Women, Science, and Technology Third Edition

Women, Science, and Technology

Third Edition

Women, Science, and Technology is an ideal reader for courses in feminist science studies. The editors have extensively revised this anthology to refl ect the newest trends in the fi eld. The third edition contains emerging work in feminist science studies that focuses on specifi c scientifi c and technological research and calls attention to debates among feminists about how to envision our futures in relation to this research. Women, Science, and Technology continues to make the argument that scientifi c and technological advances are at once deeply implicated in the rigidity of the sex/gender classifi cation system and necessarily useful to challenging that classifi cation system. In addition, recent trends in theory motivate a rethinking of related systems of domination, including race/ ethnicity, class, sexualities, and global relations. This new edition refl ects those important developments as integral to feminist science studies while incorporating a international perspectives.

Mary Wyer is Associate Professor of Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies at North Carolina State University.

Mary Barbercheck is Professor of Entomology at Pennsylvania State University.

Donna Cookmeyer is a chair on the Institutional Review Board and is the Research Integrity Ofﬁ cer for the Duke School of Medicine.

Hatice Örün Öztürk is a teaching associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University.

Marta Wayne is Professor of Biology at the University of Florida, Gainesville. This page intentionally left blank Women, Science, and Technology A Reader in Feminist Science Studies

Third Edition

Edited by Mary Wyer, Mary Barbercheck, Donna Cookmeyer, Hatice Örün Öztürk, and Marta Wayne Third edition published 2014 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 Taylor & Francis The right of the editor to be identiﬁ ed as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identiﬁ cation and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published 2001 by Routledge Second edition published 2008 by Routledge Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Women, science, and technology : a reader in feminist science studies / edited by Mary Wyer, Mary Barbercheck, Donna Cookmeyer, Hatice Örün Öztürk, and Marta L. Wayne. — Third edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Women in science. 2. Women in technology. 3. Feminism and science. I. Wyer, Mary editor of compilation. Q130.W672 2014 500.82—dc23 2013008533 ISBN: 978-0-415-52109-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-52110-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-42741-5 (ebk) Typeset in Utopia by Apex CoVantage, LLC We renew our dedication of this book to all those women in science and engineering who have been denied the good friendship and encouragement that have sustained us. Know that we are cheering for you all. This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction: Feminism, Science and Technology—Why It Still Matters xix

SECTION 1. FROM MARGINS TO CENTER: EDUCATING WOMEN FOR SCIENTIFIC CAREERS 1. Science Faculty’s Subtle Gender Biases Favor Male Students 3 CORINNE A. MOSS-RACUSIN, JOHN F. DOVIDIO, VICTORIA L. BRESCOLL, MARK J. GRAHAM, AND JO HANDELSMAN This article reports results from a randomized double-blind study indicating the need to develop meritocratic standards of evaluation of undergraduate students’ potential as scientists. 2. Snow Brown and the Seven Detergents: A Metanarrative on Science and the Scientiﬁ c Method 15 BANU SUBRAMANIAM The main character in this fable is a woman from India who comes to the U.S. to pursue her dream of becoming a scientist. 3. State of Knowledge about the Workforce Participation, Equity, and Inclusion of Women in Academic Science and Engineering 21 DIANA BILIMORIA AND XIANGFEN LIANG The authors review current statistics on the progress of women through the science and engineering pipeline, from undergraduate degrees to faculty ranks. 4. Walking a Tightrope: The Feminist Life of a Drosophila Biologist 51 MARTA WAYNE This autobiographical account describes the interpersonal and social dynamics of gender relations in the author’s academic and professional training. viii | CONTENTS

5. When Computers Were Women 60 JENNIFER S. LIGHT Historian Jennifer S. Light reveals the lost history of women who were key innovators in the technological developments underwriting contemporary computing. 6. The Intersection of Gender, Race and Cultural Boundaries, or Why Is Computer Science in Malaysia Dominated by Women? 81 ULF MELLSTRÖM Focusing on Malaysia, the author illustrates how women’s relationships to technology are not universal but rather develop and change in specifi c economic, historical, and cultural contexts. 7. Interdisciplinary Approaches to Achieving Gendered Innovations in Science, Medicine, and Engineering 100 LONDA SCHIEBINGER AND MARTINA SCHRAUDNER The authors describe concrete examples to explain how a focus on gender enhances scientifi c knowledge and technology design. 8. The Gender Gap in Patents 111 SUE ROSSER Based on interviews, statistical data, and theory, this essay examines the importance of securing patents as a gateway to professional advancement for women. SECTION 2. FEMINIST APPROACHES IN/TO SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 9. Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals 133 CAROL COHN Cohn explores the meanings behind the language used by those who develop U.S. military strategic analyses in relation to nuclear weapons. 10. Socially Camoufl aged Technologies: The Case of the Electromechanical Vibrator 157 RACHEL MAINES Historian Maines describes the development and marketing of a technology directed at the taboo subject of women’s sexuality. 11. The Need to Bleed? A Feminist Technology Assessment of Menstrual-Suppressing Birth Control Pills 171 JENNIFER AENGST AND LINDA L. LAYNE Focusing on beliefs and attitudes about femininity, the authors review perspectives on the potential of technology to meet women’s health choices and needs globally. CONTENTS | ix

12. Hardwired for Sexism? Approaches to Sex/Gender in Neuroscience 193 REBECCA M. JORDAN-YOUNG AND RAFFAELLA I. RUMIATI The authors describe the conceptual errors and problematic interpretations in contemporary research on the brain that presumes social behaviors have biological origins. 13. Making Males Aggressive and Females Coy: Gender across the Animal-Human Boundary 206 ERIKA LORRAINE MILAM Milam traces evolutionary theory from Darwin to contemporary feminism, focusing on the shifting understandings of sex differences in relation to animal and human behavior. 14. Asking Different Questions: Feminist Practices for the Natural Sciences 223 DEBOLEENA ROY The author, a neuroendocrinologist, links philosophy and feminist science theory in order to outline how feminist commitments lead to innovative methods and new research insights. 15. “Keep Life Simple”: Body/Technology Relationships in Racialized Global Contexts 242 CHIKAKO TAKESHITA Using a case study approach, the author explores the racialized subtext of the development, adoption, and marketing of contraceptives globally. SECTION 3. TECHNOLOGIES OF SEX, GENDER, AND DIFFERENCE 16. Science, Power, Gender: How DNA Became the Book of Life 265 RUTH HUBBARD Hubbard argues that social relations shape individuals’ careers and the distribution of information, but that scientiﬁ c insight emerges through empirical methods and evidence. 17. The Bare Bones of Sex: Part 1—Sex and Gender 272 ANNE FAUSTO-STERLING In this study, Fausto-Sterling details how the physiology of the human skeleton requires understanding bodies as systems that interweave culture with nature. 18. Constructing Gender from the Inside Out: Sex-Selection Practices in the United States 297 RAJANI BHATIA Bhatia’s study of transnational reproduction-assisting industries focuses on the emergence of sex-selection as a routine prenatal diagnostic technology now available to would-be parents. x | CONTENTS

19. Race, Gender, and Genetic Technologies: A New Reproductive Dystopia? 318 DOROTHY E. ROBERTS Roberts’ examines the global high-tech fertility industry as marketed to women of color to become both consumers and donors, in the social and economic context of mothering. 20. Sexing the X: How the X Became the “Female Chromosome” 334 SARAH S. RICHARDSON This article explains the history of scientiﬁ c knowledge about the X chromosome and chronicles shifts in interpretations even while scientists sustain early conceptual errors. SECTION 4. THINKING THEORETICALLY 21. Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, Gender, and Embodiment 353 JESSIE DANIELS This essay provides an overview of feminist theories about the subversive potential of the Internet, with an emphasis on the lived experiences and Internet practices of women. 22. Gender and Technology 370 FRANCESCA BRAY The author taps anthropology in order to show how theories of innovation as a universal human activity contribute to understanding gender as emergent within material culture. 23. Queering Feminist Technology Studies 385 CATHARINA LANDSTRÖM Landström analyzes heteronormative approaches to gender-technology relations and outlines how queer theory can fruitfully complicate research on the social construction of technology. 24. Feminist Heterosexual Imaginaries of Reproduction: Lesbian Conception in Feminist Studies of Reproductive Technologies 400 PETRA NORDQVIST This essay investigates feminist representations of reproduction and sexuality and argues that pervasive heterosexual norms have limited the development of theory and research. 25. From Reproductive Work to Regenerative Labor: The Female Body and the Stem Cell Industries 416 CATHERINE WALDBY AND MELINDA COOPER The authors argue that the transnational brokerage of stem cells is creating a bioeconomy in which women are laborers under contract to foster human self-regeneration science. CONTENTS | xi

26. Beyond Postcolonial Theory: Two Undertheorized Perspectives on Science and Technology 431 SANDRA HARDING In this essay, Harding argues that standpoint theory is an implicit component of postcolonial theory that can illuminate gender relations in local contexts despite its Western roots. SECTION 5. THEORETICAL HORIZONS IN FEMINIST TECHNOSCIENCE STUDIES 27. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective 455 DONNA HARAWAY This classic essay in feminist science studies presents an argument for defi ning objectivity as achieved through engagement with, rather than detachment from, human activities. 28. Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter 473 KAREN BARAD The author describes the limits of constructivist views and offers the alternative view that the empirical world has materiality and agency unrelated to human intentionality and subjectivity. 29. Animal Performances: An Exploration of Intersections between Feminist Science Studies and Studies of Human/Animal Relationships 495 LYNDA BIRKE, METTE BRYLD, AND NINA LYKKE In this essay, the authors explore the limits of nature/culture and animal/ human dichotomies and suggest that scientifi c knowledge constructs but is also constructed by the natural world. 30. Sex Genes: A Critical Sociomaterial Approach to the Politics and Molecular Genetics of Sex Determination 507 JOAN H. FUJIMURA Fujimura details experimental research about the SRY and DAX-1 genes in mice and humans to examine evidence that supports scientifi c claims about the materiality of sex. 31. Imaginary Prohibitions: Some Preliminary Remarks on the Founding Gestures of the “New Materialism” 530 SARA AHMED The author considers feminist theory about the body and reminds readers that feminist science studies scholars have long recognized the tangibility of human biology in a material world. xii | CONTENTS

32. From Science and Technology to Feminist Technoscience 543 JUTTA WEBER Conceptualizing technoscience as embedded in transnational capitalism, the author explores how transdisciplinary knowledge is challenging the boundary between science and culture. 33. Eco/Feminism and Rewriting the Ending of Feminism: From the Chipko Movement to Clayoquot Sound 557 NIAMH MOORE Moore traces the international commitments of feminist environmental activism and argues that eco/feminist historical narratives reveal a hopeful pluralist vision of global feminisms. Contributors 573

Credits 577

Index 583 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

As we began the work that launched the third edition of Women, Science, and Technol- ogy we confronted several challenges to continuing to provide an overview of feminist science studies for use inside and outside of the classroom. Selections in earlier editions were strategically chosen to make feminist perspectives on the sciences accessible to a general audience, to provide a framework that began with familiar themes from liberal feminist perspectives (describing unequal outcomes by gender and race/ethnicity, in education, employment, and training), then moved through the logic of cultural construction of scientifi c knowledge, ending with articles that pointed toward agency and action in shaping scientifi c and technological research agendas. It was a framework meant to persuade readers that feminist perspectives improved one’s ability to critically examine the changes sweeping through our lives. In this new edition we advance from our previous focus to describe a new path forward as it refl ects emerging work in feminist science studies that focuses on specifi c scientifi c and technological research, and it calls attention to debates among feminists about how to envision our futures in relation to this research. Women, Science, and Technology, in our selections, continues to make the argument that scientifi c and technological advances are at once deeply implicated in the rigidity of the sex/gender classifi cation system and necessarily useful to challenging that classifi cation system. In addition, recent trends in theory motivate a rethinking of related systems of domination, including race/ethnicity, class, sexualities, and global relations. This new edition refl ects those important developments as integral to feminist science studies. The 2013 edition of Women, Science, and Technology marks the fi fteenth year since we began teaching our course, “Women and Gender in Science and Technology,” at North Carolina State University, which sparked the development of the book. The fi rst year we offered the course there were just fi ve students enrolled, with all fi ve of us teaching it. The course now routinely attracts more than 400 students a year and satisfi es a university general education requirement at NC State, and it has been adopted widely throughout the United States. Our decisions about content for the new edition are in part due to the evolving interests and enthusiasms of students, who are more inclusive, global thinkers than their predecessors. What has become apparent to us in the past fi fteen years is that our students are better educated about gender issues than they were when we began our work, that the topic of “feminist science studies” is not as scary to them as it once xiv | PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

may have been, and that the topics that resonate most profoundly for them are related to the body. By “the body” we refer to women and men as embodied, laboring, thinking, breathing humans whose individual desires, dreams, and choices are contained by barely visible social, institutional, and economic boundaries. This third edition refl ects this emphasis, around which there is lively debate within feminist theory, with articles that focus literally on the body as an object and subject of scientifi c and technological innovation as well as articles that engage the theoretical debates. Because of the increasingly specifi c level of terms and concepts that new scholars are bringing to feminist science studies, we trust that the third edition will challenge educators and students alike to talk across traditional disciplinary divides to embrace their inner feminist scientist. In our hunt for new material and our review of the earlier introductions, we discovered several arenas in which signifi cant change has taken place, and we want to mention these here—not to lay out a claim of discovering that all is well with the world, but rather to mark the moment and honor the change that has taken place. The arenas in which we note improvements, to name a few, are: the increasing representation of women as undergraduate and graduate degree earners in science, mathematics, and engineering; the increasing visibility of women’s health care in public policy discussions; the increasing recognition that women scientists and engineers bring useful and (perhaps) distinct experiences to the table in the development, implementation, and adaptation of new discoveries; the increasingly institutionalized commitments of colleges and universities to denounce gender bias in education, employment, and training in science and engineering fi elds; and the decreasing representation of science and scientists as necessarily masculine (never mind engineering or computer science for the moment). There is no shortage of heady concerns, however. Feminist theory is troubled by the analytic limitations of the sex/gender paradigm, the implications of recognizing that feminist lenses are as partial as those we critique, the increasing disconnect between research on issues related to exclusionary practices in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fi elds and feminist science studies, the continuing lack of cross- talk between feminist science theorists and feminist scholars in traditional disciplines, and the need to enhance the level of scientifi c literacy within the ranks of women’s and gender studies faculty. We leave to you the task of considering the possibilities of this dialog in light of your conversations around essays and themes herein. This book represents our effort to make a small wave in a sea of change. In terms of professional changes, the fi ve coeditors of this book have very different careers than those we held in the fi rst edition, advancing through the academic ranks and no longer located at the same institution. We continue to bring divergent and specialized perspectives into our work together. Mary Wyer is now associate professor of psychology and women’s and gender studies. She teaches theory and research on intersectionality, stereotypes, and feminist psychology. Her publications and empirical research program focus on how individuals’ self-concept as scientists and attitudes toward equality in science infl uence career commitments and persistence in science, with attention to gender and race/ethnicity. Mary Barbercheck is a professor of entomology at Penn sylvania State University, with research and extension in sustainable agriculture. Her research focus is on soil ecology and the effects of management practices on insects and related organisms in organic cropping systems. Her interests in women and gender have expanded from STEM to include women in agriculture. These interests include conducting research with the PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION | xv

Pennsylvania Women’s Agriculture Network, with a focus on improving agricultural production and marketing by women farmers in Pennsylvania and the northeastern United States. Donna Giesman Cookmeyer is now in research administration and is involved both in the oversight of clinical trials and institutional compliance. In her work she continues to rely on qualities central to the feminist scholarship on science, including issues of equity, equal participation, and transparency. Hatice Örün Öztürk divides her teaching time between biomedical engineering and electrical and computer engineering departments. She is the assessment and accreditation coordinator for the undergraduate programs in both departments. For the past four years she worked with the College of Engineering IT staff to implement a software program assessment tool designed under her leadership. She is an active member of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program executive council and enjoys the increasing number of her engineering students taking the women and gender in science and technology course. Her fi rst book of poetry is Bread and Time and was published in Turkish in 2012. Marta Wayne is now professor of biology and adjunct professor in the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research at the University of Florida, teaching courses in genetics, genetical ethics, and science studies. These differences in our professional pathways, particularly geographical distance, have made it logistically diffi cult to work together, but have also enriched our consideration of the fi eld of articles from which we selected those included in the third edition. We all had to agree that articles spoke to issues of broad concern but in ways that were methodologically and theoretically sound. We decided to feature newer work, agreeing to set aside many articles that are old favorites and classics. We found consensus on the new directions of the work and then developed a narrative that provided coherence. The diversity of backgrounds and our divergent life experiences, shared in kitchen table discussions, proved to be indispensible in assembling the third edition. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed developing it. This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOR THE THIRD EDITION

There are several people who have made it possible for us to sustain our work on Women, Science, and Technology by reminding us how important our work is and by assuming its merit. We give continuing thanks to the Women’s and Gender Studies Pro- gram at NC State University; to colleagues in the NSF ADVANCE project (Laura Sev- erin, Margaret Daub, Marcia Gumpertz, and Daniel Solomon); Banu Subramaniam for comments on early plans; the Department of Psychology at NC State; and the National Women’s Studies Association Science and Technology Taskforce. All of you have sustained us along the way and often behind the scenes. We also thank Hilary Rampey for her careful, thoughtful, and precise marshalling of the project through every step as a research assistant extraordinaire. We would also like to thank our reviewers: Sharra Vostral University of Illinois–Urbana Ann Koblitz Arizona State University Deena M. Murphy North Carolina State University, Raleigh Gwen Kay SUNY Oswego Clare C. Jen University of Maryland, Baltimore County Judy Meuth Washington State University Deboleena Roy Emory University Susan Laird Mody SUNY Plattsburgh Ann Hibner Koblitz Arizona State University Another stalwart of our efforts is Anna Hui, who cooked spicy and delicious Thai food for us throughout many years of meetings over dinner. We could not have done it without the friendship, support, and encouragement we have enjoyed from you all.

This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION: FEMINISM, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY— WHY IT STILL MATTERS

This collection of writings is designed to engage the reader in the disorientations and diffractions (to borrow Donna Haraway’s term) that constitute contemporary feminist science studies. The scholarship represented here begins with familiar feminist themes related to social biases that discourage the participation and advancement of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), but this third edition of Women, Science, and Technology quickly moves into topics related to the content of the curriculum in higher education, critiques of prevailing knowledge about sex and gender, debates from within feminist science studies about the limits and possibilities of feminist theoretical perspectives, and envisioning of new futures unbounded by disciplinary pre- rogatives. Although it matters that women have been (and continue to be) systematically excluded from, or marginalized within, the intellectual machinery of scientifi c and technological development and innovation—and it especially matters to those who experience discrimination—this path of work is but a start to thinking about women, gender, science, and technology. The endpoint, for this edition, is to raise questions about what we are teaching in institutions of higher education, to whom, and for what purposes. In an era in which conversations about diversity and inclusion have taken on national prominence in the United States, and the need to be globally competitive drives efforts to recruit talent to STEM careers, it may seem as if issues of inequality in STEM are passé. How could anyone still think that only white men are fi t for STEM careers? The issues, unfortunately, are more complicated than simply recruiting more women and people of color into STEM fi elds—a lot more complicated, in substance, scope, detail, defi nitions, and debates. Feminist scholars have built an impressive body of theory and research that offers not only important additions and correctives to traditional disciplines but also new visions and insights that take decidedly interdisciplinary turns. Responding to Charlotte Bunch’s famous warning that the new scholarship on women requires more than an effort to “add women and stir,” feminist educators and researchers have quite literally built a new interdisciplinary fi eld, women’s and gender studies (Bunch 1987; Boxer 1998). According to the National Women’s Studies Association, there are more than 700 women’s studies programs in the United States alone, educating some 15,000 majors and minors (Reynolds, Shagle, and Venkataraman 2007). Thirty-two percent of these institutions offer graduate-level training as well. xx | INTRODUCTION: FEMINISM, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY—WHY IT STILL MATTERS

At the same time, feminist scholars inside and outside of science and engineering disciplines have been at work developing new scholarship, research, and courses that bring feminist perspectives to a critical reappraisal of scientifi c knowledge long-assumed to be “objective” and “value-free” (Bleier 1984; Fausto-Sterling 1987, 1992; Harding 1991 ; Keller 1985, 1992; Longino 1990; Rosser 1997, Spanier 1995). The once controversial insight that knowledge is socially constructed—that human values and practices inevitably shape the knower, knowing, and known (Hawkesworth 1989)—now is less so, as the scientifi c community appears to acknowledge that some values, practices, and models of the natural world are more enduring and persuasive than others, that received “facts” emerge from consensus and debate, and that facts change over time even while interpretations of them reveal persisting ideologies (admirably argued by example in Rich- ardson, herein; and by Fausto-Sterling [2000]). After all, humans cannot stand off-world, as claimed by the early Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes, who is said to have (over)confi dently asserted: “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the earth.” For instance, Western Enlightenment ideas about the “rational man” cast science as a practice designed to subdue Mother Nature, as represented by Francis Bacon’s infamous metaphor, representing nature as a bride who must be subdued. “I am come in very truth leading to you Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave” (Keller 1985, 33). Such language captures at once the systematic exclusion of women from scientifi c practice and a defi nition of masculinity that embraces objectivity as a quintessentially male mind state. Bacon’s description of the relationship between scientists and nature also places scientists (men) in opposition to nature (women) and all too clearly indicates that nature must be controlled. Despite the value we continue to place in being objective and unbiased, science and engineering disciplines are nonetheless products of historical, cultural, and all-too-human invention. Institutions of higher education—their development, organization, practices, and underlying assumptions— have inherited the Enlightenment legacy of (white) male-as-objective, with troubling consequences (Minnich 2004; Flax 1987). What precisely are the consequences? The list of systematic distortions, ignorance, and normalization of oppressive conditions is a long one. It includes the exclusion of most humanity from the knowledge-making enterprise by requiring a prolonged and expensive training period before one can be credentialed as a researcher; by concentrating decision making about the allocation of resources in the hands of a select few; by appropriating capital (intellectual and fi nancial) from the public for investment in innovations that are exploited for profi ts, which are then diverted into corporate rather than public coffers; by the wholesale plunder of developing countries for resources to feed the innovation gods new capital investments; and by the appropriation of indigenous knowledge for exploitation by Western science. The liberatory potential of scientifi c research seems all but useless in the face of new waves of ignorance, misogyny, and violence against women globally and locally. Persisting and cruel inequality across the globe continues to deprive women of the means by which to secure food, shelter, safety, and an education for themselves and their children (Kristof and WuDunn 2009). In the United States many issues that would be resolved if women were recognized as fully entitled to constitutional protections continue to plague us. Debates about public funding of birth control, women’s health services, and constitutional rights to privacy and same-sex marriage, for instance, continue to reveal deep societal ambivalences about whether women really INTRODUCTION: FEMINISM, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY—WHY IT STILL MATTERS | xxi ought to be full citizens with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of men. Even pay equity, which is widely supported, seems a distant dream.1 That these insults to women continue even in the face of important improvements is all the more maddening in light of a stubborn resistance to rationale, objective, and unbiased arguments among those who would use public policy to return women to second-class status. Nonetheless, improving the educational, economic, and social status of all women is an enduring and keystone commitment of feminist scholarship and activism. There is perhaps no better example of this than the long and continuing struggle to ensure that women with the talent, ability, and interest to contribute to the world’s scientifi c and technological advancement have the opportunity to do so. We have assembled this textbook in order to provoke our readers to envision a future in which scientists and engineers are actively engaged in challenging recalcitrant and calcifi ed assumptions about nature, knowledge, sex, gender, and social change. The feminist science scholars included in this edition of Women, Science, and Technol- ogy, represent fi ve general approaches to building on, elaborating, and contributing to the foundations of feminist scholarship. These approaches include: (1) describing local and global inequities in access to education, training, and employment in STEM fi elds; (2) critiquing distortions and misrepresentations of women’s minds and bodies in medical and scientifi c research and development (i.e., documenting and demonstrating the social construction of knowledge); (3) exploring technoscientifi c innovations as both colluding and colliding with the sex/gender/sexuality nexus; (4) refl ecting on the limitations and possibilities of borderlands in feminist science theory; and (5) examining if/how prevailing paradigms (principally the nature/nurture dichotomy, but also male/female, human/ animal, science/technology) direct or contain new insights. These fi ve approaches, we propose, represent major currents in the most recent work in feminist science studies.2

1. Describing local and global inequities in access to education, training, and employment in STEM ﬁ elds

In this approach, as captured by the readings in section 1, researchers have documented the continuing and newly emerging practices and processes that infl uence if, how, and how successfully women participate in scientifi c and technological initiatives. Although it is clear that biases continue to suppress, shape, and direct women’s opportunities in STEM fi elds, the authors bring a wide variety of approaches to unveiling the ways in which biases operate and become evident. The experiment-based study report from Moss-Racusin et al., and an overview of data on women in academic science and engineering from Bilimoria and Liang, provide evidence that despite thirty years of dedicated effort, in the United States the proverbial pipeline continues to “leak” women, even at the highest levels and even with steady increases in women’s participation. Sue Rosser points toward the patent process as a newly named barrier for advancement of women to the highest levels of infl uence, as women are less likely than men to convert their intellectual capital to a patentable innovation. Banu Subramaniam’s classic fable “Snow Brown and the Seven Detergents” recounts how the “voluntary” erasure of cultural and gender markers is mandated in order to “fi t into” the patriarchal culture of Western science. Marta Wayne uses an autobiographical approach to describe her move toward a xxii | INTRODUCTION: FEMINISM, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY—WHY IT STILL MATTERS

feminist commitment in her scientifi c research after a series of bias-charged interactions with peers left her in doubt about her future. Ulf Mellström’s study of computer science in Malaysia takes a multimethod approach to understanding how the social categories of Ma- laysian society (gender, class, race, age) interacted with nationalist development agendas to create a “situated body politics” that generated new economic opportunities for women. Londa Scheibinger and Martina Schraudner provide specifi c examples to illustrate how scientifi c research and innovation are distorted by the exclusion of women to make a case for re-educating STEM faculty and students about the consequences of the loss of talent from the creative process. As a whole, the section readings make the case for knowing the details, how/where the biases continue, how inequality affects individuals and structures social relations, how institutional practices support the persisting exclusion of women from positions of power and infl uence, and how all of this pushes us to think about what we teach, what we know, what we defi ne as signifi cant topics for future research. Still, we are reminded by Jennifer S. Light’s study of women programmers’ contribution to the development of the fi rst electronic computer in the 1940s that too little is changing too slowly. As one of these early contributors put it, to succeed one must “look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man, and work like a dog.” Arguably, especially in engineering disciplines where women remain dramatically underrepresented, this remains all too true today. Some would argue that this is further evidence of the continuing dominance of hegemonic masculinity in engineering, so that the best paying and most infl uential jobs in the global technoscientifi c economy remain in the hands of men (Cockburn 1985; Faulkner 2000).

2. Critiquing distortions and misrepresentations of women’s minds and bodies in medical and scientiﬁ c research and development (i.e., documenting the social construction of knowledge)

Section 2 is dedicated to providing exemplars of studies documenting the social construction of knowledge as evident in language, evolutionary theory, neurobiology, and the history, development, and use of technologies of the body. These articles argue for the importance of understanding the value of a feminist perspective to unraveling many of the most insidious elements of hegemonic masculinity—insidious because they are barely visible in a backdrop of claims to objectivity. Among the readings are two favorite classics from earlier editions of this textbook: Carol Cohn’s groundbreaking (and still relevant) study of the language of defense intellectuals and Rachel Maine’s history of the electromechanical vibrator as a socially camouﬂ aged technology. Both articles raise provocative questions about how we “talk” about taboo topics and how language practices silence or mask discussion of topics critical to health and well-being. Two articles explore technologies related to menstruation, a quintessentially female biological process. Jennifer Aengst and Linda L. Layne detail and review debates about menstrual suppression as an “enhancement technology.” Chikako Takeshita takes on the development and adoption of IUDs (intrauterine devices), providing a case study of a device that has many meanings, promoted by public health initiatives with purposes that range from providing new options for women to ﬁ nding new ways to control women’s choices. Both articles develop their arguments in the context of global perspectives and the diverse reproductive health needs of women. INTRODUCTION: FEMINISM, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY—WHY IT STILL MATTERS | xxiii

In addition, readings in section 2 explore the consequences of unexamined, implicit, and problematic defi nitions of “nature” and “the natural” in relation to women’s bodies and minds. Erika Lorraine Milam’s essay follows a trail of shifting stereotypes through the development and application of evolutionary theory to understanding animal and human behavior, specifi cally sexual selection. Milam’s account is a compelling reminder of the ways in which theories are social constructs, that at any given historical moment a theory’s guiding concepts, misconceptions, insights, and underlying assumptions are deeply entangled with a host of debates about related questions; in this case, questions such as “What does it mean to be human?” “What is instinct?” “What distinguishes humans from (other) animals?” Rebecca M. Jordan-Young and Raffaella I. Rumiati bring this point home in their assessment of scientifi c research on the brain and sex differences. Their essay evaluates contemporary neurobiological evidence for the relevance of sex, sex differences, and sexuality in understanding the organization and function of the brain, much of it drawn from animal research. Like their trail blazing forerunner Ruth Bleier (1984), the authors demonstrate how assumptions about the signifi cance of the two-sex system are reinscribed in research in neurobiology to reinforce the notion that there are stable and “natural” universal biological differences between women and men. As the authors point out, the practice of cataloging these differences is not an innocent one. Deboleena Roy’s account of her efforts to escape the differences paradigm in her research on hormonal activity in the brain. Her article resonates with Marta Wayne’s account of becoming a feminist drosophila researcher from the fi rst section, but Roy has elaborated her philosophical touchstones from recent feminist theory to posit premises for feminist practice in research in the natural sciences. Her approach includes, among other elements, an aversion to killing animals, which required her to challenge prevailing attitudes and practices but advanced her training and research productivity in keeping with her values. This is a hopeful essay, because it opens the door to feminist pathways to become and be a scientist.

3. Exploring technoscientiﬁ c innovations as both colluding and colliding with the sex/ gender/sexuality nexus

Readings in section 3 refl ect feminist science studies scholars’ commitment to interrogating the notion that technoscientifi c advances emerge culture-free and have no intrinsic political or cultural meaning. We have brought these readings together in order to promote discussions about the extent to which investment of intellectual and social resources in these advances drives perpetuation of the binary sex/gender system. These essays provide specifi c instances in which ideas about sex and gender are, or are not, relevant to foun dational knowledge about human biology, knowledge made possible by new technologies. The section launches with Ruth Hubbard’s effort to distinguish the ideological content of molecular genetics from the gender ideology that shaped the careers of two major contributors— Rosalind Franklin and Barbara McClintock. She contests the notion that women and men “do science” differently (i.e., x-ray diffraction techniques and microscopes are tools of the trade, no matter who uses them), making the point that there are irreducible facts to be uncovered and that one’s sex or gender has little to do with their validity or reliability. Anne Fausto-Sterling’s essay similarly takes an empiricist stand but complicates the arguments considerably by proposing that “our bodies physically imbibe culture.” She xxiv | INTRODUCTION: FEMINISM, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY—WHY IT STILL MATTERS

points to research on human bone development that documents the ongoing infl uence of social determinants on global differences in bone health, including culturally distinct diets, exercise patterns, physical activities, drug use, aging patterns, and access to health care, among others. Fausto-Sterling posits a systems model for understanding bone development, a model that sees sex and gender as embedded elements of social determinants rather than biological ones. Challenges to presuming that nature and culture exist as neatly distinguishable opposites continue in the next two articles, one by Rajani Bhatia and one by Dorothy E. Roberts. Bhatia tracks the commercialization and medicalization of reproduction, and the commodifi cation of children, in the growth of sex-selection practices globally and in the United States. Her study provides a compelling example of the ways in which new reproductive technologies are disrupting taken-for-granted notions of who, how, and why people become parents, highlighting the “ability of humans to self-determine biologies and thereby identities, subjectivities, and destinies.” One particular innovation in reprogenetics, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), makes it possible to biopsy a single cell from early embryos, enabling physicians to screen for hundreds of genetic conditions while making decisions about which embryos to implant in assisted conceptions. Dorothy E. Roberts explores the legal, economic, and social implications of this technology, with attention to race, class, and gender inequalities. She raises an alarm about the growth of a global high-tech fertility industry that brings wealthy clients to tourist destinations in order to shop for the reproductive options they seek. This trend, she argues, does not erode race, class, and gender divisions; rather, it reinforces them by exploiting the notion that race categories are “natural” and “biological” and by appropriating the reproductive capacities of economically disadvantaged women of color to fulfi ll the parenting dreams of the world’s wealthy. The concluding article in this section recounts the intellectual history of research on the X chromosome. Sarah S. Richardson traces scientifi c and popular accounts of the X as the “female chromosome” from sex chromosome science in the early twentieth century through contemporary debates about X-mosaicism in autoimmune diseases among women. This is a fascinating account of the ways in which commitments to an ideology of sex differences has driven, distorted, and contained characterizations of the physiological functions on the X chromosome. Changes over time in these characterizations drew from whatever paternalistic, progressive, or misogynist stereotypes of women were in vogue. Richardson’s study is a somber reminder that researchers who have no exposure to the critical and self-refl exive practices of feminist science are unlikely to escape the limitations of the intellectual legacy they inherit.

4. Reﬂ ecting on the limitations and possibilities of borderlands in feminist science theory

In section 4 authors reach out to feminist frameworks from a wide variety of (inter) disciplinary approaches—including cybermedia studies, material culture studies, queer studies, lesbian studies, labor studies, and postcolonial studies—to describe the current limitations of feminist science studies and to identify newly useful concepts and approaches. The essays touch on themes such as fostering dependence on Western technologies as if they were necessarily benefi cial to humankind, the ways in which gender matters especially when women are erased from the calculation of who is human, the INTRODUCTION: FEMINISM, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY—WHY IT STILL MATTERS | xxv emergence of biotechnologies in global domination practices, and the importance of embracing “epistemological pluralism” as an unsettling but productive engagement with the complexities of building knowledge systems that are not Eurocentric or colonialist. Jesse Daniels opens the section with an overview of cyberfeminist claims to the liberatory potential of digital technologies, describing the tensions between theorists who celebrate disembodied identities as escaping oppressive conditions and theorists who see cyberspace as a new platform for the reassertion of race, gender, and class power relations. Francesca Bray defi nes the overarching goal of feminist technology studies (as distinct from feminist science studies) as an effort to analyze how technologies are implicated in gender inequalities in order to work toward more democratic forms of technology, emphasizing the coproduction of technology with gender for specifi c innovations. Bray proposes that adoption of anthropological approaches to studying material culture, in particular the concept of sociotechnical systems, would enhance our ability to see how technologies travel with gender politics across time and space in systems that consoli- date power and resist change. This approach shifts the topic from the characteristics of the innovation/gender relation to the processes by which some technologies, but not others, can (and perhaps do) disrupt oppression. Catharina Landström’s essay points out that feminist technology studies’ commitment to the notion of technology and gender as coproduced implies that technology is “gender authentic” for men, and alien to women, using a “heterosexual matrix” as the normative framework for talking about technologies (Butler 1999). Landström outlines the possibilities for rethinking technologies from a queer theory perspective to disrupt and abandon the sex/gender binary as inadequate for understanding the full range of power relations that infect women’s lives. Similarly, Petra Nordqvist reviews the specifi c case of reproductive technologies in relation to lesbian conception, noting the ways in which lesbians’ use of reproductive technologies presents a challenge to the heteronormative undercurrents of feminist studies of infertility, conception, and reproduction. The last two essays in this section, one by Catherine Waldby and Melinda Cooper, and the other by Sandra Harding, underscore the importance of transnational perspectives in theory and research on the global impacts of Western scientifi c and technological innovation. Waldby and Cooper tell a harrowing story about the emergence of a new and largely unregulated bioeconomy that appropriates tissue from women’s bodies for stem cell research. We close with Harding’s call for coalition between postcolonial and feminist science studies because she adeptly reminds us that although women face threats (global and local) to health and safety that we dared not imagine ten years ago, the best path forward may require us to engage with the uncertainty of it all.

5. Thinking about how prevailing paradigms (principally the nature/nurture dichotomy, but also male/female, human/animal, science/technology) can direct or contain new insights

Feminist science studies began as a critique of deeply ﬂ awed scientiﬁ c claims to objectivity and a thorough examination of the social embeddedness of all knowledge-making activity. Trends in feminist theory in the past decade are reshaping feminist science studies, provoking efforts to develop critical, methodological, and thematic directions that take seriously the dismantling of the sex/gender system. There are several streams to these new xxvi | INTRODUCTION: FEMINISM, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY—WHY IT STILL MATTERS

directions, but they share a renewed commitment to building the kind of “better knowledge” that perhaps most feminists endorse; that is, one that is fully inclusive of women in all our global diversity, recognizes the multiplicity and simultaneity of social identities and sexualities, and envisions agentic and emerging social actors and selves in context. These new directions are unruly interdisciplinary forces that do not sit comfortably within traditional disciplines and can wreak havoc with conventional defi nitions of objectivity, detachment, and evidence. Psychology of gender, as one instance, is facing the troubling specter of complicity in generating catalogs of fi ndings about gender differences that may be methodological artifacts (Crawford 2012; Magnusson and Marecek 2012; Shields 2008). Is there a There there if gender identities are emergent in social interaction? Are the tangible and material constraints faced by those who are systematically marginalized so incon- stant and ephemeral that they escape patterned stabilities? As Donna Haraway puts it, our “problem is how to have simultaneously an account of radical historical contingency for all knowledge claims and knowing subjects, a critical practice for recognizing our own ‘semiotic technologies’ for making meanings, and a no-nonsense commitment to faithful accounts of a ‘real’ world.” Such a rethinking of prevailing paradigms of objectivity surely requires contesting (even abandoning) disciplinary boundaries. The essays included in section 5 refl ect the trends, directions, and challenges of such new directions in feminist science studies. Taken together, they evoke conversations about how to best represent the natural world and our active community investments in those representations—the priorities we set, questions we ask, language we use, standards of evidence we require, and the limitations of our analytic tools. The section ends the book with a hopeful essay by Niamh Moore, who reminds us that feminism has a long and enduring history of collective action, however fragmented or diffuse it may seem from time to time. ***** On an ending note of collective action, then, this book stands as a call to action for re- dedication to curriculum transformation efforts that fully embrace feminist science and technology studies within and outside of women’s and gender studies. One early premise in the push in the 1990s was that teaching “people-less” STEM courses suppressed or diverted the interests of everyone who valued STEM research and innovation as cata- lysts for improving human health and well-being (Musil 2001; Rosser 1995, 1997). This dynamic may be especially salient for women and people of color, who have been historically marginalized and excluded from education, research, and training in STEM fi elds. Research has demonstrated that including information about women and people of color in science classrooms improves students’ knowledge about women’s contributions in science and their assessment of the classroom climate (Damschen et al. 2005; Wyer et al. 2007). Energy for curriculum transformation has languished of late, and so we would like to posit a plan for steps in a national effort. First, we need to identify institutional partners and allies who have a commitment to the full participation of women and people of color in STEM. Second we need to develop a systematic process of transferring knowledge from feminist science and technology studies to other domains and departments (across the university). A third step, and one that is well underway, is to develop courses, curriculums, and concentrations that bring feminist science studies into routine interaction with STEM educators. A fourth step is to foster the conditions and climate that promote new research and knowledge within feminist science studies. INTRODUCTION: FEMINISM, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY—WHY IT STILL MATTERS | xxvii

And the last (unapologetically empiricist) step is to explore and document the impacts that exposure to feminist science studies content has on student learning and interest in STEM ﬁ elds. This is a worthy national project, one that provides a platform for more inclusive approaches to scientiﬁ c and technological literacy and engagement. Our review of the literature, so necessary to assembling this textbook, reveals that we have a wealth of expertise, energy, and insight to offer higher education.

NOTES 1. See “The Campaign against Women,” New York Times, May 19, 2012; “Women Buying Health Policies Pay a Penalty,” New York Times, October 29, 2008; “Overhaul Will Lower Costs of Being a Woman,” New York Times, March 29, 2010; “Virginia Lawmakers Vote against Women’s Rights,” New York Times, February 28, 2012; “Three Rulings against Women’s Rights,” New York Times , July 31, 2012; “Hey Baby! Women Speak Out against Street Harassment,” CNN, October 6, 2012; “Male-female Pay Gap Persists and Starts Early,” New York Times, October 24, 2012. 2. Subramaniam (2009) offers a thoughtful and useful overview that complements, but differs somewhat, from our characterization of the ﬁ eld.

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From Margins to Center: Educating Women for Scientiﬁ c Careers This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 1

Science Faculty’s Subtle Gender Biases Favor Male Students Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, John F. Dovidio, Victoria L. Brescoll, Mark J. Graham, and Jo Handelsman

A 2012 report from the President’s Council imbalance (9–11), but because the majority of Advisors on Science and Technology of these studies are correlational, whether indicates that training scientists and engi- lifestyle factors are solely or primarily re- neers at current rates will result in a defi cit sponsible remains unclear. Still, some of 1,000,000 workers to meet United States researchers have argued that women’s pref- workforce demands over the next decade erence for nonscience disciplines and their (1). To help close this formidable gap, the tendency to take on a disproportionate report calls for the increased training and amount of child- and family-care are the retention of women, who are starkly under- primary causes of the gender disparity in represented within many fi elds of science, science (9–11), and that it “is not caused by especially among the professoriate (2–4). discrimination in these domains” (10). This Although the proportion of science degrees assertion has received substantial attention granted to women has increased (5), there and generated signifi cant debate among the is a persistent disparity between the num- scientifi c community, leading some to con- ber of women receiving PhDs and those clude that gender discrimination indeed hired as junior faculty (1–4). This gap sug- does not exist nor contribute to the gender gests that the problem will not resolve itself disparity within academic science (e.g., solely by more generations of women mov- refs. 12 and 13). Despite this controversy, ing through the academic pipeline but that experimental research testing for the pres- instead, women’s advancement within ac- ence and magnitude of gender discrimina- ademic science may be actively impeded. tion in the biological and physical sciences With evidence suggesting that biologi- has yet to be conducted. Although acknowl- cal sex differences in inherent aptitude for edging that various lifestyle choices likely math and science are small or nonexistent contribute to the gender imbalance in sci- (6–8), the efforts of many researchers and ence (9–11), the present research is unique academic leaders to identify causes of the in investigating whether faculty gender science gender disparity have focused in- bias exists within academic biological and stead on the life choices that may compete physical sciences, and whether it might with women’s pursuit of the most demand- exert an independent effect on the gender ing positions. Some research suggests that disparity as students progress through the these lifestyle choices (whether free or con- pipeline to careers in science. Specifi cally, strained) likely contribute to the gender the present experiment examined whether, 4 | CORINNE A. MOSS-RACUSIN ET AL.

given an equally qualifi ed male and female objectivity and fairness are paradoxically student, science faculty members would particularly likely to fall prey to biases, in show preferential evaluation and treat- part because they are not on guard against ment of the male student to work in their subtle bias (24, 25). Thus, by investigating laboratory. Although the correlational and whether science faculty exhibit a bias that related laboratory studies discussed below could contribute to the gender disparity suggest that such bias is likely (contrary to within the fi elds of science, technology, en- previous arguments) (9–11), we know of no gineering, and mathematics (in which ob- previous experiments that have tested for jectivity is emphasized), the current study faculty bias against female students within addressed critical theoretical and practical academic science. gaps in that it provided an experimental If faculty express gender biases, we are test of faculty discrimination against fe- not suggesting that these biases are inten- male students within academic science. tional or stem from a conscious desire to A number of lines of research suggest impede the progress of women in science. that such discrimination is likely. Science Past studies indicate that people’s behav- is robustly male gender-typed (26, 27), re- ior is shaped by implicit or unintended sources are inequitably distributed among biases, stemming from repeated exposure men and women in many academic sci- to pervasive cultural stereotypes (14) that ence settings (28), some undergraduate portray women as less competent but si- women perceive unequal treatment of multaneously emphasize their warmth the genders within science fi elds (29), and and likeability compared with men (15). nonexperimental evidence suggests that Despite signifi cant decreases in overt sex- gender bias is present in other fi elds (19). ism over the last few decades (particularly Some experimental evidence suggests among highly educated people) (16), these that even though evaluators report liking subtle gender biases are often still held by women more than men (15), they judge even the most egalitarian individuals (17), women as less competent than men even and are exhibited by both men and women when they have identical backgrounds (18). Given this body of work, we expected (20). However, these studies used under- that female faculty would be just as likely graduate students as participants (rather as male faculty to express an unintended than experienced faculty members), and bias against female undergraduate science focused on performance domains outside students. The fact that these prevalent bi- of academic science, such as completing ases often remain undetected highlights perceptual tasks (21), writing nonscience the need for an experimental investigation articles (22), and being evaluated for a cor- to determine whether they may be present porate managerial position (23). within academic science and, if so, raise Thus, whether aspiring women sci- awareness of their potential impact. entists encounter discrimination from Whether these gender biases operate in faculty members remains unknown. The academic sciences remains an open ques- formative predoctoral years are a critical tion. On the one hand, although consider- window, because students’ experiences able research demonstrates gender bias in at this juncture shape both their beliefs a variety of other domains (19–23), science about their own abilities and subsequent faculty members may not exhibit this bias persistence in science (30, 31). Therefore, because they have been rigorously trained we selected this career stage as the focus to be objective. On the other hand, research of the present study because it represents demonstrates that people who value their an opportunity to address issues that SCIENCE FACULTY’S SUBTLE GENDER BIASES FAVOR MALE STUDENTS | 5 manifest immediately and also resurface male students in perceptions of compe- much later, potentially contributing to the tence and hireability, salary conferral, and persistent faculty gender disparity (32, 33). willingness to mentor (hypothesis A); Fac- ulty gender would not infl uence this gender bias (hypothesis B); Hiring discrimination CURRENT STUDY against the female student would be medi- In addition to determining whether faculty ated (i.e., explained) by faculty perceptions expressed a bias against female students, that a female student is less competent we also sought to identify the processes than an identical male student (hypothesis contributing to this bias. To do so, we inves- C); and Participants’ preexisting subtle bias tigated whether faculty members’ percep- against women would moderate (i.e., im- tions of student competence would help pact) results, such that subtle bias against to explain why they would be less likely to women would be negatively related to hire a female (relative to an identical male) evaluations of the female student, but un- student for a laboratory manager posi- related to evaluations of the male student tion. Additionally, we examined the role of (hypothesis D). faculty members’ preexisting subtle bias against women. We reasoned that perva- RESULTS sive cultural messages regarding women’s lack of competence in science could lead A broad, nationwide sample of biology, faculty members to hold gender-biased atti- chemistry, and physics professors (n = 127) tudes that might subtly affect their support evaluated the application materials of an for female (but not male) science students. undergraduate science student who had These generalized, subtly biased attitudes ostensibly applied for a science laboratory toward women could impel faculty to judge manager position. All participants received equivalent students differently as a func- the same materials, which were randomly tion of their gender. assigned either the name of a male (n = 63) The present study sought to test for differ- or a female (n = 64) student; student gen- ences in faculty perceptions and treatment der was thus the only variable that differed of equally qualifi ed men and women pur- between conditions. Using previously vali- suing careers in science and, if such a bias dated scales, participants rated the student’s were discovered, reveal its mechanisms and competence and hireability, as well as the consequences within academic science. We amount of salary and amount of mentoring focused on hiring for a laboratory manager they would offer the student. Faculty partic- position as the primary dependent variable ipants believed that their feedback would of interest because it functions as a profes- be shared with the student they had rated sional launching pad for subsequent oppor- (see Materials and Methods for details). tunities. As secondary measures, which are related to hiring, we assessed: (i) perceived Student Gender Differences student competence; (ii) salary offers, which refl ect the extent to which a student is val- The competence, hireability, salary con- ued for these competitive positions; and (iii) ferral, and mentoring scales were each the extent to which the student was viewed submitted to a two (student gender; male, as deserving of faculty mentoring. female) × two (faculty gender; male, fe- Our hypotheses were that: Science fac- male) between-subjects ANOVA. In each ulty’s perceptions and treatment of stu- case, the effect of student gender was sig- dents would reveal a gender bias favoring nifi cant (all P < 0.01), whereas the effect 6 | CORINNE A. MOSS-RACUSIN ET AL.

of faculty participant gender and their P = 0.95] or hireable [t (62) = 0.41, P = 0.69] interaction was not (all P > 0.19). Tests than did male faculty. Female faculty also of simple effects (all d > 0.60) indicated did not offer more mentoring [ t(62) = 0.29, that faculty participants viewed the fe- P = 0.77] or a higher salary [t (61) = 1.14, male student as less competent [ t (125) = P = 0.26] to the female student than did their 3.89, P < 0.001] and less hireable [ t(125) = male colleagues. In addition, faculty partici- 4.22, P < 0.001] than the identical male pants’ scientifi c fi eld, age, and tenure status student ( Figure 1.1 and Table 1.1 ). Fac- had no effect (all P > 0.53). Thus, the bias ulty participants also offered less career appears pervasive among faculty and is not mentoring to the female student than to limited to a certain demographic subgroup. the male student [t (125) = 3.77, P < 0.001]. The mean starting salary offered the fe- Mediation and Moderation Analyses male student, $26,507.94, was signifi cantly lower than that of $30,238.10 to the male Thus far, we have considered the results for student [ t(124) = 3.42, P < 0.01] (Figure 1.2). competence, hireability, salary conferral, These results support hypothesis A. and mentoring separately to demonstrate In support of hypothesis B, faculty gender the converging results across these individ- did not affect bias (Table 1.1). Tests of sim- ual measures. However, composite indices ple effects (all d < 0.33) indicated that female of measures that converge on an underly- faculty participants did not rate the female ing construct are more statistically reliable, student as more competent [t (62) = 0.06, stable, and resistant to error than are each

4.5

4 31000 3.5 30000 3

2.5 29000

2 28000 1.5 27000 1 Competence Hireability Mentoring 26000

Male Student Female Student 25000 Salary Figure 1. 1 Competence, hireability, and mentoring by student gender Male Student Female Student condition (collapsed across faculty gender). All student gender Figure 1.2 Salary conferral by student gender differences are signifi cant condition (collapsed across faculty ( P < 0.001). Scales range from 1 to gender). The student gender 7, with higher numbers refl ecting difference is signifi cant ( P < 0.01). a greater extent of each variable. The scale ranges from $15,000 Error bars represent SEs. n male to $50,000. Error bars represent student condition = 63, n female SEs. n male student condition = 63, student condition = 64. n female student condition = 64. SCIENCE FACULTY’S SUBTLE GENDER BIASES FAVOR MALE STUDENTS | 7

of the individual items (e.g., refs. 34 and 35).

d Consistent with this logic, the established approach to measuring the broad concept of target competence typically used in this type of gender bias research is to stan- dardize and average the competence scale

(1.10)(0.84)(0.91) 0.71 (7,965.56) 0.75 0.60 0.67 items and the salary conferral variable to are 0.20, 0.50, and 0.80, are d create one composite competence index, b and to use this stable convergent measure

Female faculty Female for all analyses (e.g., refs. 36 and 37). Be- b b b cause this approach obscures mean sal-

Mean SD ary differences between targets, we chose to present salary as a distinct dependent variable up to this point, to enable a direct test of the potential discrepancy in salary ) represent target student gender differences (no faculty student gender differences target ) represent d offered to the male and female student Female target student Female (1.07)(1.13)(1.21) 3.32 (6,948.58) 2.84 25,000.00 3.91 targets. However, to rigorously examine the processes underscoring faculty gender b bias, we reverted to standard practices at Male faculty Male this point by averaging the standardized b b b salary variable with the competence scale Mean SD items to create a robust composite competence variable (D = 0.86). This composite < 0.05). Effect sizes (Cohen’s (Cohen’s sizes < 0.05). Effect P competence variable was used in all subse- < 0.001. P quent mediation and moderation analyses. cantly ( cantly Evidence emerged for hypothesis C, (1.19)(1.27)(1.31) 3.33 (4,952.15) 2.96 27,111,11 4.00 the predicted mediation (i.e., causal path; see SI Materials and Methods: Additional a Analyses for more information on medi- Female faculty Female

a a ation and the results of additional medi- a ation analyses). The initially signiﬁ cant Mean SD impact of student gender on hireability (β = −0.35, P < 0.001) was reduced in mag- female student condition = 64. *** n nitude and dropped to nonsigniﬁ cance (β = −0.10, P = 0.13) after accounting for the Male target student Male > 0.14). Positive effect sizes favor male students. Conventional small, medium, and large effect sizes for effect sizes small, medium, and large Conventional favor male students. effect sizes > 0.14). Positive P

(0.92)(1.24)(1.11) 4.1 (5,764.86) 3.92 29,333.33 4.73 impact of student composite competence (which was a strong predictor, β = 0.69, a cant, all P < 0.001), Sobel’s Z = 3.94, P < 0.001

Male faculty Male ( Figure 1.3 ). This pattern of results pro-

a a a vides evidence for full mediation, indicat-

30,520.83 ing that the female student was less likely male student condition = 63, n to be hired than the identical male because she was viewed as less competent overall. We also conducted moderation analysis (i.e., testing for factors that could amplify or respectively (51). respectively gender differences were signifi were gender differences $15,000 to $50,000. Means with different subscripts within each row differ signifi subscripts within each row with different $15,000 to $50,000. Means attenuate the demonstrated effect) to de- Competence 4.01 Table Table 1.1 student gender condition and faculty mentoring and salary by conferral hireability, for student competence, Means HireabilityMentoring 3.74 Salary 4.74 Variable Mean SD Scales for competence, hireability, and mentoring range from 1 to 7, with higher numbers refl ecting a greater extent of each variable. The scale for salary conferral ranges from from The scale for salary ranges conferral extent of each variable. ecting a greater 1 to 7, with higher numbers refl from and mentoring range hireability, Scales for competence, termine the impact of faculty participants’ 8 | CORINNE A. MOSS-RACUSIN ET AL.

student gender. Results revealed that the Student Competence more preexisting subtle bias participants (Composite) exhibited against women, the less com- (0.73∗∗∗) posite competence (β = −0.36, P < 0.01) − ∗∗∗ 0.37 0.69∗∗∗ and hireability (β = −0.39, P < 0.01) they perceived in the female student, and the less mentoring (β = −0.53, P < 0.001) they Student Student were willing to offer her. In contrast, fac- ∗∗∗ Gender (−0.35 ) Hireability ulty participants’ levels of preexisting sub- −0.10 tle bias against women were unrelated to the perceptions of the male student’s Figure 1.3 Student gender difference hiring composite competence (β = 0.16, P = 0.22) mediation. Values are standardized and hireability (β = 0.07, P = 0.59), and the regression coeffi cients. The value amount of mentoring (β = 0.22, P = 0.09) in parentheses refl ects a bivariate they were willing to offer him. [Although analysis. The dashed line represents the mediated path. The composite this effect is marginally signifi cant, its di- student competence variable rection suggests that faculty participants’ consists of the averaged standardized preexisting subtle bias against women may salary variable and the competence actually have made them more inclined to scale items. Student gender is coded mentor the male student relative to the fe- such that male = 0, female = 1. n male male student (al-though this effect should student condition = 63, n female be interpreted with caution because of its student condition = 64. *** P < 0.001 marginal signifi cance).] Thus, it appears that faculty participants’ preexisting sub- preexisting subtle bias against women on tle gender bias undermined support for faculty participants’ perceptions and treat- the female student but was unrelated to ment of male and female science students perceptions and treatment of the male stu- (see SI Materials and Methods: Additional dent. These fi ndings support hypothesis D. Analyses for more information on and the Finally, using a previously validated results of additional moderation analyses). scale, we also measured how much faculty For this purpose, we administered the Mod- participants liked the student (see SI Mate- ern Sexism Scale (38), a well-validated in- rials and Methods). In keeping with a large strument frequently used for this purpose body of literature (15), faculty participants (SI Materials and Methods). Consistent reported liking the female (mean = 4.35, with our intentions, this scale measures SD = 0.93) more than the male student unintentional negativity toward women, [(mean = 3.91, SD = 0.1.08), t(125) = −2.44, as contrasted with a more blatant form of P < 0.05]. However, consistent with this pre- conscious hostility toward women. Results vious literature, liking the female student of multiple regression analyses indicated more than the male student did not trans- that participants’ preexisting subtle bias late into positive perceptions of her com- against women signifi cantly interacted with posite competence or material outcomes in student gender to predict perceptions of the form of a job offer, an equitable salary, student composite competence (β = −0.39, or valuable career mentoring. Moreover, P < 0.01), hireability (β = −0.31, P < 0.05), only composite competence (and not like- and mentoring (β = −0.55, P < 0.001). To ability) helped to explain why the female interpret these signifi cant interactions, we student was less likely to be hired; in me- examined the simple effects separately by diation analyses, student gender condition SCIENCE FACULTY’S SUBTLE GENDER BIASES FAVOR MALE STUDENTS | 9

(β = −0.48, P < 0.001) remained a strong pre- Additionally, moderation results indicated dictor of hireability along with likeability (β that faculty participants’ preexisting subtle = 0.60, P < 0.001). These fi ndings underscore bias against women undermined their per- the point that faculty participants did not ceptions and treatment of the female (but exhibit outright hostility or dislike toward fe- not the male) student, further suggest- male students, but were instead affected by ing that chronic subtle biases may harm pervasive gender stereotypes, unintention- women within academic science. Use of a ally downgrading the competence, hireabil- randomized controlled design and estab- ity, salary, and mentoring of a female student lished practices from audit study method- compared with an identical male. ology support the ecological validity and educational implications of our fi ndings (SI Materials and Methods). DISCUSSION It is noteworthy that female faculty The present study is unique in investigat- members were just as likely as their male ing subtle gender bias on the part of faculty colleagues to favor the male student. The in the biological and physical sciences. It fact that faculty members’ bias was in- therefore informs the debate on possible dependent of their gender, scientifi c dis- causes of the gender disparity in academic cipline, age, and tenure status suggests science by providing unique experimen- that it is likely unintentional, generated tal evidence that science faculty of both from widespread cultural stereotypes genders exhibit bias against female under- rather than a conscious intention to harm graduates. As a controlled experiment, it women (17). Additionally, the fact that fac- fi lls a critical gap in the existing literature, ulty participants reported liking the female which consisted only of experiments in more than the male student further under- other domains (with undergraduate stu- scores the point that our results likely do dents as participants) and correlational not refl ect faculty members’ overt hostility data that could not conclusively rule out toward women. Instead, despite express- the infl uence of other variables. ing warmth to-ward emerging female sci- Our results revealed that both male and entists, faculty members of both genders female faculty judged a female student to appear to be affected by enduring cultural be less competent and less worthy of being stereotypes about women’s lack of science hired than an identical male student, and competence that translate into biases in also offered her a smaller starting salary student evaluation and mentoring. and less career mentoring. Although the Our careful selection of expert partic- differences in ratings may be perceived as ipants revealed gender discrimination modest, the effect sizes were all moderate among existing science faculty members to large ( d = 0.60–0.75). Thus, the current who interact with students on a regular results suggest that subtle gender bias basis (SI Materials and Methods: Subjects is important to address because it could and Recruitment Strategy). This method translate into large real-world disadvan- allowed for a high degree of ecological va- tages in the judgment and treatment of fe- lidity and generalizability relative to an ap- male science students (39). Moreover, our proach using nonexpert participants, such mediation fi ndings shed light on the pro- as other undergraduates or lay people unfa- cesses responsible for this bias, suggesting miliar with laboratory manager job require- that the female student was less likely to ments and academic science mentoring be hired than the male student because (i.e., the participants in much psycholog- she was perceived as less competent. ical research on gender discrimination). 10 | CORINNE A. MOSS-RACUSIN ET AL.

