He’s at it again, as Phil Plait notes in a post that says all the smart things.
And now another attack piece on St. Louis has been posted on the far-right-wing Breitbart site, saying she has become immune from criticism because she’s black.
Yes, you read that right. And that’s not all. In a sentence so tone deaf I’d swear it’s parody, the author, Milo Yiannopoulos, writes*:
St Louis is responsible for the sacking of Sir Tim Hunt, a Nobel prize-winning biochemist who became the target of an online lynch mob after his comments about women in science were taken out of context.
Yes, again, you read that right. You might ignore the obviously incorrect statements in that one sentence (Hunt wasn’t sacked, he was asked to resign from an honorary position; and as we’ve seen his comments were not taken out of context), but it’s much harder to ignore that, in an article attacking a woman because she’s black, Yiannopoulos used the phrase “lynch mob.”
I’m not going to link to Yiannopoulos’ article; it’s just too much dishonest hackery to be tolerated. As Plait notes, that one sentence is a loosely connected series of lies. But the rest…I have to pick on one other comment that infuriates.
After all, we can afford to lose scientists like Sir Tim Hunt, can’t we? He wasn’t doing anything important, just trying to cure cancer.
That’s a common inaccuracy. No, he’s not trying to cure cancer — that’s a whole different discipline. He’s trying to understand a basic feature of cells, the regulation of cell division. That’s important stuff, but please note: he hasn’t lost his official position, in which he has a lab (possibly; he’s in retirement, and mostly what he seems to have done is confer with other labs and get his name on a few papers.) There’s a tendency to inflate the direct relevance of work that scientists do when translating it to the lay public. For instance, I’ve been looking at cell migrations in the embryo — hey, that’s like metastasis! I must be working on curing cancer, too!
Most dangerously, though, he’s trying to move some scientists into a magical zone of invulnerability. Oh, you work on cancer? We shall forgive you all kinds of sexist asshattery, because medicine. Let’s tear up his parking tickets and give him a puppy-shooting license, too.
No, that’s not how it works. Doing science does not exempt one from normal expectations of healthy human behavior. You also know that Yiannopoulos is profoundly dishonest, and if Hunt had offended conservative sensibilities (there’s still time; I suspect that Hunt, like most scientists, probably leans liberal) the fact that he studies the mitotic cell cycle wouldn’t have given Yiannopoulos a moment’s pause before sending his right-wing dumbass sycophants after him.
Also, the guy who denies climate change and believes in a bizarre gender essentialism doesn’t get to hide behind science.
Idea: If we hadn’t excluded half the population from science for centuries and if we didn’t do our damn best to discourage them now, may we would have cured some more sorts of cancer* already?
*You know you cn stop taking someone serious when they talk about “curing cancer” as if it was one single uniform maladie.
Just like Dawkins, and to a lesser extent, Brian Cox.
Dawkins appears to be mis-guided by some sense of the primacy of freeze peach (to put it politely).
“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls … three things happen when they are in the lab … You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls? Now seriously, I’m impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without doubt an important role in it. Science needs women and you should do science despite all the obstacles, and despite monsters like me”
“The words ‘now seriously’ make it very clear that I was making a joke, albeit a very bad one, but they were not mentioned in the first reports and I was deluged with hate mail,”
It’s pretty fair to say that his comments were taken out of context.
James Eyres
Nope.
“It’S a joke” is no excuse, the meaning and effect don’t change. It’S a joke at the expense of female scientists, making them the butt of the joke, reinforcing negative stereotypes and creating a hostile climate.
@3 James Eyres
Even if it were true that he was joking (it’s not, he confirmed it when journalists asked), how is “just joking” a get out of jail free card for saying inappropriate things to a group of people who have been systematically discriminated against for years? In the last two years I’ve gotten to hear my male lab-mates and PI “joke” about having a harem when 3 undergraduate women came to work in the lab, or suggest to myself and the only other female PhD student that we could clean our our male lab-mates flats for extra cash. Strangely enough, neither she nor I found it funny even though the men really thought it was a funny joke.
