From Slate:
It’s Time for the Heroic Male Paleontologist Trope to Go Extinct
The New Yorker’s story on the day the dinosaurs died brings up more questions than it answers, but it does make the staleness of this genre clear.
By RILEY BLACK
Riley Black, formerly known as Brian Switek, is the author of the natural history books Skeleton Keys, My Beloved Brontosaurus, and Written in Stone. They live in Salt Lake City.
We all need to take more advice from a deeply stable individual who prefers to be known as “they.”
APRIL 03, 20193:53 PM
… Instead, we got the same sexist schtick about one guy at one fossil site who’s going to figure it all out.
… Not only does this perpetuate the lone genius trope that’s demonstrably false, but it underscores paleontology’s deeply rooted problem with male privilege.
The search and study of extinct life has persistently been depicted as a man’s science.
But why is Slate calling out “male privilege” instead of just “white male privilege”? Is Slate racist?
I went to grade school in the 1960s-70s with an Asian-American kid named Stuart Sumida, now a dinosaur paleontologist at Cal State San Bernardino:
