‘No man ever’: Woman’s PhD post triggers wild male backlash

Juliet Turner’s thesis was about the evolution of co-operation and the division of labour in insects. Photo / X, Dr Juliet Turner

A young woman has bizarrely enraged men after sharing online that she had completed her PhD at the prestigious Oxford University.

Juliet Turner, an ecologist and biologist, took to X on November 15 to share an impressive academic milestone that she had successfully completed her PhD.

Turner’s thesis was about the evolution of co-operation and the division of labour in insects, and the Times Higher Education has also reported that the University of Oxford in the UK is the world’s No 1-ranked university.

“I passed my viva exam! After four years of research, I successfully defended my thesis. You can call me doctor,” she wrote.

Originally, the post was just flooded with family and friends congratulating the academic on achieving such an impressive goal, and then things took a turn.

The post has now racked up over 15 million views, but bizarrely, the celebratory post ended up on the wrong side of the internet.

Men started commenting on the post, claiming she had wasted her time getting a degree because that isn’t something men care about.

Turner, 27, at no point, when announcing she’d completed her PhD, indicated that she had chosen to pursue a higher education to impress men.

“Just look at that degree on that chick. Said no man ever,” one wrote.

“No grandmother on her deathbed was ever asked, so what was your thesis on?” Another man wrote.

“Them eggs aren’t getting any younger,” someone else wrote.

“Congrats on successfully becoming a biologist but failing at biology. You are 30 years old with no kids or husband. A genetic dead-end,” another claimed.

There were also comments claiming this made her a “cat lady”, one even argued she could have had multiple children in the time it took her to complete her degree.

All of the trolling or criticism was centred on the idea that Turner had somehow offended a niche group of men on the internet by pursuing a higher education instead of marriage.

Turner screenshotted some of the worst of these comments, and added, “POV: you are a young woman celebrating a recent academic success.”

The graduate also added that, “I’m sure having my photo shared in this derogatory way would be devastating if my motivation for getting a PhD was to impress this guy and women-hating friends.

“’Thankfully, it was not. So I can just laugh about it instead.”

Newsweek also reported that Turner said that the “idea that doing a PhD means you probably won’t have children is odd. I come from an academic family myself, so I’m living proof that academics are capable of self-replication”.

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