Notes & Comments

December 2014

.'F em inism & astrophysics

G e rtru d e Stein once remarked that it is im
p o rtan t to know how far to go in going too
far. It is curious th at certain radical femi
niststh at is, the relentlessly vindictive so
rority which, since the 1960s, has made such
a nuisance o f itself on college campuses and
other protected purlieus o f affluent Western
societieshave always had difficulty follow
ing Steins advice. W hat makes it curious,
o f course, is th at Stein is such an iconic fig
ure for their coven. Tender Buttons (get it?).
Alice B. Toklas. A rose is a rose is a rose.
C ant you hear the pulpit tones w afting up
from those phrases? A nd yet when Stein got
around to dispensing a practical, real-life ad
m onition, they completely ignore her. They
never know how far to go in going too far.

W h a t prom pts these uncharitable thoughts

is the saga, much in the news as we write, o f
Dr. M att Taylor. Taylor is the forty-something
British-born astrophysicist who is project sci
entist for the European Space Agencys Rosetta
Mission. Earlier this year, there were hosan
nas when Taylor and his colleagues success
fully brought die Rosetta spacecraft, which
had been tootling around the solar system
for a decade, o u t o f hibernation. T hat suc
cess prom pted the exuberant rocket scientist
to have a tattoo o f Rosetta and Philae, its
landing probe, inscribed upon his leg. Last
m onth, the Rosetta team engineered an even

greater trium ph. After guiding Rosetta on a

journey o f some four billion miles, they were
in (virtual) sight o f their holy grail, com et
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The cometat
2.8 miles long, a veritable flyspeck in the real
estate o f outer spacewas hurtling through
space at some 41,000 miles per hour. It was 311
million miles from Earth. Nevertheless, Taylor
and his team managed to detach Philae from
its m other ship, remotely guide it towards
Mr. 67P/C-G, and land the probe on the speed
ing comet. This was the first time in history,
as the British politician Boris Johnson pu t it,
that a representative o f humanity had paid a
visit to the surface o f a comet. Slick work, eh?

A few days after this stupendous feat o f engi

neering and scientific bravado, Dr. Taylor went
on television to say a few words about the mis
sion. He was clearly overcome by emotion. But
it soon became evident that he was stirred not
by feelings o f relief and trium ph but o f m orti
fication. Choking back tears, he leaned forward
towards the m icrophone andapologized.

A pologized. Why? Because The Atlantics

tech writer Rose Eveleth and an angry horde
o f feminists didnt like w hat he was wearing
when he first broke the news o f the landing.
Yes, thats right: they didnt like his shirt,
so they m ounted a social media attack on
the hapless scientist. Q u o th Eveleth: N o
no wom en are toooootally welcome in our
The New Criterion December 2014

Notes & Comments

community, just ask the dude in this shirt.

O ther hysterics on the distaff side followed
suit, as did New Yorker blogger James DiGioia who sniffed: Technology advances
while society remains decidedly retrograde.

think any representation o f the hum an form

is an offence against God? This is the 21st cen
tury, for goodness sake. And if you ask your
self why so few have come to the defence o f
the scientist, the answer is that no one dares.

T h e commentator Glenn Reynolds got to the

nub o f the matter when, writing in USA Today,
he noted that some feminists took one o f the
great achievements o f hum an h isto ry . . . and
made it all about the clothes. It was, Reyn
olds continued, one small shirt for a man,
one giant leap backward for wom ankind.

T h e whole thing is so silly that one m ight be

tem pted to dismiss it as a freakish exception
and move on. But, as many victims o f political
correctness o f our college campuses know to
their sorrow, it is anything but innocent. Dr.
Taylors humiliation, as Mr. Johnson noted,

S o what about that shirt? W hat was so of

fensive? You can easily find pictures o f Dr.
Taylor in his shirt on the internet. Its a
brightly colored Hawaiian-style num ber fes
tooned with cartoon-like drawings o f scantily
clad, gun-toting women, made for him by a
close female friend (whose business, we are
happy to report, has boomed). It is straight
out o f a 1950s Sci-Fi adventure story: O ut of
This World, Space Detective, and lets no t for
get Attack o f the so-ft Woman. D o you find
such things offensive? We dont. Theyre not
lewd. Merely, well, nerdy. Such vivid gar
ments may or may no t be to your tastethey
are n o t to o u rsbut then tattoos o f space
ships may or may no t be to your taste either.

A s k yourself this: Was this shirt as insult

ing as heaping pseudo-moral obloquy upon a
great scientist in his hour o f trium ph because
you happen to disapprove, or at least you
pretend to disapprove, o f images o f girls on
his shirt? We agree w ith Mr. Johnson, who
had this to say in his colum n for the Daily
Telegraph-. I think his critics should go to
the N ational Gallery and look at the Rokeby
Venus by Velazquez. O r look at the stuff by
Rubens. Are we saying that these glorious im
ages should be torn from the walls? O r torn
just from the chests o f brilliant scientists who
indulge in a bit o f whimsy when it comes to
their haberdashery? W hat are we all, John
son asked, a bunch o f Islamist maniacs who
The New Criterion December 2014

was like something from the show trials of Stalin,

or from the sobbing testimony of the enemies of
Kim Il-sung, before they were taken away and
shot. It was like a scene from Maos cultural revo
lution when weeping intellectuals were forced to
confess their crimes against the people.
Why was he forced into this humiliation?
Because he was subjected to an unrelent
ing tweetstorm o f abuse. He was bombarded
across the internet w ith a hurtling dustcloud o f hate, orchestrated by lobby groups
and politically correct media organisations.

