Psychobiologist Dario Maestripieri returned from a neuroscience meeting in New Orleans and posted to Facebook that he was disappointed with the "unusually high concentrations of unattractive women. The super model types are completely absent. What is going on? Are unattractive women particularly attracted to neuroscience? Are beautiful women particularly uninterested in the brain?"
He added, "No offense to anyone."
Many people took offense, starting with the Drugmonkey blog, which reposted the remarks.
Janet Stemwedel on Adventures in Ethics and Science has a good post explaining why she is offended by this:
The thing is, that denial is also the denial of the actual lived experience of a hell of a lot of women in science (and in other fields — I've been sexually harassed in both of the disciplines to which I've belonged).
I can't pretend to speak for everyone who calls out sexism like Maestripieri's, so I'll speak for myself. Here's what I want:
1. I want to shine a bright light on all the sexist behaviors, big or small, so the folks who have managed not to notice them so far start noticing them, and so that they stop assuming their colleagues who point them out and complain about them are making a big deal out of nothing.
2. I want the exposure of the sexist behaviors to push others in the community to take a stand on whether they're cool with these behaviors or would rather these behaviors stop. If you know about it and you don't think it's worth talking about, I want to know that about you — it tells me something about you that might be useful for me to know as I choose my interactions.
3. I want the people whose sexist behaviors are being called out to feel deeply uncomfortable — at least as uncomfortable as their colleagues (and students) who are women have felt in the presence of these behaviors.
4. I want people who voice their objections to sexist behaviors to have their exercise of free speech (in calling out the behaviors) be just as vigorously defended as the free speech rights of the people spouting sexist nonsense.
5. I want the sexist behavior to stop so scientists who happen to be women can concentrate on the business of doing science (rather than responding to sexist behavior, swallowing their rage, etc.)
I've got a daughter who, at four and a half, wants to be a scientist. Every time she says this, it makes me swell up with so much pride, I almost bust. If she grows up to be a scientist, I want her to be judged on the reproducibility of her results, the elegance of her experimental design, and the insight in her hypotheses, not on her ability to live up to someone's douchey standard of "super model" looks.
