Academia sets another new world record in shark jumping.
Via College Fix:
Those of us whose professional lives require social media often live in fear that we will post something that unintentionally riles up a digital mob.
Given the heavy representation of women in social-media roles, the backlash is often misogynistic in its effects, if not its intent, as documented in Jon Ronson’s book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.
I don’t know who was responsible for a rather benign image tweeted out by the American Political Science Association last week, but it clearly could have been a male, female, transgender or gender nonconforming person.
Inside Higher Ed has the story: The organization for poli sci academics was promoting a new journal article on international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). The tweet for the article used a Getty image of a smiling Asian woman in what could be a sundress.
All hell broke loose:
One of the authors of the piece is Asian, and on Saturday she shared her feelings about how APSA illustrated the description of her article.
“It’s pretty obvious to me why this is offensive, but let me spell it out,” wrote Wendy Wong, associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto and director of the university’s Trudeau Center for Peace, Conflict and Justice, in a post on the political science blog Duck of Minerva. …
“What does the Getty image ‘Portrait of a young woman smiling’ have to do with INGOs? Or authority? Or politics?” Wong wrote. “[…] Has all of my work on INGOs boiled down to some irrelevant stock image? Is it that hard to Google ‘NGO’ for images related to the work being advertised? Yeah, ‘all Asians look alike,’ but really?!”