Shirtstorm (split from Rosetta Mission thread)

[PKRudeBoy]

What it comes down to is this.

Your sexual preference is an important piece of information about you even in non-sexual situations, because it affects your social life. Also, there's a continuum between "sexual" and "non-sexual." For instance, we routinely talk about our relationships with loved ones in a non-sexual environment, while not talking explicitly about sex. And we routinely make assumptions about other people in a non-sexual environment, that are informed by our assumptions about their sexual preferences. Like, say, playing matchmaker with a friend.

So it is desirable that this basic information about one's sexual preferences be known because it has important social consequences. Imagine how annoying it would be to have a co-worker decide you were gay and try to set you up with homosexuals of the same sex, and you begin to see why this is matters.

By contrast, detailed information about specific sexual acts and interests (like "redheads" or "getting tied up") is NOT appropriate for a non-sexual social situation.

The difference is that "is attracted to men/women" is not the same category of information as "fancies redheads" or "likes being tied up." One is general and has implications for the nonsexual parts of a person's life. The other doesn't.

And as a rule, people trying to force gays to conceal the "is attracted to same sex" information... well, they tend to view this whole "gay" thing as some kind of weird sexual perversion and treat it as such.

The whole point of gay pride, so far as I can tell, is that gayness is not simply a fetish to be kept concealed in polite company. It's a fundamental fact about their identity. A lesbian's love of women cannot be divorced from the rest of her identity any more than a straight man's can. She shouldn't have to hide the fact that she is in love with a woman any more than a straight man should.

But she (like the straight man) might reasonably not be supposed to go on and say "not only am I attracted to women, I specifically have a thing for willowy brunettes with... mmmm... ponytails..." That might make people uncomfortable.

Many kinky people are of the opinion that their kink defines them every bit as much as homosexuality defines gays or lesbians. So no, you can't just brush that off as 'weird sexual perversions' unless you want to be precisely as bigoted as the people who think any form of LGBT expression should be banned from the public sphere.

[Simon_Jester]

So, in your opinion, is there any grounds for people to expect that others will keep some details of their sex life private? Or no such grounds?

I foresee a lot of potential for difficulties from saying "no such grounds." I would argue that human nature seems to work a lot more efficiently when there are separate public and private spheres. We're not really wired to ignore who's sleeping with whom, or salacious details of same.

I can get behind the idea that people with Anomalous Kink X should be able to say they have Anomalous Kink X without becoming instant social pariahs. That's not the issue I'm talking about.

But there's a difference between stating one's sexual preferences, and having long, detailed conversations about, say, one's sexual fantasies. Or between stating sexual preferences, and covering yourself in imagery of your preferred sort of partner displayed in a sexualized fashion.

It's the difference between "mature" and "explicit."

At that point, I feel like you're crossing the line between saying "this is who I am, you have no right to condemn me for it" and "therefore, I have the right to take up your headspace with distractions and things that make you feel uncomfortably targeted."

[Purple]

Isn't that line quite subjective though? Something you might find uncomfortable someone else might not mind.

[Zeropoint]

Here's another article, from long before the shirtstorm started, on the general issues involved:

http://inventwithpython.com/blog/2013/0 ... kers-game/

[mr friendly guy]

My not understandign this might be due to not being US-american, but why is this shirt a sexual statement? It's just a shirt with comic heroines on them. I would never even had thought of it as anything else.
By that logic, wearing a shirt with supergirl (or even worse, wonderwoman!) on it would be a statement that I am a misoginistic would-be rapist?

I've seen worse in museums, on fountains, and advertisements. And on a lot of tshirts...

This has been my thought as well aside from whether this is an American phenomenom vs a social justice warrior thing. Even if this is some sort of American cultural baggage, someone should point out that

a) this was the European space agency
b) Matt Taylor is British.

I mean why is the image of Kim Kardashian stripping down for the cameras in the same week NOT sexist, but the images on this shirt is.

I have rarely see someone try to justify it. In this thread someone tried to explain it. Otherwise in blogs and the rest of the thread people merely state it objectifies and expects us to swallow it hook line and sinker without an explanation. It kind of looks arbitrarily when one thing is sexist, and another isn't, and leaves anyone vulnerable to accusations of sexism without anyway to defend against, because what constitutes sexism for these people is arbitrary.

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On the golden rule bit. Now I have no problem doing a little bit of gift and take including looking for places which serve Halal food when out with Muslim colleagues. However when you say the shirt is sexist, and then say well some women will find it offensive, some don't, better er on the side of caution, you bring up a very familiar argument. Anyone want to guess what it is? Maybe if we phrase it this way.

God Women may or may not exist find that shirt offensive, so lets er on the side of caution and behave on the assumption he does exist women will find it offensive. Yep, that argument is a SJW equivalent of Pascal's wager, albeit with lower stakes. The same problem applies. Both the theists and the SJW need to justify their claim since the burden of proof falls on them, because there is a cost in "erring on the side of caution" despite what the wager argues. In the case of Pascal's wager, I might have to start hating my best friend because he is gay. And in the SJW case, people might be afraid to wear gifts and express themselves on the off chance that someone out there might find it offensive for very spurious reasons.

Which brings me to the next point. I have no problems taking in claims about sexism in STEM. Find it, and it should be routed out. Fine, the shirt may be a way to segue into it. I am going to be generous and assume that it was just a way of segue into it, and frankly given what is said I find such a claim as tantamount to shifting the freaking goalposts when they can't explain why the shirt is sexist. But lets assume that. One problem.

When you start with a claim that a shirt is sexist and cannot justify it, then frankly why should anyone take your other claims seriously if this is the level of your arguments. Even if you wanted to segue into the discussion SJWs have chosen a really pathetic example to do it. And the blowback they get with those internet memes about how deadly a Hawaiian shirt is, is well deserved.

[Simon_Jester]

Isn't that line quite subjective though? Something you might find uncomfortable someone else might not mind.

Which is why most standards of basic public civility work like this:

"Okay, there are broad categories of behavior and topics it is not polite to bring up in public. Anyone who freaks out over stuff that isn't in those categories? Then they are being impolite for overreacting."

It's fine and good to have open negotiations and discourse about whether or not certain specific topics should "cross the line" from being stuff you can't talk about in polite company to stuff you can. That's part of our evolving social structure.

But I don't think it's either desirable or functional to try and abolish the concept of the line. Doing so creates a lot of potential for people

Now, as has been noted by various posters recently, the Internet is different precisely because everyone is free to express opinions anonymously. But in general, in public spaces it is reasonable to expect people to personally show civility, and to show civility when acting as spokespersons for their organizations. The standard of 'civil' is going to be culturally defined as an inevitable practical matter.

[Jub]

So, you basically agree that the status quo is ass. Why, exactly, are you telling everyone in earshot about the business risks of hiring a woman, if you understand that it's a shitty thing to value productivity over parenthood?

I'm saying it because I think that this is a case where the business gets to decide. If some third party or government wants to step in, privately poll companies above x size about wage stats, and compensate the low end outliers I'd pay more taxes towards that. However I don't think legislating equality, outside of some of the broadest strokes, actually results in equality.

Leaving aside the fact that discriminating against women in the manner you advocate as an employer is prohibited under the Canadan Human Rights Act, option C) is, as I've started to explain, a good long-term decision. At the end of the term, a junior staff member will return to their former job with a) the ability to contribute above their previous capacity/level, due to the experience, at b) a lower salary, and c) lets an employer establish a stable of future candidates within, which is quicker and easier than hiring from without. It's smart, and employers whose "product cycles" are longer than a few weeks know that.

Again, I'm speaking in the broadest strokes, what works for one company may not work for another company depending on how they are structured. Plus there is no guarantee that the pregnancy won't effect a person at a time when replacing them is especially trying for the company and that has to be factored in.

At this point, you may realize that the form of discrimination you are saying companies may elect to follow could be used to deny employment to anyone with a long-term disability.

Do you think I list my depression on the form when a company asks me about long term health issues? Fuck no, I don't buy for a second that companies won't use that as a reason to look elsewhere because it's damned hard to prove why they failed to hire you.

It also ensures that women will be reliant on men for financial support. Single mothers will be encouraged to find a male protector who can keep them fed and cared for. This is exactly the situation women are angry about.

Biology sucks, some of the unfairness in life comes down to that. Women are weaker and less able to fight off would be attackers, but no amount of laws will fix that. The same goes for promoting women's sports, I'd rather watch men because frankly men are able to preform greater feats of athleticism and skill than females, no amount of government funding for female sports will change that.

We already have lesser barriers to entries in fields like military service and law enforcement for women, and I don't support those, if women want those jobs they need to be able to meet the full requirements that a man must meet. The same goes for grades and getting into certain academic programs, I don't want to let in extra women to make up the percentages, I want the best to go through regardless of race or gender. I am firmly against affirmative action that goes beyond correcting for bias when selecting between otherwise equal applicants.

You mentioned above that companies should be mercenary and do what's best for business. Well, people who choose to express themselves in a manner which may offend the public and/or a significant demographic are bad for business. The ESA is learning that now. *You*, Mr. Freedom, are the risk to a business in today's Canada. You're the person that will be disciplined, reprimanded, and fired, not the person who complains about feeling uncomfortable around you. Having appealed to your sense of teamwork, and of succession planning, and of human rights, I really don't have any other message than that.

Yet I have my career and am in good standing with my employer in spite of this.

So, your ultimate position is "I don't care about other people". To an employer, that's an equally bad message. To other people, too.

No my ultimate position is that taboos against things that don't do measurable harm to others is stupid and should be done away with. Through my actions I challenge people to think on things they'd rather not and I see no harm in doing this. If more people thought just a bit more maybe society as a whole would be better.

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So, in your opinion, is there any grounds for people to expect that others will keep some details of their sex life private? Or no such grounds?

No such grounds. The sooner we stop treating sex, religion, wages, and politics as taboo the better.

But there's a difference between stating one's sexual preferences, and having long, detailed conversations about, say, one's sexual fantasies. Or between stating sexual preferences, and covering yourself in imagery of your preferred sort of partner displayed in a sexualized fashion.

There's no difference between me going into great detail about exactly what I like in the bedroom and me talking about anything else in great detail. I both cases a person may grow weary of the conversation and desire me to stop, or they won't and the conversation keeps going to your mutual benefit.

It's the difference between "mature" and "explicit."

What makes sex different than any other topic for you Simon?

At that point, I feel like you're crossing the line between saying "this is who I am, you have no right to condemn me for it" and "therefore, I have the right to take up your headspace with distractions and things that make you feel uncomfortably targeted."

Again, what makes this topic different for you?

Which is why most standards of basic public civility work like this:

"Okay, there are broad categories of behavior and topics it is not polite to bring up in public. Anyone who freaks out over stuff that isn't in those categories? Then they are being impolite for overreacting."

It's fine and good to have open negotiations and discourse about whether or not certain specific topics should "cross the line" from being stuff you can't talk about in polite company to stuff you can. That's part of our evolving social structure.

Or you can be unabashedly who you are, not let anybody else tell you what you can and can't say, and be all the happier for it. Seriously, my offending somebody doesn't do measurable harm to them, so why should I be forced to stop doing something because some plurality of people I don't agree with dislike it?

But I don't think it's either desirable or functional to try and abolish the concept of the line.

I disagree, why should some topics and lines of thought be closed off? If we were having this conversation back in the witch burning days would you be suggesting that we shouldn't speak openly about our doubts in a higher power and that this is a line that we shouldn't cross? Jesus fucking Christ Simon, you sound like a pearl clutching curmudgeon right now.