“Just joking” doesn’t alter underlying nature of the sexism.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- @ 1;
(Channels Milo)
But… but… Giliell – haven’t legions of wise scientist penis-havers already clearly established that cancer research is far too hard for pink fluffy lady-brains? Not with, you know, actual evidence or anything boring like that, but by the innate authority granted to them by the sainted member? We all know that infallibility comes as a package deal with one’s, well, package. Hence in-phalli-bility – you see, even the word sounds more or less kind of similar, so it must be true, because logic.
Besides, how would you expect the bloke scientists to get any work done, what with overly emotional temptresses in sexy lab coats all about? I mean, people like Tim Hunt might be expected to display a basic level of self control and professionalism toward their female coworkers in such a circumstance, which would divert his attention away from the magic cancer super cure that he is scant days away from, that will not only cure all cancer but also fix the energy crisis and end world hunger – such hardship is surely unconscionable. What sort of monster would make such unreasonable demands? Won’t someone think of the privileged White cis/het scientist menz!
So the outcome is clear; women doing cancer research wouldn’t accelerate the development of cancer treatments, but instead would lead to wild lab orgies, widespread famine, worldwide economic collapse, and cancer becoming radicalised and heading out to Syria to join ISIS. Do you really want to risk terrorist cancer?
(/Milo)
MadHatter@5, how did you avoid punching them in the face?
Jesus fucking christ. Where do you people come from?
We know he was trying to be funny. That doesn’t excuse the fact that he was trying to be funny with sexist stereotypes in front of an audience of women, and we also know by his own goddamned words that he meant what he said.
@ James Eyres
Another quote from Tim Hunt:
The very part you said was ‘taken out of context’, and therefore isn’t really true, has been specifically identified by Hunt himself as a part he really did mean.
“God forbid, there is no way we are going to modify the status quo! Just deal with the sexism and bulljive”
Yep, that is a great message to women scientists.
“It’s just a joke” it’s what the oppressor tells the oppressed, so that the oppressed stops complaining. It doesn’t make “the joke” any less oppressing to the individuals who are the butt of the joke and it’s not going to work as a silencing technique.
Also, i fucking hate Milo…i really do. Jesus fucking christ is he dingustingly dishonest. The one good thing is that he thinks he is inmensely intelligent, but he fucking isn’t, so he is guaranteed to fuck up spectacularly every time he opens his lying mouth.
James Eyres @ 3
I agree with Giliell and MadHatter on this – declaring that something is ‘just a joke’ is not only a well established means of evading taking responsibility for comments one knows to be toxic and offensive, but it also does nothing to alter the underlying character of the sentiment conveyed; a bigoted joke that makes a vulnerable group its punchline is still bigoted no matter how many of the privileged laugh at it, and irrespective of whether or not the person telling it meant it seriously or purely in jest.
The mindset conveyed in humour – or more accurately expressed behind the shield of disingenuously claiming that it is all merely a joke as if that makes it alright – still contributes to a hostile atmosphere that needlessly makes the lives of the effected group that much harder. Amusing oneself by finding humour in the discrimination suffered by marginalised groups is repugnant at the very least.
I’ve read several times that UCL’s position is that he was not “asked to resign.” They tried to communicate with him about his remarks at the conference, and without consulting with them, he submitted his resignation.
James Eyres @ 3
Despite all the obstacles. DESPITE ALL THE OBSTACLES. You are actually quoting him saying that he knows full well there are obstacles to women getting involved in STEM fields and that they need to do science despite it. Not “There are obstacles and I want to help you fix them.” But “blah blah joke about a sexist stereotype and just put up with it, will you?”
Your defense of the man is to draw special attention to possibly the most sexist thing he said which is after the “now seriously” disclaimer.
James Eyres, @ 3
Seriously? We’ve been over this. All of us have been over this a gazillion times already. Do you really think you’re saying something that hasn’t been said (and refuted!) many times already? Really?
James Eyres,
Saying “it’s just a joke” is a longstanding way for bullies to handwave away their victim’s offense at their words or actions, and play the victim. It means little more than “you’ve no right to be offended by what I’ve done, and, in fact, *I* am the one who should be offended by *your* reaction”.