The results presented here reinforce those encounter biased judgments of their com- of Stenpries, Anders, and Ritzke (40), the petence and hireability, but also receive only other experiment we know of that re- less faculty encouragement and fi nancial cruited faculty participants. Because this rewards than identical male counterparts. previous experiment also indicated bias Because most students depend on feed- within academic science, its results raised back from their environments to calibrate serious concerns about the potential for their own worth (41), faculty’s assessments faculty bias within the biological and phys- of students’ competence likely contribute ical sciences, casting further doubt on as- to students’ self-effi cacy and goal setting sertions(based on correlational data) that as scientists, which may infl uence deci- such biases do not exist (9–11). In the Stein- sions much later in their careers. Likewise, preis et al. experiment, psychologists were inasmuch as the advice and mentoring more likely to hire a psychology faculty job that students receive affect their ambitions applicant when the applicant’s curriculum and choices, it is signifi cant that the faculty vitae was assigned a male (rather than fe- in this study were less inclined to mentor male) name (40). This previous work in- women than men. This fi nding raises the vited a study that would extend the fi nding possibility that women may opt out of aca- to faculty in the biological and physical sci- demic science careers in part because of diences and to reactions to undergraduates, minished competence judgments, rewards, whose competence was not already fairly and mentoring received in the early years established by accomplishments associ- of the careers. In sum, the predoctoral years ated with the advanced career status of the represent a window during which students’ faculty target group of the previous study. experiences of faculty bias or encourage- By providing this unique investigation of ment are particularly likely to shape their faculty bias against female students in bi- persistence in academic science (30–33). ological and physical sciences, the present Thus, the present study not only fi lls an im- study extends past work to a critical early portant gap in the research literature, but career stage, and to fi elds where women’s also has critical implications for pressing underrepresentation remains stark (2–4). social and educational issues associated Indeed, our fi ndings raise concerns about with the gender disparity in science. the extent to which negative predoctoral ex- If women’s decisions to leave science periences may shape women’s subsequent fi elds when or before they reach the faculty decisions about persistence and career level are infl uenced by unequal treatment specialization. Following conventions es- by undergraduate advisors, then existing tablished in classic experimental studies to efforts to create more fl exible work settings create enough ambiguity to leave room for (42) or increase women’s identifi cation potentially biased responses (20, 23), the stu- with science (27) may not fully alleviate a dent applicants in the present research were critical underlying problem. Our results described as qualifi ed to succeed in aca- suggest that academic policies and mento- demic science (i.e., having coauthored a pub- ring interventions targeting undergraduate lication after obtaining 2 years of research advisors could contribute to reducing the experience), but not irrefutably excellent. As gender disparity. Future research should such, they represented a majority of aspir- evaluate the effi cacy of educating faculty ing scientists, and were precisely the type of and students about the existence and im- students most affected by faculty judgments pact of bias within academia, an approach and mentoring (see SI Materials and Meth- that has reduced racial bias among stu- ods for more discussion). Our results raise dents (43). Educational efforts might ad- the possibility that not only do such women dress research on factors that attenuate SCIENCE FACULTY’S SUBTLE GENDER BIASES FAVOR MALE STUDENTS | 11 gender bias in real-world settings, such as universities in the United States, stra- increasing women’s self-monitoring (44). tegically selected for their representa- Our results also point to the importance tive characteristics (see SI Materials and of establishing objective, transparent stu- Methods for more information on de p- dent evaluation and admissions criteria to artment selection). The demographics of guard against observers’ tendency to un- the 127 respondents corresponded to both intentionally use different standards when the averages for the selected departments assessing women relative to men (45, 46). and faculty at all United States research- Without such actions, faculty bias against intensive institutions, meeting the criteria female undergraduates may continue to for generalizability even from nonrandom undermine meritocratic advancement, to samples (see SI Materials and Methods for the detriment of research and education. more information on recruitment strategy and participant characteristics). Indeed, we were particularly careful to obtain a CONCLUSIONS sample representative of the underlying The dearth of women within academic sci- population, because many past studies ence refl ects a signifi cant wasted opportu- have demonstrated that when this is the nity to benefi t from the capabilities of our case, respondents and nonrespondents best potential scientists, whether male or typically do not differ on demographic female. Although women have begun to characteristics and responses to focal enter some science fi elds in greater num- variables (47). bers (5), their mere increased presence is Additionally, in keeping with recom- not evidence of the absence of bias. Rather, mended practices, we conducted an a pri- some women may persist in academic sci- ori power analysis before beginning data ence despite the damaging effects of unin- collection to determine the optimal sam- tended gender bias on the part of faculty. ple size needed to detect effects without Similarly, it is not yet possible to conclude biasing results toward obtaining signifi - that the preferences for other fi elds and cance (SI Materials and Methods: Subjects lifestyle choices (9–11) that lead many and Recruitment Strategy) (48). Thus, al- women to leave academic science (even though our sample size may appear small after obtaining advanced degrees) are not to some readers, it is important to note themselves infl uenced by experiences of that we obtained the necessary power and bias, at least to some degree. To the extent representativeness to generalize from our that faculty gender bias impedes women’s results while purposefully avoiding an un- full participation in science, it may under- necessarily large sample that could have cut not only academic meritocracy, but also biased our results toward a false-positive the expansion of the scientifi c workforce type I error (48). needed for the next decade’s advancement of national competitiveness (1). Procedure Participants were asked to provide feed- MATERIALS AND METHODS back on the materials of an undergraduate science student who stated their intention Participants to go on to graduate school, and who had We recruited faculty participants from Bi- recently applied for a science laboratory ology, Chemistry, and Physics departments manager position. Of importance, par- at three public and three private large, ticipants believed they were evaluating geographically diverse research-intensive a real student who would subsequently 12 | CORINNE A. MOSS-RACUSIN ET AL.

receive the faculty participants’ ratings student, selected an annual starting salary as feedback to help their career develop- for the student, indicated how much ca- ment (see SI Materials and Methods for reer mentoring they would provide to such more information, and for the full text of a student, and completed the Modern Sex- the cover story). Thus, the faculty partici - ism Scale. pants’ ratings were associated with defi n - ite consequences. REFERENCES Following established practices, the laboratory manager application was de- President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Tech- nology (2012). Engage to excel: Producing one mil- signed to refl ect high but slightly ambig- lion additional college graduates with degrees in uous competence, allowing for variability science, technology, engineering, and mathematics . in participant responses (20, 23). In addi- Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/ tion, a promising but still-nascent appli- default/files/microsites/ostp/pcast-engage-to- cant is precisely the type of student whose excel-fi nal_feb.pdf. (Accessed February 13, 2012). Handelsman J, et al. (2005) Careers in science. More persistence in academic science is most women in science. Science 309: 1190–1191. likely to be affected by faculty support or United States National Academy of Sciences (2007) discouragement (30–33), rendering faculty Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfi lling the Potential reactions to such a student of particular in- of Women in Academic Science and Engineering terest for the present purposes. The mate- (National Academies, Washington, DC). National Science Foundation (2009) Women, Minori- rials were developed in consultation with ties, and Persons with Disabilities in Science a panel of academic science researchers and Engineering (National Science Foundation, (who had extensive experience hiring and Arlington). supervising student research assistants) to Bell N (2010) Graduate Enrollment and Degrees: ensure that they would be perceived as re- 1999 to 2009 (Council of Graduate Schools, Wash- ington, DC). alistic (SI Materials and Methods). Results Halpern DF, et al. (2007) The science of gender dif- of a funneled debriefi ng (49) indicated ferences in science and mathematics. Psychol Sci that this was successful; no participant re- 8(1):1–51. ported suspicions that the target was not Hyde JS, Linn MC (2006) Diversity. Gender similarities an actual student who would receive their in mathematics and science. Science 314:599–600. Spelke ES (2005) Sex differences in intrinsic aptitude evaluation. for mathematics and science?: A critical review. Participants were randomly assigned to Am Psychol 6 0:950–958. one of two student gender conditions: ap- Ceci SJ, Williams WM (2010) Gender differences in plication materials were attributed to either math-intensive fi elds. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 19: a male student (John, n = 63), or a female 275–279. Ceci SJ, Williams WM (2011) Understanding current student (Jennifer, n = 64), two names that causes of women’s underrepresentation in sci- have been pretested as equivalent in lik- ence. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 108:3157–3162. ability and recognizeability (50). Thus, each Ceci SJ, et al. (2011) Do subtle cues about belonging- participant saw only one set of materials, ness constrain women’s career choices? Psychol from either the male or female applicant Inq 22:255–258. Berezow AB (2011) Gender discrimination in science (see SI Method and Materials for more inis a myth. Available at http://www.nationalreview. formation on all materials). Because all com/articles/256816/gender-discrimination- other information was held constant be- science-myth-alex-b-berezow?pg=2. (Accessed tween conditions, any differences in par- June 6, 2012). ticipants’ responses are attributable to Dickey Zakaib G (2011) Science gender gap probed. Nature 470:153. the gender of the student. Using validated Devine PG (1989) Stereotypes and prejudice: Their scales, participants rated student compe- automatic and controlled components. J Pers Soc tence, their own likelihood of hiring the Psychol 56(1):5–18. SCIENCE FACULTY’S SUBTLE GENDER BIASES FAVOR MALE STUDENTS | 13

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Simmons JP, Nelson LD, Simonsohn U (2011) False- Reis HT, Judd CM (Cambridge Univ Press, New positive psychology: Undisclosed ﬂ exibility in York), pp 253–285. data collection and analysis allows presenting Brescoll VL, Uhlmann EL (2008) Can angry women anything as signiﬁ cant. Psychol Sci 22:1359–1366. get ahead? Status conferral, gender, and work- Bargh JA, Chartrand TL (2000) Handbook of Research place emotion expression. Psychol Sci 19:268–275. Methods in Social and Personality Psychology , eds Cohen J (1998) Statistical Power Analysis for the Be- havioral Sciences (Erlbaum, Hillsdale), 2nd Ed. CHAPTER 2

Snow Brown and the Seven Detergents

A Metanarrative on Science and the Scientiﬁ c Method Banu Subramaniam

Once upon a time, deep within a city in the Sneha sailed the oceans. Her face was Orient, lived a young girl called Snehalatha aglow with excitement, and her eyes were Bhrijbhushan. She spent her childhood fi lled the stars. “It’s going to be wonderful,” merrily playing in the streets with her she told herself. friends while her family and the neighbors And so one fi ne day she arrived in the looked on indulgently. “That girl, Sneha [as Land of the Blue Devils. She went in search they called her], is going to become some- of the Building of Scientifi c Truth. When she one famous someday,” they would all say. saw it, she held her breath. There it stood, Sneha soon became fascinated with the tall and slender, almost touching the skies. world of science. One day she announced, Sneha shivered. “Don’t be silly,” she told “I am going to sail across the blue oceans herself. She entered the building. The fl oors to become a scientist!” were polished and gleaming white. It all There was silence in the room. “You can looked so grand and yet so formidable. She be a scientist here, you know.” was led into the offi ce of the Supreme White “But I want to explore the world,” said Patriarch. The room was full. “Welcome, Sneha. “There is so much to see and learn.” budding Patriarchs,” he said, “from those of “Where is this place?” they asked. us in the Department of the Pursuit of Sci- “It’s called the Land of the Blue Devils.” entifi c Truth. But let me be perfectly frank. “But that is dangerous country,” they These are going to be diffi cult years ahead. cried. “No one has ever been there and This is no place for the weak or the emo- come back alive.” tional or the fi ckle. You have to put in long, “Yes, I know,” said Sneha. “But I have hard hours. If you think you cannot cut it, been reading about it. It is in the Land of you should leave now. Let me introduce you the Kind and Gentle People. In any case, I to our evaluation system. Come with me.” can handle it.” He led them across the hall into a huge Her friends and family watched her an- room. At the end of the room stood a mir- imated face and knew that if anyone could ror, long and erect and oh so white. “This do it, it would be brave Sneha, and so they is the Room of Judgment,” he continued. relented. The city watched her set out and “The mirror will tell you how you’re doing. wished her a tearful farewell. She promised Let me show you.” He went to the mirror to return soon and bring back tales from and said, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who lands afar. For forty-two days and nights is the fairest scientist of them all?” 16 | BANU SUBRAMANIAM

“You are, O Supreme White Patriarch!” The mirror replied, “Not you, you’re los- said the mirror. ing this game, you with the unpronounce- The Patriarch laughed. “That is what all able name!” of you should aspire to. And one day when Sneha was very depressed. Things it calls out your name, you will take my were not going as she had expected. “Oh, place. But until then, you will all seek Truth mirror,” she cried, “everything has gone and aspire to be number one. We want wrong. What do I do?” fi ghters here, Patriarchs with initiative and “More than anything,” said the mirror, genius. And as for those who are consis- “you have to learn to act like a scientist. tently last in the class for six months . . . That’s your fi rst task. Deep within the for- well, we believe they just do not have the ests lives the Wise Matriarch in the House ability to pursue Scientifi c Truth, and they of the Seven Detergents. Go see her, she will be expelled. Go forth, all ye budding will help you.” Patriarchs, and fi nd Scientifi c Truth.” Sneha set out to meet the Wise Matri- Everyone went their way. Sneha found arch. “Come in, child,” she said. “What herself in the middle of the hallway all alone. seems to be the problem?” She appeared to “Go fi nd Truth?” she said to herself. Was this be a very kind woman, and Sneha poured a treasure hunt? Did Truth fall from the sky? out her misery. She was very confused. This was not what “I know this is a very diffi cult time for she had thought it would be like. She went you, but it is also a very important one,” looking for her older colleagues. “Where the Matriarch said. does one fi nd Scientifi c Truth?” she asked. “Why do they call you the Wise Matri- “Well,” said he, “fi rst you have to fi nd arch?” Sneha inquired. the patronage of an Associate Patriarch or “I joined the Department of the Pursuit an Assistant Patriarch. You will have a year of Scientifi c Truth some twenty years ago,” to do that. Until then, you take courses the Matriarch replied. “That is why I un- they teach you and you learn about Truths derstand what you’re going through. I was already known and how to fi nd new Truths. expelled. When the department offered me During this time you have to learn how to this position, I felt I could begin changing be a scientist. That is very important, but things. Over the years I have advised many don’t worry, the mirror will assist you.” budding Patriarchs. You could say I’ve “How does the mirror work?” asked earned my reputation. Sneha. “My child,” she went on, “this is where “Well, the mirror is the collective con- the department sends its scientifi c misfi ts. sciousness of all the Supreme White Pa- Let me show you what they would like me triarchs across the Land of the Kind and to have you do.” She led Sneha to a room, Gentle People. They have decided what it and in it stood seven jars. “These are the takes to be the ideal scientist, and it is what seven detergents,” she said. “With them we all must dream of and aspire and work you can wash away any part of yourself you toward if we want to fi nd Scientifi c Truth. don’t want. But the catch is that once you You must check with the mirror as often as wash it away, you have lost it forever.” you can to monitor your progress.” Sneha was excited. “First I’d like to get Sneha tiptoed to the Room of Judgment, rid of my name and my accent. The mirror stood in front of the mirror, and said, “Mir- told me that.” ror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest The Wise Matriarch shook her head, scientist of them all?” “My child, do not give away your identity, SNOW BROWN AND THE SEVEN DETERGENTS | 17 your culture—they are part of you, of who “But that’s ridiculous,” she said. “Most you are,” she cried. of what is said is just plain dumb. Have “But,” said Sneha, “I’ve always dreamed you listened to some of them? They like the of being a scientist. I spent all my savings sound of their voices so much.” coming here, and I cannot go back a fail- “That may be true, but that is the way. ure. This is truly what I want.” Sneha got You have to make an impression, and sit- into the Great Washing Machine with the ting and listening like a lump of clay is not fi rst detergent. Rub-a-dub-a-dub, rub-a- the way. And another thing—why did you dub-a-dub, went the detergent. let the others operate the machine in the “You may come out now, Snow Brown. lab? You have to take initiative.” Good luck.” “That was a ten-thousand-dollar ma- Snow Brown went back amazed at how chine. What if I broke it? I’ve never used it differently her tongue moved. For the next before.” “Leave your Third World mentality week she met the other budding Patriarchs, behind. The Patriarchs see it as a lack of decided on her courses, and went out so- initiative. cializing with her colleagues. But every- They think you are not interested. You thing was new in this land: how people ate have to shoot for number one, be the very and drank, even what people ate and drank. best. You have to act like a scientist, like a She felt stupid and ignorant. And just as she winner. Girl, what you need is a good dose expected, when she went to the mirror, it of arrogance and ego.” told her that such behavior was quite un- Snow Brown was a little perturbed. She scientifi c and that she had to learn the right was disturbed by what she saw around her. etiquette. Off she went again to the House Did she really want to act like some of the of the Seven Detergents and used two other people she had met? What had happened detergents that worked their miracles in to kindness, a little humility, helping each the Great Washing Machine. other? Just how badly did she want this, “Now I act like everyone else,” she said, anyway? Her family was going to hate her satisfi ed. when she went back. They would not rec- Snow Brown went to her classes. She ognize her. She thought long and hard and thought them quite interesting. But the fi nally decided to go ahead. professors never looked her in the eye and She went back to the House of the Seven never asked for her opinions. “Maybe they Detergents and used the anti-Third World think I’m stupid,” she said to herself. In detergent. When the Great Washing Ma- class discussions everyone spoke up. Some chine was done, she came striding out, of the things they said were pretty stupid, pride oozing out of every pore. The next she thought. And so she would gather up day the Supreme White Patriarch called her courage and contribute. She was met for her. “So, what kind of progress are you with stony silence. On some occasions making in your search for Scientifi c Truth?” others would make the same point, and he asked. the professor would acknowledge it and “Well,” she said, “the mirror has kept build on it. me occupied with learning to act like a She knew the mirror would be unhappy scientist. with her, and sure enough, she was right. Surely you can’t expect me to make as “You have to be more aggressive,” it said. much progress as the others, considering.” “It doesn’t matter so much what you say as “We don’t like students making excuses, how you say it.” Snow Brown. You had better make some 18 | BANU SUBRAMANIAM

progress, and real soon. There is no place “Aha!” cried Snow Brown triumphantly. for laziness here.” “You throw emotionalism and subjectivity Snow Brown started developing some at me. Listen to yourself. You are reading of her ideas. She went to the mirror to talk into nature what you see in yourself. I hap- them over. pen to believe that mutualisms are very im- “I’m thinking of working with mutual- portant in the world. The Patriarchs have isms,” she said. “Organisms associate with decided to work with a particular model. It each others in numerous ways ecologi- doesn’t mean that it’s the only way.” cally. They can both compete for the same “Get realistic,” said the mirror, laugh- resources as in competition. Some live off ing. “You need the patronage of an Associ- other organisms, and that’s called parasit- ate or Assistant Patriarch. You need to get ism. When organisms get into ecological money from the Supreme White Patriarch relationships with each other that are mu- to do the research. Don’t forget you need to tually benefi cial, it’s called mutualism.” please the Patriarch to get ahead. And you “To be frank, Snow Brown, I would rec- are still way behind in the game. This is not ommend studying competition or parasit- the time to get radical, and you are not the ism.” “But most of the studies of ecological person to do it.” interactions have focused on them,” Snow Convinced that pragmatism was the Brown said. “I am amazed that there has best course, the overconfi dent Snow Brown been so little study of mutualisms. We developed her ideas, talked in classes, and know of some examples, but just how prev- aggressively engaged the Patriarchs in di- alent mutualisms are is still up in the air. alogue. She was supremely happy. Things For all we know, they may be a fundamen- were fi nally going her way. She went to the tal principle that describes demographic mirror and said, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, patterns of organisms on our planet.” who is the fairest scientist of them all?” “Whoa! Whoa!” cried the mirror. “You’re And the mirror replied, “It sure ain’t you, getting carried away with your emotions. Snow Brown. You’re still the last one in town.” We would all like a and-they-lived-happily- Snow Brown could not believe her ears. ever-after kind of fairy tale. You are vio- “I act and think like everyone around me. I lating one of the fundamentals of doing am even obnoxious at times. What could I science—objectivity. You don’t pursue a possibly still be doing wrong?” study because you think it would be ‘nice.’ “You’re overdoing it,” said the mirror. You base it on concrete facts, data. Then “You don’t know everything. You should be you apply the scientifi c method and inves- a little more humble and subservient.” tigate the problem.” “Am I hearing things? I don’t see anyone “I do agree that the scientifi c method may else doing that. This place does not vali- have merit,” she said. “I will use it to study date that. You told me that yourself. What mutualisms. But tell me, why do you think is really going on here?” competition has been so well studied?” “When I advised you last,” answered the “That’s because competition is so im- mirror, “I advised you the way I would ad- portant. Just look around you,” the mirror vise anyone, but I’ve been watching how replied. the other Patriarchs interact with you. Ap- “Are the Patriarchs working with each parently their expectations of you are dif- other for their mutual benefi t, or are they ferent. You’re brown, remember?” competing? Snow Brown was furious. She stormed This is what I do—promote competi- out and went to the House of the Seven De- tion. It is nature’s way.” tergents, and the sixth detergent washed SNOW BROWN AND THE SEVEN DETERGENTS | 19 her brownness away. She was now Snow The other Patriarchs nodded in agree- White. She marched back to the Depart- ment at the unfortunate event. ment of Scientifi c Truth. All the Patriarchs “There is no reason for anyone to see stared at her. They suddenly realized that this story, is there?” said the Patriarch who what stood before them was a woman, and had initially spoken. a beautiful one at that. The others concurred, and they poured “Well, am I white enough for the lot of the last detergent on her. When they were you now?” she demanded. done, there was nothing left. No pathetic “Oh, but you’re too pretty to be a scien- face, no ugly reminders, no evidence. tist,” cried the Supreme Patriarch. “You can be a technician in my lab,” said ENDING 2: INTO EMPIRICISM another. “No, in mine!” urged yet another. Snow Brown in her subversive wisdom sent The Wise Matriarch had been right. copies of her story and insights to all in the Sneha had now lost her whole identity, and department. There were some who kept for what? Why had she not seen this com- the tale alive. It soon became apparent that ing? she asked herself. How could she ever there were dissenters within the Patriarchy. have been the fairest scientist? How could They broke their silence, and the move- she have been anything but last when ment slowly grew. Scientists began form- judged by a mirror that wanted to produce ing coalitions, talking and supporting each clones of the Supreme White Patriarch? She other in forming pockets of resistance. went to the House of the Seven Detergents. They questioned the power inequities. “It’s too late, my child,” said the Wise Ma- Why are most Patriarchs white? Why are triarch. “You cannot go back now. I warned most of them men? Over many decades the you about it. I wish I had more resources negotiations continued. Women scientists to support you and others like you. I have and scientists of color rose in the power seen this happen far too often. It is import- structure. The collective consciousness ant for you to communicate this to others. was now male, female, and multicolored. You must write down what has happened But it was still supreme. It was privileged. to you for future generations.” The Pursuit for Truth continued, although Two days later they discovered Sneha’s new Truths emerged—Truths from the per- cold body on the fl oor of her room. Her spective of women, from the black, brown, face looked tortured. In her sunken eyes yellow, red and the white. The world had was the resigned look of someone who had become a better place. nothing more to lose to the world she had come to live in. On the nightstand by her ENDING 3: A POSTMODERN FANTASY body rested a tale entitled “Snow Brown and the Seven Detergents.” The story of Snow Brown spread like wild- fi re. The Land of the Blue Devils was ablaze with anger and rage. The Wise Matri- ENDING 1: AND INJUSTICE PREVAILS arch and a number of budding Patriarchs The Patriarchs stood around the body. “It stormed the Department of the Pursuit of is so sad,” said one. “But she was too emo- Scientifi c Truth and took it over. The mirror tional, a very fuzzy thinker. Some people was brought down. The Room of Judgment are just not meant to pursue Scientifi c was transformed into the Room of Nego- Truth. I wish they would accept it and leave tiation. In their fi rst meeting after all this instead of creating all this melodrama.” occurred, the scientists sat together. “We 20 | BANU SUBRAMANIAM

need a different model,” they said. They science and rewriting scientiﬁ c knowl- dismantled the positions of the Supreme edge. The House of the Seven Detergents White Patriarch, the Emeritus Patriarch, was dismantled, and the detergents were the Associate Patriarch, the Assistant Pa- rendered invisible. The new Department triarch, and the Young Patriarch. “We will of Scientiﬁ c Endeavor was very productive. be self-governing,” they decided. They de- Its faculty and students solved many prob- bunked the myth that truth was a mono- lems that had eluded the world for years. lithic entity. “Truth is a myth,” they said. They became world renowned, and their “One person’s truth is often privileged over model was adopted far and wide. someone else’s. This is dangerous. The Pa- If you are ever in the forests in the Land triarchs privileged their worldview over all of the Blue Devils and come across the others. This distorts knowledge and makes voice of an old-school scientist arguing an accurate description of the world im- vociferously, you know you have stumbled possible.” Together they decided they across the ghosts of Snow Brown and the could help each other in reconstructing Seven Detergents. CHAPTER 3

State of Knowledge about the Workforce Participation, Equity, and Inclusion of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Diana Bilimoria and Xiangfen Liang

We include science, technology, engineer- also remained a higher percentage in the ing, and mathematics (STEM) fi elds as well recent cohort (2002–2005), especially in so- as the social and behavioral sciences (SBS), cial sciences (about 60%) and life sciences under the overall rubric of science and en- (about 45%) (National Science Foundation gineering (S&E). The inclusion of women 2010, Figure 3.30 ). in S&E is directly connected to the future In the STEM professional workforce, composition of the nation’s S&E work- women were 19% of all managers and 15% force and to the continued development of top-level managers in business or in- of a globally competitive marketplace for dustry compared with 34% of all scientists talent. and engineers in business or industry in 2006 (National Science Foundation 2009). They constituted 8% of engineering man- THE PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN IN agers and 11% of natural sciences manag- THE SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING ers. Only in medical and health services WORKFORCE were women more than half of managers In the past 20 years, the proportion of (National Science Foundation 2009). women and minorities in S&E occupations The workforce participation of women has increased considerably. As indicated in in the STEM professions is considerably Figure 3.1 , college-educated women con- larger at lower rungs in the corporate stituted 27% of S&E occupation holders hierarchy–41% of qualifi ed scientists, engi- in 2007, up from 22% in 1990 (Science and neers, and technologists are women–yet, Engineering Indicators 2010, Figure 3.27, over time, 52% of these women quit their pp. 3–32). The proportion of women with jobs, not in a steady trickle, but during doctoral degrees in S&E occupations was their mid to late thirties (Hewlett, Luce, 34% in 2007, up from 23% in 1990. Among Servon, et al. 2008). These authors pro- workers whose highest degree is S&E vide a fi vefold explanation of this massive bachelor’s, the share of women has risen brain drain: hostile macho cultures, isola- to above 60% in social sciences and life tion from being the lone woman on a team sciences in the recent cohort 2002–2005 or site, systems of reward that emphasize (National Science Foundation 2010, Fig- risk-taking, extreme work pressures, and ure 3.29). Similarly, among workers whose lack of clarity about career paths (Hewlett, highest degree is S&E doctorate, women Luce, Servon et al. 2008). 22 | DIANA BILIMORIA AND XIANGFEN LIANG

35% 50%

30% 45%

40%

25% 35%

20% 30% 1990 2000 2007 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007

Women as % of students earned bachelor’s degrees College-educated women and racial/ethnic minorities Women as % of students earned master’s degrees Women and racial/ethnic minority doctorate holders Women as % of students earned doctoral degrees

Figure 3.1 Women and racial/ethnic minorities with college or doctorate degrees Figure 3.2 Women as a percentage of in science and engineering students by earned degree in S&E: occupations: 1990, 2000, 2007. 1993–2007. Source: Data drawn from Appendix Tables 2–12, 2–26, Source: Adapted from Figures 3–27 and 3–28, Science 2–28, Science and Engineering Indicators 2010, and Engineering Indicators 2010 (p.33), National National Science Foundation (www.nsf.gov.statistics/ Science Foundation. seind10).

THE PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN men earned a majority of bachelor’s degrees STUDENTS IN S&E FIELDS awarded in engineering, computer sciences, and physics (81%, 81%, and 79%, respec- Women also made considerable progress tively) while women earned half or more of in obtaining S&E degrees over the years. bachelor’s degrees in psychology (77%), bio- Figure 3.2 presents the representation of logical sciences (60%), social sciences (54%), women by earned degree from 1993 to agricultural sciences (50%), and chemistry 2007. In 2007, 485,772 students earned (50%). Fields with marked increases in the bachelor’s degrees in the United States, proportion of bachelor’s degrees awarded and half of them (244,075) were women, to women from 1993 to 2007 are earth, at- up from 45% (165,720 out of 366,035) in mospheric, and ocean sciences (from 30% 1993. Since 2000, half of the S&E bachelor to 41%); agricultural sciences (from 37% degree’s recipients have been women. At to 50%); and chemistry (from 41% to 50%), the graduate-school level, women students However, women’s share of bachelor’s de- constituted 46% (54,925 out of 120, 278) of grees in computer sciences, mathematics, S&E master degree’s recipients in 2007, up and engineering has declined in recent years. from 36% (30,971 out of 86,425) in 1993. The Women’s participation in graduate S&E percentage of female students who earned fi elds has also increased, Women made S&E doctoral degrees also increased, up up 42% of S&E graduate students in 1993 from 32% in 1993 to 47% in 2007. and 50% in 2006, although large variations According to Science and Engineering In- among fi elds persist. In 2006, women con- dicators 2010 (National Science Foundation stituted the majority of graduate students 2010), women earned 58% of all bachelor’s in psychology (76%), medical/other life degrees since 2002 and about half of all S&E sciences (78%), biological sciences (56%), bachelor’s degrees since 2000, but major and social sciences (54%). They consti- variations persist among fi elds. In 2007, tuted close to half of graduate students in STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION, EQUITY | 23 earth, atmospheric, and ocean sciences early 1970s; the full-time nonfaculty share (47%) and agricultural sciences (48%) and rose from 6% in 1973 to 13% in 2006; and more than one-third of graduate students postdocorates rose from 4% in 1973 to 9% in mathematics (37%), chemistry (40%), of all academically employed S&E doctor- and astronomy (34%), Their percentages ate holders in 2006 (Science and Engineer- in computer sciences (25%), engineering ing Indicators 2010, Table 5.6, pp. 5–20). (23%), and physics (20%) were low in 2006, Along with these movements, women have although higher than in 1993 (23%, 15%, gained an increasing share of the academic and 14%, respectively) (National Science workforce composition. In 2006, 33% of all Foundation 2010). S&E doctorate holders employed in aca- In 2009 women’s share of engineering demia were women, up from 9% in 1973 degrees hovered around 20% at all degree (Science and Engineering Indicators 2010, levels—17.8% of bachelor’s degrees, 23% of Table 5.9, pp. 5–22). Women doctorate master’s degrees, and 21.2% of doctoral de- holders constituted more than half of part- grees. The percentage of women awarded time positions in academic S&E during doctoral degrees in engineering increased 1993 and 2006. from 15.9% in 2000 to 21.2% in 2009 (Gib- In academic S&E fi elds, women hold a bons 2009). However, there is large variance larger share of junior faculty positions than by fi eld: women’s percentage of doctoral senior positions. In 2006, women consti- degrees varied from 12.6% in nuclear engi- tuted 25% of full-time senior faculty (full neering to 37.7% in biomedical engineering and associate professors) and 42% of full- (Gibbons 2009). time junior faculty (assistant professors and In brief, the number of female students lecturers). Despite these gains, women are and PhD recipients in S&E fi elds has been signifi cantly more likely to hold nontenure- increasing in recent years. However, as track positions (30% of full-time women the numbers presented in the next sec- faculty compared to 18% of men), are ap- tion show, these increases do not refl ect pointed to tenure track positions in most corresponding increases in the number of fi elds in far lower proportions than their female faculty in STEM areas, particularly representation in the candidate pool of at higher ranks, prompting many to refer doctoral degrees granted in the last decade, to this phenomenon as a ‘leaky pipeline’ of faculty in these fi elds. and are less likely to be tenured faculty than men, especially in doctoral institutions where “full-time women faculty are only half as likely as men to have tenure” THE PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN (West & Curtis 2006, 10). Importantly, the FACULTY IN ACADEMIC S&E FIELDS percentage of women with S&E doctorates The job market of academic S&E disci- (including social and behavioral sciences) plines has changed substantially in the who are full-time full professors increased past few decades. Full-time faculty po- from 14% in 1999 to 20.6% in 2008; how- sitions have been declining, and post- ever, the percentage of under-represented doctoral and other full-time nonfaculty minority S&E doctorate holders in full pro- positions (e.g., research associates, adjunct fessor positions remained relatively fl at, appointments, and lecturers) have been from 4.5% in 1999 to 5.7% in 2008 (National increasing since the early 1970s (National Science Foundation 2011). Science Foundation 2010). The full-time Figure 3.3 shows the relative status of faculty share of all academic employment women doctorate holders by academic was 72% in 2006, down from 88% in the positions held. Overall, women doctorate 24 | DIANA BILIMORIA AND XIANGFEN LIANG

60% engineering, women constituted 12.7% of the tenured or tenure-track faculty in 50% 2009 (up from 10.4% in 2004)—21.6% of

40% assistant professors (17.9% in 2004), 14.5% of associate professors (12.4% in 2004), 30% and 7.7% of full professors (5.8% in 2004)

20% (Gibbons 2009). By fi eld, the percentage of women tenured or tenure-track faculty in 10% 2009 varied from 6% in mining engineering to 22.1% in environmental engineering 1973 1983 1993 2006 (Gibbons 2009). All positions Part-time positions Academic chemistry exhibits very sim- Full-time senior faculty Full-time faculty researchers ilar patterns of the underrepresentation Full-time junior faculty Full-time nonfaculty of women, even though relatively more Postdocs women complete doctoral degrees in chemistry. In 2003–2004, women held only Figure 3.3 Women as a percentage of S&E doctorate holders by position in 12% of all tenure-track faculty positions academic employment: selected and only 21% of assistant professor posi- years, 1973–2006. tions at the top 50 chemistry departments Source: Drawn from Tables 5–9, p. 5–22, Science and (Nolan, Buckner, Kuck, & Marzabadi 2004). Enginee ring Indicators 2010, National Science The American Chemical Society reported Foundation. that the percentages of full-time, female, Notes: Academic employment limited to U.S. doctorate holders employed at 2- or 4-year colleges or doctorate faculty members at PhD-granting universities. Senior faculty includes professors and universities, master’s granting institutions, associate professors. Junior faculty includes assistant baccalaureate institutions, and two-year professors and instructors. Full-time non-faculty colleges were 13%, 20%, 26%, and 32%, re- includes positions such as research associates, adjunct spectively (Nolan et al. 2004). positions, lecturers, and administrative positions. Part-time employment excludes those employed The estimated total number of full-time part-time because they are students or retired. faculty in mathematical sciences for 2004– 2005 was 20,224, of which 5,302 (26%) were holders have made encouraging progress females (Kirkman, Maxwell, & Rose 2005). in occupying academic positions but they The number of females as a percentage are under-represented at senior faculty po- of full-time faculty varied considerably sitions, and moderately represented at the among the groups in 2004, from 12% for junior faculty positions. doctoral-granting departments in private Analyses of the workforce participation institutions to 32% for master’s-granting of women faculty reveal under represen- departments. In fall 2004, the percentage of tation in several STEM fi elds. Leboy (2008) women in mathematical sciences was gen- noted that since close to half of the top erally higher in statistics (26%) than in the ten National Institutes of Health–funded doctoral mathematics groups (18%). Simi- academic health centers in 2006 had no larly, the percentage of tenured faculty who women among their junior tenure-track are women was highest in departments faculty in their biochemistry and cell biol- granting either a master’s or a baccalaureate ogy departments, a young woman might degree only (21%), and lowest in doctoral- get the impression that her shot at a fac- granting departments (9%). Women in mat - ulty position in these schools would be hematical sciences accounted for 52% of diffi cult, if not out of reach. In schools of non-doctoral full-time faculty, and 4% STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION, EQUITY | 25 of the part-time faculty in 2004. The per- Astin and Cress (2003) reported that male centage of tenured/tenure-track women faculty attained tenure in a shorter amount faculty in mathematical sciences over the of time than female faculty in all fi elds, period 1998–2004 remained relatively sta- with the exception of engineering. Other ble (Kirkman et al. 2005). research has shown that women are less Among S&E doctorate holders with ac- likely than men to receive tenure or pro- ademic faculty positions in four-year col- motion in STEM fi elds (Rosser & Daniels leges and universities, females are less 2004). It has also been pointed out that likely than males to be found in the full the gender gap in compensation may be professor positions and more likely to be due in part to gender differences in rank, assistant professors (National Science fi eld (Astin and Cress 2003), and promo- Foundation 2011). This is consistent with tions (National Science Foundation 2003). fi ndings from Nelson (2007), who exam- As Astin and Cress (2003, 58) note, “At re- ined the percentage of male and female search universities, 25% of men are in the tenured and tenure-track faculty in sev- more highly paid fi elds of physical science, eral disciplines, including S&E, at the top mathematics/statistics, and engineering 50 U.S. educational institutions, based combined, compared to 6% of women. on research expenditures: few female full Likewise, more than twice as many women professors in S&E with the percentage of (33%) as men (16%) are in the less fi nan- women among full professors ranging cially lucrative fi elds of education, health from 3% to 15% in different fi elds. Nelson science and humanities combined.” (2007) also noted that in all but computer science, the rank of assistant professor has EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT AND the highest percentage of female faculty. In WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION OF converse, the rank which has highest per- MINORITIES IN ACADEMIC S&E centage of male faculty is typically that of full professor, and that is the rank held by Underrepresented minorities (blacks, His- the majority of male faculty as well. Fewer panics, and American Indians/Alaska differences in rank exist between male and Natives as a group) and Asians/Pacifi c female faculty in early-career stages in Islanders earned 17.4% and 8.7% of S&E S&E, but greater differences tend to appear bachelor’s degrees in 2008, up from 15.9% between 15 and 20 years after receipt of the and 8.2% in 2000 (National Science Foun- doctorate. dation 2011). Underrepresented minori- Research also indicates that women ties (URMs) earned 7.2% of S&E doctorates are underrepresented in senior academic to U.S. citizens and permanent residents ranks and faculty leadership positions in 2008, up from 6% in 2000, while Asians/ such as presidents, chancellors, provosts, Pacifi c Islanders earned 5.8% of S&E doc- deans, and chairs (Hollenshead 2003). This torates in 2009, down from 6.2% in 2000. may be related to the diffi culties women URM and Asian shares of S&E bachelor’s faculty in STEM face in academic career and doctoral degrees have risen slightly or advancement (e.g., due to gender stereo- fl attened over the last decade; more im- typing and lack of mentoring) and the fact portantly, they remain a small proportion that they may not obtain the same levels of of the total (National Science Foundation professional recognition for their scholarly 2011). Underrepresented minorities con- work as do their male colleagues. In a com- stituted 10% of all scientists and engineers prehensive study of almost 60,000 faculty in business or industry in 2006, 7% of top- members at 403 academic institutions, level managers, and 6%–13% of managers 26 | DIANA BILIMORIA AND XIANGFEN LIANG

in most S&E fi elds (National Science Foun- minorities who are not underrepresented. dation 2009). The glass ceiling is a concept refl ecting the The data regarding URM faculty in S&E workplace barriers to workforce partici- are also disturbingly low. The 2010 report pation and advancement facing specifi c A National Analysis of Minorities in Science minority groups. Chen and Farr (2007) de- and Engineering Faculties at Research Uni- lineate four criteria for a glass ceiling: (a) versities, a comprehensive demographic the inequality represents a demographic analysis of tenured and tenure track fac- difference (e.g., gender or race/ethnicity) ulty in the top 100 departments of science that is not explained by other job- relevant and engineering disciplines, shows that characteristics of an employee (e.g., edu- minorities are signifi cantly underrep- cation, training, discipline, location), (b) resented in the academic S&E pipeline the inequality is greater at higher levels, (Nelson & Brammer 2010). The report con- (c) the inequality is one of opportunity cludes, “Our data reveal that URMs among and not merely an inequality in propor- our science and engineering faculty are tions of people at high levels, and (d) the shockingly underrepresented despite in- inequality increases over the trajectory creased general growth in their represen- of a career. These authors analyzed data tation among B.S. and Ph.D. recipients. over the period 1993–1999 and found the As expected, compared to their share of existence of a glass-ceiling effect for Asian the U.S. population, URMs are underrep- Americans (both men and women) at all resented at almost every point in the aca- stages of their S&E careers, and confi rmed demic pipeline. In most disciplines, there the effect for all women (regardless of race) is a drop in representation at each point in S&E (Chen & Farr 2007). Xie and Shau- measured, with a gradual decrease up to man (2003) found that women immigrant the rank of ‘full’ professor, where the low- scientists are more severely disadvantaged est representation is found; this refl ects than native-born women scientists in em- an increase in recent hiring in those dis- ployment and advancement, unlike male ciplines. However, in some disciplines, immigrant scientists in comparison with the representation of Blacks, Hispanics, or their native-born counterparts; this gen- Native Americans, among assistant profes- der difference was attributed to differences sors (the most recently hired rank) is lowest in the migration paths taken by men and and occasionally zero” (Nelson & Brammer women—men scientists more likely to be 2010, 18). These data provide evidence that primary immigrants and women scientists the academic pipeline is leaky for racial/ more likely to be secondary immigrants. ethnic minority faculty as well. In summary, multiple sources and his- The case of Asian Americans in aca- torical data reveal the long-standing and demic S&E careers is a particular prob- consistent underrepresentation of women lem of underrepresentation (Chen & Farr in S&E fi elds. Most problematic is the low 2007). While Asian Americans are a popu- proportion of women faculty at higher lev- lation minority (about 5%) in the United els in the academic hierarchy. States, they are overrepresented among students and professionals in S&E, hold- UNDERREPRESENTATION AND ing more than 15% of all S&E doctoral de- INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCE grees (National Science Foundation 2003). EXPLANATIONS As faculty at many research universities, Asian Americans are not considered to be The concept of underrepresentation is it- underrepresented; rather, they constitute self subject to multiple interpretations STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION, EQUITY | 27

(Stewart, Malley, & LaVaque-Manty 2007). colleges in which they constitute more than Underrepresentation may mean that half of students and more than a third of the women should participate in every ac- faculty (Hagedorn, Chi, Cepeda, & McLain tivity in society in rough proportion to 2007). Defi ning critical mass departments their numbers in the population (about as those with more than 15% women faculty half), or it may mean that women should and departments with token status as hav- be expected to participate on university ing less than 15% women faculty, Etzkow- faculties in rough proportion to their at- itz, Kemelgor and Uzzi (2000) found that tainment of doctoral-level degrees. Un- women faculty in critical mass departments derrepresentation may occur in terms of reported relationships with signifi cantly many dimensions such as tenure status, higher levels of social support and identity rank or position, and leadership opportu- enhancement, more network contacts, and nities (Stewart et al. 2007). more reciprocation from network contacts Two concepts illustrate various dynamics as compared with women faculty in depart- of underrepresentation: token or solo status, ments with token status. and critical mass. The literature on tokens or Similar to the defi nition of a critical solos—individuals who are the sole repre- mass of students as defi ned by the Amer- sentatives of their group (e.g., by race, gen- ican Educational Research Association, der, rank, or tenure status)—suggests that Elam, Stratton, Hafferty, and Haidet (2009) they are perceived and treated differently suggested that a critical mass of faculty than others in a work setting (Kanter 1977; may be defi ned as a contextual bench- Yoder & Sinnett 1985; Yoder 1991; Niemann mark that allows an institution to exceed & Dovidio 1998). Solos are more likely to be token numbers within its faculty body and subject to stereotyping, scrutiny, and nega- to promote the robust exchange of ideas tive judgment (Thompson & Sekaquaptewa and views that is central to an institution’s 2002), and experience greater internal stress mission. Etzkowitz, Kemelgor, Neuschatz, (Bilimoria & Stewart 2009). When individu- Uzzi, and Alonzo (1994) identifi ed a strong als constitute a “signifi cant minority” and minority of at least 15% as necessary ful- not tokens, they begin to be viewed through crum to move toward critical mass. While more individualistic and less stereotyped the specifi c operational defi nition and the lenses. The phenomenon of solo and mi- contextual benchmark of a critical mass of nority women faculty in academic STEM women faculty in academic S&E is yet to be departments is widespread, especially in specifi ed (Elam et al. 2009), in the fi eld of top research universities. corporate governance it has been empiri- A second related concept is that of critical cally determined that while a lone woman mass. The theory of critical mass suggests can and often does make substantial con- that a meaningful representation of women tributions and two women are generally in a group facilitates their individual differ- more powerful than one, in a small-group entiation (thereby helping them evade token setting such as a corporate board it takes treatments, reduce performance pressures, three or more women to achieve a critical and escape role entrapment) and increases mass that can cause a fundamental change the possibility of their forming alliances in deliberation processes and enhance and coalitions to alter the prevailing cul- corporate governance (Kramer, Konrad, & ture (Kanter 1977). Critical mass is linked to Erkut 2006; see also Erkut, Kramer, & Kon- positive educational and career outcomes. rad 2008). This study found that having a For example, Latinos/Latinas student suc- critical mass of women directors is good cess was found to be higher at community for corporate governance in at least three 28 | DIANA BILIMORIA AND XIANGFEN LIANG

ways: different views and perspectives of First, girls’ scores in mathematics achieve- multiple stakeholders are likely to be con- ments in other countries refute arguments sidered, diffi cult issues and problems are about the possible innate nature of ob- considerably less likely to be ignored or servable differences in the U.S.—girls in brushed aside, and discussions are more Japan and Singapore outperform boys in open and collaborative. the U.S. on math tests, to the extent that Varied explanations have been offered “The cross-national differences dwarf the for the continued underrepresentation of sex differences” (Valian 2007, 29). Second, women and girls in science and engineer- U.S. girls have considerably improved ing fi elds, constituting a “culture-to-biology their scores on mathematics measures as spectrum” (Ceci & Williams 2007, 20). At the well as their performance in undergrad- biological-differences end of the spectrum uate and graduate STEM fi elds over the is the proposition that girls have lower cog- past decades, indicating that the gap is not nitive skills (specifi cally, certain mathemat- immobile (e.g., Xie & Shauman 2003). The ical and spatial rotation abilities) than do American Association of University Wom- boys—and that these nuanced defi ciencies en’s 2010 report Why So Few? Women in ultimately lower women’s chances of suc- Science, Technology, Engineering and Math- cess at ensuing stages of their academic S&E ematics provides a summary of evidence careers. While specifi c sex-based cognitive that recent gains in girls’ mathematical skill differences have been cited by some to achievement demonstrate the importance explain the low proportions of women and of culture and learning environments in girls in scientifi c and engineering research the cultivation of abilities and interests careers (see Ceci, Williams, & Barnett 2009), (Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose 2010). As this reit is beyond the scope of the current study port states, “Thirty years ago there were 13 and the present review to deeply delve into boys for every girl who scored above 700 some of the highly nuanced merits of such on the SAT math exam at age 13; today that arguments; we focus instead on the institu- ratio has shrunk to about 3:1. This increase tional level cultural and structural causes of in the number of girls identifi ed as ‘math- women’s underrepresentation and the in- ematically gifted’ suggests that education stitutional remedies that more readily yield can and does make a difference at the high- possibilities of improvement in women’s est levels of mathematical achievement” workforce participation, equity, and inclu- (Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose 2010, xiv). Third, sion. Nevertheless, we acknowledge here, it appears that specifi c kinds of spatial cog- then Harvard University president Law- nition training can elevate girls’ (and boys’) rence Summer’s 2005 citation of possible spatial skills (Newcombe 2007), and both innate gender differences at the extreme test scores and career choices can be pos- right end of the distribution of mathemat- itively infl uenced by removal of internal- ical and spatial cognition abilities (cou- ized stereotypes and biases. Believing in pled with a dismissal of rival socialization, the potential for intellectual growth, in and stereotyping and unconscious bias, and of itself, improves test scores and inten- institutional-barriers explanations) as spark - tions to pursue STEM careers; internalized ing considerable interest and debate over the negative stereotypes about girls’ and wom- biological causes of women’s underrepresen- en’s STEM abilities can be overcome by im- tation in science. proving the classroom environment and Many have strongly refuted cognitive- individual training (Steele & Aronson 1995; difference explanations for the dearth of Spencer, Steele, & Quinn 1999; Nguyen & women in S&E on the following grounds. Ryan 2008; see also Dweck 2007, 2008). STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION, EQUITY | 29

Other individual level differences may demonstrated more self-effi cacy in deal- contribute to women’s employment de- ing with work-related issues, were more cisions and success, particularly their other-oriented, were more likely to adapt demonstration of psychosocial abilities to the masculine engineering culture, such as self-confi dence, political skills, were more engaged in engineering-related and propensity to engage in negotiations, learning and professional growth, and per- as compared with men’s. A recent study of ceived themselves as having alignment more than 1,300 intramural postdoctoral between their personal and career asp ira- researchers at the National Institutes of tions (Buse, Perelli, & Bilimoria 2010). In Health documents a self-confi dence gap another study of 3,700 women engineering- (in the expectations of success) between degree holders, Fouad and Singh (2011) women and men postdoctoral researchers found that women engineers who were (Martinez et al. 2007). This survey found more self-confi dent in their abilities to that women are more likely to quit at the navigate their organization’s political postdoctoral researcher to principal in- landscape and juggle multiple life roles vestigator (PI) transition on account of reported being highly satisfi ed with their two reasons: (a) family responsibilities— jobs as well as their careers. spending time with family, plans to have Political skills involve an individual’s children, affordable child care, travel, behaviors to gain information regarding and proximity to spouse’s workplace were formal and informal work relationships some of the considerations that were and power structures within an organi- weighed more heavily by women, whereas zation (Chao, O’Leary-Kelly, Wolf, Klein, salary was more important to men, and & Gardner 1994). They refl ect the ability (b) self-confi dence—although men and to get things done by understanding and women rated themselves equally when it working through others outside of for- came to professional skill, men were sig- mally prescribed organizational mecha- nifi cantly more confi dent that they could nisms (Ferris, Davidson, & Perrewé 2005). obtain a PI position and become tenured Higher levels of political knowledge and than were women (Martinez et al. 2007). infl uence behaviors are associated with The causes of women’s less optimistic increases in annual salaries (Judge & Bretz outlook about their future success as PIs 1994) and supervisor ratings of job per- were not examined in this study. Rather, formance (Ferris et al. 2005). However, the investigators urged future research to women are less likely than men to engage examine “whether this lower confi dence in or use organizational politics, possibly originates from foreseen future challenges due to a perception of incompetence, lack that affect women more than men—such of confi dence, and distaste for political as child-bearing, child care, and/or a less activity, preferring to rely instead on for- favorable professional environment—or mal mechanisms of infl uence, sometimes whether they indicate that women un- at the cost of career progression (Arroba derestimate their professional ability” & James 1988; Mann 1995). Similarly, sex (Martinez et al. 2007). An interview-based differences in the propensity to negotiate study of 31 women engineers found that have been employed to explain various ca- “persistent” women engineers (those who reer outcomes (e.g., Babcock & Laschever stayed in the engineering workforce for 2003; Babcock, Gelfand, Small, & Stayn an average of 21 years) versus those who 2006). However, while women may be less opted out (those who left the engineering likely to engage in negotiation behaviors, workforce after an average of 12 years) there may be good reasons for this—recent 30 | DIANA BILIMORIA AND XIANGFEN LIANG

research has documented that women face for success in their workplaces and ca- social sanctions (such as be disliked or per- reers. Exclusively relying on such support ceived as demanding) and be penalized for interventions has been sometimes referred initiating negotiations (Bowles, Babcock, & to as fi x the woman or women’s problems Lai 2007). or band-aid approaches, and “have been characterized as efforts that focus on a ‘defi - cit’ model, in which it is assumed that these INSTITUTIONAL EXPLANATIONS OF individuals lack something—ability, expe- WOMEN’S UNDERREPRESENTATION: rience, interest, inspiration, motivation— THE LEAKY PIPELINE that they need in order to succeed” (Muller Focusing exclusively on programs to rem- 2003, 122–123). Although these approaches edy gaps in individual skill differences has do not systematically address root causes, had limited success in unlocking S&E ed- they support and encourage individual ucational pathways and improving S&E girls and women, and as such have a role workforce participation for women; in- to play in a comprehensive institutional stead, a more systemic approach is needed strategy for remedying workplace under- (National Academies 2003; Rosser 2004; representation and inequities, and may National Academies 2007a). A singular also catalyze longer-term shifts in institu- emphasis on individual-level explanations tional culture (Muller 2003). to rectify extant underrepresentation and Going behind the numbers and out- inequities overlooks powerful workplace comes of underrepresentation is important dynamics that constrain women’s partic- (Long 2001). Attention only to aggregate ipation and success. For example, in the growth trends in workforce participation same study of 3,700 women engineering- masks several aspects of the demograph- degree holders mentioned above (Fouad & ics of the S&E workforce (Rosser & Taylor Singh 2011), perceptions of the engineer- 2009). First, it masks a decrease over recent ing workplace climate were critical in their decades in white U.S. men, the traditional decisions to not enter or leave the engi- group from which the U.S. has drawn its neering profession. Of those women who STEM workforce. Second, the aggregated chose not to enter the engineering profes- data also hide the wide variance in women’s sion after college, a third indicated it was participation in specifi c fi elds. Women earn because of their perceptions of engineer- most of the bachelor’s degrees in non-STEM ing as being infl exible or the engineering fi elds and men earn most of the degrees in work place culture as being nonsupportive STEM (e.g., computer sciences, physical of women. Of those women who left en- sciences, and engineering). Third, aggre- gineering, almost half said they left engi- gated data mask the attrition of women at neering because of working conditions, every phase of the educational and career too much travel, lack of advancement or STEM pipeline. More women than men low salary, and one-third said they left be- leave S&E, even though their grades or aca- cause they did not like the workplace cli- demic attainments are equivalent. mate, their boss, or the culture (Fouad & The leaky pipeline has been used to Singh 2011). describe this steady attrition of girls and Individual skill-based differences such women along the educational and academic as those cited in the section above lend career pathway. Academic career develop- themselves to recommendations for spe- ment can be conceptualized as a pipeline cifi c training and development to better which carries women students from sec- equip women to more successfully navigate ondary school through higher education STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION, EQUITY | 31

Tenure and/or Entering a tenure-track Promotion to Receiving position as Assistant Associate Promotion to Advancement to PhD Professor Professor Rank Professor Rank leadership

The experience The The of pre-tenure experience experience The women of tenured of tenured experience faculty women women of women in faculty faculty non-tenure track positions

Women in Academic Science & Engineering

Figure 3.4 Pictorial representation of the leaky pipeline for woman in academic Science and Engineering. and on to a faculty job and beyond. At each (2007, 336), propose a pathway rather than transition point in the academic pipeline, a pipeline since the former “connotes fl ex- however, a lower proportion of women ibility and freedom of movement, whereas advance to the next milestone than their pipeline brings to mind a mechanical and male colleagues, compelling many to refer constrained course of action.” Xie and to this pathway as a ‘leaky pipeline’ since it Shauman (2003, 209) propose a life-course loses women at every step. As illustrated in perspective, providing evidence that “in Figure 3.4, the leaky pipeline is metaphor- contrast to the rigid ‘leaking only’ career ically used to describe the loss of women path dictated by the pipeline metaphor, faculty at each transition point. This fi gure career processes are fl uid and dynamic, illustrates the steady attrition of women at with exit, entry, and reentry all being real successive stages in the educational and possibilities at any point in a career.” De- career pipeline. spite these and other critiques, the pipe- Of course the metaphor of the leaky line continues to be the prevailing reality pipeline is not without criticism. For ex- in academic careers, and the leaky pipe- ample, Herzig (2004) notes that the pipeline persists as a widespread and powerful line metaphor poses students as passive symbolic representation of the problem- participants in their education, whose atic issues surrounding the workforce par- progress through their education is af- ticipation of women in academic STEM. fected only by market forces. Further, a Below we describe relevant systemic— leaky pipeline does not adequately address cultural and structural—challenges and why students of some demographic groups barriers facing women S&E faculty as they stay in STEM while others leave in greater progress through each major career stage proportions, and it fails to model import- in the academic pipeline. For each tran- ant features of postsecondary STEM ed- sition point, we describe the main causes ucation that may contribute to attrition, of the leakages (challenges and barriers) such as its competitive and individualistic as well as the experiences of women while nature (Herzig 2004). Some, such as Mattis they are at that stage. 32 | DIANA BILIMORIA AND XIANGFEN LIANG

