ms geek and other good stuff

first, the definition of geek vs dork (& nerd) by piled higher and deeper:

well. although i wouldn't call myself a "geek" in the computer-whiz sense and i'd like to think that i'm not a "dork" in the no social skills sense, i know that in fact i am one of the most major geeks and dorks to ever have walked the planet (which my sister will eagerly attest to, since she always does anyway). i won't go into all of what makes me those things, but i'll just say i'm rather proud of most of it. and most of the time i'm proud - and content - to be a woman in a traditionally "male" scientific field (physics/materials science)!

so everyone should read thus spake zuska, a blog about the reality of being a woman in science/engineering which i quite like (its author just commented at my "blaming" post, too!). i should start off saying that all in all my professional experience so far would rank pretty low on the struggling against sexism scale - and yet who of even the luckiest ones of us hasn't had to deal with some misogynistic pornographic images "forgotten" by male colleagues on shared computers (so funny), being forced to listen to conversations where two guys in your lab "let loose" with a topic that's designed to put you, as a woman, in your place, going to the machine shop to get something done only to be assaulted by sexist stuff pasted all over the walls (to make it clear that it's an unapologetically strictly "masculine" haven), all sorts of advances from male colleagues... and so on?! sometimes it's not that much, but often it's just enough to make you feel uncomfortable and distracted while at work. and then sometimes it can be horrible, as was the case for a friend of mine who had to endure constant harassment from her two male officemates - ranging from "joking" comments about how much of her cleavage could be seen when she'd bend over to turn on her computer every day to one of them changing out of his running shorts in the office while she was there, in spite of her protests. but whatever it is, it's stuff that you just wouldn't have to worry about if you were a guy (or a woman who's in a professional field that's not male-centered and -dominated, still, to the same extent as engineering and the sciences).

in fact, in a study and research environment where typically the percentage of women is still so low (some simple statistics for women in sciences and for girls in sciences), i for one have been lucky especially in that i've always been part of groups where the gender balance was a little bit better than the average. and i think this is essential: the worst situations are always where attention is not even paid to the issue - where it doesn't even occur to people that science is not an all-male realm, or that it shouldn't be. because as soon as many women are around (not just, at "best," the token one who's the exception that enforces the rule), such "forgetting" becomes difficult - which in itself doesn't mean that things are rosy, of course, because there's still institutionalized sexism, but it does help; it makes the day-to-day stuff bearable, at least, and you can get your work done!

one pervasive issue that i'd like to put in this context is the idea that as a woman in a "serious" male-dominated professional field, your particular gender choices might make you "legitimate" or not. but i assert that this entire dynamic is gendered. for instance: i used to know a woman in an engineering department who looked like a stereotypical "bimbo" (whatever that means, exactly). and i always hated that just because she looked like she did she was assumed to be a little (or a lot) stupid. and that's the thing. that's what i was talking about in the blaming post, too! just because the patriarchy tells us that women are either one thing or the other (either sexy or geeks, either whores or virgins...), it doesn't mean that we should play along with that mentality. what's more, taking others to task for not sticking to just one of those patriarchy-defined "opposing" roles doesn't automatically make us "feminist" - in fact, if anything it brings us into agreement with anti-feminist and patriarchy-supporting sentiments. because that kind of judgment from both men and women, and another very common stance that women tend to adopt - "but there's no sexism anywhere, i haven't seen it, in fact i'm doing quite well in an all-male environment and if there's women who can't take it that's their problem" - is essentially a way of denouncing other women, renouncing any solidarity with them, in other words woman-bashing and in effect aligning oneself with the patriarchal order. and maybe that's precisely how we should approach the problem: if we criticize a woman for succumbing to some aspect of traditional "femininity" is it really on grounds that she is perpetuating patriarchal bullshit which does damage to all women (and men), or rather that "femininity" is inherently bad and we want to dissociate ourselves from it? in criticizing, are we extending solidarity in the face of patriarchy, or denying it? are we being more useful and really "non-conformist" or more patronizing and patriarchy-embracing? i think in this both the intent and the real-life impact of our stances and words are equally important. (and i want to make sure it's clear that what i'm trying to say is actually diametrically opposite to promoting any kind of apolitical, wishy-washy, everything-goes feminism along the line of so-called "choice" feminism.)