Now, as has been noted by various posters recently, the Internet is different precisely because everyone is free to express opinions anonymously. But in general, in public spaces it is reasonable to expect people to personally show civility, and to show civility when acting as spokespersons for their organizations. The standard of 'civil' is going to be culturally defined as an inevitable practical matter.

I don't see any reason to expect civility from others just as I don't hold myself to being civil in all cases. Am I generally a nice guy, who follows the expected norms, of course I am. Now, would I do it if my job and social standing weren't on the line? No, and I'm already that guy who brings up uncomfortable topics in casual conversation with friends and people that won't hurt my career.

[PKRudeBoy]

So, in your opinion, is there any grounds for people to expect that others will keep some details of their sex life private? Or no such grounds?

I foresee a lot of potential for difficulties from saying "no such grounds." I would argue that human nature seems to work a lot more efficiently when there are separate public and private spheres. We're not really wired to ignore who's sleeping with whom, or salacious details of same.

I can get behind the idea that people with Anomalous Kink X should be able to say they have Anomalous Kink X without becoming instant social pariahs. That's not the issue I'm talking about.

But there's a difference between stating one's sexual preferences, and having long, detailed conversations about, say, one's sexual fantasies. Or between stating sexual preferences, and covering yourself in imagery of your preferred sort of partner displayed in a sexualized fashion.

It's the difference between "mature" and "explicit."

At that point, I feel like you're crossing the line between saying "this is who I am, you have no right to condemn me for it" and "therefore, I have the right to take up your headspace with distractions and things that make you feel uncomfortably targeted."

Thing is, this private-public dynamic that you are talking about really doesn't exist. It's pretty normal to talk fairly graphically about sex, as long as it's vanilla, heteronormative sex, and you aren't talking about it in mixed company. The fact that some people get uncomfortable because our culture has a puritanical streak a mile long really isn't the problem of the people whose tastes deviate from the mythical norm that everyone else pretends to adhere to. And I guarantee you almost every homophobe feels uncomfortably targeted when they see two guys kiss in public. If someone wants to keep what they do private, that should be their choice, not societies.

[Simon_Jester]

Thing is, this private-public dynamic that you are talking about really doesn't exist. It's pretty normal to talk fairly graphically about sex, as long as it's vanilla, heteronormative sex, and you aren't talking about it in mixed company...

Ah-HEM.

This is... honestly part of the point. Same-sex groups full of heterosexuals talking to each other about hetero sex in a private setting IS different... because the target isn't present.

That said, that's really not the issue. I apologize if my wording got us into a side-track; if you wish to continue discussing it maybe we need a new thread.
___________________________

To me, the issue I was originally talking about is this.

I think we can reasonably say there are parts of the social world where talking about sexuality is and is not appropriate regardless of what that sexuality is.

In the parts of the social world where sexuality is appropriate, different kinds of sexuality should be equally acceptable. Revealing that you like being tied up or like sleeping with the same sex should be fine, it should not make you a pariah. When one is in a private setting, or a semi-private social setting such as the typical restaurant or party, having sexuality (including unusual sexuality) as a routine topic of conversation, including graphic statements, isn't a problem.

What is a problem is when such discussions of sexuality intrude on parts of our society where, by convention, sex and preliminaries to sex aren't supposed to be happening. At least, not right then and there. Like the workplace. Like the classroom. Like when being interviewed by the media.

At which point it isn't about what kind of sex you're bringing to this environment. It's about whether you're bringing it.

I mean, the "shirt-storm" that provoked this discussion is about a man who is advertising one of the most 'vanilla' and normative sexual preferences any male in our society could have: scantily clad, bosomy blondes. It's still inappropriate in this context. Not because there is anything inherently inappropriate about his sexual interests, but because his sexual interests are not supposed to be waved around in this particular environment, where he's talking to the media about a scientific mission controlled by the organization he works for.

For large groups of strangers to function in modern society, we have to have that elusive quality known as "professionalism." A big part of which is the ability to control our emotions and impulses. And to only selectively let those emotions and impulses run free in certain situations. It isn't about what your sexuality is, really; it's about whether or not it's a banner you should be waving at your job. Which has nothing to do with the exact slogans, colors, or images you happen to paint on your own banner.
______________________

Now, there's a penumbra area where the sexual part of one's life intersects with the nonsexual part (i.e. knowing Susan is attracted to women may matter if Susan is a workplace friend of mine and I'm thinking of setting her up on a date). But that penumbra is, like real astronomical penumbras, not that wide.

It is still a reasonable expectation that professionals in a workplace environment will refrain from graphic depictions or discussions of sexual conduct. Especially if those depictions or discussions are likely to cause discomfort to reasonable people acting in good faith. Like women who don't like the idea that the scientist next to them is probably ogling them because he's the kind of sleazy guy who describes a comet mission as "like a beautiful woman, but not easy" and wears The Shirt.
______________________

The fact that some people get uncomfortable because our culture has a puritanical streak a mile long really isn't the problem of the people whose tastes deviate from the mythical norm that everyone else pretends to adhere to.

Personally, I think that our entire society could benefit from a bit less sexualization- note that the exact point of the 'shirtstorm' here is that this guy is trawling a sexuality that is very much 'vanilla' in everyone's faces. And that women have a right to think they can be in public without being viewed as sex objects by sleazebags.

Now maybe having him show up in a shirt like this shouldn't be worse than having him show up in a shirt that, say, shows men dressed in bondage gear. But either would still reasonably be seen as inappropriate workplace behavior.

[Simon_Jester]

I mean why is the image of Kim Kardashian stripping down for the cameras in the same week NOT sexist, but the images on this shirt is.

I have rarely see someone try to justify it. In this thread someone tried to explain it. Otherwise in blogs and the rest of the thread people merely state it objectifies and expects us to swallow it hook line and sinker without an explanation.

1) Kim Kardashian wearing anything or nothing she wants is not in itself sexist, because she's an adult. Possibly a stupid and irrelevant adult, but an adult. She can be assumed to be making the decisions she thinks are right for her.

2) The media displaying Kim Kardashian wearing this stuff may or may not be sexist, depending on context and usage of the imagery.

Now, we could (and some do) argue that the existence of imbecilic content-free 'celebrity' figures like Kim Kardashian is in some sense bad for the interests of women as a whole. But that's a separate issue from the question of whether men in the workplace are treating women in the workplace in a sexist way.

Basically, the point here is that left to their own devices, a lot of men throw sexualized jabs at the women around them. It may well be an evolved behavior- to just randomly hit on literally every female in range on the off chance of getting a one-night stand. Or to enhance one's standing with other males by looking like the guy who is sexually a 'player.'

But it tends to make women uncomfortable to have to deal with this. The article here is specifically about the context of women getting hit on, but it generalizes:

Thing is, when it’s not scarce, then even the nicest act starts to get annoying. Because you don’t get to control when people are quote-unquote “nice” to you, and it happens all the time, and you know there’s always a hidden cost behind it. You start to question people’s niceness, because they’re not doing it to be kind, they’re doing it because they want something from you. And maybe, yes, that’s something you like to give to certain people, but definitely not to everyone, and almost certainly not to the kind of guy who’s certain you’re going to give it to him if he just bugs you enough.

Harassment isn’t once. Harassment comes from a lifetime of dealing with people constantly doing things to you, whether you wanted them or not, at random intervals. You learn not to trust people. And what might have been pleasant, once, as an isolated incident, starts to feel pretty oppressive when it’s something you deal with on a weekly basis. It changes you, and then guys call you bitchy when you don’t feel like playing along and pretending this is just about the coffee.

Basically, that's what people talk about when they talk about little things and call them sexist. It's all the many many times in a woman's life when she encounters a man and has this realization "crap, I'm just a walking pair of tits to him." She has no control over it, she cannot reliably dismiss it or exclude it from her life. It may happen with a man who has actual power over her, or a man who she would otherwise have respected.

And that constant undermining sense of realizing that she's just a walking pair of tits to that man over there matters, it has effects on the way women conduct themselves around men, it has what in law we call a "chilling effect" on their behavior and their thoughts.

Thus, it is worthy of criticism.

It kind of looks arbitrarily when one thing is sexist, and another isn't, and leaves anyone vulnerable to accusations of sexism without anyway to defend against, because what constitutes sexism for these people is arbitrary.

What constitutes sexism is:
1) Active discrimination against one sex. Like explicitly refusing to hire women because they are presumed inferior)
2) Passive discrimination against one sex. Like almost always hiring women and almost never hiring men for a job, even when qualifications are otherwise equal.
3) Reinforcing social norms that make one sex's lives artificially difficult in a way that the other sex is immune to. Like the norm that women are supposed to put up with getting hit on by random sleazy strangers everywhere they go, or that it's socially acceptable for men to advertise "I see women as walking pairs of tits!"

God Women may or may not exist find that shirt offensive, so lets er on the side of caution and behave on the assumption he does exist women will find it offensive. Yep, that argument is a SJW equivalent of Pascal's wager, albeit with lower stakes. The same problem applies. Both the theists and the SJW need to justify their claim since the burden of proof falls on them, because there is a cost in "erring on the side of caution" despite what the wager argues. In the case of Pascal's wager, I might have to start hating my best friend because he is gay. And in the SJW case, people might be afraid to wear gifts and express themselves on the off chance that someone out there might find it offensive for very spurious reasons.

Except that in Pascal's Wager, God may or may not be a fictional character.

Whereas women are not fictional, they're real, and they do actually have rights and interests that we can concretely define in the real world. We can't even begin to make confident statements about what God does or doesn't want, except by accepting on faith that he wants a particular thing. We can easily make confident statements about what some women do or don't want. And about what some women view with about as much enthusiasm as they view being punched in the shoulder. And about how, if someone feels shoulderpunched by a certain action, you should not punch them that way.

Which brings me to the next point. I have no problems taking in claims about sexism in STEM. Find it, and it should be routed out. Fine, the shirt may be a way to segue into it. I am going to be generous and assume that it was just a way of segue into it, and frankly given what is said I find such a claim as tantamount to shifting the freaking goalposts when they can't explain why the shirt is sexist. But lets assume that. One problem.

When you start with a claim that a shirt is sexist and cannot justify it, then frankly why should anyone take your other claims seriously if this is the level of your arguments. Even if you wanted to segue into the discussion SJWs have chosen a really pathetic example to do it. And the blowback they get with those internet memes about how deadly a Hawaiian shirt is, is well deserved.

Well, I've been trying to talk about it myself; would you be willing to engage with me on the issue?

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Again, I'm speaking in the broadest strokes, what works for one company may not work for another company depending on how they are structured. Plus there is no guarantee that the pregnancy won't effect a person at a time when replacing them is especially trying for the company and that has to be factored in.

Remind me again how this risk of the woman having to leave for a few months in any way justifies paying them less when they are working at the job? Or anything of that nature? I think I missed that bit in the shuffle.

At this point, you may realize that the form of discrimination you are saying companies may elect to follow could be used to deny employment to anyone with a long-term disability.

Do you think I list my depression on the form when a company asks me about long term health issues? Fuck no, I don't buy for a second that companies won't use that as a reason to look elsewhere because it's damned hard to prove why they failed to hire you.

And you appear to consider this as a good thing, which should be legally enshrined, and which nobody should try to change by policy decisions. Say, changes like forcing businesses to accept a bit of inconvenience in exchange for securing the ability of single women to retain financial independence while still being able to have children. Rather than forcing them into the arms of a male 'protector' who may be actively worse for her than no male at all would be.

