Feminism

Michael Moore: Women Never Built an Atomic Bomb??? PART 1 of 2

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Sorta transcript:

Noted director and liberal polemicist Michael Moore recently Tweeted, “No women ever invented an atomic bomb, built a smoke stack, initiated a Holocaust, melted the polar ice caps or organized a school shooting.” This was, presumably, a call for people to vote for Hillary Clinton in the US presidential race. Regardless of who you vote for, Moore’s Tweet is an ignorant, embarrassing, easily debunked, dangerous bit of misinformation.

To start off, every word of this is wrong by some degree or another. Like women in science in general, the handful of women who worked on the atomic bomb have gone largely ignored by history, but they were there. Like Dr. Elizabeth Riddle Graves, aka “Diz,” a nuclear physicist who happened to help test the very first atomic device while she was seven months pregnant. She supposedly kept performing experiments right up until labor.

Mary Walton invented a key component of smoke stack emission deflection back in 1879. I’m pretty sure you could name a million more women who have built smoke stacks, depending on how you define the term “built,” both as workers and as CEOs.

Pauline Nyiramasuhuko was a Rwandan politician who was convicted of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for her role in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. You could also point to Bloody Mary, who was responsible for burning hundreds of Protestants to death. Among others. Again! It depends on how you define “initiated” and “holocaust.”

As for melting the polar ice caps, I hate to tell you this but there are literally billions of women doing that right now! The ice caps are melting due to global warming, which is caused by humanity. Women are slightly more than half of humanity. Women are even leaders in industries most responsible for that, like coal and oil– for instance, Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub is the first woman to lead an oil company in the US. Way to crack that glass ceiling, Hollub! And by “glass ceiling” I’m referring to the o-zone of course.

As for school shootings, I suppose Moore has never heard the Boomtown Rats. They performed a whole song about Brenda Ann Spencer, who shot up a school back in 1979.

Debunking each point of Moore’s Tweet ultimately misses the forest for the trees, though. What Moore seems to be saying is that women are inherently more ethical than men, so having a female leader like Hillary Clinton would by default be a better situation than having any man in the position. In my next video, I’ll tell you why that’s a load of bollocks.

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor. Twitter @rebeccawatson Mastodon mstdn.social/@rebeccawatson Instagram @actuallyrebeccawatson TikTok @actuallyrebeccawatson YouTube @rebeccawatson BlueSky @rebeccawatson.bsky.social

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2 Comments

  1. It strikes me that we don’t even need to argue that women are more ethical than men to make the case for Hillary Clinton because she’s been a public figure for a long time. We can look at Hillary’s actual behavior, rather than generalize based on her gender.

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