Pipeline Leaks Prior to the Tenure Track women scientists and engineers continues to decline. As shown earlier in Figure 3.3 , Barriers to Entering the Tenure Track the proportion of women S&E doctorate Facing Women PhD Holders holders who are in postdoctoral positions Suffi cient numbers of female doctoral was 41% in 2006, increasing from 14% in graduates are generally present in the dis- 1973 through 31% in 2003. ciplinary recruitment pools for S&E faculty Other research has shown that female (Trower & Chait 2002), but qualifi ed fe- applicants for academic positions tend male doctoral applicants may be invisible to be evaluated less favorably than male to search committees. Search committees applicants with identical qualifi cations, often lack gender diversity themselves, by both men and women. In one study of and their search activities often do not identical curricula vitae of a hypothetical include systematic identifi cation of the male or female candidate for a faculty po- candidate pool, gender-blind screening sition, both men and women evaluators of applications, and an equitable campus preferred male job applicants (Steinpreis, visit and interview process (Stewart, La- Anders, & Ritzke 1999). Another study Vaque-Manty, & Malley 2004). Conven- found that female postdoctoral fellowship tional recruitment practices contribute to applicants had to be signifi cantly more the homogenous replication of the faculty productive than male applicants to receive body; such practices are passive, time- the same peer review score (Wenneras & limited, noninclusive and nondiverse, and Wold 1997). search-committee members lack expertise Isaac, Lee, and Carnes (2009) performed in basic recruiting and hiring practices and searches for randomized controlled stud- are bias-prone (Bilimoria & Buch 2010). ies since 1973 of interventions that affect Prior research has found that women gender differences in the evaluation of and members of underrepresented mi- job applicants. Their systematic review nority groups are judged more fairly when reaffi rmed a negative bias against women they are at least 30% of the applicant pool being evaluated for positions tradition- (Heilman 1980; Sackett, Dubois & Noe ally or predominantly held by men. They 1991), yet this level of representation is also found that although interventions diffi cult to achieve in academic STEM dis- that provided raters with clear evidence of ciplines, where women represent, on aver- job- relevant competencies were effective, age, less than 20% of qualifi ed applicants. clearly competent women were rated lower The increase in women PhD graduates than equivalent men for male sex-typed holding postdoctoral positions in S&E is jobs unless evidence of communal quali- symptomatic of the barriers women face in ties was also provided. They also noted that entry to tenure track positions. According a commitment to the value of credentials to the National Postdoctoral Association, before review of applicants and women’s a postdoctoral scholar (“postdoc”) is an presence at or above 25% of the applicant individual holding a doctoral degree who pool eliminated bias against women. They is engaged in a temporary period of men- concluded that “when ambiguity exists tored research and/or scholarly training for in an individual’s qualifi cations or com- the purpose of acquiring the professional petence, evaluators will fi ll the void with skills needed to pursue a career path of his assumptions drawn from gendered stereo- or her choosing. A postdoctoral position is types” (Isaac, Lee, & Carnes 2009, 1444). a critical transition stage in the academic Analyses of S&E searches under- pipeline, beyond which the number of taken over multiple years at two research STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION, EQUITY | 33 universities yielded the following fi ndings: taught, and type of position, the number a statistically signifi cant linear relation- of words per letter for women applicants ship existed between the percent of female in comparison to men applicants was sig- and underrepresented minority (URM) nifi cantly more likely to be communal ad- applicants in the candidate pool and their jectives (e.g., affectionate, helpful, kind, inclusion on the short list; the level of rep- sympathetic, sensitive, nurturing, agree- resentation of female and URM applicants able, tactful, interpersonal, warm, caring, on the short list was associated with the and tactful) and social-communal orienta- likelihood of hiring a female or URM candi- tion descriptors (e.g., husband, wife, kids, date; and the majority of Native American, babies, brothers, children, colleagues, dad, black, and “race-unknown” candidates family, they, him, and her), and less likely were hired when there were more females to be agentic adjectives (e.g., assertive, on the short list (Bilimoria & Buch 2010). confi dent, aggressive, ambitious, domi- These fi ndings highlight that the applicant nane, forceful, independent, daring, out- pool and search committee practices to spoken, and intellectual). A second study diversify this pool are critical elements in conducted by these same authors provided increasing faculty diversity. evidence that that communal characteris- Differences in the content of recom- tics have a negative relationship with hir- mendation letters written for women and ing decisions in academia that are based men candidates have been suggested as on letters of recommendation (Madera, possible explanations for the diffi culties Hebl, & Manin 2009). women face in entering the academic The family situations of women and pipeline. Trix and Psenka (2003) found sys- men are cited as relevant differences in tematic differences in letters of recommen- academic STEM career entry and advance- dation for medical school faculty positions ment (Mason & Goulden 2002, 2004). For for female and male applicants: their study example, while 70% of male tenured STEM documented that recommendation letters faculty had children living in their home written for female applicants were shorter 12 to 14 years after earning a doctorate, than those of men, lacked key informa- only 50% of female faculty did (Mason & tion from their CVs, and were more likely Goulden 2002). In this same study, 77% of to refer to their compassion, teaching, and the male faculty but only 53% of the female effort while letters written for male ap- faculty who had babies within the fi rst plicants highlighted their achievements, fi ve years after receiving a doctorate had research, and ability. Double the letters achieved tenure 12 to 14 years after earn- written for women applicants (almost ing a doctorate. Ginther and Kahn (2006) 25%) raised doubts (e.g., by hedges, qual- found that women are less likely to take ifi ers, and faint praise) as those written for tenure-track positions in science, but the men applicants in this study (Trix & Psenka gender gap is entirely explained by choices 2003). Another recent analysis of letters of around fertility. recommendation for faculty applicants Signifi cant in explaining the barriers of a psychology department in a research to tenure-track entry is the penalty for university found other differences in the motherhood. Examining the tenure-track descriptions of women and men appli- positions at the University of California, cants (Madera, Hebl, & Martin 2009): after Berkeley, Mason, Stacy, Goulden, Hoffman, controlling for years in graduate school, and Frasch (2005) found that qualifi ed fe- number of publications, honors, number male PhDs make up less than a third of the of postdoctoral years, number of courses applicant pools. These same researchers 34 | DIANA BILIMORIA AND XIANGFEN LIANG

observed that married women with and the birth or adoption of young children) without young children are the least likely for fear that they may be penalized in fu- of all PhD recipients to secure tenure-track ture evaluations for using them. faculty positions (Mason et al. 2005). Cor- Dual-career couples face a unique prob- rell, Benard, and Paik (2007) documented lem in higher education—obtaining tenure- the existence of powerful schemas about track positions at the same institution, parenthood in both laboratory and fi eld especially if they are in the same fi eld. This studies. In the laboratory study, when issue is particularly salient for women S&E evaluating identical applications, moth- doctorate holders because 83% of them ers were less likely to be recommended have academic partners who are scientists for hire, promotion, and management, compared with 54% of their male peers and were offered lower starting salaries (Schiebinger, Henderson, & Gilmartin 2008). than nonmothers; evaluators rated mothers as less competent and committed to Women’s Experience in Off-Track paid work than nonmothers; and fathers Positions were seen as more committed to paid As noted earlier and in many other studies, work and offered higher starting salaries women are more likely to be employed in than nonfathers. In the fi eld study, pro- nontenure-track positions, such as tempo- spective employers called mothers back rary teaching positions, research positions about half as often as nonmothers, while funded by “soft” or short-term restricted fathers were not similarly disadvantaged funding, part-time faculty, visiting schol- in the hiring process (Correli, Benard, and ars, adjunct faculty, postdoctoral fellows, Paik 2007). and lower-level administrative positions Based on survival analyses of the Sur- (Harper, Baldwin, Gansneder, & Chro- vey of Doctorate Recipients (a national bi- nister 2001; Long 2001; National Science ennial longitudinal dataset funded by the Foundation 2010). Individuals in these National Science Foundation and others off-track positions are rarely provided op- 1981–2003) in S&E, and after accounting portunities for professional advancement, for a variety of control variables such as may not have their performance regularly discipline, age, ethnicity, time to PhD, and reviewed or rewarded, may rarely fi nd their PhD program ranking, married women positions converted to full-time or receive with young children had 35% lower odds priority consideration when they are, and than married men with young children may be shut out of the faculty governance to get a tenure-track position, 28% lower processes by the institutions that appoint odds than married women without young them (American Association of University children, and 33% lower odds than single Professors 1993). At the entry point to an women without young children (Goulden, academic career, these factors already in- Frasch, & Mason 2009). hibit women’s participation in S&E. Related to these dynamics, women faculty members are particularly prone to bias avoidance with regard to their family lives. Pipeline Leaks after Entering the Drago (2007) documents that women fac- Tenure Track ulty marry at lower rates than men faculty, are childless at higher rates, report having Even after gaining tenure track S&E posi- fewer children than they would like, and tions, women faculty face greater barriers are less likely to utilize family-friendly pol- in obtaining tenure, promotion, and ad- icies (such as tenure clock extensions for vancement to leadership, and encounter STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION, EQUITY | 35 more negative experiences in their work- publications would be necessary for ten- places, than do their male counterparts. ure, or what the trade-offs were between In a recent report entitled Staying Com- fewer publications in top journals and petitive: Patching America’s Leaky Pipe- more publications in lower-tier journals. line in the Sciences, Goulden, Frasch, and Very few women faculty knew how import- Mason (2009) found that family forma- ant (or unimportant) it was to get grants, tion—most importantly marriage and good teaching ratings, or do good service childbirth—accounts for the largest leaks in the tenure evaluation. in the pipeline between PhD receipt and Fox, Colatrella, McDowell, and Realff the acquisition of tenure for women in (2007) addressed three sets of conditions the sciences. Their fi ndings indicate that to support equitable evaluation, includ- women in the sciences who are married ing more complete information on can- with children are 35% less likely to enter a didates’ records and qualifi cations, clarity tenure-track position after receiving a PhD of evaluation standards, and open pro- than married men with children. Upon cesses. The rationale is that bias in assess- entering a tenure-track job, women in the ment is more likely to result if the criteria sciences who are married with children are and process of evaluation are subjective, 27% less likely than their male counter- loosely defi ned, and a matter of judgment. parts to achieve tenure. Based on results “Non- performance- based characteristics, from interviews, case studies, and statisti- such as gender and race, are more likely to cal research, Rosser and Taylor (2009) con- be activated as bases for evaluation when cluded that the need to balance career and there are few relevant and known criteria family and a lack of professional networks on which to judge individual performance” are the two primary factors that stand out (Fox, Colatrella, McDowell, & Realff 2007, among the multiple forces pushing women 171). Secret and nonsystematic processes to leave the academic STEM workforce. tend to activate “particularistic considerations” in evaluations; when criteria for eval- Barriers to Advancement to Tenure ua tion are ambiguous, outcomes based up on Achieving tenure may be the most diffi cult race, gender, national origin, and other per- hurdle of transition in academia. Female sonal and social characteristics are more faculty are less likely to be tenured than likely to occur. male faculty (Long 2001). In a comprehen- The effects of implicit biases have been sive study of almost 60,000 faculty mem- documented in the fi rst authorships of bers at 403 academic institution, Astin and scientifi c papers. After the journal Be- Cress (2003) reported that male faculty at- havioral Ecology instituted double-blind tained tenure in a shorter amount of time reviews (where neither the identities of than female faculty in all fi elds, with the manuscript authors nor reviewers are re- exception of engineering. Other research vealed) in 2000, the proportion of female has shown that women are less likely than fi rst authors increased signifi cantly during men to receive tenure or promotion in 2002–07 as compared with 1995–2000. No STEM fi elds (National Science Foundation such shifts occurred over the same time 2001; Rosser & Daniels 2004). period in another journal with a similar sub- Croson and McGoldrick (2007) de- ject matter and impact factor— Behavioral scribed the lack of clear communication Ecology and Sociobiology —or with four out about tenure requirements. In their study of fi ve other ecology and evolutionary biol- of women economics faculty, participants ogy journals, most of which had continued reported that they did not know how many to practice single-blind reviews (Budden, 36 | DIANA BILIMORIA AND XIANGFEN LIANG

Tregenza, Aarssen, et al. 2008). The edito- shown that women faculty benefi t from rial team of one of these journals, Journal mentoring and institutional supports of Biogeography, which appeared to have more than do men faculty (Bilimoria et al. an increased proportion of male-authored 2006). As reported in the 2010 report Gen- papers in Budden et al., subsequently con- der Differences at Critical Transitions in the ducted its own analyses of authorships Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathe- over the three-year period 2005–2007, matics Faculty, female assistant professors making special efforts to ascertain the with no mentors had 68% probability of gender of authors especially in previously having grant funding versus 93% of women unknown cases, and concluded that there with mentors; the same was not found to was no difference in the acceptance/re- be true for male faculty with and without jection ratio for papers submitted by male mentors (National Academies 2010). Yet, and female corresponding (not fi rst) au- access to mentorship is often more diffi cult thors (Whittaker 2008). for women and underrepresented minority Leakage also occurs from the lack of net- faculty (Smith, Smith, & Markham 2000; works and mentoring of women in the S&E Niemeier & (Gonzales 2004). Additionally, educational and career pipeline. Networks women S&E faculty have less diverse net- and mentors provide information and sup- works and fewer graduate and postdoctoral ports to a faculty member about how to students to support their work than men conduct work, improve performance, and faculty, and receive fewer referrals from understand the political workings of the their networks to consult in the commer- university system, as well as provide op- cial marketplace, serve on science advisory portunities for collaboration and greater boards, and interact with industry (Murray & visibility in their discipline. Mentoring Graham 2007). and peer support (Kram 1985, 1988) are important for professional connections Barriers to Promotion to Professor Rank (de Janasz, Sullivan, & Whiting 2003) as and Faculty/Administrative Leadership well as psychosocial benefi ts (Kram 1988). Statistics also indicate that women are un- Mentored individuals are more likely to derrepresented in senior academic ranks have higher compensation, greater salary and faculty leadership positions such as growth, and more promotions than non- presidents, chancellors, provosts, deans, mentored individuals (Allen, Eby, Poteet, and chairs (Hollenshead 2003). The low- Lentz, & Lima 2004). Who mentors and est proportion of women S&E faculty is at who is mentored in academic S&E vary ac- the highest professor level of the academic cording to a number of individual and or- hierarchy. Among S&E doctorates who ganizational factors (Fox & Conseca 2006). hold academic faculty positions in four- Gender differences occur in the struc- year colleges and universities, women are ture of mentor relationships in academic less likely than men to be full professors S&E as well as the resources obtained from and more likely to be assistant profes- these relationships: women’s collaborative sors (National Science Foundation 2006, networks outside of their institutions are Figure H-5 ). Fewer differences in rank larger, and they matter for grant success— exist between male and female faculty in collaboration network size is positively early- career stages in S&E, but greater dif- associated with the probability of grant references appear between 15 and 20 years ceipt, and women faculty have a lower prob- after receipt of the doctorate (National Sci- ability of receiving a grant (Kiopa, Melkers, & ence Foundation 2001, Figure H-5 ). In the Tanyildiz 2009). Previous research has top 50 U.S. universities, women comprised STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION, EQUITY | 37 only 3% to 15% full professors in various are implemented in highly gendered ways. fi elds S&E (Nelson 2007). They describe numerous subtle practices A nationwide study of faculty at four- by which micropolitics—the myriad strat- year colleges and universities showed egies and tactics of exerting informal and that women associate professors are 10% formal infl uence to further personal in- less likely than men to attain promotion terests—surround the implementation of to full professor even after accounting for these norms at every stage in the profes- productivity, educational background, sorial appointment process. For exam- institution type, race, ethnicity, and na- ple, although norms of transparency and tionality (Perna 2001). More recently a accountability drive efforts to diversify focus-group study of the advancement appointment committees, women com- of women and men associate professors mittee members are most often doctoral at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- students or human resource specialists nology found similar results—women are whereas men members are professors. less likely to be promoted to full profes- While vacancies are advertised in the sor than men and take longer to achieve media, in reality the preferred candidate promotions (Misra, Lundquist, Holmes, & is already known and any other applicants Agiomavritis 2010). are part of a purely cosmetic appointment In a comprehensive critique of the ap- procedure. Often special chairs are created pointments of women to professor rank in and offered to women candidates in closed Dutch universities, van den Brink (2010, recruitment procedures, thereby infl ating 214) has systematically deconstructed the number of women in chaired appoint- the various ways in which gender is prac- ments; however, such women’s chairs are ticed in the most senior academic ap- often temporary and their legitimacy is pointments—“supposedly gender-neutral disputed. Women candidates are only se- organization processes, such as the im- lected when they are “excellent” beyond all plementation of transparency policies, the doubt, whereas the standards are broader search for talent and the construction of when exercised for men candidates. Based scientifi c excellence, have been exposed as on these and other fi ndings, the authors being based on hierarchical conceptions conclude that “it is often diffi cult to en- of masculinity and femininity.” Her fi nd- hance gender equality because of the ex- ings expose and refute prevalent myths istence of multi-faceted gender inequality explaining the low numbers of women practices alongside gender equality prac- professors, including the myths that (1) tices that lack ‘teeth’, especially in a tradi- there are too few professorial positions tional masculine academic environment available, (2) there is too little female po- with ponderous traditions and ‘thick’ val- tential for these positions, (3) professorial ues. . . . We conclude that gender inequality appointment practices are transparent practices continue to dominate and that and decision makers are held accountable, they detract from, distort, or even hijack at- (4) professorial recruitment is a level play- tempts to introduce gender equality prac- ing fi eld, (5) the concept of scientifi c excel- tices” (van den Brink, Benschop, & Jansen lence can be defi ned and is gender neutral, 2010, 1478–1479). Three policy approaches and (6) gender practices are similar in all are offered to address these shortcomings: academic subfi elds (van den Brink 2010). (a) to deploy the tools of transparency and In a related study, van den Brink, Ben- accountability to their full potential par- schop, and Jansen (2010) shed light on how ticularly by making the process and deci- norms of transparency and accountability sions more visible for the larger academic 38 | DIANA BILIMORIA AND XIANGFEN LIANG

society, (b) to enable university boards to positions. However, the popular myth that monitor compliance to the regulations and there are insuffi cient numbers of women put in place the incentives and sanctions in the pipeline is not supported by the that can ensure full implementation, and data (Trower & Chait 2002). As pointed (c) to utilize multiple perspectives on gen- out in Beyond Bias and Barriers, “For over der equality in training to make committee 30 years, women have made up over 30% members aware of double standards and of the doctorates in social sciences and routine gender inequalities in the appoint- behavioral sciences and over 20% in the ment process (van den Brink, Benschop, & life sciences. Yet, at the top research insti- Jansen 2010). tutions, only 15.4% of the full professors In addition, a recent study of NIH in the social and behavioral sciences and awards found that more experienced re- 14.8% in the life sciences are women” (Na- searchers (those who have already re- tional Academies 2007a, 2). ceived R01 grants) who submitted and In summary, while considerable prog- received renewal applications were more ress has been made over the years, women likely to be male (Pohlhaus, Jiang, Wagner, faculty are still less likely to achieve ten- Schaffer, & Pinn 2011). The study found an ure, advance to professor rank, and oc- inverse correlation between age and the cupy administrative and faculty leadership participation/success of women in NIH positions. award programs in three ways: there were fewer women applicants and awardees for Women’s Experience in the Tenure Track awards targeted at higher average ages, A variety of problems emerge from the more experienced women researchers lack of a critical mass of women and few were less likely to apply and receive R01 women at the top of the academic hierar- grants than fi rst-time women researchers, chy in STEM, particularly resource ineq- and investigators with multiple concur- uities, barriers, and problems related to rent R01 awards were older and more often differential treatment and evaluation at male than investigators with one award every level in the institution. The ground- (Polhaus et al. 2011). breaking study conducted by the School of Women are also more likely than their Science’s Committee on Women Faulty at male colleagues to be under-represented MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technol- in administrative and leadership positions ogy 1999) indicated the marginalization (e.g., department chairs, deans, and senior and exclusion of senior women faculty (in administrators). For example, only 10.31% particular) as academic colleagues, docu- of permanent deans of medical schools (13 menting their receipt of lower space, sal- out of 126 in 2009, up from 12 out of 126 in ary, and other resources, exclusion from 2006) were women (Association of Amer- informal and formal social gatherings, ican Medical Colleges 2009). Among sci- and exclusion from research and teaching ence and engineering doctorate holders in collaborations. Other studies have doc- academia, women were 27% of deans and umented a persistent gender gap in sal- 30% of presidents of colleges and univer- aries (West & Curtis 2006); female faculty sities (National Science Foundation 2009). members earn signifi cantly less than male A common myth about the pipeline faculty members even after controlling for is that achieving greater proportions of human capital, scholarly productivity, and women in senior academic positions is personal characteristics (National Science merely a matter of time—that as the pipe- Foundation 2003). Additionally, women line fi lls more women will occupy senior have less access to research assistance and STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION, EQUITY | 39 funding than men (Creamer 1998; Xie & assistance from teaching assistants, access Shauman 1998), and they enter academic to services from support staff, travel money, positions with more limited start-up pack- and protected research time (Case Western ages, less offi ce and lab space, and less Reserve University 2003). Other writings graduate-student and support-staff assis- address the multiple dimensions of gender- tance (Massachusetts Institute of Technol- based resource inequity in academia (Long ogy 1999; Park 1996). 1990, 1992; Evetts 1996; Preston 2004; Val- Rosser (2004) reported that low numbers ian 2004). For example, women faculty of women S&E faculty result in women feel- receive less offi ce and lab space, have less ing isolated, having limited access to role access to graduate-student assistance, and models and mentors, and having to work get fewer services from support staff (Park harder to gain credibility and respect from 1996). their male colleagues (see also Fox 2010). The experiences of women faculty in With constrained access to key academic STEM seem to derive from particular sets networks, women junior faculty are left of beliefs held by (predominantly male) on their own to learn how to navigate the faculty and administrators. For example, promotion and tenure process in a male- participants in the focus groups men- dominated environment. Many women tioned above brought out the notion that opt out of academic S&E, choosing private- leadership seems naturally male, and that sector positions because they become frus- masculinity appears to lead to power, man- trated with the academic setting (Valian ifested in conscious and unconscious ways 2004). Noting the clustering of most female at the university. Other beliefs regarding professors at the assistant professor level, academia voiced by participants included Nelson (2007) suggests that the number of that the academic enterprise requires female faculty who can safely take steps to complete dedication at the expense of change their departmental environments everything else, especially in early-career is much smaller than it might fi rst appear. years, and that academia is essentially an In two waves of early focus groups and individual profession, with individualized interviews about the career experiences results and rewards. of women faculty members at a research These mind-sets contribute directly university between 2001 and 2004, the re- and indirectly to the treatment and eval- searchers found several important themes uation of women faculty. Similar other including: (1) an overall chilly climate and belief structures, detrimental to women unwelcoming community for women de- in academia, have been identifi ed by re- scribed by participants as exclusionary, search from other institutions as well. For unfriendly, marginalizing, tough, isolat- instance, Silver et al. (2006) summarize ing, male-dominated, and silencing; (2) a several factors that retarded the achieve- climate where ‘everything is negotiable,’ ment of full professional equality at the manifested in perceptions of side deals University of Rhode Island, as mentioned and of unequal application of procedures; in a December 2000 independent audit (3) lack of transparency in university rules, team report stemming from a grievance policies, procedures and practices; (4) a settlement to a claim of sexual harassment pervasive lack of mentoring; (5) dispro- in the College of Engineering: “a belief that portionate service and teaching pressures some male professors and administrators faced by women faculty; and (6) unfair or did not view female colleagues as equals unequal access to/allocation of resources, but rather as second-class members of the including purchase of library materials, faculty. Adding to the women’s discomfort 40 | DIANA BILIMORIA AND XIANGFEN LIANG

was their perception that individuals who responsibilities.” These powerful cultural raised complaints about disparate treat- images suggest that academic scientifi c re- ment were viewed as ‘troublemakers,’ a search is exclusionary of women, contrib- perception that discouraged the seeking uting greatly to the negative experiences of of redress for mistreatment” (Silver et al. women. 2006, 3). These factors included: demean- The chilly climate for STEM students ing and insulting statements and remarks has been described previously (Hall & San- made by the dean and faculty members dler 1984; Mills & Ayre 2003). For exam- toward women faculty; “window-dressing” ple, from their study of computer-science efforts by the dean to support women in women and men undergraduate students engineering programs rather than pro- at Carnegie Mellon, Margolis and Fisher viding adequate funding for such efforts; (2002) found that the overwhelming image public treatment of women faculty in a less of a computer science major is the “geek,” respectful manner than male faculty; and which more than two-thirds of the women commenting to women faculty on the per- (and almost one-third of the men) inter- ceived appropriateness of their clothing viewed said did not fi t them. “The rub for (Silver et al. 2006). women in computer science is that the Prior research has described how the dominant computer science culture does masculine image of academic S&E work not venerate balance of multiple inter- translates to the treatment and evalua- ests. Instead the singular and obsessive tion of women in the workforce. Van den interest in computing that is common Brink and Stobbe (2009, 451) note that among men is assumed to be the road to “the most important factors (re)producing success in computing. This model shapes gender inequality at universities relate to the assumptions of who will succeed and the images of science, scientifi c practice who ‘belongs’ in the discipline” (Margolis and the ideal scientist.” Research careers & Fisher 2002, 71). As these authors put in S&E, in particular, are perceived to de- it, “A critical part of attracting more girls mand a single- minded, full-time focus on and women in computer science is pro- a specifi c topic, exclusive devotion to career, viding multiple ways to ‘be in’ computer and aggressive self-promotion (Dean & science” (Margolis & Fisher 2002, 72), not Fleckenstein 2007). A prevalent image is just one linear path. Similar concerns were that of a scientist or engineer as a man hard raised by women engineering students in at work in a laboratory during all hours of the UK—interview fi ndings revealed that the night and weekends. The ideal worker women students had good experiences concept (Acker 1990, 1992) suggests that (mostly regarding peer and instructor sup- “the abstract worker is actually a man, and port and relationships, and the opportu- it is the man’s body, its sexuality, minimal nity to have an internship experience in responsibility in procreation and conven- industry), bad experiences (mostly regard- tional control of emotions that pervades ing structural issues such as teaching and work and organizational processes” (Acker learning methods, and curriculum con- 1990, 152). Benschop and Brouns (2003) tent and relevance), and ugly experiences suggest that the image of the ideal aca- (mostly regarding people’s attitudes to- demic represents a faculty member fully ward women students and everyday neg- absorbed in his research program, and ative occurrences) (Powell, Bagilhole, & Bailyn (2003, 139) describes the perfect ac- Dainty 2007). ademic as someone who “gives total prior- From interviews with 80 female faculty ity to work and has no outside interests or members at the University of California, STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION, EQUITY | 41

Irvine, the authors concluded that “Where and access to resources, perceived that power operates behind the scenes, subtly they undertook greater service involve- shaping structures of daily life and political ment, and believed that their departments beliefs, the assessments of those subject viewed them as less productive than their to its oppressive impact are adaptive and departmental averages (Blackwell, Snyder, their responses challenge it indirectly. Our & Mavriplis 2009). speakers, for instance, show a keen un- Results from interviews with women derstanding of where the Academy stands and men faculty members at another re- relative to the necessary sacrifi ces all its search university indicated that female participants must make in terms of family faculty were more likely to report negative life” (Monroe, Ozyurt, Wrigley, & Alexander interactions with colleagues, negative ex- 2008, 231). For these women faculty “the periences with the process of evaluation, concept of professional success needs to promotion and tenure, diffi culty balancing be redefi ned so it allows for alternative work and family life, and overwhelming models, not simply the traditional, linear workloads (Hult, Callister, & Sullivan 2005). male model in which the professional is Several other climate studies conducted by full time and focused on a career, with few universities indicate that male faculty ex- family duties” (Monroe, Ozyurt, Wrigley, & perience more favorable interpersonal re- Alexander 2008, 231). lations than women faculty. Tenure-track Results of various interview and climate women faculty often provide lower rat- studies indicate the everyday experience ings than their men counterparts on items of women faculty in S&E fi elds. In a cross- measuring institutional support, such as institutional study of 765 faculty conducted child care, career planning, teaching im- in eight research institutions during 2002– provement, tenure-clock adjustments, and 2004, Fox (2010) reported that women are accruing resources. In addition, female less likely than men to report speaking faculty on the tenure track report lower sat- daily about research and more likely than isfaction with their academic jobs than do men to report speaking less than weekly. male faculty (Bilimoria et al. 2006; Callister Women also gave signifi cantly lower rat- 2006), and they are more likely to opt out ings of access to equipment and lower rec- of academic S&E (Valian 2004). In a sam- ognition from faculty colleagues in home ple of 248 nonmedical faculty members, units (e.g., departments), and were signifi - Bilimoria et al.(2006) found that women’s cantly less likely than men to characterize job satisfaction derived more from their their home units as (a) informal (compared perceptions of the relational support pro- to formal), (b) exciting (compared to bor- vided to them in their departments than ing), (c) helpful (compared to unhelpful), the academic resources they received, (d) creative (compared to noncreative), whereas men’s job satisfaction resulted and (e) inclusive (compared to noninclu- equally from their perceptions of resources sive). In another climate study conducted and relational supports received. Similarly, at a large public university, in compari- Callister (2006) noted that female faculty son with their male counterparts, STEM members are not inherently unsatisfi ed women faculty reported signifi cantly lower or unhappy with their jobs, but rather that equality of treatment, perceived the orga- they greatly value department climate. nizational climate as signifi cantly less sup- A valuable concept from sociology ad- portive, perceived lower support for family dressing the experience of women faculty friendliness, reported more overt discrim- in S&E is the accumulation of advantage, ination in areas such as salary, promotion, which is the magnifi cation of initial small 42 | DIANA BILIMORIA AND XIANGFEN LIANG

differences into later large differences leaky pipeline. The participation, status, (Merton 1942/1973). Initial small advan- and advancement of women in academic tages operate over time and may add up to S&E have been recognized as organizational larger advantages over the course of a ca- issues, which are subject to organizational reer (Long 1992). Valian (1999) likens the transformation (Rosser & Lane 2002; Fox & accumulation of advantage to interest ac- Colatrella 2006; National Academies 2007b; cruing on capital and the accumulation of Stewart, Malley, & LaVaque-Manty 2007; disadvantage to interest accruing on debt. Fox 2008). Simplistic, ad hoc, and piece- The impact of accumulative disadvantage meal solutions, or those that focus only on the career outcomes of S&E women is at individual-level, “fi x-the-women” type recognized. For example, the 2001 report, interventions, cannot eradicate systemic, From Scarcity to Visibility: Gender Differ- historical, and widespread gender under- ences in the Careers of Doctoral Scientists representation and inequities. Instead, a and Engineers, noted that “while controlling comprehensive transformation of the or- for background differences eliminates ganizational systems, structures, processes, much of the gender difference in salary, it policies, practices, and mental models that does not eliminate it altogether . . . Further, perpetuate inequity is needed (cf. Thomas with each progressive stage of the stratifi - & Ely 1996; McCracken 2000; Meyerson & cation process, it becomes more diffi cult Fletcher 2000; Rosser 2004). Such change to distinguish outcomes that are the result calls for the reorganization of the core ele- of individual differences between women ments of the institution, including mission and men from the result of men’s cumu- and vision, goals, accountability, authority, lative advantage over women in science” decision making, policies, and practices (cf. (Long 2001, 216–217). A demonstration of Levy & Merry 1986; Nutt & Backoff 1997; the effects of accumulative disadvantage Kezar 2001; Fox 2008). In short, as recom- showed that very small differences in how mended by Rosser (2004), what is needed individuals (or groups) are treated can refor a brighter future is a “change the institu- sult in very large disparities in career out- tion, not the women” approach. comes (Martell, Lane, & Emrich 1996). In Drawing on earlier writings about change this computer simulation of organizational in higher education (e.g., Astin & Associ- promotion practices, the effects of a small ates 2001; Eckel & Kezar 2003), Fox (2008) disadvantage for females in promotion has described institutional transformation through eight hierarchical levels were mod- in higher education as change that is sys- eled. The disadvantage accounted for only tematic, deep, intentional, and cultural. 1% of the variability in promotion. The re- Transformation in higher education is searchers ran the simulations with the low- systematic in that it involves alteration in est organizational level equally staffed by the full range of functioning parts of the males and females. After the eight minutely institution; transformation is deep to the advantaged moves, the highest level in the extent that it affects values and assump- hierarchy was staffed by 65% males. tions, as well as structures and processes in higher education; transformation is intentional because it involves deliberate Institutional Transformation to Repair and purposeful decision making about the Leaky Pipeline institutional actions and directions; trans- A burgeoning literature has begun to emerge formation in higher education is cultural around institutional approaches to address because it involves the dominant and pre- the issues described above and repair the vailing patterns of assumption, ideologies, STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION, EQUITY | 43 and beliefs that people have about their or- Borrowing from the smoking-cessation ganization and that shape their attitudes, literature, another framework to under- priorities, and actions regarding teaching, stand the phases of diversity-related insti- research, and service (Fox 2008; see also tutional transformation was proposed by Eckel & Kezar 2003). Carnes, Handelsman, and Sheridan (2005). An institutional change lens on gender They posit that institutions seeking trans- equity, diversity, and inclusion concerns, formation go through fi ve stages of change: rather than an individual change approach, (1) precontemplation (unawareness that a has been recommended by a number of problem exists), for example, where the in- reports and studies. For example, the 2007 stitution engages in no dialog no resources; report Women, Work, and the Academy rec- (2) contemplation (awareness that a prob- ommended that “Rather than making it a lem exists and thinking about making a priority to change women and minorities behavioral change in the future), for ex- so that they fi t academic institutions in ample, where the institution may sponsor their current confi guration, adopt strate- workshops, discussions, task forces, and gies for changing those institutions so that committees around diversity matters; (3) they are more inclusive on a number of di- preparation (feeling confi dent that making mensions. These strategies should include a change is possible and planning to make pathways to professional success that do a change in the immediate future), for ex- not pose intractable confl icts between ample, where the institution may offer rework and the rest of life” (Wylie, Jakobsen, & sources (e.g., for targeted hiring initiatives) Fosado 2007). Looking at the full system of or training (e.g., for search committees); S&E in the country, the National Academies’ (4) action (making a change), for example, (2007a) Beyond Bias and Barriers report where the institution undertakes specifi c provided institutional transformation rec- initiatives to accomplish the goals; and ommendations not only for universities but (5) maintenance (continuing to engage in also for professional societies and higher- the new, desirable behavior and avoiding education organizations, federal funding relapse ), for example, where the institu- agencies and foundations, federal govern- tion provides rewards and reinforcements ment agencies, and the U.S. Congress. for new behaviors, and undertakes data In an early forerunner, Rosser (1993) pro- monitoring and policy reviews. According posed that overcoming the pervasive male to these authors, transformation is most orientation of science requires recognition successful when appropriate interventions of gender bias and creation of gender- target the institution’s stage of change. equitable science content and teaching. While focusing on institutional trans- She proposed proceeding systematically formation to increase women students, through the following six phases of change: Margolis & Fisher (2002) recommend (1) the absence of women in science is not that departments undergo programmatic noticed, (2) recognition that most scien- changes to improve their cultures and cur- tists are men and thus science may refl ect ricula, improve the attitudes and beliefs a masculine perspective, (3) identifi cation of male faculty and students through ed- of barriers that prevent women from enter- ucation, and engage in systemic changes ing science, (4) search for women scientists in outreach, recruitment, and admissions and inclusion of their contributions, (5) activities that focus on increasing women recognition that science is done by women, students. Proposing a similar focus on cre- and (6) redefi ning and reconstructing sci- ating a more inclusive culture, Whitten ence to include all (Rosser 1993). et al. (2007) have suggested that in the 44 | DIANA BILIMORIA AND XIANGFEN LIANG

context of physics, undergraduate educa- special effort, and committing to making tion departments think of pathways rather and institutionalizing that effort. Focusing than pipelines to actively recruit and retain specifi cally on faculty development needs women students (see also Whitten et al. as a change strategy, and proposing a vision 2003). of a new type of system based on a holistic, Drawing on contrasting metaphors of long-term view of faculty careers, Laursen soccer and football to describe the every- & Rocque (2009) recommend transformati- day experiences of female and male fac- onal actions that focus on three tiers of faculty, Cress and Hart (2009) recommend a ulty development needs: individual career fundamental rethinking of the equation stage-specifi c needs (early career skills, mid- between research, teaching, and service career skills, and late career exploration), in academic reward systems by: (1) chal- organizational needs across career stages lenging search committees and promo- (community/collegiality and department tion and tenure committees to reward life), and systemic needs (reward system, scholarship that is emerging in new areas work-life balance, diversity, and other sys- including interdisciplinary scholarship temic concerns). and support diverse ways of working and While there have been many rec- time allocation, (2) systematically collect- ommendations regarding the kinds of ing data about service commitments as changes and approaches to change, to well as hidden workloads and responsibil- date, however, there has been little sys- ities, (3) better compensating faculty who tematic study of the outcomes of in- contribute disproportionately in service stitutional change in higher education and teaching areas, and (4) providing re- pertaining to the inclusion and advance- lease time and research support for faculty ment of women faculty in S&E. Few lon- with extraordinary teaching and service gitudinal analyses and sustained research responsibilities. projects are in place, and there are many Valian, Rabinowitz, Raps, & Pizer (2004) gaps in our knowledge that need explora- have made other suggestions for institution, particularly with regard to the results tions seeking to improve equity, diversity, of change efforts underway (Kezar 2001). and inclusion of women in academic sci- Most glaring is the lack of a comprehen- ence careers, including taking a “fi x the sive theory of change that underlies suc- institution, not fi x the woman” approach, cessful institutional transformation to teaching decision makers about how sche- engender equity, diversity, and inclusion. mas about gender and race disadvantage The lack of such theory to guide trans- people in the workplace, performing fre- formational efforts at universities and quent reviews of hidden and subtle forms of colleges has been particularly vexing for bias, training oneself and other evaluators institutions seeking change. As Laursen to correct errors in evaluation and decision (2009) has commented, articulating a procedures, communicating information theory of change and its underlying as- equally to men and women about the cri- sumptions has been a challenge for many teria for success at the institution, ensuring institutional-change projects. Particularly equal job responsibilities, participation in for issues such as women’s workforce par- public settings and service duties of women ticipation, equity and inclusion in STEM and men, implementing consistent pol- higher education, identifying a theory of icies for recruitment, training, appraisal, change is inherently diffi cult: the desired mentoring, and development to both men change is large and diffi cult, the context is and women, understanding that equity complex, and the root causes are multiple will not be achieved or sustained without and interconnected (Laursen 2009). STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION, EQUITY | 45

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Walking a Tightrope: The Feminist Life of a Drosophila Biologist Marta Wayne

Despite widely reported success in increases about topics that scientists usually do of the number of women enrolling in grad- not address. Their work has added scien- uate school, the androcentric focus of sci- tifi c specifi city to feminist critiques of the ence remains present in biology at every methods and theories of a masculinist level: from what questions are asked, to science. Yet the work that would extend what answers may be considered, to who feminist theoretical insights into revising may ask/answer the questions. This is an and/or rebuilding contemporary scien- increasing problem for me both personally, tifi c theory, which is what some would call as a woman who is a scientist and a fem- “feminist science,” is just beginning. 2 As a inist; and politically, because of the ever- scientist who is also a feminist, such an ef- increasing presence of science (particularly fort promises an intellectual home, but the my fi eld, evolutionary genetics) in people’s task is daunting nonetheless. lives. The continuity between the ways that It is often the case that matters related assumptions of the male as norm occlude to the “climate” for women in science are my fi eld from the interpretation of data set apart from a focus on the substantive to the training of women scientists is dis- infl uences of gender constructs on knowl- cussed. The growing scholarship in feminist edge. I propose that these are more en- science studies offers the hope of a better sci- tangled than such a division suggests. It is ence and a better climate for feminist scien- not only that the methods and theories of tists, but communication between women’s a masculinist science are at play in shap- studies and life sciences professionals is as ing content; it is also that those theories yet at an early stage. and methods contribute to the working The last decade of feminist scholarship environment of women in science. In my on the sciences has produced an impres- fi eld, evolutionary genetics in Drosophila sive array of new research on the reciprocal (fruit fl ies), male-centered gender norms relationship between scientifi c knowledge are naturalized through interpretations of and gender inequalities.1 Though much of Drosophila behaviors and then reasserted this work has been undertaken by research- as paradigmatic dichotomized sex differ- ers in the humanities and social sciences, ences that legitimate the major and minor some of this work has been informed by insults of a chilly climate. feminists in the sciences who are writing I do research on structures in the ovary for publications outside of the sciences in Drosophila. Though my research is 52 | MARTA WAYNE

grounded in a challenge to the assumption not. Those conventions limited the experi- that the developmental processes of male ments. They limited what could and could Drosophila represent the developmental not be embraced as valid data and they processes of all Drosophila, I reject the be- limited the interpretive options available lief that these sex differences are relevant to scientists. The conventions so limited to understanding human social behavior, the fi eld that they drove interpretations of though I see my research as potentially contrary evidence. contributing to understandings of wom- For example, way back in 1948, Bateman en’s bodies. I take this position in a context wrote a paper about how often female fl ies in which it is taken for granted that it is will mate in the laboratory. The paper is scientifi cally useful to extrapolate human used in textbooks (Krebs and Davis 1993; behavior from Drosophila model and that Drickamer et al. 1996; Futuyma 1998) as the male is the norm.3 the classic study demonstrating a central In my fi eld, models for evolutionary ad- tenet of animal behavior, that females will aptation are developed from Drosophila ex- be the choosy or “coy” sex, while males periments. I recently conducted a study of will mate with anything that crosses their viability in Drosophila (Wayne et al. 2000). path. The idea is that since eggs are larger Viability in this context means whether or and fewer than sperm, females make a not the insect can survive from an egg to greater investment in their offspring than an adult, metamorphosed fl y. Viability is a males do, so they have to make sure that classic trait of central importance to evolu- their fewer offspring get the best possible tion, and it has been studied for decades. father. Bateman’s data are said to show However, no one had ever asked whether that a female fl y will mate only as often or not females and males have the same as necessary—once or twice—to ensure genes for viability. When I designed my ex- fertilized eggs for the rest of her life. How- periment, I collected the data separately ever, a careful review of the paper reveals for the two sexes, and interestingly enough, that Bateman’s data do not support this at the genetic architecture of viability is differ- all; female fl ies mate far more often than ent between females and males. However is necessary to ensure a lifetime supply of apparent or obvious this may be to you, sperm. Furthermore, Bateman’s interpre- reader, it is news to most people in my fi eld. tation of his data makes a much more lim- Scientists have known for many years ited claim. Yet his paper is widely miscited now that there are genes that cause death by scientists, and is described as demon- in one sex and not the other: genes with strating “Bateman’s Principle” (e.g., Arnold names like daughterless, sex lethal, sister- 1994) or “Bateman’s Rule” (e.g., O’Connell less, etc. (and the negative association is and Johnston 1998). surely not coincidental). In fact, the discov- In her landmark essay on the myth of the ery and analysis of these mutants is how coy female, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy discusses one of the crown jewels of developmental Bateman in the broader context of sexual genetics, the Drosophila sex determination selection and primatology (Hrdy 1987). pathway, was elucidated. But the connec- She emphasizes that it was the increased tion between the existence of these mu- presence of women as researchers that tations and the possible differences in the prompted a substantive revision of the coy genetic architecture of viability between female paradigm, because these women the sexes had not been made because the asked different questions. Hrdy argues that conventions of the fi eld presumed that “women scientists were less likely than males were “relevant” and females were male scientists to identify with authority WALKING A TIGHTROPE: THE FEMINIST LIFE OF A DROSOPHILA BIOLOGIST | 53 and with the scientifi c status quo . . . they from a biological energetics point of view. may have been more willing to entertain However, females can not have as many unorthodox ideas about sex roles” (Hrdy offspring as males, since eggs are large 1999, xix). But since Hrdy did not admit to and biologically “expensive” to produce. or endorse a specifi cally feminist agenda, According to this theory, because they are her critique of Bateman addressed only limited in this way, females must be more the scientifi c inadequacy and inaccuracy choosy (coy) than males, making sure that of the “coy female” paradigm, but not the their fewer gametes get the best possible enduring commitment to it. She raised sperm. The theory expands to include dif- questions about the paradigm, but did not ferential parental care between the sexes, posit alternatives. gestation time, and “costs” of mating. Con- Since Hrdy fi rst critiqued Bateman’s fl ict theory itself is infl uenced by Bate- rule in 1987, there has been a plethora of man, because persistent distortions of his work that shows that female fl ies are any- interpretation sustain the belief that while thing but coy. In the wild, they’ll mate males will re-mate as often as possible, fe- more than ten times (Imhof et al. 1998). In males will not (1948). fact, female fl ies will mate so readily that An emerging theory about “female re- male fl ies have evolved special qualities to sistance” is perhaps a fi rst step away from ensure that their sperm are the ones that male-centered interpretations. Female fertilize the eggs, not the male before or resistance has to do with how the female the male after. Despite these additional deals with sperm from more than one observations, many researchers fail to note male inside her reproductive tract. In this the (continued) contradiction between model, some females use the sperm of Drosophila data and Bateman’s Principle males that mate fi rst, and some use the or fail to grasp the full import of it, in that sperm of males that mate second, and so they continue to interpret mating in terms on; in other words, paternity is strongly in- of male- centered concepts. fl uenced by some capacity of the female. For example, one metaphor refers to Indeed there is a large body of recent liter- “sperm competition” to capture a biolog- ature on the subject with titles like: Female ical outcome of females’ mating practices. Control: Cryptic Sexual Selection (Eberhard A football analogy is widely used to de- 1996). Yet even here there are persisting scribe two phases: offense, to get rid of the and pernicious assumptions about the sperm of the preceding male, and defense, centrality of males to reproduction. Again to resist the offense of the following male. females are defi ned in relation to males; Some people prefer to call it “sperm pre- they are responding to a male strategy rather cedence” instead (Baker and Bellis 1988; than acting independently— “females Bellis et al. 1990), but either way the fe- are normally evolving in response to male male’s central contribution disappears. variation” (Clark et al. 1999, 218). Female Confl ict theory is another popular met- response is graphed as an interaction, aphor in evolutionary biology. According rather than as a main effect, with the to this theory, the interests of females and focus remaining on “the relative success of males often, necessarily, confl ict because sperm”(219). of the differential investment in gametes Rather than developing models of fe- (eggs and sperm) and in offspring. The male response to sperm precedence, re- crux of confl ict theory is that males should searchers could focus directly on female have as many offspring as possible, since behavioral physiology. However, the fi eld sperm are small and “cheap” to produce of scientifi cally credible ideas does not 54 | MARTA WAYNE

include this as an option; it may take a fem- of promiscuity on the part of females, but inist political stance to stretch to the “un- females will not care if males are promis- imaginable.” If science were the product cuous as long as they continue to provide of a woman-centered society rather than resources) (e.g., Buss 1991), and a lot of a patriarchal one, we might be modeling other ugly cultural norms thanks to the strategies of the female to use the sperm “new” science of evolutionary psychology. she wanted while participating in as many These publications have found an out- matings as she pleased, and males would let in a variety of arenas, from apparently respond to her manipulation of them. feminist compilations (Wilson et al. 1997) Unfortunately, the interpretive frame- to law reviews (Kennan 1998) to popular work for sperm precedence is extrapolated science books (Pinker 1998). In these con- to people. According to the National Insti- texts, confl ict theory becomes an apology tute of Health and the National Science for inequality, a statement that biologi- Foundation, my sources of funding, fl ies cally speaking, the interests of females and are a model organism for humans.4 Thus, males are inherently in confl ict even at the conceptual limitations in interpreting data level of the cell; to phrase things in terms of from fruit fl ies translate directly into myo- confl ict is to imply winners and losers or, at pic research and interpretation of data in best, détente. humans. It would be simplistic to argue that con- The concept of model organisms is that fl ict theory in evolutionary biology under- since genes in fl ies and humans ultimately writes the educational context for scientists, come from a common ancestor, by study- but there is a resonance. Competition for ing genes in a simpler, more malleable sys- resources is characteristic of contemporary tem such as a the fl y, we can learn about scientifi c research. Undergraduate, grad- the function of related genes in a more uate, and postdoctoral training all involve complex system: homo sapiens. Develop- learning how to negotiate interpersonal ing model systems in insects and animals and intellectual confl icts. Such confl icts are is a hallmark of contemporary biology, and understood as necessary and unavoidable this approach has proven medically useful components of the process of identifying for some narrowly biological topics. It be- and cultivating the “winners.” As a woman, comes rather more problematic when sci- I notice, I have noticed, I will continue to entists extrapolate behavior and its genetic notice, the symbolic resonance between underpinnings from the simple brain and male-centered biological theory, where genome of a fl y to the complex brain and “females” are under-stood as secondary or genome of people. Yet Drosophila research irrelevant, and male-centered education, has given rise to empirical studies on male where male and female students are taught sperm competition in humans (Baker and the biological theory. Bellis 1989; Baker and Bellis 1993a, 1993b). As a graduate student, I survived my Bateman’s rule has been used to expl- training by learning to interpret my day- ain rape (because men, like male fl ies, are today experiences with colleagues in the “selected” to mate with as many females lab in feminist political terms, but I in- as possible, and to interpret no as yes; terpreted my research in a “less political” and women, like female flies, are “pro- way. As my exposure to feminist critiques grammed” to say no when they mean yes) of science has grown, I have come to un- (e.g., Thornhill and Thornhill 1992), sexual derstand this interpretation as an accom- harassment (same general ideas), gendered modation to the belief that science is theories of jealousy (males will be jealous value- neutral. I have learned that feminist WALKING A TIGHTROPE: THE FEMINIST LIFE OF A DROSOPHILA BIOLOGIST | 55 perspectives are crucial to transforming the various paths one might take as a sci- scientifi c knowledge, that my feminist per- entist, and the pros and cons of each. The spective has refreshed and invigorated my work itself went splendidly, yielding great science.5 I have also concluded that the an- results. In group- wide lab meetings, and drocentric bias that presumes the male as when scientists visited from other institu- norm, the only sex worthy of study, is the tions, Dr. S. tirelessly promoted me and my same one that creates a climate hostile to work, rather than appropriating praise and women scientists. credit as my supervisor. In retrospect, this shift occurred in four Unfortunately, we got along so well, and distinct phases, beginning with accep- enjoyed working together so much, that tance of the status quo, then a questioning everyone else in the research group as- of the gender politics in my social environ- sumed we were sleeping together. Because ment, and then an increasing awareness I was quite naïve, and because the other of how deeply beliefs about gender dif- members of the group rarely set foot in our ferences infect scientifi c knowledge. I am lab, I did not learn about this gossip until now presented with phase four, where un- the end of the summer. I was very angry, settling questions are emerging about how and very hurt. Our shared excitement was my research could be used by others to fuel about science, not sex; a platonic relation- human sex- difference research. ship had been sullied by this accusation. The reason that this was so upsetting was because my colleagues apparently thought PHASE 1: I LOVE SCIENCE. WHAT that a scientist like Dr. S. couldn’t possibly PROBLEM? fi nd a mere female undergraduate intel- When I fi rst began as an undergraduate lectually exciting, and that therefore our science major, I had no idea of the politics relationship must have been based on of the lab environment, never mind gen- something else, namely sex. The fact that der politics. In my fi rst research position, I Dr. S., equally angry, commented that this was supervised by a wonderful man, Dr. S., would probably happen throughout my who shared my most important passions career, did not exactly alleviate my hurt in life: science, science, and surfi ng. I was and anger. Surely it would be different in the only other person in his laboratory. He another laboratory. taught me all kinds of complicated and de- During the next school year and the fol- manding biochemical techniques. Dr. S. lowing summer, I worked in another lab, was full of positive reinforcement. He an- with the person who became my under- swered all of my questions seriously, and graduate advisor, Dr. D. He was everything made me feel smart for asking them. To- I thought a scientist should be: brilliant, gether we solved technical problems as famous, kind, witty, and grandfatherly. they arose, and improved the experimental Surely no one would think I was sleeping protocol based on the results of the early with HIM. On my fi rst day of work, Dr. D. experiments. introduced me to three men (Dr. X., Dr. Y., We worked hard, but we also had fun to- and Mr. Z.) with whom I would be sharing gether. Every day at lunch we surveyed the a very small lab. He explained to them that surf and wind conditions, and if the waves “since I was a young lady, he hoped that were especially good we would take off they would behave themselves and watch and surf during the afternoon, returning to their language.” This had little effect. Dr. X. fi nish the day’s work in the evening. Dr. S. spoke to me only in a snarl and took every took advantage of these times to talk about opportunity to make me feel stupid and 56 | MARTA WAYNE

inadequate. At the time, I consoled myself snubbed, ignored, and/or treated patron- with the hope that he did this because he izingly by lab members for my combined feared that I was smarter than he was. Dr. Y. enthusiasm and lack of expertise. By the swore at me repeatedly, and made remarks end of my second year, I avoided the lab about my legs, as well as making more ob- as much as possible. Thus, I was simulta- scene comments. neously nerdy and not dedicated enough. I My only sometime ally was Mr. Z., who did not fl irt, not being interested in sleep- was addressed by the other two as “camel ing with anyone in the lab, nor wishing to driver” and “rug trader” because he was be accused of sleeping with anyone in the Middle Eastern. The three of them rou- lab. Thus, I was snobbish and cold. The tinely discussed their plans to get together only person in the lab who would talk to in the evenings and on the weekends to me, claimed he was doing me a favor by drink beer or go to baseball games but telling me what people were saying. There never asked me to join them. I thought was little I could do to remedy these per- that my excluded status was all part of ceptions of me. The plainer I dressed, the game of learning to be a scientist and the more frigid I was perceived to be; the that I should be tougher. I concluded that less time I spent talking about science, I should focus more on my fruit fl y exper- the more obvious it was to my detractors iments. The point was to uncover the se- that I was ignorant. If I tried to fl irt I was crets of nature, right? indeed a slut and if I worked hard, it was obvious that I was trying to make up for my defi ciencies. PHASE 2: I MAY LOVE SCIENCE, Since I continued to get along well with BUT THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG Dr. A., despite my unhappy relations with WITH ME members of his lab, the gossip circulated I was admitted to a prestigious Ivy League we were sleeping together. I began to take graduate school. I thought that by being pains to not be seen interacting with him admitted to Ivy U., I had proven myself. outside the lab, and our relationship was Everyone would treat me like a scientist. I damaged as a result. When I explained my began to work with Dr. A., who was young, behavior to him, he told me he thought that enthusiastic, and liked to talk science with my concerns were “asinine” but sadly also me. He showered me with positive feed- withdrew. Thus I was beset at every turn, yet back for even the simplest laboratory task I worried that I was being hypersensitive. and made me feel respected and even ad- In my misery, I became involved in the mired. But Dr. A. only worked in his lab graduate women’s alliance, an openly fem- late at night. During the day, I was the only inist organization. In that context, I began woman in the lab besides the technician, to realize that being the only woman in the who always worked with headphones on, lab had something to do with my troubles. in a laboratory of thirteen men (two visit- Without these women I never would have ing scientists, four postdocs, two graduate fi nished graduate school, because they students, and four undergraduates as well helped me put my experiences into a co- as Dr. A. himself). The laboratory environ- herent framework other than the only one ment was quite different during the hours that had occurred to me, which was that I I regularly worked, and my colleagues did was not cut out to be a scientist after all. not welcome me. Four years later, however, I was no Initially, I was eager to talk about science happier in the lab group. The technician as much as possible, but I was continually had quit after her accusations of sexual WALKING A TIGHTROPE: THE FEMINIST LIFE OF A DROSOPHILA BIOLOGIST | 57 harassment from someone in the lab went scientists. I looked her up, joined the group’s unresolved. Dr. A. had received a great job seminars, and began to get a serious edu- offer at a major midwestern university that cation in feminist theory and feminist sci- included funding for all of us, so most of ence studies. Since that time, I’ve worked us moved. Two women graduate students with a team who developed and taught a had joined us, later to drop out of the lab course in women in science and technol- and graduate school entirely. I remain the ogy presented at feminist conferences. We only woman ever to get a degree from that have provided one another with support, lab. The controversy around the sexual encouragement, and friendship. Intellectu- harassment accusation, the unhappiness ally, I am more aware of the biases that my of my women colleagues, and the move colleagues and myself bring to our science. to another university all took their toll on I can analyze the results of my colleagues me; but I stayed, and stayed, and stayed. I better for it, and when my gut contorts over looked in the mirror one day and did not some obfuscated gender- based assump- like what I saw: a calculating, hardened tion, I can articulate the problem clearly. person. I began to think of abandoning my I am now comfortable with the awareness plans for a science career. Was the research that at fi rst was so painful to me: science is, I loved worth my sense of self? after all, a social enterprise, not an exercise practiced by disembodied brains.6 But given that most of my colleagues are not comfort- PHASE 3: THE PERSONAL IS able with this idea, how do I behave as a sci- POLITICAL IS PROFESSIONAL entist while remaining true to my beliefs? At this point, I sought out a woman mentor and feminist colleagues. Both provided PHASE 4: CLAIMING A POLITICAL critical support for my scientifi c career. STANCE Even though I was again outnumbered by men among my colleagues, there were I am in phase four as I write this essay, since many women with whom I could be com- putting my ideas to paper for a feminist au- pletely open and my mentor, Dr. L., proved dience is itself a political act. However ex- to be organized, kind, socially adept, bril- hilarating it is to share my views with you, liant, famous, and witty. She even had a there may be costs since my colleagues are Real Life outside the lab. I also had some unlikely to endorse my account. In short, supportive male colleagues inside and taking a step toward feminist community outside the lab, and a few even tolerated requires taking a step away from my scien- my openly feminist stance. Still, the pat- tifi c one. Because my work on the structure tern of harassment had not completely of the ovary in Drosophila could be appro- evaporated. There was a very unpleasant priated for use in sex difference research, instance of inappropriate physical behav- I fi nd myself walking a tightrope between ior by a senior colleague that resulted in a illuminating basics in female biology and severe rift and subsequent period of iso- contributing to essentialist, male- centered, lation for me. There was yet another col- sociobiological agendas. The persistent league, whom misreading of Bateman’s work is a case in I trusted, who did his best to convince point. If the scientifi c community has fo- me that I was not dedicated enough. cused on describing the male and the not- The feminist community in the area male, research on females could be seen included someone in Women’s Studies as a corrective, a realignment of prevail- who was working with a group of feminist ing assumptions. Yet, an open discussion 58 | MARTA WAYNE

within science about the inadequacy of the 6. Most feminist theorists would take this for male- centered model of evolution seems granted, but scientists are less willing to grasp unlikely, at least in my fi eld. A discussion its importance. For a debate about this topic, see Sokal 1996. about female biology that does not include a focus on sex differences, given the con- REFERENCES text, is unimaginable. Some are arguing that the rigidly dichot- Arnold, Steven J. 1994. “Bateman Principles and the omized heterosexual model of the natu- Measurement of Sexual Selection in Plants and ral world is inadequate and inaccurate. I Animals.” American Naturalist 144:126–49 Suppl. S. Atherley, Alan G., Jack R. Girton, and John H. McDonald. agree, but at the same time, there are con- 1999. The Science of Genetics. Orlando, FL: Saunders tinuities among animals with ovaries that College Publishing. have a much overlooked contribution to Baker, Robin R., and Mark A. Bellis. 1988. “Kamikaze make to medical knowledge. Can we foster Sperm in Mammals?” Animal Behavior 36:936–9. the growth of knowledge about women’s — — — . 1989. “Number of Sperm in Human Ejaculates Varies in Accordance With Sperm Competition biologies without reinforcing sex differ- Theory.” Animal Behavior 37:867–9. ence arguments, especially given the mas- — — — . 1993a. “Human Sperm Competition: Ejac- culinist culture of contemporary science? ulate Adjustment by Males and the Function of And if women are excluded/marginalized Masturbation.” Animal Behavior 46:861–85. from science as researchers, and females — — — . 1993b. “Human Sperm Competition: Ejacu- late Manipulation by Females and a Function for are excluded/marginalized from science the Female Orgasm.” Animal Behavior 46:887–909. as subject matter, is any change in that cul- Bateman, A. J. 1948. “Intra- sexual Selection in Dro- ture possible? Given that this is going on in sophila. ” Heredity 2:349–68. my fi eld, is it also going on in other fi elds, Bellis, Mark A., Robin R. Baker, and Matthew J. G. particularly those that use animal models? Gage. 1990. “Variation in Rat Ejaculates Consis- tent with the Kamikaze- Sperm Hypothesis.” Jour- I do not have any answers to the questions I nal of Mammalogy 713:479–80. have raised, but I hope that this article may Bleier, Ruth. 1984 . Science and Gender: A Critique of serve as a starting point to a conversation Biology and its Theories on Women. New York: Per- in feminist science studies about the long gamon Press. shadow of androcentrism on both the cli- Buss, David M. 1991. “Evolutionary Personality Psy- chology.” Annual Review of Psychology 42: 459–91. mate and the construction of knowledge. Clark, Andrew G., David J. Begun, and Timothy Prout. 1999. “Female X Male Interactions in Drosophila Sperm Competition.” Science 283:217–20. NOTES Davis, Cinda-Sue, and Sue V. Rosser. 1996. “Program and Curricular Interventions.” In The Equity Equa- 1. For an overview of this work, see Wyer et al. 2000. tion: Fostering the Advancement of Women in the 2. For a discussion of the varying visions of feminist Sciences, Mathematics, and Engineering, eds. Cinda- science, see Harding 1991. Sue Davis, Angela B. Ginorio, Carol S. Hollenshead, 3. Extrapolation from fl ies to people is presented Paula M. Rayman, and Barbara B. Lazarus, 232–64. explicitly in most genetics textbooks: Atherley, San Fracisco, CA: Jossey- Bass Publishers. Girton et al. 1999, 9; Griffi ths, Gelbart et al. 1999, Drickamer, Lee C., Stephen H. Vessey, and Doug Meikle. 10; Klug and Cummings 2000, with respect to be- 1996. Animal Behavior: Mechanisms, Ecology, Evo- havior genetics, 672. However, rather than men- lution. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown Publishers. tioning sex, it is generally assumed that data are Eberhard, William G. 1996. Female Control: Sexual universal for males and females. Selection by Cryptic Female Choice. Princeton, NJ: 4. For model organisms in general, see http://www. Princeton University Press. nih.gov/science/models/ index.html; for Drosoph- Fedigan, Linda. M. 1997. “Is Primatology a Feminist ila in particular, see http://www.nih.gov/science/ Science?” In Women in Human Evolution, ed. Lori models/nmm/appb3.html. D. Hager, 56–76. New York: Routledge. Futuyma, 5. For different perspectives on the value of femi- Douglas J. 1998. Evolutionary Biology. Sunder- nism for science, see Fedigan 1997; and Hrdy 1999. land, MA: Sinauer Associates Inc. WALKING A TIGHTROPE: THE FEMINIST LIFE OF A DROSOPHILA BIOLOGIST | 59

Grifﬁ ths, Anthony J. F., William M. Gelbart, Jeffrey H. Longino, Helen. 1990. Science as Social Knowledge. Miller, and Richard C. Lewontin. 1999. Modern Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Genetic Analysis. New York: W. H. Freeman and Co. O’Connell, Lisa M., and Mark O. Johnston. 1998. “Male Hager, Lori D., ed. 1997. Women in Human Evolu- and Female Pollination Success in a Deceptive Or- tion. New York: Routledge. Harding, Sandra. 1991. chid, a Selection Study.” Ecology 79:1246–60. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Ithaca, NY: Pinker, Steven. 1998. How the Mind Works. London: Cornell University Press. Allen Lane, Penguin Press. Hrdy, Sarah B. 1987. “Empathy, Polyandry, and the Prout, Timothy, and Jørgen Bundgaard. 1977. “Popu- Myth of the Coy Female.” Feminist Approaches to lation Genetics of Sperm Displacment.” Genetics Science, ed. Ruth Bleier, 119–46. New York: Teach- 85:95–124. ers College Press. Sokal, Alan. 1996. “A Physicist Experiments with Cul- — — — . 1999. “Preface, 1999: On Raising Darwin’s tural Studies + the Conventions of Academic Dis- Consciousness.” In her The Woman That Never course.” Lingua Franca 6:62–4. Evolved, xiii–xxxii. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni- Spanier, Bonnie. 1995. Im/Partial Science: Gender Ide- versity Press. ology and Molecular Biology. Bloomington: Indi- Imhof, Marianne, Bettina Harr, Gottfried Brem, and ana University Press. Christian Schlötterer. 1998. “Multiple Mating in Thornhill, Randy, and Nancy W. Thornhill. 1992. “The Wild Drosophila Melanogaster Revisited by Micro- Evolutionary Psychology of Men’s Coercive Sexu- satellite Analysis.” Molecular Ecology 7: 915–7. ality.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 152:363–75. Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1985. Selections on Gender and Sci- Wayne, Marta L., J. Brant Hackett, Sergey V. Nuzhdin, ence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Elena G. Pasyukova, and Trudy F. C. Mackay. 2000. Keller, Evelyn Fox, and Helen E. Longino, eds. 1996. “Quantitative Trait Locus Mapping of Fitness- Feminism and Science. Oxford, UK: Oxford Uni- related Traits in Drosophila Melanogaster. ” Genet- versity Press. ical Research (in review). Kennan, Brian. 1998. “Evolutionary Biology and Strict Wilson, Margo, Martin Daly, and Joanna E. Scheib. Liability for Rape.” Law and Psychology Review 1997. “Femicide: An Evolutionary Psychological 22:131–77. Perspective.” In Feminism & Evolutionary Biol- Krebs, John R., and Nicholas B. Davis. 1993. An Intro- ogy, Patricia Gowaty, 431–58. New York: Chapman duction to Behavioral Ecology. Oxford, UK: Black- and Hall. well Scientiﬁ c Publications. Wyer, Mary B., Mary Barbercheck, Donna Cookmeyer, Klug, William S., and Michael R. Cummings. 2000. Hatice Orun Ozturk, and Marta L. Wayne, eds. Concepts of Genetics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: 2000. Women, Science, and Technology. New York: Prentice Hall. Routledge. CHAPTER 5

When Computers Were Women Jennifer S. Light

J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly, the opposite— that women were breaking household names in the history of com- into traditionally male occupations within puting, developed America’s fi rst electronic science, technology, and engineering. A computer, ENIAC [Electronic Numerical closer look at this literature explicates the Integrator and Computer. Ed. ], to automate paradox by revealing widespread ambiva- ballistics computations during World War lence about women’s work. While celebrat- II. These two talented engineers dominate ing women’s presence, wartime writing the story as it is usually told, but they hardly minimized the complexities of their actual worked alone. Nearly two hundred young work. While describing the diffi culty of women, both civilian and military, worked their tasks, it classifi ed their occupations on the project as human “computers,” per- as sub-professional. While showcasing forming ballistics computations during the them in formerly male occupations, it cele- war. Six of them were selected to program brated their work for its femininity. Despite a machine that, ironically, would take their the complexities—and often pathbreaking name and replace them, a machine whose aspects— of the work women performed, technical expertise would become vastly they rarely received credit for innovation more celebrated than their own.1 or invention. The omission of women from the his- The story of ENIAC’s female comput- tory of computer science perpetuates mis- ers supports Ruth Milkman’s thesis of an conceptions of women as uninterested or “idiom of sex-typing” during World War II— incapable in the fi eld. This article retells that the rationale explaining why women the history of ENIAC’s “invention” with performed certain jobs contradicted the special focus on the female technicians actual sexual division of labor. 2 Following whom existing computer histories have her lead, I will compare the actual contri- rendered invisible. In particular, it exam- butions of these women with their media ines how the job of programmer, perceived image. Prewar labor patterns in scientifi c in recent years as masculine work, origi- and clerical occupations significantly nated as feminized clerical labor. The story infl uenced the way women with math- presents an apparent paradox. It suggests ematical training were assigned to jobs, that women were somehow hidden during what kinds of work they did, and how this stage of computer history while the contemporary media regarded (or failed wartime popular press trumpeted just to regard) this work. This article suggests WHEN COMPUTERS WERE WOMEN | 61 why previous accounts of computer his- and the Department of Labor, with such tory did not portray women as signifi - titles as Women in War, American Women cant and argues for a reappraisal of their in Uniform, Back of the Fighting Front, contributions.3 and Wartime Opportunities for Women, echoed this sentiment. Before World War II, women with college degrees in math- WOMEN IN WARTIME ematics generally taught primary or sec- Wartime literature characterized World ondary school. Occasionally they worked War II as a momentous event in the history in clerical services as statistical clerks or of women’s employment. In 1943 Wartime human computers. The war changed job Opportunities for Women proclaimed, “It’s demands, and one women’s college re- a Woman’s World!” 4 Such accounts hailed ported that every mathematics major had unprecedented employment opportuni- her choice of twenty-fi ve jobs in industry ties as men were recruited for combat po- or government.8 sitions. New military and civilian women’s Yet, as Milkman suggests, more women organizations such as the Army’s Women’s in the labor market did not necessarily Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC, converted to mean more equality with men. Sexual di- full military status in 1943 and renamed the visions of labor persisted during wartime. Women’s Army Corps [WAC]), the Navy’s The geography of women’s work settings Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency changed, but the new technical positions Service (WAVES), and the American Wom- did not extend up the job ladder. A widely en’s Voluntary Services (AWVS) channeled held belief that female workers would be women into a variety of jobs. The press em- dismissed once male veterans returned phasized the role of machines in war and from the war helps to explain the Wom- urged women with mechanical knowledge en’s Bureau acknowledgment that “except to “make use of it to the best possible pur- for Ph.D.’s, women trained in mathematics pose.”5 Wartime Opportunities for Women tend to be employed at the assistant level.”9 urged: “In this most technical of all wars, The War Department and the Depart- science in action is a prime necessity. En- ment of Labor actively promoted women’s gineering is science in action. It takes what breadth of opportunity yet in some areas the creative mind behind pure science has explicitly defi ned which jobs were “open to offer and builds toward a new engine, to women.” Classifi ed advertisements ran product or process.” 6 According to the separate listings for “female help wanted” U.S. Department of Labor’s Women’s Bu- and “male help wanted.” reau: “The need for women engineers and scientists is growing both in industry and WOMEN’S AMBIGUOUS ENTRY INTO government. . . . Women are being offered COMPUTING scientifi c and engineering jobs where formerly men were preferred. Now is the time Women’s role in the development of ENIAC to consider your job in science and engi- offers an account of the feminization of neering. There are no limitations on your one occupation, “ballistics computer,” and opportunities. . . . In looking at the war job both the creation of and gendering of an- opportunities in science and engineering, other, “operator” (what we would now call you will fi nd that the slogan there as else- programmer). Ballistics computation and where is ‘WOMEN WANTED!’ ”7 programming lay at the intersection of A multiplicity of books and pamphlets scientifi c and clerical labor. Each required published by the U.S. War Department advanced mathematical training, yet each 62 | JENNIFER S. LIGHT

was categorized as clerical work. Such lectures, and membership in professional gendering of occupations had precedent. societies. Ultimately these women never Since the late nineteenth century femi- got a public opportunity to display their nized jobs had developed in a number of technical knowledge, crucial for personal sciences where women worked alongside recognition and career advancement. men. Margaret Rossiter identifi es several Wartime labor shortages stimulated conditions that facilitated the growth of women’s entry into new occupations, and “women’s work.”10 These include the rise computing was no exception.14 Ballistics of big science research projects, low bud- computing, a man’s job during World War I, gets, an available pool of educated women, was feminized by World War II. A memo- a lack of men, a woman who could act as randum from the Computing Group Or- an intermediary (such as a male scien- ganization and Practices at the National tist’s wife), and a somewhat enlightened Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), employer in a climate generally resistant dated 27 April 1942, explains how the to female employees entering tradition- NACA conceived the role of computers: ally male domains. Craving opportunities “It is felt that enough greater return is ob- to use their skills, some women colluded tained by freeing the engineers from cal- with this sexual division of labor. Many did culating detail to overcome any increased not aspire to professional employment at expenses in the computers’ salaries. The higher levels.11 engineers admit themselves that the girl Occupational feminization in the sci- computers do the work more rapidly and ences fostered long-term invisibility. For accurately than they would. This is due in example, beginning in the 1940s, laborato- large measure to the feeling among the en- ries hired women to examine the nuclear gineers that their college and industrial ex- and particle tracks on photographic emul- perience is being wasted and thwarted by sions. 12 Until the 1950s, published copies mere repetitive calculation.”15 of photographs that each woman scanned Patterns of occupational segregation de- bore her name. Yet eventually the status of veloped in selected industries and job cat- these women’s work eroded. Later publica- egories newly opened to women. 16 Women tions were subsumed under the name of hired as computers and clerks generally the lab leader, inevitably a man, and pub- assisted men. Captain Herman Goldstine, licity photographs rarely showcased woman ENIAC project leader, served as liaison en’s contributions. Physicist Cecil Powell’s from the U.S. Army’s Ballistic Research request for “three more microscopes and Laboratory (BRL) to the Moore School of three girls” suggests how invisibility and Electrical Engineering at the University of interchangeability went hand in hand.13 Pennsylvania, which produced ENIAC, and In a number of laboratories, scientists de- director of computer training for BRL. He scribed women not as individuals, but recalls that by World War II “there were a rather as a collective, defi ned by their lab few men [computers] but only a few. Any leader (“Cecil’s Beauty Chorus”) or by their able- bodied man was going to get taken machines (“scanner girls”). Likewise in the up into the armed forces.”17 With femi- ENIAC project, female operators are re- nization came a loss of technical status, ferred to as “[John] Holberton’s group” or as since other men doing more “important” “ENIAC girls.” Technicians generally did not technical and classifi ed work remained author papers or technical manuals. Nor in noncombatant positions. Thus, the did they acquire the coveted status symbols meaning of “wartime labor shortage” was of scientists and engineers: publications, circumscribed even as it came into being. WHEN COMPUTERS WERE WOMEN | 63

While college-educated engineers con- extension of the job of a human computer, sidered the task of computing too tedious this clerical task offered slightly higher sta- for themselves, it was not too tedious for tus and higher pay than other kinds of cler- the college- educated women who made ical labor.23 up the majority of computers.18 These were not simply cases of women taking on FEMALE COMPUTERS AND ENIAC men’s tasks, but rather of the emergence of GIRLS new job defi nitions in light of the female workforce.19 Celebrations of women’s war- Like much of scientifi c research and de- time contributions thus rarely challenged velopment during World War II, the ENIAC gender roles. Rather, popular accounts was the offspring of a wartime alliance be- portrayed civilian jobs for women as ap- tween a university (the University of Penn- propriately feminine, “domestic” work for sylvania, specifi cally the Moore School of the nation—despite the fact they were for- Electrical Engineering) and the U.S. armed merly done by men. 20 forces, in this case the Army Proving Ground The introduction of technology also fa- (APG) in Aberdeen, Maryland. The APG cilitated women’s entry into paid labor. housed the army’s Ballistic Research Labo- Machines stimulated the reorganization ratory (BRL), which produced range tables of work processes, often leading to the cre- for gunners. During the war, BRL recruited ation of new occupations and the culling of approximately two hundred women to older ones. In both clerical and factory work, work as computers, hand- calculating fi r- introducing technology changed some jobs ing tables for rockets and artillery shells. In so that women performed slightly different 1940, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt tasks rather than substituting directly for declared a national emergency, BRL com- men. Women’s entry into the workforce mandeered the Moore School’s differential was greatest in new occupations where analyzer and began to move some of its they did not displace men.21 Once a partic- work to the university.24 ular job was feminized this classifi cation One of the fi rst women the army hired to gathered momentum, often broadening to work at the Moore School was twenty- two- include other occupations.22 By World War year- old Kathleen McNulty. She had grad- II, computing was feminized across a vari- uated in 1942 from Chestnut Hill College, ety of fi elds, including engineering, archi- in Philadelphia, with one of the three math tecture, ballistics, and the aircraft industry. degrees awarded in her class. McNulty and The new machines, capable of replacing her friend Frances Bilas answered an ad- hundreds of human computers, required vertisement in a local paper that said Aber- human intervention to set up mathemat- deen was hiring mathematicians: ical problems. Without a gendered precedent, the job of computer operator, like the I never heard of numerical integration. We newly created jobs of “stenographer typ- had never done anything like that. Numer- ist” and “scanning girl,” became women’s ical integration is where you take, in this work. There is, of course, a fundamental particular case . . . [the] path of a bullet from the time it leaves the muzzle of the gun until difference between the human computer it reaches the ground. It is a very complex and the programmer who transfers this equation; it has about fi fteen multiplications skill to an automated process. In the 1940s, and a square root and I don’t know what else. the skill of transferring this information— You have to fi nd out where the bullet is every what we now call programming— fi t easily tenth of a second from the time it leaves the with notions about women’s work. As an muzzle of the gun, and you have to take into 64 | JENNIFER S. LIGHT

account all the things that are going to affect Herman Goldstine recalls that BRL hired the path of the bullet. The very fi rst things female computers almost exclusively. At that affect the path of the bullet [are] the fi rst, most women were recent college speed at which it shoots out of the gun [the graduates in the Baltimore and Philadel- muzzle velocity], the angle at which it is shot phia area. Adele Goldstine, his wife and a out of the gun, and the size. That’s all incor- senior computer, expanded recruiting to porated in a function which they give you—a [ballistic] coeffi cient. include colleges across the Northeast, but 29 As the bullet travels through the air, be- the project still needed more personnel. fore it reaches its highest point, it is con- In a short time, recalls Goldstine, “We used stantly being pressed down by gravity. It is up all of the civil service women we could also being acted upon by air pressure, even get our hands on.” 30 A memo to Univer- by the temperature. As the bullet reached a sity of Pennsylvania provost George Mc- certain muzzle velocity—usually a declining Clelland from Harold Pender, dean of the muzzle velocity, because a typical muzzle ve- Moore School, explained how BRL sought locity would be 2,800 feet per second [fps]— to remedy the situation: “Colonel Simon, when it got down to the point of 1,110 fps, the Chief of the Ballistic Research Laboratory, speed of sound, then it wobbled terribly. . . . has had a specially selected group of WACs So instead of computing now at a tenth of a second, you might have broken this down to assigned to the Laboratory. Although these one one hundredth of a second to very care- women have been individually picked they fully calculate this path as it went through are for the most part ready for training and there. Then what you had to do, when you are not trained persons who can enter fully fi nished the whole calculation, you interpo- into the Laboratory’s work. . . . By consult- lated the values to fi nd out what was the very ing appropriate persons on the campus it highest point and where it hit the ground.25 appears that this can be carried out without interfering with any of the University’s The work required a high level of math- regular work. . . . Under the above circum- ematical skill, which included solving stances it appears that the University’s reg- nonlinear differential equations in sev- ular work will not be disturbed and at the eral variables: “Every four lines we had to same time we will have the opportunity check our computations by something to do a rather important service.” 31 Pend- called Simpson’s rule to prove that we were er’s memo embodies a more widespread performing the functions correctly. All of ambivalence about women’s wartime con- it was done using numbers so that you tributions, particularly as members of the kept constantly fi nding differences and military. While “specially selected” for a correcting back.”26 Depending upon their “rather important” task these women were method, the computers could calculate a simultaneously “not trained persons” and trajectory in somewhere between twenty could not enter “fully” into the BRL’s work. minutes and several days, using the dif- Colonel Simon assigned two groups of ferential analyzer, slide rules, and desk- WACs to work as computers. One used desk top commercial calculators. 27 Despite the calculators and the differential analyzer for complexities of preparing fi ring tables, in practical work at the BRL, while the other this feminized job category McNulty’s ap- studied mathematics for ballistics compu- pointment was rated at a subprofessional tations at the University of Pennsylvania. grade. The BRL also categorized women These two groups alternated monthly for like Lila Todd, a computer supervisor when eight months. The fi rst WAC course started McNulty started work at the Moore School, on 9 August 1943. According to reports in as subprofessional.28 the Daily Pennsylvanian, the university’s WHEN COMPUTERS WERE WOMEN | 65 student newspaper, these women assimi- have been told that they’re unloved by lated smoothly into campus life: everybody including the ES&MWTesses. If it’s true, I’m sorry to hear it because I’m The WACs at present stationed on the Uni- afraid it will make our uphill fi ght steeper.” 34 versity campus are members of two groups Her letter suggests that the women’s pres- alternating in a special course at the Moore ence on campus had become the “inter- School of Electrical Engineering, and were ference” and “disturbance” intimated by detached from the unit at Aberdeen Prov- Simon’s memo. Indeed, ambivalence about ing Ground, Maryland. At Aberdeen most of The Conversion had triggered slander cam- them were assigned as computers. The two paigns against WACs from 1943. The cold sections, each of which numbers approximately thirty women, are commanded by reception of WAC volunteers was a product second lieutenants and corporals. They are not only of news media but also of local gos- taking courses that are equivalent to the work sip: “Resentment was expressed in towns of a college mathematics major. The results where WACs were quartered, to the effect of these studies will later be used in ballistic that they were spoiling the character of work at the Ballistic Research Laboratory of the town.” 35 The WACs in Philadelphia may the Army Ordnance Department. They are have experienced some of the more wide- stationed at the Moore School of Electrical spread hostility towards enlisted women. Engineering rather than at any other Uni- Separated by skill level into two groups, versity school because of the large amount the WACs at the Moore school had forty of work that the Moore School has done in hours of classroom instruction per week. collaboration with the Ballistic Research Lab- oratory. They are quartered in the fraternity According to the syllabus, the course was house [Phi Kappa Sigma], messed in Sergeant designed to treat “in succinct form the Hall, and receive physical training at Bennett mathematics which a person should have Hall. They are required to police their own to work on physical problems such as rooms and be in bed at eleven forty-fi ve P.M., those likely to be met in the Ballistic Re- with the exception of weekends. Reveille search Laboratory.”36 The mathematics must be answered at 7:10 A .M.32 ranged from elementary algebra to simple differential equations. In addition, a unit In this straightforward report, the student on the use of calculating machines covered reporter neglects to mention the concur- computation- and calculation- machine rent and widespread tensions surrounding techniques, handling numerical data, or- WACs. Only a month earlier, on 1 July 1943, ganizing work for machine calculation, President Roosevelt had signed legislation and using slide rules. converting the Women’s Auxiliary Army The instructors included three men (a Corps to full military status as the WAC. The Dr. Sohon, a Mr. Charp, and a Mr. Fliess) conversion was scheduled for implementa- and nine women (Adele Goldstine, Mary tion by 1 October. According to WAC histo- Mauchly, Mildred Kramer, Alice Burks, a rian Mattie Treadwell, “The following ninety Mrs. Harris, a Miss Mott, a Miss Greene, a days of the summer of 1943, initially called Mrs. Seeley, and a Mrs. Pritkin). Accounts The Conversion, were perhaps the busiest of ENIAC that discuss the WAC course, in the history of the Corps.”33 such as Goldstine’s book and the civilian While the article quoted several WACs women’s own refl ections, mention as in- commenting about their campus lives in structors only three married women: Adele a quite positive tone, Adele Goldstine, in Goldstine, Mary Mauchly, wife of John an undated letter to a correspondent, re- Mauchly of the Moore School, and Mildred ported, “Rumor hath it that the WACs (Sec. I) Kramer, wife of Samuel Noah Kramer, a 66 | JENNIFER S. LIGHT

professor of Assyriology at the University Of half- hour luncheon treks of Pennsylvania. Yet archival records show How we waited for our checks! that this is not the full story.37 Perhaps this Of assets, liabilities— oversight is consistent with a different Till all of us were wrecks— thank you too trend Rossiter discusses— that more prom- much. inent women in science were often married to notable men, also often scientists. We squared and we cubed and we plotted It is unclear whether Goldstine, Mauchly, And many lines drew and some dotted and Kramer became “visible” because their We’ve all developed a complex husbands’ visibility accorded them extra Over wine, sex, and f(x) attention, because these men somehow facilitated their wives’ careers, or because Of private tête- à- têtes the women themselves campaigned for And talk about our dates recognition. And how we wish that teacher would oblige “Thanks for the Memory,” a song pre- By coming late— thank you so much. sumably written by several WACs, offers a playful account of their time at the Moore School: And so on through the night.38 Even as the WAC courses went on, Moore School engineers were designing Of days way back when school a machine to automate the production Was just the daily rule of the same fi ring and bombing tables When we just studied theories calculated by the human computers: the For fun and not as tools— thank you so ENIAC. Engineers wanted answers faster much. than women could supply them using available technologies. Yet ENIAC couldn’t Of lectures running late do everything itself. Programming equa- Of Math that’s mixed with paint tions into the machine required human 39 Of dainty slips that ride up hips labor. The eventual transfer of comput- And hair-do- ups that ain’t—thank you so ing from human to machine led to shifting much. job defi nitions. A “computer” was a human being until approximately 1945. After that Many’s the time that we fretted date the term referred to a machine, and And many’s the time that we sweated the former human computers became Over problems of Simpson and Weddle “operators.” 40 But we didn’t care— for c’est la guerre! Herman Goldstine recounts selecting the operators. At BRL, one group of women That Saturday always came used desk calculators and another the dif- And teach ran for her train ferential analyzer. Selecting a subgroup If she didn’t lam— like Mary’s lamb from each, Goldstine “assigned six of the Her pets to Moore School came—thank you best computers to learn how to program so much. the ENIAC and report to [John] Holber- ton,” employed by the Army Ordnance De- Machines that dance and dive partment to supervise civilians. 41 With no Of numbers that can jive precedents from either sex, the creation Of series that do leaps and bounds and gendering of “computer operator” of- Until you lose the fi ve— thank you so much. fers insight into how sexual divisions of WHEN COMPUTERS WERE WOMEN | 67 labor gather momentum. Computing was pretty well be able to trace the other circuits a female job, and other female clerical for yourself and fi gure this thing out.”44 workers operated business machines. So it Understanding the hardware was a was not unusual that in July 1945, women process of learning by doing. By crawl- would migrate to a similar but new occupa- ing around inside the massive frame, the tion. The six women—Kathleen McNulty, women located burnt- out vacuum tubes, Frances Bilas, Betty Jean Jennings, Ruth shorted connections, and other noncler- Lichterman, Elizabeth Snyder, and Marlyn ical bugs. 45 Betty Jean Jennings’s descrip- Wescoff— reported to the Moore School to tion confi rms the ingenuity required to learn to program the ENIAC. program at the machine level and the The ENIAC project made a fundamen- kinds of tacit knowledge involved: tal distinction between hardware and soft- We spent much of our time at APG ware: designing hardware was a man’s job; learning how to wire the control board for programming was a woman’s job. Each of the various punch card machines: tabula- these gendered parts of the project had its tor, sorter, reader, reproducer, and punch. own clear status classifi cation. Software, a As part of our training, we took apart and secondary, clerical task, did not match the attempted to fully understand a fourth- importance of constructing the ENIAC and order difference board that the APG people getting it to work.42 The female programmers had developed for the tabulator. . . . Occa- carried out orders from male engineers and sionally, the six of us programmers all got army offi cers. It was these engineers and of- together to discuss how we thought the fi cers, the theoreticians and managers, who machine worked. If this sounds haphaz- received credit for invention. The U.S. Army’s ard, it was. The biggest advantage of learn- social caste system is historically based on ing the ENIAC from the diagrams was that European gentlemen’s social codes.43 As civil we began to understand what it could and servants, the six women computers chosen what it could not do. As a result we could to operate the ENIAC stood outside this diagnose troubles almost down to the in- system. dividual vacuum tube. Since we knew Yet if engineers originally conceived of both the application and the machine, we the task of programming as merely cler- learned to diagnose troubles as well as, if ical, it proved more complex. Under the not better than, the engineer. 46 direction of Herman and Adele Goldstine, Framing the ENIAC story as a case study the ENIAC operators studied the machine’s of the mechanization of female labor, it circuitry, logic, physical structure, and op- would be hard to argue that de- skilling eration. Kathleen McNulty described how accompanied mechanization.47 The idiom their work overlapped with the construc- of sex- typing, which justifi ed assigning tion of the ENIAC: “Somebody gave us a women to software, contradicted the actual whole stack of blueprints, and these were job, which required sophisticated familiar- the wiring diagrams for all the panels, and ity with hardware. The six ENIAC operators they said ‘Here, fi gure out how the machine understood not only the mathematics of works and then fi gure out how to program computing but the machine itself. That it.’ This was a little bit hard to do. So Dr. project leaders and historians did not value Burks at that time was one of the people their technical knowledge fi ts the scholarly assigned to explain to us how the various perception of a contradiction between the parts of the computer worked, how an ac- work actually performed by women and cumulator worked. Well once you knew the way others evaluate that work. In the how an accumulator worked, you could words of Nina Lerman, “Gender plays a 68 | JENNIFER S. LIGHT

role in defi ning which activities can readily scientists had their answer—that there be labeled ‘technological.’ ”48 were several design fl aws.51 Meanwhile, at the Los Alamos Scientifi c The “ENIAC girls” turned their attention Laboratory in New Mexico, scientists were back to shell trajectory calculations and preparing a new thermonuclear weapon, were still engaged on that project when the the Super. Stanley Frankel and Nicholas war ended. The ENIAC, designed and con- Metropolis, two Los Alamos physicists, were structed in military secrecy, was prepared working on a mathematical model that for public unveiling in early 1946. A press might help to determine the possibility of conference on 1 February and a formal a thermonuclear explosion. John Von Neu- dedication on 15 February each featured mann, a technical consultant, suggested demonstrations of the machine’s capa- that Los Alamos use ENIAC to calculate bilities. According to Herman Goldstine, the Super’s feasibility. Once Von Neumann “The actual preparation of the problems told Herman Goldstine about this possi- put on at the demonstration was done by ble use, Herman and Adele invited Frankel Adele Goldstine and me with some help and Metropolis to Philadelphia and offered on the simpler problems from John Hol- them training on the ENIAC. When the two berton and his girls.” 52 Indeed, Elizabeth physicists arrived in Philadelphia in the Snyder and Betty Jean Jennings developed summer of 1945, Adele Goldstine and the the demonstration trajectory program.53 women operators explained how to use the Although women played a key role in pre- machine. McNulty recalled that “We had paring the demonstrations, both for the barely begun to think that we had enough press and for visitors to the laboratory, this knowledge of the machine to program a information does not appear in offi cial ac- trajectory, when we were told that two peo- counts of what took place. ple were coming from Los Alamos to put a problem on the machine.”49 Despite such CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS self- effacing comments, the operators de- OF ENIAC mon strated impressive mastery of the ENIAC during the collaboration with the Social constructionist historians and so- Los Alamos physicists. By October, the two ciologists of science take the position that theoretical physicists had programmed scientists describing their experimental their elaborate problem on huge sheets work do not characterize events as they of paper. Then, the women programmed actually happened. 54 Publicity for techni- it into the machine, which no one had cal demonstrations is not so different. In formally tested. As McNulty explained, presenting ENIAC to the public, engineers “No one knew how many bad joints there staged a well-rehearsed event. They coop- were, and how many bad tubes there were, erated with the War Department, which and so on.” 50 The cooperative endeavor controlled representations of the project furthered the operators’ intimate under- through frequent press releases to radio standing of ENIAC as they pushed it to a and newspapers. new level of performance. Programming It is a curious paradox that while the for Frankel and Metropolis took one mil- War Department urged women into million IBM punch cards, and the machine’s itary and civil service and fed the media limited memory forced the women to print uplifting stories about women’s achieve- out intermediate results before repunch- ments during the war, its press releases ing new cards and submitting them to the about a critical project like the ENIAC do machine. Within a month, the Los Alamos not mention the women who helped to WHEN COMPUTERS WERE WOMEN | 69 make the machine run. War Department problem on the machine. Accompany- press releases characterize ENIAC as “de- ing photographs of Eckert and Mauchly, signed and constructed for the Ordnance the article reported that “the Eniac was Department at the Moore School of Elec- invented and perfected by two young sci- trical Engineering of the University of entists of the [Moore] school, Dr. John Wil- Pennsylvania by a pioneering group of liam Mauchly, 38, a physicist and amateur Moore School experts.” 55 They list three meteorologist, and his associate, J. Presper individuals as “primarily responsible for Eckert Jr., 26, chief engineer on the project. the extremely diffi cult technical phases Assistance was also given by many others of work . . . Eckert— engineering and de- at the school. . . . [The machine is] doing sign; Mauchly—fundamental ideas, phys- easily what had been done laboriously by ics; Goldstine—mathematics, technical many trained men. . . . Had it not been liaison.”56 The War Department’s selective available the job would have kept busy press releases highlighted certain individ- 100 trained men for a whole year.”60 While uals involved in the ENIAC project while this account alludes to the participation omitting others, specifi cally the women of many individuals other than Eckert and operators. Because of these omissions the Mauchly, the hypothetical hundred are operators were neither interviewed nor described as men. Why didn’t the article offered the opportunity to participate in report that the machine easily did calcu- telling the ENIAC story. Newspaper ac- lations that would have kept one hundred counts characterize ENIAC’s ability to per- trained women busy, since BRL and the form tasks as “intelligent” but the women Moore School hired women almost exclu- doing the same computing tasks did not sively as computers? Even in an era when receive similar acclaim.57 While the media language defaulted to “he” in general de- publicly hailed hardware designers as hav- scriptions, this omission is surprising, ing “fathered” the machine, they did not since the job of computer was widely re- mention women’s contributions. The dif- garded as women’s work. 61 Women seem ference in status between hardware and to have vanished from the ENIAC story, software illustrates another chapter in both in text and in photographs. One the story of women in the history of sci- photograph accompanying the New York ence and technology. The unmentioned Times story foregrounds a man in uniform computer technicians are reminiscent of plugging wires into a machine. While the Robert Boyle’s “host of ‘laborants,’ ‘opera- caption describes the “attendants prepar- tors,’ ‘assistants’ and ‘chemical servants’ ” ing the machine to solve a hydrodynam- whom Steven Shapin described as “invisi- ical problem,” the fi gures of two women ble actors.” Working three centuries earlier, in the background can be seen only by their fate was the same: they “made the close scrutiny. Thus, the press conference machines work, but they could not make and follow-up coverage rendered invisible knowledge.”58 both the skilled labor required to set up The New York Times of 15 February 1946 the demonstration and the gender of the described Arthur Burks’s public demon- skilled workers who did it. stration: “The ENIAC was then told to The role of the War Department and solve a diffi cult problem that would have media in shaping public discourse about required several weeks’ work by a trained the machine and its meaning is signifi - man. The ENIAC did it in exactly 15 sec- cant. Several potential opportunities for onds.” 59 The “15 seconds” claim ignores the women operators to get some public the time women spent setting up each attention and credit for their work never 70 | JENNIFER S. LIGHT

materialized. For example, the publicity are ENIAC operators employed by the Ballis- photograph of the ENIAC printed in the tic Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving New York Times was among the most widely Ground, Md., and Cpl. Goldstein is a main- disseminated images of the machine. When tenance engineer. . . . it was published as an army recruitment advertisement, the women were cropped SETTING UP A PROBLEM ON THE ENIAC: 62 Reading from left to right, Miss Betty Sny- out. This action is understandable, at one der (Narberth, Pa.), Miss Betty Jennings level, since the operators were all civilians. (Stanbury, Mo.), Miss Marlyn Wescoff Yet given the important participation of (Philadelphia, Pa.) and Miss Ruth Lichter- WACs in closely related wartime work, it man (Rockaway, NY). Miss Snyder is set- constituted another missed opportunity to ting program switches on an accumulator; give the women their due. Miss Jennings is setting up numbers to be Archival records show that photogra- remembered in the function table . . . Miss phers came in to record the ENIAC and Wescoff and Miss Lichterman are working its engineers and operators at least twice. at the printer. . . . The function table which Neither visit resulted in any publicity stores numerical data set up on its switches is seen at the right and its two control pan- for the women. On the fi rst occasion, an els are behind Miss Frances Bilas (Philadel- anonymous photographer’s pictures of the phia, Pa.) who is plugging a program cable ENIAC group turned out poorly. Herman in the master programmer. Miss Bilas is an Goldstine wrote apologetically to Captain ENIAC operator in the employ of the Ballis- J. J. Power, Offi ce of the Chief of Ordnance: tic Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving “Dear John, I am returning herewith the Ground, Maryland. 64 photographs with sheets of suggested captions. As you can see from looking at “Setting switches,” “plugging cables,” and these photographs, many of them are ex- “standing at function tables”— such cap- ceedingly poor, and, I think, unsuitable tions understate the complexities of wom- for publication.”63 Nonetheless, the cap- en’s work. While two men appear alongside tions for these unsuitable photographs are the operators, they are “maintenance engi- instructive: neers,” occupational titles suggesting technical expertise. VIEW OF ONE SIDE OF THE ENIAC: Miss The second photographer was Horace K. Frances Bilas (Philadelphia, Pa.) and Pfc. Woodward Jr., who wrote an article about Homer W. Spence (Grand Rapids, Mich.) are ENIAC for Science. He wrote to Adele Gold- setting program switches. Miss Bilas is an stine: “Dear Mrs. Goldstine and other mE- ENIAC operator in the employ of the Ballis- NIACS, You will be perturbed to hear that tic Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving the color fl esh shots (oops, fl Ash shots) Ground, Md., and Pfc. Spence is a mainte- that I was taking 1 Feb 46 turned out nicely. nance engineer. . . . I hadn’t intended them for publication but thought you folks might like them.”65 His SETTING UP A PROBLEM ON THE ENIAC: article in Science carried no photographs Reading from left to right, Miss Akrevoe of the women and made no reference to Kondopria (Philadelphia, Pa.) at an accu- their existence. mulator, Miss Betty Jennings (Stanbury, Mo.), Cpl. Irwin Goldstein (Brooklyn, NY) More surprising still, the media reports and Miss Ruth Lichterman (Rockaway, NY) did not highlight Adele Goldstine, despite standing at function tables. Miss Kondopria her leadership position and her expertise is a Moore School employee on the ENIAC in a technical realm that had not earlier project; Miss Jennings and Miss Lichterman existed for either sex. 66 An affi davit Adele WHEN COMPUTERS WERE WOMEN | 71

Goldstine submitted as testimony in Sperry and the solution of peacetime mathematical Rand v. Bell Labs explains how she saw her problems. own role: “I did much of the programming Two other groups were organized later, and the setting up of the ENIAC for the under separate contracts, one of which was various problems performed on it while devoted to analysis of experimental rocket fi ring at Aberdeen, while the other assisted I was at the Moore School. I also assisted in the proving ground development of new my husband in training Mr. Holberton and shells and bombs.71 a group of girls to set up problems on the ENIAC. . . . I worked with Mr. Holberton and This recognition is quite different from his group to program each problem which the publicity accorded to male offi cers and they put on the ENIAC up to and includ- engineers associated with the project.72 ing the demonstration problems for the The article cited here portrays the women ENIAC dedication exercises.”67 Adele Gold- as interchangeable. Even if it were too stine and Moore School professor Harry space-consuming to name each human Huskey were charged with producing an computer, it is still notable that the article ENIAC operating manual, a complete tech- describes the women as being trained for nical report, and a maintenance manual. 68 work “by the Moore School” as opposed Herman Goldstine explains: “The only per- to “by Adele Goldstine” or by her many sons who really had a completely detailed female colleagues. 73 That ENIAC’s 1946 knowledge of how to program the ENIAC demonstration doubled as a vanishing act were my wife and me. Indeed, Adele Gold- for its female participants fi ts neatly with stine wrote the only manual on the opera- postwar propaganda that as early as 1944 tion of the machine. This book was the only began redirecting women into more tra- thing available which contained all the ma- ditional female occupations or out of the terial necessary to know how to program paid labor force entirely.74 the ENIAC and indeed was its purpose.” 69 And what of the several years after World In addition, he reports that his wife con- War II? While the Department of Labor ac- tributed heavily to a 1947 paper he coau- knowledged women’s desire to stay on in thored with John Von Neumann, “Planning paid employment its publications were and Coding Problems for an Electronic not so optimistic. 75 An avalanche of ma- Computing Instrument”. 70 terials urged women to leave work. A 1948 It is an overstatement to say that female Women’s Bureau Bulletin reported on the computers and operators were never cov- situation for women with mathematics ed- ered in any media. A few articles mention ucation who sought paid work: them, as in this example: Although, during the war, production fi rms An initial group, consisting primarily of and Government projects were important women college graduates, especially trained outlets for women trained in mathematics, for work by the Moore School, began the the emphasis, following the end of hostili- work in ground gunfi re, bombing and re- ties, shifted back to the more usual channels. lated ballistics studies immediately after Teaching and employment with insurance Pearl Harbor, when the Aberdeen Prov- and other business fi rms became the prin- ing Ground’s Ballistic Research Laboratory cipal outlets for women college graduates broadened its program at the University. with mathematical training. . . . Most of the Forerunners of a group eventually num- wartime research projects sponsored by the bering more than 100, they made use of the Government were dropped after V- J day. In Moore School’s differential analyzer, which the few that continued, the small number of is equally useful in the realm of ballistics mathematical jobs were fi lled by the staffs 72 | JENNIFER S. LIGHT

of the institutions at which the research was 2. Young women in high school should be being done and by men with mathematical encouraged to try mathematics and if skills who were being released from mili- they have the qualifi cations for success tary service. The women’s military services, in mathematics and statistics should be which utilized women with mathematical encouraged to prepare for those fi elds; training during the war, were reduced to anticipated shortages make the long- very small staffs. . . . As women leave, men will be hired to replace them. . . . Although run outlook exceptionally favorable. many women are continuing on their war- 3. Young women who combine the qual- time mathematical jobs, it is diffi cult to say ifi cations for teaching with ability in how much of the gain will be in terms of per- mathematics should be encouraged to manent opportunities for women.76 teach, at least part time, since in teaching they can magnify their contribution The Federal Bureau of Investigation to the Nation’s progress. dropped many of the women it had hired 4. Mature college women who have majored as cryptographers during the war. By 1946, in mathematics, possess the personal the National Bureau of Standards had fi lled qualifi cations for teaching, and have most of the vacancies on its computing time available to work, should prepare staff with male veterans.77 At the Ballistics themselves through refresher courses in Research Laboratory, an army memoran- mathematics and education for teaching dum detailed criteria for how individuals positions, if the live in one of the many would be let go, with separate instructions communities experiencing or anticipat- for male offi cers and for WAC offi cers.78 ing a shortage of mathematics teachers. 80 With this in mind, the absence of women from an October 1946 army recruitment The report explores a wide range of ca- ad makes sense. The “propaganda ma- reer options, including programming and chine,” as Herzenberg and Howes call it, actuarial work. Yet as the patriotic rhetoric that during the war had so successfully of service “to the Nation’s progress” makes called women out of their homes, made clear, the Department of Labor prioritized a 180-degree turn, pushing many women teaching as a career choice. Science and back towards full- time domesticity. 79 engineering had won the war, and now the In the 1950s, new opportunities de- developing baby boom predicted a grow- veloped alongside continuing ambiva- ing demand for math teachers. lences about women’s occupational roles. Despite such exhortations, some women A 1956 U.S. Department of Labor report never left computer programming. Fran on employment opportunities for women Bilas, Kay McNulty, and Betty Snyder con- mathematicians and statisticians is replete tinued briefl y with ENIAC when it moved with examples of women’s mathematical to BRL in 1947; Ruth Lichterman stayed work—and the future need for women on for two years. 81 Other women joined mathematicians— in a variety of fi elds in- the ENIAC at BRL following the war. Betty cluding programming. Four “fi ndings” ap- Snyder Holberton went on to program pear as an executive summary: UNWAC and to write the fi rst major software routine ever developed for automatic 1. More women mathematicians and stat- programming. She also collaborated on isticians are currently needed, and in- writing COBOL and FORTRAN with Grace teresting jobs await those trained at the Hopper, a key programmer of the Mark I. bachelor’s degree as well as graduate Hopper left active duty with the U.S. Navy levels. as a lieutenant in 1946 but remained with WHEN COMPUTERS WERE WOMEN | 73 the Navy reserves until 1966. From 1946 A second confl icting representation until it started running programs around concerns the actual work performed by 1951, the Electronic Computer Project at women contrasted with how employ- Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study ers categorized this work. As this article employed mostly female programmers, shows, the evidence of ENIAC challenges who included Thelma Estrin, Hedi Selberg, the implicit assumption of computing his- Sonia Bargmann, and Margaret Lamb. torians that the low-status occupations Their accomplishments are future chapters of women meant that their work could for a history of computer programming. not be innovative. Wartime propaganda proclaimed “no limitations on your opportunities,” yet only certain jobs were CONCLUSION open to women. However, it was within The ENIAC story highlights several issues the confi nes of precisely such low-status in the history and historiography of gen- occupational classifi cations that women der, technology, and labor. Major wars engaged in unprecedented work. Looking have unmistakable infl uences on gender behind media accounts and later narra- relations and work, and those effects can tives of the development of ENIAC to con- be elusive and complex. Confl icts among sider primary source accounts of the work representations of women’s work in com- women actually performed reveals how puting ensure work for the historian in dis- its low-status categorization clashed with tinguishing seeming gender changes from the kinds of knowledge required. Finding real ones. These confl icts and sometime this mismatch offers the possibility that, contradictions lie at the heart of women’s in their work as operators, women moving historical invisibility. into stereotypical male domains played First, the variance between effusive war- a subversive role, challenging the gen- time recruiting literature and historians’ der status quo before the war. According evaluations of women’s actual opportuni- to this view, women’s invisibility refl ects ties is striking. Disputing the claims of pro- deep- rooted ambivalences about the roles paganda, historians generally agree that women professionals began to occupy in during wartime women may have made the labor force. These ambivalences per- some progress in expanding the variet- meated both power relationships in the ies of work they could do. Yet rather than workplace and media portrayals of wom- move up the ladder of success women’s en’s contributions. work appears to have added more rungs at Third, portrayals of women’s postwar the bottom. The narrative histories of the fate continue the ambivalence that char- ENIAC since 1946 echo this fi nding. With acterized their wartime work. Women few exceptions, they make the implicit or were seen as meeting a crisis—but only a explicit assumption that, while women temporary one. One 1943 guide to man- were involved, their participation was not agers explained: “Women can be trained suffi ciently important to merit explication. to do any job you’ve got—but remember Thus, this episode in the history and his- ‘a woman is not a man;’ A woman is a toriography of computing confi rms Ros- substitute— like plastic instead of metal.”83 siter’s “Matilda effect”: individuals at the Both postwar propaganda and histori- top of professional hierarchies receive re- ans characterize women as retreating to peated publicity and become part of his- teaching and homemaking after the war, torical records, while subordinates do not, abandoning their gains. Yet a fair number and quickly drop from historical memory.82 did not leave the workforce, a fact that the 74 | JENNIFER S. LIGHT

Department of Labor acknowledged even women, see Leila Rupp, Mobilizing Women for as it urged women toward teaching.84 War: German and American Propaganda, 1939– The revised history of ENIAC presented 1945 (Princeton, 1978). 5. Keith Ayling, Calling All Women (New York, here reveals that many of historians’ ques- 1942), 129. tions about the history of computing refl ect 6. Steele, 101. the unintentionally “male-centered terms” 7. Ibid., 99–100. of history. 85 The result is a distorted history 8. According to a Women’s Bureau Bulletin, “A co- of technological development that has ren- educational university, which before the war had few outlets for mathematics majors except dered women’s contributions invisible and in routine calculating jobs, found many attrac- promoted a diminished view of women’s tive jobs available to mathematics majors during capabilities in this fi eld. These incomplete the war, mostly in Government-sponsored re- stories emphasize the notion that program- search. . . . There was a defi nite shift from the ming and coding are, and were, masculine usual type of employment for mathematics majors in teaching and in clerical jobs in busi- activities. As computers saturate daily life, ness fi rms to computing work in industry and it becomes critical to write women back on Government war projects.” See United States into the history they were always a part of, Department of Labor, “The Outlook for Women in action if not in memory. in Mathematics and Statistics,” Women’s Bureau Bulletin 223–24 (1948): 3. According to this report, women comprised the majority of high- NOTES school mathematics teachers. 9. Ibid., 8. Margaret Rossiter, Women Scientists in Light, Jennifer S. (1999). “When computers were America: Before Affi rmative Action, 1940 – 1972 women.” Technology and Culture, 40(3), 455–483. (Baltimore, 1995), 13, confi rms this practice © The Society for the History of Technology. Re- more widely in the sciences. The few women printed with permission of The Johns Hopkins who worked in supervisory roles generally su- University Press. pervised other women, a much less prestigious 1. History has valued hardware over programming managerial role than supervising men. How- to such an extent that even the IEEE Annals of ever, at the Work Project Administration’s Math- the History of Computing issue devoted to ENI- ematical Tables Project, women supervised AC’s fi ftieth anniversary barely mentioned these male computers. See Denise W. Gürer, “women’s women’s roles. See IEEE Annals of the History of Contributions to Early Computing at the Natio- Computing 18, no. 1 (1996). Instead, they were nal Bureau of Standards,” IEEE Annals of the featured two issues later in a special issue on History of Computing 18, no. 3 (1996): 29–35. women in computing. The War Department in 1942 classifi ed all mili- 2. Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of tary occupational specialties as either suitable Job Segregation by Sex During World War II (Chi- or unsuitable for women; all jobs involving su- cago, 1987). pervision over men were automatically declared 3. Two books currently offer some information on unsuitable. Public Law 110 also made explicit the participation of women in computer history: that women could not command men with- see Autumn Stanley, Mothers and Daughters of out intervention from the secretary of war; see Invention: Notes for a Revised History of Technol- Bettie Morden, The Women’s Army Corps, 1945 – ogy (Metuchen, N.J., 1993), and Herman Golds- 1978 (Washington, D.C., 1990), 14. tine, The Computer from Pascal to Von Neumann 10. See Margaret Rossiter, Women Scientists in (Princeton, 1972). For recollections from women America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Balti- who worked on the ENIAC, see W. Barkley Fritz, more, 1982), also Women Scientists in America: “The Women of ENIAC,” IEEE Annals of the His- Before Affi rmative Action, 1940 – 1972. In the tory of Computing 18, no. 3 (1996): 13–28. Other 1982 volume, p. 55, Rossiter describes the late- histories tend to make passing references to the nineteenth-century star counters in astronomi- women and to show photographs of them with- cal laboratories who performed computer work out identifying them by name. for male astronomers. The famed astronomer 4. Evelyn Steele, Wartime Opportunities for Women Maria Mitchell was employed as a computer for (New York, 1943), preface. For an analysis of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in the late American mobilization propaganda directed at 1860s. The term computer, meaning “one who WHEN COMPUTERS WERE WOMEN | 75

computes,” originally referred to the human were almost all men who wanted Ph.D.’s in who was assigned various mathematical calcu- math or physics. This [hands- on work] was a bit lations. Ute Hoffman dates the use of computer distasteful. I think they viewed what they were to the seventeenth century, when it was used doing as something they were not going to be in reference to men who tracked the course of doing for a career. If you take a woman like Hedi time in their calendars. For decades the terms Selberg [a programmer at the Institute for Ad- computer and calculator were interchangeable. vanced Study Electronic Computer Project] she In fact, early computers such as the ENIAC and probably didn’t want to sit around with the baby Mark I were called electronic calculators. See Ute all the time.” Hoffmann, “Opfer und Täterinnen: Frauen in 12. Galison cites the invention and popularization der Computergeschichte,” in Micro Sisters: Dig- of the term “scanner girl.” italisierung des Alltags, Frauen und Computer, 13. Ibid., 176. ed. Ingrid Scholl and Ina Küller (Berlin, 1988). 14. For further discussion of prewar trends in hiring A number of other historians have documented practices, see Lisa Fine, The Souls of the Sky- women’s work in other sciences. For example, scraper: Female Clerical Workers in Chicago, Peter Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Cul- 1870 – 1930 (Philadelphia, 1990), and Margery ture of Microphysics (Chicago, 1997), discusses Davies, Women’s Place is at the Typewriter: the work of women in high-energy physics labo- Offi ce Work and Offi ce Workers, 1870 – 1930 (Phil- ratories, both those who counted fl ashes on the adelphia, 1982). See also Milkman (n. 2 above), scintillator in Rutherford’s laboratory and those chaps. 1–3. who scanned the photographs from bubble- 15. Paul Ceruzzi, “When Computers Were Human,” chamber experiments. Caroline Herzenberg Annals of the History of Computing 13 (1991): and Ruth Howes, “Women of the Manhattan 242. Project,” Technology Review 8 (1993): 37, de- 16. Cf. Milkman, 49: “The boundaries between scribe the work of women at Los Alamos, “some ‘women’s’ and ‘men’s’ work changed location, with degrees in mathematics and others with rather than being eliminated. . . . Rather than little technical background,” who performed hiring women workers to fi ll openings as vacan- mathematical calculations for the design of the cies occurred, managers explicitly defi ned some bomb. Amy Sue Bix, “Experiences and Voices of war jobs as ‘suitable’ for women, and others as Eugenics Field-Workers: ‘Women’s Work’ in Biol- ‘unsuitable,’ guided by a hastily revised idiom of ogy,” Social Studies of Science 27 (1997): 625–68, sex-typing that adapted prewar traditions to the reports the work of female fi eld- workers at the special demands of the war emergency.” Both Eugenics Record Offi ce, who gathered data Milkman and Fine discuss how gender-specifi c on individuals and families. In every case the advertisements refl ect the feminization of spe- work was subordinate to men’s. See also Jane S. cifi c occupations. Fine offers an analysis of the Wilson and Charlotte Serber, eds., Standing By shifting gender imagery of some clerical occupa- and Making Do: Women of Wartime Los Alamos tions. On this point, however, note that focusing (Los Alamos, N.M., 1988). on the industry’s language about women (in this 11. See Rossiter, Women Scientists in America (both case, the stories about the biological capacities volumes). According to Herman Goldstine, it and natural implications or womanhood—or, by was the fact that women were not seeking ca- extension, on the advertising techniques used reer advancement that made them ideal work- to create a gendered labor force) can confuse ers: “In general women didn’t get Ph.D.’s. You industry ideals with women’s actual practice. got awfully good women because they weren’t As Milkman’s notion of the idiom of sex- typing breaking their backs to be smarter than the next suggests, there is indeed a disjuncture between guy.” Herman Goldstine, interview by author, women’s prescribed place and what women ac- Philadelphia, 16 November 1994. Goldstine also tually did. This disjuncture is central to women’s noted that the few men he encountered work- invisibility in technological history. ing on programming rarely conceived of their 17. Goldstine interview (n. 11 above). The domain’s jobs as permanent. Rather, they were steps on masculinity appears in the preface of a textbook the way to something better. These jobs were on exterior ballistics: Offi ce of the Chief of Ord- “never careers for them, but a way of making nance The Method of Numerical Integration in money for a short time.” Consequently, Golds- Exterior Ballistics: Ordnance Textbook (Wash- tine observes, “Men in general were lousy—the ington, D.C., 1921). “The names of the men who brighter the man the less likely he was to be a have contributed most to its [the text’s] develop- good programmer. . . . The men we employed ment, particularly Major Moulton and Professor 76 | JENNIFER S. LIGHT

Bliss, are mentioned in various places in the de Sola Pool (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 266. See text, and to whom the writer might appropri- also Fine (n. 14 above), chap. 4, “The Discourse ately make personal acknowledgement, would on Fitness: Science and Symbols.” For a discus- amount practically to an enumeration of all sion of women’s wartime labor as portrayed in the offi cers, civilian investigators, and comput- literature and advertising, see Charles Hannon, ers who have been connected with the work in “ ‘The Ballad of the Sad Cafe’ and Other Stories ballistics in Washington and at the Aberdeen of Women’s Wartime Labor,” Genders 23 (1996): Proving Ground.” 97–119. 18. The heads of the computing groups were all 21. For a further discussion of the prewar situa- college graduates, as were the majority of tion and the complex interaction between new computers. technologies and the sexual division of labor, 19. “The title ‘engineering computer’ was created see Fine, also Davies (n. 14 above). Jobs with a for these women, since such work before the more established tradition of male employment war was done by young, junior engineers as part were less likely to become feminized before of their induction training following graduation World War II. For example, while “clerk” and from an engineering college.” U.S. Department “bookkeeper” stayed largely male, feminization of Labor, “Women in Architecture and Engineer- was more widespread in stenography because it ing,” Women’s Bureau Bulletin 223–25 (1948): 56. had not been defi ned as male. See Milkman (n. See Sharon Hartmann Strom, Beyond the Type- 2 above), chap. 4. For further discussion of how writer: Gender, Class, and the Origins of Modern new jobs were gendered, see Heidi Hartmann, American Offi ce Work, 1900 – 1930 (Urbana, Ill., Robert Kraut, and Louise Tilly, eds., Computer 1992), for a discussion of similar circumstances Chips and Paper Clips: Technology and Women’s within American businesses. To call a particular Employment, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1986), job “feminized” does not restrict it to women. vol. 1, chap. 2. Certainly there were some male computers and 22. See Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: programmers. For a review of literature on gen- Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (n. 10 above), der and technology, see Nina Lerman, Arwen and Milkman. Palmer Mohun, and Ruth Oldenziel, “Versatile 23. At the time, women were concentrated in cler- Tools: Gender Analysis and the History of Tech- ical roles more than in any other occupation; nology,” Technology and Culture 38 (1997): 1–30. they comprised 54 percent of all clerical workers 20. The idiom of sex-typing made the sexual divi- in 1940 and 62 percent in 1950. U.S. Department sion of labor seem natural; differences in work of Labor, “Changes in Women’s Occupations capacity were considered biologically based. 1940–1950,” Women’s Bureau Bulletin 253 (1954): Evelyn Steele, editorial director of Vocational 37. Clerical work encompasses a broad range of Guidance Research, writes, “It is generally jobs, including offi ce machine operators. The agreed that women do well at painstaking, te- Employment and Training Administration and dious work requiring patience and dexterity of U.S. Employment Service’s Dictionary of Oc- the hands. The actual fact that women’s fi ngers cupational Titles (Washington, D.C., 1939–41) are more slender than men’s makes a difference. classifi ed computing-machine operator and Also, women adapt themselves to repetitive jobs calculating-machine operator as entry-level requiring constant alertness, nimble fi ngers and clerical occupations. For further discussion of tireless wrists. They have the ability to work to the wide range of clerical jobs, see Strom (n. 19 precise tolerances, can detect variations of ten- above) and Fine. See also David Alan Grier, “The thousandths of an inch, [and] can make careful ENIAC, the Verb ‘to program’ and the Emergence adjustments at high speed with great accuracy”; of Digital Computers,” IEEE Annals of the His- Steele (n. 4 above), 46. Women’s strengths thus tory of Computing 18, no. 1 (1996): 51–55. lay in performing repetitive, detailed, unskilled 24. It was part of a prior agreement with the Moore tasks. Such statements were not new. Arguments School that in times of national emergency the made in favor of women working as telephone Aberdeen Proving Ground could commandeer operators were similar: “The work of success- the school’s differential analyzer. Lydia Messer, ful telephone operating demanded just that oral history, interview by Cornelius Weygandt, particular dexterity, patience and forbearance 22 March 1988, University of Pennsylvania Ar- possessed by the average woman in a degree chives, Philadelphia. Joel Shurkin, Engines of the superior to that of the opposite sex.” Brenda Mind (New York, 1984), 119. BRL had apparently Maddox, “Women and the Switchboard,” in organized previous cooperative projects during The Social Impact of the Telephone, ed. Ithiel World War I with the University of Pennsylvania. WHEN COMPUTERS WERE WOMEN | 77