It also ensures that women will be reliant on men for financial support. Single mothers will be encouraged to find a male protector who can keep them fed and cared for. This is exactly the situation women are angry about.

Biology sucks, some of the unfairness in life comes down to that. Women are weaker and less able to fight off would be attackers, but no amount of laws will fix that. The same goes for promoting women's sports, I'd rather watch men because frankly men are able to preform greater feats of athleticism and skill than females, no amount of government funding for female sports will change that.

So rather than engineer our technology and society to work around the inconveniences imposed by biology, you want to embrace it as some kind of untouchable natural law.

Are you also opposed to eyeglasses, crutches, and Rogaine?

We already have lesser barriers to entries in fields like military service and law enforcement for women, and I don't support those, if women want those jobs they need to be able to meet the full requirements that a man must meet. The same goes for grades and getting into certain academic programs, I don't want to let in extra women to make up the percentages, I want the best to go through regardless of race or gender. I am firmly against affirmative action that goes beyond correcting for bias when selecting between otherwise equal applicants.

You may well find that to get the same numerical qualification, the disadvantaged candidate has to be an objectively better person.

It's like the "Lowest Difficulty Setting" Scalzi article someone linked to. What you're saying is that you want to hire, say, the person who played through a game on the fastest time. Others point out that it may be far more challenging to beat the game on Hard in five hours than to beat it on Easy in four. And you go "I don't care about that, I want the fastest player, regardless of difficulty setting!"

Predictably, this makes you sound kind of dim.

So, in your opinion, is there any grounds for people to expect that others will keep some details of their sex life private? Or no such grounds?

No such grounds. The sooner we stop treating sex, religion, wages, and politics as taboo the better.

Do you expect humans to magically turn into passionless robots who don't actually care about these things?

Because otherwise, there will always be a need for us to control our words and choice of behaviors around others. Professionalism is a real value. In my line of work I have seen very well what happens when you remove it from a large group of people and try to get them to concentrate on difficult subject matter- they become comically (or dark-comedically) immature and start screwing around and don't get anything done.

Every person has to have a minimum level of self-discipline for society as we know it to function. Part of that is knowing when not to go around calling attention to your genitalia, or what you plan to do with them tonight.

It's the difference between "mature" and "explicit."

What makes sex different than any other topic for you Simon?

That because we are humans, and not ideal frictionless spherical intellects floating in VR-space, we are hardwired to care intensely about sex and sexuality. That is a reality. You cannot make it go away.

Because of this, discussions of sexuality have the potential to be distracting, titillating, welcoming, or offensive in ways that few if any other subjects have. For this very reason, they have no place in a public workspace where people are trying to concentrate on specific matters to which sex is thoroughly irrelevant.

Or you can be unabashedly who you are, not let anybody else tell you what you can and can't say, and be all the happier for it. Seriously, my offending somebody doesn't do measurable harm to them, so why should I be forced to stop doing something because some plurality of people I don't agree with dislike it?

Because it's the equivalent of forgetting to bathe for a two weeks and walking around stinky. You're doing something you know is outside social norms and which can seriously annoy, perturb, and distract those around you. You're doing it for, frankly, selfish reasons ("I don't give a crap what other people think" is a selfish reason). And your only real argument in favor of it is "other people should be less sensitive."

To relink an article:
inventwithpython.com/blog/2013/03/25/taking-punches-is-a-suckers-game/

Other people should not be expected to take your punches just because you can't be bothered to stop throwing punche

And remember, we're not talking about who you are. We're just talking about what you choose to talk about at work and flaunt in front of the cameras when interviewed as a representative of your workplace. That is not even the same category of issue as "should I be free to be who I am?"

Because again, Matt Taylor isn't exactly an oppressed sexual minority here, or at least his shirt doesn't indicate that he's one. Liking bosomy blondes in lingerie is very normative for males in Western society. The problem is not that he's being persecuted for being 'weird,' it's that he's bringing up a situationally inappropriate subject in a way that tends to exclude people from the subject of interest.

But I don't think it's either desirable or functional to try and abolish the concept of the line.

I disagree, why should some topics and lines of thought be closed off? If we were having this conversation back in the witch burning days would you be suggesting that we shouldn't speak openly about our doubts in a higher power and that this is a line that we shouldn't cross? Jesus fucking Christ Simon, you sound like a pearl clutching curmudgeon right now.

Sex is almost unique on this front because it has a power to directly colonize our headspace that, say, sports does not. But frankly, there are a LOT of things you shouldn't talk about while on the job. Not because they should never be discussed at all, but because in that context they are a distraction. Or a nuisance. Or they alienate people you will need to work productively with tomorrow. Or because you're acting in a spokesmanship role, and shouldn't say anything the rest of the people you work with aren't comfortable standing behind, because otherwise you're making them look bad and betraying their trust in you.

How thick do you have to be, to not notice that I'm talking about workplace environments, not "all discussion of this is censored forever?"

Now, as has been noted by various posters recently, the Internet is different precisely because everyone is free to express opinions anonymously. But in general, in public spaces it is reasonable to expect people to personally show civility, and to show civility when acting as spokespersons for their organizations. The standard of 'civil' is going to be culturally defined as an inevitable practical matter.

I don't see any reason to expect civility from others just as I don't hold myself to being civil in all cases. Am I generally a nice guy, who follows the expected norms, of course I am. Now, would I do it if my job and social standing weren't on the line? No, and I'm already that guy who brings up uncomfortable topics in casual conversation with friends and people that won't hurt my career.

Hint:

You are thick. At least on this issue.

Civility has a value that you, perhaps, do not fully understand. It has a lot to do with why people can get along in society without throttling each other. So far, you have gotten by on a lower level of civility than average, perhaps. And you seem to view civility as something you kindly deign to offer to others.

No.

Civility is a basic, necessary, reasonable expectation of day to day life in a high-functioning society. Places where civility breaks down on a large scale are usually hellholes, and this is not a coincidence. People become less civil as they become more stressed and desperate. And lack of civility results in more random conflict, more people taking offense over trifles, more ideas not had due to distractions, more good things not done because of energy wasted with pointless interpersonal conflict.

It's sand in the gears of society.

Sure, you may be very insensitive to sand. But it's insanity to ignore its effect on the machine.

Now, none of this has to do with what you say in your own home, or with your friends, or whatever. It's about how you act in a public space, while performing a role that entails responsibilty on your part. Others have a right to expect that when carrying out a responsible role, you will speak responsibly, along with other forms of responsible conduct.

[Jub]

Remind me again how this risk of the woman having to leave for a few months in any way justifies paying them less when they are working at the job? Or anything of that nature? I think I missed that bit in the shuffle.

The cost of either training a replacement or losing productivity. Take as an example a machine shop where the functional limit to how much work can be done is the number of qualified workers you have, they take on orders based on what they can expect, on average, their current crew to do. Now people might schedule vacations and things but that would happen regardless of gender, the same goes for injuries; the same doesn't go for pregnancy. If a man's significant other (SO) gets pregnant and the company really needs him he might stay, maybe he needs some extra incentive to stay but they have the option of trying to keep him one; if a woman gets pregnant, there is nothing you can do to keep her one, you have to either get another person to cover (not always an option) or hire somebody (training is expensive and depending on the length of the job this may force you to retain another full time staff member that you wouldn't have needed if you just hired a man). So from a companies perspective why would they want a woman, at the same wage, if she's going to be, on average, slightly less reliable over her career than a man?

And you appear to consider this as a good thing, which should be legally enshrined, and which nobody should try to change by policy decisions. Say, changes like forcing businesses to accept a bit of inconvenience in exchange for securing the ability of single women to retain financial independence while still being able to have children. Rather than forcing them into the arms of a male 'protector' who may be actively worse for her than no male at all would be.

It's a thing that can't be proven either way. In my case if I put it on my resume and don't get hired should I just sue every place that didn't hire me on the assumption that my depression was the cause? If I get a lower wage than I may have expected do I sue then too? How can I prove what they would have given me if I didn't list the illness? More importantly, how do you legislate this issue in a way that doesn't just result in people of type x being hired preferentially just because they've raised a stink most recently?

So rather than engineer our technology and society to work around the inconveniences imposed by biology, you want to embrace it as some kind of untouchable natural law.

Are you also opposed to eyeglasses, crutches, and Rogaine?

Nope, but we don't have anything to pass the burden of child birth off just yet either. If glasses didn't exist, would you honestly expect me to hire visually impaired copy editor? How if hearing aids didn't exist, should I have to hire a deaf person to work in my call center? Even if I did hire one of these people, would it not be wise of me to pay them less than somebody who does the job more effectively?

You may well find that to get the same numerical qualification, the disadvantaged candidate has to be an objectively better person.

It's like the "Lowest Difficulty Setting" Scalzi article someone linked to. What you're saying is that you want to hire, say, the person who played through a game on the fastest time. Others point out that it may be far more challenging to beat the game on Hard in five hours than to beat it on Easy in four. And you go "I don't care about that, I want the fastest player, regardless of difficulty setting!"

Predictably, this makes you sound kind of dim.

So objectively, the woman is as good or better than the male soldier who is expected to do more push-ups, sit-ups, etc just because those tasks are harder for her? Bullshit, she's straight up weaker and in a position where physical strength matters I want an equal cross gender physical standard for entry. If women can't meet that to bad, not everybody is going to make the cut.

In the case of grades, I do support some measure of legislation to even out the fact that women can be graded more harshly than men in certain subjects. However I don't support telling a university that they need to take x percentage or number of women for every y men. I'd rather they find some way to ensure the process is actually fair, rather than making it seem artificially fair by allowing less qualified candidates through just because they're women or belong to minority z.

I also understand that some minorities and women get less access to the kind of education that leads to go grades than some white males do. I'd rather fix that issue at the source rather than lower standards for those minorities at the next level.

Do you expect humans to magically turn into passionless robots who don't actually care about these things?

Because otherwise, there will always be a need for us to control our words and choice of behaviors around others. Professionalism is a real value. In my line of work I have seen very well what happens when you remove it from a large group of people and try to get them to concentrate on difficult subject matter- they become comically (or dark-comedically) immature and start screwing around and don't get anything done.

Every person has to have a minimum level of self-discipline for society as we know it to function. Part of that is knowing when not to go around calling attention to your genitalia, or what you plan to do with them tonight.

I think that every group has it's own dynamic and what works for one won't work for another. Thus say, at one workplace, a shirt with sexy ladies might not cause waves, so maybe people outside that work place should let well enough alone instead of trying to impose their standards upon that group. Likewise if one job allowed a less formal attitude towards say, piercings and tattoos, and allowed their staff to show of their body mods, I would have an issue if somebody from outside said 'Ew, body mods are gross and offend me, you should cover them up or else people offended by the won't want to work with you.' I have the same issue with women doing it over sexism.

That because we are humans, and not ideal frictionless spherical intellects floating in VR-space, we are hardwired to care intensely about sex and sexuality. That is a reality. You cannot make it go away.

We're more open to certain topics of conversation now than we were 50 years ago, so why assume that any topic of conversation is innately something that can never be openly discussed in a public space?

Because of this, discussions of sexuality have the potential to be distracting, titillating, welcoming, or offensive in ways that few if any other subjects have. For this very reason, they have no place in a public workspace where people are trying to concentrate on specific matters to which sex is thoroughly irrelevant.

Says you. Do you think that a conversation about exposed breasts causes the same amount of sensation in Europe, where you can see nipples in a shampoo commercial, as it does in the US? It doesn't and they have a much more equal and open society for it. So how about, instead of trying to restrict what topics can be pushed in a work place environment, we instead leave the immature people who can't get by in an open society to rot and move on without them?

