World has gone mad, sexism in space?

[Cheshiretaurus]

I have a t shirt I bought in bad taste on a lads holiday in Spain that says FBI (female body inspector). Im going to wear it next time im involved in a press conference. Not that I've ever been involved in a press conference. That should cause a bit of trouble.

[Swamp Donkey]

I'm offended by all those people who keep getting offended for the sake of being offended

SD

[davecov]

Don't worry! I will! Sadly, it wasn't the first time it happened to me and I have been subject to some fairly unpleasant verbal abuse in recent years because of my nationality. Although I refuse to be bothered, that sort of behaviour in our own country is surely far more serious issue than a scientist wearing what was actually a truly crap shirt that not even I would be seen dead in!!

Allan

I share your pain, Allan, only the other way round

I am English and have lived in Scotland since 2009. I love living here and the people in my village are great. Go some places though and you will find a mindless, bigoted, minority who once they know you are English start the snide comments.

As for the people complaining about the guy's shirt, the most they have probably ever given to humanity is to vote on X-Factor! Wish I knew where he got the shirt as my girlfriend would laugh if I wore it!

Dave

[Albeback52]

I share your pain, Allan, only the other way round

I am English and have lived in Scotland since 2009. I love living here and the people in my village are great. Go some places though and you will find a mindless, bigoted, minority who once they know you are English start the snide comments.

As for the people complaining about the guy's shirt, the most they have probably ever given to humanity is to vote on X-Factor! Wish I knew where he got the shirt as my girlfriend would laugh if I wore it!

Dave

Sorry to hear that Dave. I tend to just laugh in their faces. They don't tend to like that!!

Allan

[hovis]

I actually quite liked his shirt..

Am I bad?

[Bonehammer]

Could we be through the looking glass at a crackdown on manufacturers who supply "inappropriate and offensive" decals with their aircraft kits? Seriously - the sort of individuals who enjoy generating such a tempest-in-a-teacup are always on the look out for a fresh target.

And the Vargas girls will become four-piece puzzles to cirmcumvent regulations...

Edited November 17, 2014 by Bonehammer

[Norman]

This is not the planet i grew up on !

When you go to a remeberance day parade as i did a little while ago and see a group protesting called ''Women against rape in war' you know the minorities are taking over, i'm 62 and grew up with grandparents and uncles etc who fought in that conflict and lost family members i wondered what their reaction would have been to that group and their chanting and banners dabbed with red paint screaming insults at those in the parade!

Forget space Don its happening here mate ! i would bet not one of us here would go out of their way to upset anyone of either sex in a premeditated manner and i bet that bloke certainly didn't do that either, he made a bad choice and yes i can see how 'some' would get upset by it rather than dismissing it as a bad choice , it's sad but it is the world we live in, doesn't mean we all have to like it though !

Maybe i was abducted by aliens when i was young ??? and am not on earth anymore.....???? in that case .....can i go home now please ...huh ???

[Paul Bradley]

Interestingly, the BBC ran a report over the weekend about how women are increasingly using toplessness as a form of political protest.

[Brad]

Could we be through the looking glass at a crackdown on manufacturers who supply "inappropriate and offensive" decals with their aircraft kits? Seriously - the sort of individuals who enjoy generating such a tempest-in-a-teacup are always on the look out for a fresh target.

Don't laugh too hard, at a model show here they actually put a wooden box with an opaque cloth over the front on top of some scantily clad and naked female figures entered in a competition to avoid offending anyone. So the message to take from that is; machines of death, destruction and unthinkable human carnage are less offensive than a boobie or two.

[Black Knight]

And what about all those WW2 aircrew with all those scantily clad ladies on their aircraft! How sexist, how demeaning. How wrong! Somebody should have told them that they were being "unprofessional".

During WW2 US aeroplanes stopping off in N.I, [or accidentally in Eire] had to censor their art work as it was 'offensive' to locals, especially nuns and priests [they were the ones who complained]

[Bonehammer]

During WW2 US aeroplanes stopping off in N.I, [or accidentally in Eire] had to censor their art work as it was 'offensive' to locals, especially nuns and priests [they were the ones who complained]

"Sexism" and "Eire" in the same thread. Mustn't take the bait, mustn't take the bait...