basically, my point here is very close to what zuska says with "being a woman in engineering, it depends upon how you approach it, how you treat other women, what you stand up for, how you conduct yourself in life... it's just a hell of a lot harder to do ... in engineering and science because the institutionalized sexism is so entrenched." precisely! but then my question for zuska would be how some of her reaction to the "it screen goddess" who attempted a dialog would fit into this expressed attitude. because i think it doesn't - zuska is trying to distance herself from a project she finds problematic politically speaking (and rightly so, up to a point), but ultimately what it feels like is that she has decided those women exhibit false consciousness, and therefore are not capable of any agency, nor should they be allowed any. and in my view, this is the type of place from which things start to go down the misogynistic slope.

this is such an important point! for a good exploration of "false consciousness" and its ramifications go over here (i found the link, as i did zuska's blog, through tiara.org, feminism and technology):

... suppose we strip away the unsavory connotations of "false consciousness." Let us further accept that every adult human being's right to self-determination should be respected, regardless of sex or background or educational level or mental impairment, and regardless of whether we believe that human being is acting in accordance with his or her best interests. I would assert that there is value in recognizing that people do not always see the ways in which societal institutions or assumptions may hurt them or hurt the class of people to which they belong. This is particularly true of women because our culture is rife with all sorts of assumptions about women which inure to our detriment -- assumptions about our essential nature (including the assumption that there even is an essential feminine nature), our capabilities, our proper role, and our relationship with men.

You're probably not ever going to catch me using the term "false consciousness." And you are certainly never going to catch me saying that women, or any other types of individuals, are somehow incapable of identifying their own interests and acting to further them. I often do, however, see instances when women will buy into a paradigm or set of sexist assumptions that I believe are either not good for them as individuals or are not good for women in general. But rather than write off the instances I have observed with the one-size-fits-all explanation of "false consciousness," I believe there a number of explanations for this phenomenon ...

going back to the discussion of what it's like to be woman in a "hard science" field - i think that the blog against sexism day post at adventures in ethics and science summed up matters beautifully, and "women in science: the clash of cultures" by londa schiebinger brings up most of the essential points. [later edit: thinking girl has also written about what might be some reasons why there are less women in math/sciences.]

some quick resources:
[if anyone has good links to suggest, that would be awesome!]

• genderchangers' "cool women's groups and programs" list
• girlgeeks
• women-related web sites in science/technology
• the center for women and information technology
• association for women in science
• women in engineering (at my old school)

and as for the philosophical part - for my "women and science" course in undergrad i wrote a paper on the subject of how aggression has been used to legitimize scientific endeavors throughout history (applied to vivisection), in which i covered the basic feminist critique of traditional epistemology and science. it can't hurt to bring it up: >>>

The quintessential traditional element of modern science remains the ideal of objectivity, embodied in aperspectival experimental methods of research. This ideal has been used to legitimize various disciplines, and most notably medical research and physiology, as "true" sciences. ... Feminist scholars have criticized scientific objectivity as a "gender-linked ideal, reified by the image of the male scientist scrutinizing and even oppressing female nature," which has caused the exclusion of women from the scientific realm and the exploitation of everything considered "less than" the all-powerful scientist. ....

Gendered images have always played a role in descriptions of the natural world in relation to humans and the universe in general. Up until the seventeenth century, nature was viewed as having a "female soul;" during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the dominant ideas were of a female cosmos and a feminine orientation to it, resulting in a "participating consciousness" manifested in the thought and culture of the time. This concept relied on the "continuity between the human and physical realms, on the interpenetrations, through meanings, of self and world." By the early seventeenth century, however, these ties came to be seen as distortions, or epistemological threats to human intelligence and progress, and to the necessity for such ideals as "self," "locatedness" and "innerness" for the sentient individual. The newly emerging theories of rationalism (Rene Descartes) and empiricism (Francis Bacon) celebrated this break between the person and the organic world, transforming an anxiety over the separation into an actively pursued ideal of the male "rebirth" through denial of the concept of a "female soul" of the world.

... The Cartesian ideal of objectivity is based on this idea, so that "so long as the human being is embedded in nature and united with it, objectivity is impossible." Objectivity relies on the complete detachment of the observer from the studied object. Through the impartial attitude of the knower towards that which is to be known, "infantile subjectivism is overcome by the possibility of a cool, impersonal, distanced cognitive relation to the world." Indeed, for Descartes, the "prejudices" of childhood need to be overcome in order to aspire to the new type of objective scientific thought. Since in this case childhood is synonymous to sensuality and animality, such "prejudices" are seen to blur the necessary boundaries between subject and object. For Kant, too, human intelligence is founded on the distinction between knower and known.