Because it's the equivalent of forgetting to bathe for a two weeks and walking around stinky. You're doing something you know is outside social norms and which can seriously annoy, perturb, and distract those around you. You're doing it for, frankly, selfish reasons ("I don't give a crap what other people think" is a selfish reason). And your only real argument in favor of it is "other people should be less sensitive."

Those people should suck it up and deal. I do the same when people bring up things I don't like, because I believe they have the freedom to do something even if it annoys me.

And remember, we're not talking about who you are. We're just talking about what you choose to talk about at work and flaunt in front of the cameras when interviewed as a representative of your workplace. That is not even the same category of issue as "should I be free to be who I am?"

So my freedom to be who and what I am should be repressed in certain circumstances because it might offend people? Say I really liked wearing women's clothes while growing a huge beard and making no other attempt to appear female, should I not be allowed to wear clothing that meets female dress code standards to work because some people find my manor of dress odd? Are you who argues that we should legislate the hiring of less desirable people going to turn around and say that the employer doesn't have the right not to hire somebody, but does have the right to oppress them in other ways?

Because again, Matt Taylor isn't exactly an oppressed sexual minority here, or at least his shirt doesn't indicate that he's one. Liking bosomy blondes in lingerie is very normative for males in Western society. The problem is not that he's being persecuted for being 'weird,' it's that he's bringing up a situationally inappropriate subject in a way that tends to exclude people from the subject of interest.

And the issue is? Do you see men not joining certain careers that are female dominated because they fear oppression? Should we use affirmative action to get more men into nursing, early childhood care giving, or any other female dominated field? Should we ask the women already there to change so they avoid offending the male newcomers?

Sex is almost unique on this front because it has a power to directly colonize our headspace that, say, sports does not.

Then how does Europe function with their more relaxed attitudes towards sex? They must just be horny gibbering wrecks with all the sexual freedoms they enjoy. Oh wait, they aren't, maybe because taboos are social constructs and not some biological constant.

But frankly, there are a LOT of things you shouldn't talk about while on the job. Not because they should never be discussed at all, but because in that context they are a distraction. Or a nuisance. Or they alienate people you will need to work productively with tomorrow. Or because you're acting in a spokesmanship role, and shouldn't say anything the rest of the people you work with aren't comfortable standing behind, because otherwise you're making them look bad and betraying their trust in you.

Yet these topics have changed and what is acceptable has grown over the years. What I can say in one place I can't say in another, that isn't freedom. I want speech to actually be free, not just free from the government stopping you from saying something. Freedom of ideas shouldn't be restricted to your home, or the internet, it should be truly free and damn the people holding us back from that.

Civility has a value that you, perhaps, do not fully understand. It has a lot to do with why people can get along in society without throttling each other. So far, you have gotten by on a lower level of civility than average, perhaps. And you seem to view civility as something you kindly deign to offer to others.

I simply exercise self control and expect others to do the same. I, unlike some, recognize that other people hold different values than I do and make an effort not to let those differences color how I see and interact with them. I am incredibly liberal when it comes to most social norms and I see no reason to restrict the freedoms of others based on my personal preferences.

Civility is a basic, necessary, reasonable expectation of day to day life in a high-functioning society. Places where civility breaks down on a large scale are usually hellholes, and this is not a coincidence. People become less civil as they become more stressed and desperate. And lack of civility results in more random conflict, more people taking offense over trifles, more ideas not had due to distractions, more good things not done because of energy wasted with pointless interpersonal conflict.

Except that the idea of what is and isn't civil varies wildly form person to person. What offends you may not offend me, what doesn't offend you may offend me, and something I find harmless may cause offense to nobody or to a vast swath of society. Especially now that people from other cultures can look into an event broadcast from another country and attack a man over his shirt of all things. People need to learn that the genie is out of the bottle and isn't going back.

Now, none of this has to do with what you say in your own home, or with your friends, or whatever. It's about how you act in a public space, while performing a role that entails responsibilty on your part. Others have a right to expect that when carrying out a responsible role, you will speak responsibly, along with other forms of responsible conduct.

What if my workplace has a standard, I follow said standard, and then an outside group attacks me for something that is acceptable in my public space? Like say I work in socially liberal Europe and people in America get pissy over a shirt?

[Ziggy Stardust]

It's a catch-22 for people trying to raise awareness. You can't make people aware of how pervasive gender issues are without pointing out things like the "shirtstorm", but every time you do, people come out of the woodwork and accuse you of focusing on trivial issues like some guy's shirt, even if you admit (which every feminist I've heard speak about the issue has) that it's not a big deal in and of itself but the larger pattern it represents is a very big deal, and we should all be aware of the bigger issues. Feminists have tried to use this as an example to segue to a discussion of those issues, and reactionaries have blocked that segue so they can point and say "look at all these crazy old birds getting their literal panties in a bunch about some dude's shirt".

On the other hand, what if the issue actually is trivial? You seem to be implying that the only people that are ever unreasonable are the ones on this one side of the argument, when it is entirely possible for people to overreact to objectively trivial matters (note: I am not speaking on this issue specifically; to be honest I am still undecided. I am speaking in a more theoretical sense). People overreacting to trivial things can be damaging by serving to dilute the perceived impact of the more serious matters. On both sides, acting like a close-minded idiot (by either trying to marginalize real issues as you talk about, or exaggerate non-existent ones) serves only to short-circuit discussion. I just don't like the way you seem to dismiss even the possibility of a certain line of dissent or argument just for the nebulous sake of awareness.

Thing is, this private-public dynamic that you are talking about really doesn't exist. It's pretty normal to talk fairly graphically about sex, as long as it's vanilla, heteronormative sex, and you aren't talking about it in mixed company. The fact that some people get uncomfortable because our culture has a puritanical streak a mile long really isn't the problem of the people whose tastes deviate from the mythical norm that everyone else pretends to adhere to. And I guarantee you almost every homophobe feels uncomfortably targeted when they see two guys kiss in public. If someone wants to keep what they do private, that should be their choice, not societies.

So are you saying that, say, a lone woman hanging out socially with a group of hetero men in whom she has no sexual interest has absolutely no logical cause to feel threatened or uncomfortable if those men start talking about sex in specific and graphical details? Because that line of thought is veering awfully close to some of the rape culture apologism you hear so often. You sound like you are insinuating that essentially the only possible reason to not want to hear someone else talk about sex is because of some latent puritanism, which is ignoring the fact that talking about sex can in many social circumstances be interpreted as an unwanted advance, as opposed to just casual conversation.

[salm]

So are you saying that, say, a lone woman hanging out socially with a group of hetero men in whom she has no sexual interest has absolutely no logical cause to feel threatened or uncomfortable if those men start talking about sex in specific and graphical details? Because that line of thought is veering awfully close to some of the rape culture apologism you hear so often. You sound like you are insinuating that essentially the only possible reason to not want to hear someone else talk about sex is because of some latent puritanism, which is ignoring the fact that talking about sex can in many social circumstances be interpreted as an unwanted advance, as opposed to just casual conversation.

I´m sure it can but wouldn´t that be highly depending on the circumstances? There are plenty of scenarios where the combination of situation and character types of the present people wouldn´t create any threat at all.
It´s possible to talk about cars in a threatening manner (implying to run over somebody for example) and some types of people will be more likely to feel threatened by this evil-car-talk than others but there are also plenty of ways to talk about cars in a non-threatening manner.

[mr friendly guy]

1) Kim Kardashian wearing anything or nothing she wants is not in itself sexist, because she's an adult. Possibly a stupid and irrelevant adult, but an adult. She can be assumed to be making the decisions she thinks are right for her.

2) The media displaying Kim Kardashian wearing this stuff may or may not be sexist, depending on context and usage of the imagery.

The issue isn't whether the fact she chooses or chooses not to strip down is sexist. Its whether the image in and of itself is sexist. Because people are arguing the image of the shirt in and of itself is sexist. Hence the comparison. Its irrelevant whether she chooses to or not, just like a comment such as "All gays are paedophiles" is still bigoted whether the person making it believes in it or is only saying that because someone has placed a gun to their head. The fact they have agency or lack of it is irrelevant to evaluating the statement on its own merits. Its also irrelevant when evaluating the shirt. Only the message the image supposedly conveys is relevant here.

Saying “ah, but agency and she chooses to do it blah blah” is a blatant cop out. But lets play it that way.
a. A female friend made the shirt for Taylor. Said female friend is an adult. Thus not sexist using your logic. So those who argued it was sexist, just failed using your own premises, by not checking their facts. But then I don’t expect Social justice whiners to check facts.
b. Lets assume a man made the shirt for Taylor. Again so what? The pictures are not of a real person so there isn’t an element of someone showing a picture of you against your will or any image copyright as such. The picture itself doesn’t require agency because its fictional and not a real person. Rights are reserved for real people, not fictional images. Thus the arguments about being to make decisions are irrelevant to the POV of the picture.

Now, we could (and some do) argue that the existence of imbecilic content-free 'celebrity' figures like Kim Kardashian is in some sense bad for the interests of women as a whole. But that's a separate issue from the question of whether men in the workplace are treating women in the workplace in a sexist way.

Correct. However if you will recall the argument started from the shirt being sexist in an of itself. Don’t believe me, look at the original tweets which started this shitstorm.
Therefore the comparison to Kim Kardashian’s shoot is relevant.

Wait – you’re are going to say that “we don’t get it”, “we miss the point” and the shirt was “just a way to segue” into the real argument which is sexism in STEM fields. Well unfortunately it looks like someone made a claim, got called on the bullshit and then shifted the goalposts and said, no, no, when we said x we really meant y. Frankly this isn’t the first time feminists have resorted to such tactics. If a Creationist or a Trekkie did that type of tactic here, they would be crucified. I am all for equal opportunity when mocking idiots.

But the point is, do these same SJW criticising Matt Taylor criticise her for displaying a similar image.

I am sure some do, but a lot have not. Because you know they focus on the fact that she chooses to do so (pose for the camera) and ignore the point that the just argued an image in and of itself is sexist. See previous response on this.

This indicates not just gross hypocrisy but quite a ginormous mental disconnect here.

But it tends to make women uncomfortable to have to deal with this. The article here is specifically about the context of women getting hit on, but it generalizes:

Thing is, when it’s not scarce, then even the nicest act starts to get annoying. Because you don’t get to control when people are quote-unquote “nice” to you, and it happens all the time, and you know there’s always a hidden cost behind it. You start to question people’s niceness, because they’re not doing it to be kind, they’re doing it because they want something from you. And maybe, yes, that’s something you like to give to certain people, but definitely not to everyone, and almost certainly not to the kind of guy who’s certain you’re going to give it to him if he just bugs you enough.

Harassment isn’t once. Harassment comes from a lifetime of dealing with people constantly doing things to you, whether you wanted them or not, at random intervals. You learn not to trust people. And what might have been pleasant, once, as an isolated incident, starts to feel pretty oppressive when it’s something you deal with on a weekly basis. It changes you, and then guys call you bitchy when you don’t feel like playing along and pretending this is just about the coffee.

Basically, that's what people talk about when they talk about little things and call them sexist. It's all the many many times in a woman's life when she encounters a man and has this realization "crap, I'm just a walking pair of tits to him." She has no control over it, she cannot reliably dismiss it or exclude it from her life. It may happen with a man who has actual power over her, or a man who she would otherwise have respected.

And that constant undermining sense of realizing that she's just a walking pair of tits to that man over there matters, it has effects on the way women conduct themselves around men, it has what in law we call a "chilling effect" on their behavior and their thoughts.

