Female astronaut goes to space but can’t escape online sexism by ‘small men’ | Space

There isn’t a galaxy far, far away enough where women can escape sexist online trolls.

Emily Calandrelli became the 100th woman to go to space when she joined a group of six space tourists in a launch led by Blue Origin, the aerospace company owned by the billionaire Jeff Bezos.

“We got to weightlessness, I immediately turned upside down and looked at the planet and then there was so much blackness. There was so much space,” Calandrelli said in a video posted to social media that showed her reacting with awe to seeing Earth from space.

She added: “I didn’t expect to see so much space, and I kept saying that’s our planet! That’s our planet! It was the same feeling I got when my kids were born, and I was like, ‘That’s my baby!’”

But it was not long before the comments beneath the video were flooded with hateful, objectifying remarks.

The astronaut and MIT engineer said some sexualized her reaction to viewing the planet from space. The incident led to Blue Origin taking down the original video from its social media accounts.

Calandrelli, who also hosts a television show on Netflix called Emily’s Wonder Lab, where she’s known as “Space Gal”, said the reactions made her sad and angry, but she doubled down on her joy. In an Instagram post, she wrote she refuses “to give much time to the small men on the internet.

“I feel experiences in my soul. It’s a trait I got from my father,” she said. “We feel every emotion deeply and what a beautiful way that is to experience life. This joy is tattooed on my heart.

“I will not apologize or feel weird about my reaction. It’s wholly mine and I love it.”

Calandrelli said in an interview with CNN that the beauty of sending more women into space is that they “get to describe it in a way that moms can understand, that women can understand”.

Blue Origin did not respond to a request for comment.