Sir Tim Hunt - women should stay out of labs because they distract men

[MurielWoods]

and they cry too easily and make men fall in love with them

I shit you not

I can't believe people are willing to write off these comments as 'laughable' they are not laughable at all. They are sexist and belief like this are holding women back. It's no joke that only one in ten professors are women. If the same comments were said about men it would probably be laughed off but then they are having to struggle to be taken seriously in the work place.

Boris is a disgrace too, sticking up for him, saying hunt is just stating gender differences. This is an MP! So what if research has shown women cry more, it doesn't mean single sex labs are appropriate or that a Nobel prize winner should not be able to discuss research with a women.

I can't believe there isn't more uproar over this, but then women just get written off as hysterical bags blowing everything out of proportion (& women are guilty of saying this too).

Imagine if hunt had stood up and said all blacks have to use sex race labs. There would be uproar, Norris wouldn't be backing him up then

Sorry for typos - bloody iphone

I'm pretty sure hunt would have escaped more lightly if his 'apology' had shown any sign that he recognised what he'd actually said wrong.

I am not entirely convinced that you can compare what he said to racism though.

The remarks were sexist. In principle that is the same as remarks that are racist.

It was a joke!!!

I think the poor man has already suffered enough for this joke.

How many brilliant female scientists have we not had because of attitudes like his?

It was a joke!!!

Do you think sexist jokes are OK then? How about racist ones? Or homophobic ones?

When I look around the institute (life sciences and environmental sciences) here female scientist easily make up half of the research/teaching staff and probably more than half of the students. It's not the occassional joke that keeps women from science it's that even now in 2015 it is still bloody difficult to combine a career in science with a family. I know many scientist couples who started out in science together and once they have children their career pathes diverge. Some of this would be helped if you could properly share parental leave in this country.
Challenging what someone says is an important part of doing science. I have no issue with challenging Tim Hunt on what he says and maybe, hopefully having a meaningful discussion about how to advance women in science, shutting him up with cries of sexism doesn't actually do much good.

Hmm, bloody poor joke. I guess it was actually personal experience for him. He had an affair with his student which broke up her marriage (not sure about his?) and then married her. So perhaps he was being honest in his case. The wording was crass though. Blaming the 'girls' for him not being able to concentrate on the science... What a sleaze he sounds.

He didn't just turn up to the conference thinking "I think I'll crack a joke today to make my presentation more interesting ..... what shall I say?'

He relayed his own personal experiences and opinions and only after the furore that followed tried to defend it as 'just a joke'.

He's a sexist idiot, albeit a very distinguished one and his comments were totally out of order.

I don't doubt for a moment he was being honest. Yes, he honestly thinks that because he has a couple of 'problems with girls' that they should be excluded. He mainly seemed sorry for being idiot enough to say this in a roomful of journalists - not to reflect on why it's a problem to glibly recommend segregated labs to spare his discomfort in a world where women hit barriers to entry and progression that don't exist for men. Maybe he doesn't see it because he's in an area where there are good numbers of 'girls' at lower levels and he's married to one of the rare examples who's made it to the top ... but he's supposed to be an intelligent man capable of a little bit of thought and logical deduction isn't he?

TBH I'm not sure it was a good idea to sack him, but largely because it's turned him into the 'victim' of narky uppity wimmin with no sense of humour. Whereas actually the 'girls' responded cheerfully and robustly to the dinosaur with #distractinglysexy and it was the (I'm guessing mostly male) establishment which canned him.

I am embarrassed about people's anger over this one, TBH. There are so many worse things going on in this world.

Mental that he had to resign.

I am so tired of the joke/banter excuse, I really am. If what Tim Hunt said was offensive and discriminatory, then the fact he meant it ironically or said it a a joke doesn't excuse him.

In fact, we know from his 'apology' that it did coincide with his actual views. He finds women problematic.

It is disappointing (to use the mildest word I can think of) that people are actually debating this in terms of 'gender differences' rather than saying, 'Well Tim, that's your bloody problem. Sort it out. Go on a training course, whatever. The women are here to stay.'

