Did you guys actually read that article, or only the pretty colorful boxes? Because the text right before that fancy box explains why that phrase came into existence.
> dealing with misogynistic comments and just overall disappointing behavior from quite a few less than stellar men was a regular occurrence at work for me and my female coworkers.
Subjective judgements on behavior, from someone who complains that there are too many white scientists.
Pardon me if I take their judgement with a grain of salt.
The entire article is incredibly poorly written, to boot. I was expecting to see a credit card advertisement any second. “Use my referral code and you too can fly to Antarctica for free!”. Actually - the majority of points/credit card referral sites have higher quality writing.
I mean, let's view this charitably. It makes total sense for a woman, who feels like she received misogynistic comments from men at her workplace, to have a poor opinion of the men there. I also don't know if it's really good faith to dismiss a woman saying something was misogynistic as subjective. Of course being a bigot is kind of subjective-- the bigot just thinks their prejudice is normal/true. I wouldn't trust any of the male scientists to say "no of course misogynistic comments didn't happen"; they're guys and, speaking as a guy, it's a blindspot for most men when they make women uncomfortable.
I also charitably don't think there's anything wrong with being suspicious of a very obvious lacking in racial diversity. Globally, white people are a minority of people, and they're likely not the overwhelming majority of all scientists even. So it would obviously be a statistical anomaly if only white people were on a specific research trip. [edited to add: a commenter below clairified this particular station is operated by the US, which is majority white, and scientists even moreso. I was assuming stations are operated with international cooperation :) ]
> Why exactly should the expectation of justification go one way but not the other?
The existing conditions in Antarctica.
The idea that sexism is an absolute abhorrent behavior (with a focus on either or both genders) is not something to promote, despite the fervor in recent years. The sexes have a different representation in the arctic and pointing them out is akin to pointing out that a lot of left handers apply to NASA. I wouldn't call something garbage because I'm offended someone held up a patch that says "Only left handers are in their right mind".
Getting upset at this writer/article/situation is not constructive. Nor is the condemnation a fair editorial critique, imo.
Language is contextual. A woman who has seen repeated instances of male misbehavior is within her rights to record her feelings about it — “the men here are mediocre” in this context is clearly not talking about all men but her feelings about the shitty men she encountered, and also pointing at a pattern of what happens when there are a large number of white males vs more diverse settings (this isn’t unique to Antarctica — Google has this problem). Mistreatment of women in such settings is well documented.
It’s like if you say “my job sucks” — not all parts of your job may actually suck, just the parts you hate. Or “the government is corrupt” most folks would infer that you are talking about a specific subelement.
If we lived in a society where women routinely mistreated men then flipping the statement wouldn’t be offensive. What makes it offensive flipped is mostly that generalizations about women typically encode harmful falsehoods that come from generations of patriarchy. You could not flip her statements in good faith because women do not treat men the way she described anyway.
As a progressive I hate that it isn’t simple as much as everyone else. But to fight for equality is to understand that the origins of the fight come from unwanted asymmetry and of course that’s going to be reflected in discourse.
vGPU|2 years ago
Subjective judgements on behavior, from someone who complains that there are too many white scientists.
Pardon me if I take their judgement with a grain of salt.
The entire article is incredibly poorly written, to boot. I was expecting to see a credit card advertisement any second. “Use my referral code and you too can fly to Antarctica for free!”. Actually - the majority of points/credit card referral sites have higher quality writing.
EatingWithForks|2 years ago
I also charitably don't think there's anything wrong with being suspicious of a very obvious lacking in racial diversity. Globally, white people are a minority of people, and they're likely not the overwhelming majority of all scientists even. So it would obviously be a statistical anomaly if only white people were on a specific research trip. [edited to add: a commenter below clairified this particular station is operated by the US, which is majority white, and scientists even moreso. I was assuming stations are operated with international cooperation :) ]
BurningPenguin|2 years ago
paint|2 years ago
omscs99|2 years ago
Why exactly should the expectation of justification go one way but not the other?
Frankly, I’ll take the same standard and apply it the other way. The author is sexist, the article is hot garbage
Supermancho|2 years ago
The existing conditions in Antarctica.
The idea that sexism is an absolute abhorrent behavior (with a focus on either or both genders) is not something to promote, despite the fervor in recent years. The sexes have a different representation in the arctic and pointing them out is akin to pointing out that a lot of left handers apply to NASA. I wouldn't call something garbage because I'm offended someone held up a patch that says "Only left handers are in their right mind".
Getting upset at this writer/article/situation is not constructive. Nor is the condemnation a fair editorial critique, imo.
kajecounterhack|2 years ago
It’s like if you say “my job sucks” — not all parts of your job may actually suck, just the parts you hate. Or “the government is corrupt” most folks would infer that you are talking about a specific subelement.
If we lived in a society where women routinely mistreated men then flipping the statement wouldn’t be offensive. What makes it offensive flipped is mostly that generalizations about women typically encode harmful falsehoods that come from generations of patriarchy. You could not flip her statements in good faith because women do not treat men the way she described anyway.
As a progressive I hate that it isn’t simple as much as everyone else. But to fight for equality is to understand that the origins of the fight come from unwanted asymmetry and of course that’s going to be reflected in discourse.
paint|2 years ago
This is what happened in the comments?
She gave context in the post. Did you read it?