In this case, I will give Tim Hunt some benefit of the doubt. He accepted at least some responsibility for his comments, and apologized for them, and even doubled down on some. Those reaffirmations are unfortunate, but at least he was forthright and honest about them when pressed.
So, what’s your excuse? And what’s with all of Hunt’s defenders, all of which who are 3rd party to all of this? You’re all taking such offense to the fact that people were offered by someone other than yourselves. This isn’t your fight, and your hero has already capitulated. Go home. You’re just making fools out of yourselves.
@James Eyres
At the risk of piling on, tldr: sexist humour is both sexist and sadistic. To say that someone was “just joking” is not a defence, it’s pointing out an aggravating factor.
James Eyres, #3
Yeah, I don’t know why women would take it personally. It’s not as if the joke lines up perfectly with the way women are treated in STEM.
Has he done a joke about black people being killed by the police yet?
The Daily Mail doesn’t give a shit about science, Yiannopoulos doesn’t give a shit about science, and (as the tone and content of their comments reveals) a significant number of Hunt’s defenders on Twitter don’t give a shit about science, or are simply uninformed about science and about sexism, and about sexism in science. The Daily Mail makes money out of sexist online bilge. Yiannopoulos knows that sexism is a thing of the past – predating these five or ten years!
What exactly is their interest in this story? I’m willing to bet that most of these angry voices had never uttered the words Tim and Hunt together in a sentence prior to this, let alone have any clue about who he was or his accomplishments in the field of cell cycle regulation.
They don’t care about any of the issues. They just care about trying to silence female voices and anyone who supports them.
Blazing opportunist scumbags.
Bernard Bumner #19
Amen to all that.
“It was just a joke.”
“I was just messing with you.”
“You are such a crybaby taking it seriously.”
-Pretty much every bully, ever.
James Eyres #3
Nope, his comments, whether or not meant as a joke, were demeaning to women, and therefore a form of sexual harassment. Have you ever had sexual harassment training? Don’t speak about it unless you are properly educated on the subject.
numerobis @7
Mostly by reminding myself I have to keep their good will to finish and get out of here. Same as most women I know (including the other one in the lab). Despite the strange belief that men who get called out for these comments (or actions for that matter) face consequences that are too high, the reality is that most of the time the worst they get is an eye roll because the social and career consequences of “making trouble” can be catastrophic for their target(s).
Let’S also remember that the people who were there cannot remember the “now seriously”. Not that it changed anything, as mentioned before.
MaHatter
That’s the thing. We know those people have power over us, we need their approval, so we shut our mouths and say nothing, or we even smile.
And then that gets framed as “see, women totally don’t mind, they find it funny!”
Bernard @19
The Daily Mail certainly only cares about the ‘academic freedom’ to make controversial statements when it suits them. A couple of years ago a colleague of a friend made some comments about exam marking on Facebook (not public but nothing on that site is ever very private), nothing identifying any students and nothing that I haven’t heard academics say in person on multiple occasions. The Mail picked up this story and gleefully called for the guy to be sacked, calling him ‘Full Name, senior lecturer’ rather than ‘shortenened name, recent PhD grad employed on some low-paid teaching temp work’. He lost that temp work, and the offer of a more permanent position at another university was withdrawn. Of course, unlike Tim Hunt this was his only employment and he was the only breadwinner for his young family (my friend was considering taking them in if they became homeless). Fortunately another academic took pity on him and offered him a research assistant job, very low pay but better than nothing.
My favorite Russian proverb: “There is a bit of a joke in every joke.”
Arkady @25,
That doesn’t surprise me. The mail loves to foster a bit of moral outrage at a cost to the less powerful.
Making possibly indiscreet or less than professional comments in a private forum (which is certainly something we’ve all done) is obviously a matter for a national tabloid and requires nothing less than sacking, whereas a figurehead making remarks which are directly detrimental to his unpaid public relations role does not require that he gives up that role. (And that is to ignore the wider context of the actual harm, beyond merely reputational, that is done as result of opinions such as those held by said figurehead.)