Bacon viewed the new principles of science and philosophy as "a truly masculine birth of time," and Cartesian rationalism has been described as the "super-masculinization of rational thought." On this basis, feminist authors have brought the now universal ideal of scientific objectivity into question. Some have criticized objectivity itself as being exclusively "masculine" in nature, while others have argued that women too can achieve the same degree of impersonality that is required of scientists, and therefore the masculine subject/feminine object dichotomy needs revisioning.

Both Donna Haraway and Sandra Harding have advocated new epistemologies that recognize the situated and fragmentary character of all knowledge ... The differentiation here is similar to that ... between the "participating consciousness" of the medieval time and the detached objectivity of modern science. Helen Longino and Ruth Doell have identified points of vulnerability in scientific method, which show the variety in the ways masculine bias can express itself in the content and processes of scientific research.

Based on these analyses, Evelyn Fox Keller and Carol Gilligan have written on the necessity of an integration of "sympathetic thinking" (the opposite of apersonal thinking) into our current standards of rationality. Such a change involves developing a new type of objectivity, rather than requiring rejection of the concept of objectivity altogether. Keller has called this "dynamic objectivity," defined as "a pursuit of knowledge that makes use of subjective experience [...] in the interests of a more effective objectivity. Premised on continuity, it recognizes difference between self and other as an opportunity for a deeper and more articulated kinship." In other words, Keller advocates the return to a "one-with-nature" approach combined with a critical observation of this union -- something Albert Einstein termed "cosmic religiosity."

Another theory presented in this context belongs to Naomi Oreskes, who argues that the ideal of "heroism" in scientific research, rather than that of objectivity, is its specifically "masculine" trait, and the one most likely to have prevented women from advancing and being recognized in science. While for Keller the invisibility of female scientists can be explained by a woman's innate ("feminine") way of doing science, which is outside the norms of accepted practice, Oreskes disputes the accuracy of this point. "[The traditional concept of] [s]cientific objectivity demands the effacement of the observer and insists on the irrelevance of context." But this idea of the "dispassionate dissector of nature [...] untainted by strong emotion, [with] his white lab coat [...], a cipher for a bloodless rationality that permits the pursuit of nature with cold and abstract objectivity" does not clarify completely why women could not be active participants in such scientific pursuits. Instead, the myth of the "heroic" scientist does, because it glorifies the image of a physically powerful man, willing to sacrifice emotional ties with outside life. Contrary to the idea of a detached, objective scientist, Oreskes discusses a passionate observer, who pursues his research intently while purposely giving up health, safety, and family life. She specifies that the former image may be used in scientific communities if the status of a certain discipline as "real" science is disputed, but for an accepted area of research the rhetoric of heroism is employed to win over the larger public.

The analyses of modern science advanced by these feminist scholars can be seen to converge based on a criticism of the underlying celebration of male aggression found in scientific discourse. This recognition of the "rhetoric of violence" in science addresses both the view of objectivity as detachment from (and the implied subordination of) nature by the scientist and the theory of scientific heroism as a means of limiting scientific pursuit to the masculine realm. Moreover, given the highly gendered context, the mentioned aggression takes on sexual connotations. Such expressions as "conquering," "unveiling the secrets," and "penetrating the depths" of nature are commonplace in scientific texts, suggesting something more than the mere culture versus nature conflict.

In itself, the Cartesian repudiation of the "female soul" of the organic world implies a victory over the old, feminine, order. As Bordo puts it, in the seventeenth century that "female world-soul [...] was murdered." She poses that starting at that time, the universe began to be perceived as more disordered and uncontrollable than ever before, thus requiring more drastic means of subduing it. This "taming" of the female universe was accomplished by empirical science through "aggressive assault and violation of her 'secrets,'" and by rationalism through "the philosophical neutralization of her vitality."

the entire paper with references is here.
also useful for further exploration of the general topic: another feminism and science bibliography, a list of women in science and engineering references, "history of women and science, health, and technology: a bibliographic guide to the professions and the disciplines" and a pretty comprehensive collection of links on women, gender and science.