More than a shirt

I don't often talk hot-button topics on here (I prefer safe topics, like books. In the whole of human history, I can’t recall one instance where books have ever caused trouble), but something happened this week which stuck in my craw (yes, I have a craw, it's where I store all my repressed rage).

Dr Matt Taylor, part of the Rosetta mission team, was interviewed wearing a shirt that depicted numerous women wearing decidedly un-numerous clothing. This sparked condemnation of the 'sexist' shirt, followed by a predictable counterlash defending Dr Taylor and his choice of shirt and lamenting the 'oversensitive nature' of (variously): social justice warriors, feminists, offence-seekers, and the brigade of political correctionist fun-ruiners.

I have seen three main points of complaint against shirt-based criticism:

1) The backlash and its effect on Taylor (he later apologised in tears) was excessive and overly harsh

2) The shirt is not a big deal—there are more important things to focus on

3) The shirt is not sexist

1) Was the backlash too harsh?

Probably. This big scary beast we call the 'internet' is capable of many beautiful and terrifying things; it speaks with many voices, which sometimes resolve to the buzzing of a thousand angry flies. I don't like the ‘net mob mentality, but the discussion does not end with the condemnation how the criticism was presented. We can condemn his treatment without dismissing the issues raised. This is no longer about Matt Taylor, nor his shirt.

2) ‘The shirt is not a big deal’

This comment is stupid. Whatever the topic, it always appears. 

'Why are people wasting time talking about the shirt? We just landed a robot on a frickin' asteroid.'

'Why are we wasting money landing on a stupid asteroid? We should spending that money to build robots with famine-blasting lasers.' 

'Why are we wasting money on lasers that can only solve world hunger? We should be trying to stop the thing that really matters—the inevitable heat-death of the universe? Why does no-one care about that?'

It’s an inherently pointless argument that gets thrown up all the time (literally regurgitated like the indigestible garbage that it is). It's reductive. If you concede to that logic, you can dismiss anything on the grounds that there's always a bigger fish in need of frying.

Most of all, it bothers me that people think there are a finite amount of fucks we can give, so we better spend them wisely. If that were true (spoiler warning: it isn't), I’d suggest not wasting any listening to people who offer that opinion (incidentally, the same applies for anyone who unironically uses the term 'social justice warrior' or 'feminazi'). We can hold many discordant ideas about many different things at once. It's one of my favourite things about people. Our concern is not zero-sum.

3) ‘The shirt isn't sexist’

This is the roiling meat at the centre of the issue. Much of the commentary on the topic (particularly in the mainstream media) made little attempt to characterise why the shirt is sexist. Even those taking the stance that it is largely focussed on the implications and wider impact—for example, on women in STEM fields. To be clear: that's really bloody important and relevant, but it’s not what this post is about. For me, that narrative skipped a step, which left some people behind.

The shirt is not sexist because it is sexualised. Sexualised imagery is not inherently sexist (though there are many ways in which it can take a flying leap into 'sexist bullshit' territory). The key factor is context, both in terms of placement and the wider social context.

I have no problem with sexualised imagery in and of itself, but I do take issue with people wearing clothing emblazoned with it. That's not a repressed, prudish, 'seeing sexy things in a public place makes me uncomfortable', prurient reservation; it's because putting sexualised imagery into the position of a slogan or decoration is a reduction. It's turning someone (and that someone is usually a woman) into a talisman, a banner.

Even that I do not see as inherently sexist in an abstract sense. Wearing a t-shirt depicting a favourite actor, singer, politician (male or female) is still a reduction of that person by the same definition, but wouldn’t be called sexist. However, when the focus is placed squarely on a woman’s body above all else, it takes on a different character. 

If we lived in a society with more mature attitudes towards sex and gender—one not so rife with sexism (and many other ‘-isms’) on every level (and it really, really is)—if we were healthier in our attitude towards women's bodies in particular, the act of wearing clothing like this wouldn’t be loaded with such a momentously-fucking-heavy context. But we don't, and it is. Women go through life with their worth constantly evaluated in terms of their appearance. That makes all the difference for how we interpret this. It plays into a wider narrative of sexism.

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Sometimes, reactions can be overzealous or overbearing, but that does not mean that people are simply looking for low-hanging offence fruit so they can feast on its delicious flesh because that's how they feed and grow and incubate their fun-sucking spawn.

We don’t have to condone the way something is expressed to accept the truth behind it. We can totally disagree with the torrent of abuse while accepting that there is a point somewhere in there. We can reach that conclusion on our own, in spite of all the shouting on both sides.

This one thing is not earth-shattering. It’s sadly sidelined a great achievement, but the fact that it has does not magically make the issue cease to exist. It’s not just about the shirt. The shirt is not single-sleevedly widening the gender pay gap or shutting women out of science. It shouldn’t have merited the attention it received, but the tectonic plates of opinion grinding against each other were sufficient to raise an earthquake.

A shirt can’t do that on its own—it’s a thread in a much bigger tapestry.

It’s not just about the shirt.