Last Wednesday, the European Space
Agency (ESA) landed a space probe on a 2.5-mile long comet over 300 million
miles away. Let that extraordinary human achievement sink in for a moment. Now
let this sink in: the bulk of the media attention for this historic event is
centered on a garish bowling shirt worn by one of the scientists, which has
become the target of feminist anger about pervasive misogyny in the scientific
profession.
Matt Taylor, part of the team of
scientists that landed a space probe on a
comet over 300 million miles away, was interviewed
briefly prior to the event. He seemed like an articulate, amiable guy who was
passionate about his exciting work. Unfortunately, he was wearing something
that resembled the side of a 1970s van: a retro Hawaiian shirt adorned with an
illustrated bevy of provocatively dressed women posed amid sunbursts and ocean waves.
It was made for him by a rockabilly
model whose husband did Taylor’s sleeve tattoos.
So, instead of marveling at the
fact that humans have landed a space
probe on a comet over 300 million miles away, some zeroed in on Taylor’s
shirt as evidence that the world of science is hostile to women. The Guardian, for example, huffed, “ESA
can land their robot on a comet... But they still can’t see misogyny under
their noses.” Verge’s unintentionally self-parodying headline
was “I don't care if you landed a spacecraft on a comet, your shirt is sexist
and ostracizing.” The writers of that article asserted that
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... 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, and the ESA has yet to
issue a statement or apologize for that.
ESA has nothing to apologize for,
but Taylor was so bowled over by the negative online response that he later humiliated
himself by tearfully
apologizing on camera – because no unintended, imagined slight is complete today
without a groveling public apology to an internet full of total strangers. “I
made a big mistake and I offended many people and I am very sorry about this,” he
managed, sniffling. Too late; he’s forever branded as a misogynist who wants to
boot women out of the old boys’ club of science – you know, macho sexists like
Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Was his shirt appropriate for a
television broadcast? That depends on how uptight you are. It was initially distracting,
but so what? Perhaps he didn’t know he was going to be on TV. Maybe he did know
but thought the look would be a refreshing, colorful change from a lab coat and
pocket protector. It’s not known whether his colleagues bothered to suggest a more
media-friendly change of clothing; if they didn’t, perhaps it was because they
were busy landing a space probe on a comet over 300 million
miles away.
The real “casual sexism” here is
not that Matt Taylor wore a shirt decorated with kitschy cartoons; at most he might
be guilty of a crime of fashion, which is no one else’s business and no cause
for a public apology (otherwise most of us would be apologizing daily). One
gaudy, bawdy bowling shirt does not create a hostile work environment. The real
sexism is the assumption that career-driven women are so sensitive that they
must be shielded from an article of clothing which might intimidate them out of
pursuing their chosen scientific or technical endeavor.
We have become a culture so
obsessed with the hyper-sensitivity of officially designated victim classes
that we police behavior to a degree verging on totalitarianism. We claim to be
waging a war against bullying, but we bully public apologies out of people who
don’t even know us and never intended offense. We are so threatened by heterosexual
masculinity that we automatically equate it with misogyny. As a culture, let’s grow
a sense of humor and put our energy toward something truly important, like boldly
going where no man – or woman – has gone before.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 11/17/14)