Thus, it is worthy of criticism.

Can you explain in clear unambiguous terms how this relates to Matt Taylor’s shirt. I think I might see a connection, but I don’t want to accidentally strawman you, so I ‘ll let you explain the connection.

What constitutes sexism is:
1) Active discrimination against one sex. Like explicitly refusing to hire women because they are presumed inferior)
2) Passive discrimination against one sex. Like almost always hiring women and almost never hiring men for a job, even when qualifications are otherwise equal.
3) Reinforcing social norms that make one sex's lives artificially difficult in a way that the other sex is immune to. Like the norm that women are supposed to put up with getting hit on by random sleazy strangers everywhere they go, or that it's socially acceptable for men to advertise "I see women as walking pairs of tits!"

1 & 2 have no relevance to Matt Taylor’s shirt, and I wasn’t asking about sexism in the hiring of staff. I am asking about why the image on the shirt is sexist. Point 3 might possibly relate to it, but frankly showing that you admire a certain body shape in a woman doesn’t translate to “I see women as walking pair of tits,” no more than a gay man wearing a Conan or He-Man shirt translates to “I see STRAIGHT men as walking pair of pecs.”

Except that in Pascal's Wager, God may or may not be a fictional character.

Whereas women are not fictional, they're real, and they do actually have rights and interests that we can concretely define in the real world. We can't even begin to make confident statements about what God does or doesn't want, except by accepting on faith that he wants a particular thing. We can easily make confident statements about what some women do or don't want. And about what some women view with about as much enthusiasm as they view being punched in the shoulder. And about how, if someone feels shoulderpunched by a certain action, you should not punch them that way.

One big problem with that statement Simon. I wasn't comparing God to women. It would be obvious what I was comparing to by looking at the position of the strikethrough used. I was comparing the existence of God to the existence of sexism in a hypothetical case. Pascal's wager relies on you to accept the potential benefits outweigh the costs (which it naturally downplays) in return for not providing any evidence of the benefits (ie God exists with benefits for worshipping him). The SJW argument is no different.

Some women wouldn't mind such a shirt, some do. That's less of the issue. The pertinent issue is to settle what is sexism for the shirt. If it is, its irrelevant whether some women find it ok. Its sexist and we should stamp out the behaviour. If it isn't, then its irrelevant whether some other women find it offensive. They are just picking a fight. See where I am heading?

Whereas Pascal wager at least has the advantage of God being unfalsifiable. Not so with sexism if you define it. Then you can "prove" using its internal premises whether the shirt is sexist. Unfortunately all we go so far in this thread is...
a. We should listen to women (zeropoint's argument) - EPIC fail because some women actually don't find it sexist.

b. If some do, we should er on the side of caution (Lagmonster, Terraltha used this argument) - perhaps, but its not an argument for "the shirt is sexist," no more than Pascal's wager "argues for God's existence". This argument argues to believe its sexist (just in case) the same way Pascal's wager argues to believe in God (just in case). If you tell Matt Taylor that some people might find his shirt offensive even if you meant nothing from it, that is a whole lot different from SEXIST shirt. If you're going to argue the latter then it behooves you to justify why the shirt is sexist. Guess which argument most of the SJWs have been using. Hint, not the former.

Well, I've been trying to talk about it myself; would you be willing to engage with me on the issue?

Sure. If you say sexism is bad I would say yeah, no shit.
If you say sexism does occur in STEM fields, I would say justify it with evidence. If I am convinced I would say I agree, and its bad that it occurs.

*********************************************************************************************************
Matt Taylor might be privileged, but frankly what occurred to him was bullying by lying shitheads who don't even know what the words "pornographic" or "naked" means even as they uttered them, and insulted women when they suggested a shirt fucking stops women from entering STEM fields, and insulted human scientific knowledge when they said "I don't care about landing on a comet." They also insulted victims of bullying when they said Matt Taylor apologised because he realised what had "fucked up" (AFTER he had been bullied). What next? Gays who commit suicide do it because they also realised they "fucked up?"

Matt Taylor by helping the scientists of whatever gender, whatever nationality and ethnicity in putting a satellite on a comet did more for humanity than what social justice wankers did, and ever will do.

Social Justice Wankers deserve some of the blowback they've received, like that shirt is now sold out. Heck I might even buy one just to spite them.

[Simon_Jester]

The cost of either training a replacement or losing productivity. Take as an example a machine shop where the functional limit to how much work can be done is the number of qualified workers you have, they take on orders based on what they can expect, on average, their current crew to do. Now people might schedule vacations and things but that would happen regardless of gender, the same goes for injuries; the same doesn't go for pregnancy...

So, you're dealing with a worker who is incrementally more likely to need to take a few months off work. Just like if you hired someone who turns out to have a chronic medical condition, and there are rules against discriminating against people like that too. Except that unlike chronic illness, maternity leave can be scheduled six freaking months in advance because it's predictable.

I mean, do you think women just unexpectedly show up to work thirty weeks pregnant and say "guess what, I'm leaving for the next six months?"

It's a thing that can't be proven either way. In my case if I put it on my resume and don't get hired should I just sue every place that didn't hire me on the assumption that my depression was the cause? If I get a lower wage than I may have expected do I sue then too? How can I prove what they would have given me if I didn't list the illness? More importantly, how do you legislate this issue in a way that doesn't just result in people of type x being hired preferentially just because they've raised a stink most recently?

Statistical analysis.

It is trivially easy for a large firm to prove whether it's been turning away male or female applicants at a significantly higher than statistically expected rate. Likewise whether it's been underpaying them. Where's your faith in math?

So rather than engineer our technology and society to work around the inconveniences imposed by biology, you want to embrace it as some kind of untouchable natural law.

Are you also opposed to eyeglasses, crutches, and Rogaine?

Nope, but we don't have anything to pass the burden of child birth off just yet either.

Our tool for reducing the burden of childbirth, in this case, is called "maternity leave" and you appear to be opposed to it. Remember, you're not talking about someone who can't do the job like a deaf music critic. You're talking about someone who can do the job perfectly well but might need some time off some day, and trying to justify paying them 10 or 20% less for the same work now and forever because of the chance that they'll take off, oh, 1 or 2% of their working lifetime starting with six months or so of advance notice.

It is not making you look smart, or sexism-free.

So objectively, the woman is as good or better than the male soldier who is expected to do more push-ups, sit-ups, etc just because those tasks are harder for her?

The female soldier who can do exactly as many of those push-ups may well have a considerably higher level of drive, determination, overall athleticism, and ability to take care of her health. Because she'd have to, to be able to match a male in those areas while 'playing at higher difficulty.'

In the case of grades, I do support some measure of legislation to even out the fact that women can be graded more harshly than men in certain subjects. However I don't support telling a university that they need to take x percentage or number of women for every y men. I'd rather they find some way to ensure the process is actually fair, rather than making it seem artificially fair by allowing less qualified candidates through just because they're women or belong to minority z.

So rather than deal with the reality by simple, effective means, you would prefer to ignore an obvious solution for ideological reasons and "hope that somebody" comes up with a solution that doesn't trigger your filters.

Where's your pragmatism?
________________________________________________

I think that every group has it's own dynamic and what works for one won't work for another. Thus say, at one workplace, a shirt with sexy ladies might not cause waves, so maybe people outside that work place should let well enough alone instead of trying to impose their standards upon that group. Likewise if one job allowed a less formal attitude towards say, piercings and tattoos, and allowed their staff to show of their body mods, I would have an issue if somebody from outside said 'Ew, body mods are gross and offend me, you should cover them up or else people offended by the won't want to work with you.' I have the same issue with women doing it over sexism.

What you're missing here is that society is more than the sum of its niche subcultures. Modern society, in order to function, requires that people from different subcultures be

This, necessarily, involves some compromise. People who are easily offended have to learn to accommodate people that offend them. But people who easily cause shock have to learn to accommodate people that might be offended by them.

If we insist on all the compromises going in favor of whoever wants to cause the highest shock value, we will rapidly find ourselves facing problems maintaining basic order in society.

This is not about who you are as such. It is about how you conduct yourself in public.

It is not about whether homosexuals should have the same rights to public displays of affection as heterosexuals. It is about whether anyone has the right to, say, tear a loved one's clothes off and start having sex in a public park.

It is not about whether a lawyer has freedom of speech. It is about whether the lawyer has the right, when speaking on behalf of their client in a courtroom, to express political views that would be at odds with their client's interests.

It is not about whether you have the right to be interested in bosomy blondes; it is about whether you have the right to essentially turn yourself at work, while representing an organization that employs both men and women, into a walking billboard for "my ideal woman is a lingerie model and I want everyone to know it."

That because we are humans, and not ideal frictionless spherical intellects floating in VR-space, we are hardwired to care intensely about sex and sexuality. That is a reality. You cannot make it go away.

We're more open to certain topics of conversation now than we were 50 years ago, so why assume that any topic of conversation is innately something that can never be openly discussed in a public space?

Because professionalism is not purely about which topics are taboo. There are things that were never taboo, but have always not been okay for an attorney to say while speaking on behalf of their client, for instance. Because the attorney has a responsibility to represent the client in good faith, and to do nothing which might prejudice their case.

Likewise, it has never really been taboo for men to court women. But in a workplace environment, where women and men have to be able to work together efficiently, it may be inappropriate to make romantic advances to your co-workers randomly. Because people who keep having to turn each other down for unwanted dates don't work together very efficiently.

This is the class of issue that's in play here.

Because of this, discussions of sexuality have the potential to be distracting, titillating, welcoming, or offensive in ways that few if any other subjects have. For this very reason, they have no place in a public workspace where people are trying to concentrate on specific matters to which sex is thoroughly irrelevant.

Says you. Do you think that a conversation about exposed breasts causes the same amount of sensation in Europe, where you can see nipples in a shampoo commercial, as it does in the US? It doesn't and they have a much more equal and open society for it. So how about, instead of trying to restrict what topics can be pushed in a work place environment, we instead leave the immature people who can't get by in an open society to rot and move on without them?

Again, the issue is not taboo. Removing or reducing the nudity taboo as part of a general social consensus is fine. Social consensus evolves over time. But if there is a social consensus that everyone is required to, for example, cover their genitals in public...

You personally don't necessarily get a free pass to walk around with Jub Junior swinging in the breeze. And you certainly don't get to say "everyone else needs to lighten up and not be offended by my actions!" Because in that case, you are not being singled out because of who you are, because of anything fundamental to your identity. You're being singled out because of how you choose to behave in a public space.

The reason for this is simple: you are creating a public nuisance.

Now, if you want to argue that public nudity should not be considered a distraction by the public, and therefore should not be classed as a public nuisance, fine... but you don't get to override the public's decision willy-nilly on your own authority. You have to first convince people that nudity is not a nuisance, then start acting on that public conviction.

Drunken shouting is also a public nuisance, and you might consider drunken shouting while you're trying to sleep next door to be a very serious nuisance indeed. And you might even be... unsympathetic to someone who says drunken shouting is normal, there shouldn't be a taboo against drunken shouting, and you need to lighten up and learn how to take a metaphorical punch.

Because it's the equivalent of forgetting to bathe for a two weeks and walking around stinky. You're doing something you know is outside social norms and which can seriously annoy, perturb, and distract those around you. You're doing it for, frankly, selfish reasons ("I don't give a crap what other people think" is a selfish reason). And your only real argument in favor of it is "other people should be less sensitive."

Those people should suck it up and deal. I do the same when people bring up things I don't like, because I believe they have the freedom to do something even if it annoys me.