The U.S. Army Ordnance Department’s Course corporals. The WAC offi cer in charge of the de- in Exterior Ballistics: Ordnance Textbook (Wash- tachment on campus was Lt. Mildred Fleming. ington, D.C., 1921) credits H. H. Mitchell of the 33. Mattie Treadwell, United States Army in World University of Pennsylvania as “Master Com- War Two Special Series: The Women’s Army Corps puter, who organized the range table computa- (Washington, D.C., 1954), 221. tion work at Aberdeen.” Before 1941, the Moore 34. Adele Goldstine to J. G. Brainerd, n.d., “Monday School also provided computers for BRL. Nancy Night,” Information Files: World War II: WAC Stern, From ENIAC to UNIVAC: An Appraisal of Training: Miscellaneous, University of Penn- the Eckert-Mauchly Computers (Bedford, Mass., sylvania Archives. The ES&MWTesses were the 1981), 10. women involved in the Engineering, Science, 25. Shurkin, 128. and Management War Training courses. J. G. 26. Shurkin, 127–28. Brainerd was a professor at the Moore School 27. Stern, 13–14. and liaison with U.S. Army Ordnance. 28. Not all women’s jobs ranked lower or earned 35. Helen Rogan, Mixed Company: Women in the less than men’s, but the history of female em- Modern Army (New York, 1981), 41; Treadwell, ployment shows a persistent pattern into which chap. 4. Building on the work of historians such the BRL’s policies fi t. For example, see Sharon as Milkman (n. 2 above) and Fine (n. 14 above), Hartmann Strom, “ ‘Machines Instead of Clerks’: who have analyzed the need for women in men’s Technology and the Feminization of Bookkeep- jobs to maintain femininity, Leisa Meyer has de- ing, 1910–1950,” in Hartmann, Kraut, and Tilly scribed the sexual politics of women’s entrance (n. 21 above), 2:63–97. See Fritz (n. 3 above) for into military service; see “Creating G.I. Jane: women’s accounts of the work they performed The Regulation of Sexuality and Sexual Behav- and H. Polachek, “Before the ENIAC,” IEEE An- ior in the Women’s Army Corps During World nals of the History of Computing 19, no. 2 (1997); War Two,” Feminist Studies 18 (1992) 581–601, 25–30 for the complexities of computations for and Creating G.I. fane: Sexuality and Power in preparing fi ring tables. the Women’s Army Corps during World War Two 29. Adele Goldstine received her bachelor’s de- (New York, 1996). gree from Hunter College in 1941, then a mas- 36. “Topics Included in the Engineering, Science, ter’s from the University of Michigan in 1942. and Management War Training Courses for In 1942 she taught mathematics in the public Members of the W.A.C, from Aberdeen Proving school system in Philadelphia. From late 1943 Ground,” Information Files: World War II: WAC to March 1946 she worked for the ENIAC project Training: Miscellaneous, University of Penn- at the Moore School and spent part of 1944 at sylvania Archives. There was a second train- the Aberdeen Proving Ground. In 1948, she re- ing course in 1945; Herman Goldstine Papers, sumed graduate study at New York University. American Philosophical Society Library, Phila- She became a consultant to the Atomic Energy delphia (hereinafter Goldstine Papers). Commission project effective 7 June 1947, work- 37. Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to Von Neu- ing on making the ENIAC into a stored-program mann (n. 3 above), 134; Fritz (n. 2 above). The computer. Herman Goldstine recalls that “Los histories of other sciences, in both Britain and Alamos was the major user of the ENIAC so it the United States, show scientists’ wives fi lling was [John] Von Neumann [who was using it]. a number of the more senior women’s positions Adele was his assistant. I was also a consultant in science. For example, Cecil Powell’s wife Iso- but she was doing the major part.” Goldstine in- bel led the scanning girls in Powell’s laboratory, terview (n. 11 above). and Janet Landis Alvarez, wife of Luis Alvarez, 30. Ibid. trained the women bubble-chamber scanners at 31. Harold Pender to George McCelland, 23 July Berkeley. Among the computers at NACA were a 1943, Information Files: World War II: WAC number of engineers’ wives. At the Los Alamos Training: Miscellaneous, University of Pennsyl- Scientifi c Laboratory, John Von Neumann’s sec- vania Archives. ond wife, Klara Dan Von Neumann, became a 32. Daily Pennsylvanian, 29 September 1943, un- programmer and helped to program and code titled clipping in Information Files: World War some of the largest programs of the 1950s. Also II: WAC Training: Miscellaneous, University of at Los Alamos were Kay Manley, wife of John Pennsylvania Archives. While women received Manley, and Mici Teller, wife of Edward Teller, instructions from civilians (not an unusual who performed mathematical calculations for practice in the armed services), they were com- the design of the bomb. For further discussion manded by military second lieutenants and of couples in the sciences, see Helena M. Pycior, 78 | JENNIFER S. LIGHT

Nancy G. Slack, and Pnina G. Abir- Am, eds., the important thing, but as soon as you get be- Creative Couples in the Sciences (New Bruns- yond the bottleneck of making the computer,” wick, N.J., 1996). According to Fritz, at least programming software became a new bottle- four computers married engineers at the Moore neck. “They’ve automated the bejeezus out of School after 1946. Frances Bilas married Homer making chips but not software.” Ironically, by Spence, Kathleen McNulty became Mauchly’s the time the process of making hardware was second wife, and Elizabeth Snyder married John automated programming software had become W. Holberton. According to Goldstine, Betty a man’s job and acquired higher status than it Jean Jennings (Bartik) married a Moore School had had in the 1940s. See, for example, Phillip engineer. Also at the Moore School were Eckert’s Kraft, “The Routinization of Computer Pro- fi rst wife, a draftsman for the ENIAC project; gramming, “Sociology of Work and Occupations Alice Burks, whose husband Arthur worked with 6 (1977): 139–55. Eckert and Mauchly on the ENIAC design; and 43. Jeanne Holm, Women in the Military: An Unfi n- Emma Lehmer, wife of Derrick Henry Lehmer, a ished Revolution, rev. ed. (Novato, Calif., 1992), computer and table compiler. 73. Social mores, as well as a variety of rules 38. “Thanks for the Memory,” presumably written and regulations, meant that women’s qualifi - by WACs at the Moore School, ca. 1943–44, Gold- cations had to surpass men’s before they could stine Papers. compete for higher- level jobs within academia 39. In a retrospective analysis, Goldstine framed (including government-sponsored research) the computers’ job as a prime candidate for and industry. The army had higher selection cri- mechanization due to its low skill: “Computing teria for female offi cers and enlisted personnel is thus subhuman in that it calls on very few of “than those for men in the same service” (p. 50). man’s manifold abilities and yet is fundamental P.L. 110, the legislation converting the WAC to to many of his other activities, as Leibnitz so full military status, specifi ed that “its command- clearly perceived. This then is basically why ing offi cer could never be promoted above the computing was chosen as a human task to be rank of colonel and its other offi cers above the mechanized”; Goldstine, The Computer from rank of lieutenant colonel; its offi cers could Pascal to Von Neumann, 343. never command men unless specifi cally ordered 40. It is unclear exactly when this shift occurred. to do so by Army superiors” (Treadwell [n. 33 It was at least as early as February 1945, when above], 220). Additionally, the War Department George Stibbitz wrote in a report on relay com- in 1943 set the ratio of female offi cers to enlisted puters for the National Defense Research Com- women at one to twenty. Comparable fi gures for mittee: “Human agents will be referred to as men were one to ten. Using the excuse of a sur- Operators’ to distinguish them from ‘computers’ plus of male offi cers, it capped WAC offi cers by (machines).” Ceruzzi (n. 15 above), 240. limiting entrants to the WAC Offi cer Candidate 41. Goldstine interview (n. 11 above). Interest- School but did not impose a similar limitation ingly, Milkman (n. 2 above) has discussed how on male offi cers. None of the six women ENIAC jobs perceived as feminine in some places were operators held high status in academia or the quintessentially masculine in others— often military. Men at the Moore School who were not within the same industry. The idiom of sex- affi liated with the army, such as Harry Huskey typing, while consistent in individual factories, or Arthur Burks, had visible academic appoint- often differed among factories manufacturing ments. See Rossiter, Women Scientists in Amer- the same product. On the Mark II computer at ica: Before Affi rmative Action, 1940– 1972 (n. 9 the Navy’s Dahlgrgn Proving Ground, for in- above), for more on hierarchies, promotions, stance, operators were male. This area deserves and payment in science. further study. 44. Shurkin (n. 24 above), 188. 42. The terms hard and soft, as used to describe 45. Kraft (n. 42 above), 141. gendered tasks, are signifi cant. For the hard and 46. Fritz (n. 2 above), 19–20. soft sciences, hard mastery and soft mastery 47. A number of historians have disputed de- skilling are binary distinctions in science and technol- assumptions. For example, Sharon Hartmann ogy implying that the “hard” ways of knowing Strom, “ ‘Machines Instead of Clerks’ ” (n. 28 are men’s domain; “soft” ways of knowing are above), 64, describes in the case of bookkeeping more feminine. Goldstine, when interviewed, machine operators how “workers continued to reported that he had resisted “there being a dis- apply hidden skills of judgement and to inte- tinction” between hardware and software. He grate a number of tasks, particularly to jobs in observed: “At the beginning, the hardware was the middle levels of bookkeeping, even though WHEN COMPUTERS WERE WOMEN | 79

these jobs required the use of machines.” Fine Calculating Machines,” press release, February (n. 14 above), 84, claims that the stenographer- 1446, Goldstine Papers. typist’s job was more challenging than the 56. U.S. War Department, Bureau of Public Rela- copyist’s whom she replaced. For a review tions, “History of Development of Computing of literature on gender, mechanization, and Devices,” press release, 15–16 February 1946, de-skilling, see Nina Lerman, Arwen Palmer Goldstine Papers. Mohum, and Ruth Oldenziel, “The Shoulders 57. For media characterizations of ENIAC, see C. Di- We Stand On and the View from Here: Historiog- anne Martin, “The Myth of the Awesome Think- raphy and Directions for Research,” Technology ing Machine,” Communications of the ACM 36, and Culture 38 (1997): 9–30. See also Kenneth no. 4 (1993): 125, 127; see also Martin, “ENIAC” Lipartito, “When Women Were Switches: Tech- (n. 51 above), 3–10. Like the laundry industry nology, Work, and Gender in the Telephone In- that made its employees invisible by publicizing dustry, 1890–1920,” American Historical Review the tireless machines, the ENIAC was portrayed 99 (1994): 1075–111. as doing almost all of the work; Arwen Mohum, 48. Nina Lerman, “ ‘Preparing for the Duties and “Laundrymen Construct their World: Gender Practical Business of Life’: Technological Knowl- and the Transformation of a Domestic Task to an edge and Social Structure in Mid-19th- Century Industrial Process,” Technology and Culture 38 Philadelphia,” Technology and Culture 38 (1997): (1997): 97–120. 36. Judy Wajcman, Feminism Confronts Technol- 58. Steven Shapin, “The House of Experiment in ogy (University Park, Penn., 1991), 37, observes: Seventeenth- Century England,” Isis 79 (1988): “Defi nitions of skill can have more to do with 395. ideological and social constructions than with 59. T. R. Kennedy, “Electronic Computer Flashes An- technical competencies which are possessed by swers, May Speed Engineering,” New York Times, men and not by women.” 15 February 1946. 49. Shurkin, 188. 60. Ibid. 50. Ibid., 189. 61. The NACA memorandum (n. 15 above) spe- 51. C. Dianne Martin, “ENIAC: Press Conference cifi cally used she to describe the computers in That Shook the World,” IEEE Technology and its service. Women played salient roles in the Society Magazine 14, no. 4 (1995): 3–10. Because demonstration of many domestic and business the problem was classifi ed, the equations re- technologies, from sewing machines to type- mained concealed. writers to IBM offi ce products, making their 52. Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to Von omission here all the more pointed. Neumann (n. 3 above), 229. For details of the 62. See, for example, Popular Science Monthly, Oc- kinds of calculations performed using ENIAC, tober 1946, 212. see Arthur W. Burks and Alice R. Burks, “The 63. Herman Goldstine to Captain J. J. Power, Offi ce ENIAC: First General-Purpose Electronic Com- of the Chief of Ordnance 17 January 1946, Gold- puter,” Annals of the History of Computing 3 stine Papers. (1981): 310–89. The Burks were another signif- 64. ENIAC fi le appended to Goldstine to Power, 17 icant husband and wife team, publishing their January 1946. story together; Alice R. Burks and Arthur W. 65. Horace K. Woodward Jr. to Adele Goldstine, 23 Burks, The First Electronic Computer: The Ata- February 1946, Goldstine Papers. nasoff Story (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1988). 66. While Adele Goldstine did not receive media 53. Fritz (n. 2 above), 20–21. Goldstine recalled acknowledgement, she clearly had some status bringing Douglas Hartree, a physicist who had among her colleagues at the Moore School as built a differential analyzer in Britain, to the the only woman working on the machine’s hard- United States for a visit. “I got Kay McNulty ware. Initially, she oversaw Holberton. As head of to be his programmer and she was good the WAC course, despite her civilian status, she and intelligent. The girls soon branched off had frequent contact with top administrators at independently and it was during that period both the Moore School and the Aberdeen Proving that my wife was making ENIAC into a stored Ground. In a publicity folder, biographical profi les program computer”; Goldstine interview (n. 11 on approximately a dozen staff members at the above). Moore School connected with the ENIAC include 54. See, for example, Bruno Latour, Science in Action J. Presper Eckert, John W. Mauchly, Herman H. (Cambridge, 1987). Goldstine, John G. Brainerd, Arthur Burks, Harry 55. U.S. War Department, Bureau of Public Relations, Huskey, Cpl. Irwin Goldstein, and Pfc. Spence. “Ordnance Department Develops All- Electronic Adele Goldstine is the only woman included. 80 | JENNIFER S. LIGHT

67. The affi davit is included in a letter from Harry Special Bulletin, 1944; Rossiter, Women Scientists Pugh, at Fish, Richardson, and Neave, to Her- in America: Before Affi rmative Action, 1940 – 1972 man Goldstine, 12 December 1961, Goldstine (n. 9 above), chap. 2. Papers. 77. U.S. Department of Labor, “The Outlook for 68. Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to Von Women,” 11. Neumann (n. 3 above), 200. 78. Army Service Forces Offi ce of the Chief of Ord- 69. Ibid., 330. nance, Washington, D.C., to personnel at BRL, 70. Ibid., 255 n. 4. 29 January 1946, Goldstine Papers. 71. “Studies at Penn Aided Artillery,” undated clip- 79. Herzenberg and Howes (n. 10 above). ping from unidentifi ed news paper, ENIAC Pub- 80. U.S. Department of Labor, “Employment Op- licity Folder, Goldstine Papers. portunities for Women Mathematicians and 72. See, for example, Allen Rose, “Lightning Strikes Statisticians,” Women’s Bureau Bulletin 262 Mathematics,” Popular Science Monthly, April (1956): vi. 1946, 85, photo caption: “. . . Sharpless, of the 81. For these women’s later employment histories, Moore School of Engineering, sets a dial on the see Fritz (n. 2 above), 17. Eniac’s initiating unit, which contains some of 82. Margaret Rossiter, “The Matilda Effect in Sci- the master controls of the huge, complex me- ence,” Social Studies of Science 23 (1993): 325–41. chanics. . . . Mr. Sharpless designed some Eniac 83. U.S. War Department, You’re Going to Hire Women, equipment.” booklet produced to persuade managers and su- 73. Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, in Laboratory pervisors to hire women, cited in Chester Gregory, Life (Beverley Hills, Calif., 1979), 219, point out Women in Defense Work During World War II: An that “a key feature of the hierarchy is the extent to Analysis of the Labor Problem and Women’s Rights which some people are regarded as replaceable.” (New York, 1974), 12. 74. Rupp (n. 4 above), 161. 84. For example, the Women’s Bureau Bulletin 262 75. Ibid., 161–62. (1956) features several pictures of women work- 76. U.S. Department of Labor, “The Outlook ing with computers and mentions women cod- for Women in Mathematics and Statistics” ing and programming. (n. 8 above), 9–11. See also U.S. Department 85. Gerda Lerner, “The Necessity of History,” in Why of Labor, “A Preview as to Women Workers in History Matters: Life and Thought (New York, Transition from War to Peace,” Women’s Bureau 1997), 119. CHAPTER 6

The Intersection of Gender, Race and Cultural Boundaries, or Why Is Computer Science in Malaysia Dominated by Women ? Ulf Mellström

This paper addresses a familiar concern emphasizing that gender and technology about the inclusion of women in science relations are always deeply embedded in and engineering. Women’s participation cultural contexts shaping the use, design in science and engineering varies greatly and production of technologies and their around the globe, but there still seems to coproduction of gender and technology. exist, as Lagesen (2005: 19) states, a linger- In this it draws on earlier closely related ing notion of an all-encompassing mas- work (Lagesen, 2005, 2007b), but it also culine culture of science and engineering differs in its aim to empirically analyse transcending time and space. By using specifi c aspects of Malaysian culture, so- empirical data from Malaysia in the con- ciety and history in order to illustrate the text of computer science, the paper aims cultural embeddedness of gender and to open a culturally situated analysis of the technology relations. However, I shall use gendering of technology that undermines the Malaysian situation within computer any notion of a global masculine culture science mainly as an example to highlight of science and engineering, transcending how an intersectional analysis takes form. cultural and national differences. Inspired Consequently, I shall not provide a full- by recent critical interventions and new fl edged critical analysis of the multifaceted analytical openings in gender and technol- and divergent power dimensions of the ogy studies (Lagesen, 2005, 2007a,b; Bray, Malaysian society. 2007; Landström, 2007; Rommes, 2007) The paper has three substantive parts. the paper points to a western bias of gen- I will fi rst present the so called ‘woman der and technology studies, and argues for problem’ (Lagesen, 2005) in gender and cross- cultural work and intersectional un- technology studies and contemporary crit- derstandings including race, class, age and ical thought in feminist technology stud- sexuality. With the Malaysian case exempli- ies, invoking the theoretical tenets that fying the core of the argument, I argue that possibly succeed this critique and how gender and technology studies needs to this feeds into the Malaysian situation. investigate confi gurations of masculinity Second, I will present my case in terms of and femininity in a cross-cultural perspec- materials, methods, and the cultural spective more thoroughly. The paper will focus ifi cities of computer science in Malaysia. on the relational dependence of male and Third, a discussion of the emp iri al case female categorizations in gender relations, follows where I argue that the gender 82 | ULF MELLSTRÖM

relations of computer in Malaysia has to 1989, 1990; Wajcman, 1991, 2000, 2004; be understood in regard to five strands Mellström, 1995, 2002, 2003, 2004; Olden- of intersecting explanations: (1) quotas, ziel, 1999; Salminen- Karlsson, 1999; Faulk- ethnicity and gender; (2) a situated body ner, 2000, 2001; Lie, 2003). politics; (3) techno optimism and techno- In the western world, it seems that little nationalism; (4) underachieving men; has changed, as there are even fewer women and (5) a critical mass of women and a in computer science today than in the shortage of computer professionals. late 1980s and the early 1990s (Salminen- Karlsson, 1999). However, when we look beyond the western world to developing THE ‘WOMAN PROBLEM’ IN GENDER countries such as Malaysia, we fi nd that a AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES growing number of studies present a more The so- called ‘woman problem’, meaning diversifi ed picture (Kelkar et al., 2005; Ng & the exclusion of women in science and Mitter, 2005; Saloma- Akpedonu, 2005; Wa- engineering, has been thoroughly investi- jcman & Le, 2007). The position of women gated in gender and technology studies. In in the IT industry, and in new rapidly trans- spite of the fact that women are becoming forming digital economies in countries the majority of the student population in such as the Philippines, Brazil, Malaysia most academic settings around the world, and Vietnam, gives hope for an emancipa- the relative absence of women from sci- tory concern for a more gender balanced ence and engineering remains puzzling division of labour. In an investigation in the (Quinn, 2003; Lagesen, 2005). This is espe- Philippines, Saloma Akpedonu (2005: 100) cially so for information technology (IT). reports that women constitute 30% of the This relative lack of women is seen as a Philippine Computer Society and that their problem, while a predominance of men is position in the IT industry has not resulted regarded as the norm (Kramer & Lehman, in a devaluation of status (see also Wajc- 1990). Learning environments are not man & Le, 2007: 6). In their study of the friendly to women (Siann, 1997; Henwood, gender relations of software work in Viet- 2000). Computer science technology grew nam, Wajcman and Le (2007: 23) conclude: out of the military, and its aura of combat and war has never attracted women (Mört- Compared to women’s employment in pre- berg, 1987; Edwards, 1990). In reviewing vious eras, IT work is a signifi cant improve- the literature, Lagesen concludes that the ment. Women in the IT sector have higher levels of education and earn more than ‘woman problem’ in computer science women working in agriculture or the service mainly has been understood as an issue sector. The IT industry does provide a vehi- of exclusion, and little is known about cle for women to gain both higher education the women who actually decide to study and economic power in Vietnam. computer science (Lagesen, 2005, 2007a; Sørensen, 2002). The history of gender and The fact that in Malaysia, women’s edu- computer science as well as IT in general cation, and their positions in computer seem to follow a well- known pattern in science departments and software em- western history of technology. Throughout ployment being equivalent to those of this history, men have placed themselves men, undoubtedly contributes to such in central positions, and technology has relative optimism about gender and tech- been associated with masculine values, nology relations in developing countries. whether it concerns machinery or digital However, before moving to my case study, technology (Cockburn, 1983, 1985; Hacker, I shall briefl y address some emergent THE INTERSECTION OF GENDER, RACE AND CULTURAL BOUNDARIES | 83 epistemological dilemmas in gender and relations in non- western societies. This new technology studies. wave of critical thought in feminist technology studies, which originated from a combination of sexuality studies, material- Analytical Openings in Gender and semiotic and postcolonial approaches, Technology Studies points to a need to address a wider range Recently, critical interventions in the fi eld of analytical themes in order to capture the of gender and technology studies have inherent complexities and ambiguities of drawn attention to how heteronormative gender and technology relations. assumptions continue to pervade empiri- My analysis follows up on this call to cal research in feminist technology studies address non- western gender and technol- (Faulkner, 2001; Landström, 2007; Rommes, ogy relations. There are critical analytical 2007). Landström (2007), in a critical re- consequences to such a focus. As Fran- reading of what she labels feminist con- cesca Bray argues, ‘in focusing so closely structivist technology studies, addresses on the gender–technology nexus itself FTS the divide between theoretical discourse [Feminist Technology Studies] sometimes that collapses old deterministic gender neglects deeper- lying ideological dimen- binaries and empirical research that re- sions within which any regime of truth lapses into such binaries. In a similar vein, concerning gender and technology must Els Rommes (2007: 13) shows how hetero- ultimately be understood’ (Bray, 2007: 19). sexual imaginaries consistently work to Consequently, furthering gender diversity reproduce gender dichotomies and hier- in gender and technology studies opens up archies associated with computers, and cross- cultural interventions, comparisons how technologically competent women and intersectional understandings. A huge become masculinized in terms of various spectrum of variations in gender subjec- dimensions of heteronormativity. Closely tivities in relation to artefacts and technol- associated with Landström’s and Rommes’ ogy remains open to investigation, and its queer-theoretical interpretations are Vivian analysis can bring new perspectives to the Lagesen’s (2005, 2007a,b) and Francesca fi eld. This also implies that addressing the Bray’s (2007) accounts of the ‘black-boxing’ relative absence of gender and technology of gender in gender and technology rela- research on non-western contexts should tions, where gender often is represented as introduce a wider range of cultural perspec- stable while technology is treated as open tives on the gender relations embedded in to interpretative fl exibility. Although Lag- a diverse range of settings. Studies of gen- esen and Bray do not problematize the ‘se- der and technology relations, and of tech- miotics of heteronormativity’ (Landström nological change in general, consequently 2007: 14), they nevertheless point to a com- require attention as to how gender as well mon analytical asymmetry in gender and as class and race often instigate changes in technology studies (see also Gill & Grint, the social and cultural balance in a nation 1995; Landström, 2007). Another critique such as Malaysia (see also Harding, 2006). that has been addressed at various times in When reviewing existing literature in gen- social studies of science and technology, as der and technology studies, one conclusion well as in feminist science and technology seems to follow, which is that few studies studies (MacKenzie & Wajcman 1999; Bray, go beyond treating gender and technology 2007; Wajcman & Le, 2007), which now as analytical parameters, to include inter- seems as pertinent as ever, is that there are sectional understandings of the gendering so few studies of gender and technology of technology. In other words, if, in theory, 84 | ULF MELLSTRÖM

gender and technology are coproduced the gender ratios in the computer science (Faulkner, 2000, 2001; Lagesen, 2005), so are and IT sectors of Malaysian industry. For ethnicity and technology, age and technol- instance, women constituted 65% of the ogy, sexuality and technology, and class and students at the School of Computer Sci- technology (see also MacKenzie & Wajcman, ence at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), 1999: 25–26). Still, these latter dimensions and 66% of the students in Computer Sci- of cross-cultural comparison and intersec- ence and Information Technology at the tional understanding are generally absent University of Malaya, during the academic from STS research, and gender and technol- year 2001–2002 (Lagesen, 2005). As early as ogy studies particularly, with a few notable 1990/1991, women comprised 51% of the exceptions (for example, Traweek, 1988; total student intake in computer- related Dyer, 1997; Verran, 1998, 1999; Traweek & courses in tertiary institutions (Ng & Yong, Reid, 2000; Adams, 2002). My purpose in this 1995). Among masters degree and PhD paper is to invoke cross- cultural compari- students at USM, more than 50% were sons and intersectional readings, in general, women, and of the ten professors in the and in reference to Malaysia in particular. department in 2003, seven were women. Consequently, my gender analysis is There also is a high percentage of women grounded in an intersectional understand- in the professional information and coming (Crenshaw, 1991; Peletz, 1996; Young, puting technology (ICT) sector. Although 1997; Yuval- Davis, 1997; Collins, 1998), Malaysian labour force statistics are not where issues of inclusion and exclusion, broken down according to speciﬁ c educa- power and powerlessness are to be under- tional attainments, women comprise 44% stood by an integrative analysis of gender, of professionals and 38.9% of technicians race, age, class and nation. As the Malay- and associate professionals (ICT and com- sian feminists Cecilia Ng and Carol Yong puter science professionals are normally (1995: 178) argue, ‘. . . while new technology grouped in these statistical categories). skills are being polarized by gender, it also These gender distributions are note- evident that women are entering computer worthy and very encouraging in terms of professions in both the developed and de- gender equality. They can be regarded as veloping countries, leading to a class polar- a possible catalyst for change in a devel- ization within the female labour force itself ’. oping country where substantial portions It is therefore also important to look at the of the population currently are reworking wider picture in which technology, labour their social and ethnic identities (Kahn & relations and education are embedded. Loh, 1992; Gomes, 1994; Goh, 2002). How- From their Malaysian horizon Ng and Yong ever, according to Kahn and Loh (1992), (1995: 178) also argue that, ‘[s]ince society this grand narrative of a speciﬁ c Malay- is based on hierarchy, and technology is a sian modernity must also be understood medium of power, one needs to understand in terms of a fragmented society in which how power is negotiated’. In a postcolonial an emerging and substantial middle class and multiethnic society such as Malaysia is conspicuous. This emerging middle this also becomes highly pertinent, be- class is portrayed as the symbol and hope cause class and ethnic differentials often for moving beyond a tradition marked by are as important as gender differentials. sharp ethnic divides between the three major ethnic groups—Malays (58% of the The Malaysian Case population), Chinese (27%) and Indians The Malaysian case is interesting for gen- (7%). Various political measures and pro- der and technology studies because of grammes under the New Economic Policy THE INTERSECTION OF GENDER, RACE AND CULTURAL BOUNDARIES | 85

(NEP) of 1971, and the New Development ‘common destiny’ is crucial for construct- Policy (NDP) of 1991, aim to strengthen ing nationhood rather than emphasizing the national economy and unite the coun- a common past (Yuval- Davis, 1997). The try’s ethnic groups. Still, a number of so- Malaysian State emphasizes this vision of cioeconomic divides remain between the national development as an effective way ethnic groups. This national balancing act to generate a collective sense of belong- associated with efforts to promote inter- ing. Recurrent public campaigns such as racial harmony thus continues to pervade the Malaysia boleh (Malaysia can, is able) contemporary Malaysian society. In this crusade in the late 1990s and the begin- balancing act, Chinese and Indian people ning of 2000s persistently declare that a have been marginalized, as non- Muslims, Pan-Malaysian identity ( Bangsa Melayu , while the Malaysian state has been pro- see Ariffi n, 1993) is built through technol- moting a ‘national culture’ based on in- ogy and development. This Pan-Malaysian digenous Malay culture, combined with identity is very much defi ned as a national a distinctly Islamic ‘govermentalism’ as a body and is seen as primarily economic central feature (Nonini, 1998). ‘Malayness’ and technological, and looking towards is usually identifi ed in terms of language, the future (Williamson, 2002: 419). This religion and royalty (bahasa, agama, raja), new middle-class is sometimes described and excludes anything ‘Chinese’ or ‘Indian’. as the ‘haves’ in contrast to the ‘haves- not’ This balancing act is codifi ed in the ethnic in the current programme of development. divisions and offi cial politics between in- Access to a knowledge society and IT ap- digenous Malays (bumiputeras , meaning pears to be the dividing line between the sons of the soil), and a number of other ‘haves’ and ‘have- nots’ (Ng & Yong, 1995). indigenous groups and non- bumiputeras The relationship between gender (here (the Chinese and Indians). almost exclusively defi ned as women) and The emerging middle class, united by technology in Malaysia has been inves- relative prosperity and technical develop- tigated from different perspectives (Ong, ment, has the potential to be a powerful 1987; Ng & Munro- Kua, 1994; Ng & Yong, symbol and contravening force in the shaky 1995; Levidow, 1996; Ng & Mohamad, 1997; ethnic and racial balance of contemporary Ng & Thambiah, 1997; Ng, 1999; Lagesen, Malaysian society. The supra-ethnic na- 2005; Ng & Mitter, 2005). As noted above, tionalist rhetorics and politics of the coun- rapid industrialization, with an emphasis try have almost become an obsession with on IT and globalization are leading to class modernity through technological develop- cleavages within the female labour force ment. Technology in general and IT in par- in Malaysia (Ng & Yong, 1995: 178). For in- ticular hold highly positive connotations stance, within the electronic components and are seen as major sources of individual industry (semiconductors, disk drives, and and national empowerment. Malaysia, as a so on) low-skilled technology employment postcolonial society, has a nationalist pol- is predominantly female and will probably itics that is most conspicuously manifested remain so. But at the same time, leading in Vision 2020 (Mahatmir, 1991), a plan female professionals within ICT- related for becoming a fully developed country— businesses are occupying an impressively a K- society (knowledge society). This ‘vi- high proportion of executive positions sion’ is directed towards a ‘common des- (Ng & Yong, 1995: 178). These women are tiny’ to be realized through technology and partaking in the formation of this imag- modernization. In such efforts to build and ined, as well real, formation of the new create a subjective sense of commitment, a middle class that is supposedly leading 86 | ULF MELLSTRÖM

the Malaysian nation into the future. Par- 38 (25%) were Chinese, and fi ve (3%) were adoxically, part of the explanation for why Indian; of the men, 20 (13%) were Malay, women have come to dominate computer 17 (11%) were Chinese, and two (<1%) science in Malaysia is due to the intensive were Indian. The students were taking a ethnifi cation of the Malaysian society and course in computer ethics, which might its consequences for higher education. have meant that a disproportionally high In sum, an important conclusion that can number of women were taking the course, be drawn from research by feminists and but according to lecturers from the depart- other scholars studying the Malaysian con- ment, the gender ratio was similar to that text is that theories of gender identity should of most courses in the department. consider that ethnic and class inequalities The questionnaire focused on gender, often are as important as gender differen- ethnicity, family structure, educational tials. This means that we cannot focus on choice and career plans. The ten inter- gender per se, but must also investigate the views followed up on the themes laid out complex interrelationships of gender, class, in the questionnaire, and enabled me to go age and ethnicity in a multi-ethnic society into greater depth on the themes, and in such as Malaysia. By taking my point of de- a more reciprocal manner. I also attended parture with an intersectional understand- computer science classes and talked to stu- ing of the highly complex multiethnic and dents in between lectures, at lunches, and stratifi ed society of Malaysia, I shall explore at various social gatherings. I used English how cultural dynamics infl uence and shape as the main language for the interviews, the construction of computer science as a but occasionally also Hokkien, which is the woman- friendly technological fi eld. dominant Chinese dialect of the island of Penang on the north-west coast of Malay- sia.2 In addition to these multifaceted data, I Materials and Methods was able to draw upon previous experience Material for this paper was collected with working in Malaysia to gain insight through policy documents, newspaper into gender and computer science. In what articles, labour employment statistics follows, I propose that a web of overlapping and popular writings. It also draws upon themes explains why computer science in a long- term study of gender in Malaysia Malaysia is dominated by women. My in- that began in 1997 (Mellström, 2002, 2003, tersectional analyses draws on a form of 2004). In 2003 and 2005, with the help methodological eclecticism that uses both of lecturers and professors at the Com- historical and discursive understandings of puter Science Department at Universiti Malaysian society, as well as individual and Sains, Malaysia, in Penang, I conducted ethnographic evidence. Combining such a questionnaire survey with 150 students diverse sources of data and interpretation in a computer science class.1 I also com- produces a form of intersectional analysis pleted ten interviews with students in the that draws together a complex web of his- same class, and supplemented those data torical circumstances, contemporary poli- with periods of participant observation tics and mundane realities. in lecture halls and on campus. I also had numerous informal conversations with QUOTAS, ETHNICITY AND GENDER lecturers, postdocs and professors at the department. Out of the 150 students, 111 As noted earlier, the Malaysian nation is (73%) were women and 39 (27%) were continuously balancing issues of interra- men. Of the women, 68 (45%) were Malay, cial harmony and disruption as one of its THE INTERSECTION OF GENDER, RACE AND CULTURAL BOUNDARIES | 87 fundamental socio-cultural dimensions. a number of Chinese organizations asked This tension is literally inscribed into this for equal rights for all Malaysians, the so- relatively new nation’s history, present and called Suqiu claims, which upset many bu- future, not least in the division between miputeras and especially the ruling United bumiputeras and non- bumiputeras . This Malay National Organisation (UMNO) division, which sharply separated Chi- youth party, whose leaders claimed that nese, Indians and Malays, was originally the Chinese were trying to create racial un- implemented by the British colonialists, rest in the country. UMNO vice-president but it was reinforced in the fi rst period of Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said that if the self- government after independence in Government accepted the Suqiu demands 1957. This reinforcement of ethnic politics ‘national integrity will suffer and Malaysia eventually resulted in the racial riots and will not be able to maintain unity, eco- bloodshed of 13 May 1969, when nearly nomic growth and racial harmony enjoyed 200 people were killed. The memory of since independence’ (The Star, 16 Decem- this traumatic event has still to be over- ber 2000). The special privileges of Malays come, and has strong symbolic signifi - concerns a number of different societal cance in today’s politics, as it continually areas, but in the area of higher education weighs against the Pan-Malaysian creation it means that the bumiputeras will be of Bangsa Melayu. Yet, after more than 30 granted special scholarships, free tuition years of economic progress and reform and special opportunities to study over- (associated with the NEP and NDP pro- seas, among other things. Until 2005, when grammes), aimed at eliminating the iden- students entered any of the state univer- tifi cation of race with economic function, sities they were divided into bumiputeras the inter-ethnic economic imbalance still and non- bumiputeras . The quota system prevails but is slowly being eased accord- guaranteed that at least 50% of the stu- ing to some analysts. The ethnic bound- dents would be bumiputeras . Since a much aries are, however, manifestly continuing higher number of Chinese and Indian stu- in connection with the bumiputera policy dents generally apply to universities, the through which Chinese and Indians are dis- quota meant that the non- bumiputeras favoured on the grounds of race ‘negative’, had to have much higher qualifi cations to while the bumipetera’s (sons of the soil) get accepted. Since 2005, the system has special rights and privileges are inscribed been slightly changed, with a preparatory in the Malaysian constitution. These rights college year (matriculation) organized and privileges for Malays and the Malay- according to race- based principles. Cur- related groups are inscribed in Articles 152 rently, there are heated domestic debates and 153 of the Constitution. The privileges about whether the bumiputera matricu- range from quota protections in the fi elds lation schools, which only Malay students of education, scholarship, employment, attend, live up to the same standards as training, trade, business permits and so nonbumiputera colleges. Critics argue that on. The non- bumiputeras sometimes refer this is not the case. to these privileges as kulitifi cation ( kulit is The race- based quota system for uni- Malay for skin, race) in contrast to quali- versity admission is of special interest fi cation. They were implemented under here, because the special bumiputera priv- the NEP in 1971 and the New NDP in 1991. ileges have opened up an arena for Malay The special privileges defi ned in Article girls to study the classic masculine subject 153 of the Constitution are a highly sensi- of computer science. They are favoured on tive issue. For example, in December 2000, the grounds of the race ‘positive’ policy, 88 | ULF MELLSTRÖM

and granted student places that possibly class and gender. Drawing on the work of would not have been open without the Henri Lefebvre (1991) he shows how pub- quota- system. As Lagesen (2005: 50) also lic spaces can be understood in relation to notes, the proportion of Malay women in three forms of spatiality: spatial practices, computer science courses and at the fac- representational space and representa- ulty level at University of Malaya (UM) was tions of space. While trying to understand strongly infl uenced by the quota system. how women dominate computer science, As other researchers also have shown (Ng & I agree that it is crucial to understand the Thambiah, 1997; Ng, 1999; Luke, 2002; La- politics of space and bodies. According to gesen, 2005), Chinese and Indian women Nonini (1998: 341), spatial practices are the and men feel discriminated against by the embodied habitus and set of routines that race- based politics. During my study, such people engage in when they move through feelings were articulated, off-the- record, and appropriate space as users. Repre- by Chinese and Indian students, but never sentational space is affectively marked in openly expressed in class or mentioned by perceptions and memories, and represen- senior academic staff. Viji, an Indian male tations of space are visual signs such as student stated that he was considering maps. The concepts of spatial practice and doing his Master’s in computer science in representations of space are of foremost Chennai, India, because, he said: ‘We non- interest in the multiple ways. Race, class bumis are not getting a fair chance in this and gender mark out complex webs of spa- system.’ Other non-bumi students recur- tial practices and representations of space. rently raised similar concerns in informal These fundamental social categories reach conversations. On an aggregate level, there deeply into Malaysian society and contin- also were indications that the system dis- uously operate in public as well as in do- favours non-bumis , since the vast major- mestic spaces. The dynamics of a situated ity of the approximately 60,000 Malaysian body politics then has to be understood students that study overseas each year are in various intersections of these social non- bumiputeras (Lee, 1999).3 categories. To a large extent, race can be In this perspective, race becomes a more understood as a hierarchy of bodies. This pertinent and pervasive social category hierarchy also has become inextricably than gender, and it possibly and somewhat mixed with the hierarchy of masculinities paradoxically operates more effectively to (Connell, 2000) and femininities, as bod- include women than many other inclusion ies are confi gured and governed by local strategies that have tried thus far. However, gender discourses. The female majority in in this case, some Malay women are being computer science in Malaysia is a case that positively affected by these inclusion mea- illustrates this point. sures, while Indian and Chinese women The spatial associations of practices are not. with computers, in relation to masculine and feminine bodies, made up a recurrent theme in the interviews and the survey Situated Body Politics (see also Lagesen, 2005, 2007b). One stu- The articulation of gender, race and class dent, Zaharah, commented: ‘IT for me is in Malaysia has long been informed by sitting in an offi ce and do some business. state policies, nationalist discourses and Many men think that the IT- section is not religious cosmology (Peletz, 1996). Nonini real like engineering and media.’ This re- (1997, 1998, 1999) points to how Malay- mark is consistent with what almost all the sian public spaces are divided by race, interviewees said, which is that computer THE INTERSECTION OF GENDER, RACE AND CULTURAL BOUNDARIES | 89 technology is spatially associated with I interviewed said that women engineers indoor spaces and that such spaces are are not fi t for civil engineering (Mellström, suitable for women. This also implies that 2003: 49). That is, they are not fi t for out- the gendered associations with IT use and door work in the hot sun. At that very mo- computer science, which are familiar from ment, I could not help wondering about the studies of western nations, are more or chief engineer of the big project, a woman less absent in Malaysia. Lagesen (2007b) from mainland China who evidently had also points to the close spatial association spent uncountable hours in the hot sun between women, offi ce technologies and managing the project. As if the Malay en- indoor spaces. In other words, the spatial gineer had read my mind, he said: ‘Well, segregation of what counts as female and I mean the female engineers in Malaysia. male spaces seems to precede the gender Engineers from China, they are different.’ codifi cation of the technology. None of the This is one of many examples in my ma- computer science students I interviewed terials of how gender intersects with race associated computer technology with spe- as a social category that operates through cifi c masculine characteristics. Instead, different spatial practices, and helps men they expressed surprise that this was the to create spaces of their own and to keep case in western Europe. As Lagesen (2007b: women circumscribed by a situated body 14–15) also notes, according to her inter- politics with its plethora of rules for what viewees, hardware network jobs make up certain women can or cannot do. a masculine fi eld, because they are more Still, in the bigger picture it is no doubt mobile, physical, and involve outdoor ex- the case that computer science as a pro- posure not suitable to women. Similiarly, fessional activity and the IT sector as an interviewees in my study seemed to preindustrial realm have opened up new suppose that practices with IT were associ- emancipatory possibilities, spatial prac- ated with segregated gendered spaces. tices and representational spaces for Ma- However, when we examine how in- laysian women, although it may not be terviewees suppose that women’s work is the Cyberfeminist Utopia that one might situated with indoor spaces symbolically have been hoped for (cf. Lagesen, 2007b). connected to computing, it becomes clear So, even though the liberating effect of the that a division solely by gender would mis- association between computing and femi- represent the complex hierarchy of bodies. ninity is regulated within a nationalist and Computer science was generally perceived local gender discourse, there is reason for as a suitable occupation for women, irre- relative optimism that computer science spective of other social categories, while and IT work will offer major improvements civil engineering was defi ned as a mascu- for women in the Malaysian labour market, line fi eld because of its outdoor working as the nation navigates between infl uences environment and exposure to critical sit- of ‘western modernity’ and an emerging Is- uations, such as confronting foreign la- lamic modernity. bourers at construction sites and the like (see also Lagesen, 2007b).4 Still, it seems Techno- optimism and Emancipation that even here there is a certain degree of interpretative fl exibility with regard to According to a number of Malaysianists, what counts as ‘genuinely’ associated with gender politics in Malaysia has almost al- gender, race and spatial practices. For in- ways been superseded by race (see, for stance, at a dam project on the northern example, Ariffi n, 1999; Mohamad, 2002). part of the island, a Malay male engineer Given the totalizing ethnic politics 90 | ULF MELLSTRÖM

pervading Malaysian society, gender is symbolically associated with femininity. seldom problematized as a political issue. This infl ux opened up a representational The women’s movement in Malaysia has space for women that was implicitly and been organized either by women’s groups explicitly referred to by students I inter- entrenched in ethnic party politics, who viewed whose mothers or female relatives often support ruling ethnic elites, or by had worked in the electronics industry. feminist organizations organized through Penang (where USM is located) was a Free nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) Trade Zone (FTZ) as early as the 1970s, and and located at universities. Maznah much of the early electronics industry in Mohamed (2002: 217) distinguishes be- Malaysia was established there. Conse- tween the women’s movement at the cen- quently, it was not surprising that as many tre and the one at the periphery, but also as 34 (50%) of the Malay female students I concludes that even if there is ‘an ongoing interviewed had female relatives who had contest between these two streams there worked there in the electronics industry. 6 has also been moments when they col- Judging from responses to the survey and luded for common gains’. Although there interviews, even more of the respondents has never been a multicultural feminist associated electronics in general, and IT movement in Malaysia, certain causes work in particular, with the labour market have united women from different eth- for women. Farah, a 22-year- old Malay fe- nic groups. This was evident in the labour male student from the neighbouring state movement and the anti-colonial struggle of Kedah said: ‘Two of my aunts were work- for independence in the 1960s, as well as ing for AMD, two of my cousins for Sony. later in struggles against domestic violence They all do assembly work. Many women and for opening up the labour market in my kampung (village) are going to Pen- for women. ang for work in the factories.’ Of special interest here is how Malay Consequently, this indicates that the women entered IT work and the related conscious efforts to recruit low-paid women electronics industry. Before the infl ux into this industrial sector early on also had of large- scale export- led industrializa- some bearing on the symbolic effects and tion in the 1970s and 1980s, few Malay gender codifi cation of IT work. As such, this women were part of the labour force, and sector came to represent a new industrial Chinese women formed the majority of fe- segment without the old gendered and ra- male industrial workers (Mohamed, 2002: cialized associations of the manufacturing 223). When Malaysia opened its economy industry associated with pre- independence to the global market in the 1970s, export- days. In combination with a general under- oriented industries were favoured such supply of ‘woman- power’ in the electronics as textiles, garments and electronics. industry and a general shortage of computer Hundreds of thousands of Malay women professionals in the IT sector, there has poured into the new job opportunities, been what one might term a reversed sym- partly because of their perceived dexter- bolic gender appropriation of the ‘western’ ity and docility (Ong, 1987; Lie & Lund, conception of computing, electronics, and 1994; Levidow, 1996). 5 The mass recruit- IT work. However, as been pointed out ear- ment of this female, largely rural, labour lier, the electronics industry and IT work force both changed the composition of the have also fragmented the female labour electronics industry sector and opened up force. On the one hand, there is the low- a new labour market for Malay women, skilled technology employment, consistent thus making the electronics industry with the image of the ‘nimble- fi ngered’ THE INTERSECTION OF GENDER, RACE AND CULTURAL BOUNDARIES | 91 docile female worker, and on the other there space saying that she is highly qualifi ed. So, is the female professional IT worker and ac- do I send an unqualifi ed man because he is ademic. This is a highly charged and am- a man? No, I think it is not the choice that I bivalent symbolic space that nevertheless is would choose. occupied by a high proportion of women in a critically important industrial sector in a What Mahatmir expresses is also mir- developing nation. This development in the rored in recurrent media debates and IT sector also has had impact on wider gen- articulated at different levels of the Ma- der relations in Malaysian society and has laysian educational system, not least in challenged notions of an all- encompassing the state university system. Such debates global culture of masculine symbolism and are part of the Malaysian public discourse values connected with computing. as well as more local discussions. For example, a female professor and head of the computer science department at USM Under- achieving Men stressed that she would like to see more The fact that women dominate com- young Malay male students enrolled in her puter science and many other academic department but that: ‘They don’t seem mo- fi elds also goes hand in hand with a long- tivated enough and we also have problems standing concern that Malay women out- with young men dropping out of class.’ She perform men in Malaysian academia, as also mentioned that the department had well as in other areas of the society. This launched recruitment campaigns at local concern points directly to boys and men, matriculation colleges, ‘. . . but we mostly and particularly Malay men. As has been seem to reach the young girls’. The topic publicly expressed for example by Dr Ma- was recurrently discussed in the depart- hatmir Mohammad, former prime minis- ment, though differently, depending on ter and Malaysia’s dominant political fi gure who was interviewed and what their po- for two decades, young Malay boys are not sition was. A young lecturer in the depart- ambitious enough and Malay girls are more ment put the matter more bluntly when serious. In an interview in the English lan- she said, ‘[b]oys are raised that way. Always guage newspaper New Straits Times (29 De- used to roam around and not taking re- cember 2000), Mahatmir stated: sponsibility. I guess they think they will be head of families anyway so why bother?’ In the universities today, over 60% of the The arguments in this public debate students, especially among the Malays, often stress that Malay men must change are women and they are studying serious their mindsets and wake up to the new subjects—engineering, science, manage- world of knowledge-society, modernity ment, etc, whereas the boys are studying and technological development. Moreover, simple subjects which they think they can it is often argued, Malay men lag behind in pass, such as Bahasa Malaysia, Islamic Stud- the development of a pan-Malaysian iden- ies, and Social Sciences [sic!]. And when tity: they remain stuck in their kampung they come into the government, where are mentalities and need to mature and take we going to place them? They don’t have the on more responsibility. Ironically, in this capacity to deal with administration, while the women in the universities are studying context, Malay men are often portrayed as serious subjects to become the lawyers, the effeminate, withdrawn from the challenge doctors, the engineers, and the scientists. of forming the Bangsa Melayu character; They have shown that they can deliver, for not ‘men’ enough to cope with a moder- example, a woman who had been sent to nity ruled by a globalized market economy, 92 | ULF MELLSTRÖM

glossy consumerism and fi nancial na- a heteronormative masculinity based on tionalism. Accordingly, the emergence of successful participation in marketplace a new middle- class requires Malay men competition (Mellström, 1995: 170). Kim- to conform to a Malaysian State doctrine mel (1994: 122ff.) characterizes this as for Islamic modernity which emphasizes marketplace manhood, a kind of masculin- agama, raja and bahasa on the one hand, ity that sets standards for other men and and modernity through technological and women, and against which they are mea- fi nancial nationalism, on the other. The sured. It is a career- oriented form of mas- combination of a heavily male- dominated culinity in which members of an emerging bureaucratized Islam with a nationalism middle class are supposed to become phrased in terms of modernity, is ulti- agents of change and to embody larger mately based on a global corporate mas- spatial- temporal patterns of modernity culinity (see Connell, 2000). However, and globalized industry. although there is great variation, many According to this conception of modern Malay men consider this new masculin- masculinity, traditional rural Malay men, ity to be ‘foreign’ or ‘western’: an import accustomed to the confi nes of custom in which ‘[t]he “State” is metaphorized in ( adat) and a culture of kinship-relationality, men and the village in women, and the become a problem. They are village (kam- former seems more visible than the latter, pung) people, rejecting change, and their and hence more powerful and dominant’ association with a kampung lifestyle is met- (Karim, 1995: 26). This new conception of aphorized as effeminate in this discourse of masculinity does not necessarily comply State and market forces. This ‘foreign’ and with a bilateral view of gender in which so- globalized notion of a competitive market- cial relationships invert or blur older lines place manhood based on an industrialized of hierarchy and difference, with their re- masculinity is thus dissonant with classi- lationships of rank, class and gender. The cal Malay notions of (heteronormative) particular bilateralism of gender relations masculinity in which men’s identities and typical of South- East Asia and Malay cul- senses of self are formed and based in kin tures, which emphasize lack of formality and village relations. These older notions and avoidance of open confl ict, tend to defi ne masculinity, not by reference to be overlooked by ‘Eurocentric’ analyses men’s roles or positions on the economy or of power relations. As Errington (1990: 5) political system, but in terms of relations characterizes it: ‘[w]e also tend to identify (Peletz, 1996: 322ff.). Accordingly, mascu- “power” with activity, forcefulness, get- linity is enacted through locally grounded ting things done, instrumentality, and ef- social categories in daily life, such as fectiveness brought about calculation of brother, father, son, uncle, friend and hus- means to achieve goals’. The prevalent view band. Certain male relational roles, such as in many parts of island South- East Asia, father or husband, may have more domi- however, is that ‘to exert force, to make nant salience for the category of maleness explicit commands, or to engage in direct than would any position in the so-called activity—in other words, to exert “power” public arena (keeping in mind that such a in a Western sense—reveals a lack of spir- ‘westernized’ concept may not apply here). itual power and effective potency, and A different form of hetero-normativity is at consequently diminishes prestige’ (Karim, stake, as masculinity is performed or en- 1995: 17). Apparently, this notion of power acted through the interrelation between and manhood is rooted in the sphere of traditional social categories and in relation production, the public arena, presumably to reciprocal female roles. This is not say THE INTERSECTION OF GENDER, RACE AND CULTURAL BOUNDARIES | 93 that masculinity stands on equal footing female lecturers at USM as sources of in- with femininity, but to suggest that classical spiration (see also Lagesen, 2005, 2007b) Malay (hetero-normative) masculinity is a as well as alumni, who lectured in the social category composed by a number of department on a regular basis. Azlina, a relational roles, and contrasts with notions third- year student recalled, ‘this former of masculinity based on positions in the USM student came the other week, and global political economy. To conclude, the she was really successful, and everything traditional relational notion of masculinity she said was so inspiring.’ In other words, opens space for women’s participation in the gender- balanced composition of com- the positional sphere of a newly industri- puter science, combined with the number alizing nation such as Malaysia. Many of of women acting as role models through the responses from young women in the lecturing and working in IT businesses survey and interviews resonated with their were very important for opening the repre- anticipated careers and future life- space, sentational space of computer science. As with regard to family, and more generally Lagesen (2007b: 87) also notes, this com- in relation to masculinity, class and race. bination of factors opens up for a more The politics of space and, as shown earlier, fl exible gender coding of computing and the situated body politics in Malaysia, are computer science. Whether or not such of utmost importance for understanding symbolic openness also caused signifi cant how women have made, and can continue change in the social environment was be- to make, headway into the traditional (in yond the scope of this study, but since men the west) masculine outpost of computer have never dominated computer science technology. in Malaysia, respondents such as Azlina had every reason to believe that the openness in the job marked would continue. The Co- production of Computing and Even to raise questions on this topic often Gender in the Malaysian Context elicited surprise, such as in a response In the fi nal part of this paper I shall look more from a second-year student, Maimunah’s: closely into the co-production of comput- ‘Why do you ask that? Is that a problem?’ ing and women’s work by following threads When getting such responses I tried to ex- from the interviews and survey, which also plain that it is a problem in western coun- link closely to previous research (for ex- tries, which was why I was interested in the ample, Ng & Yong, 1995; Ng & Mohamad, Malaysian case. The theory that a critical 1997; Ng & Thambiah, 1997; Margolis & mass of women is necessary to secure a Fischer, 2002; Lagesen, 2005, 2007a,b). In gender- balanced recruitment is frequently the upper echelon of women’s IT work, discussed in research on women in science where most of the interviewed students and engineering, and computer science from computer classes at USM were likely in particular (Margolis & Fischer, 2002; to work in the future, it is evident that Lagesen, 2007b). However, in academic as numbers and role models matter. As many well as everyday discourse in computer as 51% of the female students answered science departments, it seems that gender- that they thought that IT- related occupa- balance simply isn’t discussed as a prob- tions, such as systems analyst, program- lem. A preoccupation with this question by mer, lecturer at the university and web western researchers like myself may strike designer, were available for them in the fu- respondents in this context as an impo- ture because they had seen other women sition of an irrelevant concern. For them, in those jobs. The students mentioned race and class, interspersed with certain 94 | ULF MELLSTRÖM

mainstreamed gendered questions, are Employment statistics indicate8 that more salient to concerns about exclusion there is a ‘leaky-pipeline’ effect in the ICT and inclusion in higher education and pro- sector as a whole, which is segregated in fessional careers. Gender is not necessarily terms of class and ethnic cleavages. Many articulated as an issue in the professional urban women pursue full-time profes- sphere, as long as it is confi ned to the fa- sional careers until about the age of 55 miliar symbolic as well as material spaces years (the average female retirement age in that I discussed earlier. In other words, Malaysia). They seem to be able to do so in gender is much less salient in relation to industry and academia without losing sta- race and class. More salient was the com- tus and career opportunities, while women bination of relational and positional roles: in many lower- income factory jobs tend to how the ‘public and private’ interrelate, or leave the workforce at an earlier age be- how women in computer science and IT- cause of pregnancies, childcare and other related work manage their juxtaposition. family obligations. A tentative conclusion Many of the female students in the survey about this pattern is that opportunities and interviews spoke of how they try to for women mirror the structure of a frag- balance family life with their careers. mented labour force in a highly stratifi ed For example, Atikah, a Malay female stu- multiracial society. In the science, engi- dent said, ‘[I]t is very important that I can neering and technology sectors, race, class take care of my family fi rst but also to make and age are no less crucial than gender is a career.’ Most of the female students, ir- for determining career opportunities. The respective of ethnicity, anticipated having ‘leaky pipeline’ effect may be hard to trace full responsibility for their future families— for women in science, engineering and IT with raising children and household work.7 professions, but the it surely can be ob- Male students did not anticipate such reserved in particular industrial sectors in sponsibility, although fi ve men mentioned which many women move out from the la- it. One conclusion that can be drawn from bour market between the ages of 35 or 40 such responses is that the domestic division years, or never enter it at all, depending on of labour was not questioned. Instead, fe- their race and class. male students anticipated having to fi nd vi- Female students also expressed a great able solutions for managing a professional deal of ambivalence in their responses career in combination with family respon- to my questions, probably refl ecting the sibilities. As one of them, Zaharah phrased pressures that many young women in con- it: ‘I will pursue a career until I reach 35, temporary Malaysia experience. These maybe 40, and then I will stay home with pressures include social demands that my children and husband.’ Of course, arise from a gender paradigm that works such responses did not mean that the fe- in parallel with a positional labour market male students actually will withdraw from in which many young women perform es- the labour market when it is time to raise pecially well for many years. This labour a family, and many said that they chose market has been open to them, due to a to study computer science because it can combination of race- based quota- politics, be combined with family responsibilities. a shortage of computer professionals, and Apparently, they imagine this to be easier a fl exible gender codifi cation system in with academic jobs, as Atikah pointed out: computing. Nevertheless, this openness ‘I would not mind to become a lecturer be- takes place in a social order that is still very cause it seems to be fl exible with family and much based in relational characteristics everything’ (see also Lagesen, 2005). and the ‘politics’ of family relations. THE INTERSECTION OF GENDER, RACE AND CULTURAL BOUNDARIES | 95

