I mean, let's view this charitably. It makes total sense for a woman, who feels like she received misogynistic comments from men at her workplace, to have a poor opinion of the men there. I also don't know if it's really good faith to dismiss a woman saying something was misogynistic as subjective. Of course being a bigot is kind of subjective-- the bigot just thinks their prejudice is normal/true. I wouldn't trust any of the male scientists to say "no of course misogynistic comments didn't happen"; they're guys and, speaking as a guy, it's a blindspot for most men when they make women uncomfortable.

I also charitably don't think there's anything wrong with being suspicious of a very obvious lacking in racial diversity. Globally, white people are a minority of people, and they're likely not the overwhelming majority of all scientists even. So it would obviously be a statistical anomaly if only white people were on a specific research trip. [edited to add: a commenter below clairified this particular station is operated by the US, which is majority white, and scientists even moreso. I was assuming stations are operated with international cooperation :) ]

I guess you and i have a very different understanding of the word "complaint". Because i don't see any.

She's not wrong. There are too many white scientists (statistically) and STEM graduates.

Language is contextual. A woman who has seen repeated instances of male misbehavior is within her rights to record her feelings about it — “the men here are mediocre” in this context is clearly not talking about all men but her feelings about the shitty men she encountered, and also pointing at a pattern of what happens when there are a large number of white males vs more diverse settings (this isn’t unique to Antarctica — Google has this problem). Mistreatment of women in such settings is well documented.

It’s like if you say “my job sucks” — not all parts of your job may actually suck, just the parts you hate. Or “the government is corrupt” most folks would infer that you are talking about a specific subelement.

If we lived in a society where women routinely mistreated men then flipping the statement wouldn’t be offensive. What makes it offensive flipped is mostly that generalizations about women typically encode harmful falsehoods that come from generations of patriarchy. You could not flip her statements in good faith because women do not treat men the way she described anyway.

As a progressive I hate that it isn’t simple as much as everyone else. But to fight for equality is to understand that the origins of the fight come from unwanted asymmetry and of course that’s going to be reflected in discourse.

> Why exactly should the expectation of justification go one way but not the other?

The existing conditions in Antarctica.

The idea that sexism is an absolute abhorrent behavior (with a focus on either or both genders) is not something to promote, despite the fervor in recent years. The sexes have a different representation in the arctic and pointing them out is akin to pointing out that a lot of left handers apply to NASA. I wouldn't call something garbage because I'm offended someone held up a patch that says "Only left handers are in their right mind".

Getting upset at this writer/article/situation is not constructive. Nor is the condemnation a fair editorial critique, imo.

> If the genders were reversed it would be binned as sexist without any support or regard for context

This is what happened in the comments?

She gave context in the post. Did you read it?