I Pit Where Liberalism Has Gone

[Memnon]

@iiandyiiii

So you’re saying that I should be insulted by being told that I try and argue for social justice? That’s a bad thing, somehow?

I talk about things on the internet because it’s fun. It has nothing to do with trying to fight for social justice.

I wouldn’t call you an SJW. Despite our disagreements (and despite my…shall we say “intemperate” tone - which was uncalled for and for which I apologise, by the way) I consider you to be a smart and pretty reasonable poster. Defining an SJW is difficult because the criterion isn’t based on ideology so much as behaviour. If you think men get paid more than women for the exact same work, that’s one thing. If you think men get paid more than women for the exact same work and call everyone who disagrees with you a shitlord while tweeting pictures of yourself drinking from a mug with ‘Male Tears’ on it to a #KillAllMen hashtag, you’re probably an SJW. If a conservative commentator is invited to speak at your campus and you decide to write a letter of complaint, or even join a peaceful protest, that’s one thing. If, on the other hand, you blockade the venue, or scream abuse at the audience, or set off the fire alarm, or reserve a seat with the express intention of using the ‘Heckler’s veto’ to shout down the speaker, you’re probably an SJW.

An SJW, in short, is someone who uses their own sensitivity as a weapon, often from behind a keyboard, and always with a vastly inflated sense of their own importance. Is this definition perfect? Probably not, but it’s the one I work with.

@iiandyiiii

Criticism isn’t a “witch-hunt” or “taking a gargantuan shit all over him”. It’s criticism. Sometimes people make mistakes, as Taylor acknowledged that he did. Sometimes people call you out on it. It’s not the end of the world; it didn’t end Taylor’s career. It’s just criticism. Good for Taylor for handling criticism well and in a straight forward way and trying to improve himself. This had a good outcome.

Yeah, but there’s criticism and then there’s criticism, isn’t there? Rose Eveleth, the Atlantic journalist who arguably started #Shirtstorm, tweeted “Thanks for ruining the cool comet landing for me, asshole”. That was her opening salvo, and it went out to each of her 13,000 followers. I ask you, in all honesty, do you really think that qualifies as constructive criticism? Yeah, she later thanked Taylor for his apology, but only after she found herself on the receiving end of a massive backlash, and at no point did she apologise for calling him an asshole.

And furthermore, Taylor didn’t handle the criticism well. He broke down in tears. Also, I disagree that this had a good outcome. #ShirtStorm overshadowed the comet landing, a feat which, when you consider the amount of hard work and ingenuity it took, qualifies as one of the most amazing technological accomplishments of our generation. The end result was that the story became about Taylor, not his achievement and not the contributions of his team, many of whom were women. Could you name - without googling - any of the women who worked on the project? I couldn’t. I never got the chance to hear their names because any talk of their contributions was drowned out by the sound of an army of SJWs screaming about Taylor’s shirt. So yeah, I consider this an all-round PR fail for absolutely everyone involved.

@iiandyiiii

I imagine Taylor is much stronger and more capable than you give him credit for.

Well, neither of us know him so we can’t really say one way or the other. He’s clearly a very sensitive guy, and the fact that he couldn’t finish his apology without crying would seem to indicate he was probably overwhelmed by all the negative attention. He may very well still be upset about it all.

@iiandyiiii

A lot of people wouldn’t apologize – they’d dig in and double down and swear that they’re going to wear a t-shirt with naked girls and swastikas and rape porn next time.

I wouldn’t have apologised. The thing about SJWs is they tend to have quite short attention spans. If their targets don’t buckle within a few days, they usually move on to someone else. If my bosses made me apologise, I’d have done it wearing a shirt covered in pictures of Afghan women in Burkhas. I imagine the silence from the regressive left would have been positively deafening. Then again, I’m kind of an asshole so they probably wouldn’t let me in front of a camera in the first place.

@iiandyiiii

Good god, you’d think that saying “hey, I think that shirt you’re wearing/that thing you said is problematic” is like setting their house on fire!

If they’d actually said “Hey, I think that shirt you’re wearing is problematic” (and, maybe, if they’d given him a day or so to enjoy his remarkable achievement first) then I don’t think anyone would have had a problem. Instead, they said things like “Thanks for ruining the cool comet landing for me, asshole” and “Would it have been that hard to wear a normal shirt? I’m perfectly ok with geek humour but seriously, fuck you douchebag”. I don’t think I’m being uncharitable when I say that such statements are far closer to being castigations than criticisms. This is the kind of thing I mean when I talk about weaponised sensitivity.

