Well, shocks idiots. From the Guardian:
A swath of science fans expressed shock Wednesday upon learning that a popular science Facebook page is run by a woman.
Elise Andrew, an English blogger living in Canada, posted a link promoting her Twitter feed on her I Fucking Love Science Facebook page, which has more than 4.2m fans.
“I got Twitter! I figured it’s about time I started exploring other social media. If you’re on there, can you Tweet me some science people worth following?” Andrew said.
The post provoked an onslaught of comments discussing her gender and looks. “F.ck me! This is a babe ?!!” wrote commenter Can Durace. “holy hell, youre a HOTTIE!” wrote Douglas Pistone Linares.
Lou Forbes said: “you mean you’re a girl, AND you’re beautiful? wow, i just liked science a lil bit more today ^^”
And I just died a little inside. I fucking love science. But I fucking hate people sometimes.
Sigh… why does it matter to these people? P.S.: I assume these are the nicest comments she received- no doubt there are some a lot less happy to learn the person they’ve been following has no y chromosome.
For some reason, I always assumed it *was* a woman behind IFLS. Not sure why, nor does it matter to me at all.
I love that page. I had never really thought about who ran it. If asked, I would have guessed it was a team of people. It doesn’t surprise me that it’s a female, but the law of percentages would be in your favor if guessing it was a man. It’s a simple fact that more males get into the sciences than females. That’s been changing for a while now, but it seems a good chunk of the population hadn’t noticed.
The more disturbing part of it is all the idiots commenting on how “hot” she is. SO freaking pathetic. She IS cute, but what the hell does that have to do with anything? Do that many guys really not get how demeaning that is? *sighs*
I don’t think folks had the same reaction when Mayim Bialik is a PhD-certified neuroscience major, in addition to playing one on The Big Bang Theory. As a guy, I can’t get behind the usual things we’re supposed to be good at, like science and math (hate the latter). Hell, the people who helped me out with science and math in college were women.
Folks should be complementing her Facebook page, not her looks.
Oh, but it is a compliment. That’s the sad thing. Because while obviously women can do stuff like writing and science, the underlying message is that they’re only really important as marriage/reward material for some guy, and the only way to achieve that is through looks.