designs with copious amounts of cleavage, skintight clothes, and provocative poses. That is, the internal exasperation of having yet another female character representative of casual, perhaps even unconscious, sexism, and wondering when it will change if at all.

It is not a question of censorship, but rather: do men have no way to express themselves and their identity through anything else? Or is it because those things men are expressing themselves in are their free speech, so women should endure their careless attitude and not complain? Is it always going to be 'just a shirt' or 'just a design' or 'just a catcall', "quit whining"?

That's the standard? Do they not have any other way to express themselves? So you can dictate what they wear now.

Most people at the knitting club by me only wear pant suits, and tacky sweaters. I'm fairly sure it's not to keep me out.... although it's working.

The reason feminists speak out now, even if harshly, is because if they don't speak out at all now, nobody will notice or care. It will be simply accepted as the normal. It speaks volumes about the culture there right now if nobody told Matt Taylor, "It's probably a bad idea to wear that shirt on camera." Because they had accepted something like that as the normal. Even if your daughter would not be insulted by a shirt, what could she do against a workplace (or many workplaces) unconsciously discriminating against her? Especially when these people might not realize what they're doing, and possibly even reject the idea that they are doing it?

I haven't followed the 'shirtstorm' very closely, but it seems like the complaints were very intense. I don't agree with the intensity of the response, but I think the apology was correct. Perhaps to you it was censorship; to me it was hopefully a realization on the part of Matt Taylor (and possibly others in his field) so that he can reflect a bit on disparities in his line of work.

Again, people care, and they care to distance themselves from this form of "feminism". Which I know it really upsets many women legitimately concerned about gender equality to cast this sort of thing in with the term feminism. I fully admit to schadenfreude over that

So it's your view that this guy, a nice guy by all accounts and an obviously very bright man, should have this brought up at his moment of successful landing a freaking space ship on a comet? His shirt should be the discussion and he should apologize for it ad then reflect on how his shirt helps shackle the doors of science to women?

 

[KHarvey16]

It absolutely does, unless you think misogyny is some nefarious evil force that just hovers around.

Again, another clear indication of a poster not paying any attention whatsoever to words actually being written by separate human beings present in the duscussion. If any of you could react to a string of letters typed by someone else instead of the imaginary jumble you have swishing around in your head I could really see my day improving.

 

[studyguy]

I just thought the shirt was sorta tacky. In terms of what you should wear when you're going to be presenting to that many people, it wouldn't rank high on my list. The fact that it dampened some of the excitement of the achievement among news media is a bummer though.

 

[Brawndo Addict]

I agere, my post was an anecdote, not research.

It's not about whether it was research (clearly its not), it's about whether you were using anecdotes as evidence.

I'm a professional scientist in my late 20s and from my observations

Evidence.

women are very well represented in this industry.

Conclusion.

Both of my previous bosses were women, incredibly smart, and very well respected within the company and our new executive director of research who is female is also brilliant and has company wide influence and respect.

Evidence.

The great thing about STEM is that at the end of the day your data, techniques, and research are a tangible thing and represents how good of a scientist you are regardless of gender, creed, or anything else.

Conclusion.


Response to the fact that you were objectively and patently wrong in every respect?

Still pending.

 

[Entropy912]

You said nothing about your 'curiosity' in the first post. This seems to be an ad-hoc addition to try to defend yourself by appealing to the particular STEM segments with higher female participation rather than STEM at large which is what you were talking about originally. Second, you can play the semantics game all day but people understand what you're arguing for even if you don't explicitly say it.

Again, it was just an opinion based on what I have observed in my career as a chemist and I'm not trying to defend one stance over another, just simply stating that there are a lot of women in my industry. For me, that industry is chemistry, and according to your stats, 44% of professional chemists / material scientists are women which I'd say is in line with what I have personally observed.

 

[Dash27]

Dude. Stop. Like really, stop.

You are conflating issues, creating strawmen and you don't seem to have read what I wrote.
.

Here's what you wrote:

Err, so now you're the second person to bring this up I kind of feel the need to address this. A fictional character in a TV series created by men isn't some stellar example of women in geekdom. Please at least use someone who actually exist like Felicia Day.
.

The women on the shirt are also fictional. (probably, one could be the Star Trek girl) But created by a woman (definitely)

I don't like Felicia Day very much. There's also the nerdy girls on that Bazinga show but I dont like them either. I like Felicity.