@iiandyiiii

Examples of what? Internet assholery? That has nothing to do with liberalism – it’s present everywhere. I’m sure there were some assholes who said assholish things. But there were also lots of reasonable and thoughtful criticism – that’s the part that’s liberal and progressive. And that’s what lead to Taylor’s apology, and good for him.

But I don’t have a problem with the reasonable and thoughtful criticism. Personally, I didn’t see very much of that, but reasonable and thoughtful criticism is, almost by definition, always welcome. I’m not saying it was impossible to criticise Taylor’s shirt. I’m saying that the way many people chose to do it was tantamount to bullying. SJWs, by definition, aren’t reasonable or thoughtful, and I’m willing to bet that their bullying was responsible, if not necessarily the apology itself, then for at least the obvious mental stress Taylor suffered while issuing it.

@Trinopus

Women earn less than men for working just as hard, and for performing very similar work. And, contrary to your beliefs, in some cases they get paid less for exactly the same work.

Three objections:

1. As this article shows, once you correct for choice of major, choice of career, maternity leave, propensity to work overtime, and a host of other factors, the gender pay gap all but disappears. It certainly isn’t 78 cents on the dollar.

2. If a woman is really being paid less than a man for the exact same work, she should sue. That kind of wage discrimination is illegal, after all.

3. If it really were true that employers could get away with paying women 78 cents on the dollar for the exact same work as men, why do employers even hire men at all? Why would they impose what is, effectively, a 22% tax on themselves in return for no tangible benefit?

@JRagon

SJW was, perhaps, a meaningful term some time ago, but a couple years ago (around Gamergate, I estimate) it started to become a shorthand for “somebody who disagrees with me.” It has little to do with the sorts of angry liberal people on twitter who would intentionally doxx and harass people, and instead any internet personality espousing a vaguely liberal viewpoint gets accused of being an “SJW”.

While it was arguably a useful term to describe the political mirror of the nastier parts of the MRA and alt-right communities, it has degraded into a blanket slur largely due to overuse by those groups. Like it or not, if you keep using it, people are going to keep lumping you in with them.

I can accept that, at least to a certain extent. Can you accept that SJWs have done the same thing with words that actually matter? Words like ‘Bigot’, ‘Racist’, ‘Misogynist’, and ‘Homophobe’? These people don’t think they’ve had a good day unless they’ve defined all of them downwards at least twice. And unlike ‘SJW’, words like ‘racist’ and ‘misogynist’ are words that society actually needs, and these idiots have basically neutered them through incessant overuse, to the benefit of actual racists everywhere. That’s why no-one gives a shit when they see Donald Trump being called racist or sexist. SJWs throw those words around like confetti. No-one cares anymore. This is one of the reasons I blame SJWs for the rise of the alt-right. People have lost patience with this endless procession of spurious charges of racism and sexism, and some of these people have decided that it’s just far more fun to needle SJWs with hashtags and Rare Pepes than to sort the real racists from the manufactured ones.

@Merneith

You’ve missed the point of the criticism of that shirt. The point was - the dude had spent eleven years spearheading a project to broaden the intellectual horizons of mankind and he chose that exact moment of his achievement to wear shirt with pinup women all over.

Yes, as a favour to a female friend. The grand irony in all this is that he was trying to help a woman. He was trying to promote her business, at her request. He probably thought he was being nice. Now, is this a bit clueless? Sure. Is it so clueless that it justified making his shirt the focus of the conversation and overshadowing his amazing achievement? Hell no!

It’s also worth noting that the contributions of all the women on Taylor’s team were similarly overshadowed by the “controversy”. It occurs to me that if the SJWs were so concerned about inclusivity in science, they could have channeled their efforts into publicising the achievements of the women on the team. Instead, they decided to do what they always do and go after the easy target and pile on until he crumbled, to the detriment of absolutely everyone involved.

@Little Nemo

@Me

Ten thousand more examples available on request.

Okay, I’m requesting it. Show me your cites.

I’m happy to provide them, but before I do so I feel I must ask, is this really what you want?

[Chimera]

@Der_Trihs

Correct; they need to regard women with fear. He made the mistake of treating women as if they weren’t enemies, the way his critics demand that men treat women and that women treat each other. He had a female friend, did something for her instead of treating her as threat, and was punished for it.

Your world must be terrifying.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Chimera

Your world must be terrifying.

