On Wednesday, Matt Taylor, a scientist on the Rosetta Project, which
landed a spacecraft on a comet
for the first time ever earlier this week, was interviewed on TV about
his amazing accomplishments while wearing a shirt. That's good. But
unfortunately, the shirt featured a design of scantily clad women in
pornographic poses. On Friday,
Taylor apologized for wearing that shirt. What transpired in between has been dubbed Shirtstorm. So what happened?
After seeing Taylor on TV in his sexy lady shirt, Atlantic journalist Rose Eveleth tweeted:
That was Eveleth's fairly casual way of expressing that it was not so
awesome for Taylor to wear a shirt like that during such an important
moment when so many people are trying to persuade women and girls to
take up STEM careers. Then
chemist and Skepchick contributor Raychelle Burks
wrote a cheeky piece agreeing that it's fun to wear loud clothes when
being a scientist in the public eye and recommended some alternatives to
Taylor's chosen shirt, like "Think Geek" T-shirts or a shirt covered in
planetary bodies instead of naked women. "There are appropriate places
and times to wear clothing with sexual imagery on it — sex parties,
erotica readings, erotic art openings, I can probably think of a few
others,"
Greta Christina, a sex writer and pornographer herself,
wrote. "But the very public announcement of a major event in the
history of scientific discovery — landing a robot on a comet! — is not
one of those places or times." The reaction, in total, was pretty
lighthearted. This should be a learning moment and an opportunity to
talk about the subtle ways to make science more welcoming to women and
leave it at that, right?
This is all over a shirt that common sense should tell you is not
appropriate, even by the loose and free standards that the science
community often (wonderfully, mind you) employs in its dress standards.
Something to remember next time you see a feminist going over the top or
taking cries of sexism too far,
which does happen: Feminists have nothing on anti-feminists when it comes to going overboard.
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