I actually wrote this about a month or so ago, but am posting it now because the (male) professor in my "Intro to Research Ethics" class (not actually as dry as it sounds) praised the fact that I had written about how being a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field is actually a pretty big driving force propelling me forward in geophysics. I felt pretty intensely uncomfortable about being "revealed" publicly as a feminist, even in a positive sense. The conflicting feelings I felt today - wanting to stand behind what I wrote, but feeling a great deal of trepidation over being "outed" as a feminist, reminded me of this post I wrote some weeks ago. Also the fact that I actually had something of a night off, for once...
The few weeks during which there was an uproar over a certain shirt were a bit jarring for me. Mostly, because I was just shocked at the denial that the shirt was sexist*, in such tones as to suggest that this denial was simply common sense. I’m not going to jump into the argument over whether or not the shirt was sexist, because I’ve already done that, and that’s part of why I felt the need to write this. I feel the need to explain a bit about why I keep posting all those articles, why I don’t post some other articles, why I am feminist, and why I felt a bit queasy about writing that last phrase.
*The context in which the shirt was worn being a HUGE part of this
First, what I post and what I don’t post. I would like to point out that the article I posted about the blankety-blank shirt was actually an attempt to move on from the issue. The article I posted described how a female scientist saw the shirt, and did her own remake by photo-shopping the visages of notable female scientists onto the shirt, transforming the shirt from a symbol of latent sexism and microagression to a celebration of women’s contributions to science. This is the kind of article I like to post, because there are few things that turn me off more than an angry diatribe*. Mostly, though, I feel there are plenty of articles floating around about all the things that are wrong, and not enough about what to do about it. I may be disadvantaged in terms of my gender, but this is very much not the case where race is concerned. From my white perspective, I know how frustrating it is to be told always what NOT to do, and be always be wondering what I could possibly do to help and not hinder. So when I find articles that offer helpful instruction, or information about methods that work to lessen the obstacles that women face in today’s society, those are the ones that I try to share.
*although sometimes those are very much needed.
I also delight in sharing encouraging stories, when I can, about awesome women doing awesome things. The article I posted related to the @#$@#$ shirt falls in this category. One of my qualms about many of the feminist articles I read is the overall tone of doom and gloom (more on this later), and so I try to alleviate this when I can, as much for my own sake as anyone else’s.
Of course, I’m human, so I will occasionally go on a brief (say, two or three) article posting spree. I actually just took a spin through my Facebok feed from the last nine months or so, and was somewhat confused to find very few posts on feminism. So either I don’t post as much as I think I do or Facebook is hiding things. Not really sure. ANYWAY, most of the articles/videos/etc that I avoid posting are the gut-reaction ones, you know, the pictures that have some poignant picture and some sassy one phrase statement. I may get a kick out of them sometimes, but I generally avoid sharing them because I don’t think they help. I think they give those of us “in the feminist club” a thing to chuckle about, and give those “outside the club” another thing to get pissed off at. So nothing is really accomplished. I’d much rather help people see a reason to listen, and make them think. Unfortunately, this strategy means posting a bunch of long articles I’m pretty sure not a lot of people read.
So why care? Well, for one, selfish interests. I’m a woman in a male dominated field. For most of the time I’ve worked there, my office has had one woman in the building – me. We’ve recently hired a full time female geophysicist*, so now that’s increased to all of two. Out of about twenty five or so humans in the whole building. I will say right now that any bad experiences I’ve had related to my gender have been very, very mild, mostly just loneliness and a sense of having to be extra awesome to adequately represent my gender. But there is something really off about these gender ratios! Other selfish interest – I haven’t faced much gender discrimination or violence yet, but that doesn’t mean I won’t sometime in the future. I’ve already had the experience of having a stalker for several years, I regularly have to strategically avoid certain men at social dance events, and our advisors had to specifically tell the women in our research group to be aware of bad situations prior to our sponsors' meeting.** I’ve had friends who have faced worse – leaving their careers because of hostile work environments, abuse, rape.
*Who did the survey planning for a 4-D gravity survey I may end up studying, fan girl swoon.