And I say that as someone who spent the first EIGHT OR SO YEARS in my place of work having people address me in a 'joke' Caribbean accent and calling me Winston in the style of Jim Davidson, describing anyone vaguely dark as having 'a touch of the tar brush', saying things like 'absolutely terrifying, these black women' to me and on and on and on.

It was always supposed to be a joke. These people were friends and mentors and otherwise very nice to me, but it was impossible to believe they took me seriously as a colleague when this was how I was treated. They had no idea whatsoever of what it was like to be on the receiving end of this type of constant othering.

I finally cracked when someone called me a nig-nog at a work event. Apparently it was supposed to be affectionate, but my tantrum was epic. I haven't had a problem since. They've all forgotten they ever did it and frequently mention cases about this kind of thing in the news with shock and disapproval.

To all the people who say 'but it was only a joke' I say: many a true word is spoken in jest; and when the jokes are constant, denigrating, and one-sided (you don't get to respond in kind) they are a very real problem.

I don't sense much anger - 'tired of it' is about right. Of course there are worse things going on in the world, but the world doesn't work off a priority list of worst first. It's perfectly reasonable to deal with what should be low-hanging fruit in 21st century Britain.

Of course a man making jokes about women is not the most serious thing in the world.

But sexism is a quite serious subject. It pervades all society and discriminates against 50% of the population, just because they have an X instead of a tiny Y.

Sexism is responsible for deaths, rapes, mutilation, starvation, slavery.

There should be zero tolerance.

I bet he'd be the first to complain about "feminists" hating men, though.

According to a Guardian article he is married to a top scientist, so I do think it probably was just a stupid joke. However it certainly didn't sound like that and in a field where women have traditionally been put down, it was more than crass.

I do think the university should have made enquiries into whether he has actually discriminated against female students and colleagues in real life before asking for his resignation.

According to a Guardian article he is married to a top scientist

That means nothing.

Tim Hunt's thoughts/remarks are ludicrous but I can't help feeling that he has paid a very heavy price for them. As far as I am aware, no one has come forward to say that they felt he discriminated against them while they worked alongside him, he is a brilliant scientist by anyone's standards and his inability keep his mouth shut has meant that a very distinguished career has ended in ignominy. It seems disproportionate to me and it would have been far better if, instead of turfing him out of academia and losing what is a very valuable resource, his bosses offered to, say, monitor his department to ensure that none of his latent views were influencing the way he worked.

We may only know the tip of the iceberg... i.e. his remarks now.

The problem is he's obviously not got the message.

Lots of academics I knew had/had had affairs with students (undergrad and graduate). I would think most of them are now relieved they are out of academia or keeping a low profile - as this behaviour which wasn't seen as "that bad" then could cripple a career now.
It was a different time, attitudes were different. Everything was less professional, and there were not the codes of conduct there are nowadays.

Of course I was lucky - my supervisor was gay, so definitely not a problem for me.

Atenco
He is indeed married to a top scientist.
He had an affair with her while she was his student and married to somebody else.

So if she had rejected his advances and cried, would she now be a professor?

Oh dear. According to an interview in the guardian this sad affair has made him cry.

www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/13/tim-hunt-hung-out-to-dry-interview-mary-collins

I'm slightly suspicious after reading this account whether the haste with which the various institutions canned him might have been that they think he's losing it and it was a convenient excuse. I hope that's not the case.

Oh I think some institutions are scared. Because there are a lot of possible nasties that could crawl out of the cupboard of every academic institution in this country. Academics had affairs with students. Some students did very well out of their affairs (one got to do a Doctorate which with her undergraduate grades she never would have done normally). Others were manipulated and damaged (and not all were female).

I think most universities are hoping they can shut the doors, keep quiet and hopefully the academics involved will die off before the stories emerge from the cupboards.

A lot of these academics had grown up in the 60s and believed in free love (there were a lot of affairs and open marriages). A lot of the male ones hadn't really known women until University, a lot in my day still had spent their whole education in boys schools.

You could be right.