Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!ukma!gatech!mcnc!ecsvax!sethg@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
From: sethg@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Seth Gordon)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: Effects of Lacan, Cisoux, etc., on women's position
Message-ID: <5875@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 17 Nov 88 16:01:34 GMT
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palepink@cc.utah.edu in <5845@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>:
`The comment that disturbed me is somebody's contention
`that French criticism might affect American feminism
`and their faith in women's abilities.  It looks to me
`that American feminists are doing a pretty good job of
`damning women by themselves (the ones I've read don't
`refer specifically to French theory, at least.  There
`may have been strong influences).

Could you elaborate on this?  My Women's Studies professor and I would
be most interested in this topic.  (Isabelle de Courtivron is my
professor; she is the head of the Women's Studies Program here, she's
French, and I believe she co-edited a book of French feminist essays.)

`The articles I read, these last few years, on the progress
`of women in science, largely agree that women have
`reached their limit.  This is because when Francis 
`Bacon formulated the scientific method three hundred
`years ago he used phrases like "man can learn to exploit
`Nature for his benefit; she has much to give", so that
`the scientific method is inherently anti-woman and
`women's brains are incapable of creatively working
`in an anti-woman direction.  

Are *most scientists* *socialized* to be anti-woman?  IMHO, probably so.
Is *the scientific method* *inherently* anti-woman?  IMHO, almost
certainly not.

It's true that among many people, even scientists, there is an image of
science as inherently "masculine"; exploitation of women is used as a
metaphor for science or technology (as in that Bacon quote); and
"objective" scientists let assumptions about gender bias their work.

Evelyn Fox Keller, in _Reflections on Gender and Science_ (Yale
University Press, 1985), suggests that women have a harder time than men
doing "hard" science, and science is perceived as masculine, because
both masculinity and science involve sharp seperation between, and
domination of, a "subject" (men or the scientist) and an "object" (women
or nature).  However, she does not see this as due to innate differences
between male and female brains; following Nancy Chodorow's feminist
psychoanalytic theories, she sees this as rooted in how boys and girls
are raised.

I don't think "the scientific method is inherently anti-woman."  By
using the scientific method to find the *truth* about gender differences
and their causes, science can be actively *pro*-woman.  See, for
example, Ann Fausto Sterling's book _Myths of Gender: Biological
thoughts About Women and Men_, or Ruth Bleier's essay "Sex Difference
Research: Science or Belief" in _Feminist Approaches to Science._

The Biology and Gender Study Group at Swarthmore College (Michael
Dukakis's alma mater, incidentally) has written a paper relevant to this
discussion: A. Beldecos et al., "The Importance of Feminist Critique for
Contemporary Cell Biology," which should be coming out in _Hypatia_
sometime in 1988.  (I only have the manuscript, so I don't know which
issue.)  In the abstract for this paper, the authors write:

"Biology is seen not merely as a privileged oppressor of women but as a
co-victim of masculinist social assumptions.  We see feminist critique
as one of the normative controls that any scientist must perform
whenever analyzing data, and we seek to demonstrate what has happened
when this control has not been utilized...."

What do they mean, "feminist critique as... [a] normative control?"

"We have come to look at feminist critique as we would any other
experimental control.  Whenever one performs an experiment, one sets up
all the controls one can think of in order to make as certain as
possible that the result obtained does not come from any other source.
One asks oneself what assumptions one is making.  Have I assumed the
temperature to be constant?  Have I assumed that the pH doesn't change
over the time of the reaction?  Feminist critique asks if there may be
some assumptions that we haven't checked concerning gender bias."

The authors, in this paper, give a feminist critique of cell biology, in
which, for example researchers and textbook writers throughout the ages
have assumed the sperm and egg to fit the stereotypical roles of men and
women.

-- 
"Hey, man, you lookin' *good*!"  "Yeah, man, I'm on the rag!"
 -- Gloria Steinem, _If Men Could Menstruate_
: bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!sethg / standard disclaimer
: Seth Gordon / MIT Brnch., PO Box 53, Cambridge, MA 02139