I vote we forget about the OP - he’s useless and boring, anyway - and make this into a classic Der Trihs pitting.

[Pantastic]

@DerekMichaels00

that being skeptical of transgender ideology is as bad as being a homophobe, and so on. I’ve been told that because I am skeptical of transgenderism, I’m as morally bad as people who physically attack transgendered people.

What exactly is the ‘transgender ideology’ you refer to, and how are you ‘skeptical’ of it? The main ‘transgender ideology’ that I’m aware of is ‘use the correct pronouns and let us go about our lives without being threatened’, so if you’re skeptical’ of that you’re a pretty awful person. What do you think you’re being skeptical of when you’re talking about ‘transgenderism’, are you asserting that a well-documented and researched medical phenomenon doesn’t exist just because it seems kind of weird to you? Yeah, there’s nothing redeeming in that either, and the ‘it’s just a man in a dress’ attitude does lead directly to physical attacks in the real world.

[Evil_Economist]

@Memnon

An SJW, in short, is someone who uses their own sensitivity as a weapon, often from behind a keyboard, and always with a vastly inflated sense of their own importance. Is this definition perfect? Probably not, but it’s the one I work with.

You seem sensitive about the behavior of SJWs, and you criticize them from behind your keyboard. Do you think that to a third party you would be in any way distinguishable from them?

If my bosses made me apologise, I’d have done it wearing a shirt covered in pictures of Afghan women in Burkhas.

Careful with that edge, brave internet warrior.

[ZPG_Zealot]

@Memnon

I wouldn’t call you an SJW. Despite our disagreements (and despite my…shall we say “intemperate” tone - which was uncalled for and for which I apologise, by the way) I consider you to be a smart and pretty reasonable poster. Defining an SJW is difficult because the criterion isn’t based on ideology so much as behaviour. If you think men get paid more than women for the exact same work, that’s one thing. If you think men get paid more than women for the exact same work and call everyone who disagrees with you a shitlord while tweeting pictures of yourself drinking from a mug with ‘Male Tears’ on it to a #KillAllMen hashtag, you’re probably an SJW. If a conservative commentator is invited to speak at your campus and you decide to write a letter of complaint, or even join a peaceful protest, that’s one thing. If, on the other hand, you blockade the venue, or scream abuse at the audience, or set off the fire alarm, or reserve a seat with the express intention of using the ‘Heckler’s veto’ to shout down the speaker, you’re probably an SJW.

An SJW, in short, is someone who uses their own sensitivity as a weapon, often from behind a keyboard, and always with a vastly inflated sense of their own importance. Is this definition perfect? Probably not, but it’s the one I work with.

Yeah, but there’s criticism and then there’s criticism, isn’t there? Rose Eveleth, the Atlantic journalist who arguably started #Shirtstorm, tweeted “Thanks for ruining the cool comet landing for me, asshole”. That was her opening salvo, and it went out to each of her 13,000 followers. I ask you, in all honesty, do you really think that qualifies as constructive criticism? Yeah, she later thanked Taylor for his apology, but only after she found herself on the receiving end of a massive backlash, and at no point did she apologise for calling him an asshole.

And furthermore, Taylor didn’t handle the criticism well. He broke down in tears. Also, I disagree that this had a good outcome. #ShirtStorm overshadowed the comet landing, a feat which, when you consider the amount of hard work and ingenuity it took, qualifies as one of the most amazing technological accomplishments of our generation. The end result was that the story became about Taylor, not his achievement and not the contributions of his team, many of whom were women. Could you name - without googling - any of the women who worked on the project? I couldn’t. I never got the chance to hear their names because any talk of their contributions was drowned out by the sound of an army of SJWs screaming about Taylor’s shirt. So yeah, I consider this an all-round PR fail for absolutely everyone involved.

Well, neither of us know him so we can’t really say one way or the other. He’s clearly a very sensitive guy, and the fact that he couldn’t finish his apology without crying would seem to indicate he was probably overwhelmed by all the negative attention. He may very well still be upset about it all.

I wouldn’t have apologised. The thing about SJWs is they tend to have quite short attention spans. If their targets don’t buckle within a few days, they usually move on to someone else. If my bosses made me apologise, I’d have done it wearing a shirt covered in pictures of Afghan women in Burkhas. I imagine the silence from the regressive left would have been positively deafening. Then again, I’m kind of an asshole so they probably wouldn’t let me in front of a camera in the first place.

