In case you missed it, the London-born comet scientist Dr Matt Taylor was one of the British scientists involved with the landing of spacecraft Philae on a comet more than 400 million kilometers away. Despite this great achievement for mankind, he was criticized for the shirt that he was wearing during a televised coverage of the event.
Dr Matt Taylor was heavily criticized for wearing a shirt that featured cartoon images of scantily dressed women in revealing clothes. This shirt provoked an outbreak on Twitter with many feminist critics saying that the shirt is an insult to women.
It is quite strange, even funny, that people actually noticed his clothes in the first place, considering the fact that he is a genius scientist who has earned a Ph.D in Space Physics and not a fashionista. As a woman, I could not help but feel shocked at the hypocrisy of feminists who reacted this way to Dr Taylor’s shirt, especially since a main argument in favour of feminism is that women can wear whatever they want and men should not be provoked by it. However when the roles are reversed, this man was bullied and criticized instead.
Let us imagine this situation if it were a female scientist and everyone was focused on her clothing and not her achievements. Feminists would be defending her immediately.
There are so many other injustices that happen in the world that the feminists need to fight for. From the missing school girls in Nigeria, to women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, and even the pressing issue of rape crime in India. It does not make any sense – there are so many gender issues in the world, and yet the self-proclaimed feminists are focusing on a shirt. It makes people feel that feminism today is genuinely a coward’s movement, as they are afraid to fight real problems and injustices occuring in the world, but justify their existence by creating unnecessary controversy on problems that in comparison seem trivial.
Feminism is supposed to be a movement for equality, but lately it’s become a movement for the superiority for women.
In this picture, Jessica Valenti, a columnist for the Guardian US and a feminist writer who founded www.feministing.com, is shown wearing a shirt that reads “I Bathe In Male Tears”.
Why didn’t the Internet go crazy over this offensive shirt? Is it because she is a modern day feminist? Or is it because most men do not bother about petty writings on clothing and understand that the women can wear whatever she wants?
Dr Taylor has apologized in tears about his shirt and said that it was a big mistake for him to wear it. It is just sad to see an individual who’s made history put down like this. This is not being a “feminist”, this is called bullying. This latest fiasco has shed a bad light on the feminist movement, misrepresenting feminists as radical and trivial.
People have stepped up to say that we should thank Dr Taylor for his wonderful work, and that he deserves to be happy for such a fantastic achievement. Some kind-hearted people have started a crowdfunding campaign to show their support towards Dr Taylor on Indiegogo, and are working towards raising funds to purchase Dr Taylor an astronomical watch worth US$2,867 as a token of appreciation for his work.
According to the site, for those who are unable to contribute, you could also send Dr Taylor a support message. It’s reassuring that there are still kind people in this world.