So today's episode of issue-pharyngulation involves American female astronauts, who, due to endemic sexism at NASA became Astronaut-nots. It is obviously a shameful episode of our nation's history and deserves to be made more widely known. Bravo, PZ! Yet how does he end his tract? He finds the need to somehow make this come full circle, to his little FTB war with ejected blogger thunderfoot:
So, he's somehow finding a relevance between an event of sexism 50 years ago with Thunderfoot, wait no, not thunderfoot, a random thunderfoot acolyte (wait, so all sexist youtube trolls are now Thunderfoot's minions?) on the Youtube. Yes, PZ, in choosing a random sarcastic ALL-CAPS youtube troll, you have selected a Worthy Opponent.Would you believe I got a comment from a Thunderf00t acolyte on youtube just this morning?Nice to know these problems have all gone away already.[Monty Python Gumby] FEMINISM IS A NON ISSUE. WOMEN ALREEEEEEEEADY HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS IN THE WEST. NO MORE NEED FOR FEMINISM IN THE WEST.
I'm coming to the opinion that PZ is just a blog-hit whore. The same way HuffPo or Yahoo News put up some intriguing photo with a misleading caption and then you find out what they're reporting is altogether different from the blurb. Only PZ does it with his pet sexism and feminism topics. He's taking genuinely compelling topics, but he somehow feels the need to punch them up to increase the seething froth of his commenters. Or, maybe it's something in the FTB water; PZ was never this ridiculous when he was on ScienceBlogs.
(Oh, and as a postscript, NASA's Mercury 13 program entailed racism, too. NASA wasn't certainly training black or latino or asian female astronauts in 1962-- but you won't hear the lily-white PZ think to mention that because PZ is a stone-cold racist.)