[Will Vale]

Curious to know if folks would think the same if Matt Taylor or someone else interviewed for Rosetta had been wearing a Tom of Finland shirt on the telly?

Will

[upnorth]

I was surprised by the general scruffiness of so many important people at mission control - but i wasn't "offended" in any way. Maybe it was "Dress Down Friday"?

Don't be surprised by that. I imagine that talking to the press and public is a very low priority for them.

One of my clients is a computer anti virus company and they are very lenient with dress code and company atmosphere. The key is that the people code and program and get the product live by the release deadline.

Employers in these sorts of fields will look past the bulk of tattoos, piercings, dreadlocks and clothing choices to ensure that they get the most able people they can to get the results they're after.

As for the women working in these fields, they're largely the sort that don't let it get to them. They aren't "Poor, delicate princesses struggling daily in male dominated fields"; quite the contrary, they are mature in mind set, goal and result oriented and largely couldn't care less about the attire of their male colleagues.

I suspect Dr. Taylor never imagined that he'd end up as the media face for ESA or anyone else in his career. He probably expected that any accomplishments made by he and his team at ESA would be related to the press by well dressed PR types.

These killjoys getting offended need to open their eyes, look past the tips of their own noses and realize that the world is a whole lot bigger than them. Sometimes their act of getting offended serves no other purpose than to show the rest of us what small, pathetic and limited lives they live.

[Eric Mc]

I have no problem with whatever clothes they chose to wear.

However, I was contrasting their style with the way the |Americans tend to do things - especially in relation to personnel at Mission Control,. Houston. They've been operating in the public eye for over half a century and are well versed in how things look to the public, especially on TV.

I would reckon that the controllers at the JPL in Pasadena are bit more relaxed regarding dress sense - being more from a "scientific"background, rather than engineering or military - and being based in California. I think the ESA controllers were trying to emulate to some extent the more relaxed "California" style of JPL.

Also, most of them had been up for over 48 hours so I'm not surprised some of them were looking a little frayed around the edges.

[Black Knight]

Dr.Taylor probably has an IQ 50 times more than mine; but he has the fashion sense of any other geek. That shirt was just naff.

He probably got it off the peg in some downtown store for a couple of bucks, cos a shirt is a shirt. He probably never looked at what was on it.

[Eric Mc]

Not so sure about that. He is well festooned with tattoos, which indicates that he is image conscious - at least at some level.

I, on the other hand, spend about .0001% of my time thinking about what I look like. My wife does the thinking for me

[Truro Model Builder]

I have seen it written that he "deserved it [the abuse, presumably] for what he was wearing". Hmm, try using that argument in certain other circumstances and see what happens.

But then, has anyone else noticed the casual anti-male sexism that is increasingly invading the media? Remember the diet coke break ad? Can you imagine the furore if it had been a group of men ogling a woman? But some women ogling a man, well that's alright then. That's equality at work. Seemingly.

Edited November 20, 2014 by T7 Models

[gruffy]

I have seen it written that he "deserved it [the abuse, presumably] for what he was wearing". Hmm, try using that argument in certain other circumstances and see what happens.

But then, has anyone else noticed the casual anti-male sexism that is increasingly invading the media? Remember the diet coke break ad? Can you imagine the furore if it had been a group of men ogling a woman? But some women ogling a man, well that's alright then. That's equality at work. Seemingly.

Hear hear!

[Eric Mc]

Yes - it seems true equality of treatment is an impossible ideal to achieve. If it's not men treating women unfairly, it's the other way around.

It's a real shame that the scientific and engineering achievements of the mission were overshadowed by the incident.

And maybe he SHOULD have been a bit more aware of the POSSIBLE take some people might have on his apparel. Or maybe someone in the team should have been a bit more conscious that the world was watching. They weren't geeks shuffling around a private laboratory. They were on public view - and the public will have opinions - which they will vent.

