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.'Fem inism & astrophysics

G er tru d e Stein once remarked that it is im-

portan t to know how far to go in going too

far. It is curious that certain radical femi-

niststhat is, th e relentlessly vindictive so-

rority w hich, 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 ha t makes it curious,o f course, is tha t 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.

Cant you hear the pulpit tones wa fting up

from those phrases? And yet when Stein got

around to dispensing a practical, reallife ad-

mo nition, they completely ignore her. They

neverknow how far to go in going to o far.

W h a t prompts these uncharitable thoughts

is the saga, much in the news as we write, o f

Dr. Matt Taylor. Taylor is the fortysomething

Britishborn astrophysicist who is projec t 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, ou t o f hibernation. Th at suc-

cess prompted the exuberant rocket scientist

to have a tattoo of Rosetta and Philae, its

landing probe, inscribed upon his leg. Last

month , the Rosetta team engineered an even

greater triumph. After guiding Rosetta on a

journey o f some four billionmiles, they were

in (virtual) sight o f their holy grail, comet

67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko. The cometat

2.8 miles long, a veritable flyspeck in the real

estate o f outer spacewas hurtling thro ugh

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 mother ship, remotely guide it towards

Mr. 67P/CG, and land the probe on the speeding comet.This was the first time in history,

as the British politician Boris Johnson put it,

that a representative of 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. Butit soon became evident that he was stirred no t

by feelings o f relief and triumph but of morti-

fication. Choking back tears, he leaned forward

towards the microphone andapologized.

Apologized. Why? Because The Atlantics

tech writer Rose Eveleth and an angry horde

o f feminists didnt like wha t he was wearing

when he first broke the news o f the landing.

Yes, thats right: they didnt like his shirt,

so they mounted a social media attack on

the hapless scientist. Quoth Eveleth: No

no women are toooootally welcome in our

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community, just ask the dude in this shirt.

Oth er hysterics on the distaff side followed

suit, as did New Yorker blogger James Di-

Gioia who sniffed: Technology advances

while society remains decidedly retrograde.

T h e com mentator Glenn Reynolds got to the

nub of the matter when, writing in USA Today,

he no ted that some feminists took one of the

great achievements o f human history . . . and

made it all abo ut the clothes. It was, Reyn

olds continued, one small shirt for a man,

one giant leap backward for womankind.

S o what abou t that shirt? What was so of

fensive? You can easily find pictures of Dr.

Taylor in his shirt on the internet. Its a

brightly colored Hawaiian-style number fes

tooned w ith 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 of a 1950s Sci-Fi adventure story: Out of

This World, Space Detective, and lets no t forgetAttack o f the so-ft Woman. Do you find

such things offensive? We dont. Theyre not

lewd. Merely, well, nerdy. Such vivid gar

ments may or may not be to your tastethey

are not to oursbut then tattoos of space

ships may or m ay not be to you r taste either.

A s k yourself this: Was this shirt as insult

ing as heaping pseudo-moral obloquy upon agreat scientist in his ho ur o f triumph because

you happen to disapprove, or at least you

pre tend to disapprove , o f images of girls on

his shirt? We agree with Mr. Johnson, who

had this to say in his column for the Daily

Telegraph-. I think his critics should go to

the Na tional Gallery and look at theRokeby

Venusby Velazquez. O r look at the stu ff by

Rubens. Are we saying that these glorious im

ages should be torn from the walls? Or to rn

just from the chests o f brilliant scientists who

indulge in a bit o f whimsy when it comes to

the ir haberdashery? W ha t are we all, John

son asked, a bunch o f Islamist maniacs who

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 tha t no one dares.

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

tempted to dismiss it as a freakish exception

and move on. But, as many victims of political

correctness of ou r college campuses know to

their sorrow, it is anything but innocent. Dr.

Taylors humiliation , as Mr. Johnson noted,

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 of abuse. He was bombarded

across the internet with a hurtling dust-

cloud of hate, orchestrated by lobby groups

and politically correct media organisations.

T he whole episode stinks of rancid politically

correct animus. C ritics who have described

the event as political correctness gone mad

are not wrong. But it is worth noting that

the case of Dr. Taylor is by no means the only

such outrage. O n the contrary, the com mis

sars of political correctness have been em

bo ldened over the last couple of decades asthey have succeeded in one case after anothe r

in using race or sex to bully their opponents

into subm ission. Cast you r mind back to the

episode o f Larry Summers. In 2005, Sum

mers, then the President of Harvard Uni

versity, fresh from locking horns with one

of academias most prominent charlatans

and race-baiters, Cornel West, found himself

speaking at a conference atm i t on Diversify

ing the Science & Engineering Workforce.

Summers speculated on why there are not

mo re wo men scientists at elite universities.

He touched on several possibilities: maybe

patterns o f discrimination had something

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to do w ith it. Maybe most women preferred

to p u t their families before their careers. O r

maybe, as Summers asserted in an attempt

to be provocative and to ignite a more

open discussion about underrepresenta-tion, it had something to do with differ-

ent availability of aptitude at the h igh end.

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

felt I was going to be sick, wailed Nancy Hop-

kins, a professor of biology at the Massachu-

setts Institute of Technology, who then walked

ou t on Summers. My heart was pounding and

my breath was shallow, Hopkins trembled.

I was extremely upset. Whatever happened

to strong women? What would Margaret

Thatcher have done?

That bo ut o f hysteria did for Larry Sum -

mers, who was shortly thereafter ignomini

ously 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 o thercertified feminist icons to prance around in

pornographic splendor when men are expected

to behave with Mrs. Grundyesque rectitude?

And why is the former empow ering while

any deviation from die latter is sexist? Why

is it that these selfappointed moral guardians

and professional feminists are always looking

for a whipping post? Why dont they just get

on with their work: dosomething to command

admiration rather than screaming murder atevery unsanctioned statement? Look just

beyond Americas horizonsthere one can

surely find women who deserve the defense

of an angry horde. Ho w about the women

in Egypt, for example, where more than

90 percent over age fifteen are subjected to

the barbaric practice of genital mutilation?

T h e case of Dr. Taylors shirt may seem like

little more than a bad joke. In fact, it is some-

thing more sinister. It is a vivid example ofwhat

happens when a selfenfranchised politically

correct cadre sets about quashing freedom and

eccentricity in tire name o f an alwaysevolving

sensitivity. The goal, as one wag put it, is a

testosteronefree society in which everything

tha t is no t mandatory is prohibited. W hich iswhy the Rose Eveleths and Nancy Hopkinses

o f the wo rld are victimizers, not victims, and

their b rand o f feminism is an atavistic, tribal

ideology as harmful to wom en as it is to men.

The New Criterion on art

F o r m ore than a decade, we have devoted a

large portion of 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 Ed itor James Panero on a wide variety of

subjects, from the cutouts 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 of 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 of

responsible selfgovernance. Readers alarmed

by the skyrocketing cost of visiting many m u-

seums today will be interested in the cold eye

Daniel Grant casts upon that unedifying phe-

nom enon, 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 Gehrysproposed travesty for a monumen t honoring

Dwight D. Eisenhower in Washington, D.C.

We are pleased once again to be able to bring

such a cornucopia of incisive reflections on art

to our readers. In years gone by, this special

section was made possible by support from

some o f our coconspirators, including the late

Helen Frankenthaler, a dear friend o fThe 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 CriterionDecember2014 3