I’m admiring #Shirtstorm. It aloof won’t end. Let’s see how it’s gone so far:
• On Wednesday the European Amplitude Agency’s 10-year-old Rosetta delving landed on the apparent of a comet for the aboriginal time in animal history.
• But who cares? That’s because on Nov. 13 physicist Matt Taylor, Rosetta’s activity scientist, for a alive beck of the acknowledged landing by the apprentice Philae on a 300-million-mile-away comet hurtling through space, wore a feministically incorrect shirt. Fabricated by a changeable acquaintance of Taylor’s, the Hawaiian-style shirt was printed with bright illustrations of females who were not alone ample and minimally clad but, abacus insult to sexist injury, were wielding guns.
• Feminist Twitter-bomb strafing! Its basis seemed to be that pictures of adorable dames in atramentous underwear abash women from entering STEM fields. (You try to chase the acumen in that one; I can’t.) “[A] shirt affection women in lingerie isn’t adapted for a advertisement if you affliction about women in science,” tweeted astrophysicist Katie Mack. A cheep by Rose Eveleth, a tech biographer for The Atlantic, empiric sarcastically, “No no women are toooootally acceptable in our community, aloof ask the dude in this shirt.”
• On Friday Taylor apologized. Absolutely he access into tears during what was declared to be a columnist conference on the Rosetta mission. Attired this time in a penitential-looking atramentous hoodie, Taylor said, “I fabricated a big aberration and I affronted abounding bodies and I am actual apologetic about this."
• But if you anticipate that Taylor’s bawling acknowledgment apoplectic the feminist battlefront squad, you’re mistaken. Rachel Feltman, a science biographer for the Washington Post, blogged: “Of course, I alone achievement that one day (when he's a little beneath busy) Taylor will say a bit added on the subject, and appearance that he understands why the shirt wasn't okay.”
• Then, on Monday bourgeois Glenn Harlan Reynolds took the allegedly abhorrent footfall of absolutely balustrade with Taylor in USA Today instead of the avenging furies of feminism. In a cavalcade blue-blooded “1 Small Shirt for a Man, 1 Giant Leap Backward for Women,” Reynolds wrote: “It seems to me that if you affliction about women in STEM, maybe you shouldn't appetite to acquaint the angle that they're so aerial that they can't handle pictures of comic-book women.” He accused the anti-Taylor Twitter-bombers of “‘Mean Girls’ online mobbing” and “bullying.”
• The feminist tweeters accept now set their architect on Reynolds. The new meme seems to be that his cavalcade amounted to a claimed advance on Taylor’s critics. Slate’s Phil Plait additionally chimed in, accusatory that “a bubbles torrent of backfire misogyny” has “swept over amusing media.”
So now it’s “backlash misogyny” to say boo to Taylor’s critics.
Eventually #Shirtstorm will die down, like added storms. But meanwhile I accept this observation: Taylor’s shirt absolutely was in bad taste. But not because he’s some array of “sexist pigdog,” as one analyzer alleged him. It’s because he avalanche into a apparent animal category: Science Nerd.
Maybe it’s because I grew up in Pasadena, home of Caltech, mother address of science nerdery, but I accustomed Taylor’s blazon immediately. Take a attending at him: the abhorrent eyeglasses, the bristles that’s not absolutely hip abundant to be hipster, the busy tattoos that discharge out from beneath that shirt all the way to Taylor’s wrists. The man alike had a boom of the Rosetta landing needled assimilate his leg aback in January! And blatant accidental shirts of all kinds are allotment of his accustomed wardrobe. Matt Taylor could be a appearance in “The Big Bang Theory.”
And allotment of Science Nerd ability seems to be that if your academician is big enough, it’s OK for you to dress for every distinct break as admitting you were absorption the approach of relativity while walking your dog. It’s why Mark Zuckerberg wears that gray T-shirt everywhere. So Matt Taylor donned absolutely inappropriate abrasion -- inappropriate because a scientist care to dress professionally aback presenting his assignment to the public, which is not the aforementioned as messing about in a lab.
So, yes, Taylor should accept beat a altered shirt. A shirt fabricated of Oxford bolt and maybe a tie. Alike geniuses charge to apprentice a little about tasteful dress.
Charlotte Allen writes frequently about feminism, backroom and religion. Chase her on Twitter @MeanCharlotte.
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