#DistractinglySexy? When lab boys get naughty
Now it's the hashtag #DistractinglySexy which has gone viral, and has women scientists across the world setting fire to their bunsen burners. No, girls, sexism is not restricted to India, nor does it disappear if you win a Nobel Prize. Or a knighthood!
We now know that male scientists in the laboratory fall in love with you and make you cry, and ensure they get the Nobel Prize and not you...
Outrage erupted when Nobel Prize winning scientist Sir Tim Hunt said, during a recent lecture at the World Conference of Science Journalists, in South Korea, that three things happened when "girls" were in the laboratory: "You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry."
He did not clarify whether this was an experiment he carried out, with a control group... (The Sir Tim Hunt fan club, perhaps?) He was, in fact, seriously advocating same sex labs... Which is even more shocking both because not only is it regressive, he has assumed that "same sex" scientists are immune to falling in love. It has made many ask which planet Sir Tim lives on. Will same sex labs give better science?
Ironically, Sir Tim, 72, is married to a fellow scientist, professor Mary Collins, 56, whom he reportedly met (yes!) in a laboratory, at Cambridge University, where she was studying biochemistry. He was supervising her. Did she cry? We have no idea, but certainly, Collins has said very little while their private life has spilt into the public domain. We now know she was dating and later married to someone else while conducting an affair d'coeur with Sir Tim.
So she got divorced and married Sir Tim. But the reason his private life is being discussed is because there are scientists who think that he might have been speaking only on a personal level. Nonetheless, there are many more who feel his comments will not help the cause of women scientists who in any case face far too much bias and prejudice. It is precisely old-fashioned, chauvinistic, sexist comments like this which prevent women from pursuing science.
Sir Tim's explanation that it was meant to be a "light-hearted, ironic comment," has few takers.
Digging himself further into a hole, Sir Tim, said, as reported in the Daily Mail, "I have fallen in love with people in the lab, and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it's very disruptive... I found that these emotional entanglements made life very difficult..." Oh well, it seems that labs are meant for much more experimentation than thus far thought about. Remind me again, what exactly did Sir Tim get the Nobel Prize for?
The backlash has been swift. Sir Tim has resigned from his honorary post as professor at the University College London. And he has been mocked across social media.
Not only have women scientists reacted angrily, they have posted photographs of themselves in laboratories, holding human hearts and wearing outsized goggles to prevent their tears from running over... One even wore a mask and said that it "protects me from hazardous chemicals and muffles my woman cries".
Is it that even male scientists at the cutting edge of science have been unable to track the changing reality of emancipated women today? In fact, wouldn't you agree that in any entanglement today, it's the man likely to shed tears... Should we pass you a handkerchief, Sir Tim?