**I will say I’m very glad they were open about this, instead of sweeping it under the rug as a shameful thing that was only the women’s fault. This shows awareness and integrity, and I salute them for it.
It is hard to un-see a thing once it is seen. I have read so many articles on the challenges women face, particularly in science, that it is hard now not to automatically notice gender ratios at a conference, see who is presented as “successful” in an article*, notice who professors will praise and who they only mention, notice how all the founding scientists of geophysics are men. I get tired of noticing all the extra things I have to think about as a female – is it safe to walk down this street? Is this guy talking to me a threat or just friendly? Do I need to stop dancing with this guy before he gets “ideas”?
*All men, surprise. Should really have saved that article link, sorry.
It all gets me just a bit riled up. It’s hard for me, sometimes, to imagine a reality in which I wouldn’t have to think about these things as a matter of daily life – the reality of a white male. He only has to think about these things if he decides to, for me, it’s my reality all the time. And I know it is so, so much worse for other women. I’ve been rather ridiculously lucky to have the worse thing to happen to me be a few minor stalking episodes. I can’t imagine having to deal with the trauma of something worse, AND being the only one around who will speak up about the societal systems that make such things common. So because I have been relatively unscathed, I feel it’s my duty to speak up, as someone who’s “made it” so far.
And now for why I cringe at calling myself “feminist”. Part of it’s a personality quirk. I’m extremely contrarian by nature, so I instinctively hate associating myself with a label or a group. For the same reason I cringe at calling myself “environmentalist”, even though I probably for all intents and purposes am*. But on a deeper level, I worry about what all this does to me, on both an internal and external level. I don’t deny that feminism needs to be a thing. There’s too much stupid stuff in the world that just needs to change. However, it gets exhausting being angry so much. It is hard to un-see things, and harder to know that if I want to call them out I’m going to have to fight an uphill battle against very entrenched mindsets. The anger is insidious, and more than once I have felt the danger of it poisoning friendships and relationships. I am not a vindictive person, and I do not like finding I am angry at someone. But because I am a faulty human being, I often find it hard to separate a person from their views, when those view run counter to something that is so very important to me, both as an issue and as a reality of my life.
*which is just FUN when the research you love is funded by the extraction industries….
I also worry how my feminist views affect how people see me. I wonder if employers, who is my field are pretty likely to be older white males, are going to find out about my feminist views and associations and think, oh, here is a white hot flaming feminist, she won’t do good work in our mostly male company. She is emotional and irrational, we don’t want her. I wonder how my friends see me – do they see me as fiery emotional feminist firebrand on fire? It is so important to me that people be able to talk to me, and the idea that people might not talk to me for fear of being attacked distresses me, all the more so because I know what that feels like in my identity as a White Upper-Middle Class Anglo Saxon Protestant American. I don’t want to inflict that on my friends!
Nonetheless, there are the people who quietly tell me that reading some article I posted empowered them, or helped them realize a difficult situation wasn’t actually just them being weak. I’ve had older women tell me on more than one occasion to keep fighting, to not let slide the gains they made in their generation. And that is very heartening. But I am a pacifist at heart, and I find it hard to come to terms with the fact that sometimes conflict is necessary in order to fix things that need fixing.
So why am I still feministing? Well, I’m a very stubborn optimist, and a lover of history. At the SEG, we had a panel of prominent women in geophysics speak about their experiences in geophysics. Something I have been thinking about a lot lately, when I am feeling overwhelmed by all the stupid resistance one can get for daring even to criticize a @%^% shirt: would these women, one of whom was the first ever female PhD in EM (electromagnetism) and another who still remains the only female president of the SEG, have believed that one day I’d be in a geophysics research group that was slightly over 50% female? Would they have believed that I would make it to the second half of my master’s before I realized, oh wait a minute, some people think I’m not supposed to do this? I’d like to think they would have. So I’m going to stubbornly believe that today’s trolls will be tomorrow’s history lessons, that the idea of not having equal numbers of women and men at an engineering school will be something for my children to gasp and giggle at. That someday, I won’t have to explain to a man why a shirt is sexist, and I won’t even see the shirt in the first place. I’m hoping that some day I’ll have some really hair-raising stories, and that they will be just that – stories, and no longer reality.
