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Buy Matt Taylor Something Nice

…To make up for Rose Eveleth, Chris Plante, and Arielle Duhaime-Ross tarnishing his big day with a petty and indecent snit over his shirt.

I chipped in $20.

ETA: Glenn Reynolds gives a short summary of the aforementioned petty and indecent snit, and makes this point:

It seems to me that if you care about women in STEM, maybe you shouldn’t want to communicate the notion that they’re so delicate that they can’t handle pictures of comic-book women. Will we stock our Mars spacecraft with fainting couches?

One can apply his observation to “feminism” outside of STEM, as well: it’s hard to accept a modern feminist’s assertions that she is strong and independent when she expects everyone to walk on eggshells so as not to offend her, cannot tolerate even the most trifling of (often imagined) offenses, and when she inevitably finds something over which she can come unglued in a dramatic show of moral outrage, demands others take action to punish the offender and change the rules to suit her. Those are the attributes not of a strong and independent woman, but of a borderline and narcissist. It’s no wonder that women who are actually competent and capable – and actually strong and independent – seem to eschew the label “feminist” for themselves.

ETA2: Amy Alkon:

Do you think there’s a man alive whose response would be to whimper that he is being chased out of science?

Clearly, feminism is no longer about demanding that women be treated as equals, but as eggshells…

On a side note, there’s a certain kind of nerd who wears that kind of shirt, and I’ve always had a soft spot for that guy and the way he sees the world. The sort of hope and love of space fantasy and dream of a bullet-bra’d fantasy woman of that guy is the stuff jobs landing spacecraft on comets are made of.

I read the imagery on his shirt in much the same way: as ‘space fantasy’ art echoing the pulp magazine covers of Golden Age SF. (But of course, as we know, even that’s not acceptable.)

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