"Let me tell you about my trouble with girls ... three things happen when they are in the lab ... You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry." So said Nobel prize-winning scientist Tim Hunt to a room full of female science journalists at a conference in South Korea.
Aside from sounding like the opening of a bildungsroman narrated by a Holden Caulfield-style protagonist, the first eight words of that sentence are all you need to wrap your head around Hunt's sexism. Firstly is his reference to the women he works with as "girls". Referring to the opposite sex as boys or girls when everyone involved in that conversation is an adult immediately makes the conversation one about crushes, flirting, juvenile single-gender cliques, playground games. There's nothing inherently wrong with this language, but calling all of the women you work with "girls" is illuminating as to the context you consider them in.
The second thing Hunt reveals about himself in that short phrase is that he doesn't see it as a problem that this is very much his problem. He calls it "my trouble", yet seems perfectly happy to project the blame onto women. His other trouble is that he presumes everyone will sympathise with him, and see him as the victim. Sorry, Tim, but that's not going to happen.
The idea that science laboratories should be segregated because a male scientist finds working around women too distracting is the same kind of logic that leads to people insisting other people should cover themselves up so that they don't have impure thoughts about them. Hunt is not the first man, nor will he be the last, to be arrogant enough to suggest that others should bend and move and shape themselves around him, while he himself remains unmoved, unchanged. This all comes down to people taking responsibility for their own feelings of desire instead of projecting their guilt, or confusion, or anger over them onto someone else.
Hunt later (sort of) apologised for his words on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme. "I did mean the part about having trouble with girls. I mean, it is true that I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it's very disruptive to the science because it's terribly important that in the lab, people are on a level playing field and I found that these emotional entanglements made things really, really difficult."
Before I continue, a sidenote: workplace romances aren't only for heterosexuals -- something that seems to have completely slipped Hunt's mind.
His apology went on: "I mean I'm really really sorry that I caused any offence. That's awful. I just meant to be honest actually. What was intended as an ironic, lighthearted comment was apparently interpreted deadly seriously by my audience, but what I said was quite accurately reported."
Connie St Louis, who attended the talk, told the Today Programme that Hunt continued for six or seven minutes -- his diatribe getting increasingly offensive as the audience remained stony faced; they clearly were not appreciating the joke, but that did not sway him from his course. "He just carried on digging this hole. After he'd finished there was just deathly, deathly silence. A lot of my colleagues sat down and were taking notes because they couldn't believe in this day and age that someone would be prepared to be so crass, so rude in a different culture and to be so openly sexist as well."
So what are we to make of Hunt's apology? St Louis is adamant in her belief that Hunt wasn't joking and it seems those elsewhere are also sceptical about the "lighthearted" nature of his comments. "I did grad work in the institute where Hunt ran a lab. Tip of the fucking iceberg," tweeted science writer, Ed Yong.
The reason that it matters -- really matters -- whether we believe Hunt, and whether we know what he thinks about women, is because he is in a position of immense power. Nobel-prize winning scientists sit on panels and selection committees that decide who should receive funding. Hunt sits on the committee for choosing the winners of the Shaw Prize and many other panels. If he really is, as he says himself, something of a chauvinist, his self-confessed biases should probably rule him out of any such decision-making processes. The real question at play here is not whether women should be allowed into the lab, but whether Hunt should be let out of it.
Hunt's UCL colleague Jennifer Rohn described feeling "very disappointed" by Hunt's comments. "As a Nobel laureate, I know he's a human being, but he does have some sort of responsibility as a role model and an ambassador for the profession," she told the Today programme.
Rohn also pointed out that his comments will likely lead to young female scientists feeling disenchanted and fretting about much of the hidden and "unconscious bias" that exists within the sciences. "People will interpret his comments as having a kernel of truth underneath and it doesn't help that a few men in that generation do hold these attitudes."
Sexism slips out occasionally through the loose lips of the misguided, or the arrogant, or the unfortunate, and the response can seem disproportionate -- but it is justifiable in the context of the bigger picture. When last month female scientists took to Twitter with pictures of their scientific instruments in response to a comment by a male scientist about scientists all being "boys with toys", it was as much to do with taking a stand against the more subtle sexism, the unconscious sexism they face in their careers as that particular incident.
Prejudice that bubbles under the surface is even more disturbing than Hunt's comments. At least now we know; at least with him we can be sure where we stand. We also know where to make him stand: far away from women and any positions in which he has a say about their futures.
WIRED.co.uk has contacted Tim Hunt for comment and will update this article if we hear back.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
