Ugh. So, the beautiful thing about writing a blog hardly anyone reads is I can basically say whatever I want. Which makes this blog, I guess, masturbatory. But masturbation has its place in a healthy sex life--why not extend the icky metaphor?
I have a lot of blogs that I read fairly regularly--they are necessary to my mental health when in the throes of editing pages and pages or moving files around or transcribing tales of tenure and promotion woe from council notes (that last one always puts my stomach in a twist--the horrible sexist, racist, and sometimes just plain asshole comments some very few people make! oh, the railroading! oh, the failures to communicate! oh, my future!). So, I'll stop a minute from the work, and read a little, and move on.
But yesterday, I made a mistake: I tried to participate. One of the blogs (a favorite, actually) posted about advisor fecundity--a study of how many professors professors churn out, basically. So, there is something so weird about calling it "fecundity"--one more in a series of anecdotal instances where I find that researchers (of all stripes, science or not) talk about their career as if it were their kid, as if their advisees were their kids, as if the particular research was their kid, or the research or brains was something to fuck or to fuck with, e.g. "the penetrating thrust of this seminal research." I particularly find this true when I get stuff to edit from math and physics--or when the scientist is especially famous. So, as I exchange all the "its" and "it's" and try for the sometimes elusive clear and simple explanation/not misrepresenting the research balance, I will also replace the baby-making language with something more neutral.
And so, I got excited when there was commentary about this particular phenomena, because sometimes I think I'm being crazy. (I'm not--would you let "the thrust of this penetrating research" go out into the world? That's the editorial equivalent of letting your friend leave the house with the barndoor open or toilet paper on the shoe.) So I made a remark. I tried to be cute--which is always a mistake. And I was ironically self-deprecating about my literary sensitivity to the use of words, which in a scientific context, was definitely a mistake. And, of course, I evinced a feminist opinion, which makes you troll food. If you go to the FSP blog (see link and blog roll) you can find my comments. You can see what assholery ensued.
I'm trying to avoid engaging with the "critiques" offered to my comments--that's only going to make me angrier, even if I did it in this relatively safe space. (If I did it there, I'd be internet toast.) But the one that tells me I'm stupid for "having" to reference the OED and was wasting my time (as if all I do all day is remove "penetrating" from documents) and should leave academia stuck in my craw. Clearly, a troll--but these are precisely the attitudes that made me always not-feeling-completely-at-home when I was in science, that kept me from leaving science for literature because of my (partially working-class based) shame of loving something "useless," and that I sometimes still get since I don't live in a bubble and still have contact with science-y places. The basic premise to the attitude is that words don't matter, words have transparent and singular meanings, that paying attention to words is worthless and stupid, and finally that *you* are stupid for spending time on it. (Yay for ad hominem attacks!) Sure, I'm not going to cure cancer with literature, but... but... oh, fuck it. Fuck you, anonymous troll! Words are lovely! Words are ugly! Words have many meanings and shades and histories that still fucking matter! Words have effects on people!--directly and indirectly! It's good to know about words! It's good to care about words! When people talk about research in terms of a dude-scientist fucking Mother Nature, some people might be skeeved out!
And there are so many things to say about what's wrong with that, from the gendering of who does science to perhaps saying something that doesn't feel too inviting to lady profs, students, and let's not forget my primary audience--donors. (And please, let's not piss off the donors--it's not like the federal money is flowing free these days.) It's not like the ladies will faint away at the use of such language (there are some tough, tough ladies at this university--they can fend for themselves, and they often have to). But, dude, there are reasons that STEM disciplines and this BRU in particular don't have 1:1 gender ratios... this is just one humble reason among so, so many.
No comments:
Post a Comment