Women and Gender

Shields: Feminists can address issues of all sizes

A Rosetta scientist apologized on Nov. 14 for wearing a shirt covered in half-naked women to Rosetta’s probe landing — a historical event featuring the first instance of a satellite landing on a comet in orbit. The scientist, Matt Taylor, faced backlash from people both within and outside of the science community for his choice of attire.

Taylor seemed genuinely remorseful when he apologized, saying, “I made a big mistake and I offended many people and I’m very sorry about this.” Many on Twitter were forgiving toward Taylor and the issue has, by and large, ended for him. But feminists who decided to comment on Taylor’s shirt as well as the unbalanced ratio of women in science, went on to receive far more backlash.

Many Twitter users said that feminists’ tackling this issue took attention away from more serious feminist issues and invalidated the movement altogether. This argument is absolutely wrong and only works to diverge from the issue at hand. Anyone who wants to engage in feminist discourse should actually listen to others, instead of trying to discredit their argument by claiming it isn’t important enough.

Not only were some Twitter users disagreeing with feminists who were shining a light on this injustice, they were blatantly attacking these feminists as well. One user said, “When women stop looking for any reason to get offended then we can all get along sensibly,” and another remarked that this debacle is why some don’t take the feminist movement seriously.

This viewpoint couldn’t be further from the truth. Multitasking isn’t just for busy moms or fast food workers, activists can do it too. It is completely possible for a movement to care about several things at the same time. Yes, some issues within the feminist movement are more important than others, but this does not negate the less pertinent issues. These smaller issues are still issues and they still deserve attention and discussion.



It’s also important to note that a lot of the time, these smaller issues are often side effects of bigger issues. Something as seemingly inconsequential as an offensive shirt reflects the great absence of women within the science industry. Which is exactly why Taylor felt comfortable enough to wear his shirt. Talking about these smaller issues is not only a great way to address and solve these issues, but also to chip away at the bigger issues that they are symbolic of as well.

People who distract from the original discourse to say that the conversation itself is a waste of time do not actually care about the larger issues within feminism or any other movement. They only care about shutting down the conversation in the only way that they know how — by steering it off course.

These people are also missing one big point: all issues of the feminist movement are important and consequential because all issues are interrelated. They all stem from the fact that women are seen as lesser beings within our society. As long as our society is rooted in sexism, we will continue to see it rear its head in the biggest and smallest of ways. It is important that we challenge it in whatever form it appears.

Mandisa Shields is a sophomore newspaper and online journalism major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at meshield@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @mandisashields.





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