Okay, let's try a rational discussion, shall we?
This particular gentleman is probably not an awful, raging sexist. A very small minority of people have railed violently against him, leading to him apologizing for wearing the shirt on television, in tears. That's not okay.
In some places talk about this shirt has overshadowed the monumental scientific achievement that we has a species have managed. That's not okay either.
But what I've seen more of--and keep in mind, I travel in a lot of pretty liberal and feminist circles--is backlash against the backlash. "****ing feminist *******" and "If a shirt is enough to keep you from going into STEM then you don't belong there" and "grow some balls" and all of that.
And that's not okay, either.
Many great scientists have been women, but no one knows the name Ada Lovelace as well as they know Charles Babbage. No one knows Rosalind Franklin as well as Watson and Crick. Kids don't grow up learning about Annie Jump Cannon or Elizabeth Blackwell or Lise Mietner or any of the numerous female programmers involved with the ENIAC.
But most everyone knows Einstein and Edison. Lots of people know about Tesla these days. Older folks probably remember the name Oppenheimer pretty well. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are both household names, and are both people whose fortunes depend on the prior work of many of the women listed above. But you here about the men, not the women, especially in historic contexts. Women have
always worked in STEM, but they are often uncredited and unrecognized. What message does this give women, especially girls?
We still have this idea that women are just not as good at math (and therefore science and engineering) as men. You can quote statistics or drag in "biotruths" if you want. If you want to claim that
fewer women are naturally skilled in these areas, knock yourself out. But an individual girl can be as good or better than an individual boy. By saying or supporting the idea that girls aren't good at math and that it's
okay for them to not be good at math, we're discouraging them from trying. We're alienating the girls who are good at math by implying their talents are unfeminine.
The girls who do make it into STEM fields in college and beyond are then often faced with
institutionalized sexism, less pay that their male counterparts, or flat out misogyny. And, very possibly as a result,
women still lag behind men in STEM degrees and employment in almost all fields.
But assuming a woman makes it past all those hurdles, someone she might consider a colleague shows up to work on the most important day of his professional life in a shirt with barely-dressed, bondage-gear-wielding women. She sees this and dares to speak up by saying hey, this shirt is problematic because...
And she is told in so many words to shut up and get back in the kitchen where she belongs.
That is a problem.
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