T h e whole episode stinks o f rancid politically

correct animus. Critics w ho have described
the event as political correctness gone m ad
are n o t wrong. But it is w orth noting that
the case o f Dr. Taylor is by no means the only
such outrage. O n the contrary, the commis
sars o f political correctness have been em
boldened over the last couple o f decades as
they have succeeded in one case after another
in using race or sex to bully their opponents
into submission. Cast your m ind back to the
episode o f Larry Summers. In 2005, Sum
mers, then the President o f H arvard U n i
versity, fresh from locking horns with one
o f academ ias m ost prom inent charlatans
and race-baiters, Cornel West, found himself
speaking at a conference at m it on Diversify
ing the Science & Engineering Workforce.
Summers speculated on why there are no t
m ore w om en scientists at elite universities.
H e touched on several possibilities: maybe
patterns o f discrim ination had som ething

Notes & Comments

to do w ith it. Maybe m ost w om en preferred

to p u t their families before their careers. O r
maybe, as Summers asserted in an attem pt
to be provocative and to ignite a m ore
open discussion ab o u t underrepresenta
tion, it had som ething to do w ith differ
ent availability o f aptitude at the high end.

W h a t a storm that last comment sparked! I

felt I was going to be sick, wailed Nancy H op
kins, a professor o f biology at the Massachu
setts Institute o f Technology, who then walked
out on Summers. My heart was pounding and
my breath was shallow, Hopkins trembled.
I was extremely upset. Whatever happened
to strong women? W hat w ould M argaret
Thatcher have done?
T hat b o u t o f hysteria did for Larry Sum
mers, who was shortly thereafter ignominiously forced from the presidency o f Harvard
because he had inadvertendy trespassed upon
the delicate feelings o f some touchy feminists.

W h y is it acceptable for celebrities or other

certified feminist icons to prance around in
pornographic splendor when men are expected
to behave with Mrs. Grundyesque rectitude?
And why is the former empowering while
any deviation from die latter is sexist? Why
is it that these self-appointed moral guardians
and professional feminists are always looking
for a whipping post? W hy dont they just get
on with their work: do something to command
admiration rather than screaming m urder at
every unsanctioned statement? Look just
beyond Americas horizonsthere one can
surely find wom en w ho deserve the defense
o f an angry horde. H ow about the wom en
in Egypt, for example, where m ore than
90 percent over age fifteen are subjected to
the barbaric practice o f genital mutilation?

T h e case o f Dr. Taylors shirt may seem like

little m ore than a bad joke. In fact, it is some
thing more sinister. It is a vivid example o f what
happens when a self-enfranchised politically

correct cadre sets about quashing freedom and

eccentricity in tire name o f an always-evolving
sensitivity. The goal, as one wag pu t it, is a
testosterone-free society in which everything
that is no t mandatory is prohibited. W hich is
why the Rose Eveleths and Nancy Hopkinses
o f the w orld are victimizers, n o t victims, and
their brand o f feminism is an atavistic, tribal
ideology as harmful to women as it is to men.

The New Criterion on art

F o r more than a decade, we have devoted a
large portion o f our December issue to the visu
al arts. We do so again this year, with a number
o f reviews and essays assembled by our Execu
tive Editor James Panero on a wide variety o f
subjects, from the cut-outs o f Henri Matisse to
the new New Brutalism in architecture to how
the Brooklyn Museum has failed Brooklyn art.
Marco Grassi accompanies Philippe de Monte
bello, the former director o f the Metropolitan
Museum o f Art, around some o f the worlds
great museums, and Victoria Coates meditates
on the way democracies throughout the ages
have enlisted art in their pursuit o f the ideal o f
responsible self-governance. Readers alarmed
by the skyrocketing cost o f visiting many m u
seums today will be interested in the cold eye
Daniel Grant casts upon that unedifying phe
nomenon, while anyone concerned about the
fate o f our public spaces will want to turn to
the astringent essay by Bruce Cole, the former
Director o f the National Endowm ent for the
Humanities, who anatomizes Frank Gehrys
proposed travesty for a m onum ent honoring
Dwight D. Eisenhower in Washington, D.C.
We are pleased once again to be able to bring
such a cornucopia o f incisive reflections on art
to our readers. In years gone by, this special
section was made possible by support from
some o f our co-conspirators, including the late
Helen Frankenthaler, a dear friend o f The New
Criterion. This year, we are deeply grateful for
the generous interventions o f Bobbie Foshay,
Alex and Mary Ross, and the J. M. Foundation,
which made our special section on art possible.
Thank you one and all.

The New Criterion December 2014