Another day, another man thinking he can tell a professional, highly-qualified woman how to do her job.
First Twitter user Martin Betancourt gave Olympic cyclist Annemiek van Vleuten a 140 character lesson in cycling.
But the ‘I know better than you’ brigade hitched up a notch when world-class astronaut Jessica Meir had the complexities of space explained to her by a man.
For background, Meir:
- Is a Harvard assistant professor
- Completed a PhD on the diving physiology of emperor penguins and northern elephant seals
- Was selected by Nasa to become one of the eight members of Astronaut Group 21 - from a pool of 6,372 applicants
But despite all that, social media user Casey O’Quin took to Twitter to instruct her on a little basic physics.
The American-Swede astronaut had posted a video of her in a space simulator - equivalent to being 63,000 feet above Earth.
But this being the Internet, O’Quin took it upon himself to explain Meir’s point about water boiling back to her.
But no-one would let him get away with it, social media users stepping in to chastise O’Quin for forgetting that Meir was likely to know a fair bit more than him.
“This lesson went well, I think,” one joked. “But you should have told her to smile more - women love that.”
Some nine hours after the deluge of criticism, O’Quin might have realised his mistake, writing in a follow-up post: “Again, I forget how everyone gets offended by everything.”
He has since deleted his account.
And just to clarify the point about mansplaining here:
Congratulations, Internet!