Recently, Nobel Prize winning biochemist Tim Hunt stood down from his position at University College London after his comments at a conference in Seoul led to widespread outrage in the scientific community.
Hunt's comments were derisive and displayed a phenomenally discriminatory and out-dated mode of thinking.
Specifically, Hunt suggested that it was too hard to work with women in science because he couldn't help falling in love with them, and women with him, and they always cried when criticised.
In a spectacular lack of judgement (and scientists are supposed to be considered and rational) Hunt made these comments to an audience of women, at an event celebrating women in science.
Shortly afterwards news got out on the internet and women in science across the world began posting pictures of themselves doing their jobs accompanied by the hashtag ''distractinglysexy''.
It was a light-hearted dig at someone who had said something unfathomably stupid, but more seriously it highlighted the challenges women still face in scientific fields.
There was nothing wrong with calling Hunt out on his ludicrous statement, but after he resigned his position the internet turned back on the women who had drawn attention to his harmful, sexist attitudes.
People were suddenly convinced that it was unfair for a man who publicly shared misogynistic ideology to lose his credibility, and they were convinced that the response from these nasty, horrible women was ultimately much worse than continuing discrimination against women in science.
This kind of thing happens on the internet all the time.
Things snowball so quickly out there in cyberspace that everyone seems to forget exactly what the point of the conversation was.
In this case, the point was that these kinds of comments are unacceptable, but all that gets warped when action gets taken with regard to what people found unacceptable to begin with.
The conversation so often gets taken back to its ''tone'', or the language used to express the problem.
Obviously, tone can get completely out of control online, and it's not hard to find vitriol aplenty, but when people are hurt by something that is discriminatory or threatening, then telling them how they should express themselves is tantamount to silencing.
A lot of men were unhappy that Tim Hunt's career was ''ruined'' by one misstep, but the truth of the matter is that it wasn't just one misstep.
He was buying into harmful ideology and spreading it around, and that ideology permeates the scientific community already.
He might have been made an example of, but really it was for the best.
In a similar case recently, a group of young women on the blogging platform Tumblr blogged about how young adult author John Green made them feel uncomfortable with his online presence and interactions with his fans.
Their language was considered by some to be inflammatory and the wider community immediately jumped to Green's defence, rather than listening to what these girls had to say.
The internet, and people using the internet, have the power to ruin your life, whether you've done something wrong or not. Outrage is an acceptable currency, and sometimes it is uncalled for. But, in cases like this, the response was reasonable and resulted in harmful behaviour being directly addressed.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that when an oppressed group tries to say that there is a problem with something, and they succeed in drawing attention to that problem, it is inappropriate to turn back on that group and say that the way they expressed themselves was more harmful than the behaviour they were responding to.
Millie Lovelock is a Dunedin student.