If they’d actually said “Hey, I think that shirt you’re wearing is problematic” (and, maybe, if they’d given him a day or so to enjoy his remarkable achievement first) then I don’t think anyone would have had a problem. Instead, they said things like “Thanks for ruining the cool comet landing for me, asshole” and “Would it have been that hard to wear a normal shirt? I’m perfectly ok with geek humour but seriously, fuck you douchebag”. I don’t think I’m being uncharitable when I say that such statements are far closer to being castigations than criticisms. This is the kind of thing I mean when I talk about weaponised sensitivity.

But I don’t have a problem with the reasonable and thoughtful criticism. Personally, I didn’t see very much of that, but reasonable and thoughtful criticism is, almost by definition, always welcome. I’m not saying it was impossible to criticise Taylor’s shirt. I’m saying that the way many people chose to do it was tantamount to bullying. SJWs, by definition, aren’t reasonable or thoughtful, and I’m willing to bet that their bullying was responsible, if not necessarily the apology itself, then for at least the obvious mental stress Taylor suffered while issuing it.

Three objections:

1. As this article shows, once you correct for choice of major, choice of career, maternity leave, propensity to work overtime, and a host of other factors, the gender pay gap all but disappears. It certainly isn’t 78 cents on the dollar.

2. If a woman is really being paid less than a man for the exact same work, she should sue. That kind of wage discrimination is illegal, after all.

3. If it really were true that employers could get away with paying women 78 cents on the dollar for the exact same work as men, why do employers even hire men at all? Why would they impose what is, effectively, a 22% tax on themselves in return for no tangible benefit?

I can accept that, at least to a certain extent. Can you accept that SJWs have done the same thing with words that actually matter? Words like ‘Bigot’, ‘Racist’, ‘Misogynist’, and ‘Homophobe’? These people don’t think they’ve had a good day unless they’ve defined all of them downwards at least twice. And unlike ‘SJW’, words like ‘racist’ and ‘misogynist’ are words that society actually needs, and these idiots have basically neutered them through incessant overuse, to the benefit of actual racists everywhere. That’s why no-one gives a shit when they see Donald Trump being called racist or sexist. SJWs throw those words around like confetti. No-one cares anymore. This is one of the reasons I blame SJWs for the rise of the alt-right. People have lost patience with this endless procession of spurious charges of racism and sexism, and some of these people have decided that it’s just far more fun to needle SJWs with hashtags and Rare Pepes than to sort the real racists from the manufactured ones.

Yes, as a favour to a female friend. The grand irony in all this is that he was trying to help a woman. He was trying to promote her business, at her request. He probably thought he was being nice. Now, is this a bit clueless? Sure. Is it so clueless that it justified making his shirt the focus of the conversation and overshadowing his amazing achievement? Hell no!

It’s also worth noting that the contributions of all the women on Taylor’s team were similarly overshadowed by the “controversy”. It occurs to me that if the SJWs were so concerned about inclusivity in science, they could have channeled their efforts into publicising the achievements of the women on the team. Instead, they decided to do what they always do and go after the easy target and pile on until he crumbled, to the detriment of absolutely everyone involved.

I’m happy to provide them, but before I do so I feel I must ask, is this really what you want?

The thing you seem to be ignoring is that all of this giant clusterfuck would have been avoided if Taylor had used a small amount of common sense and said, “I would love to help your business, but that shirt would be inappropriate for me to wear on a televised interview.” No one smart enough to do what he and his team did could conceivably imagine that shirt was acceptable for a serious interview (I am of course presuming Taylor wished to be taken seriously as a scientist and not as an over-the-hill fraternity boy). Any trouble that resulted, and the fact that the controversy overshadowed the accomplishment, you can lay completely at the feet of the T-shirt wearer, not the people who were offended.

[Larry_Borgia]

Matt Taylor is a decent smart guy who made a dumb sartorial gaffe. When called on it he apologized. As far as I can tell from google he is still employed and happily married. He has gotten over it. The people who called him out have gotten over it. I suggest everyone in this sorry thread get over it as well. It’s a God damn three day weekend. Go out and have fun.

[ZPG_Zealot]

@Larry_Borgia

Matt Taylor is a decent smart guy who made a dumb sartorial gaffe. When called on it he apologized. As far as I can tell from google he is still employed and happily married. He has gotten over it. The people who called him out have gotten over it. I suggest everyone in this sorry thread get over it as well. It’s a God damn three day weekend. Go out and have fun.

