Poor men terribly hurt by female astronomer ...

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_Chap
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Poor men terribly hurt by female astronomer ...

Post by _Chap »

Trolls latched on to Bouman’s achievement of the first black hole image

TL;DR: sad, angry men yell at women on the internet. Again.


Image

Katie Bouman who developed algorithm for the 1st Black Hole Image with the stack of hard drives containing all the data.

The researcher Dr Katie Bouman played a leading role in taking the first photograph of a black hole. A photo of the 29-year-old Bouman taken the moment the photo was processed shows her with her hands clasped in front of her mouth, looking at the camera with a mix of shock and excitement. It went viral – both a testament to the groundbreaking work itself and a moment of victory for women in the sciences, whose contributions have long been ignored, downplayed and erased.

The giddiness didn’t last long.

Anti-feminist trolls latched on to the story and attacked Bouman with a vitriol that, in a saner world, would be shocking, but in this one looked a lot like the reaction to a Ghostbusters movie remake with a female cast – that is, sad, angry men yelling at women on the internet. Trolls created fake social media accounts impersonating Bouman. They questioned her contribution to the project. When she said that she was part of a team who all worked hard to make the photo happen, they dug in deeper, suggesting she was only getting public attention because she was a woman, when men did all the real work.

Unfortunately, this is par for the course for women on the internet. Or women in politics. Or women on television. Or women who become prominent in any way, even if they are, like Katie Bouman, private citizens who did something truly amazing.

It’s easy to point to misogynist trolls as a problem; it’s also easy to write them off as just pathetic losers tweeting from their mothers’ basements. But in reality, they are the tip of the trashpile. Trolls say out loud what others think; trolls also embody the ugliest and most blatant versions of the more subtle sexisms that animate everyday life. While hundreds of petulant man-children rail against a female scientist on Twitter, there are undoubtedly a great many more men in the real world who wouldn’t call a woman the C-word (at least not in public, or at least not with their own names attached), but do think maybe there is something to the theory that men are just more mathematically and scientifically adept than women.

For each of the hundreds of whiners who proclaimed their childhoods ruined by female Ghostbusters, there are a hundred more men who may not care about the Ghostbusters saga, but would also have to be dragged to see a movie with an all-female cast and simply don’t consume many cultural products – books, movies, television shows, music – in which women dominate and men are either marginal or absent. For every guy still, in 2019, yelling expletives about Hillary Clinton, there are thousands and thousands more who would say they would love to support a woman for president … just not any of the actual women who are running or have ever run.

Women see how other women are treated when we shine or succeed – how quickly we are cut down, how insults snowball into threats – and are intimidated
Highlighting these attacks is crucial, if only to show the depth and degree of virulent misogyny. Too many women who have come into the public eye for any reason – or even women who are not in the public eye but spend time in online social spaces – know the feeling of being harassed, belittled, threatened and demeaned. Too many women have, as a result, piped down, shut up or bowed out. Untold numbers more never jump into the ring in the first place, keeping their voices down, their work quiet and their successes private.

I am sometimes invited to speak to journalism classes or to groups of college or high school students, and over and over again, I hear the same question: “How do you deal with the harassment?” I only hear this question from girls and women. Women see how other women are treated when we shine or succeed – how quickly we are cut down, how insults snowball into threats – and are intimidated. I never have a good answer, except to say that the internet can be a rough place for women, and to the extent you can ignore it or even work to change misogynist online culture, the better. But “ignore the bullies” is deeply unsatisfying and profoundly unhelpful advice.

Katie Bouman probably knows that. I don’t know how much time she spent online before this incident (she’s a computer scientist, so maybe quite a bit), but no doubt it has been jarring. But it goes beyond Bouman herself. Just as Bouman’s success was an inspiration to young women and girls in the sciences, the very public attacks on her work as a corollary warning. And that’s how we should understand this: not just as one of the ugliest forms of misogyny rearing its head, but as a pervasive, systematic part of a broader system that undermines women’s success and recognition at every level.

Attacks from sexist trolls are overwhelming and destabilizing. But far worse is the slow drip of sexism that keeps women from achieving their full potential for power, success and achievement every single day.
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
_Gunnar
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Re: Poor men terribly hurt by female astronomer ...

Post by _Gunnar »

It's both sad and disgraceful that misogyny like this still exists in our supposedly enlightened age. Female astronomers have long been underrated and under appreciated, though they have made some of the most significant historical contributions to that science. At the top of this list is Henrietta Swan Leavitt,
. . .who discovered the relation between the luminosity and the period of Cepheid variable stars.
making possible the work of Edwin Hubble, that led to our present understanding of our expanding universe and its origin.

Mathematics is another field where women have been vastly underrepresented and underrated. Two women have recently broken through that glass ceiling: American Karen Uhlenbeck has won the 2019 Abel prize, often referred to as "math's Nobel" prize. The accomplished mathematician is the first woman in history to earn the distinction from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

And Stanford University professor Maryam Mirzakhani, who won the Fields Medal, also considered by many to be the "Nobel Prize of Mathematics."
(Newser) – An Iranian-born Stanford University professor has become the first woman to win the Fields Medal—the most prestigious prize in mathematics, and one that the San Jose Mercury News describes as "math's Nobel Prize." Maryam Mirzakhani, 37, is one of four mathematicians under 40 being awarded the prize, which is given out every four years at the International Congress of Mathematicians. Becoming the first female winner in the prize's 80-year history "is a great honor. I will be happy if it encourages young female scientists and mathematicians," she says in a press release from Stanford. She is the first Fields winner from the university since 1966.
No precept or claim is more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.

“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
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_Chap
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Re: Poor men terribly hurt by female astronomer ...

Post by _Chap »

Gunnar wrote:It's both sad and disgraceful that misogyny like this still exists in our supposedly enlightened age.


But not really unexpected.

As women more and more do stuff that once only men did, from time to time one of them will end up doing it very well, and be noticed for that reason. And some poor guy in his mother's basement faces the insufferable sight of a women who:

(a) is doing something he has no idea how to do

(c) is clearly very interested in what she is doing, and is for the moment taking no interest at all in him.

What's a guy to do under those circumstances? No real man could let her get away with behaving like that, now could he?
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
_Gunnar
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Re: Poor men terribly hurt by female astronomer ...

Post by _Gunnar »

Chap wrote:What's a guy to do under those circumstances? No real man could let her get away with behaving like that, now could he?

Yes! How dare they excel at anything that only men are supposed to be good at! :twisted:
No precept or claim is more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.

“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison
_Some Schmo
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Re: Poor men terribly hurt by female astronomer ...

Post by _Some Schmo »

Given the cultural disadvantages women have, it's even more impressive when they excel to the point of being noticed.

Some men are just damned stupid, and smart women only aggravate their condition. What else can you say?
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
_Res Ipsa
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Re: Poor men terribly hurt by female astronomer ...

Post by _Res Ipsa »

But isn’t it important that we focus on the men to understand why society has compelled them to act this way. I’m sure it has something to do with liberals, feminists, and PC.
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
_Gunnar
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Re: Poor men terribly hurt by female astronomer ...

Post by _Gunnar »

It's all Donald Trump's fault! :wink:
No precept or claim is more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.

“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison
_MeDotOrg
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Re: Poor men terribly hurt by female astronomer ...

Post by _MeDotOrg »

Well I certainly have hard drive envy.
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