What Nobel winner Tim Hunt's sexist outburst actually says

[pErvinalia]

Says the inveterate ad hominemer..

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Give it a rest, you two.

[pErvinalia]

He's on ignore. I just thought I'd give him a spray for old times sakes.

[Mr.Samsa]

Some old fart says an old farty thing and the internet explodes. Shirt rending and wailing ensues. Bans are proposed. Because what the old fart said is OFFENSIVE AND I TAKE OFFENSE!!!!!!!!!

It's getting all 1984, getting sacked for a causal remark.

But it wasn't a casual remark, it was a prepared speech given to a conference of women scientists where he basically explained why he discriminated against them and refused to hire them (and also why they're terrible scientists). Then he wrote an "apology" where he carefully and explicitly stated that he wasn't really sorry for what he said because he thought it was right and true.

I'm all for asking for cool heads when somebody let's slip a childish joke among colleagues and it upsets somebody, but we're talking about a measured speech where he intentionally made the comments he did because it reflected his actual practices.

Don't get me wrong as what he said was just stupid but the outrage mongers can fuck off. We need more business like Protein World who stood up to these internet whiners and made a profit doing so.

Again this is the weird thing though - the only people I see getting "outraged" and "whining" are the ones defending him. It's like the Matt Taylor shirt issue all over again where most people were just calmly pointing out that maybe it wasn't an appropriate shirt to wear to such an important event, and then the outrage mongers just went insane sending death threats and attacking people because they thought there was nothing wrong with Taylor's shirt.

It just seems like on the internet there's always someone there to have a big crywank about how they think that perfectly calm and reasonable criticism of shitty actions or people shouldn't occur. It's essentially just their form of censorship and shutting down free discussion because it disagrees with their personal beliefs. I just want to tell these people to grow up and stop trying to turn every valid criticism into some big drama where they get to push their favourite political agenda. It almost serves as a disproof to Hunt's claim about women being more thin-skinned, as the amount of men I've seen get so emotional and worked up over this perfectly mundane situation is incredible.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Some old fart says an old farty thing and the internet explodes. Shirt rending and wailing ensues. Bans are proposed. Because what the old fart said is OFFENSIVE AND I TAKE OFFENSE!!!!!!!!!

It's getting all 1984, getting sacked for a causal remark.

But it wasn't a casual remark, it was a prepared speech given to a conference of women scientists where he basically explained why he discriminated against them and refused to hire them (and also why they're terrible scientists). Then he wrote an "apology" where he carefully and explicitly stated that he wasn't really sorry for what he said because he thought it was right and true.

I'm all for asking for cool heads when somebody let's slip a childish joke among colleagues and it upsets somebody, but we're talking about a measured speech where he intentionally made the comments he did because it reflected his actual practices.

Don't get me wrong as what he said was just stupid but the outrage mongers can fuck off. We need more business like Protein World who stood up to these internet whiners and made a profit doing so.

Again this is the weird thing though - the only people I see getting "outraged" and "whining" are the ones defending him. It's like the Matt Taylor shirt issue all over again where most people were just calmly pointing out that maybe it wasn't an appropriate shirt to wear to such an important event, and then the outrage mongers just went insane sending death threats and attacking people because they thought there was nothing wrong with Taylor's shirt.

It just seems like on the internet there's always someone there to have a big crywank about how they think that perfectly calm and reasonable criticism of shitty actions or people shouldn't occur. It's essentially just their form of censorship and shutting down free discussion because it disagrees with their personal beliefs. I just want to tell these people to grow up and stop trying to turn every valid criticism into some big drama where they get to push their favourite political agenda. It almost serves as a disproof to Hunt's claim about women being more thin-skinned, as the amount of men I've seen get so emotional and worked up over this perfectly mundane situation is incredible.

[Brian Peacock]

[JimC]

I met one of my girlfriends in a lab. Our eyes met over a rack of test-tubes, and hormones were released...

[DaveDodo007]

[Mr.Samsa]

That's quite a good comic actually. It shows how the guy is willing to ignore harm committed against other people (usually minorities if we're talking about the problems in video games, journalism, media, etc), but is suddenly all offended when he's in trouble and needs help. If we apply it to the Tim Hunt situation, it would be like people who defend him arguing that people are just "whiners" when they point out actual harm committed against them and then when the person who attacked them simply gets criticised, they're all having a cry about it as if they deserve to have their voice heard.

The only problem is that it makes no sense to portray what I assume is a feminist. With things like feminism in video games it's obviously the feminists who are attacked and have bomb threats made against them, etc, whereas the MRA/gamergater crybabies are all whining about how it sucks that somebody dared question their precious games.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

That's quite a good comic actually. It shows how the guy is willing to ignore harm committed against other people (usually minorities if we're talking about the problems in video games, journalism, media, etc), but is suddenly all offended when he's in trouble and needs help. If we apply it to the Tim Hunt situation, it would be like people who defend him arguing that people are just "whiners" when they point out actual harm committed against them and then when the person who attacked them simply gets criticised, they're all having a cry about it as if they deserve to have their voice heard.

The only problem is that it makes no sense to portray what I assume is a feminist. With things like feminism in video games it's obviously the feminists who are attacked and have bomb threats made against them, etc, whereas the MRA/gamergater crybabies are all whining about how it sucks that somebody dared question their precious games.

Your earlier post was spot on, Mr Samsa. However, to deny that the kinds of feminists depicted here - the loud, spiteful, sharp and pointy kind - exist, is disingenuous in the extreme. There ARE (self-identified) feminists that are just as big crybabies as any gamergater.

[Brian Peacock]

#distractinglysexy : https://twitter.com/hashtag/DistractinglySexy?src=hash
BBC : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-33099289

[pErvinalia]

I met one of my girlfriends in a lab. Our eyes met over a rack of test-tubes, and hormones were released...

You should have been using a fume hood...

[Tero]

We had a few women in the lab, a minority in synthetic organic labs. Some old timer professors would reminisce of days when you could "piss in the sink" in the lab. I think the 1950s.

[Tero]

I had two people in my undergrad lab section I was teaching who took "intimately mix the two powders" literally. They were a couple.

[Mr.Samsa]

Your earlier post was spot on, Mr Samsa. However, to deny that the kinds of feminists depicted here - the loud, spiteful, sharp and pointy kind - exist, is disingenuous in the extreme. There ARE (self-identified) feminists that are just as big crybabies as any gamergater.

I didn't deny they exist. Feminists are people and people can be shitty sometimes. My point however was that when simplifying issues to identify trends, it makes no sense to portray the feminist as the aggressor in the situations the comic describes.

For example, if you look at the references to the 'gamergate' issue, the only role feminists had was to criticise harmful gender stereotypes and then for one feminist to have possibly cheated on their boyfriend in entirely inconsequential ways relevant to gaming. The reaction was to send death and rape threats to these women, force them and their families to leave their homes, and then threaten bomb attacks whenever they have public appearances.

Undoubtedly some shitty feminists exist but presenting feminists as the aggressor in those issues is like comparing arsonists to firemen in the assumption that sometimes firemen start fires.