I see what you mean and when I first heard that saying I thought so too. That’s why I developed a bit after. In my opinion it does not mean “if you’re not with us you’re against us in an irreversible manner” at all (I don’t fight against individuals, I fight against a toxic ideology). To me, it mostly aims to denounce the fact that centrists are actually right wing people who don’t admit it. And, at least in France, the situation tends to confirm that : Macron was officially “neither on the left nor on the right” and it has become clearer and clearer that he is, in fact, completely on the right end of the political spectrum (if not worse for some of our ministers like Retailleau who clearly carries a far right ideology).

In France we have a saying “Si t’es pas de gauche, t’es de droite” i.e “if you’re not a leftist, then you’re on the right wing” meaning that if you do not explicitly reject the paradigm supported by the right then you’re implicitly accepting it and thus indirectly support right wing and conservatism.

I was actually joining the chat to write that things are not that different in biology. I have a PhD and 7 years of postdocs behind me. Over the years I have :

• been denied a management position because “the team was only men, who wouldn’t listen to me” (spoiler alert, they put an incompetent guy in charge who screwed up massively and I ended up taking over, successfully).
• had a boss who systematically doubted my opinion (while he was not a specialist of the topic) but listened to the very same argument from a male colleague
• had male Masters students who could speak uninterrupted during meetings when I couldn’t
• got denied a tenure position for a guy with the same profile (literally the same topic and same labs) but much less experience than mine (like 5 years younger) This last one broke me, I ended up quitting academia

Thanks for sharing your experience, I’ll keep that in mind!

Omg you’re making me freak out. I had to quit academia a year and a half ago (after 7 years of postdocs) and, after a bad experience in the private sector (techy start up bitch who was just plain insane), I’ve been struggling for 10 months to find a new path and a job…and I’m still nowhere near finding something I’m afraid.

I would love to see a massive boycott of MacDonald everywhere (at least in the US), I am surprised that this hasn’t come up somewhere online yet. That would be powerful signal IMO