 

[stonesak]

Again, another clear indication of a poster not paying any attention whatsoever to words actually being written by separate human beings present in the duscussion. If any of you could react to a string of letters typed by someone else instead of the imaginary jumble you have swishing around in your head I could really see my day improving.

Keep fighting the good fight.

 

[berzeli]

From the 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." They also include Rose Evelyth's tweet, that they endorse as her 'brilliantly capturing' the situation: "No no women are toooootally welcome in our community, just ask the dude in this shirt."

If you don't think that's blaming him for women not feeling welcome in STEM fields then you might be the one with poor reading comprehension.

Saying that something is an example of casual misogyny does not mean that they're suggesting that Matt Taylor is a misogynist. Far from it, casual misogyny refers to those things that we aren't aware of that have an adverse effect on women.

They are not suggesting that he is responsible for having created this culture, but they are saying that even if he isn't aware of it (and it's highly likely he wasn't) he was perpetuating stereotypes that people find harmful.

It is not about assigning blame, it is that he was a highly visible example of underlying issues.

Google "Matt Taylor". Might be different depending where you're searching from, but for me on the front page apart from 2 links about different Matt Taylors and his wiki article (which does mention the shirt thing but it obviously isn't the main focus), every link is about the shirt he wore. Does that not count as damaging his image? I agree he'll be fine professionally but still.

And yeah I think he was more deserving of happiness on Wednesday than people who'd get so upset by a shirt they feel the need to take it out on others like that.

You are projecting your beliefs on people, most (if not all) who found the shirt a bad decision are really cool with Matt Taylor as a person and don't think any less of him. Especially after his really nice apology.

 

[Irminsul]

Oh please, how did I attempt to 'explain everything' with that graph/stat? Did you somehow miss see the other stats/graphs I posted? Besides, there is no single statistic that could possibly prove discrimination/bias and its origins and impacts to such a degree that would satisfy detractors. That's not a reason to ignore gender differences and research what may be causing them. And if you had actually examined the article I linked to, you'd see they have an entire section about limitations:

I read the article, thank you very much. The limitations don't talk about statistics being misused, so they don't really apply to my point.

I didn't even ask for much, checking whether your results are statistically significant is basic stuff. The limitations and dozens of dependencies they didn't look at are just the icing on the cake.

If you can't support your hypotheses with proper statistics instead of meaningless graphs, don't do it.

Do I really think this has a non-gendered explanation?

Probably not, but "probably" is neither good science nor good statistics, so leave them out.

 

[KHarvey16]

Here's what you wrote:



The women on the shirt are also fictional. (probably, one could be the Star Trek girl) But created by a woman (definitely)

I don't like Felicia Day very much. There's also the nerdy girls on that Bazinga show but I dont like them either. I like Felicity.

You have just perfectly demonstrated the depths of your inability to evaluate a statement. This is laughable.

 

[Entropy912]

I agere, my post was an anecdote, not research.

Edit: I agree, my post was an anecdote, not evidence.

 

[Dice//]

Your suggesting nerd culture exists to keep women out? Or that it's just a side effect. This is like arguing there are not many women in Heavy Metal bands because they all wear t-shirts with zombies and gore on them. So we need to get them to stop wearing those shirts.

Certainly the nonchalance or judgmental attitudes men have against feminists isn't very encouraging for women here. Numerous GirlGAF members have been here because some people's thoughts on this subject feels slightly unfair.

Even when women here didn't like the sexualization of Bayonetta on the gaming side of GAF, it largely boiled down to the opposition saying or hyperbolizing "You just want all women in turtle necks --- what's wrong with me looking at sexy women!". Hell, I'll give Bayonetta the benefit of the doubt because that at least was much more a private thing to enjoy.

Why is it women/feminists must be okay with a representation of their own selves and image inappropriately being seen in certain, especially professional, venues?

 

[Faddy]

[citation needed]

Here is a nice review article that discusses many studies which have all come to the same conclusion, the average male is better than the average female in solving mathematical problems.

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ834219.pdf

The actual gap in ability is small but significant enough to be exacerbated by social structures. Read more

http://www.sdsc.edu/~woodka/Chapter1.html

The gender difference in mathematical ability is negligible when comparing students who are studying STEM subjects

 

[KHarvey16]

Keep fighting the good fight.