Somehow, academic freedom – the individual freedom of academics to work unhindered by the administration and backers of the institution – also excludes the possibility of institutions choosing who to nominate as their public relations representatives. The tabloids may as well argue that University press officers should be free to put out bigoted press releases.
The Daily Mail’s and Breitbart’s hit pieces on St. Louis are quite obviously aimed at silencing her (and given that they fail to mention the corroborating journalists, are also fairly obviously pieces of misdirection propaganda). They also fail in the most basic of fact checks by repeating the lie that Hunt was sacked. By their own purported standards, this doubt alone should be reason to dismiss the entirety of their articles.
Yiannopolous’s article is terrible. So is Phil Plait’s.
Thank you, Chris61, for your elaborate, eloquent and well argued critique
You’re very welcome, Giliell.
At least chris61 seems to have abandoned the pretense that she’s capable of defending her position on pretty much anything. It’s progress of a sort.
I remember when my daughter went through her “just kidding” phase.
In the quote in defense of Tim Hunt, up there, he calls himself a monster. Has anyone’s criticism gone past the equivalent of agreeing with him?
Hmmmm…. I think the very best one can claim is that he was incompletely represented– not that his words were taken out of context. Yes, he made some pretty and easy words about women in science rah, rah. And he peppered it with a sexist joke. And people were unamused. So they said something about it. Seems straightforward to me.
Perhaps he can claim “but I said ‘hurray, for girls, rah, rah’ and they ignored that” but he can’t claim the joke never happened, was out of context, or wasn’t sexist.
Did anyone else hear about another conference wherein Tim Hunt is said to have joked with an audience member (a woman) about having sex with her? Apparently at some other conference he asked for a volunteer to come up on stage ended up making comments about having sex with her!?
If this is accurate, it makes Hunt’s comments in Korea look tame by comparison. People are scrambling to find the video of this event, but if it’s out there it will come to light eventually.
It is reported that he brought the volunteer on stage and then said to her: “We could say, if I win this hand, I get to kill and eat you. That’s one possibility. Another thing is is that if you win this hand, I would have to submit and have sex with you.”
And later he says: “You win. I will give you my hotel room number right after this… Don’t worry, we’ll do the sex thing later.”
And: “Okay, go back to your seat. Wait, take the cards with you. I have to call you back for the sex part later.”
He apparently asked the same volunteer to come up on stage later and said: “I’d like my partner here to come up, and we’ll have sex on stage… Simulated sex on stage, sorry to disappoint you.”
When she took her seat, he said: “You were an excellent sex partner.”
Can you believe this??? Just awful, vile stuff.
Fin Stollof (#34): Cute attempt at a Gotcha! Failed, but cute. Nobody’s ever tried to use that against PZ before! </sarcasm>.
Fin Stollof #34
Totally irrelevant bullshit argument. His Korea remarks were obvious sexual harassment. If you have a problem with that, show using of sexual harassment training where the recipient decides what is and isn’t harassment, that half the population wasn’t demeaned by his remarks.
Fin Stollof @ 34
You’re adorable.
Look, Fin thinks he is clever!
Do you seriously not see the monumental difference between an adult themed joke with another adult individual, clearly whithin a context that is very explicit, and which was set up in advance of the volunteer participating, and sexist comments about women in general? No? Really?
Fine, Hunt was “joking”: as in voicing his sexist attitudes to mock himself for holding those views.
His response to the reaction to his self-mockery, was the big mistake. He did not apologize for holding those views and expressing them in a bad way. No, he apologized for the audience not “getting” the joke. Also, got angry at the angry responses to his self-mockery. Not angered at himself for not doing a better job at being obviously self mocking. He claimed it was “obvious self-mockery” and accused the angry responders of being witch hunters and lynch mobs. Then hoped to appease the angry by resigning his honorary position. To which I imagine him saying, “happy now, witch hunters?????”
I’m willing to acknowledge he was self-aware enough to see the sexism of his attitudes, BUT his followup was quite lacking (to say the least).
slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) @ 39
How do you arrive at that conclusion? I mean you describe him making a sexist joke, apologizing not for the content of what he said but for humorless people’s failure to get it, used hyperbolic language to further demean the people criticizing him…
…and then somehow he’s self-aware and understands the problem? You seem to have missed a step or 12 in there somewhere.
re @40:
I did not say he “understands the problem”, just that he is self aware that his attitudes are sexist. Based on his claim that he was mocking himself.
