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Astrophysicist calls out dude’s DM that she’s ‘too beautiful’ for science

Can men just not?

Photo of Samira Sadeque

Samira Sadeque

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It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a woman expressing her opinions or acing her career—or lord forbid, both—should be dumbed down in order to soothe the male ego. Well, one astrophysicist has had enough.

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Sophia Gad-Nasr, an astroparticle physicist and PhD student at UC Irvine, shared the screenshot of yet another dude who slid into her DMs to tell her how pretty she was while simultaneously shitting on her career.

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One person summarized the interpretation accurately: “The way I perceive you should stand between you and your passion.”

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It inspired other women to share accounts of when their intellect and/or career choices were dismissed for their looks, which happens so often that it’s not so shocking.

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https://twitter.com/divyamanibg/status/1114823632944078849

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There also seems to be an odd obsession with strippers among these dudes, as if beautiful women can’t be in non-sex-related career fields.

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https://twitter.com/voxael/status/1114688653530238976

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But these aren’t merely eye-roll-worthy comments; they demonstrate how little women are taken seriously in STEM-related fields and the opportunities afforded them.

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Research shows how implicit bias can affect women’s performance in STEM, and how prevalent implicit bias is in the sciences, with many considering it a “male” field. Beyond that, a woman’s success in STEM is deemed to be too “masculine,” which would render her “less likeable.” Seriously, can women ever win?

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This isn’t even the first time women have been inspired (or ticked off enough) to share these accounts. In 2017, many shared similar stories with #PrettyInPhd. Though the hashtag included women in all of academia, a disproportionately large number of the tweets were about experiences of women in STEM, highlighting even further how targeted these attacks are specifically on women in the sciences.

Gad-Nasr did not immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment, but her website boasts beautiful analogies about astrophysics where she explains the universe with everyday relatable things. As is very obvious from her viral tweet thread, she absolutely loves what she does.

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The universe can do her better.

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The Daily Dot