This ambivalent situation has much to sense of communality is much less pro- do with how the Malaysian state and nation nounced among the non- bumiputeras , are in the process of being metaphorized as the very term suggests. Approximately as an ‘extended family’ (see Yuval- Davis, one- half of the nonbumiputera students 1997; Hylland- Eriksen, 1998). In a newly said that they planned to enter the trans- developing postcolonial nation, with a national job market in countries such as distinctive nationalist state politics build- the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand and ing on agama, raja and bahasa , citizens Japan. Such plans seemed realistic, given are expected to share a familial sense of the large diaspora of Chinese and Indian commitment to these values. Such com- populations from Malaysia (Mellström, mitment evidently varies among the differ- 2003) that provide extensive transnational ent ethnic groups, due to past and present networks of mobility for students from politics of inclusion and exclusion in the those populations. imagined community (Anderson, 1991). In sum, a number of factors are salient However, the very idea of an extended na- in the co-production of gender and com- tional ‘family’, implying paternalistic fam- puting in the Malaysian context. In my ily and kinship relations at a national scale, view, these factors point to the temporal also supports gender relations that are im- and spatial variability and fl exibility of portant for how computer science and IT gender and technology relations. To dis- work was viewed with techno-optimism cern where, why and how technology is by many Malay women in my survey and being symbolized and codifi ed in Malaysia interviews. Their responses can be inter- requires a thorough and locally informed preted through this naturalized and ‘pri- gender analysis. mordial’ image of the nation (Yuval-Davis, 1997: 15), in which educational and oc- CONCLUSIONS cupational choices are connected with and dependent upon familial relations. In this paper I referred to an eclectic set Two quotes illustrate this point: ‘My par- of data on women and computer science ents want me to be someone that can give in Malaysia, and stressed the importance something in order to help my country’ of investigating how gender and technol- (Zanir, second-year student); ‘I must help ogy relations are embedded in specifi c to develop our country to be more techno- cultural contexts. With the aim of open- logically advanced’ (Azikah). ing up gender and technology studies to The desire to help build the nation is cross-cultural comparisons and intersec- strikingly recurrent in responses from tional analyses, I took up a familiar con- Malay female students, who speak of cern with the representation of women in going into a fi eld fi lled with promise for science and engineering, and examined a their own, their families’, and their na- case in which women dominate a fi eld— tion’s future. They are very explicit about computer science— that in western coun- the responsibility they feel for their fam- tries is predominantly a male domain. ilies and their country. In contrast to the Inspired by recent critical interventions in Malay female students, Chinese and In- feminist technology studies, I argue that dian students, irrespective of their gender, gender and technology studies need to expressed very different views. Responses pay more attention to culturally situated from male Malay students also differed, analyses that bring local gender discourses though to a lesser degree, from their fe- into the picture. Computing and computer male counterparts. Not surprisingly, the science are numerically dominated by 96 | ULF MELLSTRÖM

men and symbolically charged with mas- 4. This account refl ects the xenophobic character- culinity in many western countries, but izations of foreign guest workers in Malaysian in Malaysia they are situated within local media, ‘aliens’ as they sometimes are called ( The Malaysian Daily, The Star , 14 January 2000). gender discourses that change the polarity 5. From 1970 to 1980, female workers in the man- of the ‘charge’. It is thus crucial to investi- ufacturing sector increased from about 70,000 to gate relational aspects of gender, including about 300,000 (Mohamad, 2002: 223n. 5) positional relations of women and men 6. Many of the students are locally recruited, mean- with other relevant social categories in- ing that they come from nearby northern states of Malaysia, such as Penang, Perlis, Kedah or tersecting and shaping gender relations. Perak. A ‘relative’ can also mean a person in the I hope this paper has demonstrated why extended family, and generally Malay families it is of crucial importance to situate men, are large. power and technology in such local con- 7. This category made up 73% of the female students. texts. I also addressed a form of analytical 8. In the Malaysian labour force, participation rates vary by sex and age group. We can see that in asymmetry that characterizes the process the age group 25–34 years, men comprise 97.2% of coproduction thematic to gender and and women 61.6%; in age group 35–44 years, it is technology studies, by discussing a case 98.3% and 52.1%, respectively; and in the 45–54 in which particular practices that dictate year group, it is 94.7% and 44.5%, respectively. a priori which occupational and techno- This fl uctuates considerably, however, depending on the industrial sector, occupation and ed- logical spaces are appropriate for specifi c ucational diplomas in question. In the upper and gender categories. Accordingly, this paper high-income branch of the ICT sector, the effect casts doubt upon the notion that an all- seems less pronounced, according to the lectur- encompassing masculine culture of sci- ers and professors at USM that I interviewed. ence and engineering transcends time and However, there are no available data to confi rm this assessment. (Source: Labour Force Sur- space. It also offers a critique of a western vey Report, First Quarter 2007, Malaysia, Series bias of gender and technology studies, No. 10, No. 2/2007, August 2007, Department of which can lead to context- insensitive anal- Statistics.) yses of the cultural situatedness of gender and technology relations. REFERENCES Adams, Vincanne (2002) ‘Randomized Controlled NOTES Crime: Postcolonial Sciences in Alternative Med- I would like to thank the three anonymous re- icine Research’, Social Studies of Science , 32(5/6): viewers for great comments and a thorough 659–90. job of examining my drafts for this paper. I also Anderson, Benedict (1991) Imagined Communities: would like to thank Professor Michael Lynch, ed- Refl ections on the Origin and Spread of National- itor of Social Studies of Science, for invaluable ism (London: Verso). editing input, and Professor Lucy Suchman, col- Ariffi n, Omar (1993) Bangsa Melayu: Malay Concepts laborating editor, for encouraging comments and of Democracy and Community 1945–195 0 (Oxford: support. Oxford University Press). Ariffi n, Rohanna (1999) ‘Feminism in Malaysia: A His- 1. I have elaborated elsewhere (Mellström, 2009) on torical and Present Perspective of Women’s Strug- the survey results of this research. In this paper gles in Malaysia’, Women’s Studies International I am rather concerned with general theoretical Forum 22(4): 417–23. arguments. Bray, Francesca (2007) ‘Gender and Technology’, An- 2. A dialect I have mastered to a certain degree, be- nual Review of Anthropology 36:1–21. cause of earlier anthropological fi eldwork in Pen- Cockburn, Cynthia (1983) Male Dominance and Tech- ang (Mellström, 2003). nological Change (London: Pluto Press). 3. Available at http://aei.dest.gov.au/AEI/Publications Cockburn, Cynthia (1985) Machinery of Dominance: AndResearch/MarketDataSnapshots/ MDS_No05_ Women, Men and Technical Know-how (London: Mal_pdf.pdf (accessed 6 December 2008). Pluto Press). THE INTERSECTION OF GENDER, RACE AND CULTURAL BOUNDARIES | 97

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Interdisciplinary Approaches to Achieving Gendered Innovations in Science, Medicine, and Engineering1 Londa Schiebinger and Martina Schraudner

Gendered innovation uses gender as a di- technological excellence. Research must mension of quality in research process and ‘control’ for sex and gender. Sex and gender in the transfer of ideas to markets. It intro- analysis act as yet further controls— one set duces new analytical perspectives for con- among many standard methodologies— sidering the role of gender/sex similarities/ that serve to provide critical rigour in sci- differences as determinants of outcomes. ence. Gendered innovations also seek to To better understand gendered innova- create gender excellence; that is to say, tions, we distinguish three approaches to build inclusive scientifi c communities taken by policy makers, institutional ad- where men and women share equally at ministrators, and scientists and engineers all levels in decision making, policy, and over the past three decades (Schiebin- defi ning and carrying out research. Gen- ger 1999; 2008). The fi rst focuses on pro- dered innovations seek: 1) to create gen- grammes designed to increase women’s der equality; 2) to enhance creativity; 3) participation. The second approach seeks to stimulate economic and technological to increase women’s participation by trans- development (or business innovation); 4) forming research institutions. The third to make research more responsive to so- focuses on overcoming gender bias in sci- ciety. Innovation is what makes the world ence and technology by designing gender tick. Including gender analysis in science, analysis into all phases of basic and applied medicine, and engineering can spark cre- research— from setting priorities, to fund- ativity by offering new perspectives, posing decisions, to establishing project objec- ing new questions, and opening new areas tives and methodologies, to data gathering, to research. to evaluating results, and transferring ideas to markets. All three approaches are neces- FIXING THE NUMBERS OF WOMEN sary for gendered innovations: it is import- IN SCIENCE, MEDICINE, AND ant to point out, however, that increasing ENGINEERING women’s participation in science and engineering will not be successful without re- The fi rst and most straightforward ap- structuring institutions and incorporating proach to gendered innovations focuses on gender analysis into research. programmes to increase the participation The ultimate goal of gendered inno- of women in science, medicine, and engi- vations is to enhance scientific and neering. The rationale is that the dearth of INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO ACHIEVING GENDERED INNOVATIONS IN SCIENCE | 101 women scientists and engineers is a ‘pipe- FIXING THE INSTITUTIONS: line’ problem and that more women need TRANSFORMING STRUCTURES AND to be trained in technical fi elds. REMOVING BARRIERS Efforts in this area began in the 1980s as national governments and interna- Despite claims to objectivity and value- ti onal agencies began collecting sex- neutrality, academic institutions have disaggregated data to monitor women’s identifi able cultures that have developed participation. In 1982, the US National Sci- over time— and, historically, in the absence ence Foundation (NSF) published the fi rst of women (Hopkins 2006, 16; Margolis congressionally mandated report, Women and Fisher 2002; Rosser 1994; Schiebinger and Minorities in Science and Engineering 1989). To the extent that Western- style sci- (NSF 1982). In 2003, the European Com- ence has been replicated around the world, mission’s Directorate- General (DG) for Re- institutional structures, cultural stereo- search & Innovation published its fi rst She types, and divisions of labour disadvantage Figures, reporting trends in women’s par- women’s participation. The second gen- ticipation across EU member states (Euro- eral approach taken by government policy pean Commission 2003a). makers and academic administrators seeks In 1989, the US NSF established a Task to increase gender equality by transforming Force on Programs for Women which research institutions. Beginning in 1993, sought to support women’s careers in the US NSF implemented programmes de- science and engineering by increas- signed to create ‘positive and permanent ing women’s research funding, teaching changes in academic, social, and scientifi c women negotiation skills, and setting climates: in classrooms, laboratories, de- up mentoring networks—or, more gen- partments, institutions and organisations’ erally, making women more competi- (Rosser 2008). tive in the scientifi c workplace (Rosser The NSF’s robust ADVANCE programme, 2008). The European Commission recom- launched in 2001, has made the US a global mended similar measures in its 2000 Eu- leader in institutional transformation. This ropean Technology Assessment Network model programme assists institutions (not (ETAN) report, issued by the Helsinki individuals) in implementing structural group (ETAN 2000). This fi rst approach changes to improve women and underrep- seeks to increase women’s participation resented minorities’ success in science and by supporting women’s education and engineering. Institutional reform ranges careers. While critically important, this from counteracting subtle gender and eth- approach has also been criticized for ‘fi x- nic bias in hiring and promotion practices ing the women’. The implicit assumption to restructuring work/life balance by of- is that science, medicine, and technol- fering parental leave, supporting dual ca- ogy institutions and research are gender reers as well as child- and elder-care, and neutral. Consequently, this approach allowing for career breaks (NSFa; NSFb; fails to look beyond women’s careers to Lavaque-Manty and Stewart 2008, 165–81; the need to reform scientifi c institutions Schiebinger et al. 2008). and research methods. Achieving gender In 2010, the European Commission also equality requires examining gendered di- moved to the institutional level, funding pro- visions of labour in society at large and in jects that encourage research organizations science in particular, as well as consider- and universities to implement multi-year ing how research is conceptualized and action plans to address institutional barriers, carried out. such as recruitment, promotion, retention 102 | LONDA SCHIEBINGER AND MARTINA SCHRAUDNER

policies and practices, management and re- be expensive: Between 1997 and 2000, 10 search assessment standards, and policies drugs were withdrawn from the United for dualcareer couples and career breaks States market because of life- threatening (European Commission 2010b). In Germany, health effects—four of these were more universities have agreed to increase sub- dangerous to women. Part of the problem stantially the number of women leaders in is that preclinical research uses primar- decision- making positions by the year 2013 ily male animals (Beery and Zucker 2011; (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). Wald and Wu 2010; Zucker and Beery 2010; Much remains to be done to restruc- US GAO 2001). ture research and educational institutions The global leader in terms of this policy to achieve gender equality. The goals here approach is the European Commission’s is to create conditions that allow both DG Research & Innovation. In the 6th EU men and women’s careers to fl ourish— Framework Programme (FP6, 2002–2006), conditions that allow all faculty members the DG Research & Innovation imple- to achieve at the highest level. mented its cutting- edge policy requiring This second policy approach focuses on that grantees applying for the largest grants institutional reform while often assuming (the Integrated Projects and Networks of that what goes on inside institutions— basic Excellence grants) include a ‘gender di- and applied research—is gender neutral. mension’ in research. As stated in the call Restructuring institutions is important, but for proposals, research design must specify must be supplemented by efforts to elimi- ‘whether, and in what sense, sex and gen- nate gender bias from research and design. der are relevant in the objectives and the Change needs to come also at a third level: methodology of the project’ (European gendered innovations in scientifi c knowl- Commission 2003b). edge and technology design. The EU, however, scaled back its innovative research requirement in the FP7 (2007– 2013) because few researchers un- FIXING THE KNOWLEDGE: derstood how to addressing gender in ENHANCING EXCELLENCE BY research (CSES 2009). Where do other MAINSTREAMING GENDER ANALYSIS granting agencies stand on this issue? The INTO BASIC AND APPLIED RESEARCH DG Research & Innovation is one of the Western science—its methods, techniques, few research organizations that requires and epistemologies— is commonly cele- grantees to address gender analysis in ap- brated for producing objective and uni- plications for all fi elds, although several versal knowledge, transcending cultural European countries also include this as restraints. With respect to gender, ethnic- part of their national science policies— ity, and much else, however, science is not see, for example, Norway (Research Coun- value- neutral. Research has documented cil of Norway)2 and Spain (Sanchez de how gender inequalities, built into society Madariaga 2011). The US NSF currently has and research institutions, have infl uenced no programmes that address these issues. science, medicine, and technology (Insti- Most recently, the Bill and Melinda Gates tute of Medicine 2010; Klinge 2010; Wajc- Foundation has committed to including man 2007; Biihrer and Schraudner 2006; gender analysis in their agricultural grants Faulkner 2006; Schiebinger 1993; Harding (Gates Foundation). 1991). Gender bias in research limits sci- Policies requiring researchers to inte- entifi c creativity, excellence, and benefi ts grate gender analysis into research are more to society. Gender bias in research can also common in health research organizations. INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO ACHIEVING GENDERED INNOVATIONS IN SCIENCE | 103

Since 1993, the US National Institutes of There is an urgent need for gender ex- Health has required researchers to recon- perts, natural scientists, and engineers to ceptualize medical research to include work together to develop internationally women and minorities in federally-funded agreed upon methods of sex and gender research, though this has not been rig- analysis that can serve as a basis for un- orously enforced (NIH 1993). The World derstanding how gender functions in re- Health Organisation mainstreams gender search. Gender analysis must become an analysis into all ‘research, policies, pro- integral part of identifying priorities and grammes, projects, and initiatives’ (WHO designing research. As the World Health 2002). The Canadian Institutes of Health Organisation states, ‘It is not enough sim- Research has committed to ‘Integrating Sex ply to ‘add in’ a gender component late in and Gender into Health Research’ (CIHR a given project’s development. Research 2003). In Europe, Sweden’s Karolinska In- must consider gender from the beginning’ stitute and Germany’s Charite Universi- (WHO). Sex and gender analysis act as yet tatsmedizin have both created centres for further controls— one set among many— gender medicine that promote sex and providing critical rigour in science, medi- gender analysis in basic and clinical health cine, and engineering research, policy, and research (Haafkens and Klinge 2007). practice. Gender mainstreaming, adopted by the The European Commission DG Re- United Nations Fourth World Conference search & Innovation currently seeks to train on Women in Beijing (1995), entails the researchers in how to integrate sex and gen- systematic integration of gender equality der analysis into research (Yellow Window into all systems and structures, policies, 2009). In 2006, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, programmes, processes and projects, into the German industrial applied research ways of seeing and doing (Rees 2002). engine, was funded by the German Minis- Gender mainstreaming now needs to be try for Education and Research to prepare expanded to include gender analysis in a checklist to help technology designers basic and applied research. Mainstream- and engineers identify key gender compo- ing gender analysis into research creates nents of their projects (Schraudner 2010; ‘Gendered Innovations’. Biihrer and Schraudner 2006; Schraudner and Lukoschat 2006). The Austrian ‘FEM- tech’ and Danish ‘Female Interaction’ proj- Creating New Knowledge and Design ects, funded by national governments, also Gendered innovations use gender as a re- operationalize sex and gender analysis for source to create new knowledge. It is cru- designers (FEMtech; Schroder 2010). cially important to identify gender bias These projects demonstrate that more and understand how it operates in science, systematic approaches are required. In medicine, and engineering. But analysis 2009, the Clayman Institute for Gender Re- cannot stop there: focusing on bias is not search at Stanford University initiated the a productive strategy. Gender experts are Gendered Innovations in Science, Medi- now shifting emphasis away from critique cine, and Engineering Project (Gendered towards a positive research programme Innovations). This project has been ex- that employs gender analysis as a resource panded internationally through a collab- to achieve excellence in science, medicine, oration with the European Commission and engineering (Klinge 2008; Schiebinger in 2011 entitled Innovation through Gen- 2008; Wajcman 2007; Schraudner and Lu- der. Systematic methods of sex and gender koschat 2006; Faulkner 2001). analysis are being produced in a series of 104 | LONDA SCHIEBINGER AND MARTINA SCHRAUDNER

expert meetings in 2011 and 2012. These Example 1. Technology Design: meetings bring together gender experts, Pregnant Crash Test Dummies basic scientists, engineers, public health a. The problem: Conventional seatbelts do and medical experts, policy makers, and not fi t pregnant women properly, and in technology designers. the US, 82% of foetal deaths with known The purpose is to develop practical meth- causes result from motor vehicle collisions ods of sex and gender analysis for research- (Weiss et al. 2001, 1863). Because millions ers. Emerging methods of sex and gender of pregnant women drive every year, the use analysis are listed in Figure 7.1 . of seatbelts in pregnancy is a major safety The Gendered Innovation project demon- concern (Ventura et al. 2001, 1). When a lap strates methods through case studies. Each belt is placed over (rather than under) the section below presents a case study high- pregnant belly, force transmitted through lighting a problem, a method of sex or gender the uterus increases three- to fourfold analysis important to overcoming the prob- (Pearlman and Viano 1996, 977). Seatbelts lem, and a solution, or gendered innovation. were fi rst installed in automobiles in the 1950s, and commonly used since the late 1980s. However, it was not until 1996 that researchers invented pregnant crash test Methods of Sex and Gender Analysis dummies to test crash safety in foetuses. serve to enhance scientific and technological Even today, governments for the most part excellence. The methods listed here represent a do not mandate pregnant crash test dum- minimum set of issues that researchers should consider. As with any set of methods, researchers mies in automobile safety testing. will fine-tune methods to their specific enquiry. b. Methods of analysis—# 7 Reference The value of these methods depends, as with any models ( Figure 7.1 ): In much engineering intellectual endeavour, on the talent and creativity design, men are taken as the norm; women of the research team. are analysed as an afterthought and often 1. Formulating research questions/ studied from the perspective of how they Envisioning design deviate from the norm. This means that 2. Analysing research priorities and social women may be left out of the ‘discovery’ outcomes 3. Analysing sex phase—as a result, many devices are adap- 4. Analysing gender ted to women retrospectively, if at all. In 5. Analysing covariates (age, this case, the three- point seatbelt was de- socioeconomic status, region, etc.) signed with no attention to pregnancy. 6. Sampling 7. Analysing reference models Many years later, a supplementary strap 8. Analysing knowledge created through was developed (to hold conventional lap social divisions of labour (physical and belts in place) in efforts to fi x the origi- cognitive) nal design. A better solution might be a 9. Participatory research 10. Rethinking language and visual completely new basic design, a four- point representation seatbelt, perhaps, that works without a lap 11. Rethinking stereotypes belt (Duma et al. 2006, 1). From the start, 12. Analysing academic disciplines devices should be designed for a broad 13. Redefining key concepts 14. Rethinking theory population to enhance safety and ensure a 15. Rethinking decision-making processes broad user base. c. Gendered innovation: Solutions to safety testing are emerging from Sweden. Figure 7.1 Emerging Methods of Sex and Volvo’s ‘Linda’, designed in 2002 by me- Gender Analysis chanical engineer Laura Thackray, is the INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO ACHIEVING GENDERED INNOVATIONS IN SCIENCE | 105 world’s fi rst computer simulated pregnant 2003, 13). Women’s participation correlates crash-test dummy. ‘Linda’ generates data strongly with project sustainability as well modelling the effects of high-speed impact (Gross et al. 2001). on a woman and foetus. Automobile manufacturers, however, have yet to implement an alternative to the three- point seat belt. Example 3. Medical Research: d. Further comments: Using methods of Cardiovascular Disease sex and gender analysis from the beginning a. The problem: Cardiovascular disease is would have helped engineers avoid leaving the leading cause of death for women in out pregnant women. Sampling (method the United States, Europe, and in many #6, Figure 1) encourages designers to study developed countries (American Heart As- user populations and to include both men sociation 2011). Despite this, cardiovascu- and women in design development. These lar disease has long been defi ned as a male men and women should represent peo- disease, and clinical standards and treat- ple from different regions, social classes, ments have been developed for men. ages, reproductive status, etc. Analysing b. Methods of analysis: Researchers must sex (method #3, Figure 7.1 ) encourages de- analyse disease reference models (method signers to look at sex- specifi c characteris- #7, Figure 7.1 ). In the case of cardiovas- tics of men and women. Pregnancy should cular disease, myocardial infarction or not be overlooked. ‘heart attack’ symptoms were modelled in men and the results generalized to the entire population. Symptoms, however, Example 2. Civil Engineering to Secure can differ between men and women. Men Water Supplies typically experience pain in the chest and a. The problem: Millions of people world- left arm. Women often experience chest wide lack reliable, effi cient access to water. pain along with a series of less recognized b. Methods of analysis: Analysing social symptoms, such as nausea and vomiting, divisions of labour (method #8, Figure 7.1) pain in the right arm and back, fatigue, helps researchers understand who in a cold sweat, and dizziness. Because wom- community holds the knowledge required en’s symptoms do not match ‘standard’ for a particular project. Women, as tradi- (male) symptoms of myocardial infarction, tional water fetchers, often have special- women are often misdiagnosed and im- ized knowledge concerning water sources. properly treated (Mosca et al. 1997, 2468). Participatory research (method #9, Fig- c. Gendered innovation: Including ure 7.1) calls for women with specialized women as research subjects (analysing knowledge to be engaged in development sex, method #3, Figure 7.1 ) has led to the projects from the start. Increased diversity discovery of important sex differences in in research teams helps to enhance results. myocardial infarction symptoms, diag- c. Gendered innovation: Social divisions nostic testing, and preventative therapies. of labour in much of Africa make water pro- Further, analysing covariates (method #5, curement women’s work. Consequently, Figure 7.1) has led to the discovery that women have detailed knowledge of soils risk differs signifi cantly by ethnicity and and their water yield. A study of water proj- socioeconomic class. In the United States, ects in 13 nations revealed that ‘equal rep- African- American women have 28% higher resentation and participation by women cardiovascular disease mortality compared contributes to the success of community- to the overall female population (American managed water services’ (Postma et al. Heart Association 2011). 106 | LONDA SCHIEBINGER AND MARTINA SCHRAUDNER

Example 4. Osteoporosis: Sex and format data in ways that allow for system- Gender Analysis Also Benefi ts Men atic review or meta- analysis. a. The problem: It is important to under- c. Gendered innovation: Sex analysis stand that gender analysis relates to men is beginning to reveal that the sex of stem as well as women. Osteoporosis is a disease cells matters: clinical outcomes of stem cell traditionally seen as affecting postmeno- transplantation can differ depending on the pausal women, and men have historically sex of donor cells used, the sex of the host, been excluded from osteoporosis research the type of stem cells transplanted, and the in much the same way as women have disease being treated (Csete 2008, 232). been excluded from cardiovascular disease research. Current diagnostic criteria CONCLUSION AND for osteoporosis are based on the relation- RECOMMENDATIONS ship between bone mineral density (BMD) and fracture risk in postmenopausal white Employing gender analysis to stimulate women, resulting in under- diagnosis of innovation in science, medicine, and engi- osteoporosis in men (Faulkner and Or- neering involves interdisciplinary coordina- woll 2002, 87). Yet men suffer from a third tion throughout the research process— from of all osteoporotic- hip fractures, and have making policy about what fi elds of research higher average mortality than women with to fund, to refi ning methods of sex and gen- similar injuries (Sweet et al. 2009, 193). der analysis in basic and applied research, b. Methods of analysis: Examining sex in to the process of hiring and promoting fac- diagnostic reference models (method #7, ulty, to the reviewing of manuscripts for Figure 7.1 ) in osteoporosis research has bro- publication. Realizing the full potential of ken the gender paradigm and turned atten- gendered innovations in the next decade tion to understanding the disease in men. will also require international cooperation c. Gendered innovation: Diagnostic cri- to match the global reach of science and teria are beginning to include men (Cum- technology, as recognized in the European mings et al. 2006, 1550). Commission’s genSET Consensus Report and the United Nations resolutions on Gen- der, Science and Technology (genSET 2010, Example 5. Stem Cells: Analysing Sex 6; UN Women 2011). a. The problem: Stem cell research has Once methods of sex and gender anal- failed to evaluate differences between XX ysis are in place, there are a few further and XY stem cells (Wizemann et al. 2001). steps. These involve both researchers and By failing to consider sex, researchers may research institutions: be overlooking important aspects of how XX and XY cells work differently in human 1. Train current researchers and evalu- bodies. ators in gender methodology. The gen- b. Method of analysis: Analysing sex SET project offers a good model for how (method #3, Figure 7.1)— both report- to engage researchers as active partici- ing sex and designing research to analyse pants in gendered innovations (genSET data by sex—can lead to important break- 2010). throughs. Researchers need to: 1) identify 2. Hold senior management accountable the sex of cell lines; 2) prospectively design for developing evaluation standards that experiments for meaningful analysis of take into account proper implemen- sex differences of results (not all sex dif- tation of sex and gender analysis in references will be signifi cant); 3) record and search. There are several practical ways INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO ACHIEVING GENDERED INNOVATIONS IN SCIENCE | 107

to encourage researchers to develop pro- future scientists and engineers. In this fi ciency in sex and gender analysis: way, students in technical fi elds learn a. Granting agencies can require that methods of sex and gender analysis con- all applicants specify whether, and in tinuously throughout their studies. Text- what sense, sex and gender are rele- books should be revised to integrate sex vant in the objectives and the meth- and gender results and methods. odology of their project. Research projects that fulfi l this criterion might Innovation has been placed at the heart achieve a higher score for funding. of the Europe 2020 strategy (European Researchers might also achieve this Commission 2010a). Innovation is seen as score by demonstrating that sex or a way to address major social problems as gender is not relevant to a particular well as stimulate economic development. project. It is important, however, that Gendered innovations in science, medicine, the issue be addressed. and engineering employ sex and gender b. Hiring and promotion committees analysis as a resource to stimulate creativity, can evaluate researchers and educa- and by doing so enhance the lives of both tors on their success in implement- men and women. As this paper suggests, ing gender analysis. Knowledge and gender analysis sparks creativity by offering use of methods of sex and gender new perspectives, posing new questions, analysis can be one factor taken into and opening new areas to research. Can we consideration in hiring and promo- afford to ignore such opportunities? tion decisions. c. Editors of peer-reviewed journals can require sophisticated use of sex NOTES and gender methodology when se- 1. Parts of this paper were included in a keynote ad- lecting papers for publication. A num- dress for the Oesterreichische Forschungsgemein- ber of journals do this: the Journal of schaft by Londa Schiebinger and have been the American College of Cardiology, published in their proceedings: Wissenschaft und the Canadian Medical Association Gender, ed. Gottfried Magerl, Reinhard Neck, and Christiane Spiel. Vienna: Boehlau, 2011. 3 Journal, and Circulation , the Ameri- 2. ‘The Research Council views it as essential that can Heart Association journal. Nature gender perspectives are given adequate consid- is considering adopting this policy eration in research projects where this is relevant. (Nature Editorial 2010, 665). Journals Good research must take into account biological should also enforce consistent use of and social differences between women and men, and the gender dimension should be one of the key words such as ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ main pillars of the development of new knowl- to facilitate meta- analysis. edge. In research projects this dimension may be 3. Train the next generation in methods of manifested through the research questions ad- sex and gender analysis. Sex and gender dressed, the theoretical approaches chosen, the analysis should be taught throughout methodology applied, and in the efforts to assess whether the research results will have different the curriculum, including basic science, implications for women and men’. medicine, and engineering courses. It 3. Circulation (Journal of the American Heart As- is important that research institutions sociation) Instructions for Authors state: ‘Please support programmes in gender research provide sex-specifi c and/or racial/ethnic-specifi c where experts develop new knowledge data, when appropriate, in describing outcomes of epidemiologic analyses or clinical trials; or concerning gender, science, medicine, specifi cally state that no sex-based or racial/ and technology. Yet at the same time, ethnic-based differences were present’. http:// gender analysis must also be taught to content.onlinejacc.org/misc/ifora.dtl. (10/2/11) 108 | LONDA SCHIEBINGER AND MARTINA SCHRAUDNER

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CHAPTER 8

The Gender Gap in Patents Sue Rosser

Software engineer Joan Jetma works at a department made me aware of a new issue, very large global information technology critical for women in science, of which I company that prides itself on innovation had previously been ignorant. When he and rewards its employees for patenting fi rst brought the issue of gender and pat- innovative discoveries. Joan had observed ents to my attention, my reactions ranged that very few women in the company from how boring to who cares? Fortunately where she worked obtained patents. the new faculty member was persistent, When she did some research to determine bringing up the issue again at a reception, whether her observations were correct, she when he bumped into me in the hall, and learned that data are scarce on the num- fi nally when he made an appointment to ber of women who patent both inside and discuss it with me. outside her company. She discovered that On some level, I wondered if my resis- about 10 percent of the women obtained tance came from the realization that a gen- patents at her company. When her own der gap in patents would mean that women patent came up for review, she realized had been left out of the leading edge of sci- that all of the reviewers were men. ence yet again. Was this yet another new face of this old issue? After more than 30 Patents weigh heavily for some promotions years of studying issues of women, science, and career advancement in the company, and technology, and working actively on which considers itself a leader in innovation. the national and local levels to implement Not only do individuals who patent receive fi - programs (Rosser and Lane 2002b) to in- nancial rewards, but patenting can be a make or break difference for certain promotions, crease the numbers of women scientists For example, it’s impossible to become a Fel- and engineers, I couldn’t bear to recognize low or Distinguished Engineer without hav- the old pattern of women achieving parity ing patented at the company where I work. in one area, just as the men lead the shift to a new, different arena. My own career and research had long As a dean, of course, I felt obligated to made me aware of the importance of men- take the research interests of my faculty toring, institutional barriers, and leader- member seriously. The more I investigated ship in the careers of women scientists and the gender gap in patents, the more I began engineers, but it was not until recently that to see that it represents a very critical issue a young male faculty member in a different for women in science today. Although I 112 | SUE ROSSER

didn’t know very much about patents, as a in molecular biology, materials, and com- dean at a doctoral research extensive tech- puter science. These new fi elds have expe- nological institution, I was keenly aware of rienced remarkable growth. For example, the increasing signifi cance of technology patents in information technologies have transfer and commercialization of science. shown a fi vefold increase from the early In the United States, Japan, and many Eu- eighties (1980–1985) to the early twenty- ropean countries, most research universi- fi rst century (2000–2005) (Ashcraft and ties are placing increasing emphasis upon Breitzman 2007). innovation and applied research. This re- De-funding of higher education, partic- sults in blurring of boundaries between ularly by state legislatures, has forced pub- academia and industry. Technology trans- lic institutions into closer relationships fer and licensing offi ces and increased per- with corporations. Relatively fl at funding centages of total research funding coming from the federal government for research from industry, as well as confl ict of inter- and education in physical sciences and est policies that spell out ethical ways for engineering until the President’s proposed faculty to commercialize the products that 2009 budget, combined with fl attening result from their federally funded research of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) conducted at the university, mark the evi- budget after its doubling from 1998–2003 dence of the commercialization of science to support health and bioscience, provided and this blurring. Even the most distant further impetus for the university-industry faculty colleagues in humanities and fi ne relationship. The economic crash begin- arts become aware of the trend when they ning in 2008 has led to budget cuts for read about the unanimous 2006 decision universities that will ultimately impact re- of Texas A&M University to include inven- search productivity; the results of the Stim- tions in tenure and promotion decisions ulus Package remain to be seen. (Zaragoza 2008); when they serve on a uni- Spurred by several reports produced by versity tenure and promotion committee the National Science Board (NSB 2004), the where a lengthy discussion emerges over National Academy of Sciences (2007), and how much weight patents should be given the Council on Competitiveness (2005), compared to peer-reviewed publications the U.S. Congress has begun to recognize in a promotion decision; or when they science, technology, and innovation as cru- serve on the committee to determine how cial keys for insuring the competitive edge to modify existing policies on sabbaticals of the United States in the global economy. and research leaves for faculty who wish The tightening on visa restrictions in the to take one or more years away from the wake of September 11 underlined the de- classroom for a “start-up” company. pendence of the U.S. science and techno- Most faculty also recognize the driv- logical enterprise on students from other ers for this trend toward applied research countries and professionals who are im- and increasingly closer relationships be- migrants on H-1B visas. Globalization and tween the corporate world and academia. the fl attening of the world described by The exciting work emerging from new Thomas Friedman uncovered the possi- interdisciplinary fi elds such as biotech- bilities for loss of U.S. innovative competi- nology, nanotechnology, and information tiveness. In August 2007, the U.S. Congress technology have spawned many of these held hearings on future directions for sci- stimulating intellectual relationships. ence and technology in general and on Those very names suggest the application ways to improve the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act (technology) to basic science discoveries in particular, to rebalance incentives for THE GENDER GAP IN PATENTS | 113 patents, transfer, and licensing between of many scientists, engineers, and students corporations and universities. The focus to come to the United States. The projected on patents refl ects their signifi cance as a dearth of scientists and engineers resulting measure of innovation. In September, 2011 from the decrease in immigrant scientists a U.S. patent reform was signed, changing has caused the focus to shift to underuti- the law from fi rst to invent to fi rst to fi le or lized sources within the U.S. population to publish. fi ll the gap. Women represent the largest Much of the current funding available underutilized source. (See Chapter 3 for the from federal agencies, along with corpo- statistics on women in STEM.) rate funding, is now allocated to fund ap- Juxtaposing the increasing emphasis of plied research, commercialization, and global science and technology on innova- technology transfer. The funding as well as tion with the data on gender participation the bonuses, stock options, and hefty sal- in the science and technology workforce aries paid to scientists who serve on advi- reveals an additional issue of potential sory boards to start-up companies means consequence both for women scientists that a gender gap in patents signals the old and engineers as well as for the compet- dilemma of women again being left be- itiveness of the United States. The per- hind, since patents are a primary indicator centage of women granted patents ranks of technology transfer. signifi cantly lower than that of their male peers. Not only is the percentage of women obtaining patents lower than men, but it WOMEN IN SCIENCE AND also ranks very low relative to the percent- TECHNOLOGY age of women in the STEM disciplines. Just as globalization, constraints brought Curiosity drove me to explore the gen- on by September 11, and new interdisci- der gap data in different disciplines, sec- plinary fi elds in science and technology tors, and countries. The evidence proved have increased focus on commercializa- overwhelming. In all countries, in every tion of science and innovation in the United discipline, including those such as biology, States, they have also brought renewed at- in which women had begun to approach tention back to issues of women in science parity, the gender gap remained substan- and technology. Reports released from the tial, whether in government, academic, or National Academy of Sciences (2007) such private sector. as Rising Above the Gathering Storm, as well as Innovate America (Council on Com- MEASURES OF PRODUCTIVITY: petitiveness 2005), and Science and Engi- PATENTS AND PUBLICATIONS neering Indicators (National Science Board OBTAINED BY U.S. WOMEN 2004), spell out the anticipated workforce shortage. They also underline the extent A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted to which the U.S. science and engineering by a national government to an inventor workforce has depended upon students for a time-limited period in exchange for from other countries to provide well- public disclosure of the invention. Usually qualifi ed and motivated graduate students a patent application includes one or more and immigrant scientists and engineers to claims defi ning the invention, which must keep both U.S. industrial and academic be new, inventive, useful, or industrially science staffed. September 11, 2001 not applicable. Since national laws and inter- only caused entry problems via H-1B and national agreements govern patents, the student visas, but it also changed the desire procedures for granting them, as well as 114 | SUE ROSSER

the requirements and extent of exclusive women’s patents are more frequently cited rights, vary quite a bit depending upon than those of the men, suggesting a similar where the patent was granted. pattern to that found in earlier studies of Quantifying gender and patents be- publication rates in which men published comes a diffi cult exercise. Many patents more than women but that women’s pub- bear the names of several individuals, lications were cited more frequently (Long often including lawyers and other individ- 1993). Citation, in both patents and pub- uals who work for the company but who lications, refl ects the signifi cance or im- have little to do with the invention itself. portance of the work and how much other Some counts include all patents with at scientists or engineers use it as a basis for least one woman inventor. For example, reference for their work. a 2007 study from the National Center for A study restricted to a sample of 4,227 Women and Information Technology re- life science faculty found that 5.65% of the ported that from 1980 to 2005, approxi- women and 13.0% of the men held at least mately 9% of U.S.-invented IT patents had one patent, despite no signifi cant differ- at least one female inventor. Others use ences in publication patterns (Thursby and fractional counts. When the fraction of the Thursby 2005). The lower percentage of patent that can be counted as female is cal- women obtaining patents appears to hold culated, the overall percentage of female across sectors of government, academia, U.S.-invented IT patents drops to 4.7%, and industry (Stephan and El-Ganainy although the fractional percentage has in- 2007; U.S. Patent and Trademark Offi ce creased from 1.7% in 1980 to 6.1% in 2005 2003) with the exception of science-based (Ashcraft and Breitzman 2007). This posi- network fi rms in the biotechnology indus- tive increase in percentage of patents by try (Whittington and Smith-Doerr 2008), women occurred during a period when the where women are equally as likely as men percentage of women employed in IT de- to become involved in patenting, but still creased slightly, from 32% in 1983 to 27% do not patent as frequently as men. in 2005 (Ashcraft and Breitzman 2007). Women also tend to have lower pub- Nonetheless, these data underline that lication rates than men, but the gender 93.9% of U.S. origin patents come from disparities in publication rates are not as men, who constitute approximately 70% signifi cant as those for patents. For the of the U.S. IT workforce. The percentage of United States, Yu Xie and Kimberlee Shau- U.S. origin patents obtained by women in man (2003) document that women publish IT ranks well below their percentage in the at about 70–80% of the rate of men, based IT workforce. on 1988 and 1993 databases. In her study Although women are closer to parity in of tenured or tenure-track faculty in doc- numbers and percentages in the life sci- toral granting departments in computer ences, a similar gender gap pattern found science, chemistry, electrical engineering, in other fi elds with regard to patenting ap- microbiology, and physics in 1993–1994, pears to occur in the life sciences (Ding, Mary Frank Fox (2005) found that men Murray, and Stuart 2006). A study of more are twice as likely as women to publish 20 than 1,000 recipients of NIH training or more papers, while women are almost grants in cellular and molecular biology twice as likely as men to publish zero or revealed that 30% of men compared to 14% one paper. Fiona Murray and Leslie Gra- of women recipients had patented (Bun- ham (2007) found that men at “Big School” ker Whittington and Smith-Doerr 2005). had higher total publication counts (82 vs. In contrast, this same study revealed that 55) and higher publication counts per year THE GENDER GAP IN PATENTS | 115

(3.7 vs. 2.6) than women, although these a further complication to studying the gen- were not statistically signifi cant; however, der gap in patents. Catherine Ashcraft and the citation counts per paper were very Anthony Breitzman (2007) compared fe- similar (42 for men vs. 41 for women). male IT patenting rates in the United States The signifi cant difference between men and Japan. Fulvio Naldi and Ilaria Prenti and women was that men published 16% (2002) used large databases to study gender of their publications jointly with industry, differences in patenting and publications in while women published only 6% jointly the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, with industry (Murray and Graham 2007, Spain, and Sweden in biology, biomedi- table 1 ). cal research, chemistry, clinical medicine, An additional issue, not exactly paral- earth and space, engineering, mathemat- leled in citation counts for papers, arises ics, and physics. Frietsch et al. (2007) stu- surrounding quality or impact of patents. died gender differences in patenting and Patents are obtained both to protect new publications in those same fi elds and in inventions or ideas, as well as in business those same six countries plus eight oth- to prevent others from using or developers: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, ing linked components critical to the basic Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the operation of the invention. It is the latter United States. type of patent, particularly common in Using the Scopus database that covers computing, that many claim are “junk pat- more than 15,000 peer-reviewed journals ents” that are “putting too many patents of in the life sciences, health sciences, phys- dubious merit in the hands of people who ical sciences, and social sciences, Rainer can use them to drag companies and other Frietsch and colleagues (2007) found that inventors to court” (Tessler 2008, 1). One the share of female authors varied by coun- possible way to read the higher citation try between 21.5% (Switzerland) through count for women’s patents is to assume 28.3% (United States) to 38.6% (Italy). He that women hold fewer patents of “dubi- also found considerable variation by fi eld, ous merit” compared to men. with biology (33.9%), biomedicine (32.2%), and medicine (28.3%) having the largest share of female authors, while engineering INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS OF (20.4%), physics (18.1%), and mathematics PATENTS OBTAINED BY WOMEN (16.3%) had the least. Chemistry (25.3%) Unfortunately, the gender gap also appears and geosciences (21.8%) were intermedi- to hold internationally. Since patent of- ate. His data of share of female authors by fi ces do not record the gender of inventors discipline and country suggest that women for each patent (Ashcraft and Breitzman publish somewhat less than men in each 2007), relying on names makes determina- fi eld but that women’s publication rates tion of gender diffi cult in some instances, are signifi cantly higher than their patent- particularly for gender-ambiguous names ing rates in all countries and all fi elds. (Chris) or for names commonly applied All these studies document that in all to women in some countries and men in of these countries in all of the different others (Jean in the United States compared areas, the percentage of women obtain- to France). Using complicated and laboring patents is signifi cantly lower than that intensive techniques, researchers have of their male counterparts. Considerable evolved methodologies to match gender variation exists among the technological with patents for large databases interna- fi elds, with pharmaceutical (24.1%) and tionally. This reliance on names constitutes basic chemicals (12.5%) tending to have 116 | SUE ROSSER

higher percentages of patents obtained counterparts but it is less than the percent- by women, and machine-tools (2.3%) and age of women in STEM in the fi eld in the energy machinery (1.9%) having lower country. This raises the following ques- percentages in 2001 (Frietsch et al. 2007). tions: what are the impacts and nature of Within the IT industry, some variation oc- the gender gap, and what can be applied curred among subcategories, with women from women’s studies and gender studies obtaining about 8% (fractional count) to close this gender gap in patenting? of the computer software patents in the Both in the United States and interna- United States and about 6% (fractional tionally, the focus for scientifi c research count) of patents in other fi elds such as has shifted from basic to applied research hardware, semiconductors, communica- and innovation, for which one of the pri- tions, and peripherals. Relatively the same mary indicators is patents granted. If subcategory distributions held for Jap- women scientists and engineers are not anese women, but at lower percentages obtaining patents at rates comparable to overall, since Japanese women obtained their participation in the STEM workforce about 3.0–3.6% (fractional count) of pat- and at signifi cantly lower rates than their ents overall but 5.6% (fractional count) of male peers, then women are not partici- the software patents. pating in the new areas and directions for As suggested by the comparison of U.S. science and technology. This hurts women and Japanese women in IT, considerable scientists and engineers who are left out differences in the percentage of women of the leading-edge work in innovation. obtaining patents occur among countries. Women are then not seen as leaders in The study of patenting in 14 countries (Fri- their fi eld, which hurts women fi nancially etsch et al. 2007) documented that in gen- and in their professional advancement. eral the percentage of women’s patenting Commercialization of science can be ex- has increased during the past decade in all tremely lucrative, if the patent results in countries. However, substantial variations a product that is developed, brought to exist among countries, even within Europe. market, and is successful. Since patents Australia (13.7%), Spain (17.5%), and New “count” as a marker of success, similar to Zealand (14.0%) rank highest; Switzerland publications, and may even be required for (7.4%), Germany (5.9%), and Austria (4.5%) some bonuses and “fellow” status in some rank lowest. The United States (11.1%), industries, women’s small percentages of Sweden (9.3%), and Denmark (11.4%) rank patents also inhibit their professional ad- about midway in percentage of women vancement. Although men dominate pat- obtaining patents (Frietsch et al. 2007). In enting in all fi elds, some relative gender all countries, the percentage of women ob- differences in fi elds of patents exist. taining patents is less than the percentage of women in the STEM workforce. WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF GENDER Issues surrounding quantifi cation, qual- INEQUITY IN PATENTS? ity, and association of some names with a particular gender might raise doubts if the Having a relatively small number of women gender gap in patents were small or not obtaining patents hurts scientifi c inno- evident in all sectors, disciplines, or coun- vation, technology, and competitiveness tries. But the gap is substantial. In short, overall. As feminist critiques (Keller 1983; in all countries across all sectors and in all 1985) of science have revealed, science fi elds, the percentage of women obtain- is gendered in ways that bind objectivity ing patents is not only less than their male with masculinity so that a latent, diffuse THE GENDER GAP IN PATENTS | 117 assumption that scientists are working for patents often arise out of personal ex- toward the common good permeates ap- perience, it is not surprising that studies proaches and results of science, when (Macdonald 1992) of the patents obtained in fact it may be working for the good of by women and of women inventors doc- only some races, classes, and one gender. ument that women invent more technol- When women entered science in larger ogies related to reproduction or children. numbers, they revealed androcentric ap- Women also have invented many technol- proaches that included biased questions, ogies for the home (a patented house that approaches, and theories and conclusions cleans itself, using 68 separate devices), and drawn from data. Similarly, the predomi- for caretaking, particularly of children (dis- nance of men in patenting may mean that posable diapers and the pull-down-from- innovations useful for a broader popula- the-wall baby-changing stations found tion may not be developed. in public restrooms). If more women were Having large numbers of male engi- involved in commercialization, imagine neers and creators of technologies often the new, useful products that might be de- results in technologies that are useful from veloped to benefi t society. a male perspective. In addition to the military origins for the development and fund- REASONS FOR THE GENDER GAP ing of much technology (Barnaby 1981; IN INDUSTRY Norman 1979), which makes its civilian application less useful for women’s lives Exclusion or self-exclusion of women from (Cockburn 1983), technology for the home commercialization of science and patent- that is designed by men frequently focuses ing hurts both women and science, while on issues that are less important to women also shortchanging society. Patenting has users. For example, Anne-Jorunn Berg’s been integral to technical and scientifi c (1999) analysis of “smart houses” reveals fi rms for more than two centuries and that such houses do not include new tech- remains central and signifi cant for the nologies; instead they focus on “integra- culture of most science and technology tion, centralized control and regulation of corporations. As noted previously, not only all functions in the home” (306). “House- do those who patent reap signifi cant fi nan- work is no part of what this house will ‘do’ cial rewards and recognition, but a track for you” (307). Knowledge of housework record in obtaining patents is required for appears to be overlooked by the designers individuals to attain certain positions in of smart houses. As Ruth Schwartz Cow- their fi elds. As suggested in the previous an’s (1983) work suggests, the improved chapter, some scientists and engineers household technologies developed in the move back and forth among the private, fi rst half of the twentieth century actually academic, and government sectors. Since increased the amount of time housewives the gender gap in numbers of patents spent on housework and reduced their role obtained by women remains in industry, from general manager of servants, maiden where the rewards, incentives, and motiva- aunts, grandmothers, children, and oth- tions for patenting are more positive and ers, to an individual who worked alone clear, I thought that attempting to under- doing manual labor aided by household stand some of the reasons behind the gap appliances. in industry might help begin to understand Although men do dominate patenting the gap in academia, where the impact of in all fi elds, some relative gender differ- patents on the academic career path may ences in fi elds of patents exist. Since ideas be mixed or not well understood. 118 | SUE ROSSER

Interview Data and Methods small technology companies that women have different motivations and interests I conducted interviews with ten people, two that may make them less likely to patent. men and eight women, who served as software engineers, vice presidents, chief executive offi cers, or presidents of technology companies in the metro New York City area CEO Sharlane Levitan and in California’s Silicon Valley. Although Sharlane Levitan has worked in very large two individuals had worked at the same technology companies in a variety of roles, company in different positions during mostly on the marketing and development their entire careers, most had worked at a sides, as well as serving as CEO of two small variety of companies, both large and estab- technology companies. She believes that lished and small and startup. Interviewees one reason women patent at lower rates were obtained using the snowball method; than their workforce numbers in the IT at the close of each interview, I asked industry is that most women move to the who else in another company in the area marketing, development, and human re- I should ask these same questions to help source sides of the company. Although they me better understand the gender gap in may start in engineering or software devel- patenting. All names and other identifi ers opment, many women move into the oper- of interviewees have been changed. ationally oriented roles, which are less likely Each interviewee was asked the following to be areas from which patents emanate. fi ve questions: In general, women are less interested in 1. What is the percentage of women, com- technology and more interested in socially pared to men, obtaining patents at the oriented areas. I believe that the way to motivate women and retain them in technology company(ies) with which you have been is to emphasize context, creativity, and the associated? How does that compare arts side of technology for which women with the overall percentage of women in may be more hard-wired. Simultaneously, the company? I believe that most women do take a risk- 2. What role do patents play in advancing averse approach to their career that inhibits one’s career in the company? Are pat- their ability to think boldly and persistently ents becoming more or less important about one big idea that might be patentable. than they were 10 years ago? To overcome these differences in motivation 3. Why don’t women patent at the same and risk aversion, companies should make rates as men? What are the barriers? mentoring others in the process of patenting 4. How can we increase opportunities for part of performance plans and develop R&D training programs to teach women about women to patent? What actions is your the process of patenting. That would help company taking to facilitate this? to change the climate and motivation for 5. What (else) should I have asked about women to patent. women and patents? Levitan’s notions of women’s risk aver- The quotations that follow from three in- sion also seemed to stem from the fact that terviews are representative of the broader women are more interested in and occu- set of data collected. pied with children and family, which might I conducted an interview with technol- lead them to develop more patentable ogy sector CEO Sharlane Levitan.* Sharlane ideas in these arenas than in IT. Indeed, fi nds from her experience in both large and her contention receives some support from THE GENDER GAP IN PATENTS | 119 evidence derived from the studies of inven- with other questions about sector, publi- tions by women and surveys of patents ob- cation rates, incentives, and age. When he tained by women (Macdonald 1992) which fi nally accepted that the data for the gen- suggest that many women develop tech- der gap might be solid, he said, “I’m pretty nologies related to reproduction (e.g., Ny- sure that the women in R&D in my com- statin to prevent vaginal yeast infections), pany patent at the same rate as their many secondary sex characteristics (backless male counterparts.” He did admit, though, bra), or babies/children (folding crib). that he had never thought about gender or When I pressed her a bit, Sharlane admit- checked the data for his company, which ted that it might not be the biological differ- he became intrigued to examine. Rick Foot ences between men and women, but the was quite convinced that his view—that societal views of gender based on biological there could not be a gender gap in patent- differences as suggested by existentialist ing or if a gap did exist, it was proportional Simone de Beauvoir (1949) that resulted in to the low number of women in IT—was this gender gap in patenting in IT. absolutely true. When I interviewed women in indus- I conducted the following interview try about the gender gap in patenting, with Sal Calfi t*, a software engineer who they immediately knew what I was talking works at one of the largest global informa- about and told me what they believed to tion technology companies in the world. be the reasons the gap persists. In contrast, Concerned about the dearth of women when I spoke with men in industry, most obtaining patents in the company, she of the interview was spent challenging the formed a community to support them and data that the gap existed at all. After they help them learn the process. became convinced that the gap might be real, they stated that it might hold for other Software Engineer Sal Calfi t companies, but they were pretty sure it was not true for theirs, although they had never Sal had observed that very few women in thought about it or looked into it, as the my the company where she worked obtained interview with Rick Foot* reveals. patents. That stimulated her to start the support community for women. She sent an email to about 20 women in the com- President Rick Foot pany; she immediately received responses Rick Foot currently serves as president from all around the globe. In two years, and founder of a very successful IT inno- the community has grown to 600 women vation company. He has started up other who represent all sectors and all countries companies and headed several research where the company is located. and development operations. Friendly and generous with his time for the interview, he I believe that a variety of factors account began by explaining the patenting process. for the low numbers of patents obtained by He told me that he didn’t think there was women. Women look critically at themselves a gender gap in patenting in the industry and their ideas, wondering whether they are meritorious. They need someone both to en- but that it must result from the persistently courage and to guide them through the pro- low numbers of women in the industry. cess. Women also tend to be the workhorses When I explained the NCWIT study and on the team; they are more focused on get- the data showing that women patented at ting the job done than the external rewards. much lower rates than their participation I also believe that women have less ac- in the IT workforce, he challenged the data cess to networks, which is why the network 120 | SUE ROSSER

I created provides a lifeline for these women. patent. Women faculty reported fewer op- The women seem to love the community portunities and referrals from collegial atmosphere; they appear to crave the brain- networks to participate in the commercial storming, support, and nurturing atmo- marketplace by being asked to consult, sphere. Communities of the company are serve on science advisory boards, and in- now springing up in China and India with teract with industry, resulting in women large memberships of women. becoming less socialized to commercial science. This led to women having fewer In setting up the online support com- chances, relative to their male colleagues, munity for women in her company, Sal to resolve ambiguities that many life scien- Calfi t tries to provide access and level the tists hold about commercial science. playing fi eld for women in other coun- Murray and Graham (2007) then appear tries. The interest of women in India and to move beyond issues of access to explore China working for the corporation in the what might be described as almost a psycho- online communities to support patenting analytic approach, reminiscent of the work refl ects the varying complex aspects of the of Evelyn Fox Keller. They state, “Partly be- inter-relationships among developed and cause of the dearth of women, the practices developing countries in general and be- of commercial science, including those sur- tween the particular cultures of the colo- rounding money and competition, became nized and colonizing country. constructed as male” (Murray and Graham The particular forms and ways that these 2007, 682). Murray and Graham found shape and play out vary, depending upon that male constructions of “these intersec- the history, culture, geography, and dura- tions were reinforced across generations tion of colonization for both the colonized by homophily in mentoring and networks, and colonizing countries. For example, work-family issues, and broader societal the IT industry uses subcontracted female stereotypes towards women in commercial labor in developing countries, particularly roles” (Murray and Graham 2007). Although for software development. Practically, the the effects were more severe on senior ties developed between colony and colo- women, in the “entire population of junior nizer, as well as the language of the colo- faculty, 44% of men have been granted nizer learned by the colonized during the patents compared to only 11% of women.” period of colonization, means that former Although not stated explicitly, the pres- relationships continue in the neocolonial ence of the continuing gap even among modern world (Rosser 2005, 15–16). junior women implies that the liberal Using feminist theoretical frameworks feminist approach of eliminating barriers to contextualize responses of interview- will not be suffi cient, as long as organi- ees provides some further insights into the zational and societal stereotypes remain gender gap in patenting in industry. Some unchallenged. of the studies about the gender gap in pat- Paula Stephan and Asmaa El-Ganainy enting for academic women also point to (2007) suggest that one aspect of the orga- issues of access and discrimination. For nizational context argument—that more example, Murray and Graham (2007) con- men than women are employed at higher ducted semi-structured interviews of 56 ranks at doctoral research extensive insti- life science faculty about their experiences tutions where most patenting occurs— with commercial science at “Big School.” only partially accounts for the gender Only 23% of women faculty had patented, gap. Although they appear to recognize while 74% of men faculty hold at least one some of the structural and power issues THE GENDER GAP IN PATENTS | 121 surrounding why doctoral research ex- include more women than those of men. tensive institutions with high prestige and Women scientists may have fewer gradu- better salaries are dominated by men, they ate students and postdocs than men and do not really critique these organizational less diverse networks than men. structures. The predominance of men employed at research I institutions, where Some women, particularly those coming wages are higher and hours are longer, re- from a socialist feminist perspective, pur- sults partly from a culture that is less family- posely avoid commercialization of their friendly than that found at many less elite research which they view as “selling their higher education institutions. science” to pander to capitalism. Current Stephan and El-Ganainy (2007) provide intellectual property rights agreements evidence from various studies to suggest and laws provide opportunities for choices the following explanations for the gap, in in technology development that further addition to employment at doctoral re- exacerbate class differences by transferring search extensive institutions: technologies developed using public mon- eys to the private realm through patents. • Women are more risk averse than men The decisions regarding which products regarding fi nancial decisions and may are developed falls under the infl uence of have less interest in money and a lower capitalist interests in profi t margins. Such comfort level with fi nancial transactions. intellectual property rights function as a • Women dislike competition more than form of privatization (Mohanty 1997). They men, and commercial science is per- allow decisions about which products will ceived as competitive. be developed to occur in the private, rather • Women are less comfortable selling than the public, realm. This results in cap- themselves and their science in the en- italist interests in the bottom line, rather trepreneurial manner needed for com- than public needs and interests, dictat- mercialization. ing which “products” are developed. New • Women are less likely to seek out oppor- technologies in computer science and en- tunities to participate in commercial gineering are often developed using federal science. grants (paid for by taxes). In the patenting • Women may choose areas for research of intellectual property, rights (and profi ts) that are less compatible with commer- get transferred from the public who paid cialization. for the research with their tax dollars, to • Women have fewer characteristics such the private company, institution, or indi- as high productivity and a “title” that vidual who controls the patent. Socialist venture capitalists like. feminists might view this as a transfer from • Compared to men, women have more the pockets of the working class, who pay family constraints which they perceive the taxes to underwrite federal research, as a tradeoff with their entrepreneurial to the patent holders in the private sector activities, who will reap massive profi ts, serving the • Women faculty may be less likely to be interests of bourgeois capitalists. located in one of the three commercial- Understanding that middle- and upper- ization geographic “hot spots” in Califor- class men create and design most new nia, Massachusetts, or North Carolina. technology, along with serving as the • Women tend to have fewer peers in- sources of money for design and creation, volved in commercialization, partly be- explains much about whose needs are met cause their collegial networks are likely to by current technology and its design. The 122 | SUE ROSSER

male norm is often used in technology de- of women and be adapted for the spaces sign, resulting in the exclusion of women where women spend time. Socialist fem- even as users of the technology. For ex- inism would suggest that the allocation ample, military regulations often apply of resources for technology development Military Standard 1472 of anthropometric should be determined by greatest benefi t data so that systems dimensions use the for the common good. For example, now 95th and 5th percentile of male dimen- that a larger percentage of the population sions in designing weapons systems. This is older, perhaps more technology to ease led to the cockpits of airplanes being de- daily life for the elderly will be invented. signed to fi t the dimensions of 90 percent Venture capitalists may have a higher of the male military recruits (Weber 1997). comfort level with men than women since This worked relatively well as long as the most venture capitalists are men (Murray military was entirely male. In the case of and Graham 2007). Gender discounting the joint Primary Aircraft Training System (viewing the accomplishments of women (JPATS), used by both the navy and air force differently from those of men, when all else to train the pilots, the application of the is equal) of women’s work by industry may standard accommodated the 5th through lead to fewer women being asked to partic- 95th percentile (90 percent) of males, but ipate in commercialization. only approximately the 65th through 95th In brief, although more research on percentile (30 percent) of females. The pol- the reasons for the gender gap needs to icy decision by Secretary of Defense Les be undertaken, it appears that a variety of Aspin (1993, 10) to increase the percent- factors concerning attitudes and socializa- age of women pilots, uncovered the gen- tion of women, balancing work and fam- der bias in the cockpit design. Designed ily, sexist attitudes of venture capitalists to exclude only 10 percent of male recruits and industrial partners, as well as women’s by its dimensions, the cockpit excluded differing collegial networks and research 70 percent of women recruits, making it focus, may serve as major contributors. extremely diffi cult to meet the military’s Gender discounting of women’s scientifi c policy goal of increasing the number of work by industry, greater comfort level of women pilots. The offi cers initially reacted venture capitalists with men than women, by assuming that the technology refl ected fewer opportunities for commercialization the best or only design possible and that open to women, broader and more varied the goal for the percentage of women pi- collegial networks available to men, and a lots would have to be lowered and/or the boy’s club atmosphere imply exclusion and number of tall women recruits would have being locked out, if not actual discrimina- to be increased. This initial reaction, which tion against women in commercialization represented the world viewpoint of men, of science. These suggest that the gender changed over time. When political coali- gap in patents is a feminist issue to which tions, the Tailhook scandal, and feminist theories from gender and women’s studies groups reinforced the policy goal, a new might usefully be applied. cockpit design emerged which reduced the minimum sitting height from 34 to 32.8 WHAT CAN WE APPLY FROM GENDER inches, thereby increasing the percentage AND WOMEN’S STUDIES TO CLOSE of eligible women (Weber 1997, 239). THE PATENTING GENDER GAP? Imagining women as designers, as well as users, of technology suggests that These “explanations” given by Stephan and more technologies might meet the needs El-Ganainy parallel many of the “reasons” THE GENDER GAP IN PATENTS | 123 elaborated during the last quarter century investment community should actively for why women do not participate in sci- seek out and assess ideas from women, as ence. Many scholars who study women in well as men, scientists. science and engineering have suggested Using the policy interventions sug- solutions or policy initiatives that men- gested by Murray and Graham, the “ex- tors, departments, and institutions can planations” for the gender gap provided undertake to attract and retain women by Stephan and El Ganainy, who offer no in science. explicit policy interventions, coupled In 1990, I suggested ideas to make sci- with evidence of different areas in which ence more female-friendly (Rosser 1990). women have patented (MacDonald 1992; Considering this list makes me wonder Frietsch et al. 2007) as a basis, I modifi ed if adapting some of these ideas to issues my earlier ideas of ways to make patent- raised about gender and patenting could ing more female-friendly. They are divided be useful in attracting more women to into suggestions for faculty, institutions commercialization of science. Murray and and their technology transfer offi ces, cor- Graham (2007) suggest policy interven- porations and venture capitalists, and tions for faculty PhD advisors, for institu- women scientists. tions and their institutional technology transfer offi ces, and for the industrial and investment communities to facilitate SUGGESTIONS FOR WOMEN women’s participation in commercial sci- SCIENTISTS ence to “ensure that those scientifi c ideas with important commercial relevance are 1. Consider expanding your scientifi c re- not squandered” (Murray and Graham search agenda to include commercial- 2007, 583). These interventions include ization. This may mean overcoming suggestions to make certain that commer- notions about the purity of what counts cially active PhD advisors provide women as good science. and men students with the same, appro- 2. Formulate hypotheses that focus on priate mentoring experiences including gender as a crucial part of the commer- encouraging all students to look into com- cialization/patenting decision. For ex- mercial science, facilitating ties to indus- ample, in initial experimental design, trial and other sponsors who want to “buy” ask whether a particular drug works their ideas, and demonstrating, especially differently in males and females. Might to women, how to sell their science with- a drug cure an illness in both men and out violating their scientifi c integrity. They women or just men? Might an invention suggest that institutions appoint more be adapted for a new product, especially qualifi ed women to high-level adminis- useful to women? trative positions to encourage industry to 3. Consider basic research problems that look more carefully at their science and might lead to patents and commercial- leadership capabilities, and appoint them ization of products to help with complex to scientifi c advisory boards. Technology problems more commonly dealt with by transfer offi ces should provide legitimacy women in the home, such as child care- and support for women faculty to navi- giving, housecleaning, and care for the gate the commercial science marketplace. elderly. After being made aware of the data doc- 4. Make a conscious effort to broaden net- umenting their leadership role in foster- works to include both older and younger ing old boy networks, the industrial and men and women scientists. 124 | SUE ROSSER