I’m sorry to have come across so badly [see what I did there, Hunt?], I am not trying to excuse his remarks, just describing my most-lenient view of what he did. That’s why I started with the “Fine”. I’m willing to accept his explanation (not as an excuse) that his faux jokes were self-mockery. It is his counter-reaction, to his mockery not going over the way he intended, is the part I can’t just brush aside, and took the most offense at (personally).
Perhaps I misspoke that sentence of mine you quoted. Let me (attempt to ) fix it:
“I’m willing to
acknowledgeaccept he was self-aware enough to see […]”to which I’ll accept a “close but no cigar” type response.
My point was that the behavior you describe seems like the opposite of self awareness. I mean he says he was mocking himself, he mentions having a reputation for being a chauvinist and he refers to himself as a monster but that gives no indication of self-awareness. You can be aware that people think X about you without having the first clue what it is you’ve done to give rise to that perception. Further, the simple fact that he thinks he’s mocking himself when women are clearly the butt of his joke is indicative of a distinct lack of self-awareness. Then he proceeds to blame his critics for hanging him out to dry, etc. I mean sure, I bet he’s aware that people think he said sexist things because tons of people have told him so. That’s not self-awareness.
Yeah, the terrible abusive sex part was…shuffling cards.
But even if they are true they are irrelevant. You don’t need any particular credentials to report what someone said, and her version is corroborated by others who were there, and is not significantly disputed by Hunt.
chris61 @ 44
The point of the article is to undermine Ms. St. Louis’s credibility. That makes it a hit piece regardless of whether any of what they said is true. Further, as jefrir points out, Ms. St. Louis having been less than honest about something in the past doesn’t mean she’s wrong about this. Especially when the thing in question is corroborated by multiple other people INCLUDING. TIM. HUNT.
Chris, a “hit piece” is exactly what it is. Take this bit:
Just Asking Questions, amirite?
It’s an exercise of combing through her CV and piling up irrelevant details of allegedly questionable factuality in order to indict her honesty. The real kicker is, the specific point on which they’re trying to drum up a controversy is a red herring in the first place. For the hundredth time, it is rather an exacerbating factor, not an ameliorating one, that Hunt was “joking”. “Just joking, jeez, why are you so uptight” is the bully’s first refuge. It reeks of the privilege of being able to simply laugh off slights to oneself while ignoring the real and harmful effects on those less fortunate than oneself due to one’s own shitty behavior. The Daily Mail piece is fractally dishonest, and in your first little turd dropped here, you equated it with Plait’s post, which is actually a quite good analysis of the state of play at he moment.
In short chris61, you suck. Fuck you.
Freethought from Wiki:
Now, lets see if empirical evidence follows….
Who gives a shit what your opinion is, if you can’t back it up with evidence…Which you don’t.
PZ doesn’t need to respond. The fact that half the population, which includes femists males like myself, see it demeaning to women, and you present no evidence otherwise, makes your question moot. NO EVIDENCE, you have nothing to say. Questions aren’t evidence.
Asshole, if it was acknowledge to be arranged beforehand by both parties, no problem. What is your problem, since you have no evidence??? Why don’t you merely fade into the bandwidth with the other people who show with prima facie evidence by their posts they lack the understanding of CONTEXT.
For fuck’s sake, I am so tired of these assholes. Freethought doesn’t have anything to do with providing a forum for your assholery, asshole.
Joking about sex is not automatically sexist. if you think it is, or pretend to in order to score points with your ‘pitter buddies, you have the same stupid hangups as the rest of them, and those are fucking rooted in sexist attitudes in the first place. These supposedly clever turnaround gotchas don’t work. They demonstrate only and exactly the kind of fucked up sexist attitudes that lead to all this shit. Which I suppose could be sort of useful idiot type teaching moments, except you’re all such odious assholes.