Hint: This means you have the social grace of a monitor lizard, although you have a lovely justification for your lack of social grace.

If someone declines to bathe for two weeks and starts stinking to high heaven, then it is entirely appropriate for people to approach them and politely ask them to start washing themselves. If the behavior persists, it is appropriate to try and remove the persistently unhygienic person from the environment.

Because that stink is a public nuisance. It interferes in a very real way with people's ability to do their jobs around the stinking person. It can correlate to actual hazards to health. And it is something the stinking person could choose to put an end to at any time, with a trivial exertion of effort.

Now, other people MAY be patient and forgiving and choose to ignore the stinking person's bad behavior. But that is a privilege extended to the stinking person, not a right.

And remember, we're not talking about who you are. We're just talking about what you choose to talk about at work and flaunt in front of the cameras when interviewed as a representative of your workplace. That is not even the same category of issue as "should I be free to be who I am?"

So my freedom to be who and what I am should be repressed in certain circumstances because it might offend people? Say I really liked wearing women's clothes while growing a huge beard and making no other attempt to appear female, should I not be allowed to wear clothing that meets female dress code standards to work because some people find my manor of dress odd? Are you who argues that we should legislate the hiring of less desirable people going to turn around and say that the employer doesn't have the right not to hire somebody, but does have the right to oppress them in other ways?

What I ask is that everyone behave in public in a manner consistent with public order, with getting along and collaborating to make society work.

This requires that everyone be prepared to compromise. People who hate taking baths have to compromise on hygiene with a general public that hates what unwashed humans smell like after a month or two. People who love blasting loud music have to compromise with people who aren't interested in listening to their music. People who like to get drunk and wander around the neighborhood have to compromise with people who don't like running into drunks.

Cross-dressing is a borderline case precisely because it's hard to say to what extent transvestitism is part of who a person is (i.e. the product of gender dysphoria) and to what extent it's part of how they choose to behave.

[It is interesting to observe that there is almost no such thing as female-to-male transvestitism in day to day life, so far as I know]

But in any case, that may be a borderline case. But many other issues are NOT borderline. T he existence of edge cases doesn't mean there is no rule at all here.

Because again, Matt Taylor isn't exactly an oppressed sexual minority here, or at least his shirt doesn't indicate that he's one. Liking bosomy blondes in lingerie is very normative for males in Western society. The problem is not that he's being persecuted for being 'weird,' it's that he's bringing up a situationally inappropriate subject in a way that tends to exclude people from the subject of interest.

And the issue is? Do you see men not joining certain careers that are female dominated because they fear oppression? Should we use affirmative action to get more men into nursing, early childhood care giving, or any other female dominated field? Should we ask the women already there to change so they avoid offending the male newcomers?

Social norms already take care of that very effectively, because male privilege remains a real thing even in careers that are statistically mostly female.

Now, if large numbers of male applicants are being unjustifiably rejected from jobs, or singled out and marginalized even after getting those jobs, or having to face a constant stream of obnoxious jokes about their sexuality and clumsy unwelcome come-ons... That's different.

But for the love of sanity, think about what this situation actually is. When someone says "this thing hurts me, don't do this," listen to them. Don't keep dismissing and lawyering and screwing around rather than admit there's a problem.

Sex is almost unique on this front because it has a power to directly colonize our headspace that, say, sports does not.

Then how does Europe function with their more relaxed attitudes towards sex? They must just be horny gibbering wrecks with all the sexual freedoms they enjoy. Oh wait, they aren't, maybe because taboos are social constructs and not some biological constant.

And yet there are things it is not customary to do, and which you can get in trouble for doing. Like, say, have sex in public.

See, what constitutes a public nuisance is negotiable. There is no inherent reason why an exposed breast has to be a public nuisance. But those negotiations have to proceed in some kind of orderly fashion; they are not just the product of permanently saying "whoever wants to create the biggest nuisances, can do so."

Unless of course you're engaged in civil disobedience to prove a point... but people who practice civil disobedience know they are breaking a law and accept they will experience consequences, in order to prove their point. You're not doing that.

Yet these topics have changed and what is acceptable has grown over the years. What I can say in one place I can't say in another, that isn't freedom. I want speech to actually be free, not just free from the government stopping you from saying something. Freedom of ideas shouldn't be restricted to your home, or the internet, it should be truly free and damn the people holding us back from that.

Then no one can ever trust anyone to represent them ever, and no one can ever go to a workplace without worrying about gratuitous insults and hazing.

Your 'ideal' society excludes a lot of people who don't like being insulted, or need to be able to trust others to represent their interests.

Except that the idea of what is and isn't civil varies wildly form person to person. What offends you may not offend me, what doesn't offend you may offend me, and something I find harmless may cause offense to nobody or to a vast swath of society.

Which is why, necessarily, the publicly defined code of what constitutes 'civil' is the product of consensus. Compromise. Sometimes that means you don't get to do what you want.

Especially now that people from other cultures can look into an event broadcast from another country and attack a man over his shirt of all things. People need to learn that the genie is out of the bottle and isn't going back.

In this case, the thing that is being criticized was NOT AT ALL taboo until recently, because sexism against women was normative in Western society until at most a few decades ago.

You're treating this as though the man is making a bold statement by saying "I like bosomy blondes in lingerie." Which is bullshit. The message he's sending is "women look like sex objects to me" to all the women present, which is bad unless you really enjoy marginalizing and disrespecting women.

What if my workplace has a standard, I follow said standard, and then an outside group attacks me for something that is acceptable in my public space? Like say I work in socially liberal Europe and people in America get pissy over a shirt?

Since we have people in the US who wear similar shirts, the reaction can easily be aimed mainly at other Americans.

Now, are you asking, "what if I get fired over this?" Well, frankly, if ESA's institutional values include and accept that shirt, then they should have the guts to ignore American public opinion. On the other hand, they may find that European female professionals don't want to work with ESA employees who have such attitudes.

[Covenant]

If I may, before I have to continue prepping to head home for thanksgiving, chime in response to what I felt was a very good philosophical question raised to Mr. Friendly Guy:

This is long-winded. But there's a lot of debate about sexist images, objectification, self-presentation, cultural norms and art that I'm always stuck right in the middle of so I feel that there's a healthy debate in there. Too often I think people say "this is sexist, burn it!" while other people say "you are annoying, burn the feminists!" and nothing, especially the real question at the heart of this, gets addressed. Anyway, like I said, long-winded and I'm rushed to keep packing. I'll be around a bit to respond today (for a few hours) but then I'll be home for a week, so I understand if nobody feels like debating me.

I think we must try to envision the future of a successful feminism, where the world is not gripped by sexual bias or sex-shaming, and I think that world (to be internally consistent) must include the presence of expression and art, including shirts, like the one Dr. Taylor wore.

If we assume the shirt is inherently sexist then there needs to be some degree of inherent sexism/racism in the Kim Kardashian photoshoot because of the obvious objectification and fetisization of her body, as well as because of the lineage of image, ie, it was based off of a shoot that combined a lot of strange exoticism/racial fetishism/possible racism into a weird mix. While this may seem odd, it should not be odd that a woman doing what she wants, in a liberated way, could also be reinforcing a sexist paradigm. She has also said she never really experienced "race" in a real way until the birth of her kid, so she's probably privileged and insulated enough from the consequences and not heavily clued-in and angry about the consequences. The nature of a thing like gender roles (or racial roles) within a society is that they reinforce themselves, the same way the "real men act like..." gender roles reinforce themselves and help perpetuate negative male gender role-typing too. So if the shirt is inherently sexist because it reinforces a norm where women's bodies are disproportionately used as sexual decoration, then so is Kim's photo shoot "problematic" because it reinforces objectification.

This is even true for the rockabilly-looking gal who made the shirt. However, at some point, something that is "sexist" will have to lose the meaning/punch it originally had because a woman's body will not forever be an expression of domination. Women who choose to dress down for the SlutWalk feel empowered to challenge the idea that "dressing like a slut" is how someone gets raped, but is that internalized sexism? Is it an internalized abuse? I think that the consensus (even though there is discussion) is that the end result of a successful demolition of gender bias and gender privilege would look like a world where people can dress as they like, even if it arouses or annoys other people for reasons all their own, and would naturally include things like Kim's shoot and women feeling free to walk about in clothes of their choice.

Prude-ish behavior (like the shaming of Kim) is not a bias-less system at work. Even below the slut-shaming is a bedrock of desire-shaming that exists for everyone except young men. Women who want and pursue sex run into a battery of slut and skank shaming barricades. Old men who are sexually active, unless they are attractive enough, tend to be considered disgusting old men. Older women who pursue younger men are fetishized but still shamed by others, even if there is a degree of "power" gained by attaining a young man. We can say there's a lot about power and class here, but let's skip that for the moment to focus on the main thing: there are multiple layers of problem here, not just sexism. We have an overall problem with sex, bodies, objectification and sexism. It's not turtles all the way down, but there may be two more turtles to go before we reach the bedrock of this societal problem that people express as sexism, usually.

This brings us back to the beginning, the very very beginning, the one few people even talked about, where we must ask "Is the shirt sexist, and if so, is that a problem?" Very few people, except actual sexist assbags, would raise such a question--but it is still worth talking about, especially in the lens of approaching a world where we actually HAVE ended sexism and sex shaming. Sometimes, it must be argued, something will both be offensive and positive, or at least offensive and protected. We know that already. So there are some times when something sexist or racist or offensive or dangerous is done as protest, not to reinforce the system, and perhaps can undermine the system. Which means that we cannot honestly cast a blanket accusation against all objectification always and everywhere, as it would be hypocritical. Thus we need to look at contexts and messages and so on.

This means there are also times when personal choices (for example, a domination or non-consent fetish for a woman) is and should be a protected choice but would appear to reinforce a negative bias if it was, for example, put within the lens of a TV-Show or advocated for as public policy. This is partially what happened to the poor fellow: he went from being just a dude in a shirt in a context everyone understood to being a dude on television where his presence there seemed to be a tacit approval of female objectification by the ESA and STEM fields in general. Though, in a fully liberated society we should expect Dr. Taylor to be able to wear his shirt and have no problems, or at least less of a total shitstorm, because in a liberated society it would not appear sexist (or maybe not even unusual) because it would no longer be a reinforcement of a negative system, since by definition that system is extinguished in a liberated society. That's generally our model future to work towards. If we can conceive of a future where a women space agency person can wear that shirt and not cause a furor then it is only biasless to assume a man would too, given an egalitarian society.

The obvious problem is we are not in that society yet, and we still have problems, so where do we go from there?

I think the only think that makes sense is to advocate responsible handling of such dangerous materials, the same as we should do for firearms and alcohol and cars, and care more about what they say than policing and shaming people into compliance with an ideological aim that (carried through to its unwavering end) would not yield the result desired: ie, would not yield a world where people are free to wear what they want and embrace their sexual nature. The treatment given to Taylor feels like over-compensation by the driver, trying to steer the vehicle back towards the goal by over-correcting, but that causes knee-jerk reactions (and vehicle spin-out) instead of actual progress. It is only natural some people would have complaints, even in great volume, but it seems like the debate is centering around the wrong things and aiming towards the wrong future.

