Writing the female body into science.

I've been thinking about revolutions lately. Mostly because during the holidays over at Sciencewoman there was a heated discussion about what one woman's revolution looks like.

While it may be old news by now, I wanted to address this issue in this post. This is, in part, a problem with the blogosphere. It's a little like MTV with short clips, quick reactions, and then it is forgotten. Well, okay not entirely. Sometimes the same person will revisit their post and add to the issue but often it's just filed away in the "stacks of archives. It takes time for me to metabolize the big ideas.

Plus, I've been doing science. Excuses, excuses GirlPostdoc.


Here is a short excerpt from Sciencewoman's revolution:

My revolution looks like having all employers/professions respect that all people have lives outside of work by offering real, financially-feasible part-time, telecommuting, flexibility, paid maternity leave, etc.

My revolution looks like having both parents combine to fully and equitably distribute household responsibilities. My revolution looks like having communities structured around supporting families and respecting the earth, maybe through dense developments with shared division of childcare or outside-maintenance.

My revolution looks like having affordable and available local, organic food, even if I have to do some of the work to raise it (because my job allows me time to do that, see above). My revolution looks like communities that are truly built in a way to reduce dependence on cars and encourage families to get outside to walk and play.

Doesn't look bad does it? And probably for the most part I agree with this kind of ideal. Except I read this and it made me quite uncomfortable. At first, I couldn't put my finger on the discomfort, then I realized it was with the word "revolution." A revolution implies an often violent, large scale turnaround or change.

In the words of Mao Zedong,

A revolution is not a dinner party, nor an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly, and modestly. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

An act of violence. Herein lies the problem. How can you have a nice-let's-all-hold-hands-and-be-shiny-happy-people revolution. It's a liberalist fantasy. You can't have respect for the ideal of liberty and then turn around and impose a way of life, even if that way of life seems like a eutopia. It is not respectful, nor polite. A revolution is an imposition. It is by its very nature injurious to the freedom of others.

My second thought is that revolutions are brought about because many, many people are frustrated with the current socio-political environment. The reason why these women are seeking a "new world order" is because they are disaffected by science. In this the case, Sciencewoman and many other women in the blogosphere are frustrated and they blog about trying to be a scientist, a mother, a cook, a housekeeper and get a good night's sleep. For example Sciencewoman says,

How many times have both Isis and I [not to mention all the other mommy-scientist bloggers] written about being sleep-deprived? about being forced to make hard choices between our science and our families?

I think a lot of women, even if they don't have kids, are disillusioned by science. We are being forced to make hard choices between science and our own female identities.

Why? The construction of science is male. It has a history written by men and is thus currently framed in a male language. It is an intense, competitive, and result-oriented discipline where we, as grad students, are encouraged to be "masters of our world."

I don't think this idea is new. But I think it may be one reason why women are leaving tenure-track jobs, why when you look at the gender composition in grad school, post-doctoral fellows and then up to faculty, that the proportion of women drop off substantially. It is also why when we judge candidates for things like job interviews we hold true to those masculine qualitites.

One incident during grad school reminds of this. The grad students and post-docs at BigUniversityInCanada have the opportunity to participate in the evaluation of any candidate. They do so by interviewing candidates as a group and then meeting to discuss which one they want and why. This is then brought back to the search committee through a grad student representing the views of the group. We were discussing a female candidate, who had stellar research. When it came time to evaluate her, one post-doc, TheBrit, spoke up. He was simply expressing the views of many there when he said, "She's got no presence, there's something missing. She's got...no balls." Then a friend, MsFeminista, sitting across from TheBrit, literally leapt across the table, yelling "Some of us don't have any balls!"

While it's an amusing anecdote, I think it's more telling about the nature of evaluation in science. We want our female candidates to have male traits and are disappointed when they don't. But really, why should we expect them to only possess those traits viewed as male? The complexity of this issue is further explored in an article by Marlene Zuk and Gunilla Rosenqvist.

All of this thinking about revolutions made me realize how disconnected I am to my own femininity. It's possibly because all I do is science. 24-7. And it's made me feel incredibly fragmented. It's why, I think, Dr. Isis blogs so much about shoes and why so many women (aside from the biological imperative) leave academia to have babies. Really, all these women are doing are trying to find ways to re-visit with the softer, kinder, more nurturing feminine side.

The problem is that science and the feminine are at odds with each other. And this is where the frustration arises. I think instead of looking to the greater society, we should think about re-constructing (not revolutionizing) the language of scientific pursuit. We need as Hélène Cixous says in The Laugh of the Medusa, an "Écriture féminine" for science. We must inscribe the female body into science.

This doesn't mean we should abandon the past and the male construction, but perhaps those of us on the inside can start to do things differently. And maybe much frustration would be avoided if science was able to accomodate a softer, kinder, more nurturing feminine side. (Here when I speak of the feminine and masculine I am really referring to the Eastern ideas of yin and yang.)

How to do this? At this point I can only speak figuratively. But I'd like to think of it in the words of another more eloquent woman,

Listen to a woman speak at a public gathering (if she hasn't painfully lost her wind). She doesn't 'speak', she throws her trembling body forward; she lets go of herself, she flies; all of her passes into her voice, and it's with her body that she vitally supports the 'logic' of her speech. Her flesh speaks true. She lays herself bare. In fact, she physically materializes what she's thinking; she signifies it with her body. In a certain way she inscribes what she's saying, because she doesn't deny her drives the intractable and impassioned part they have in speaking. Her speech, even when 'theoretical' or political, is never simple or linear or 'objectified', generalized: she draws her story into history. Hélène Cixous

The Laugh of the Medusa