Note for out of context folks:
Context are not just the preceding and the following sentence. Context is the way women in science are treated. Context is the way women are treated all the fucking day, whether they are doing science, something “masculine”, something “feminine” or just trying to get home after a long day. It’s all part of the context.
So you are the ones actually taking these words out of context.
Looks like someone sounded the bugle over at the pit… idiocy influx in progress.
Well, before any more arrive then, Holms, let’s just put on record that the only valid criticism of Connie St Loius is that her CV – plucked from one source – is incomplete.
I have news for the under-23s. Anyone over 40 is going to have to use a CV which is a summary or one shortened to fit the available space.
My full CV stretches to four A4 pages. If I put in some explanation of what the organisation was about or precisely what I did / learned while there it would expand to 7 pages easily.
You see, some of us have rather more experience than others. Women often have CVs which reflect social reality, which do no describe a perfect arc from gormless youth to CEO. We often do what can be fitted in with other commitments or pick up the work which needs to be done wherever we are. Indeed we often do boring jobs to survive and find voluntary work which actually uses our talents and knowledge.
I have been a shop assistant, a waitress and chair of a political think tank. A condensed version of that is definitely not going to make sense to every passing idiot. That doesn’t mean it is a lie.
Fin Stollof @34,
I was at a conference nine years ago where a certain biology professor gave a witty and memorable demonstration about how sex works to combine genes. I’m no biologist, but I was a woman in the audience.
The running joke of the presentation was the contrast between the references to sex occurring between the presenter and the volunteer and the activity that was actually occurring on stage, as PZ says, shuffling cards. It worked as a joke explicitly because the demonstration was indeed about sex, unless you think of it as a demonstration of a mathematical model. The incongruity of the patter versus the activity was funny.
If you want to compare this demonstration to the “joke” that Tim Hunt made, it is useful to think about what makes Tim Hunt’s joke work as a joke. I think it’s a decent comparison, because both jokes work on incongruity of a situation. The thing is, in Tim Hunt’s joke, the incongruity is in the very idea of women working in science labs with men. That is flat out sexist.
THat’s the same people who always accuse us of being prudes, right?
That we just hate sex, right?
Oh, and straight white cis men.
None of us would ever have sex with a straight cis white man, right?
This is still going on? The horse has got to be beyond dead at this point.
RE: Fin Stollof #34
THAT is what it looks like when you take comments out of context. It’s when the bit you leave out fundamentally alters the meaning of the interaction.
In contrast, notice how the full story about Tim Hunt still has him looking like a sexist asshole. Ergo, NOT out of context.
You know, people keep on posting The Quote (like in #3) published by the Daily Mail as if it’s the Gospel Truth, when the person who said that this was the exact quote has been a.) refuted by 3 other journalists who were there and b.) admitted that this wasn’t an “exact transcript”. I wish people would be more honest.
@56
That’s because people with shitty standards of behavior are prone to adopting hyper-strict standards of behaviour when it suits them, i.e. to lecture those that have better standards of behaviour in an attempt to discredit those pesky moralising types. Of course this requires a large lack of integrity in order to be so disingenuous, but, well… this seems an opportune time to refer you to the start of this paragraph, where it mentions ‘shitty standards of behavior.’
Gen, Uppity Ingrate and Ilk @ 59
Indeed. As much as the alleged “now seriously” doesn’t change the complaint about Hunt’s comments, it is telling that his defenders uncritically believe the one account that comports with their preferred narrative despite the fact that it’s contradicted by multiple other accounts.
Holms @ 60 & Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- @ 56
It all goes back to authoritarian/reactionary people and their intolerance of ambiguity. Everything has to fit into a well-defined category. It’s always bad or it’s always good. Things they want are always good; things they don’t want are always bad. Which leads to accusations of hypocrisy when they see others saying “X is fine in circumstance 1 but not in circumstance 2” where circumstances 1 and 2 don’t align with their personal want/don’t want spectrum.
@seven of mine
Either that or they’re just so stupendously simplistic that they genuinely don’t understand how context can change the meaning of a thing.
@51 CJO
And that, in a nutsell is it.
