I’ve been intending to dive into this Tim Hunt debacle, but the twitter storm is moving too fast for me to get a word in, so this is just a holding post – no extended argument here (yet).
Science needs women? Doh!
Which century are we in? Which geological period is Hunt in? All human endeavours need women in positions of equal opportunity to participate – and even that is a thinly disguised historical insult to our sisters.
For me this is not (just) a question of equality of freedoms but one of necessary diversity. We must “admit variety” to quote E. M. Forster on democratic freedom. Evolution demands it, and I’m not talking sexual reproduction. Women bring a “differently better” set of skills to the party, any party, the only party in town in fact. Life.
Vive la difference, as I may have mentioned. Jeez!
We different humans need each other.
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[Post Note : I warned at the start of this post it was a quickie – a specific point I needed to make without deeper analysis – reacting to the twitterstorm that has since led to his resignation – sadly.
Love is such a tricky non-PC topic in professional or otherwise-to-be-taken-seriously contexts – even trickier when you are talking genders or sexuality in the first place – but if we can get over ourselves, love really is the most important thing in life bar none. Hunt did in fact just make a mistake. Yes his views on gender were probably of his time, and yes his attempt at humour was clumsy and misguided – and sadly his apology was no less clumsy – but either way, all he did was make a mistake.
Did he really need to be pilloried into a resignation?
A wonderful piece here from Sarah Bell – “Perhaps the answer is simply love?” – rather than falling in love being an awkward “emotional problem”.
A theme here: “What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding“.]
Too true. Now how about explicitly linking this to awareness of natural inclusion, ignorance of which continues to blight human understanding?
Yes, I think we have a convergence of language that is making this easier. Trust me I do (make that link) – just proceeding so as not to frighten the horses. The nature of the natural world *is* to be inclusive – natural inclusion – bingo!