Plus, this standard (the whole "is Kim sexist if this shirt is sexist?") it is a much too confusing standard for anyone to actually use to make meaningful decisions in their daily life, and it leads to people feeling as if they MUST protest when they see a shirt like this, because to do otherwise is to fail in defense of others, or to tacitly approve of abuse/the system/sexism/etc. Even among egalitarians, feminists, sex-positive activists and members of the kink community, there is no clear concept of where the line is drawn. Nobody has any idea how to behave or what is considered right and reasonable. That's good--its part of a debate--but if we want the debate to move forward we need to remember where we want to end up at the end of the fight. It is not a world where people are shamed and ridiculed for wearing something revealing, and probably so should it not be where one is also shamed and ridiculed for wearing something showing one wearing something revealing.

So I think the only reasonable solution is to examine art like this as a cultural artifact, but not to demonize them. This shirt, in some societies, would be an expression of rebellion against a system that forces women to be sexless and permanently shrouded. It would be positive. In a society of sexual liberation and biasless gender fluidity it should not be alarming. In our society it reinforces the objectification of feminine form. But the problem at heart here is the society, and the cultural lens you use to examine it, not the shirt itself. And if we assume the presence of sub-cultures then a kink-friendly woman with retro interests who is friends with perhaps another kink-friendly scientist who also has retro comic book gal interests might find a t-shirt like this a positive or at least delightfully subversive gift to give and wear as an expression of fun and personal choice.

It is simply more honest to address the actual problems and sources of sexism at the source than to attack cultural artifacts and signifiers that can become detached from their original meaning, and while I will not attack the people who (well-meaning or not) try to take on societal problems wherever they show up, I think the cultural narrative about objectification is venturing uncomfortably close to an argument for sex/slut shaming and over-stating objectification's role in a larger interlocking system of sex bias.

(though I would take issue with MrFG's tone on some points, even if such issue-taking is entirely meaningless. I would say we should not criticize "feminism" or "social justice wankers" as a whole because of their interest in this, since I think that only leads to a fall-back position with the crazy people, and pushing socially motivated people further from useful forms of activism.)

[Ziggy Stardust]

I´m sure it can but wouldn´t that be highly depending on the circumstances? There are plenty of scenarios where the combination of situation and character types of the present people wouldn´t create any threat at all.
It´s possible to talk about cars in a threatening manner (implying to run over somebody for example) and some types of people will be more likely to feel threatened by this evil-car-talk than others but there are also plenty of ways to talk about cars in a non-threatening manner.

Yes, but that's precisely why I brought this up. I think it's ridiculous for people to be making sweeping claims about whether talking about a concept as broad and nebulous as "sex" to be either off-limits completely or completely fine devoid of context. Some people in this thread seem to be saying that people should be able to talk about it in every possible situation with no consideration of context, and other people seem to be implying that it is always inappropriate. I think both extremes are idiotic and unrealistic.

The fact is that talking about sex can mean a lot of different things to different people, and is highly dependent on the social context. You can't dismiss people who are offended by it as "prudes", because there are situations in which otherwise innocuous sex talk can come across as physically threatening. Similarly, you can't say its always off-limits, because it is a highly integral part of our social interactions.

[Simon_Jester]

So are you saying that, say, a lone woman hanging out socially with a group of hetero men in whom she has no sexual interest has absolutely no logical cause to feel threatened or uncomfortable if those men start talking about sex in specific and graphical details? Because that line of thought is veering awfully close to some of the rape culture apologism you hear so often. You sound like you are insinuating that essentially the only possible reason to not want to hear someone else talk about sex is because of some latent puritanism, which is ignoring the fact that talking about sex can in many social circumstances be interpreted as an unwanted advance, as opposed to just casual conversation.

I´m sure it can but wouldn´t that be highly depending on the circumstances? There are plenty of scenarios where the combination of situation and character types of the present people wouldn´t create any threat at all.

It´s possible to talk about cars in a threatening manner (implying to run over somebody for example) and some types of people will be more likely to feel threatened by this evil-car-talk than others but there are also plenty of ways to talk about cars in a non-threatening manner.

Sex is more of an issue than cars because men are more likely to have designs on a woman's sex than on their car. And unlike cars, sex can't be insured.

Sure, it's situational. But when the basic problem is "women feel threatened when they feel like men are persistently hitting on them," the appropriate response is "men, stop doing things that make women feel threatened." NOT "women, lighten up, we're just talking about how much we want to fuck you while you're in the next room."

The issue isn't whether the fact she chooses or chooses not to strip down is sexist. Its whether the image in and of itself is sexist. Because people are arguing the image of the shirt in and of itself is sexist.

Me, I'm not. I'm arguing that while the shirt is not (in and of itself) sexist, the context in which he chose to wear it means the act of wearing it is.

In the same sense, there's nothing inherently sexist about erotic paintings, but using them as pinups in a workplace can be sexist.

Because women really DO have problems in our society with being the targets of unwanted and excessive male sexual interest. And seeing that sexual interest expressed without restraint or courtesy to them really DOES cause problems and DOES tend to exclude women from workplaces and public spaces.

And as I said before, the response to "your pinup makes me feel threatened and unwelcome, or at least unwelcome as anything other than a sex object" is NOT to say "lighten up!"

Saying “ah, but agency and she chooses to do it blah blah” is a blatant cop out. But lets play it that way.

a. A female friend made the shirt for Taylor. Said female friend is an adult. Thus not sexist using your logic. So those who argued it was sexist, just failed using your own premises, by not checking their facts. But then I don’t expect Social justice whiners to check facts.

Since my argument is that the shirt is not intrinsically sexist under all circumstances, but rather the choice to wear it in a workplace environment while talking to the press and public about the scientific research performed by his mixed-sex team that works for an international agency.

b. Lets assume a man made the shirt for Taylor. Again so what? The pictures are not of a real person so there isn’t an element of someone showing a picture of you against your will or any image copyright as such. The picture itself doesn’t require agency because its fictional and not a real person. Rights are reserved for real people, not fictional images. Thus the arguments about being to make decisions are irrelevant to the POV of the picture.

Again, the point is something entirely different. Now granted, I think it is possible to create an image that is sexist in its own right (say, if it persistently depicts women and only women as slavish and inferior). But I am not arguing that this shirt is such an image.

Now, we could (and some do) argue that the existence of imbecilic content-free 'celebrity' figures like Kim Kardashian is in some sense bad for the interests of women as a whole. But that's a separate issue from the question of whether men in the workplace are treating women in the workplace in a sexist way.

Correct. However if you will recall the argument started from the shirt being sexist in an of itself. Don’t believe me, look at the original tweets which started this shitstorm.

Therefore the comparison to Kim Kardashian’s shoot is relevant.

It is relevant to others, but not to me. Please distinguish between people who say "the act of wearing the shirt is sexist and inappropriate" and people who say "the shirt itself is sexist."

Wait – you’re are going to say that “we don’t get it”, “we miss the point” and the shirt was “just a way to segue” into the real argument which is sexism in STEM fields. Well unfortunately it looks like someone made a claim, got called on the bullshit and then shifted the goalposts and said, no, no, when we said x we really meant y. Frankly this isn’t the first time feminists have resorted to such tactics. If a Creationist or a Trekkie did that type of tactic here, they would be crucified. I am all for equal opportunity when mocking idiots.

Feel free to mock the idiots, but the catch is that as far as I can tell the idiots aren't here. If you want to mock them go elsewhere. If you want to mock me, be advised that I will call you out on strawmanning.

But the point is, do these same SJW criticising Matt Taylor criticise her for displaying a similar image.

I am sure some do, but a lot have not. Because you know they focus on the fact that she chooses to do so (pose for the camera) and ignore the point that the just argued an image in and of itself is sexist. See previous response on this.

This indicates not just gross hypocrisy but quite a ginormous mental disconnect here.

I don't know who said that but it sure wasn't me. I've never used the phrase "social justice warrior" or abbreviations for same in my life until this very moment, in this very sentence.

But it tends to make women uncomfortable to have to deal with this. The article here is specifically about the context of women getting hit on, but it generalizes:

Thing is, when it’s not scarce, then even the nicest act starts to get annoying. Because you don’t get to control when people are quote-unquote “nice” to you, and it happens all the time, and you know there’s always a hidden cost behind it. You start to question people’s niceness, because they’re not doing it to be kind, they’re doing it because they want something from you. And maybe, yes, that’s something you like to give to certain people, but definitely not to everyone, and almost certainly not to the kind of guy who’s certain you’re going to give it to him if he just bugs you enough.

Harassment isn’t once. Harassment comes from a lifetime of dealing with people constantly doing things to you, whether you wanted them or not, at random intervals. You learn not to trust people. And what might have been pleasant, once, as an isolated incident, starts to feel pretty oppressive when it’s something you deal with on a weekly basis. It changes you, and then guys call you bitchy when you don’t feel like playing along and pretending this is just about the coffee.

Basically, that's what people talk about when they talk about little things and call them sexist. It's all the many many times in a woman's life when she encounters a man and has this realization "crap, I'm just a walking pair of tits to him." She has no control over it, she cannot reliably dismiss it or exclude it from her life. It may happen with a man who has actual power over her, or a man who she would otherwise have respected.

And that constant undermining sense of realizing that she's just a walking pair of tits to that man over there matters, it has effects on the way women conduct themselves around men, it has what in law we call a "chilling effect" on their behavior and their thoughts.

Thus, it is worthy of criticism.

Can you explain in clear unambiguous terms how this relates to Matt Taylor’s shirt. I think I might see a connection, but I don’t want to accidentally strawman you, so I ‘ll let you explain the connection.

One of the many ways in which women can feel harassed in society is by the idea that their bodies are eternally on display, eternally being compared (critically) to some idealized figure of sexual attraction. That men around them see them as objectively less good for not looking like some silicone-plastic underwear model, that they are being viewed dismissively as "the fat chick" or "the lady in the frumpy dress" or "the girl with the bad teeth." Many women even internalize this- either they think of themselves as ugly, or they form social in-groups that are almost obsessively devoted to perfecting the art of dressing, painting, shaping, and grooming themselves to appear as attractive as humanly possible. Or, in the case of cosmetic surgery, in-humanly possible.

Now, men are not immune to sensitivity about their appearance, obviously. But for women it's a whole different order of problem.

Men relatively rarely go in for surgery purely to improve the appearance of secondary sexual traits. Women do so on a regular basis.

Cosmetics and beautification for men are a niche market.

Cosmetics and beautification for women are a multibillion dollar industry.

Men can get by in most professional environments just by showing up clean and with a mediocre haircut and broadly appropriate clothing. If they're dressing down a little or forget to shave one day, nobody's likely to call them out of

Women are routinely expected to apply multiple types of cosmetics and more complex, more uncomfortable outfits just to flatter their appearance enough to be normal by the standards of their environment.

And yes, individual women or individual workplaces may violate this trend; I am generalizing precisely because I discuss a general truth. This is something that has been experienced by virtually all women at one time or another, but which cannot be specifically attributed to THIS place and THAT time by a person who is trying to talk about their entire society.

What constitutes sexism is:
1) Active discrimination against one sex. Like explicitly refusing to hire women because they are presumed inferior)
2) Passive discrimination against one sex. Like almost always hiring women and almost never hiring men for a job, even when qualifications are otherwise equal.
3) Reinforcing social norms that make one sex's lives artificially difficult in a way that the other sex is immune to. Like the norm that women are supposed to put up with getting hit on by random sleazy strangers everywhere they go, or that it's socially acceptable for men to advertise "I see women as walking pairs of tits!"

1 & 2 have no relevance to Matt Taylor’s shirt, and I wasn’t asking about sexism in the hiring of staff. I am asking about why the image on the shirt is sexist. Point 3 might possibly relate to it, but frankly showing that you admire a certain body shape in a woman doesn’t translate to “I see women as walking pair of tits,” no more than a gay man wearing a Conan or He-Man shirt translates to “I see STRAIGHT men as walking pair of pecs.”