SUGGESTIONS FOR CORPORATIONS particular who are more likely than AND VENTURE CAPITALISTS their male colleagues to live outside one of the geographic hotspots for 1. Collect data, disaggregated by gender, commercialization. on who patents. 10. Consider other ways to fi nd ideas for 2. Expand the scientifi c research agendas commercialization that rely less on open to commercialization by seeking self-promotion and competition with out the work of women scientists to ex- others and more on understanding the plore its potential. potential based upon solid explana- 3. Explore science and ideas that have tion of the science. not traditionally been considered for 11. Make technology transfer and commer- commercialization because of gender cialization companies more family- discounting. friendly through on-site day care, hold- 4. Focus on gender as a crucial part of the ing meetings during business hours, commercialization/patenting decision. and use of conferencing technology to Does a particular drug work differ- limit necessity for travel. ently in males and females or cure an 12. Articulate the goals for commercial- illness in both men and women or just ization of science to link them directly men? Could this invention be adapted with making society better and help- for a new product, especially useful to ing people to provide powerful incen- women, children, or the elderly? tives for women to patent. 5. Include women on scientifi c advisory boards of corporations. 6. Make a conscious effort to overcome SUGGESTIONS FOR MALE FACULTY, the boys’ club atmosphere of com- INSTITUTIONS, AND TECHNOLOGY mercialization and to broaden net- TRANSFER OFFICES works to include both men and women scientists. 1. Make transparent all stages of the com- 7. Expand recruitment for commerciali- mercialization process, and provide zation ideas beyond males who self- both male and female students with promote very aggressively to include equal access, mentoring, and connec- women who may initially appear less tions to each stage of the process. entrepreneurial. 2. Incorporate discussion of how to build a 8. Move beyond the signal shock stage of business plan and how to understand fi - only inviting women with very high- nancial risks in commercialization into level titles such as dean, provost, vice scientifi c training for all students, both president, or president of the university male and female, just as learning to to serve on scientifi c advisory boards write grants, build budgets, and manage to seek out women scientists who have a laboratory are now considered neces- not chosen the administrative career sary constituents of graduate training in path but who have excellent ideas for science and engineering. commercialization. 3. Encourage all students to undertake 9. Use national and international con- research agendas that include some ferences to seek out scientifi c research “high-risk” ideas and experiments and ideas ripe for commercialization, rec- some “lower-risk” ideas and experi- ognizing that this may be an excel- ments. This insures that women have lent way to reach women scientists in, experience with higher-risk ideas and THE GENDER GAP IN PATENTS | 125

learn that it’s OK to fail. In contrast, TIMING AND A MODEL TO CLOSE some risk-seeking male students may THE GENDER GAP need to learn to balance their high-risk research agenda with the benefi ts of Why was the gap discovered so recently? some lower-risk ideas. Now that we’ve noticed the gap, when, if 4. Alternate discussion, experiments, and ever, will it be closed? How long will it take problems assigned between basic and for women scientists, corporations, ven- applied science in the classroom and lab- ture capitalists, male faculty, technology oratory to facilitate students’ perceiving transfer offi ces, and institutions to imple- a less sharp dichotomy between science ment the policies others and I have sug- and technology transfer and overcome gested as a way to close this gap? Since the their aversion to commercialization. commercialization of science only began 5. Include information from economics, to explode in academia in the 1970s and business, and policy, along with science was particularly fueled by the passage of courses in training to socialize students the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980, encouraging to commercialization and how big sci- academics to claim intellectual property ence works. and work with universities to license these 6. Insure that mentoring of students is rights to fi rms, in some ways it is not sur- gender-neutral by inviting all students, prising that the “gender gap” has relatively both male and female, to explore com- recently been identifi ed (Ding, Murray, mercialization potential of their ideas, and Stuart 2006; Bunker Whittington and and by making all parts of the pro- Smith-Doerr 2005) and that researchers cess transparent. Mentoring should are only beginning to explore the dimen- also be gender appropriate, in recog- sions of the gap across different fi elds, nizing that women may be more risk sectors, and countries (Ashcraft and Breit- averse, less inclined to sell science, zman 2007; Frietsch et al. 2007; Naldi and and have different constraints, Pro- Prenti 2002, 2004). vide women and men with a variety of To someone like me, who has focused approaches to address their particular on women in science, women’s studies, constraints. and curriculum transformation for more 7. Include women in signifi cant adminis- than 30 years, it smacks of a familiar pat- trative positions in the university. This tern: women are excluded until someone not only provides leadership oppor- “discovers” their absence. Then women tunities and role models for women become integrated over time in what can in the institution, but it also sends be described as a series of stages or phases. the shock signal corporations use to In Female Friendly Science (1990), I identify women with outstanding proposed a fi ve-stage model for curric- credentials. ulum transformation to aid in including 8. Provide courses and online training and more information on women and men of apprenticeship models/ mentors to color. Built on models developed by fem- teach scientists how to sell their ideas to inist scholars working in other disciplines venture capitalists, angel funders, and (McIntosh 1984; Schuster and Van Dyne corporations. 1985; Tetreault 1985), the following model 9. Emphasize the social usefulness, espe- is specifi c for science and mathematics. cially to help human beings and the en- Stage 1. Absence of women not noted. vironment, of technology transfer and This is the traditional approach to science commercialization. and the curriculum from the perspective of 126 | SUE ROSSER

the white, Eurocentric, middle- to upper- in patents. My junior colleague’s interest class male in which the absence of women in the reasons for, and parameters sur- is not noted. The assumption is that gen- rounding, the gender gap in patents, cou- der affects neither those who become sci- pled with several recent high-profi le studies entists nor the science produced. (Ashcraft and Breitzman 2007; Ding et al. Stage 2. Women as an add-on. This stage 2006; Murray and Graham 2007; Stephan recognizes that most scientists are male and El Ganainy 2007) which focused on and that science may refl ect a masculine women’s low rates of patenting suggest that perspective on the physical, natural world. we are currently moving toward stage 3, A few exceptional women such as Nobel centering on barriers or problems that pre- laureates who have achieved the highest vent women from patenting. A 2008 article success as defi ned by the traditional stan- on the dearth of women in high positions dards of the discipline may be accepted in in Silicon Valley (Ross 2008) exemplifi es the the scientifi c community and included in problem stage. The article states that “al- the curriculum. most one-third of women at the ‘middle- Stage 3. Women as a problem. Barriers level’ of their high-tech careers are planning that prevent women from entering sci- to quit primarily because of perceived bar- ence are identifi ed. Women are recognized riers to advancement” (2008). as a problem, anomaly, or absence from The time when commercialization and science and the curriculum. Women may technology transfer began to take off in be seen as victims, as protesters, or as de- the late 1970s to the early 1980s until the prived or defective variants, who deviate “discovery” of the gender gap in about from the white, middle- to upper-class 2004–2005 constitutes stage 1, when the norm of the male scientist. absence of women is not noted. Occa- Stage 4. Women as the focus. Women sional articles highlighting star women scientists and their unique contributions who patent at high rates exemplify stage are sought. The extent to which the role 2, exceptional women who patent at the of women has been overlooked, misun- same rates under the same conditions as derstood, or attributed to male colleagues men in male-dominated fi elds. Stephanie throughout the history of science is ex- Louise Kwolek exemplifi es such a stage 2 plored to determine women’s scientifi c woman. She invented Kevlar, a synthetic achievements. Questions are asked about material used in bullet-proof vests that is new perspectives that might result when fi ve times stronger than the same weight women become the focus in topics chosen of steel, while she worked as a chemist at for study. New methods may be used and DuPont and obtained 28 patents during language in which data and theories are her 40 year career (About. com.Inventors described may shift, improving the quality 2006). A recent spate of attention to the of science. gender gap as demonstrated by publica- Stage 5. Inclusive science. Scientists, tions, NSF-funded projects, and confer- scientifi c research, and science curriculum ence presentations begins to encroach on are redefi ned and reconstructed to include stage 4: focus on the gender gap, although diversity in terms of gender, as well as race, it seems unlikely that more than a few indi- class, age, and other factors. viduals have reached stage 4. Thinking of the stage model and its In short, most scientists, engineers, and possibilities for explaining phenomena of academia have not noticed the gender curriculum drew my attention to the pos- gap and remain in stage 1. Even individu- sibility of its application to the gender gap als involved in technology transfer appear THE GENDER GAP IN PATENTS | 127 unaware of the absence of women until the gender gap among younger cohorts of it is brought to their attention. Once they women suggests progression through the think about it, they typically agree that very stages. First, the numbers and percent- few women patent in the fi elds with which ages of women obtaining patents have they are familiar. After some thought, increased over time. Overall, the U.S. Pat- they’ll often mention one or two women in ent and Trademark Offi ce reports that their fi eld who do obtain patents, exempli- the percentage of U.S. origin patents in fying stage 2. Most will then begin to move all categories which include at least one to stage 3 when they wonder what prevents woman inventor has increased from 3.7% women from patenting at the same rate as (1977–1988) to 10.9% in 2002, and that the men. The 2008 study from Stanford’s Clay- number of U.S. origin patents that include man Institute and the Anita Borg Institute, at least one woman inventor has also been titled Climbing the Technical Ladder: Ob- increasing (U.S. Patent and Trademark Of- stacles and Solutions for Mid-level Women fi ce 2003). From 1977 to 2002, women in- in Technology (Simard, et al. 2008) high- ventors showed the greatest participation lights the problem aspect of this stage 3. in U.S. origin patents in design (11.5%) and A gender gap also seems to apply in the plant (11.7%) patenting. By 2002, 12.9% of recognition of the gender gap in patents. the design patents and 21.2% of the plant Men and women outside of fi elds where patents had at least one woman inventor. technology transfer and commercialization In 2002, 19.6% of chemical utility patents occur are equally ignorant of the gender gap had at least one woman inventor, but elec- in patents. In fi elds where technology trans- trical (7.0%) and mechanical (7.8%) utility fer and commercialization are prevalent, patents with one woman inventor ranked men appear much less aware of the gender much lower. gap than women. Most women in these Second, younger women are patenting same fi elds are completely aware of the gap more than senior women colleagues. In a and immediately articulate the number study at “Big School,” only 23% of women of women who patent in their particular faculty had patented, while 74% of men area and their personal theories about why faculty held at least one patent. Among women do not patent at the same rate as the younger cohort the gap is less; in the men. In contrast, men in those same fi elds “entire population of junior faculty, 44% of typically state that they were unaware of men have been granted patents compared the gap, deny its existence, or declare that it to only 11% of women” (Murray and Gra- may exist elsewhere but not in their labora- ham 2007). tory or department (Rosser 2009). Third, limited evidence suggests that women are becoming involved with patenting at the same rates as their male IMPLICATIONS FOR CLOSING THE peers in some venues. In a study of science- GENDER GAP: WHAT ARE THE based network firms in the biotechnol- IMPLICATIONS OF STAGE THEORY ogy industry, Kristin Whittington and FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER? Laurel Smith-Doerr (2008) documented WHAT WILL IT MEAN FOR CLOSING that women were as likely as men to be- THE GENDER GAP IN PATENTING? come involved in patenting, although the A stage or phase theory implies that the women were still patenting less frequently fi nal stage of inclusion won’t be reached than the men. without taking the time to go through each Overall, both nationally and internation- of the earlier stages. Evidence of narrowing ally, the gender gap in patents has shown 128 | SUE ROSSER

some signs of closing over time. These a variety of sectors with quite different studies provide some evidence for progres- cultures from that of academia. Corpora- sion through the stages. Reaching stage 5 tions and their boards, venture capitalists, of inclusion seems distant, although some marketing specialists, and angel funders, fi elds and sectors, such as the biotech start- in addition to students, men and women ups, appear to be closer to inclusion. faculty, and technology transfer person- In order to reach inclusion (stage 5), nel in universities will all need to progress not only will all disciplines, but all sec- through these stages to close the gender tors and individuals involved, have to pass gap. Not only is the group involved in tech- through these stages. As I worked in proj- nology transfer very large and diverse in ects on curricular transformation occur- terms of backgrounds and expertise, but ring in the sciences, I recognized that the different components and individuals hold phases applied to more than curriculum. competing interests and cultures. These stages describe steps of personal More signifi cant than understanding development through which individuals the stage theory and process is the desire progress as they become aware of biases of each individual and each group, as well due to gender and race in curriculum and as that of corporate power and elite edu- pedagogy. In an early book (Rosser 1986), I cational institutions, to want to close the suggested that an individual must progress gender gap. Since technology transfer and personally through, or at least to, a stage of patenting involve substantial amounts of development before he or she can develop money, such a desire cannot be taken for curriculum and pedagogical techniques at granted. Indeed, one study of the gender that stage. For example, a faculty member gap noted that part of the appeal of tech- cannot teach a stage 5, inclusive course in nology transfer for some academics may which the primary focus shifts from the have been to create an elite male-only white male experience to include women, club: As Stephan and EI-Ganainy sug- men of color, and disabled persons, if she gest, “entrepreneurial science opened the or he is only at the add-on phase (stage 2) possibility of having a ‘boys’ club’ when it in her or his own thinking. emerged on campuses in the late 1970s” Just as phase theory may be applied to just at the time when larger numbers of personal development and transformation women and underrepresented minorities toward inclusion as well as curriculum, it were entering academic science (Stephan also may be applied to programs, depart- and El-Ganainy 2007, 486). ments, institutions, and/or agencies. As Aside from the obvious issues of fairness is the case with individuals, even with a and discrimination, what other problems well-conceived (stage 5) plan for diversity, and losses result from the boys’ club that and inclusion and the best of intentions on excludes women and leads to a gender gap the part of all faculty, staff, and/or employ- in patenting? First, women who are scien- ees, a university cannot jump from stage 1 tists lose. Studies (Stephan and El-Ganainy to 5 without going through the intermediate 2007) document that women scientists, stages. Moving an entire department and compared to their male peers, have fewer curriculum toward gender inclusion is diffi - graduate students and postdocs and cult. Transforming an entire college or uni- smaller, less diverse collegial networks. versity has proved a long-term challenge. Compared to their male peers, women are Technology transfer and commercial- asked less frequently to consult or serve ization involve interactions with many on scientifi c advisory boards, and have individuals outside the university from their work discounted more frequently by THE GENDER GAP IN PATENTS | 129 industry (Murray and Graham 2007). This leading-edge fi elds in innovation simply means that women scientists lose out not represent the twenty-fi rst century ver- only on higher salaries, stock options, sion of the mid-twentieth-century phe- awards, and promotions, but also on op- nomenon of women not holding major portunities to work in some of the most leadership positions in big science? Such cutting-edge fi elds on the frontiers of sci- exclusion represents a major loss, since ence such as information technology, bio- women scientists have focused on differ- technology, and nanotechnology. ent problems, used new approaches, and Second, science loses in attracting more produced new theoretical perspectives individuals with creative ideas. Fewer wo- that have benefi tted science, technology, men are attracted to science because of the and society. perceived chilly atmosphere of exclusion (Rosser 2004). As indicated in the recent Clay- man Institute and Anita Borg Study (Simard REFERENCES et al. 2008), perceived barriers and obstacles About.com.Inventors. 2006. Patent point to ponder— cause women either to not enter the fi eld, to Mothers of Invention. 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Brothers: Male dominance as technology transfer and commercializa- and technological change . London: Pluto Press. tion of science increase in the United States Council on Competitiveness. 2005. Innovate America: and globally. National Innovation Initiative Summit and Report . Washington, DC: Council on Competitiveness. In contrast, if the percentage of pat- Cowan, Ruth S. 1983. More work for mother: The iro- ents awarded to women remains far lower nies of household technology from the open hearth than the percentage of women scien- to the microwave . New York: Basic Books. tists and engineers in the science, engi- de Beauvoir, Simone. 1989. The second sex , trans. neering, technology, and mathematics and ed. H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage Books. (Original work published 1949.) (STEM) workforce, this may represent Ding, Waverly, Fiona Murray and Toby Stuart. 2006. another example of old wine in new bot- Gender differences in patenting in the academic tles. 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Fox, Mary Frank. 2005. Gender, family characteristics, ———. 2004. The science glass ceiling: Academic women and publication productivity among scientists. scientists and the struggle to succeed . New York: Social Studies of Science 35 (1): 131–50. Routledge. Frietsch, Rainer, Inna Haller, Melanie Vrohlings and ———. 2005. Through the lenses of feminist theories: Hariolf Grupp. 2007. Battle of the sexes? Main areas Focus on women and information technology. of gender-specifi c technological and scientifi c ac- Frontiers 26 (1): 1–23. tivities in industrialized countries. Unpublished ———. 2009. The gender gap in patenting: Is technol- paper presented at Georgia Tech, October 16. ogy transfer a feminist issue? NWSA Journal 21(2): Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1983. A feeling for the organism . 65–84. San Francisco: Freeman. Rosser, Sue V. and Eliesh Lane. 2002b. Funding for ———. 1985. Refl ections on gender and science . New women’s programs at NSF: Using individual Haven: Yale University Press. POWRE approaches for institutions to ADVANCE. Long, Scott. 1993. Women in science. Part 1. The pro- Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and ductivity puzzle. Essays of an Information Scientist Engineering 8 (3–4): 327–45. 15, p. 248. Schuster, Marilyn and Susan Van Dyne. 1985. Women’s Macdonald, Anne L. 1992. Feminine ingenuity: place in the academy: Transforming the liberal arts Women and invention in America. New York: Bal- curriculum . Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld. lantine Books. Simard, C., A. D. Henderson, S. Gilmartin, L. Schiebin- McIntosh, Peggy. 1984. The study of women: Pro- ger and T. Whitney. 2008. Climbing the techni- cesses of personal and curricular revision. Forum cal ladder: Obstacles and solutions for mid-level for Liberal Education 6 (5): 2–4. women in technology. Palo Alto, CA: Michelle Mohanty, Chandra T. 1997. Women workers and cap- Clayman Institute for Gender Research and the italist scripts: Ideologies of domination, common Anita Borg Institute. interests, and the politics of solidarity. In Feminist Stephan, Paula and Asmaa El-Ganainy. 2007. The en- genealogies, colonial legacies, democratic futures , trepreneurial puzzle: Explaining the gender gap. ed. M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra T. Mohanty, Journal of Technology Transfer 32: 475–87. 3–29. New York: Routledge. Tessler, Joelle. 2008. Program turns to online masses Murray, Fiona and L. Graham. 2007. Buying and sell- to improve patents.http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- ing science: Gender stratifi cation in commercial bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/09/14fi nancia… science. Industrial and Corporate Change Special Tetreault, Mary K. 1985. Stages of thinking about Issue on Technology Transfer 16 (4): 657–89. women: An experience-derived evaluation model. Naldi, Fulvio and Ilaria Vannini Prenti. 2002. Scientifi c Journal of Higher Education 5 (4): 368–84. and technological performance by gender. A feasi- Thursby, Jerry and Marie Thursby. 2005. Gender pat- bility study on patents and biometric indicators . terns of research and licensing activity of science Luxembourg: European Union Commission. and engineering faculty. Journal of Technology ———. 2004. “Performance by Gender.” http://ec. Transfer 30: 343–53. europa.eu/research/infocentre/export/success/ U.S. Patent and Trademark Offi ce. 2003. U.S. Patent- article_721_en.html. Retrieved April 13, 2009. ing by women . Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and National Academy of Sciences. 2007. Rising above the Trademark Offi ce. gathering storm. Washington, DC: National Acad- Weber, Rachel. 1997. Manufacturing gender in com- emies Press. mercial and military cockpit design. Science, Tech- National Science Board. 2004. Science and engineer- nology and Human Values 22: 235–53. ing indicators-2004 (NSBB 04-01). Arlington, VA: Whittington, Kristin B. and Laurel Smith-Doerr. 2008. Author. Women inventors in context: Disparities in pat- Ross, A. S. 2008. Few women at the top in Silicon enting across academia and industry. Gender and Valley. San Francisco Chronicle, November 24, Society 22: 194. p. D-1. Xie, Yu and Kimberlee Shauman. 2003. Women in sci- Rosser, Sue V. 1986. Teaching science and health from ence . Boston: Harvard University Press. a feminist perspective: A practical guide. Elmsford, Zaragoza, S. 2008. State wants added path to tenure NY: Pergamon Press. at Texas universities. Austin Business Journal , Feb- ———.1990. Female friendly science . Elmsford, NY: ruary 8. http://austin.bizjournals.com/austin/ Pergamon Press. stories/2008/02/11/stroy5.html. SECTION II

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Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals Carol Cohn

“I can’t believe that ,” said Alice. war if deterrence fails. It is their calcula- “Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tions that are used to explain the necessity tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and of having nuclear destructive capability at shut your eyes.” what George Kennan has called “levels of Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she such grotesque dimensions as to defy ra- said. “One can’t believe impossible things.” tional understanding.”2 At the same time, “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, it is their reasoning that is used to explain I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, why it is not safe to live without nuclear 3 sometimes I’ve believed as many as six im- weapons. In short, they create the theory possible things before breakfast.” [LEWIS that informs and legitimates American nu- CARROLL, Through the Looking Glass ] clear strategic practice. For two weeks, I listened to men engage My close encounter with nuclear strategic in dispassionate discussion of nuclear analysis started in the summer of 1984. I war. I found myself aghast, but morbidly was one of forty-eight college teachers (one fascinated—not by nuclear weaponry, or often women) attending a summer work- by images of nuclear destruction, but by shop on nuclear weapons, nuclear strategic the extraordinary abstraction and removal doctrine, and arms control, taught by dis- from what I knew as reality that character- tinguished “defense intellectuals.” Defense ized the professional discourse. I became intellectuals are men (and indeed, they are obsessed by the question, How can they virtually all men) “who use the concept of think this way? At the end of the summer deterrence to explain why it is safe to have program, when I was offered the oppor- weapons of a kind and number it is not tunity to stay on at the university’s center safe to use.” 1 They are civilians who move on defense technology and arms control in and out of government, working some- (hereafter known as “the Center”), I jumped times as administrative offi cials or consul- at the chance to fi nd out how they could tants, sometimes at universities and think think “this” way. tanks. They formulate what they call “ra- I spent the next year of my life immersed tional” systems for dealing with the prob- in the world of defense intellectuals. As a lems created by nuclear weapons: how to participant observer, I attended lectures, manage the arms race; how to deter the use listened to arguments, conversed with de- of nuclear weapons; how to fi ght a nuclear fense analysts, and interviewed graduate 134 | CAROL COHN

students at the beginning, middle, and end act as they do, and that feminists who are of their training. I learned their specialized concerned about nuclear weaponry and language, and I tried to understand what nuclear war must give careful attention to they thought and how they thought. I sifted the language we choose to use—whom it through their logic for its internal incon- allows us to communicate with and what it sistencies and its unspoken assumptions. allows us to think as well as say. But as I learned their language, as I became more and more engaged with their information and their arguments, I found that my STATE I: LISTENING own thinking was changing. Soon, I could Clean Bombs and Clean Language no longer cling to the comfort of studying an external and objectifi ed “them.” I had to Entering the world of defense intellectu- confront a new question: How can I think als was a bizarre experience—bizarre be- this way? How can any of us? cause it is a world where men spend their Throughout my time in the world of stra- days calmly and matter-of-factly discuss- tegic analysis, it was hard not to notice the ing nuclear weapons, nuclear strategy, and ubiquitous weight of gender, both in social nuclear war. The discussions are carefully relations and in the language itself; it is an and intricately reasoned, occurring seem- almost entirely male world (with the excep- ingly without any sense of horror, urgency, tion of the secretaries), and the language or moral outrage—in fact, there seems to contains many rather arresting metaphors. be no graphic reality behind the words, as There is, of course, an important and they speak of “fi rst strikes,” “counterforce growing body of feminist theory about gen- exchanges,” and “limited nuclear war,” or der and language.4 In addition, there is a as they debate the comparative values of a rich and increasingly vast body of theoreti- “minimum deterrent posture” versus a “nu- cal work exploring the gendered aspects of clear war-fi ghting capability.” war and militarism, which examines such Yet what is striking about the men them- issues as men’s and women’s different re- selves is not, as the content of their conversa- lations to militarism and pacifi sm, and the tions might suggest, their cold-bloodedness. ways in which gender ideology is used in the Rather, it is that they are a group of men service of militarization. Some of the femi- unusually endowed with charm, humor, nist work on gender and war is also part of intelligence, concern, and decency. Reader, an emerging, powerful feminist critique of I liked them. At least, I liked many of them. ideas of rationality as they have developed The attempt to understand how such men in Western culture.5 While I am indebted to could contribute to an endeavor that I see all of these bodies of work, my own project as so fundamentally destructive became a is most closely linked to the development continuing obsession for me, a lens through of feminist critiques of dominant Western which I came to examine all of my experi- concepts of reason. My goal is to discuss ences in their world. the nature of nuclear strategic thinking; in In this early stage, I was gripped by the particular, my emphasis is on the role of its extraordinary language used to discuss nu- specialized language, a language that I call clear war. What hit me fi rst was the elabo- “technostrategic.” 6 I have come to believe rate use of abstraction and euphemism, of that this language both refl ects and shapes words so bland that they never forced the the nature of the American nuclear stra- speaker or enabled the listener to touch tegic project, that it plays a central role in the realities of nuclear holocaust that lay allowing defense intellectuals to think and behind the words. SEX AND DEATH IN THE RATIONAL WORLD OF DEFENSE INTELLECTUALS | 135

Anyone who has seen pictures of Hiro- us that radiation is the only “dirty” part of shima burn victims or tried to imagine the killing people. pain of hundreds of glass shards blasted To take this one step further, such into fl esh may fi nd it perverse beyond phrases can even seem healthful/curative/ imagination to hear a class of nuclear de- corrective. So that we not only have “clean vices matter-of-factly referred to as “clean bombs” but also “surgically clean strikes” bombs.” “Clean bombs” are nuclear devices (“counterforce” attacks that can purport- that are largely fusion rather than fi ssion edly “take out”—i.e., accurately destroy— and that therefore release a higher quan- an opponent’s weapons or command tity of energy, not as radiation, but as blast, centers without causing signifi cant injury as destructive explosive power. 7 to anything else). The image of excision “Clean bombs” may provide the perfect of the offending weapon is unspeakably metaphor for the language of defense an- ludicrous when the surgical tool is not a alysts and arms controllers. This language delicately controlled scalpel but a nuclear has enormous destructive power, but with- warhead. And somehow it seems to be for- out emotional fallout, without the emo- gotten that even scalpels spill blood.11 tional fallout that would result if it were clear one was talking about plans for mass White Men in Ties Discussing murder, mangled bodies, and unspeakable Missile Size human suffering. Defense analysts talk about “countervalue attacks” rather than Feminists have often suggested that an im- about incinerating cities. Human death, in portant aspect of the arms race is phallic nuclear parlance, is most often referred to worship, that “missile envy” is a signifi cant as “collateral damage”; for, as one defense motivating force in the nuclear build-up. 12 analyst said wryly, “The Air Force doesn’t I have always found this an uncomfortably target people, it targets shoe factories.”8 reductionist explanation and hoped that Some phrases carry this cleaning-up to my research at the Center would yield a the point of inverting meaning. The MX more complex analysis. But still, I was curi- missile will carry ten warheads, each with ous about the extent to which I might fi nd the explosure power of 300–475 kilotons of a sexual subtext in the defense profession- TNT: one missile the bearer of destruction als’ discourse. I was not prepared for what approximately 250–400 times that of the I found. Hiroshima bombing. 9 Ronald Reagan has I think I had naively imagined myself as dubbed the MX missile “the Peacekeeper.” a feminist spy in the house of death—that While this renaming was the object of con- I would need to sneak around and eaves- siderable scorn in the community of de- drop on what men said in unguarded mo- fense analysts, these very same analysts ments, using all my subtlety and cunning refer to the MX as a “damage limitation to unearth whatever sexual imagery might weapon.”10 be underneath how they thought and These phrases, only a few of the hun- spoke. I had naively believed that these dreds that could be discussed, exemplify men, at least in public, would appear to the astounding chasm between image and be aware of feminist critiques. If they had reality that characterizes technostrategic not changed their language, I thought that language. They also hint at the terrifying at least at some point in a long talk about way in which the existence of nuclear de- “penetration aids,” someone would sud- vices has distorted our perceptions and denly look up, slightly embarrassed to redefi ned the world. “Clean bombs” tells be caught in such blatant confi rmation 136 | CAROL COHN

of feminist analyses of What’s Going On Sexual imagery has, of course, been a Here.13 part of the world of warfare since long be- Of course, I was wrong. There was no ev- fore nuclear weapons were even a gleam in idence that any feminist critiques had ever a physicist’s eye. The history of the atomic reached the ears, much less the minds, of bomb project itself is rife with overt images these men. American military dependence of competitive male sexuality, as is the dis- on nuclear weapons was explained as “ir- course of the early nuclear physicists, strat- resistible, because you get more bang for egists, and SAC commanders. 15 Both the the buck.” Another lecturer solemnly and military itself and the arms manufacturers scientifi cally announced “to disarm is to are constantly exploiting the phallic imag- get rid of all your stuff.” (This may, in turn, ery and promise of sexual domination that explain why they see serious talk of nuclear their weapons so conveniently suggest. A disarmament as perfectly resistable, not to quick glance at the publications that con- mention foolish. If disarmament is emas- stitute some of the research sources for culation, how could any real man even con- defense intellectuals makes the depth and sider it?) A professor’s explanation of why pervasiveness of the imagery evident. the MX missile is to be placed in the silos of Air Force Magazine’s advertisements for the newest Minuteman missiles, instead of new weapons, for example, rival Playboy replacing the older, less accurate ones, was as a catalog of men’s sexual anxieties and “because they’re in the nicest hole—you’re fantasies. Consider the following, from the not going to take the nicest missile you June 1985 issue: emblazoned in bold letters have and put it in a crummy hole.” Other across the top of a two-page advertisement lectures were fi lled with discussion of verti- for the AV-8B Harrier 11—“Speak Softly and cal erector launchers, thrust-to-weight ra- Carry a Big Stick.” The copy below boasts tios, soft lay downs, deep penetration, and “an exceptional thrust to weight ratio” and the comparative advantages of protracted “vectored thrust capability that makes versus spasm attacks—or what one military the . . . unique rapid response possible.” adviser to the National Security Council Then, just in case we’ve failed to get themes has called “releasing 70 to 80 percent of our sage, the last line reminds us, “Just the sort megatonnage in one orgasmic whump.”14 of ‘Big Stick’ Teddy Roosevelt had in mind There was serious concern about the need way back in 1901.”16 to harden our missiles and the need to “face An ad for the BKEP (BLU-106/B) reads: it, the Russians are a little harder than we are.” Disbelieving glances would occasion- The Only Way to Solve Some Problems is to ally pass between me and my one ally in the Dig Deep. summer program, another woman, but no THE BOMB, KINETIC ENERGY one else seemed to notice. PENETRATOR “Will provide the tactical air commander If the imagery is transparent, its signifi - with effi cient power to deny or signifi cantly cance may be less so. The temptation is to delay enemy airfi eld operations.” draw some conclusions about the defense “Designed to maximize runway crater- intellectuals themselves—about what they ing by optimizing penetration dynamics are really talking about, or their motivations; and utilizing the most effi cient warhead yet but the temptation is worth resisting. Indi- designed.”17 vidual motivations cannot necessarily be read directly from imagery; the imagery it- (In case the symbolism of “cratering” seems self does not originate in these particular in- far-fetched, I must point out that I am dividuals but in a broader cultural context. not the fi rst to see it. The French use the SEX AND DEATH IN THE RATIONAL WORLD OF DEFENSE INTELLECTUALS | 137

Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacifi c for their through a hole to “pat the missile.” Pat the nuclear tests and assign a woman’s name missile? to each of the craters they gouge out of the The image reappeared the next week, earth.) when a lecturer scornfully declared that Another, truly extraordinary, source of the only real reason for deploying cruise phallic imagery is to be found in descrip- and Pershing II missiles in Western Eu- tions of nuclear blasts themselves. Here, rope was “so that our allies can pat them.” for example, is one by journalist William Some months later, another group of us Laurence, who was brought to Nagasaki went to be briefed at NORAD (the North by the Air Force to witness the bombing. American Aerospace Defense Command). “Then, just when it appeared as though the On the way back, our plane went to refuel thing had settled down in to a state of per- at Offut Air Force Base, the Strategic Air manence, there came shooting out of the Command head quarters near Omaha, top a giant mushroom that increased the Nebraska. When word leaked out that our size of the pillar to a total of 45,000 feet. The landing would be delayed because the new mushroom top was even more alive than B-1 bomber was in the area, the plane be- the pillar, seething and boiling in a white came charged with a tangible excitement fury of creamy foam, sizzling upward and that built as we fl ew in our holding pattern, then descending earthward, a thousand people craning their necks to try to catch geysers rolled into one. It kept struggling in a glimpse of the B-1 in the skies, and cli- an elemental fury, like a creature in the act maxed as we touched down on the runway of breaking the bonds that held it down.”18 and hurtled past it. Later, when I returned Given the degree to which it suffuses to the Center I encountered a man who, their world, that defense intellectuals unable to go on the trip, said to me envi- themselves use a lot of sexual imagery does ously, “I hear you got to pat a B-1.” not seem especially surprising. Nor does it, What is all this “patting”? What are men by itself, constitute grounds for imputing doing when they “pat” these high-tech motivation. For me, the interesting issue is phalluses? Patting is an assertion of inti- not so much the imagery’s psychodynamic macy, sexual possession, affectionate dom- origins, as how it functions. How does it ination. The thrill and pleasure of “patting serve to make it possible for strategic plan- the missile” is the proximity of all that phal- ners and other defense intellectuals to do lic power, the possibility of vicariously ap- their macabre work? How does it function propriating it as one’s own. in their construction of a work world that But if the predilection for patting phallic feels tenable? Several stories illustrate the objects indicates something of the homo- complexity. erotic excitement suggested by the lan- During the summer program, a group of guage, it also has another side. For patting is us visited the New London Navy base where not only an act of sexual intimacy. It is also nuclear submarines are homeported and what one does to babies, small children, the the General Dynamics Electric Boat boat- pet dog. One pats that which is small, cute, yards where a new Trident submarine was and harmless—not terrifyingly destructive. being constructed. At one point during the Pat it, and its lethality disappears. trip we took a tour of a nuclear powered Much of the sexual imagery I heard was submarine. When we reached the part of rife with the sort of ambiguity suggested by the sub where the missiles are housed, the “patting the missiles.” The imagery can be offi cer accompanying us turned with a grin construed as a deadly serious display of the and asked if we wanted to stick our hands connections between masculine sexuality 138 | CAROL COHN

and the arms race. At the same time, it can throw back. But beyond contempt, he also also be heard as a way of minimizing the feels outraged—after all, this is a woman seriousness of militarist endeavors, of de- we have paid for, who still will not come nying their deadly consequences. A former across. He suggests that we withdraw our Pentagon target analyst, in telling me why goods and services—and then we will see he thought plans for “limited nuclear war” just how long she tries to hold onto her vir- were ridiculous, said, “Look, you gotta tue. 19 The patriarchal bargain could not be understand that it’s a pissing contest— laid out more clearly. you gotta expect them to use every thing Another striking metaphor of patriar- they’ve got.” What does this image say? chal power came early in the summer pro- Most obviously, that this is all about com- gram, when one of the faculty was giving a petition for manhood, and thus there is lecture on deterrence. To give us a concrete tremendous danger. But at the same time, example from outside the world of military the image diminishes the contest and its strategy, he described having a seventeen- outcomes, by representing it as an act of year-old son of whose TV watching habits boyish mischief. he disapproves. He deals with the situation by threatening to break his son’s arm if he turns on the TV again. “That’s deterrence!” Fathers, Sons, and Virgins he said triumphantly. “Virginity” also made frequent, arresting, What is so striking about this analogy is appearances in nuclear dis course. In the that at fi rst it seems so inappropriate. After summer program, one professor spoke all, we have been taught to believe that nu- of India’s explosion of a nuclear bomb as clear deterrence is a relation between two “losing her virginity”; the question of how countries of more or less equal strength, in the United States should react was posed which one is only able to deter the other as whether or not we should “throw her from doing it great harm by threatening to away.” It is a complicated use of metaphor. do the same in return. But in this case, the Initiation into the nuclear world involves partners are unequal, and the stronger one being defl owered, losing one’s innocence, is using his superior force not to protect knowing sin, all wrapped up into one. Al- himself or others from grave injury but to though the manly United States is no vir- coerce. gin, and proud of it, the double standard But if the analogy seems to be a fl awed raises its head in the question of whether expression of deterrence as we have been or not a woman is still worth anything to a taught to view it, it is nonetheless extremely man once she has lost her virginity. revealing about U.S. nuclear deterrence as New Zealand’s refusal to allow nuclear- an operational, rather than rhetorical or armed or nuclear-powered warships into declaratory policy. What it suggests is the its ports prompted similar refl ections on speciousness of the defensive rhetoric that virginity. A good example is provided by surrounds deterrence—of the idea that Retired U.S. Air Force General Ross Mil- we face an implacable enemy and that we ton’s angry column in Air Force Magazine , stockpile nuclear weapons only in an at- entitled, “Nuclear Virginity.” His tone is tempt to defend ourselves. Instead, what that of a man whose advances have been we see is the drive to superior power as a spurned. He is contemptuous of the wom- means to exercise one’s will and a readi- an’s protestation that she wants to remain ness to threaten the disproportionate use pure, innocent of nuclear weapons; her of force in order to achieve one’s own ends. moral reluctance is a quaint and ridiculous There is no question here of recognizing SEX AND DEATH IN THE RATIONAL WORLD OF DEFENSE INTELLECTUALS | 139 competing but legitimate needs, no desire theater (European based) weapons. The to negotiate, dis cuss, or compromise, and patterns in which a MIRVed missile’s nuclear most important, no necessity for that rec- war heads land is known as a “footprint. “ 21 ognition or desire, since the father carries These nuclear explosives are not dropped; a the bigger stick.20 “bus” “delivers” them. In addition, nuclear The United States frequently appeared bombs are not referred to as bombs or even in discussions about international politics warheads; they are referred to as “reentry ve- as “father,” sometimes coercive, sometimes hicles,” a term far more bland and benign, benevolent, but always knowing best. The which is then shortened to “RVs,” a term single time that any mention was made of not only totally abstract and removed from countries other than the United States, our the reality of a bomb but also resonant with NATO allies, or the USSR was in a lecture the image of the recreational vehicles of the on nuclear proliferation. The point was ideal family vacation. made that younger countries simply could These domestic images must be more not be trusted to know what was good for than simply one more form of distancing, them, nor were they yet fully responsible, one more way to remove oneself from the so nuclear weapons in their hands would grisly reality behind the words; ordinary be much more dangerous than in ours. The abstraction is adequate to that task. Some- metaphor used was that of parents need- thing else, something very peculiar, is going ing to set limits for their children. on here. Calling the pattern in which bombs fall a “footprint” almost seems a willful distorting process, a playful, perverse refusal of Domestic Bliss accountability—because to be accountable Sanitized abstraction and sexual and patri- to reality is to be unable to do this work. archal imagery, even if disturbing, seemed These words may also serve to domesti- to fi t easily into the masculinist world of cate, to tame the wild and uncontrollable nuclear war planning. What did not fi t, forces of nuclear destruction. The meta- what surprised and puzzled me most when phors minimize; they are a way to make I fi rst heard it, was the set of metaphors phenomena that are beyond what the mind that evoked images that can only be called can encompass smaller and safer, and thus domestic. they are a way of gaining mastery over the Nuclear missiles are based in “silos.” On unmasterable. The fi re-breathing dragon a Trident submarine, which carries twenty- under the bed, the one who threatens to four multiple warhead nuclear missiles, incinerate your family, your town, your crew members call the part of the subma- planet, becomes a pet you can pat. rine where the missiles are lined up in their Using language evocative of every- silos ready for launching “the Christmas day experiences also may simply serve tree farm.” What could be more bucolic— to make the nuclear strategic commu- farms, silos, Christmas trees? nity more comfortable with what they are In the ever-friendly, even romantic world doing. “PAL” (permissive action links) is of nuclear weaponry, enemies “exchange” the carefully constructed, friendly acro- warheads; one missile “takes out” another; nym for the electronic system designed weapons systems can “marry up”; “cou- to pre vent the unauthorized fi ring of nu- pling” is sometimes used to refer to the wir- clear warheads. “BAMBI” was the acro- ing between mechanisms of warning and nym developed for an early version of an response, or to the psycho political links antiballistic missile system (for Ballistic between strategic (intercontinental) and Missile Boost Intercept). The president’s 140 | CAROL COHN

Annual Nuclear Weapons Stockpile Mem- referred to as “Oppenheimer’s baby.” One orandum, which outlines both short- and of the physicists working at Los Alamos, long range plans for production of new Richard Feynman, writes that when he was nuclear weapons, is benignly referred to temporarily on leave after his wife’s death, as “the shopping list.” The National Com- he received a telegram saying, “The baby mand Authorities choose from a “menu of is expected on such and such a day.” 26 At options” when deciding among different Lawrence Livermore, the hydrogen bomb targeting plans. The “cookie cutter” is a was referred to as “Teller’s baby,” although phrase used to describe a particular model those who wanted to disparage Edward of nuclear attack. Apparently it is also used Teller’s contribution claimed he was not at the Department of Defense to refer to the bomb’s father but its mother. They the neutron bomb.22 claimed that Stanislaw Ulam was the real The imagery that domesticates, that father; he had the all important idea and humanizes insentient weapons, may also inseminated Teller with it. Teller only “car- serve, paradoxically, to make it all right ried it” after that.27 to ignore sentient human bodies, human Forty years later, this idea of male lives.23 Perhaps it is possible to spend one’s birth and its accompanying belittling of time thinking about scenarios for the use maternity—the denial of women’s role in of destructive technology and to have the process of creation and the reduction human bodies remain invisible in that of “motherhood” to the provision of nur- technological world precisely because that turance (apparently Teller did not need world itself now includes the domestic, to provide an egg, only a womb)—seems the human, the warm, and playful—the thoroughly incorporated into the nuclear Christmas trees, the RVs, the affectionate mentality, as I learned on a subsequent pats. It is a world that is in some sense com- visit to U.S. Space Command in Colorado plete unto itself; it even includes death and Springs. One of the briefi ngs I attended loss. But it is weapons, not humans, that included discussion of a new satellite sys- get “killed.” “Fratricide” occurs when one tem, the not yet “on line” MILSTAR sys- of your warheads “kills” another of your tem. 28 The offi cer doing the briefi ng gave own warheads. There is much discussion an excited recitation of its technical ca- of “vulnerability” and “survivability,” but pabilities and then an explanation of the it is about the vulnerability and survival of new Unifi ed Space Command’s role in the weapons systems, not people. system. Self-effacingly he said, “We’ll do the motherhood role—telemetry, tracking, and control—the maintenance.” Male Birth and Creation In light of the imagery of male birth, the There is one set of domestic images that extraordinary names given to the bombs demands separate attention images that that reduced Hiroshima and Nagasaki suggest men’s desire to appropriate from to ash and rubble—“Little Boy” and “Fat women the power of giving life and that Man”—at last become intelligible. These confl ate creation and destruction. The ultimate destroyers were the progeny of bomb project is rife with images of male the atomic scientists—and emphatically birth. 24 In December 1942, Ernest Law- not just any progeny but male progeny. In rence’s telegram to the physicists at Chi- early tests, before they were certain that cago read, “Congratulations to the new the bombs would work, the scientists ex- parents. Can hardly wait to see the new ar- pressed their concern by saying that they rival.” 25 At Los Alamos, the atom bomb was hoped the baby was a boy, not a girl—that SEX AND DEATH IN THE RATIONAL WORLD OF DEFENSE INTELLECTUALS | 141 is, not a dud.29 General Grove’s triumphant God and the Nuclear Priesthood cable to Secretary of War Henry Stimson at The possibility that the language reveals the Potsdam conference, informing him an attempt to appropriate ultimate cre- that the fi rst atomic bomb test was suc- ative power is evident in another striking cessful read, after decoding: “Doctor has aspect of the language of nuclear weap- just returned most enthusiastic and confi - onry and doctrine—the religious imagery. dent that the little boy is as husky as his big brother. The light in his eyes discernible In a subculture of hard-nosed realism and from here to Highhold and I could have hyper-rationality, in a world that claims as heard his screams from here to my farm.” 30 a sign of its superiority its vigilant purging Stimson, in turn, informed Churchill by of all nonrational elements, and in which writing him a note that read, “Babies sat- people carefully excise from their discourse isfactorily born.” 31 In 1952, Teller’s exul- every possible trace of soft sentimentality, tant telegram to Los Alamos announcing as though purging dangerous nonsterile the successful test of the hydrogen bomb, elements from a lab, the last thing one “Mike,” at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall might expect to fi nd is religious imagery— Islands, read, “It’s a boy.”32 The nuclear sci- imagery of the forces that science has been entists gave birth to male progeny with the defi ned in opposition to . For surely, given ultimate power of violent domination over that science’s identity was forged by its female Nature. The defense intellectuals’ separation from, by its struggle for free- project is the creation of abstract formu- dom from, the constraints of religion, the lations to control the forces the scientists only thing as unscientifi c as the female, the created—and to participate thereby in subjective, the emotional, would be the re- their world-creating/destroying power. ligious. And yet, religious imagery perme- The entire history of the bomb project, ates the nuclear past and present. The fi rst in fact, seems permeated with imagery atomic bomb test was called Trinity—the that confounds man’s overwhelming tech- unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy nological power to destroy nature with Spirit, the male forces of Creation. The the power to create—imagery that inverts imagery is echoed in the language of the men’s destruction and asserts in its place physicists who worked on the bomb and the power to create new life and a new witnessed the test: “It was as though we world. It converts men’s destruction into stood at the fi rst day of creation.” Robert their rebirth. Oppenheimer thought of Krishna’s words William L. Laurence witnessed the Trin- to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: “I am be- ity test of the fi rst atomic bomb and wrote: come Death, the Shatterer of Worlds.”36 “The big boom came about a hundred sec- Perhaps most astonishing of all is the onds after the great fl ash—the fi rst cry of fact that the creators of strategic doctrine a new-born world. . . . They clapped their actually refer to members of their commu- hands as they leaped from the ground— nity as “the nuclear priesthood.” It is hard earthbound man symbolising the birth of a to decide what is most extraordinary about new force.”33 Watching “Fat Man” being as- this: the easy arrogance of their claim to sembled the day before it was dropped on the virtues and supernatural power of the Nagasaki, he described seeing the bomb priesthood; the tacit admission (never as “being fashioned into a living thing.” 34 spoken directly) that rather than being Decades later, General Bruce K. Holloway, unfl inching, hard-nosed, objective, empir- the commander in chief of the Strategic Air ically minded scientifi c describers of real- Command from 1968 to 1972, universe.”35 ity, they are really the creators of dogma; or 142 | CAROL COHN

the extraordinary implicit statement about TACAMO, the acronym used to refer to the who, or rather what, has become god. planes designed to provide communications If this new priesthood attains its status links to submarines, stands for “take charge through an inspired knowledge of nuclear and move out.” The image seems closely weapons, it gives a whole new meaning to related to the nicknames given to the new the phrase “a mighty fortress is our God.” guidance systems for “smart weapons”—” shoot and scoot” or “fi re and forget.” Other acronyms work in other ways. STAGE 2: LEARNING TO SPEAK The plane in which the president suppos- THE LANGUAGE edly will be fl ying around above a nuclear Although I was startled by the combination holocaust, receiving intelligence and is- of dry abstraction and counterintuitive suing commands for the next bombing, imagery that characterizes the language is referred to as “kneecap” (for NEACP— of defense intellectuals, my attention and National Emergency Airborne Command energy were quickly focused on decoding Post). The edge of derision suggested in re- and learning to speak it. The fi rst task was ferring to it as “kneecap” mirrors the edge training the tongue in the articulation of of derision implied when it is talked about acronyms. at all, since few believe that the president Several years of reading the literature really would have the time to get into it, or of nuclear weaponry and strategy had not that the communications systems would prepared me for the degree to which acro- be working if he were in it, and some might nyms littered all conversations, nor for the go so far as to question the usefulness of way in which they are used. Formerly, I had his being able to direct an extended nu- thought of them mainly as utilitarian. They clear war from his kneecap even if it were allow you to write or speak faster. They feasible. (I never heard the morality of this act as a form of abstraction, removing you idea addressed.) But it seems to me that from the reality behind the words. They speaking about it with that edge of derision restrict communication to the initiated, is exactly what allows it to be spoken about leaving all others both uncomprehending and seriously discussed at all. It is the very and voiceless in the debate. ability to make fun of a concept that makes But, being at the Center, hearing the de- it possible to work with it rather than reject fense analysts use the acronyms, and then it outright. watching as I and others in the group started In other words, what I learned at the to fl ing acronyms around in our conversa- program is that talking about nuclear tion revealed some additional, unexpected weapons is fun. I am serious. The words are dimensions. fun to say; they are racy, sexy, snappy. You First, in speaking and hearing, a lot of can throw them around in rapid-fi re suc- these terms can be very sexy. A small su- cession. They are quick, clean, light; they personic rocket “designed to penetrate any trip off the tongue. You can reel off dozens Soviet air defense” is called a SRAM (for short- of them in seconds, forgetting about how range attack missile). Submarine-launched one might just interfere with the next, not cruise missiles are not referred to as to mention with the lives beneath them. SLCMs, but “slick’ems.” Ground-launched I am not describing a phenomenon ex- cruise missiles are “glick’ems.” Air-launched perienced only by the perverse, although cruise missiles are not sexy but magical— the phenomenon itself may be per- “alchems” (ALCMs) replete with the illusion verse indeed. Nearly everyone I observed of turning base metals into gold. clearly took pleasure in using the words. SEX AND DEATH IN THE RATIONAL WORLD OF DEFENSE INTELLECTUALS | 143

It mattered little whether we were lectur- powerful in a way that stretches and even ers or students, hawks or doves, men or thrills the imagination. women we all learned it, and we all spoke The more conversations I participated it. Some of us may have spoken with a self- in using this language, the less frightened consciously ironic edge, but the pleasure I was of nuclear war. How can learning to was there nonetheless. speak a language have such a powerful ef- Part of the appeal was the thrill of being fect? One answer, I believe, is that the pro- able to manipulate an arcane language, cess of learning the language is itself a part the power of entering the secret kingdom, of what removes you from the reality of nu- being someone in the know. It is a glow clear war. that is a signifi cant part of learning about I entered a world where people spoke nuclear weaponry. Few know, and those what amounted to a foreign language, a who do are powerful. You can rub elbows language I had to learn if we were to com- with them, perhaps even be one yourself. municate with one another. So I became That feeling, of course, does not come engaged in the challenge of it—of decod- solely from the language. The whole set-up ing the acronyms and fi guring out which of the summer program itself, for example, were the proper verbs to use. My focus communicated the allures of power and the was on the task of solving the puzzles, de- benefi ts of white male privileges. We were veloping language competency not on the provided with luxurious accommodations, weapons and wars behind the words. Al- complete with young black women who though my interest was in thinking about came in to clean up after us each day; gen- nuclear war and its prevention, my energy erous funding paid not only our transporta- was else where. tion and food but also a large honorarium By the time I was through, I had learned for attending; we met in lavishly appointed far more than a set of abstract words that classrooms and lounges. Access to excellent refers to grisly subjects, for even when the athletic facilities was guaranteed by a “Tem- subjects of a standard English and nuke- porary Privilege Card,” which seemed to me speak description seem to be the same, they to sum up the essence of the experience. are, in fact, about utterly different phenom- Perhaps most important of all were the ena. Consider the following descriptions, in endless allusions by our lecturers to “what each of which the subject is the aftermath I told John [Kennedy]” and “and then Henry of a nuclear attack: [Kissinger] said,” or the lunches where we could sit next to a prominent political fi gure Everything was black, had vanished into the and listen to Washington gossip. black dust, was destroyed. Only the fl ames A more subtle, but perhaps more im- that were beginning to lick their way up had portant, element of learning the language is any color. From the dust that was like a fog, fi g- that, when you speak it, you feel in control. ures began to loom up, black, hairless, faceless. The experience of mastering the words in- They screamed with voices that were no longer fuses your relation to the material. You can human. Their screams drowned out the groans get so good at manipulating the words that rising everywhere from the rubble, groans that seemed to rise from the very earth itself.37 it almost feels as though the whole thing is under control. Learning the language gives [You have to have ways to maintain commu- a sense of what I would call cognitive mas- nications in a] nuclear environment, a situa- tery; the feeling of mastery of technology tion bound to include EMP blackout, brute that is fi nally not controllable but is instead force damage to systems, a heavy jamming powerful beyond human comprehension, environment, and so on.38 144 | CAROL COHN