[Black Knight]

Nobody advised him to change his shirt because no one noticed what was on it. They didn't give a fig for what his shirt looked like. They probably wouldn't have noticed if he came into the office with no pants on or wearing a tutu. But if he had one digit wrong in a calculation they would have been on him like the proverbial ton of bricks.

In real life people just don't notice what their work mates are wearing. They get used to them.

[Eric Mc]

Depends on the organisation and the culture in which it operates as to whether "dress sense" matters or not. I know this from having worked for a number of different employers over the years where attitudes to dress sense varied markedly, even though the job itself was more or less the same.

[Alan P]

As one who works in a uniformed environment, I have no opinion about whether his shirt was appropriate for his workplace.

However, it was wholly inappropriate for an internationally televised feature interview. Perhaps astrophysicist geeks work in a world completely divorced from the outside, but surely somebody in management or PR for ESA must have seen that and thought, "change your shirt, if nothing else it's a distraction"?

Incidentally, his shirt was hand made for him by a (female) friend who has been inundated by requests for her design. The world is nothing if not contradictory!

[Panzer Vor!!!]

I liked his shirt and yes id have one

[IrritableRabbit]

This was just another ####storm created by social justice warriors and their white knights in an on going culture war against... well everything they don't approve of.

Oh.. And they'll always go for easy targets.. Like Matt here in his shirt... Give them a REAL target that needs sorting and they'll go strangely quiet. You'll find they also don't like 'real' old school feminists like Christina Hoff Sommers who would be far more sensible about #shirtgate.

They did try it on with computer gamers as well, because 'they' thought they were just white, male dweebs with no friends, and are apparently according to them, all misogynists. But if you're up on #Gamergate you'll know that they bit off more than they could chew with that one because the gamers fought back... All the girls and boys, men and women, of all colours, creeds and orientation who like games did not lie down.

Matt shouldn't have apologised. He should have stood up and said.. 'I have nothing to apologise for. I know why I wear this shirt. The problem is you.'.

Culture wars.. Interesting stuff.

I do have a question though to do with the actual mission.

Why.. If the mission was to an object that was going to be so FAR from the sun for a great part of the mission, did they rely on solar power only?

Why did they not use an RTG (Radioisotope thermoelectric generator)? We've used them before.

Has there been a ban on nukes in space and I didn't notice, or did Greenpeace crash their ships into mission control or something?

*Edit* Maybe I should direct THAT question to the other thread about Rosetta now I've just seen it. hehe.

Edited November 20, 2014 by IrritableRabbit

[gruffy]

This was just another ####storm created by social justice warriors and their white knights in an on going culture war against... well everything they don't approve of.

Oh.. And they'll always go for easy targets.. Like Matt here in his shirt... Give them a REAL target that needs sorting and they'll go strangely quiet. You'll find they also don't like 'real' old school feminists like Christina Hoff Sommers who would be far more sensible about #shirtgate.

They did try it on with computer gamers as well, because 'they' thought they were just white, male dweebs with no friends, and are apparently according to them, all misogynists. But if you're up on #Gamergate you'll know that they bit off more than they could chew with that one because the gamers fought back... All the girls and boys, men and women, of all colours, creeds and orientation who like games did not lie down.

Matt shouldn't have apologised. He should have stood up and said.. 'I have nothing to apologise for. I know why I wear this shirt. The problem is you.'.

Culture wars.. Interesting stuff.

I do have a question though to do with the actual mission.

Why.. If the mission was to an object that was going to be so FAR from the sun for a great part of the mission, did they rely on solar power only?

Why did they not use an RTG (Radioisotope thermoelectric generator)? We've used them before.

Has there been a ban on nukes in space and I didn't notice, or did Greenpeace crash their ships into mission control or something?

*Edit* Maybe I should direct THAT question to the other thread about Rosetta now I've just seen it. hehe.

Ironically, the people who don't like computer gamers are the ones on facebook and play candy crush. Only men play games ? I'm on a click and point gamers website where there's more females than men.