Yesterday the European Space Agency landed the Philae spacecraft on a comet, a powerful step forward for humanity and science alike. However, slightly before the big moment, coverage of the event reminded us how much progress remains to be accomplished back on Earth.
A number of the scientists involved on this incredible project were interviewed in the hours leading to contact by Nature Newsteam. One of those Rosetta scientists was Matt Taylor, who chose to dress, for this special occasion, in a bowling shirt covered in scantly clad caricatures of sexy women in provocative poses.
"This is going to be a very long day but a very exciting day," said Taylor. "I think everyone should enjoy it because we're making history."
No one knows why Taylor chose to wear that shirt on television during a massive scientific mission. From what we can tell, a woman who goes by the name of Elly Prizeman on Twitter made the shirt for him, and is just as bewildered as he must be that anyone might be upset about her creation. Taylor apologized on Friday during a live ESA broadcast for wearing the shirt, stating that "the shirt I wore this week... I made a big mistake and I offended many people, and I'm very sorry about this." Still, Taylor's personal apology doesn't make up for the fact that no one at ESA saw fit to stop him from representing the Space community with clothing that demeans 50 percent of the world's population. No one asked him to take it off, because presumably they didn't think about it. It wasn't worth worrying about.
This is the sort of casual misogyny that stops women from entering certain scientific fields. They see a guy like that on TV and they don't feel welcome. They see a poster of greased up women in a colleague's office and they know they aren't respected. They hear comments about "bitches" while out at a bar with fellow science students, and they decide to change majors. And those are the women who actually make it that far. Those are the few who persevered even when they were discouraged from pursuing degrees in physics, chemistry, and math throughout high school. These are the women who forged on despite the fact that they were told by elementary school classmates and the media at large that girls who like science are nerdy and unattractive. This is the climate women who dream of working at NASA or the ESA come up against, every single day. This shirt is representative of all of that, and the ESA has yet to issue a statement or apologize for that.
The Atlantic journalist Rose Eveleth brilliantly captures what that shirt represents in a community that continues to struggle, if not outright fail, to respect women.
Update Nov 13, 2:00PM ET: The amazingly talented Arielle Duhaime-Ross added some powerful thoughts to this piece that I wish I'd included when it was originally published.
Update Nov 14, 8:43AM ET: This post has been updated with a video of Matt Taylor's apology. The Verge has reached out to the ESA, but has yet to hear back.
Comments
Unprofessional in most any workplace, but especially when you’re on international TV representing your team.
By RoboticSpacePenguin on 11.13.14 9:27am
#shirtgate
By growing beanstalk on 11.13.14 9:56am
Actually it’s about ethics in graphic shirts.
By Tommy_P on 11.13.14 10:33am
lmao I actually got a nice laugh out of that, I like what you did there
By theclinton on 11.13.14 8:00pm
Unfortunately, people these days don’t understand what professionalism is.
By Just_Some_Nobody on 11.13.14 10:19am
Or rather than that, there are environments where people are judged for their skills and actions rather than their outward behaviour. In traditional corporations everybody needed to suit up… why? Because of "professionalism", in science and ICT… less so. After all, real professionalism can’t be faked.
Either way, wearing a custom made shirt you got for your birthday on national television. Nope, don’t really see the huge problem with that.
By David Mulder on 11.13.14 4:44pm
Exactly. Not caring about this shirt means they care about his actually useful merits like technical skills etc.
As long as it’s hygenic and not offensive it’s fine. The last point is apparently a point of contention, but the fact that he wears a loud shirt should never be.
By GriffinSauce on 11.13.14 4:47pm
Maybe you are just too uptight? Mirror’s article on this shirt is COMPLETELY opposite to this article :D
"Joy-parkinson tweeted: "Dr Matt Taylor is what every scientist should look like – rad shirt, sleeve tattoos. Rad."
"
By Meaculpa on 11.14.14 12:13am
It strikes me as a shirt you wear drunk at a party, or at a vacation on some beach. I don’t even…
By Jonas N on 11.13.14 10:41am
" it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to …"
Oh well …
By Sicsicpuppy on 11.13.14 12:07pm
It takes more than a rocket scientist…
By fingebimus on 11.13.14 1:03pm
I’m not a feminist anymore because I refuse to accept double standards.
