About

#Shirtstorm and #Shirtgate are Twitter hashtags that arose in reaction to a shirt worn by British scientist Dr Matt Taylor during livestream coverage of the spacecraft Philae's comet landing during the Rosetta Mission in November 2014.

Background

On November 12th 2014, European Space Agency spacecraft Philae achieved the first landing of a spacecraft on a comet in human history.^[1] During Nature Newsteam’s livestream coverage of the landing, Rosetta scientist Matt Taylor was interviewed in a colorful bowling shirt featuring patterns of scantily clothed female cartoon characters (shown below).

Notable Developments

Twitter Reaction

That day, Brooklyn-based journalist Rose Eveleth tweeted a photograph of Taylor with a sarcastic remark citing his shirt as an example of the male-biased work culture within the scientific community (shown below). Also on November 12th, Taylor’s friend Elly Prizeman tweeted she made the shirt for Taylor’s birthday, accompanied by the hashtags “#shirtgate” and “#shirtstorm.”

In the following 48 hours, the tweet gained over 1,000 retweets and 760 favorites, while the hashtags #shirtstorm and #shirtgate were mentioned more than 23,000 times and 19,000 times, respectively.

News Media Coverage

On November 13th, The Verge^[14] published an article titled “I don’t care if you landed a spacecraft on a comet, your shirt is sexist and ostracizing,” which accussed Taylor of “the sort of casual misogyny that stops women from entering certain scientific fields.” The debacle was reported on several news websites such as CNN^[4], The Telegraph,^[5] Talking Points Memo,^[6] Daily Mail^[9] and The Guardian.^[10]

Taylor's Apology

On November 14th, Taylor made a tearful apology for wearing the shirt during an ESA Google+ Hangout session (shown below).

“I made a big mistake and I offended many people and I am very sorry about this."

Online Debate

Many twitter users reused the hashtags to criticize the shallowness of the complaints. Prizeman, wrote a more thorough blog post^[11] expressing her disappointment with those who reacted negatively toward Taylor.

On November 17th, London mayor Boris Johnson made public statements defending Taylor, comparing his critics to "Islamist maniacs."^[13]

Search Interest

External References