Page 3 -Smut Or A British Institution?

to play devil's advocate
a reason to get angry and the people getting angry with matt taylor's shirt to support slothy's point:

by saying that the shirt is bad because it sexualises women is like saying pretty people cant be scientists. you can be attractive and smart. most academics are super well rounded and charming.
saying that image is of model and not serious scientist is reinforcing the societal stereotype that "you're either pretty or smart but never both"

its why we have that terrible show "big bang theory" showing dorky scoially inept weak smart guys and a dumb pretty girl and her friends who are smart but not as pretty. its what larger society thinks smart people should be like (which is the opposite of reality, most academics are well rounded badasses)

but men and women in STEM really need to be pushing that they are in every way better than the rest of us (lets face it, most of them are).

EDIT: this is the image of most gamers - dorky scoially inept weak guys rather than mostly uni students playing between nights out or people who are completely normal and enjoy interactive storylines

 

We just thanking Lefty because he mentioned Penny?

 

pretty much...

 

Damn it Zaad, say something unreasonable!

That is actually a good point. I'm not sure the female reporter part is entirely relevant though but that's me nit picking.

But isn't that along the lines of (example) "Young men are sent an awkward message if they want to be a hairdresser because there's a documentary where female hairdressers are gossiping about how hot men are and have semi-naked firemen calendars!"?

It just feels like one of those messages where the only people who truly care about the message are the people claiming to represent a viewpoint rather than the demographic objectified.

The shirt that a female colleague gave him as a present, presumably holds sentimental value as a result and which a number of his female colleagues came out in support of and of which there were no complaints in the work place?

You're right though, I can easily see it being the kind of shirt in most places that would be frowned at at the very least and possibly complained about, rightly or wrongly. I for one think it's wrong but I also know that's my opinion.

For me, it's celebrating the fact that those women are legally employed, informed and consenting and feeling empowered by the fact that others see them as sexually attractive in their chosen career. The whole purpose of the photos is there for that very reason so I just can't see a problem with it being used for that reason, even with no balance.

All that said, I hate the fact that Page 3 is in a paper that can be readily accessable by kids, that I think bugs me more than anything else and so if it really has gone the way of the dodo, I won't lose any sleep.

So...agree to disagree?

 

You'd be surprised at how many of them genuinely think this, and the amount of disdain most of them reserve for the humanities.

 

Wait...did The Sun just troll the media?

 

So it was all just a publicity stunt. I must say that it worked very well, as the media seems to have been discussing little else for the last couple of days. Once again, The Scum has kept the news off the front page.

 

Indeed. You almost get a tribal attitude between disciplines. As a physics student at the number 3 ranked uni in Australia, I basically looked down on everyone but the mathematicians; who were, of course, freaks. It's.. actually a bit scary, thinking about it. It starts as a bit of a joke, but then you find yourself actually looking down on... biologists, say .

 

http://xkcd.com/435/

look down all you want (you're tall after all ), but i still laid you out with a lead straight from horse stance

 

don't force me to do it again, man :evil: :ban:

 

You know as well as I do that that's not how prejudice and "ism's" work for the most part.
It's often not one thing or a small event that causes the reaction you are after.
It's a culture. Background noise. It's cumulative.
Imagine say you want to get from A to B. You really want to get to B.
You start on the journey...but every so often there's a truck up ahead that drops a brick in the road. The first brick you tut and drive round. Easy. No big deal.
But then there's another brick. The individual bricks aren't much but they add up. You drive round a couple more. After 10 or 20 bricks you start getting really cheesed off and start to wonder if it's worth going to location B after all. Perhaps location C would be easier to get to?
All the while other drivers are being waved on to overtake without having bricks dropped in front of them. They get to location B much easier than you're finding it.
You plow on, avoiding bricks because you really want to get to B.
Eventually your car stops but you can't tell why. You can see location B in the distance but your car won't budge. Other cars are going on fine.
Unbeknown to you someone's built a wall across the road made of invisible bricks. You can go no further no matter how determined.
All the while other people just like you can see your journey and see that actually there aren't many people like you or them at location B. So maybe even starting the journey, no matter how much they want to get there, is pointless in the first place?

That's how prejudice works and that's what it's like being a minority/woman/marginalised group trying to get ahead in a hostile environment. It's not a black and white "A causes B" situation.
What you are then doing is holding up one brick and saying "this little brick is putting you off getting to location B?...you must have problems".
The shirt is a metaphorical brick in the road. It's not the only one. And it's only an indicator of a larger problem. The real problem is the metaphorical lorry doing the dropping and the invisible walls.

It's an example of low level hostility that by itself may not seem much but will accumulate or form a back ground hostility level that puts people off. Substitute jokes about curry for any other sort of jibe/trick/comment that a minority has had to put up with just to move forward in life/career.
You know for a fact that those sorts of things go on for all sorts of people surely?

You're saying essentially the shirt is no big deal and it's something women will have to get over or ignore in order to get where they want to get (or else they have bigger problems or didn't really want it badly enough). Forgive me if that's not your stance but that's how it comes across. You are asking women to accept something men just don't have to.

Batman onesies aren't sexist in nature. He'd have looked like a fool and be seen to trivialise science so I;m sure it would have attracted comment though.

What we tend to forget too is that the awful shirt was only part of the picture. Matt Taylor also used subtly sexist terms to describe the landing (likening it to convincing a reluctant woman to have sex IIRC) that were also questionable in a professional setting.

I've met maybe 2 or 3 people in my whole life that genuinely dressed without thought to what they looked like or came across. They tended to have stained clothes, left their flies undone, wore clothes that didn't fit, mismatches, creased, old, worn, etc.
They most definitely didn't have loads of tattoos, a hipster beard, neat haircut, designer glasses and a range of colourful bowling shirts.
And they wouldn't have got anywhere near being a spokesman for a major scientific achievement because they were genuinely shambolic in the rest of their lives too.

 

if you rearrange it the other way, it could be ranking of application to real world outcome.

problem with academia is that people involved in "groundbreaking research" rarely care about real world outcome which is usually pushed by the sociologists onto the politicians

 

Thanks for taking the time to respond Smithy. I don't have the time to respond to it now as I'm going out, but hopefully I'll get round to digesting it fully in a couple of days .

 

Glad we're keeping it good natured even though I've annoyed you.

 

If he had worn a Wonder Woman shirt would the same criticism have applied I..errr. wonder?