And yet, a substantial fraction of women feel that it does.

Are you, or for that matter some specific individual woman, qualified to tell them they're so objectively wrong that their feelings on the matter aren't relevant?

One big problem with that statement Simon. I wasn't comparing God to women. It would be obvious what I was comparing to by looking at the position of the strikethrough used. I was comparing the existence of God to the existence of sexism in a hypothetical case. Pascal's wager relies on you to accept the potential benefits outweigh the costs (which it naturally downplays) in return for not providing any evidence of the benefits (ie God exists with benefits for worshipping him). The SJW argument is no different.

In this case, the cost is that a guy doesn't wear a particular shirt on the job on the day he expects to talk to reporters.

The benefit, well, you don't see it... because of the 'dogs and lizards' thing. To borrow from that article:

A straight cisgendered male American, because of who he is and the culture he lives in, does not and cannot feel the stress, creepiness, and outright threat behind a catcall the way a woman can... When she says “you don’t have to put up with being leered at,” what she means is, “you don’t ever have to be wary of sexual interest.” That’s male privilege. Not so much that something doesn’t happen to men, but that it will never carry the same weight, even if it does...

Nevertheless, just because you personally can’t feel that hurt, doesn’t mean it’s not real. All it means is you have privilege.

That's a big part of what this comes down to. A large number of women have said, at varying times, that they do not like seeing pinup models (or shirts full of pinup models) strewn around their workplace.

It used to be commonplace for Men At Work to have pinups all over... in an era when women were not welcome in the workplace, and when it was assumed that if a woman was working it meant she was less virtuous, more sexually available, than the "good girls" who stayed at home.

Now, some women may be fine with having attractive females in varying states of undress pinned up all over their workplace. Or they may try to 'give as good as they get' with attractive males in varying states of undress.

But for quite a few other women, it is not okay, they may try to pretend it is but it really isn't, and they will never be comfortable with it. And they can never actually cause a man to experience the same discomfort they feel. Because in our society, as it actually operates, men almost never have to feel that type of discomfort. Even duplicating the conditions under which women feel the discomfort, with the genders flipped, won't replicate the subtext and the lifelong series of individual encounters and experiences that shape how women perceive sexual situations differently than men.

As a result, the nature of the hurt, of the offense, can only be described to men in terms of analogies and parables, like the ones I've repeatedly linked to in my posts. And the real test of whether one is an asshole or a decent person, as a male in modern society... well. It's whether when someone says "this hurts me," you pay attention, or whether you just shrug and ignore it. Or, worse yet, start coming up with elaborate justifications for why the issue doesn't really matter and is all in her head because this woman gets silly ideas sometimes, and because men who agree with them are a bunch of suggestible white knights.

No.

The fact that some women are capable of ignoring XYZ, for whatever reason, does not mean XYZ is irrelevant. The fact that your black friend thinks racism is no longer really a problem for him does not mean, when large numbers of other blacks say "racism hurts me," you're allowed to ignore them. The experience of one person, or of a minority of persons, cannot negate a reality experienced by the entire group of persons.

Matt Taylor might be privileged, but frankly what occurred to him was bullying by lying shitheads who don't even know what the words "pornographic" or "naked" means even as they uttered them, and insulted women when they suggested a shirt fucking stops women from entering STEM fields, and insulted human scientific knowledge when they said "I don't care about landing on a comet." They also insulted victims of bullying when they said Matt Taylor apologised because he realised what had "fucked up" (AFTER he had been bullied). What next? Gays who commit suicide do it because they also realised they "fucked up?"

You are cherrypicking the most obnoxious statements (probably including some outright parodies) from a large group of people, deciding they represent the group, and dismissing the whole group in a spiteful tone.

The problem with that is presumably very obvious, since I know you have a brain.

Matt Taylor by helping the scientists of whatever gender, whatever nationality and ethnicity in putting a satellite on a comet did more for humanity than what social justice wankers did, and ever will do.

Social Justice Wankers deserve some of the blowback they've received, like that shirt is now sold out. Heck I might even buy one just to spite them.

May I suggest you read the article I recently linked to? I would like to know what you think of it.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, but that's precisely why I brought this up. I think it's ridiculous for people to be making sweeping claims about whether talking about a concept as broad and nebulous as "sex" to be either off-limits completely or completely fine devoid of context. Some people in this thread seem to be saying that people should be able to talk about it in every possible situation with no consideration of context, and other people seem to be implying that it is always inappropriate. I think both extremes are idiotic and unrealistic.

The fact is that talking about sex can mean a lot of different things to different people, and is highly dependent on the social context. You can't dismiss people who are offended by it as "prudes", because there are situations in which otherwise innocuous sex talk can come across as physically threatening. Similarly, you can't say its always off-limits, because it is a highly integral part of our social interactions.

Well, my take on it is that we can reasonably say "in these social spheres, sex should not be discussed because it is not relevant." This helps to ensure that no one* is suffering purely because they are forced to participate in joint social life.

Casual conversations about sex should be comfortable and pleasant for everyone involved, as a rule... and that requires freedom to leave the conversation. One cannot leave a workplace environment at will. One cannot refrain from going to the grocery store, or going to court when legal issues are at stake.

The main reason why imposing 'sexist images' and 'sexist conversation' on women is a problem is not so much because of the actual content of the imagery and conversation.

It's because this is a unique tax that applies only to (many although not all) women. By structuring society this way, we're saying "if you want to work at a full time job, you must accept being made uncomfortable by comments or images of a sexual nature at least twice a week." And you don't get a choice to not pay the tax, because most people don't get to decide whether or not they work at a job.** Likewise, if your boss enjoys making penis jokes, you don't get to decide to stop listening to penis jokes.

So perhaps we can refine our definition of when 'civility' demands that we not discuss sex. Basically, sex should be discussed in an environment where all parties to the conversation are free to leave if the conversation makes them feel uncomfortable. And where there is no hierarchy demanding that they listen to opinions or ideas they find repugnant.
______________________

*That includes, say, the recent rape victim who still has to go to work every day but flinches whenever she hears the word "fuck." Such a person does not deserve to have to suffer just because she doesn't want to come out and say "look, I was raped three weeks ago, can you please pick something else to talk about?"

**Unless we go all out and take the '50s approach and say that any woman in the workplace deserves whatever the men in that workplace see fit to dish out... and that's obviously wrong.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

It's a catch-22 for people trying to raise awareness. You can't make people aware of how pervasive gender issues are without pointing out things like the "shirtstorm", but every time you do, people come out of the woodwork and accuse you of focusing on trivial issues like some guy's shirt, even if you admit (which every feminist I've heard speak about the issue has) that it's not a big deal in and of itself but the larger pattern it represents is a very big deal, and we should all be aware of the bigger issues. Feminists have tried to use this as an example to segue to a discussion of those issues, and reactionaries have blocked that segue so they can point and say "look at all these crazy old birds getting their literal panties in a bunch about some dude's shirt".

On the other hand, what if the issue actually is trivial? You seem to be implying that the only people that are ever unreasonable are the ones on this one side of the argument, when it is entirely possible for people to overreact to objectively trivial matters (note: I am not speaking on this issue specifically; to be honest I am still undecided. I am speaking in a more theoretical sense). People overreacting to trivial things can be damaging by serving to dilute the perceived impact of the more serious matters. On both sides, acting like a close-minded idiot (by either trying to marginalize real issues as you talk about, or exaggerate non-existent ones) serves only to short-circuit discussion. I just don't like the way you seem to dismiss even the possibility of a certain line of dissent or argument just for the nebulous sake of awareness.

If the issue is too trivial, then the SJW's (for lack of a better term, what's the positive version of that?) will have made a tactical blunder and the right-wing media can chalk up a victory, but you never know which flashpoint is going to be the one that sticks. Everyone seemed to have all the info about the evils of segregation in 1955 before Rosa Parks refused to change seats on an Alabama bus, yet that small incident was the spark that ignited a movement. If it had happened a few years earlier when conditions weren't ready for people to react so strongly, it might have just been any other bus on any other day in the South.

By the way, I'm not implying that Dr. Taylor is some kind of villain or that the incident even deserves the attention it's received. As Covenant points out, if our society does achieve highly progressive attitudes on gender then incidents like the shirtstorm won't even raise an eyebrow. But if we have to suffer a few more shirtstorms before we finally have an event that crystallizes the unfairness of gender disparities for a critical mass of society, it will be well worth it, and there's no way to know beforehand which event will turn out to be the magic spark.

[jwl]

mr friendly guy, I mainly agree with you here, but is it really necessary to put the guy as your avatar?

[Ziggy Stardust]

Well, my take on it is that we can reasonably say "in these social spheres, sex should not be discussed because it is not relevant." This helps to ensure that no one* is suffering purely because they are forced to participate in joint social life. <snip>

I agree with you completely.

By the way, I'm not implying that Dr. Taylor is some kind of villain or that the incident even deserves the attention it's received. As Covenant points out, if our society does achieve highly progressive attitudes on gender then incidents like the shirtstorm won't even raise an eyebrow. But if we have to suffer a few more shirtstorms before we finally have an event that crystallizes the unfairness of gender disparities for a critical mass of society, it will be well worth it, and there's no way to know beforehand which event will turn out to be the magic spark.

That's fair enough. As I said, I am actually still undecided on how I feel about this particular incident. I am just very uncomfortable making sweeping generalizations in situations like this.

****************

Also, can we just make some sort of rule that using the term "SJW" un-ironically is basically just a concession? I mean, anyone who says it just sounds like such a twat. I find it impossible to take anyone's argument seriously if it relies so heavily on the term.

[mr friendly guy]

mr friendly guy, I mainly agree with you here, but is it really necessary to put the guy as your avatar?

Its a nice way to support him. As well as donate to the charity of his choice.

[mr friendly guy]

@simon Jester will get back to you when I finish work. But I want to clarify a few things

It is relevant to others, but not to me. Please distinguish between people who say "the act of wearing the shirt is sexist and inappropriate" and people who say "the shirt itself is sexist."

Except that was what I was talking about, and when you reply to that you inadvertantly give the impression you were debating that point. It didn't strike me as you saying, ok but I have a different argument.

. If you want to mock them go elsewhere. If you want to mock me, be advised that I will call you out on strawmanning.

Er Arthur Tuxedo did and is still is making the argument that its just a way to segue into the argument. I included a whole bunch of other possibilities to cover stock standard responses.

But the point is, do these same SJW criticising Matt Taylor criticise her for displaying a similar image.

I am sure some do, but a lot have not. Because you know they focus on the fact that she chooses to do so (pose for the camera) and ignore the point that the just argued an image in and of itself is sexist. See previous response on this.

This indicates not just gross hypocrisy but quite a ginormous mental disconnect here.

I don't know who said that but it sure wasn't me. I've never used the phrase "social justice warrior" or abbreviations for same in my life until this very moment, in this very sentence.

Firstly you clearly have used the abbreviation before "this very moment in this very sentence." I just quoted you saying it. That's a minor point but I found it bizarre you would say that.

Secondly it should be clear that BOTH you and I were not talking about you when we mention SJW, so I don't know how you suddenly turn it around and say "I don't know who said that but it sure wasn't me."

[mr friendly guy]

Also, can we just make some sort of rule that using the term "SJW" un-ironically is basically just a concession? I mean, anyone who says it just sounds like such a twat. I find it impossible to take anyone's argument seriously if it relies so heavily on the term.

How do you tell they are using it un-ironically?