Basically, they’re like the christian conservatives who couldn’t understand the liberal uproar about Josh Duggar. Those folks have two boxes (stealing from Libby Anne here): Rightful sex (Man, woman, married, PIV) and Unrightful sex (outides of marriage, masturbation, contraception, same sex, rape). And since liberals are OK with about anything in the latter box except rape, conservatives think they’re hypocrites for objecting against rape. They cannot understand that our boxes are very different, one saying “consent” and the other “no consent”
Now our own little atheist antis are much the same. Only their boxes contain All things mentioning sex/women/etc. and Aprroved by the Non-existant Thought Police. They cannot understand that our boxes are different and therefore think they have a gotcha.
Giliell @65
These are the same people that don’t see the difference between a woman choosing to wear a sexy outfit and every woman comic book and video game character having unnatural boobs up to her chin. They think feminists are complaining about all cleavage and miss the point(intentionally or not) at the very first step.
I imagine humblepie at 47 was just a pitter driveby, but why was chris61 at 44 removed?
Other People’s Scruples are just another weapon in the Rat Fuck arsenal.
(This is why scruples need to be constructed with at least a modicum of cynicism about the ease of using them as a weapon.)
@everyone(I guess)
You kind of missed the point. Nowhere have I gave an opinion on whether or not it being a joke excuses the comments.
Taking the first part of the quote,
“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls … three things happen when they are in the lab … You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls?”
and publishing that, on its own, ignores the critical part of the quote where he says “Now seriously”.
If you take something somebody says, remove the part where it’s clear this person was joking, then show the world what this person said you have certainly taken it out of context.
I’m not saying his comments are now excused, I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve what he got, hell I’m not even saying he doesn’t believe what he said in its entirety. What I’m saying is that the quote that sparked all of this outrage was taken out of context which seems, at least to me, pretty irrefutable.
James Eyres
If Hunt’s comments having been taken out of context doesn’t excuse them, render Hunt undeserving of anythinng that happened, or indicate that Hunt doesn’t believe what he said then “out of context” is an utterly vapid observation. If that’s the case, you don’t even have a point for us to have missed.
Irrelevant bullshit. You are just trying to bean overly obnoxious irrelevant pendant on that point. He admitted what he said. Pointless attempt at a point.
James Eyres @69
What was the part where Hunt was “joking”? I fail to see any jokes in what he said. Jokes are supposed to be funny, causing people to go “ha ha” and otherwise express appreciation of humor. Hunt’s “jokes” fail to meet this standard. Therefore they’re only “jokes”, not jokes. However they succeed at being expressions of sexism. Which is what people are objecting to.
There’s the further point that jokes can be sexist as well as funny. Should sexist jokes be excused because they have some humor in them? If so, please explain in detail why should they be excused.
James Eyres, each response you make not in the context of sexual harassment training, where the recipient, not the giver, makes the determination of harassment, is a non-sequitur. The only rational discussion includes those elements front and center.
Given the large outpouring of “you did wrong” from women and feminists, it is obvious Hunt stepped over a line into harassment, and whether or not he was joking is utterly and totally irrelevant to the fact that it was considered harassment, and is therefore harassment. Why are you not seeing such an obvious, rational, and properly skeptical point?
James Eyres @ 69,
You didn’t hear the interview on BBC Radio4 Today, did you? This is before anyone got over-excited or defensive.
It’s just a tiny clip but the link on the right allows you to plough through the whole 3 hours and find the complete car crash.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02tc22c
If the bit that was left out doesn’t actually change the meaning of what was said, nor alter the problematic and offensive nature of it, in what way can it be considered “out of context”?
As has been pointed out repeatedly, “joking” is the preferred method of expressing opinions of this nature. People who don’t seriously believe things like this tend not to make these kinds of “jokes”. The “now seriously” comment in no way changes anything about the situation. His comments were every bit as offensive with or without that bit.
Finally, before you start trying to defend yourself, I suggest you go back and read some of the stuff that has already been written on this subject, because nothing you said here was new, interesting, or thought-provoking. Your objections were addressed days before you even wrote the comment.
if anyone wants to listen to the BBC 4 radio clip in its entirety it starts at the 2 hour 21 min point of the broadcast.