Everyone, I’m elated to tell you that Tumblr will be joining Yahoo.
Before touching on how awesome this is, let me try to allay any concerns: We’re not turning purple. Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission – to empower creators to…
rifa:
i hate it when
there’s like a feeling in your gut that something is very wrong and the feeling is so strong that it makes you feel physically ill but the problem is that there’s actually nothing wrong so you don’t know what to do
and the feeling just doesn’t go away
OH MY GOD OTHER PEOPLE GET THIS
what if you have a soul mate and thats what happens
when theyre in trouble
omg I seriously thought this was just me
How the fuck does Bill Nye expect this to happen? What do you want to do, force women to enroll in science courses, regardless of whether or not they want to do it? Just for the sake of having “enough” women? Why the fuck do these fractions matter so much? It’s not like people are holding guns to our head and threatening to kill us if we become interested in science.
Maybe, just maybe, a lot of us DON’T FUCKING WANT to be scientists. Is that a crime?
Hi there, princess-munchkin. Female engineering student here.
Bill Nye is not saying that you HAVE to be a scientist, and you are right that no one is holding a gun to my head because I am interested in science, but let me tell you some of the struggles of being a woman in the STEM fields.
1) Because I am a woman, I am not expected these fields. I first fully realized this when I was in high school, on my robotics team. See, although my robotics team was about 50% female, most of the women were part of the “business administration” side of things: finance, marketting, PR, membership, etc. Was this a problem? Absolutely not. But I was there to be an engineer, and specifically, to be the robot programmer. This was met with a lot of hesitation at first from some of the other students (all of whom happened to be male. This is not necessarily a bad thing.) You see, all of the robot programmers before me were guys. Computer programming is just a thing that guys do, or so they thought. Even after I had proved myself to the mentors on the team, many of the students still underestimated my abilities. There were rumors going around that I wouldn’t have been able to program the robot at all if the lead software mentor wasn’t there to help me. This was just flat-out false, but it wasn’t until I won an award for the team that the other students actually saw my merit.
2) There is not a lot of encouragement for women to go into these fields. I first noticed this when I was in elementary school. I was always interested in math, science, you name it, but many of my teachers and family members pushed that to the side for a long time. When I asked for legos for christmas, I would get ballet slippers. In fact, for a long time, I was training to be a professional dancer. I loved to dance. I loved math more, but no one seemed to notice that about me. It wasn’t until I had a long conversation with one particular teacher in high school that I decided to look into engineering. I had never even considered it as an option before, because no one decided to encourage me to pursue my interest in science. If it hadn’t been for that teacher, I would probably not be at the school I am at right now.
3) For a long time, Engineering/Science/Math WAS a “boys only” club. Let me tell you when some of the top technical schools and societies started letting women in:
- RPI, The oldest tech school in the country, founded in 1824. Started admitting women in 1942 to “replace men called to war.” Campus housing for women wasn’t constructed until 1966.
- Tau Beta Pi, the Engineering Honors Society - Founded in 1885. Started admitting women in 1968.
- Caltech - Currently rated #3 in undergraduate engineering. Founded in 1891. Started admitting women in 1970.
- Georgia Tech - Currently rated #5 in undergraduate engineering. Founded in 1885. Started admitting women in 1952.
Do you see the implications of this? Engineering has been a part of our society since around the late 1800s (in the case of RPI, since the 1820s), but women weren’t even allowed in for the most part until the 1950s, regardless of their merit.
4) Because of the fact that it was a “boys only” club for such a long time, there are not a lot of women engineers and scientists to look up to. When you’re reading your physics, chemistry, and math text books, the majority of those theories were came up with by men. It is true that much of our history was written by White Men, but this does not mean that the fact that there are few women scientists to look up does not matter.
So, as you can hopefully see, princess-munckin, or anyone else that shares the opinions of princess-munchkin, Bill Nye was not arguing that women that are not interested in STEM should go into those fields anyway. But he IS arguing against all of the systematic barriers set up against women who ARE interested in engineering and science. There are several women out there who are just as good as the boys at math and science, but will never pursue their interests because it just doesn’t seem like an option. That was me for a long time. I am super grateful for the fact that I fought against that, and that I ended up where I am.
if you don’t like science, fine. Don’t be a scientist. But if one day you have a daughter and she shows interest in being a scientist, PLEASE encourage her. Because Bill Nye is right, there needs to be more women scientists in the world.
A+ comment
Young Lads & 2/3 of Gents
No young Ryan :(
Tumblr, I present to you, the coolest people on the planet.
At this rate, Colbert might actually be held accountable in the near future for making transphobic jokes.
Go trigger warn some shit
That’s not transphobic, though. He’s making a point that because the LGBT agenda is “barreling forward at full-speed” that the B and T of LGBT is being left behind. Everyone is focusing on the L and the G that there are people who have no idea what the B and T even stand for. He’s not being transphobic or making a slight meant to make fun of or harm the bi and trans* community. He’s making a point that no one is focusing on them because they’re focusing on the lesbian and gay community.
Mother. Fucking. This.
People really need to realize that EVERYTHING Colbert says while on camera is satire.
Satire: The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the cotext of a play, novel, fiilm or other works.
He is not making a transphobic joke. He is not honestly saying that bi and trans people do not count/matter/exist. He is making humor in order to shed light on the fact that they are forgotten.
He is doing this to raise fucking awareness that there is more to LGBT than LG. He is raising a big flag that says “Hey, don’t forget about these guys. They count. They matter. Why aren’t you doing anything about them? Why aren’t they discussed?” He is not trying to say “They don’t matter.”
So please stop with the self righteous, self pity, “social justice” comments unless you know what you are talking about.
I do appreciate that Bisexual is matched with bacon. I rather enjoy bacon.
This is why I love the Colbert Show.
Stephen Colbert is basically my hero.
He is a great man.
do you ever just get up from your computer to walk aimlessly around your house only to sit back down in front of the computer again
I pointlessly open the fridge too.
sometimes i just stand in the middle of the living room and look lost.
Why am I in the bathroom
elphabaforpresidentofgallifrey:
i went to a high school where they played jeopardy music when you had about 30 seconds to get to class and i shit you not best part of the day was seeing kids sprinting to class with this music playing
My old school did this but it got better because they put the James Bond theme song with it.
It was awesome.
THIS IS THE ONE TIME I WILL EVER ADMIT TO SCHOOL BEING AWESOME
