15 Nov 2014

Social Justice Warriors Reduce Scientist To Tears

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GunerGirlsShirt
“Gunner Girls” Hawaiian shirt, sold out!

Sane people marveled world-wide as Social Justice Warriors ignored the fascinating story of mankind successfully landing a spacecraft on a comet and instead focused angry attention on the content of Astrophysicist Matt Taylor‘s Hawaiian shirt.

The Telegraph grumbled:

Political correctness officially went mad on November 14, 2014. It happened when Dr Matt Taylor, the man who helped put a rocket on a comet, choked back tears as he apologised for wearing a risqué shirt. And thus absurdity hijacked a moment in history. While some of us were following Rosetta’s landing on Philae with wonder, others were apparently rather more interested in what the scientists were wearing. It’s almost as though they suffer from some ocular defect that makes it impossible to correctly identify wood when looking at trees. Although, to be fair, trees can be offensively phallic.

Atlantic tech writer Rose Eveleth: “No no women are toooootally welcome in our community, just ask the dude in this shirt.” Astrophysicist Katie Mack: “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 science.” New York blogger, James DiGioia: “Technology advances while society remains decidedly retrograde.”

To remind you, Mr DiGioia is writing about a shirt. Not forced marriages in rural Pakistan but a guy wearing a tacky shirt with some ladies on it firing guns. And while that shirt was brutally occupying Mr DiGioia’s television screen like Germany invading Poland, a rocket was quietly touching down on a comet and making our dream of conquering the stars a little closer to reality. Wood? Trees? “You say potato, I say patriarchy.”

But Taylor was, of course, reduced to tearful apologies.

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But the Washington Post’s Rachel Feltman was not satisfied with Taylor’s tears. She thinks he should come back and apologize some more and repeat publicly the politically correct message he has learned.

Of course, I personally hope that one day (when he’s a little less busy) Taylor will say a bit more on the subject, and show that he understands why the shirt wasn’t okay. Science is not a welcoming place for women, even today, and the only people who can truly make it more welcoming are the men who run the show. If a stellar scientist walks into work — and then says hello to the whole world — wearing a sexist shirt, what kind of message are we sending to future scientists?

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Myself, I think it is appalling that an adult employed professionally as a scientist finding himself responsible to appear in public to address an international audience in connection with a historic scientific achievement has grown to adult years without any sense of personal dignity or knowledge of conventional etiquette, and thinks it proper to appear on television with a Hawaiian shirt (pretending to be a coat or sweater) layered over a polo shirt. And to top all this off, he is so far removed from the older model of the British gentleman, his upper lip is so lacking in stiffness, that he cries publicly over being criticized by crackpots. Jesus wept.

I will add, on the positive side, though, that though I don’t own or wear Hawaiian shirts, and would not be caught dead wearing one of them to a dogfight, as Hawaiian shirts go, I thought his was relatively cool.

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6 Feedbacks on "Social Justice Warriors Reduce Scientist To Tears"

Dan Kurt



GoneWithTheWind

The shirt doesn’t really “say” anything. It is just a shirt of the shelf that some designer thought might sell. Shirts with saying and protests actually “say” something and some of them are actually offensive. I didn’t find the shirt offensive or sexist but then I don’t belong to the constantly outraged feminist group.



COL Goff

“DO NOT BE ASHAMED”
by Wendell Berry
You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.
They will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
“I am not ashamed.” A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop.



Debra Croft

Truly sad. Shame on the Washington Post for stooping so low in search of something to fill space. He is probably a very decent person who just liked the shirt. As a woman and an artist, I like the shirt
There are issues in this world that deserve our outrage. Attempting to lump Mr. Taylor’s shirt in with those issues is an outrage in and of itself.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.



Surellin

The return of the dress code! I’ll agree to dress like Don Draper if all these SJWs agree to dress like Joan Harris.



Peter Thiel's excellent point about political correctness and indulgences

[…] socially destroyed. Lord knows, we’ve seen the Social Justice Warrior crowd savage people for wearing the wrong shirts, making the wrong jokes, or proposing new solutions to politically approved […]



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