Dear people who are pissed off about the scientist with the pin-up girl shirt being called sexist by certain feminists and use the argument "he landed a satellite on a comet and you're bitching about his shirt?":
I will preface this status by saying that I personally do not find his shirt offensive. I think it's silly and while I suppose there is some base form of objectification happening there, pin up art is considered art and much as I don't consider liking porn a sign of you hating women, tasteful sexy art is not a bad thing.
That being said, if the structure of your argument is "you hating on his shirt [that signifies possible sexism] is ignoring his great achievement," and you consider yourself a supporter of equal rights for women, you are performing a bit of logical fallacy there.
Let's suppose the dude had on a shirt with Nazi insignia. Or something patterned with the N word. Chances are that you would be disgusted by his bigotry and prejudices and you would immediately call him out on it. Those are touchstone "bad" things in the mainstream culture. Yet somehow something that is sexist is feminists overreacting, and not a true bad thing. This begs the question: do you really support equal rights for women?
And before you dismiss this as me reading into this the wrong way, remember that you started it: you used a structure of defense that tacitly acknowledges the sexism at hand, but claims that his achievement is monumental, so that wipes out the error of his sexism. After all, if you're not defending his shirt as not sexist but cutting straight to his achievement and chiding your opponent for wasting their time focusing on the shirt, that's exactly what you're doing. In short, you're doing it wrong. That is, if you don't consider yourself sexist.
Sincerely,
C
