Space exploration = "male entitlement"?

[Father Heathen]

Opinion | Marcie Bianco: After pillaging Earth, the patriarchy looks to colonize Mars

Yeah, it's garbage like this that makes people who are otherwise egalitarian hesitant to identify as feminists. Thoughts?

 

[Polymath257]

 

[Erebus]

Well if you think about it, what is a rocket other than a metaphor for the penis? Planets, being spherical, are obviously eggs. Now they're talking about a rocket delivering its cargo onto a planet?

Clearly this is a problem that must be immediately addressed.

 

[Quetzal]

I am going to break this down because this subject is near and dear to my heart. From the article...

The presumed right to use and abuse something and then walk away to conquer something new is a hallmark of colonialism.

Right and the author is just as much to blame as anyone else. Assuming she votes, drives a car that spits out exhaust, and throws things in trash cans. As much as she wants to take the high road, she can't.

Frittering away your life savings on a red sports car is so last century. Instead, today’s man who is grappling with the limitations of his mortality spends $90 million on a rocket to launch a $100,000 electric car, helmed by a robot by the name of “Starman,” into space.

Which is perfectly within his right to do, as it is hers if she ever does something more with her life than write slanted articles to grab naive users.

These men, particularly Musk, are not only heavily invested in who can get their rocket into space first, but in colonizing Mars. The desire to colonize — to have unquestioned, unchallenged and automatic access to something, to any type of body, and to use it at will — is a patriarchal one. Indeed, there is no ethical consideration among these billionaires about whether this should be done; rather, the conversation is when it will be done. Because, in the eyes of these intrepid explorers, this is the only way to save humanity.

Well, yes. It is an accepted idea that eventually we will need to leave the planet. And investing in this industry is the only way to do so.

It is the same instinctual and cultural force that teaches men that everything — and everyone — in their line of vision is theirs for the taking. You know, just like walking up to a woman and grabbing her by the pu**y.

Right, space exploration to save humanity = pu**y grabbing. Does this woman hear herself?

Through a feminist lens, Aldrin’s deliberate word choice revealed an important reality of the space race: This 21st century form of imperialism is the direct result of men giving up on the planet they have all but destroyed.

This is your problem too, little miss. You take advantage of all your first world life has to offer like the rest of us. You are not special.

The raping and pillaging of the Earth, and the environmental chaos that doing so has unleashed, are integral to the process of colonization.

No, it isn't. If that were true, Columbus and company would have set fire to Europe on their way over.

“Women in developing countries are particularly vulnerable to climate change because they are highly dependent on local natural resources for their livelihood,” a 2013 United Nations report noted. “Women charged with securing water, food and fuel for cooking and heating face the greatest challenges. Women experience unequal access to resources and decision-making processes, with limited mobility in rural areas.”

This means that while men compete with each other over whose rocket is the biggest, fastest, and best, and send playthings off to become flashy space junk, women around the world are fighting to stay alive against violent assaults on their personhood — and their planet.

That isn't the same thing. She knows it, we know it. At this point this article has become a biased, factually untrue rant.

This masculine insecurity is everywhere in American culture and, increasingly, American politics. Trump himself has spoken about making sure our nuclear bomb is “bigger and more powerful and can often be found “bragging about building a “beautiful,” “great, great wall.”

Not. The. Same. Thing.

Houston, we have a problem.

And it’s the patriarchy.

No, sweetheart. It is the fact that some misguided senior editor somewhere gave you access to a keyboard on a stage you don't deserve.

 

[Polymath257]

Well if you think about it, what is a rocket other than a metaphor for the penis? Planets, being spherical, are obviously eggs. Now they're talking about a rocket delivering its cargo onto a planet?

Clearly this is a problem that must be immediately addressed.

Yes, we should be sending egg-shaped probes with arms to go embrace the other planets, making sure their crevices are appropriately taken care of.

 

[Quetzal]

If you can stomach it...

Marcie Bianco (@MarcieBianco) | Twitter

 

[Revoltingest]

If you can stomach it...

Marcie Bianco (@MarcieBianco) | Twitter

Ew.

 

[Revoltingest]

Opinion | Marcie Bianco: After pillaging Earth, the patriarchy looks to colonize Mars

Yeah, it's garbage like this that makes people who are otherwise egalitarian hesitant to identify as feminists. Thoughts?

I like how the article has the word "THINK" in the upper left corner.
It's such good advice.

Anyway, it's unfair to feminists that such lightning rods are so cringeworthy.
Still, she's quite funny.

 

[Father Heathen]

I like how the article has the word "THINK" in the upper left corner.
It's such good advice.

I don't understand why a major network like NBC would even entertain such asinine gobbledygook. If feminists want to be taken seriously, they need to keep the kooky fringe types like this from giving their movement a bad name.

 

[Revoltingest]

I don't understand why a major network like NBC would even entertain such asinine gobbledygook. If feminists want to be taken seriously, they need to keep the kooky fringe types like this from giving their movement a bad name.

NBC reports on train wrecks of all kinds.

 

[Quetzal]

I don't understand why a major network like NBC would even entertain such asinine gobbledygook.

I was surprised as well.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Meh, it's clearly little more than a click-baity article piggybacking on the back of a popular current topic to expound on the broader view the writer takes on the mentality of colonialism and its relationship to patriarchal systems and evoke a strong reaction (which it apparently has). I wouldn't use it as basis to judge all of modern feminism.

 

[Revoltingest]

I was surprised as well.

Hey, you might know.....
Are there no women involved in space exploration?

 

[Revoltingest]

I was surprised as well.

I wonder...
Do other feminists see such twerdlepoo, & contact her to
say "Knock it off....you're making feminism look insane!".

I notice that she's an atheist.
Let's hope that she doesn't begin representing us.
Ew.

 

[Quetzal]

Hey, you might know.....
Are there no women involved in space exploration?

We have lady astronauts and everything!

 

[Quetzal]

I wonder...
Do other feminists see such twerdlepoo, & contact her to
say "Knock it off....you're making feminism look insane!".

I actually did reach out to her on twitter but it has nothing to do with feminism. I feel like her readers might get turned off to space/science and I am not a fan of that.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Hey, you might know.....
Are there no women involved in space exploration?

60 female astronauts with completed spaceflights and 15 trained female astronauts, according to wiki:
List of female astronauts - Wikipedia

I'm sure there's a tonne of female engineers working on space exploration too. Might be worth a bit more digging.

[EDIT] Turns out female NASA employees have their own website:
Women@NASA

 

[Revoltingest]

We have lady astronauts and everything!

The Patriarchy must be recruiting.

 

[Revoltingest]

I actually did reach out to her on twitter but it has nothing to do with feminism. I feel like her readers might get turned off to space/science and I am not a fan of that.

I'm betting that no science inclined geek (male, female or other) would take her seriously.
I've worked with many female aerospace engineers. While they've had complaints about
work (as we all have), I don't recall even one lamenting their work serving "The Patriarchy".

 

[Quetzal]

I'm betting that no science inclined geek (male, female or other) would take her seriously.
I've worked with many female aerospace engineers. While they've had complaints about
work (as we all have), I don't recall even one lamenting their work serving "The Patriarchy".

That is pretty cool, remind me, when did you work in aerospace? I know you mentioned it before but I can't remember.