Only for those of us lucky enough to be somewhere Columbus Day is still a day off.

[Larry_Borgia]

@ZPG_Zealot

Only for those of us lucky enough to be somewhere Columbus Day is still a day off.

Good point. Well enjoy the weekend you have then, whether two or three days. BTW, my post wasn’t directed at your post directly above mine, ZPG, it wasn’t there when I posted.

[Memnon]

@Evil_Economist

You seem sensitive about the behavior of SJWs, and you criticize them from behind your keyboard. Do you think that to a third party you would be in any way distinguishable from them?

Well, I’m not calling you a shitlord, or accusing you of dismissing my lived experience and making me feel unsafe so…yeah. I reckon anyone who has had any dealings with genuine SJWs would easily be able to tell the difference between my behaviour and theirs. For one thing, I’m actually putting forward arguments, flawed as you may consider them to be. SJWs generally tend to treat requests to defend their positions as little more than the unjust imposition of emotional labour, dismiss you as “part of the problem” and tell you to fuck off and take your white/male/cis/het tears with you. I’m not doing any of that.

Careful with that edge, brave internet warrior.

I’m right though, aren’t I? They wouldn’t have a clue what to do. It’d be like putting a chicken in a hall of mirrors.

[TBG]

@DerekMichaels00

What has happened?

Give an idiot an inch, they’ll call you a racist/sexist/whateverist because the evil straight white patriarchy didn’t give them a light year.

[Human_Action]

@Memnon

I’m right though, aren’t I? They wouldn’t have a clue what to do. It’d be like putting a chicken in a hall of mirrors.

Point out the false dichotomy of portraying women as either fetish pinup dolls, or oppressed & in burkas?

[ZPG_Zealot]

@Larry_Borgia

Good point. Well enjoy the weekend you have then, whether two or three days. BTW, my post wasn’t directed at your post directly above mine, ZPG, it wasn’t there when I posted.

I knew that. I’m just envious of those who work where Columbus Day is still a paid day off.

[marshmallow]

I don’t associate this sort of campus and online activism with liberalism per se, which is a vanilla managerial corporatism as practiced by the likes of the Clintons or Obama. I tend to think of it as millennial progressivism, since most of the grassroots rank and file are fairly young. Calling them SJWs doesn’t work well because that’s a shibboleth of the right, and those on the right are proud SJWs themselves. Regressive left doesn’t work because it’s backwards. It’s what hawks call the peaceful left who don’t want to bomb Muslims. From what I’ve seen socialists don’t like this trend either, associating many of its more flippant concerns with the over privileged bourgeois.

@Pantastic

What exactly is the ‘transgender ideology’ you refer to, and how are you ‘skeptical’ of it? The main ‘transgender ideology’ that I’m aware of is ‘use the correct pronouns and let us go about our lives without being threatened’, so if you’re skeptical’ of that you’re a pretty awful person.

I can’t speak for DerekMichaels00, but one could agree with the latter while remaining skeptical of the former. Such ideology could, depending on the community, include beliefs such as: non-gender conforming children should undergo reassignment surgery or hormone replacement; male and female are identities found in the brain (“ladybrain”); the Western concept of femininity is real and valuable instead of an act of oppression; that there is such a thing as a female penis; that women talking about their vaginas, periods, or reproductive health are transphobic or exclusionary; or that trans-women should compete against women in sports or lead women’s political movements despite growing up and being socialized as male.

[Memnon]

@Human_Action

Point out the false dichotomy of portraying women as either fetish pinup dolls, or oppressed & in burkas?

Well, my original point about Taylor was that SJWs are all too happy to jump on a guy for wearing the wrong shirt for five minutes on TV, but when you bring up the topic of niqabs and burkhas - garments which, make no mistake, are explicitly patriarchal attempts to equate piety with the total invisibility of women - they often have surprisingly little to say. Indeed, they’re more likely to attack people who criticise those garments as bigots and Islamophobes. It’s my sneaking suspicion that if Matt Taylor’s press address had instead been delivered by a woman in a niqab, the same SJWs who pilloried Taylor wouldn’t have made a peep despite the fact that, by whatever metric you wish to use, niqabs and burkhas are, by design, infinitely more misogynistic than anything Taylor could have worn. I admit, that’s just a suspicion on my part, and it could well be unfair, but my personal dealings with SJWs point very strongly toward that conclusion.

[ZPG_Zealot]

@Human_Action

Point out the false dichotomy of portraying women as either fetish pinup dolls, or oppressed & in burkas?

