You cut off the quote. Why?
Here is the rest:
"On the other hand, he is the only one who ever explained quantum mechanics to me as if I could understand it." That was the essence of Richard's charm.
Here is the rest:
"On the other hand, he is the only one who ever explained quantum mechanics to me as if I could understand it." That was the essence of Richard's charm.
Bill Clinton was not even being sexist and he got tasered big time. I'm not sure why Feynman should get a pass.
Other people may have been more polite than Feynman in casual situations, but when it came to serious discussion he treated women (and students) as equals better than other people.
I'd say that the type of (charisma > sexism) is boolean -- maybe fuzzy boolean given the fuzzy quality of the operands -- not right|wrong.
In any case you're entitled to your opinion; the problem is that you did some blatantly unfair editing there. If someone says "Steve is an asshole, but I have to admit he's a great CEO", you're not supposed to quote only the first sentence, no matter how much you think being an asshole is a bad thing.
You don't get it. You are treating the original article like a Bible. In my opinion, the original article is the one which did the blatantly unfair editing; it bended over backwards to make the man look good by sandwiching the sexism carefully between the praises.
What I did could be constituted as wrong only if I was quoting Feynman and then cut off the last part, for example.
Whether you think it's sad or not, I have known people who felt exactly this way. e.g., my senior year EE lab partner was a woman who couldn't stand our Theory of Communications prof, but put up with him because he was the only person who could explain the topics in a way that made sense to her.
I'm pretty sure she wasn't alone in that sentiment. Fortunately or unfortunately, we all have to make compromises.