That thing I have about non-apologies..?

Yesterday I apologized to Sunita for my poorly worded response to a comment in her blog.

I didn’t mean to offend, but my words did cause offense, and so I apologized. Was the apology necessary, once I explained myself a bit better?

Yes, it was.

Because we shouldn’t only apologize for what we mean to say or do.

We should apologize for the harm we cause when we are thoughtless and rash.

And we should never, never, do the asshole “well, it’s not my fault you took offense” thing.

Like, say, Bethany House, publisher of For Such A Time (background through this post)

John Havel, plagiarist for The Hustle, a (long) postscript

First, the niceties: I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one anywhere. You can read what I know (or think I know) about copyright and fair use, as it applies to the United States, here and here, respectively. Based on my understanding of both, I believe that my use of screenshots and quotes in this post, for the purpose of commentary and discussion, as well as to express my opinions, fall squarely under fair use.

Also, I’m using either do-not-link links, or cached pages from the Wayback Machine, because I’m not giving the assholes at The Hustle hits.

Finally, this is very long. No, seriously; it’s insanely long. You’ve been warned.

And now, on to the post. (Please note the update in the body of the post)

More casual misogyny in science

One of the meanings of misogyny is contempt for women.

Not too long ago, I posted something about the ingrained and often invisible misogyny found in science.

As I said in my reply to Lori’s comment over there, we cannot change what we don’t see.

The obvious sexist issue was that an reviewer at a scientific journal would see nothing wrong telling two female PhDs to find a male researcher to validate their study. The second obvious issue would be that nothing was done by the editor of said journal about the first issue, until there was backlash in social media. The invisible issue would be how said (male) editor apologized for the whole thing, by framing is as a ‘sensitive lady feelings’ thing.

That’s contempt.

Nothing to see here…except deeply ingrained sexism

I came across this a few days ago, and I was thinking about what about the editor’s apology bothered me so:

“I want to sincerely apologize for the distress the report caused the authors, and to make clear that we completely oppose the sentiments it expressed,” Pattinson wrote. “The report contained objectionable language, and the authors were understandably upset.”

And then it hit me.