Report him to the NSA as a possible Taliban/ISIS sympathizer, possibly, or simply give him the cold shoulder and move him into the suspicious category of male co-workers from that point on for being immature and sexist.

[ZPG_Zealot]

@Memnon

Well, my original point about Taylor was that SJWs are all too happy to jump on a guy for wearing the wrong shirt for five minutes on TV, but when you bring up the topic of niqabs and burkhas - garments which, make no mistake, are explicitly patriarchal attempts to equate piety with the total invisibility of women - they often have surprisingly little to say.

That’s more of a meme put out by right-wing commenters. Prior to 9/11, the only people concerned about the oppression of women in Islam were on the left. The conservatives in the West acted like they approved. It was only with 9/11 and the War on Terror that the right suddenly became interested with the fate of women in Islamic majority countries as a way of further demonizing Islam while ignoring how their (conservative Western) treatment of women only differed by degrees.

[PAjoe]

@ZPG_Zealot

Only for those of us lucky enough to be somewhere Columbus Day is still a day off.

You mean Hitler day?

[Human_Action]

@Memnon

Well, my original point about Taylor was that SJWs are all too happy to jump on a guy for wearing the wrong shirt for five minutes on TV, but when you bring up the topic of niqabs and burkhas - garments which, make no mistake, are explicitly patriarchal attempts to equate piety with the total invisibility of women - they often have surprisingly little to say. Indeed, they’re more likely to attack people who criticise those garments as bigots and Islamophobes. It’s my sneaking suspicion that if Matt Taylor’s press address had instead been delivered by a woman in a niqab, the same SJWs who pilloried Taylor wouldn’t have made a peep despite the fact that, by whatever metric you wish to use, niqabs and burkhas are, by design, infinitely more misogynistic than anything Taylor could have worn. I admit, that’s just a suspicion on my part, and it could well be unfair, but my personal dealings with SJWs point very strongly toward that conclusion.

That hasn’t been my experience with interacting with progressives; using the existence of the niqab and burkha in some cultures as a weapon to attack all Muslims or to justify discrimination against Muslims is frowned upon, but criticism of sexism in any given culture isn’t. The ratio of honest criticism to Islamophobia is about 1:5 in my experience, though, sadly enough.

I’m not disputing your experiences, just saying they aren’t universal.

Also, the niqab/burkha and crap like Taylor’s shirt aren’t that far apart, philosophically; both reduce women to the status of sex objects instead of people.

[k9bfriender]

@Memnon

Well, my original point about Taylor was that SJWs are all too happy to jump on a guy for wearing the wrong shirt for five minutes on TV, but when you bring up the topic of niqabs and burkhas - garments which, make no mistake, are explicitly patriarchal attempts to equate piety with the total invisibility of women - they often have surprisingly little to say. Indeed, they’re more likely to attack people who criticise those garments as bigots and Islamophobes. It’s my sneaking suspicion that if Matt Taylor’s press address had instead been delivered by a woman in a niqab, the same SJWs who pilloried Taylor wouldn’t have made a peep despite the fact that, by whatever metric you wish to use, niqabs and burkhas are, by design, infinitely more misogynistic than anything Taylor could have worn. I admit, that’s just a suspicion on my part, and it could well be unfair, but my personal dealings with SJWs point very strongly toward that conclusion.

If a woman wears a burka or other covering because she is required to do it by her community, her husband, or her father, then that is oppressive and misogynistic.

If a woman wears a burka because she feel comfortable in it, then that is her right. If a female scientist had given her interview wearing such a covering, you are right, most on the left would consider it to be her right. Some would have questioned whether she was pressured into wearing it, and if so, then maybe taken that up as a cause, but that still would not be attacking her, but instead, the patriarchal elements in her community that you are complaining about.

Do you consider any woman not walking down the street wearing a string bikini or less to be oppressed? Some women don’t want you to be looking at them. If a woman is not comfortable exposing as much skin and curve as we take for granted in this western world of ours, why is it your right to demand that they wear less than they wish to?

So yeah, if you went on to make an apology wearing a shirt with burkas on it, as your boss, I’d say, “Yeah, never mind on that apology, I’ll take care of that. You need to concentrate on cleaning out your desk. Security will be by briefly to escort you.”

Fortunately, this man being a Noble Laureate, while displaying some bad judgement momentarily, is not a complete flaming moron that would even consider such a ridiculous action.