A fight implies we're in the same area. You guys are off playing in the sandbox alone without us, raging a battle against imaginary foes.

 

[RedShift]

Again, another clear indication of a poster not paying any attention whatsoever to words actually being written by separate human beings present in the duscussion. If any of you could react to a string of letters typed by someone else instead of the imaginary jumble you have swishing around in your head I could really see my day improving.

I agree with him. The Verge clearly thinks he's doing misogynistic things and compares him to some deeply unpleasant misogynistic people, then they're calling him a misogynist.

And I'm chalking another point on the scoreboard of the times you've responded to a post you disagree with saying what amounts to 'yet more proof you're an idiot unlike brilliant me' while not actually posting any arguments why they're wrong. EDIT: Lol, you did it 2 more times in the time it took me to write this post.

You have just perfectly demonstrated the depths of your inability to evaluate a statement. This is laughable.

A fight implies we're in the same area. You guys are off playing in the sandbox alone without us, raging a battle against imaginary foes.

 

[berzeli]

Here's what you wrote:

The women on the shirt are also fictional. (probably, one could be the Star Trek girl) But created by a woman (definitely)

I don't like Felicia Day very much. There's also the nerdy girls on that Bazinga show but I dont like them either. I like Felicity.

... How does that contradict what I wrote? I'm not following you at all. What does his shirt have to do with women in geekdom?

And you still don't seem to get the difference between fictional characters and real life individuals. You liking a fictional character does not make it a good example of how geeky women are being portrayed, or feel about geekdom.

 

[Brawndo Addict]

Edit: I agree, my post was an anecdote, not evidence.

I find it extremely telling you have focused entirely on repeating over and over that it's just an 'anecdote' or 'opinion' rather than responding to the weight of my posts which was that STEM is not well represented by women and STEM is biased against women. You seem to have no interest in those facts whatsoever aside from trying to rewrite your original post to be referencing chemistry when in talks about STEM in general.

Why even offer an 'opinion' that you don't think should be used to reach any sort of conclusion and that you don't think is evidence of anything? Clearly it has to be some kind of evidence otherwise it would have no relevance to your opinion in the first place. Why not take 5 seconds to google your industry's gender share and use that instead of an anecdote?

We can read, and your post (or perhaps more accurately, the focus/nature of your replies) is generally against the idea that there are gender problems in STEM.

 

[berzeli]

Here is a nice review article that discusses many studies which have all come to the same conclusion, the average male is better than the average female in solving mathematical problems.

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ834219.pdf

The actual gap in ability is small but significant enough to be exacerbated by social structures. Read more

http://www.sdsc.edu/~woodka/Chapter1.html

The gender difference in mathematical ability is negligible when comparing students who are studying STEM subjects

Hahaha, holy shit. From the conclusions of the first study you linked:

Meanwhile, the fact that gender differences in mathematical problem solving are not biologically determined while possibly influenced by the combined impact of many different factors that have biological, psychological and environmental origins,
give us promise that education can play a great role in eliminating or reducing gender differences in mathematical problem solving.

(emphasis mine)

Great example of how biological differences determine mathematical prowess...

 

[Dash27]

Certainly the nonchalance or judgmental attitudes men have against feminists isn't very encouraging for women here. Numerous GirlGAF members have been here because some people's thoughts on this subject feels slightly unfair.

The casual accusation of impropriety gets passionate responses. There is a reason so many people, over and over, say "it's just a shirt". That said, you quoted me but I'd like to hear your response to the question. Do you think one of the objectives in the geek culture is to keep women out? All the geeks I know, if anything, are too deferential to women.

Even when women here didn't like the sexualization of Bayonetta on the gaming side of GAF, it largely boiled down to the opposition saying or hyperbolizing "You just want all women in turtle necks --- what's wrong with me looking at sexy women!". Hell, I'll give Bayonetta the benefit of the doubt because that at least was much more a private thing to enjoy.

Why is it women/feminists must be okay with a representation of their own selves and image inappropriately being seen in certain, especially professional, venues?

I'm lost on Bayonetta so I respectfully decline to comment there.

I'm also not following the last question, so I'll say simply that I empathize with the feeling that women are not welcome in the abstract. I just say that this is not an example of it, and that is why there is so much blowback.

