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I did not, I actually did not think about the scientist at all. I was distracted by the tiny cat. CAT!
I didn’t either. I kinda assumed it was them having a group of already identified cats and then doing science-y stuff and saying “wait! This one’s different!” And poof, new species.
That’s kinda exactly what happened. There were 4 known species. One cat ended up in a shelter that was not exactly like any of those, so they decided to take DNA from 35 cats from the 4 (now 5) species and showed the 5th was a separate species.
At no point did I think of the scientists gender. I don’t think I ever have considered the gender of a scientist.
Hell another cat could’ve discovered this cat and I’d never know until someone mentioned it.
And here I was imagining a diverse group of scientists, because science is rarely done by just one person anyway.
The name is Paola not Paolo so that should have been a hint right there.
Have people been assuming they’re a white guy?
I can’t even really think of a context when discussing the cat when the scientists gender and especially race would come up?
I am normally pretty pessimistic, but can’t imagine this either, like someone would say “did you hear about that new cat they found?” not “hey, did you hear about that new cat some white, straight, Christian guy found?”
It appears to be a US American thing.
We discover a new species. what’s the first thing we do? We put it in a cage.
Humanity in a nutshell.
I think the cat ended up in a shelter (I don’t know the reason though) and then they discovered it didn’t match the other cat species known about. So it happened the other way around.
It was apparently found as a kitten by someone who thought it was a standard cat, then after a year of what I can only assume was murder kitty behaviour, they took it to a shelter
It really is peak cat when it takes a full year with a wild, feral animal to notice it’s behaviour isn’t just cat being cat.
Pspspspspspspspspspspspsps
“Extreamly weird how many people I’ve seen assume she is a white guy”
I thought she was a cat. That’s what we were talking about. White? She is more of a yellow orange with tan to brown spots.
/s
Thank you to those who tried to translate for the contextually bereft.
I just thought it was cool to see a picure of the person who identified our new Babu.
Hey some of us can’t tell races easily, she just looks like any white woman
What if she’s not a woman? or white? or real? Maybe she’s trans. Not transgender… transdimensional.
Maybe they exist in a space that occupies your mind but not on this physical plane? What if all we see of them is but a piece of the knowable whole and our perceptions give it the shape of what we think it should be? Like an iceberg breaching through dimensional surface, forced into focus by our rules of reality.
How else could they discover that which was unknown?
You got your HRT, and then you got your SMRT (Spice Melange Replacement Therapy)
Time to . . . Par-tee-down?
What kind of white guy has a feminine Latina name?
I think it’s great so many of you have apparently never had to consider racism or sexism in science.
I was just reminded that as recently as 60 years ago women were legally prohibited from opening a bank account in many places in America. As an example of sexism in society.
So, y’know. Progress. Eventually.
Everyone woman I know personally or have had the privilege to talk to about this topic has been raped and sexually assaulted including my mother, my grandmother, my wife, and my daughters.
I am not sure there really is progress anymore.
I’m not just going to assume that they are not a white guy just because the don’t like like a white guy to me.
I don’t know how they identify. I would need to hear this person directly say “I am not a white guy”.
Anyways I think that they seem pretty fly regardless of how they identify.
I’m not saying that my mind doesn’t default to a specific gender for some roles, like ballet dancer or lumberjack. Even some that are clearly relatively mixed but skewed gendered roles like nurse or police officer. But I don’t think of a “scientist” as a specific gender.
