Segregation of Female Scientists!

[Sheitgeist]

Started a thread in Chat about this, but no one's noticed.

The Nobel Laureate Tim Hunt has made some ridiculous comments about female scientists:

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/10/nobel-scientist-tim-hunt-female-scientists-cause-trouble-for-men-in-labs

He's apologised for causing offence, but says he still means it!

Yonic - oh I see, you don't actually know if there have been any such cases - yours was more of a supposition ?

Mmm hmm, cadno. Indicated by the question mark and the use of the word "think". Ain't language great?

Unforeseen bonus of all this: the women scientists in all the #distractinglysexy memes and tweets is making visible a lot of women in science, from historical heroines to present-day scientists, and it's great.

I'm so tempted to go round my workplace (loads of fellow female scientists) and greet my mates by saying "you're looking distractingly sexy today..." (Obviously only the ones who'd get the joke).

I am of course looking distractinglysexy as I wade through lines of antiquated fortran code... but then at nearly 50, with wrinkles, wobbly bits and grey hairs, I have a head start on this one!

Oooh, I haven't waded through antiquated Fortran code for a long time. It's pretty much the software equivalent of mud-wrestling, isn't it?

I've just twigged why my company is so happy to have me work from home!

As to criminality and Nobels - when it comes to the Peace prize there's quite a few laureats who are war criminals in some people's eyes.

The peace prize was awarded to one convicted criminal, Carl von Ossietzky, which I guess shows that there shouldn't be a rule against it.

I believe that Nelson Mandela also had a spot of trouble with the law.

Yeah - but the Peace prize does seem to be in a category all of its own - there was Kissinger and Arafat to name but two more.

I'm very much enjoying the #distractinglysexy tweets today . We female scientists are a resourceful bunch!

I'm not au fait with the Literature laureats but I'd be willing to bet some of their work includes overt sexism.

Of course, we expect higher standards of scientists!

Yes, the tweets are hilarious - been making me laugh all day.

He was a good lecturer, shame about the personality.

I don't know if molecular biology is particularly bad, but all the sitting for hours in small dark locakable rooms at all hours with great excuses for having to work late really doesn't help. I haven't encountered such horrendous stories of harassment anywhere else I've worked before or after.

Help me explain this to my dp, he says men do find find women distracting at work but that the men would be wrong to ask women to leave because of it. Simple explanation for dim man please?

Apart from the fact I'd be worried by any person who found all their colleagues of the opposite sex attractive..?

Sometimes people fancy people. Sometimes those people work together. Sometimes that leads to dates, love, marriage and babies , or a subset of those things.

Your DP is very right to say that no one group should ask another to leave, though!

If I may jump in?

Now he's saying he was pushed out for a joke.

Well, if you don't want to be pushed out for a misogynistic, sexist joke, don't make a misogynistic, sexist joke.

Seems obvious to me, really.

But it wasn't a joke - to quote the Beeb article:

"I did mean the part about having trouble with girls," he said. "It is true that people - I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it's very disruptive to the science because it's terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field.

I found that these emotional entanglements made life very difficult.

I'm really, really sorry I caused any offence, that's awful. I certainly didn't mean that. I just meant to be honest, actually.

He also said they were meant in a 'light-hearted' way but I'm not sure how - he was given the opportunity to retract them, or claim they'd been taken out of context, but all he appears to have apologised for is saying them where journos could hear. Hardly the bloody point.

He needs to take it like a grown up. He said what he said, he confirmed that he meant what he said. He was presumably informed by UCL that his comments were not in keeping with their ethos and so he resigned.

I think I've found the article in question - the confirmation statement he gave to the Beeb was also 'just a mistake'. Quite an unfortunate week he's had. And he has been subject to a particularly vicious social media campaign - I have no idea what this is. I'm sure he got some awful tweets, probably nowhere near the number Sue Perkins, Mary Beard or Caroline Criado-Perez have received this year. But actually the Twitter 'campaign' I've seen has been hilarious and about positively celebrating female scientists, two things he seems to have failed to do.

We female scientists are a resourceful bunch!

Go figure!
It's amazing we haven't all started crying over his comments.

1. Tim Hunt has, for decades, mentored and supported women in science. He has done more for women than 99.9% of those who called for his resignation.

2. Tim Hunt "was always immensely supportive of the ERC’s work around gender equality" (Dame Athene Donald)

3. Tim Hunt made an experience-based assertion, based on over half a century of experience, that men and women working together in labs can be emotionally distracting for both sexes.

4. Tim Hunt commented that a problem he has had, working in labs in the past, is that women tend to cry more when confronted with criticism. Nevertheless he fully supports women in science. “No one seems to mention his main speech in Korea in which, according to the ERC President, he was ‘very supportive towards women in science and he said that he hoped there was nothing that barred women from science’” (Dame Athene Donald). He simply believes, based on his own considerable experience, that single sex labs are more conducive to good scientific research.

5. We may disagree with what Tim says, but we should defend to the death his right to say it.

Please read the other side of the story here and, if you agree, sign the petition to help reinstate Sir Tim Hunt:

www.ipetitions.com/petition/bring-back-tim-hunt#scrollTo-upvote-1653069

(Posted by an ordinary chap and advocate of human rights for both sexes).

single sex labs are more conducive to good scientific research

What the absolute fuck?

We may disagree with what Tim says, but we should defend to the death his right to say it.

Why, you think what he said was a serious commentary? Appears to me like he tried to make a series of bad-taste/ironical jokes/comments that were dead on delivery, like the comment about who prepared the food before he started speaking about 'science' issues.

5) We may disagree with what Tim says, but we should defend to the death his right to say it.

Sure, anyone has the right to show himself to be sexist. It doesn't mean they keep the right to be in positions where they decide what happens to women.

Also:
Tim Hunt commented that a problem he has had, working in labs in the past, is that women tend to cry more when confronted with criticism. Nevertheless he fully supports women in science.
How grand of him. To still support women despite their obvious faults.

And hurray for gender apartheid in labs. Genius.

You could guarantee that all the dodgy microfuges etc would end up in the women's lab.

So we should, what, duplicate all scientific research by doing it in both male- and -female only labs?

Or, let me guess, only do the well-funded stuff in the male-only labs.

Athene Donald is/was a good lecturer and researcher (she taught me, briefly, years back). Surely she would have the sense to preface any of that Hunt-support with 'We all know that his idea of single-sex labs is bollocks BUT...'

"He simply believes, based on his own considerable experience, that single sex labs are more conducive to good scientific research.". Except he doesn't. He believes that scientific labs should be free of women.

"Posted by an ordinary chap and advocate of human rights for both sexes" No you aren't. You need to go away and understand what human rights mean for women.