 

[Herpes Reasons]

No. You need to learn what bondage is. Women wearing latex and holding guns is not bondage. And the images aren't inherently sexy. That's in the eye of the beholder. Get over yourself thought police.

Amen

 

[KHarvey16]

I agree with him.

Not surprisingly.

The Verge clearly thinks he's doing misogynistic things and compares him to some deeply unpleasant misogynistic people, then they're calling him a misogynist.

They're painting his actions as casually misogynistic in the context of a field inundated with deeply held misogynistic norms. That it isn't conscious on his part is the entire damn point. That's the point all of us have been making that you and others clearly refuse to acknowledge. It's much more convenient for you to disregard it and insert whatever comes to mind.

 

[jakonovski]

Ha, the personal attack situation here closely resembles the playground staple, I'm not touching you!

 

[unround]

It absolutely does, unless you think misogyny is some nefarious evil force that just hovers around.

Misogyny is a structural and institutional force as well as a personal one. When feminists talk about misogynist acts they are often are referring to acts that reinforce the cultural and structural misogynist status quo, and these acts do not require the actors to actually hate women (although this is often the case of course). An initiative advising women of ways in which they can avoid being sexually assaulted may be made out of genuine concern, but it is still misogynist as it reinforces a culture in which rapists are seen as an inevitable force of nature which women are responsible for avoiding.

In this case, the shirt was worn with no ill will but still served as a painful reminder to many female scientists that they are in a culture which is rife with objectification of their bodies which often overshadows acknowledgment of their considerable achievements. That this happened during a massive broadcasted event without anyone noticing is not necessarily a reflection of the characters of the people who didn't notice it, but it is reflective and a subtle reinforcement of the wider misogynist culture.

 

[stonesak]

A fight implies we're in the same area. You guys are off playing in the sandbox alone without us, raging a battle against imaginary foes.

You mean the real world, where the backlash against this type of militant feminism is resulting in only a quarter of women identifying of as feminists, even though they believe in equal rights? There world where the treatment of Matt resulted in a toxic environment that could only end in one place, people empathizing with a poor man crying because he was raked over the coals for wearing a shirt instead of addressing the real issues regarding women in STEM fields? If people thinking this is about the shirt are missing the forest for the trees, then feminists are missing the national park for the forest.

 

[Dice//]

You mean the real world, where the backlash against this type of militant feminism is resulting in only a quarter of women identifying of as feminists, even though they believe in equal rights? There world where the treatment of Matt resulted in a toxic environment that could only end in one place, people empathizing with a poor man crying because he was raked over the coals for wearing a shirt instead of addressing the real issues regarding women in STEM fields? If people thinking this is about the shirt are missing the forest for the trees, then feminists are missing the national park for the forest.

Misogyny is a structural and institutional force as well as a personal one. When feminists talk about misogynist acts they are often are referring to acts that reinforce the cultural and structural misogynist status quo, and these acts do not require the actors to actually hate women (although this is often the case of course). An initiative advising women of ways in which they can avoid being sexually assaulted may be made out of genuine concern, but it is still misogynist as it reinforces a culture in which rapists are seen as an inevitable force of nature which women are responsible for avoiding.

In this case, the shirt was worn with no ill will but still served as a painful reminder to many female scientists that they are in a culture which is rife with objectification of their bodies which often overshadows acknowledgment of their considerable achievements. That this happened during a massive broadcasted event without anyone noticing is not necessarily a reflection of the characters of the people who didn't notice it, but it is reflective and a subtle reinforcement of the wider misogynist culture.

^

EDIT: You kinda make it sound like only women get militant about gender issues.

 

[Faddy]

Hahaha, holy shit. From the conclusions of the first study you linked:



(emphasis mine)

Great example of how biological differences determine mathematical prowess...

Why are you laughing? The fact that there is a difference is the issue. Anyway that line should probably read

Meanwhile, the fact that gender differences in ma
thematical problem solving are not solely biologically
determined while possibly influenced by the combined
impact of many different factors that have
biological, psychological and environmental origins,

Regardless the article clearly identifies a gender gap in mathematical problem solving

 

[KHarvey16]

You mean the real world, where the backlash against this type of militant feminism is resulting in only a quarter of women identifying of as feminists, even though they believe in equal rights?

