Wearing a t-shirt with scantily clad women (or men) on it is not acceptable in any workplace. Just like watching porn is not appropriate in the workplace.
There is no end in sight for independent thought in science, but the end of thoughtless marginalisation of women is most definitely overdue.
edit: honestly - downvotes for this? Think about what that means.
It's hard to say that he was disrespecting his colleagues considering that not one of them told him not to wear it. Even if they were scared to do so you would expect someone of higher or equal status to him to say something if it was really seen as a problem. IMO this is a culture clash between American and British culture. In the US it would be unthinkable for someone to wear a shirt like that just because it would be seen as unprofessional, even by a misogynist (which I don't think the Dr. is). In the UK they don't take things like that as serious and are also more tolerant of sex images. It's quite likely that no one thought anything of his shirt until people (Americans) started complaining about it on Twitter.
Do you think they didn't tell him not to wear it because they didn't deem it offensive or perhaps even because they are scientists and engineers that determined that it is merely an article of clothing and it would be prudent to wear any shirt in lieu of going on camera not wearing a shirt at all? (I hope you appreciate the humor in my response as I upvoted yours because I agree with your thoughts on the matter).
Get the repressed individuals out of the office and it's totally fine, some people are comfortable in their own skin, some people aren't.
My partner would like to wear lower cut tops than she's allowed to at work, so I don't see how some arbitrary dress code reduces marginalization of women.
In some places how you dress is very important to clients, some people are able to see through the clothes one wears to the value they provide. There is no universal dress code that ends marginalization of women, because gasp different women have different opinions on what they'd like to wear.
That's completely irrelevant. The problem is that he wore a shirt that sexualises women in a televised major scientific event. Millions of people saw the video, and the image he projected was that he's more interested in sex than in making women feel welcome and valued in science. Which is incidentally the same image you're portraying.
"the image he projected was that he's more interested in sex than in making women feel welcome and valued in science. "
Was the shirt professionally appropriate? No.
Was he "projecting that he was more interested in sex than women in science"? No.
Overstating the case is probably the worst sin in political discussions. It might feel all good to do it, but all it does is make it easy for you to be dismissed entirely.
Wearing a t-shirt with scantily clad women (or men) on it is not acceptable in any workplace. Just like watching porn is not appropriate in the workplace.
There is no end in sight for independent thought in science, but the end of thoughtless marginalisation of women is most definitely overdue.
edit: honestly - downvotes for this? Think about what that means.