It’s just a shirt, if those female characters were replaced with male characters no one would care, as in both scenarios it would be a non-issue.
By Agentx002 on 11.13.14 4:49pm
You cannot just exchange men for women in these analogies because men hold the power.
By juliaisgreat on 11.13.14 4:57pm
So. I’m going to make an accusation toward your argument. It will probably get deleted (because I’m going against a person who holds power… oh, the irony).
You’ve copypasta’d this same argument at least twice in this thread. It’d seem that you’d rather regurgitate the same idea over and over again rather than put actual thought into your arguments. Double standards are double standards, regardless of who holds "power."
By JustinDaigle on 11.13.14 5:05pm
People have made the same flawed argument multiple times.
No. A double standard implies that everything is the same in both situations. This isn’t the case.
By juliaisgreat on 11.13.14 5:08pm
No it doesn’t.
A double standard means that you’re not applying the same logic in both scenarios.
If wearing a shift of the opposite sex is sexist, it’s sexist regardless of the sex of both the wearer and the shirt.
If something only becomes sexist by your logic because it’s worn by the ‘power’ sex (which is frankly a ridiculous, subjective claim in the first place) – then what you mean by sexist is just a nonsense which isn’t what most people understand it to mean.
By TomGarrott on 11.13.14 5:28pm
Nope, it didn’t. Can people here stop with the persecution complex?
By Malkmus on 11.13.14 7:16pm
Not when they are still having comments deleted.
By ChodaBoy on 11.15.14 10:34pm
Umm, we’re talking about the European Space Agency here, the one lead by Chairwoman Claudia Kessler. I’m not even going to try to discount the argument’s inherent validity – just pointing out that men aren’t in the position of power in this instance.
As someone else already stated, you’re using the, "you white men are in a position of power", argument quite often, perhaps you should see if it actually applies before just throwing it out there next time?
By Agentx002 on 11.13.14 8:07pm
Oh goody. We all have our own personal Castle Grayskulls? This is what I get when I speedread the secret man-manuals we get
By nomad80 on 11.13.14 10:34pm
No but your connection that the clothing is the reason people don’t enter scientific fields is total and absolute crock. If women didn’t enter fields/degrees in which men in college referred to woman as "bitches" there wouldn’t be any women in any degree. Men and women in medical school refer to women as "bitches" at bars. Women and men in business school refer to women as "bitches" in bars. Men and women in education degrees refer to women as "bitches" in bars. Women and men in the arts and literature programs refer to women as "bitches" in bars.
In fact I saw way more ‘offensive’ t-shirts on art students than probably anyone else. And guess what the male/female ratio is in arts programs? There are clearly pressures for women not to enter the hard sciences but this notion that it’s because scientists are incosiderate sexist pigs (unlike say business degrees, which have near equality of men and women) is insulting and absurd. This is just nerd bashing redux. You know who is pressured to not enter the sciences? Everybody but especially women. Who is pressuring these people to not pursue science? Generally not scientists, it’s everyone who thinks math is for geeks and losers.
Is it a horrible T-Shirt? Yes it’s atrocious, but I would say his tattoos are probably lame too, however it’s not a epithet for everything wrong with society.
By gavin.greenwalt on 11.14.14 7:44am
There are many women who hold positions of power. Get over yourself.
By The Beef Hammer on 11.14.14 9:37am
This guy probably spend 99.9% of his time sitting in a dimly lit room in front of a computer… and yes, I’m talking about his workplace. I work in a fairly similar setting and that type of dress is pretty commonplace. As for the representing your team on TV part… I don’t know about you, but if I was involved in landing that spacecraft on that comet, I’d of been so excited that morning I could’ve forgot my pants and not cared…
By NSAspyguy on 11.14.14 9:08pm
Okay, let’s start a "Shirts I’d rather wear thread than that" comment chain. I’ll start.
I’d rather wear this shirt than what the guy is wearing.
By Kirielson on 11.13.14 9:31am
I’d wear this shirt wore by this specific gentleman.
By james.leblanc on 11.13.14 9:44am