Emma Watson and equality

Discussion relating to current events, politics, religion, etc
Message
Author
creep
Site Admin
Posts: 10341
Joined: Thu Jul 21, 2011 9:51 am

Re: Emma Watson and equality

#161 Post by creep » Fri Nov 14, 2014 3:12 pm

:conf:
BERLIN

British physicist Matt Taylor brimmed with excitement as the European Space Agency's Philae lander successfully separated from the Rosetta spacecraft, showing off a colorful tattoo on his thigh of both, while proclaiming "we're making history."

But it was his garish bowling shirt that attracted more attention than the unconventional Rosetta project scientist's words or ink — a collage of pinup girls in various states of undress.

Summarizing the firestorm, the Guardian proclaimed in a blog post: "ESA can land their robot on a comet. But they still can't see misogyny under their noses."

On Friday, Taylor — wearing a non-descript navy-blue ESA hoodie — offered an unsolicited apology.

"I made a big mistake and I offended many people," he said, breaking down in tears. "And I'm very sorry about this."

Image

User avatar
Hype
Posts: 7028
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm

Re: Emma Watson and equality

#162 Post by Hype » Fri Nov 14, 2014 7:59 pm

So I think I think it's okay to wear "offensive" shirts, though I think there are probably cases that wouldn't be work-appropriate, and might indicate that you're a misogynist or that there is something wrong with you, like depictions of rape, or something.

I have made some pretty strong and detailed arguments in defense of much of the current feminist push for equality, but I also think there are pretty clear reasons why these valiant motives should not be used as a cudgel to beat down everything one doesn't like or approve of, irrespective of its practical force. I said something similar about "mansplaining" -- it's a genuine phenomenon, and men ought to be concerned with the ways in which their historical dominance in academia and commerce can be easily used to simply silence women, but it can also be trotted out by anyone who simply doesn't like a person or what they are saying (and I've admitted that I think that's happened to me before, though I could be mistaken). So yeah, I think probably there's no good reason to go around trying to get everyone to stop wearing shirts that depict women in ways one doesn't like. Why should people be concerned with that when it's entirely possible it was a gift from the guy's mom, daughter, or girlfriend... This is what I meant by 'cudgel' -- insensitive and blunt use of a genuine and important motive to bash people indiscriminately.

User avatar
perkana
Posts: 5394
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 9:28 pm

Re: Emma Watson and equality

#163 Post by perkana » Fri Nov 14, 2014 8:35 pm


creep
Site Admin
Posts: 10341
Joined: Thu Jul 21, 2011 9:51 am

Re: Emma Watson and equality

#164 Post by creep » Fri Nov 14, 2014 8:41 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote:So I think I think it's okay to wear "offensive" shirts, though I think there are probably cases that wouldn't be work-appropriate, and might indicate that you're a misogynist or that there is something wrong with you, like depictions of rape, or something.
:lol: really going out on a limb there.

i have a problem with how ugly the shirt is not the women on it. i can't see the whole shirt but it doesn't look that offensive. the guy could have made a wiser choice since he was going to be on tv but all the outrage is silly and made the poor man cry.

User avatar
Hype
Posts: 7028
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm

Re: Emma Watson and equality

#165 Post by Hype » Fri Nov 14, 2014 9:13 pm

creep wrote:
Adurentibus Spina wrote:So I think I think it's okay to wear "offensive" shirts, though I think there are probably cases that wouldn't be work-appropriate, and might indicate that you're a misogynist or that there is something wrong with you, like depictions of rape, or something.
:lol: really going out on a limb there.

i have a problem with how ugly the shirt is not the women on it. i can't see the whole shirt but it doesn't look that offensive. the guy could have made a wiser choice since he was going to be on tv but all the outrage is silly and made the poor man cry.
My view is that offensiveness has nothing to do with anything, as far as morality's concerned. You could wear a shirt that says "Hitler was right." or "Fuck Jews." and there wouldn't be anything necessarily wrong with it, even if it is universally accepted as highly offensive. There *would* be something wrong with wearing such a shirt as a boss in a workplace, as a government employee who deals directly with the public, teacher, or police officer, or even in a place where it's highly likely that someone might actually be hurt by it (not just offended but sincerely traumatized, as in, say, a Holocaust survivor whose memories are brought back by it). There's a vast difference between innocently offensive and insensitive, and there is no objective sense of 'offensive'.

In fact, it's just bad if feminists are conflating offensiveness with defenses of women's rights. Denials of rights to women are offensive, but they're also wrong, not because they're offensive, but because they're fucking wrong.

But I think it's hard to say exactly why people are calling this shirt out as offensive.

User avatar
farrellgirl99
Posts: 1678
Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2011 9:20 pm
Location: Queens

Re: Emma Watson and equality

#166 Post by farrellgirl99 » Fri Nov 14, 2014 9:19 pm

Yeah I saw this and was kind of confused why people were so outraged. I think it's a dumb/ugly/maybe slightly inappropriate shirt to wear for a tv interview, but im not offended by it at all :noclue:

User avatar
Hype
Posts: 7028
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm

Re: Emma Watson and equality

#167 Post by Hype » Fri Nov 14, 2014 9:20 pm

perkana wrote:My mom sent me this

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... -feminist/
And I thought this was important to read too
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... y-science/
I was just talking to someone in the grad department in Comp. Sci. here, about that exact fact (in the first link) that for some reason Comp. Sci. women's enrollment hasn't kept pace with mathematics for 30 years. There are a bunch of pop articles about this: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new ... 11/?no-ist
What happened? The answer isn’t straightforward, but Planet Money's hosts lay out some potential contributing factors. In the early and mid-1980s, personal computers entered the home. But these Commodore 64s, Radio Shack TRS-80s and others were marketed to boys. As NPR reports, you couldn’t do much with these early computers, and they were sold as toys—machines to play games on.

This idea that computers are for boys became a narrative. It became the story we told ourselves about the computing revolution. It helped define who geeks were and it created techie culture.

So computers entered the category of "boys' toys." Having access to and familiarity with these machines gave boys a leg up in entry-level programing classes. Women in these classes were learning programming for the first time, while men were honing skills they had been developing for years. "I remember this one time I asked a question and and the professor stopped and looked at me and said, 'You should know that by now," Patricia Ordóñez, who attended Johns Hopkins University in the early 1980s. "And I thought 'I am never going to excel.'"

Research suggests the snowballing of this effect is a big part of the gender imbalance story.
If you combine that with a less motivated effort to encourage women programmers (seriously, how hard would it be to show off how awesome Ada Lovelace was?)... it makes a lot of sense.

I remember taking programming in high school, there were some guys who found it difficult, and only a few girls who took the class and they all found it extremely difficult, but the guys who didn't find it difficult (like me) were people who had been programming since very early childhood in the first place.

User avatar
perkana
Posts: 5394
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 9:28 pm

Re: Emma Watson and equality

#168 Post by perkana » Wed Nov 19, 2014 4:43 pm

I don't know how many women enroll in Comp. Sci. here nowadays, but they've always been more than any of us who have enrolled in engineering.

Post Reply