Misogynist activist at the University of Waterloo hates scientist Marie Curie and women.

In The Fourteen Not Forgotten and Sexist Posters at Waterloo, Christine Cheng discusses a misogynist activist at the University of Waterloo who put up fourteen posters last month (February 2011) vilifying scientist Marie Curie and women in general. (Her post is also cross-posted at the Geek Feminism Blog.)

The incident reminds many of us of the École Polytechnique Massacre. Both the University of Waterloo and l’École Polytechnique de Montréal focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Math, and Engineering) fields, and female students are a minority. Both schools are located in Canada. Both misogynists appear to be angry that women are attending university and are being educated in male-dominated fields.

The Marie-Curie-hating misogynist at Waterloo has also sent out a misogynist e-mail pretending to be the university’s president, and has created a Facebook page with similar misogynist rantings. The university’s Women’s Centre and LGBT student centre have closed due to safety concerns.

A male undergraduate at the University of Waterloo made this ridiculous—yet typical male-privileged—comment before taking down his post:

Yes, it is wrong, yes, it is inappropriate, but get a life if you are going to fuss and cry over stupid shit like this. Because if you do, you must be living in a sheltered bubble.

A commenter at hook & eye named bakka111 responds to this reaction:

The “Sheltered bubble” comment from Bill’s portfolio is particularly ironic. Just who lives in a sheltered bubble? Those who fear the messages because they have experienced the mundane-threats a patriarchal culture issues to women, or those who have never experienced such threats. Oh the irony.

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Further Reading:

• The Fourteen Not Forgotten and Sexist Posters at Waterloo by Christine Cheng
• the honest truth: Marie Curie, in which one learns that double-Nobel-prize-winning Marie Curie received her education at an “underground university”, because conventional universities did not accept women. Imagine what the history of science would look like if women were not barred from university.

White people dislike Asian people attending Canadian universities.

Maclean’s thinks that top Canadian universities are “too Asian”. I didn’t even know how to begin to address the many ways the article fails, but wildunicornherd sums it up pretty well:

The best universities are “too Asian”? How about you’re too racist.

I just love this bit:

To quell the influx of Jewish students, Ivy League schools abandoned their meritocratic admissions processes in favour of one that focused on the details of an applicant’s private life—questions about race, religion, even about the maiden name of an applicant’s mother. Schools also began looking at such intangibles as character, personality and leadership potential. Canadian universities, apart from highly competitive professional programs and faculties, don’t quiz applicants the same way, and rely entirely on transcripts. Likely that is a good thing. And yet, that meritocratic process results, especially in Canada’s elite university programs, in a concentration of Asian students.

Emphasis mine. Like, “we” realized that racism is wrong so we abandoned the policies that kept out the Jews…which meant we were forced to let in the Asians! God damn you, political correctness! Because we have nothing to fear from a lot of Jews (who are all white Europeans, of course), but a majority of Asians (who may not even be born in Canada! who may *clutches pearls* speak Mandarin!) is a problem that needs to be fixed.

I also love how Asian students associating mainly with other Asian students is a HUGE PROBLEM HOW CAN WE STOP THIS but White students who go to Western because there’s too many icky Chinese at U of T is understandable, y’know?

And by “love” I mean SMASH WITH RAGE.

More coherent commentary from Angry Asian Man.

The article also continually creates a false dichotomy between East Asian students and Canadian-born students (i.e., the Perpetual Foreigner stereotype), as if all East Asians are immigrants, and all Canadian-born Canadians are white:

Sweet’s latest study, “Post-high school pathways of immigrant youth,” released last month, found that more than 70 per cent of students in the Toronto District School Board who immigrated from East Asia went on to university, compared to 52 per cent of Europeans, the next highest group, and 12 per cent of Caribbean, the lowest. This is in contrast to English-speaking Toronto students born in Canada—of which just 42 per cent confirmed admission to university.

Hey, I’m an English-speaking Toronto student born in Canada! Shouldn’t I be applauded for being of the 42 per cent minority of my group—English-speaking Toronto students born in Canada—who attended university? Oh snap, I’m Asian instead of white, so I’m the wrong kind, the kind they don’t want attending university.

Seriously, if you think that my race makes me not fully Canadian, or if you think my race means that I must have the same personality as others who happen to share my race, or if you think that white Canadians are more deserving of Canadian privileges than other Canadians, then you are racist.

Update 2010/11/12: Maysie addresses more reasons why the Maclean’s article fails.