Militant? I don't think you know what that word means. I wonder if tedious, frustrating, depressing conversations like the one occurring in this thread has any effect on the number of people willing to carry on those conversations.

There world where the treatment of Matt resulted in a toxic environment that could only end in one place, people empathizing with a poor man crying because he was raked over the coals for wearing a shirt instead of addressing the real issues regarding women in STEM fields? If people thinking this is about the shirt are missing the forest for the trees, then feminists are missing the national park for the forest.

Again the implication that he wasn't really sorry and was only sad at how mistreated he was by all the mean feminists. Your cynical, self serving interpretation of him and his motivations speak poorly of your ability to have a rational discussion.

 

[Dash27]

Hahaha, holy shit. From the conclusions of the first study you linked:



(emphasis mine)

Great example of how biological differences determine mathematical prowess...

You really should read what he linked, it's very interesting. Very similar to the debate on why boys are lagging behind in lower grades. It's proposed that it's related to how they learn not the topics.

 

[jorma]

The only thing that was suggested by that study was that more women might be encouraged to explore computer science as a major if the environment they worked in didn't communicate that you had to be a geek in order to fit into it.

As for how it relates to the shirt: I thought that in the same way that the décor in that environment communicated that one needed to be a geek (and thus lowered women's interest), the shirt communicated that one needed to expect a certain level of casual, unthinking objectification.

That doesn't automatically mean there's anything wrong with the environment. If that's how people percieve computer science, then that's on them. Because - obviously - you don't actually have to be a geek to successfully explore computer science. And it's still not exclusion, it's "i don't want to be included".

And his uncovered tattoos also communicated something. And if anyone finds fault with having him representing ESA on TV with those tattoos uncovered (like a lot of people in Japan undoubtedly would), then i'd think they were also in the wrong.
Since you don't actually have to be in the yakuza to work on european space programs

 

[hohoXD123]

As a scientist you should know about using objective evidence instead of anecdotal.

Fair enough, it's great to present evidence from research papers but they can always be scrutinised. Are the first two based on the US? May not be as relevant if we're talking about the situation in European STEM fields. As for the one about the UK, the authors themselves say this:

The authors of the study, published in the online journal BMJ Open today, said their findings could not be taken as evidence of gender bias on the part of funding councils, but urged funder to “urgently investigate” the reasons behind the differences.

Some more:

Young Scientists Say They're Sexually Abused In The Field



Bibliometrics: Global gender disparities in science

The first one is pretty worrying, but for the second one, for one thing I couldn't see any significance values and they outline the limitations:

There are several limitations to the conclusions that can be drawn from our findings. Foremost among them is that age indisputably has a role — perhaps even the major role — in explaining gender differences in scientific output, collaboration and impact. As is well known, the academic pipeline from junior to senior faculty leaks female scientists, and the senior ranks of science bear the imprint of previous generations' barriers to the progression of women. Thus it is likely that many of the trends we observed can be explained by the under-representation of women among the elders of science. After all, seniority, authorship position, collaboration and citation are all highly interlinked variables.

Another key limitation is that authorship of papers is only one of many indicators of research activity. Our analysis includes only journal articles, not books, conference proceedings, database construction or code, for example. Also problematic is the lack of universal norms associated with authorship attribution and position. For example, it is possible that some women do not appear as authors despite their contribution to research activities, and there are fields in which authors are listed alphabetically. There is also a concern that gender-assignment techniques can introduce errors (see Supplementary Information). We have tried to mitigate this with validation exercises, but there is always room for improvement.

 

[ZombiePlatypus]

I'm seeing this story come up on other sites on message boards now. I cannot believe something that's such a freaking non-issue blew up so outta proportion.

"I'm sorry some people are too tragically dense to understand the simple difference between any sexualized depiction of the female form, and sexism." That should have been his apology.

 

[.GqueB.]

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.

Band name

 

[KHarvey16]

I'm seeing this story come up on other sites on message boards now. I cannot believe something that's such a freaking non-issue blew up so outta proportion.

"I'm sorry some people are too tragically dense to understand the simple difference between any sexualized depiction of the female form, and sexism." That should have been his apology.

Maybe you could spend a few minutes reading the thread? You felt compelled to post, maybe you could feel compelled to learn something, too.