There are no ways to describe the phe- nuclear war, should it occur. But I do mean nomena represented in the fi rst with the it in terms of the structural position the language of the second. Learning to speak speakers of the language occupy and the the language of defense analysts is not a perspective they get from that position. conscious, cold-blooded decision to ignore Structurally, speaking technostrategic lan- the effects of nuclear weapons on real live guage re moves them from the position of human beings, to ignore the sensory, the victim and puts them in the position of emotional experience, the human impact. the planner, the user, the actor. From that It is simply learning a new language, but position, there is neither need nor way to by the time you are through, the content of see oneself as a victim; no matter what one what you can talk about is monumentally deeply knows or believes about the likeli- different, as is the perspective from which hood of nuclear war, and no matter what you speak. sort of terror or despair the knowledge of In the example above, the differences in nuclear war’s reality might inspire, the the two descriptions of a “nuclear environ- speakers of technostrategic language are ment” stem partly from a difference in the positionally allowed, even forced, to es- vividness of the words themselves—the cape that awareness, to escape viewing nu- words of the fi rst intensely immediate and clear war from the position of the victim, evocative, the words of the second abstract by virtue of their linguistic stance as users, and distancing. The passages also differ rather than victims, of nuclear weaponry. in their content; the fi rst describes the ef- Finally, then, I suspect that much of the fects of a nuclear blast on human beings, reduced anxiety about nuclear war com- the second describes the impact of a nu- monly experienced by both new speak- clear blast on technical systems designed ers of the language and long-time experts to assure the “command and control” of comes from characteristics of the language nuclear weapons. Both of these differences itself: the distance afforded by its abstrac- may stem from the difference of perspec- tion; the sense of control afforded by mas- tive: the speaker in the fi rst is a victim of tering it; and the fact that its content and nuclear weapons, the speaker in the sec- concerns are that of the users rather than ond is a user. The speaker in the fi rst is the victims of nuclear weapons. In learning using words to try to name and contain the the language, one goes from being the pas- horror of human suffering all around her; sive, powerless victim to the competent, the speaker in the second is using words to wily, powerful purveyor of nuclear threats ensure the possibility of launching the next and nuclear explosive power. The enor- nuclear attack. Technostrategic language mous destructive effects of nuclear weap- can be used only to articulate the perspec- ons systems become extensions of the self, tive of the users of nuclear weapons, not rather than threats to it. that of the victims.39 Thus, speaking the expert language not STAGE 3: DIALOGUE only offers distance, a feeling of control, and an alternative focus for one’s energies; It did not take very long to learn the lan- it also offers escape—escape from think- guage of nuclear war and much of the spe- ing of oneself as a victim of nuclear war. I cialized information it contained. My focus do not mean this on the level of individual quickly changed from mastering technical consciousness; it is not that defense ana- information and doctrinal arcana to at- lysts somehow convince themselves that tempting to understand more about how they would not be among the victims of the dogma was rationalized. Instead of SEX AND DEATH IN THE RATIONAL WORLD OF DEFENSE INTELLECTUALS | 145 trying, for example, to fi nd out why sub- A strong distaste for being patronized marines are so hard to detect or why, prior and dismissed made my experiment in to the Trident II, submarine-based ballistic English short-lived. I adapted my everyday missiles were not considered counterforce speech to the vocabulary of strategic anal- weapons, I now wanted to know why we ysis. I spoke of “escalation dominance,” really “need” a strategic triad, given sub- “preemptive strikes,” and, one of my favor- marines’ ”invulnerability.”40 I also wanted ites, “subholocaust engagements.” Using to know why it is considered reasonable to the right phrases opened my way into long, base U.S. military planning on the Soviet elaborate discussions that taught me a lot Union’s military capabilities rather than se- about technostrategic reasoning and how riously attempting to gauge what their in- to manipulate it. tentions might be. This standard practice is I found, however, that the better I got at one I found particularly troubling. Military engaging in this discourse, the more im- analysts say that since we cannot know for possible it became for me to express my certain what Soviet intentions are, we must own ideas, my own values. I could adopt plan our military forces and strategies as if the language and gain a wealth of new we knew that the Soviets planned to use all concepts and reasoning strategies—but at of their weapons. While this might appear the same time as the language gave me ac- to have the benefi t of prudence, it leads to a cess to things I had been unable to speak major problem. When we ask only what the about before, it radically excluded others. Soviets can do, we quickly come to assume I could not use the language to express my that that is what they intend to do. We base concerns because it was physically impos- our planning on “worst-case scenarios” sible. This language does not allow certain and then come to believe that we live in a questions to be asked or certain values to world where vast resources must be combe expressed. mitted to “prevent” them from happening. To pick a bald example: the word “peace” Since underlying rationales are rarely is not a part of this discourse. As close as discussed in the everyday business of de- one can come is “strategic stability,” a term fense planning, I had to start asking more that refers to a balance of numbers and questions. At fi rst, although I was tempted types of weapons systems—not the polit- to use my newly acquired profi ciency in ical, social, economic, and psychological techno strategic jargon, I vowed to speak conditions implied by the word “peace.” English. I had long believed that one of the Not only is there no word signifying peace most important functions of an expert lan- in this discourse, but the word “peace” it- guage is exclusion—the denial of a voice self cannot be used. To speak it is imme- to those outside the professional commu- diately to brand oneself as a soft-headed nity.41 I wanted to see whether a well- activist instead of an expert, a professional informed person could speak English and to be taken seriously. still carry on a knowledgeable conversation. If I was unable to speak my concerns What I found was that no matter how in this language, more disturbing still was well-informed or complex my questions that I found it hard even to keep them in were, if I spoke English rather than expert my own head. I had begun my research ex- jargon, the men responded to me as though pecting abstract and sanitized discussions I were ignorant, simpleminded, or both. It of nuclear war and had readied myself to did not appear to occur to anyone that I replace my words for theirs, to be ever vig- might actually be choosing not to speak ilant against slipping into the never-never their language. land of abstraction. But no matter how 146 | CAROL COHN

prepared I was, no matter how fi rm my rational actors have suffi cient information commitment to staying aware of the real- to know exactly what size nuclear weapon ity behind the words, over and over I found the opponent has used against which tar- that I could not stay connected, could not gets, and in which they have adequate com- keep human lives as my reference point. I mand and control to make sure that their found I could go for days speaking about response is precisely equilibrated to the at- nuclear weapons without once thinking tack. In this scenario, no fi eld commander about the people who would be inciner- would use the tactical “mini-nukes” at his ated by them. disposal in the height of a losing battle; It is tempting to attribute this problem no EMP-generated electronic failures, or to qualities of the language, the words direct attacks on command.. and control themselves—the abstractness, the euphe- centers, or human errors would destroy misms, the sanitized, friendly, sexy ac- communications networks. Our rational ronyms. Then all we would need to do is actors would be free of emotional response change the words, make them more vivid; to being attacked, free of political pressures get the military planners to say “mass mur- from the populace, free from madness or der” instead of “collateral damage” and despair or any of the myriad other factors their thinking would change. that regularly affect human actions and de- The problem, however, is not only that cision making. They would act solely on the defense intellectuals use abstract termi- basis of a perfectly informed mathematical nology that removes them from the reali- calculus of megatonnage. ties of which they speak. There is no reality So to refer to “limited nuclear war” is al- of which they speak. Or, rather, the “reality” ready to enter into a system that is de facto of which they speak is itself a world of ab- abstract and removed from reality. To use stractions. Deterrence theory, and much of more descriptive language would not, by strategic doctrine altogether, was invented itself, change that. In fact, I am tempted to largely by mathematicians, economists, say that the abstractness of the entire con- and a few political scientists. It was in- ceptual system makes descriptive language vented to hold together abstractly, its valid- nearly beside the point. In a discussion of ity judged by its internal logic. Questions of “limited nuclear war,” for example, it might the correspondence to observable reality make some difference if in place of saying were not the issue. These abstract systems “In a counter force attack against hard tar- were developed as a way to make it pos- gets collateral damage could be limited,” sible to “think about the unthinkable”— a strategic analyst had to use words that not as a way to describe or codify relations were less abstract—if he had to say, for in- on the ground.42 stance, “If we launch the missiles we have So the greatest problem with the idea of aimed at their missile silos, the explosions “limited nuclear war,” for example, is not would cause the immediate mass murder that it is grotesque to refer to the death of 10 million women, men, and children, as and suffering caused by any use of nuclear well as the extended illness, suffering, and weapons as “limited” or that “limited nu- eventual death of many millions more.” It clear war” is an abstraction that is discon- is true that the second sentence does not nected from human reality but, rather, that roll off the tongue or slide across one’s con- “limited nuclear war” is itself an abstract sciousness quite as easily. But it is also true, conceptual system, designed, embodied, I believe, that the ability to speak about achieved by computer modeling. It is an “limited nuclear war” stems as much, if not abstract world in which hypothetical, calm, more, from the fact that the term “limited SEX AND DEATH IN THE RATIONAL WORLD OF DEFENSE INTELLECTUALS | 147 nuclear war” refers to an abstract concep- In other disciplines, we have frequently tual system rather than to events that might found that the reference point for theories take place in the real world. As such, there is about “universal human phenomena” has no need to think about the concrete human actually been white men. In technostra- realities behind the model; what counts is tegic discourse, the reference point is not the internal logic of the system.43 white men, it is not human beings at all; it This realization that the abstraction was is the weapons themselves. The aggressor not just in the words but also characterized thus ends up worse off than the aggressed the entire conceptual system itself helped because he has fewer weapons left; human me make sense of my diffi culty in staying factors are irrelevant to the calculus of gain connected to human lives. But there was and loss. still a piece missing. How is it possible, for In “regime A” and throughout strategic example, to make sense of the following discourse, the concept of “incentive” is paragraph? It is taken from a discussion of similarly distorted by the fact that weap- a scenario (“regime A”) in which the United ons are the subjects of strategic paradigms. States and the USSR have revised their of- Incentive to strike fi rst is present or absent fensive weaponry, banned MIRVs, and according to a mathematical calculus of gone to a regime of single warhead (Midg- numbers of “surviving” weapons. That is, etman) missiles, with no “defensive shield” incentive to start a nuclear war is discussed (or what is familiarly known as “Star Wars” not in terms of what possible military or or SDI): political ends it might serve but, instead, in terms of numbers of weapons, with the The strategic stability of regime A is based on goal being to make sure that you are the the fact that both sides are deprived of any guy who still has the most left at the end. incentive ever to strike fi rst. Since it takes Hence, it is frequently stated that MIRVed roughly two warheads to destroy one enemy missiles create strategic instability because silo, an attacker must expend two of his missiles to destroy one of the enemy’s. A fi rst they “give you the incentive to strike fi rst.” strike disarms the attacker. The aggressor Calculating that two warheads must be tar- ends up worse off than the aggressed.44 geted on each enemy missile, one MIRVed missile with ten warheads would, in theory, “The aggressor ends up worse off than be able to destroy fi ve enemy missiles in the aggressed”? The homeland of “the ag- their silos; you destroy more of theirs than gressed” has just been devastated by the ex- you have expended of your own. You win plosions of, say, a thousand nuclear bombs, the numbers game. In addition, if you do each likely to be ten to one hundred times not strike fi rst, it would theoretically take more powerful than the bomb dropped on relatively few of their MIRVed missiles to Hiroshima, and the aggressor, whose home- destroy a larger number of your own—so land is still untouched, “ends up worse off”? you must, as they say in the business, “use How is it possible to think this? Even ab- ’em or lose ’em.” Many strategic analysts stract language and abstract thinking do fear that in a period of escalating political not seem to be a suffi cient explanation. tensions, when it begins to look as though I was only able to “make sense of it” war may be inevitable, this combination when I fi nally asked myself the question makes “the incentive to strike fi rst” well that feminists have been asking about the- nigh irresistible. ories in every discipline: What is the ref- Incentive to launch a nuclear war arises erence point? Who (or what) is the subject from a particular confi guration of weap- here? ons and their hypothetical mathematical 148 | CAROL COHN

interaction. Incentive can only be so nar- are separate questions, questions that are rowly defi ned because the referents of outside what they do, outside their realm of technostrategic paradigms are weapons— expertise. So their deliberations go on quite not human lives, not even states and state independently, as though with a life of their power. own, disconnected from the functions and The fact that the subjects of strategic par- values they are supposedly to serve. adigms are weapons has several important Finally, the third problem is that this dis- implications. First, and perhaps most crit- course has become virtually the only legit- ically, there simply is no way to talk about imate form of response to the question of human death or human societies when how to achieve security. If the language of you are using a language designed to talk weaponry was one competing voice in the about weapons. Human death simply is discussion, or one that was integrated with “collateral damage”—collateral to the real others, the fact that the referents of stra- subject, which is the weapons themselves. tegic paradigms are only weapons would Second, if human lives are not the ref- be of little note. But when we realize that erence point, then it is not only impossi- the only language and expertise offered to ble to talk about humans in this language, those interested in pursuing peace refers it also becomes in some sense illegitimate to nothing but weapons, its limits become to ask the paradigm to refl ect human con- staggering, and its entrapping qualities— cerns. Hence, questions that break through the way in which, once you adopt it, it be- the numbing language of strategic anal- comes so hard to stay connected to human ysis and raise issues in human terms can concerns become more comprehensible. be dismissed easily. No one will claim that the questions are unimportant, but they STAGE 4: THE TERROR are inexpert, unprofessional, irrelevant to the business at hand to ask. The discourse As a newcomer to the world of defense among the experts remains hermetically analysts, I was continually startled by like- sealed. able and admirable men, by their gallows The problem, then, is not only that the humor, by the bloodcurdling casualness language is narrow but also that it is seen with which they regularly blew up the world by its speakers as complete or whole unto while standing and chatting over the coffee itself—as representing a body of truths that pot. I also heard the language they spoke exist independently of any other truth or heard the acronyms and euphemisms, and knowledge. The isolation of this technical abstractions, heard the imagery, heard the knowledge from social or psychological pleasure with which they used it. or moral thought, or feelings, is all seen as Within a few weeks, what had once been legitimate and necessary. The outcome is remarkable became unnoticeable. As I that defense intellectuals can talk about the learned to speak, my perspective changed. weapons that are supposed to protect par- I no longer stood outside the impermeable ticular political entities, particular peoples wall of technostrategic language and, once and their way of life, without actually ask- inside, I could no longer see it. Speaking ing if weapons can do it, or if they are the the language, I could no longer really hear best way to do it, or whether they may even it. And once inside its protective walls, I damage the entities you are supposedly pro- began to fi nd it diffi cult to get out. The im- tecting. It is not that the men I spoke with permeability worked both ways. would say that these are invalid questions. I had not only learned to speak a They would, however, simply say that they language: I had started to think in it. Its SEX AND DEATH IN THE RATIONAL WORLD OF DEFENSE INTELLECTUALS | 149 questions became my questions, its con- realize that these new insights were things I cepts shaped my responses to new ideas. actually knew before I ever entered this com- Its defi nitions of the parameters of real- munity. Apparently, I had since forgotten ity became mine. Like the White Queen, I them, at least functionally, if not absolutely. began to believe six impossible things be- I began to feel that I had fallen down the fore breakfast. Not because I consciously rabbit hole—and it was a struggle to climb believed, for instance, that a “surgically back out. clean counterforce strike” was really possible, but instead because some elaborate CONCLUSIONS piece of doctrinal reasoning I used was already predicated on the possibility of those Suffi ce it to say that the issues about lan- strikes, as well as on a host of other impos- guage do not disappear after you have sible things.45 mastered technostrategic discourse. The My grasp on what I knew as reality seductions remain great. You can fi nd all seemed to slip. I might get very excited, sorts of ways to seemingly beat the boys at for example, about a new strategic justifi - their own game; you can show how even cation for a “no fi rst use” policy and spend within their own defi nitions of rationality, time discussing the ways in which its impli- most of what is happening in the devel- cations for our force structure in Western opment and deployment of nuclear forces Europe were superior to the older version.46 is wildly irrational. You can also impress And after a day or two I would suddenly your friends and colleagues with sickly hu- step back, aghast that I was so involved morous stories about the way things really with the military justifi cations for not happen on the inside. There is tremendous using nuclear weapons—as though the pleasure in it, especially for those of us moral ones were not enough. What I was who have been closed out, who have been actually talking about—the mass inciner- told that it is really all beyond us and we ation caused by a nuclear attack—was no should just leave it to the benevolently pa- longer in my head. ternal men in charge. Or I might hear some proposals that But as the pleasures deepen, so do the seemed to me infi nitely superior to the dangers. The activity of trying to out-reason usual arms control fare. First I would work defense intellectuals in their own games out how and why these proposals were gets you thinking inside their rules, tacitly better and then work out all the ways to accepting all the unspoken assumptions of counter the arguments against them. But their paradigms. You become subject to the then, it might dawn on me that even though tyranny of concepts. The language shapes these two proposals sounded so different, your categories of thought (e.g., here it be- they still shared a host of assumptions that comes “good nukes” or “bad nukes,” not, I was not willing to make (e.g., about the nukes or no nukes) and defi nes the bound- inevitable, eternal confl ict of interests be- aries of imagination (as you try to imagine tween the United States and the USSR, or a “minimally destabilizing basing mode” the desirability of having some form of nu- rather than a way to prevent the weapon clear deterrent, or the goal of “managing,” from being deployed at all). rather than ending, the nuclear arms race). Yet, the issues of language have now be- After struggling to this point of seeing what come somewhat less vivid and central to united both positions, I would fi rst feel as me. Some of the questions raised by the though I had really accomplished some- experiences described here remain im- thing. And then all of a sudden, I would portant, but others have faded and been 150 | CAROL COHN

superseded by new questions. These, while in military thinking does not require con- still not precisely the questions of an “in- frontation with, and actually demands the sider,” are questions I could not have had elision of, this reality. 48 without being inside, without having ac- Listening to the discourse of nuclear excess to the knowledge and perspective perts reveals a series of culturally grounded the inside position affords. Many of my and culturally acceptable mechanisms questions now are more practical—which that serve this purpose and that make it individuals and institutions are actually re- possible to “think about the unthinkable,” sponsible for the endless “modernization” to work in institutions that foster the pro- and proliferation of nuclear weaponry? liferation of nuclear weapons, to plan mass What role does technostrategic rational- incinerations of millions of human beings ity actually play in their thinking? What for a living. Language that is abstract, sani- would a reasonable, genuinely defensive tized, full of euphemisms; language that is “defense” policy look like? Others are more sexy and fun to use; paradigms whose refer- philosophical. What is the nature of the ra- ent is weapons; imagery that domesticates tionality and “realism” claimed by defense and defl ates the forces of mass destruc- intellectuals for their mode of thinking? tion; imagery that reverses sentient and What are the many different grounds on nonsentient matter, that confl ates birth which their claims to rationality can be and death, destruction and creation—all shown to be spurious? of these are part of what makes it possi- My own move away from a focus on the ble to be radically removed from the real- language is quite typical. Other recent en- ity of what one is talking about and from trants into this world have commented to the realities one is creating through the me that, while it is the cold-blooded, ab- discourse. 49 stract discussions that are most striking Learning to speak the language reveals at fi rst, within a short time “you get past something about how thinking can beit—you stop hearing it, it stops bothering come more abstract, more focused on you, it becomes normal—and you come parts disembedded from their context, to see that the language, itself, is not the more attentive to the survival of weapons problem.” than the survival of human beings. That However, I think it would be a mistake to is, it reveals something about the process dismiss these early impressions. They can of militarization—and the way in which help us learn something about the mili- that process may be undergone by man or tarization of the mind, and they have, I be- woman, hawk or dove. lieve, important implications for feminist Most often, the act of learning techno- scholars and activists who seek to create a strategic language is conceived of as an more just and peaceful world. additive process: you add a new set of vo- Mechanisms of the mind’s militarization cabulary words; you add the refl ex ability are revealed through both listening to the to decode and use endless numbers of ac- language and learning to speak it. Listen- ronyms; you add some new information ing, it becomes clear that participation in that the specialized language contains; you the world of nuclear strategic analysis does add the conceptual tools that will allow you not necessarily require confrontation with to “think strategically.” This additive view the central fact about military activity— appears to be held by defense intellectuals that the purpose of all weaponry and all themselves; as one said to me, “Much of strategy is to injure human bodies.47 In fact, the debate is in technical terms—learn it, as Elaine Scarry points out, participation and decide whether it’s relevant later.” This SEX AND DEATH IN THE RATIONAL WORLD OF DEFENSE INTELLECTUALS | 151 view also appears to be held by many who articulates the criteria and reasoning strat- think of themselves as antinuclear, be they egies upon which nuclear weapons develop- scholars and professionals attempting to ment and deployment decisions are made . change the fi eld from within, or public I believe that this is largely an illusion. In- interest lobbyists and educational organi- stead, I want to suggest that technostrategic zations, or some feminist antimilitarists.50 discourse functions more as a gloss, as an Some believe that our nuclear policies ideological curtain behind which the actual are so riddled with irrationality that there reasons for these decisions hide. That rather is a lot of room for well-reasoned, well- than informing and shaping decisions, it informed arguments to make a difference; far more often functions as a legitimation others, even if they do not believe that the for political outcomes that have occurred technical information is very important, for utterly different reasons. If this is true, see it as necessary to master the language it raises some serious questions about the simply because it is too diffi cult to attain extent of the political returns we might get public legitimacy without it. In either case, from using technostrategic discourse, and the idea is that you add the expert language whether they can ever balance out the po- and information and proceed from there. tential problems and inherent costs. However, I have been arguing through- I do not, however, want to suggest that out this paper that learning the language is none of us should learn the language. I do a transformative, rather than an additive, not believe that this language is well suited process. When you choose to learn it you to achieving the goals desired by antimil- enter a new mode of thinking—a mode of itarists, yet at the same time, I, for one, thinking not only about nuclear weapons have found the experience of learning the but also, de facto, about military and po- language useful and worthwhile (even if at litical power and about the relationship times traumatic). The question for those between human ends and technological of us who do choose to learn it, I think, means. is what use are we going to make of that Thus, those of us who fi nd U.S. nuclear knowledge? policy desperately misguided appear to One of the most intriguing options face a serious quandary. If we refuse to opened by learning the language is that it learn the language, we are virtually guar- suggests a basis upon which to challenge anteed that our voices will remain outside the legitimacy of the defense intellectuals’ the “politically relevant” spectrum of opin- dominance of the discourse on nuclear is- ion. Yet, if we do learn and speak it, we not sues. When defense intellectuals are crit- only severely limit what we can say but we icized for the cold-blooded inhumanity also invite the transformation, the mili- of the scenarios they plan, their response tarization, of our own thinking. is to claim the high ground of rationality; I have no solutions to this dilemma, but they are the only ones whose response to I would like to offer a few thoughts in an the existence of nuclear weapons is ob- effort to reformulate its terms. First, it is jective and realistic. They portray those important to recognize an assumption im- who are radically opposed to the nuclear plicit in adopting the strategy of learning status quo as irrational, unrealistic, too the language. When we assume that learn- emotional. “Idealistic activists” is the pejo- ing and speaking the language will give us rative they set against their own hard-nosed a voice recognized as legitimate and will professionalism. give us greater political infl uence, we are Much of their claim to legitimacy, then, assuming that the language itself actually is a claim to objectivity born of technical 152 | CAROL COHN

expertise and to the disciplined purging of alternative voices—diverse voices whose the emotional valences that might threaten conversations with each other will invent their objectivity. But if the surface of their those futures. discourse its abstraction and technical jargon appears at fi rst to support these claims, a look just below the surface does NOTES not. There we fi nd currents of homoerotic 1. Thomas Powers, “How Nuclear War Could Start,” excitement, heterosexual domination, the New York Review of Books (January 17, 1985), 33. drive toward competency and mastery, the 2. George Kennan, “A Modest Proposal,” New York Review of Books (July 16, 1981), 14. pleasures of membership in an elite and 3. It is unusual for defense intellectuals to write for privileged group, the ultimate importance the public, rather than for their colleagues, but a and meaning of membership in the priest- recent, interesting exception has been made by hood, and the thrilling power of becoming a group of defense analysts from Harvard. Their Death, shatterer of worlds. How is it pos- two books provide a clear expression of the stance that living with nuclear weapons is not so much a sible to hold this up as a paragon of cool- problem to be solved but a condition to be man- headed objectivity? aged rationally. Albert Camesale and the Harvard I do not wish here to discuss or judge the Nuclear Study Group, Living with Nuclear Weap- holding of “objectivity” as an epistemolog- ons (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ical goal. I would simply point out that, as 1984); and Graham T. Allison, Albert Carne sale, and Joseph Nye, Jr., eds., Hawks, Doves, and Owls: defense intellectuals rest their claims to An Agenda for Avoiding Nuclear War (New York: legitimacy on the untainted rationality of W. W. Norton & Co., 1985). their dis course, their project fails accord- 4. For useful introductions to feminist work on ing to its own criteria. Deconstructing stra- gender and language, see Barrie Thome, Cheris tegic discourse’s claims to rationality is, Kramarae, and Nancy Henley, eds., Language, Gender and Society (Rowley, Mass.: Newbury then, in and of itself, an important way to Publishing House, 1983); and Elizabeth Abel, ed., challenge its hegemony as the sole legiti- Writing and Sexual Difference (Chicago: Univer- mate language for public debate about nu- sity of Chicago Press, 1982). clear policy. 5. For feminist critiques of dominant Western I believe that feminists, and others who conceptions of rationality, see Nancy Hartsock, Money, Sex, and Power (New York: Longman, seek a more just and peaceful world, have 1983); Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka, a dual task before us—a deconstructive eds., Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives project and a reconstructive project that on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology and are intimately linked. 51 Our deconstructive the Philosophy of Science (Dordrecht: D. Reidel task requires close attention to, and the dis- Publishing Co., 1983); Evelyn Fox Keller, Refl ections on Gender and Science (New Haven, Conn.: mantling of, technostrategic dis course. The Yale University Press, 1985); Jean Bethke Elshtain, dominant voice of militarized masculinity Public Man, Private Woman: Woman in Social and and decontextualized rationality speaks so Political Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni- loudly in our culture, it will remain diffi cult versity Press, 1981); Genevieve Lloyd, The Man for any other voices to be heard until that of Reason: “Male” and “Femole” in Western Phi- losophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota voice loses some of its power to defi ne what Press, 1984), which contains a particularly use- we hear and how we name the world—until ful bibliographic essay; Sara Ruddick, “Remarks that voice is delegitimated. on the Sexual Politics of Reason,” in Women and Our reconstructive task is a task of cre- Moral Theory , ed. Eva Kittay and Diana Meyers ating compelling alternative visions of (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld, in press). Some of the growing feminist work on gender possible futures, a task of recognizing and and war is explicitly connected to critiques of ra- developing alternative conceptions of ratio- tionality. See Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (New nality, a task of creating rich and imaginative York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1966); Nancy SEX AND DEATH IN THE RATIONAL WORLD OF DEFENSE INTELLECTUALS | 153

C. M. Hartsock, “The Feminist Standpoint: De- strategic language and thinking are imbued with, veloping the Grounds for a Specifi cally Feminist indeed constructed out of, modes of thinking that Historical Materialism,” in Harding and Hintikka, are associated with technology. eds., 283–310, and “The Barracks Community 7. Fusion weapons’ proportionally smaller yield of in Western Political Thought: Prologomena to a radioactive fallout led Atomic Energy Commis- Feminist Critique of War and Politics,” in Women sion Chairman Lewis Strauss to announce in and Men’s Wars, ed. Judith Hicks Stiehm (Oxford: 1956 that hydrogen bomb tests were important Pergamon Press, 1983); Jean Bethke Elshtain, “not only from a military point of view but from “Refl ections on War and Political Discourse: Re- a humanitarian aspect.” Although the bombs alism, Just War and Feminism in a Nuclear Age,” being tested were 1,000 times more powerful Political Theory 13, no. 1 (February 1985): 39–57; than those that devastated Hiroshima and Na- Sara Ruddick, “Preservative Love and Military gasaki, the proportional reduction of fallout Destruction: Some Refl ections on Mothering and apparently qualifi ed them as not only clean Peace,” in Mothering: Essays in Feminist Theory , but also humanitarian. Lewis Strauss is quoted ed. Joyce Trebilcot (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Al- in Ralph Lapp, “The ‘Humanitarian’ H-Bomb,” lanheld, 1984), 231–62; Genevieve Lloyd, “Selfhood, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 12, no. 7 (September War, and Masculinity,” in Feminist Challenges , ed. 1956): 263. E. Gross and C. Pateman (Boston: Northeastern 8. I must point out that we cannot know whether to University Press, 1986). There is a vast and valu- take this particular example literally: America’s list able literature on gender and war that indirectly of nuclear targets is, of course, classifi ed. The de- informs my work. See, e.g., Cynthia Enloe, Does fense analyst quoted, however, is a man who has Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women’s had access to that list for at least two decades. He Lives (Boston: South End Press, 1984); Stiehm, is also a man whose thinking and speaking is care- ed.; Jean Bethke Elshtain, “On Beautiful Souls, ful and precise, so I think it is reasonable to assume Just Warriors, and Feminist Consciousness,” in that his statement is not a distortion, that “shoe Stiehm, ed., 341–48; Sara Ruddick, “Pacifying factories,” even if not themselves literally targeted, the Forces: Drafting Women in the Interests of accurately represent a category of target. Shoe Peace,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and factories would be one among many “military tar- Society 8, no. 3 (Spring 1983): 471–89, and “Draft- gets” other than weapons systems themselves; they ing Women: Pieces of a Puzzle,” in Conscripts would be military targets because an army needs and Volunteers: Military Requirements, Social boots. The likelihood of a nuclear war lasting long Values, and the ALL-Volunteer Force, ed. Robert enough for foot soldiers to wear out their boots K. Fullinwider (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allan- might seem to stretch the limits of credibility, but held, 1983); Amy Swerdlow, “Women’s Strike for that is an insuffi cient reason to assume that they are Peace versus HUAC,” Feminist Studies 8, no. 3 not nuclear targets. Nuclear targeting and nuclear (Fall 1982): 493–5; Mary C. Segers, “The Catho- strategic planning in general frequently suffer from lic Bishops’ Pastoral Letter on War and Peace: A “conventionalization”—the tendency of planners Feminist Perspective,” Feminist Studies 11, no. 3 to think in the old, familiar terms of “conven- (Fall 1985): 619–47. tional” warfare rather than fully assimilating the 6. I have coined the term “technostrategic” to repre- ways in which nuclear weaponry has changed sent the intertwined, inextricable nature of tech- warfare. In avoiding talking about murder, the de- nological and nuclear strategic thinking. The fi rst fense community has long been ahead of the State reason is that strategic thinking seems to change Department. It was not until1984 that the State De- in direct response to technological changes, partment announced it will no longer use the word rather than political thinking, or some indepen- “killing,” much less “murder,” in offi cial reports on dent paradigms that might be isolated as “stra- the status of human rights in allied countries. The tegic.” (On this point, see Lord Solly Zuckerman, new term is “unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of Nuclear Illusions and Reality [New York: Viking life” ( New York Times, February 15, 1984, as cited in Press, 1982]). Even more important, strategic the- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak 11, no. 1 [October ory not only depends on and changes in response 1984]: 3). to technological objects, it is also based on a kind 9. “Kiloton” (or kt) is a measure of explosive power, of thinking, a way of looking at problems—for- measured by the number of thousands of tons of mal, mathematical modeling, systems analysis, TNT required to release an equivalent amount of game theory, linear programming—that are part energy. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima of technology itself. So I use the term “techno - is estimated to have been approximately 12 kt. An strategic” to indicate the degree to which nuclear MX missile is designed to carry up to ten Mk 21 154 | CAROL COHN

reentry vehicles, each with a W-87 warhead. The of this analogy to me and sharing her thoughts yield of W-87 warheads is 300 kt, but they are “up- about this and other events in the program. The gradable” to 475 kt. interpretation I give here draws strongly on hers. 10. Since the MX would theoretically be able to “take 21. MIRV stands for “multiple independently targ- out” Soviet land-based ICBMs in a “disarming fi rst etable re-entry vehicles.” A MIRVed missile not strike,” the Soviets would have few ICBMs left for a only carries more than one warhead; its war- retaliatory attack, and thus damage to the United heads can be aimed at different targets. States theoretically would be limited. However, to 22. Henry T. Nash, “The Bureaucratization of Homi- consider the damage that could be infl icted on cide,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (April1980), the United States by the remaining ICBMs, not to reprinted in E. P. Thompson and Dan Smith, eds., mention Soviet bombers and submarine-based Protest and Survive (New York: Monthly Review missiles as “limited” is to act as though words have Press, 1981), 159. The neutron bomb is nota- no meaning. ble for the active political contention that has 11. Conservative government assessments of the occurred over its use and naming. It is a small number of deaths resulting from a “surgically warhead that produces six times the prompt ra- clean” counterforce attack vary widely. The Of- diation but slightly less blast and heat than typifi ce of Technology Assessment projects 2 mil- cal fi ssion warheads of the same yield. Pentagon lion to 20 million immediate deaths. (See James planners see neutron bombs as useful in killing Fallows, National Defense [New York: Random Soviet tank crews while theoretically leaving the House, 1981], 159.) A 1975 Defense Department buildings near the tanks intact. Of course, the ci- study estimated 18.3 million fatalities, while the vilians in the nearby buildings, however, would U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, be killed by the same “enhanced radiation” as the using different assumptions, arrived at a fi gure of tank crews. It is this design for protecting prop- 50 million (cited by Desmond Ball, “Can Nuclear erty while killing civilians along with soldiers that War Be Controlled?” Adelphi Paper no. 169 [Lon- has led people in the antinuclear movement to don: International Institute for Strategic Studies, call the neutron bomb “the ultimate capitalist 1981]). weapon.” However, in offi cial parlance the neu- 12. The phrase is Helen Caldicott’s in Missile Envy: tron bomb is not called a weapon at all; it is an The Arms Race and Nuclear War (Toronto: Ban- “enhanced radiation device.” It is worth noting, tam Books, 1986). however, that the designer of the neutron bomb 13. For the uninitiated, “penetration aids” refers to did not conceive of it as an anti-tank personnel devices that help bombers or missiles get past weapon to be used against the Russians. Instead, the “enemy’s” defensive systems; e.g., stealth he thought it would be useful in an area where technology, chaff, or decoys. Within the defense the enemy did not have nuclear weapons to use. intellectual community, they are also familiarly (Samuel T. Cohen, in an interview on National known as “penaids.” Public Radio, as reported in Fred Kaplan, “The 14. General William Odom, “C31and Telecommu- Neutron Bomb: What It Is, the Way It Works,” Bul- nications at the Policy Level,” Incidental Paper, letin of Atomic Scientists [October 1981], 6.) Seminar on C31: Command, Control, Communi- 23. For a discussion of the functions of imagery cations and Intelligence (Cambridge, Mass.: Har- that reverses sentient and insentient matter, vard University, Center for Information Policy that “exchange[s) . . . idioms between weap- Research, Spring 1980). ons and bodies,” see Elaine Scarry, The Body 15. ‘ “This point has been amply documented by in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World Brian Easlea, Fathering the Unthinkable: Mascu- (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), linity, Scientists and the Nuclear Arms Race (Lon- 60–157, esp. 67. don: Pluto Press, 1983). 24. For further discussion of men’s desire to appro- 16. Air Force Magazine 68, no. 6 (June 1985): 77–78. priate from women the power of giving life and 17. Ibid. death, and its implications for men’s war- making 18. William L. Laurence, Dawn over Zero: The Study activities, see Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid of the Atomic Bomb (London: Museum Press, and the Minotaur (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 19. 1977). For further analysis of male birth imagery 19. U.S.A.F. Retired General T. R. Milton, “Nuclear in the atomic bomb project, see Evelyn Fox Keller, Virginity,” Air Force Magazine 68, no. 5 (May “From Secrets of Life to Secrets of Death” (paper 1985): 44. delivered at the Kansas Seminar, Yale University, 20. I am grateful to Margaret Cerullo, a participant in New Haven, Conn., November 1986); and Easlea the fi rst summer program, for reporting the use (n. 15 above), 81–116. SEX AND DEATH IN THE RATIONAL WORLD OF DEFENSE INTELLECTUALS | 155

25. Lawrence is quoted by Herbert Childs in An would be different from World War II, which was American Genius: The Life of Ernest Orlando Law- a “war of attrition,” in which transportation, sup- rence (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968), 340. ply depots, and other targets were hit, rather than 26. Feynman writes about the telegram in Richard being a “big bang” (Daniel Ford, “The Button,” P. Feynman, “Los Alamos from Below,” in Rem- New Yorker Magazine 61, no. 7 [April 8, 1985], 49). iniscences of Los Alamos, 1943–1945 , ed. Law- 36. Jungk, 201. rence Badash, Joseph O. Hirshfelder, and Herbert 37. Hisako Matsubara, Cranes at Dusk (Garden City, P. Broida (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co., N.Y.: Dial Press, 1985). The author was a child in 1980), 130. Kyoto at the time the atomic bomb was dropped. 27. Hans Bethe is quoted as saying that “Ulam was Her description is based on the memories of the father of the hydrogen bomb and Edward survivors. was the mother, because he carried the baby for 38. General Robert Rosenberg (formerly on the quite a while” (J. Bernstein, Hans Bethe: Prophet National Security Council staff during the Car- of Energy [New York: Basic Books, 1980], 95). ter Administration), “The Infl uence of Policy- 28. The MILSTAR system is a communications satel- making on C31,” Incidental Paper, Seminar on lite system that is jam resistant, as well as having C31 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, an “EMP-hardened capability.” (This means that Center for Information Policy Research, Spring the electromagnetic pulse set off by a nuclear ex- 1980), 59. plosion would theoretically not destroy the sat- 39. Two other writers who have remarked on this ellites’ electronic systems.) There are, of course, division of languages between the “victims” and many things to say about the sanity and morality the professionals (variously named) are Freeman of the idea of the MILSTAR system and of spend- Dyson and Glenn D. Hook. Dyson, in Weapons ing the millions of dollars necessary to EMP- and Hope (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), notes harden it. The most obvious point is that this is that there are two languages in the current dis- a system designed to enable the United States to cussion of nuclear weapons, which he calls the fi ght a “protracted” nuclear war—the EMP-hard- language of “the victims” and the language of “the ening is to allow it to act as a conduit for com- warriors.” He sees the resulting problem as being mand and control of successive nuclear shots, the diffi culty the two groups have in communi- long after the initial exchange. The practicality cating with each other and, thus, in appreciating of the idea would also appear to merit some dis- each other’s valid concerns. His project, then, is cussion—who and what is going to be commu- the search for a common language, and a good nicating to and from after the initial exchange? portion of the rest of the book is directed toward And why bother to harden it against EMP when that end. Hook, in “Making Nuclear Weapons Eas- all an opponent has to do to prevent the system ier to Live With: The Political Role of Language in from functioning is to blow it up, a feat certain to Nuclearization,” Journal of Peace Research 22, no. become technologically feasible in a short time? 1(1985): 67–77, follows Camus in naming the two But, needless to say, exploration of these ques- groups “the victims” and “the executioners.” He is tions was not part of the briefi ng. more explicit than Dyson about naming these as 29. The concern about having a boy, not a girl, is perspectives, as coming from positions of greater written about by Robert Jungk, Brighter Than a or lesser power, and points out that those with the Thousand Suns , trans. James Cleugh (New York: most power are able to dominate and defi ne the Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1956), 197. terms in which we speak about nuclear issues, 30. Richard E. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, The so that no matter who we are, we fi nd ourselves New World, 1939146: A History of the United speaking as though we were the users, rather than States Atomic Energy Commission , 2 vols. (Uni- the victims of nuclear weapons. Although my versity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, analysis of perspectives and the ways in which 1962), 1:386. language inscribes relations of power is similar to 31. Winston Churchill, The Second World War , vol. 6., his, I differ from Hook in fi nding in this fact one of Triumph and Tragedy (London: Cassell, 1954), 551. the sources of the experts’ relative lack of fear of 32. Quoted by Easlea, 130. nuclear war. 33. Laurence (n. 18 above), 10. 40. The “strategic triad” refers to the three differ- 34. Ibid., 188. ent modes of basing nuclear warheads: at land, 35. From a 1985 interview in which Holloway was on intercontinental ballistic missiles; at sea, explaining the logic of a “decapitating” strike on missiles in submarines; and “in the air,” on against the Soviet leadership and command and the Strategic Air Command’s bombers. Given control systems—and thus how nuclear war that nuclear weapons based on submarines are 156 | CAROL COHN

“invulnerable” (i.e., not subject to attack), since 46. “No fi rst use” refers to the commitment not to be there is not now nor likely to be in the future any the fi rst side to introduce nuclear weapons into reliable way to fi nd and target submarines, many a “conventional” war. The Soviet Union has a “no commentators (mostly from outside the com- fi rst use” policy, but the United States does not. In munity of defense intellectuals) have suggested fact, it is NATO doctrine to use nuclear weapons in that the Navy’s leg of the triad is all we need to a conventional war in Western Europe, as a way of ensure a capacity to retaliate against a nuclear overcoming the Warsaw Pact’s supposed superior- attack. This suggestion that submarine-based ity in conventional weaponry and troop strength. missiles are an adequate deterrent becomes es- 47. For an eloquent and graphic exploration of this pecially appealing when it is remembered that point, see Scarry (n. 23 above), 73. the other basing modes—ICBMs and bombers— 48. Scarry catalogs a variety of mechanisms that act as targets that would draw thousands of nu- serve this purpose (ibid., 60–157). The point is clear attacks to the American mainland in time further developed by Sara Ruddick, “The Ratio- of war. nality of Care,” in Thinking about Women, War, 41. For an interesting recent discussion of the role of and the Military, ed. Jean Bethke Elshtain and language in the creation of professional power, Sheila Tobias (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld, see JoAnne Brown, “Professional Language: in press). Words That Succeed,” Radical History Review, no. 49. My discussion of the specifi c ways in which this 34 (1986), 33–51. discourse creates new realities is in the next part 42. For fascinating, detailed accounts of the devel- of this project, entitled, “The Emperor’s New opment of strategic doctrine, see Fred Kaplan, Armor.” I, like many other social scientists, have The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon &: been infl uenced by poststructuralist literary the- Schuster, 1983); and Gregg F. Herken, The Coun- ory’s discussion of deconstructing texts, point of sels of War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985). view, and narrative authority within texts, and I 43. Steven Kull’s interviews with nuclear strategists take the language and social practice of the de- can be read to show that on some level, some of fense intellectuals as a text to be read in this way. the time, some of these men are aware that there For a classic introduction to this literature, see is a serious disjunction between their models and Josue Harari, ed., Textual Strategies: Perspectives the real world. Their justifi cation for continuing in Post-structuralist Criticism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cor- to use these models is that “other people” (un- nell University Press, 1979); and Jacques Derrida, named, and on asking, unnameable) believe in Of Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins them and that they therefore have an important University Press, 1976). reality (“Nuclear Nonsense,” Foreign Policy , no. 58 50. Perhaps the most prominent proponent of this [Spring 1985), 28–52). strategy is Sheila Tobias. See, e.g., “Demystify- 44. Charles Krauthammer, “Will Star Wars Kill Arms ing Defense: Closing the Knowledge Gap,” Social Control?” New Republic , no. 3,653 (January 21, Policy 13, no. 3 (1983): 29–32; and Sheila Tobias, 1985), 12–16. Peter Goudinoff, Stefan Leader, and Shelah 45. For an excellent discussion of the myriad un- Leader, What Kinds of Guns Are They Buying for certainties that make it ludicrous to assume the Your Butter? (New York: William Morrow & Co., targeting accuracies posited in the notion of “sur- 1982). gically clean counterforce strikes,” see Fallows (n. 51. Harding and Hintikka, eds. (n. 5 above), ix–xix, 11 above), chap. 6. esp. x. CHAPTER 10

Socially Camouﬂ aged Technologies: The Case of the Electromechanical Vibrator Rachel Maines

Certain commodities are sold in the legal labor-intensive and costly than predeces- marketplace for which the expected use sor technologies, but because it maintained is either illegal or socially unacceptable. the social camoufl age of sexual massage Marketing of these goods, therefore, re- treatment through its associations with quires camoufl aging of the design purpose modern professional instrumentation and in a verbal and visual rhetoric that conveys with prevailing beliefs about electricity as a to the knowledgeable consumer the item’s healing agent.[1] selling points without actually endorsing The case of the electromechanical vi- its socially prohibited uses. I refer not to brator, as a technology associated with goods that are actually illegal in character, women’s sexuality, involves issues of ac- such as marijuana, but to their grey-market ceptability rather than legality. The vibrator background technologies, such as ciga- and its predecessor technologies, includ- rette rolling papers. Marketing efforts for ing the dildo, are associated with mastur- goods of this type have similar character- bation, a socially prohibited activity until istics over time, despite the dissimilarity of well into the second half of this century.[2] the advertised commodities. I shall discuss Devices for mechanically-assisted female here an electromechanical technology that masturbation, mainly vibrators and dil- addresses formerly prohibited expressions does, were marketed in the popular press of women’s sexuality-the vibrator in its ear- from the late nineteenth century through liest incarnation between 1870 and 1930. the early thirties in similarly camoufl aged Comparisons will be drawn between mar- advertising. Such advertisements tempo- keting strategies for this electromechanical rarily disappeared from popular literature technology, introduced between 1880 and after the vibrator began to appear in stag 1903, and that of emmenagogues, distill- fi lms, which may have rendered the cam- ing, burglary tools, and computer software oufl age inadequate, and did not resurface copying, as well as the paradigm example until social change made it unnecessary to of drug paraphernalia. disguise the sexual uses of the device.[3] I shall argue here that electromechanical For purposes of this discussion, a vibra- massage of the female genitalia achieved tor is a mechanical or electromechanical acceptance during the period in question appliance imparting rapid and rhythmic by both professionals and consumers not pressure through a contoured working sur- only because it was less cumbersome, face usually mounted at a right angle to the 158 | RACHEL MAINES

handle. These points of contact generally the cachet of modernity and linked the intake the form of a set of interchangeable vi- strument to older technologies of electro- bratodes confi gured to the anatomical areas therapeutics, in which patients received they are intended to address. Vibrators are low-voltage electricity through electrodes rarely employed internally in masturba- attached directly to the skin or mucous tion; they thus differ from dildoes, which membranes, and to light-bath therapy, are generally straight-shafted and may or in which electric light was applied to the may not include a vibratory component. skin in a closed cabinet. The electrothera- Vibrators are here distinguished also from peutic association was explicitly invoked massagers, the working surfaces of which in the original term for the vibrator’s inter are fl at or dished.[4] It should be noted that changeable applicators, which were known this is a historian’s distinction imposed on as “vibratodes.” Electrical treatments were the primary sources; medical authors and employed in hysteria as soon as they were appliance manufacturers apply a heteroge- introduced in the eighteenth century, and neous nomenclature to massage technolo- remained in use as late as the 1920s. gies. Vibrators and dildoes rarely appeared Hysteria as a disease paradigm, from in household advertising between 1930 and its origins in the Egyptian medical cor- 1955, massagers continued to be marketed, pus through its conceptual eradication by mainly through household magazines.[5] American Psychological Association fi at in The electromechanical vibrator, intro- 1952, was so vaguely and subjectively de- duced as a medical instrument in the 1880s fi ned that it might encompass almost any and as a home appliance between 1900 set of ambiguous symptoms that troubled and 1903, represented the convergence of a woman or her family. As its name sug- several older medical massage technolo- gests, hysteria as well as its “sister” com- gies, including manual, hydriatic, electro plaint chlorosis were until the twentieth therapeutic and mechanical methods. In- century thought to have their etiology in ternal and external gynecological massage the female reproductive tract generally, with lubricated fi ngers had been a standard and more particularly in the organism’s re- medical treatment for hysteria, disorders of sponse to sexual deprivation.[8] This phys- menstruation and other female complaints iological condition seems to have achieved at least since the time of Aretaeus Cappadox epidemic proportions among women and (circa 150 A.D.), and the evidence suggests girls, at least in the modern period.[9] that orgasmic response on the part of the Sydenham, writing in the seventeenth cen- patient may have been the intended thera- tury, observed that hysteria was the most peutic result.[6] Douche therapy, a method common of all diseases except fevers.[10] of directing a jet of pumped water at the pel- In the late nineteenth century, physi- vic area and vulva, was employed for simi- cians noted with alarm that from half to lar purposes after hydrotherapy became three-quarters of all women showed signs popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth of hysterical affl iction. Among the many centuries.[7] The camoufl age of the appar- symptoms listed in medical descriptions of ently sexual character of such therapy was the syndrome are anxiety, sense of heavi- accomplished through its medical respect ness in the pelvis, edema (swelling) in ability and through creative defi nitions the lower abdomen and genital areas, both of the diseases for which massage was wandering of attention and associated indicated and of the effects of treatment. tendencies to indulge in sexual fantasy, in- In the case of the electromechanical vibra- somnia, irritability, and “excessive” vaginal tor, the use of electrical power contributed lubrication.[11] SOCIALLY CAMOUFLAGED TECHNOLOGIES: THE CASE OF THE ELECTROMECHANICAL VIBRATOR | 159

The therapeutic objective in such cases [14] Many later physicians, however, such was to produce a “crisis” of the disease in as the nineteenth century hydrotherapist the Hippocratic sense of this expression, John Harvey Kellogg, seem not to have corresponding to the point in infectious perceived the sexual character of patient diseases at which the fever breaks. Man- response. Kellogg wrote extensively about ual massage of the vulva by physicians or hydrotherapy and electrotherapeutics in midwives, with fragrant oils as lubricants, gynecology. In his “Electrotherapeutics formed part of the standard treatment in Chronic Maladies,” published in Mod- repertoire for hysteria, chlorosis and re- ern Medicine in 1904, he describes “strong lated disorders from ancient times until contractions of the abdominal muscles” the post-Freudian era. The crisis induced in a female patient undergoing treatment, by this procedure was usually called the and similar reactions such that “the offi ce “hysterical paroxysm.” Treatment for hys- table was made to tremble quite violently teria might comprise up to three-quarters with the movement.”[15] In their analysis of a physician’s practice in the nineteenth of the situation, these physicians may have century. Doctors who employed vulvular been handicapped by their failure to recog- massage treatment in hysteria thus re- nize that penetration is a successful means quired fast, effi cient and effective means of of producing orgasm in only a minority of producing the desired crisis. Portability of women; thus treatments that did not in- the technology was also a desideratum, as volve signifi cant vaginal penetration were physicians treated many patients in their not morally suspect. In effect, mispercep- homes, and only manual massage under tions of female sexuality formed part of the these conditions was possible until the in- camoufl age of the original manual tech- troduction of the portable battery-powered nique that preceded the electromechanical vibrator for medical use in the late 1880s. vibrator. Insertion of the speculum, how- Patients reported experiencing symp- ever, since it travelled the same path as the tomatic relief after such treatments, and supposedly irresistible penis during inter- such conditions as pelvic congestion and course, was widely criticized in the medi- insomnia were noticeably ameliorated, es- cal community for its purportedly immoral pecially if therapy continued on a regular effect on patients.[16] That some ques- basis. A few physicians, including Nathaniel tioned the ethics of the vulvular massage Highmore in the seventeenth century and procedure is clear; Thomas Stretch Dowse Auguste Tripier, a nineteenth century elec- quotes Graham as observing that “Massage trotherapist, clearly recognized the hyster- of the pelvic organs should be intrusted to ical paroxysm as sexual orgasm.[12] That those alone who have ‘clean hands and a many of their colleagues also perceived pure heart’.”[17] One physician, however, the sexual character of hysteria treatments in an article signifi cantly titled “Signs of is suggested by the fact that, in the case of Masturbation in the Female,” proposed the married women, one of the therapeutic application of an electrical charge to the options was intercourse, and in the case of clitoris as a test of salacious propensities single women, marriage was routinely rec- in women. Sensitivity of the organ to this ommended.[13] “God-fearing physicians,” type of electrical stimulation, in his view, as Zacuto expressed it in the seventeenth indicated secret indulgence in what was century, were expected to induce the par- known in the nineteenth century as “a bad oxysm with their own fi ngers only when habit.”[18] Ironically, such women were absolutely necessary, as in the case of very often treated electrically for hysteria sup- young single women, widows and nuns. posedly caused by masturbation. 160 | RACHEL MAINES

However they construed the benefi ts, Air-pressure models were introduced, physicians regarded the genital massage but they required cumbersome tanks of procedure, which could take as long as an compressed air, which needed frequent re- hour of skilled therapeutic activity, as some- fi lling. When line electricity became widely thing of a chore, and made early attempts available, portable plug-in models made to mechanize it. Hydrotherapy, in the form vibratory house calls more expeditious and of what was known as the “pelvic douche” cost effective for the enterprising physi- (massage of the lower pelvis with a jet of cian. The diffi culty of maintaining batteries pumped water), provided similar relief to the in or out of the offi ce was noted by several patient with reduced demands on the ther- medical writers of the period predating apist. Doctors of the eighteenth and nine- the introduction of plug-in vibrators.[23] teenth centuries frequently recommended Batteries and small offi ce generators were douche therapy for their women patients liable to fail at crucial moments during who could afford spa visits. This market patient treatment, and required more en- was limited, however, as both treatment gineering expertise for their maintenance and travel were costly.[19] A very small mi- than most physicians cared to acquire . . . nority of patients and doctors could afford Portable models using de or ac line elec- to install hydrotherapeutic facilities in con- tricity were available with a wide range of venient locations; both doctor and patient vibratodes, such as the twelve-inch rectal usually had to travel to the spa. Electrically- probe supplied with one of the Gorman powered equipment, when it became avail- fi rm’s vibrators. able, thus had a decentralizing and cost- Despite its inventor’s reservations, the reducing effect on massage treatment. Weiss instrument and later devices on In the 1860s, some spas and clinics in- the same principle were widely used by troduced a coal-fi red steam powered de- physicians for pelvic disorders in women vice invented by a Dr. George Taylor, called and girls. The social camoufl age applied the “Manipulator,” which massaged the to the older manual technology was care- lower pelvis while the patient either stood fully maintained in connection with the or lay on a table.[20] This too required a new, at least until the 1920s. The mar- considerable expenditure either by the keting of medical vibrators to physicians physician who purchased the equipment and the discussion of them in such works or by the patient who was required to as Covey’s Profi table Offi ce Specialties add - travel to a spa for treatment. Thus, when ressed two important professional consid- the electromechanical vibrator was in- erations: the respectability of the devices vented two decades later in England by as medical instruments (including their Mortimer Granville and manufactured by reassuringly clinical appearance) and their Weiss, a ready market already existed in utility in the fast and effi cient treatment the medical community.[21] Ironically, of those chronic disorders, such as pelvic Mortimer Granville considered the use of complaints in women, that provided a sig- his instrument on women, especially hys- nifi cant portion of a physician’s income. terics, a morally indefensible act, and rec- [24] The importance of a prestige image for ommended the device only for use on the electromechanical instrumentation, and male skeletal muscles.[22] Although his its role in the pricing of medical vibrators original battery-powered model was heavy is illustrated by a paragraph in the adver- and unreliable, it was more portable than tising brochure for the “Chattanooga,” at water-powered massage and less fatiguing $200 in 1904 the most costly of the physi- to the operator than manual massage. cians’ offi ce models: SOCIALLY CAMOUFLAGED TECHNOLOGIES: THE CASE OF THE ELECTROMECHANICAL VIBRATOR | 161

The Physician can give with the “Chatta- to certain waves of sound. These particu- nooga” Vibrator a thorough massage treat- lar electrical vibrations, capable of powerment in three minutes that is extremely fully exciting the Globe, lend themselves to pleasant and benefi cial, but this instrument innumerable uses of great importance . . . is neither designed nor sold as a “Massage “[28] In the same category of mystical rev- Machine.” It is sold only to Physicians, and erence for vibration is Samuel Wallian’s constructed for the express purpose of exciting the various organs of the body into activ- contemporaneous essay on “The Undula- ity through their central nervous supply. [25] tory Theory in Therapeutics,” in which he describes “modalities or manifestations of I do not mean to suggest that gynecolog- vibratory impulse” as the guiding principle ical treatments were the only uses of such of the universe. “Each change and grada- devices, or that all physicians who pur- tion is not a transformation, as mollusk chased them used them for the production into mammal, or monkey into man, but an of orgasm in female patients, but the liter- evidence of a variation in vibratory veloc- ature suggests that a substantial number ity. A certain rate begets a vermis , another were interested in the new technology’s util- and higher rate produces a viper, a verte- ity in the hysteroneurasthenic complaints. brate , a vestryman .”[29] The interposition of an offi cial-looking In 1900, according to Monell, more than machine must have done much to restore a dozen medical vibratory devices for phy- clinical dignity to the massage procedure. sicians had been available for examination The vibrator was introduced in 1899 as a at the Paris Exposition. Of these, few were home medical appliance, and was by 1904 able to compete in the long term with elec- advertised in household magazines in sug- tromechanical models. Mary L. H. Arnold gestive terms we shall examine later on. It Snow, writing for a medical readership in was important for physicians to be able to 1904, discusses in some depth more than justify to patients the expense of $2–3 per twenty types, of which more than half are treatment, as home vibrators were avail- electromechanical. These models, some able for about $5. priced to the medical trade as low as $15, The acceptance of the electromechani- delivered vibrations from one to 7,000 cal vibrator by physicians at the turn of this pulses a minute. Some were fl oor-standing century may also have been infl uenced by machines on rollers; others could be sus- their earlier adoption of electrotherapeu- pended from the ceiling like the modern tics, with which vibratory treatment could impact wrench.[30] The more expensive be, and often was, combined.[26] Vibratory models were adapted to either ac or de therapeutics were introduced from Lon- currents. A few, such as those of the British don and Paris, especially from the famous fi rm Schall and Son, could even be ordered Hopital Salpetriere, which added to their with motors custom-wound to a physi- respectability in the medical community. cian’s specifi cations. Portable and bat- [27] It is worth noting as well that in this tery-powered electromechanical vibrators period electrical and other vibrations were were generally less expensive than fl oor a subject of great interest and considerable models, which both looked more impos- confusion, not only among doctors and ing as instruments and were less likely to the general public, but even among sci- transmit fatiguing vibrations to the doc- entists like Tesla, who is reported to have tor’s hands. fallen under their spell. “ . . . [T]he Earth,” Patients were treated in health spa he wrote, “is responsive to electrical vibra- complexes, in doctor’s offi ces or their own tions of defi nite pitch just as a tuning fork homes with portable equipment. Designs 162 | RACHEL MAINES

consonant with prevailing notions of what 1899. Like the vibrators sold to doctors, a medical instrument should look like in- home appliances could be handpowered, spired consumer confi dence in the physi- water-driven, battery or street-current ap- cian and his apparatus, justifi ed treatment paratus in a relatively wide range of prices costs, and, in the case of hysteria treat- from $1.50 to $28.75. This last named was ments, camoufl aged the sexual character the price of a Sears, Roebuck model of 1918, of the therapy. Hand or foot-powered mod- which could be purchased as an attach- els, however, were tiring to the operator; ment for a separate electrical motor, draw- water-powered ones became too expen- ing current through a lamp socket, which sive to operate when municipalities began also powered a fan, buffer, grinder, mixer metering water in the early twentieth cen- and sewing machine. The complete set was tury. Gasoline engines and batteries were marketed in the catalogue under the head- cumbersome and diffi cult to maintain, as line “Aids that Every Woman Appreciates.” noted above. No fuel or air-tank handling Vibrators were mainly marketed to women, by the user was required for line electricity, although men were sometimes exhorted to in contrast with compressed air, steam and purchase the devices as gifts for their wives, petroleum as power sources. In the years or to become door-to-door sales represen- after 1900, as line electricity became the tatives for the manufacturer.[32] norm in urban communities, the electro- The electromechanical vibrator was pre- mechanical vibrator emerged as the domi- ceded in the home market by a variety of nant technology for medical massage. electrotherapeutic appliances which con- Some physicians contributed to this tinued to be advertised through the twenties, trend by endorsing the vibrator in works often in the same publications as vibratory like that of Monell, who had studied vi- massage devices. Montgomery Ward, Sears bratory massage in medical practice in the Roebuck and the Canadian mail order de- United States and Europe at the turn of this partment store T. Eaton and Company all century. He praises its usefulness in female sold medical batteries by direct-mail by the complaints: end of the nineteenth century. These were simply batteries with electrodes that ad- . . . pelvic massage (in gynecology) has its ministered a mild shock. Some, like Butler’s brilliant advocates and they report wonder- Electro-Massage Machine, produced their ful results, but when practitioners must sup- own electricity with friction motors. Cont- ply the skilled technic with their own fi ngers emporaneous and later appliances some- the method has no value to the majority. But special applicators (motor-driven) give prac- times had special features, such as Dr. H. tical value and offi ce convenience to what Sanche’s Oxydonor, which produced ozone otherwise is impractical.[31] in addition to the current when one elec- trode was placed in water. “Electric” mas- Other medical writers suggested combin- sage rollers, combs and brushes with a ing vibratory treatment of the pelvis with supposedly permanent charge retailed at hydro- and electrotherapy, a refi nement this time for prices between one and fi ve made possible by the ready adaptability of dollars. Publications like the Home Nee- the new electro mechanical technology. dlework Magazine and Men and Women At the same period, mechanical and advertised these devices, as well as related electromechanical vibrators were intro- technologies, including correspondence duced as home medical appliances. One courses in manual massage. of the earliest was the Vibratile, a battery- Vibrators with water motors, a popular operated massage device advertised in power source, as noted above, before the SOCIALLY CAMOUFLAGED TECHNOLOGIES: THE CASE OF THE ELECTROMECHANICAL VIBRATOR | 163 introduction of metered water, were adver- ads emphasized the role of the device in tised in such journals as Modern Women , making a woman’s home a veritable Uto- which emphasized the cost savings over pia of modern technology, and its utility treatments by physicians and further em- in reducing the number of occasions, such phasized the advantage of privacy offered as visiting her physician, on which she by home treatment. Such devices were would be required to leave her domestic marketed through the teens in Hearst’s paradise.[37] and its successors, and in Woman’s Home Advertisements for vibrators often shared Companion .[33] Electromechanical vibra- magazine pages with books on sexual mat- tors were sold in the upper middle class ters, such as Howard’s popular Sex Problems market, in magazines typically retailing in Worry and Work and Walling’s Sexology , for between ten and fi fteen cents an issue. hand guns, cures for alcoholism and, oc- As in the case of medical vibrators, mod- casionally, even personals, from both men els adapted to both ac and de current were and women, in which matrimony was the more expensive than those for use with de declared objective. Sexuality is never ex- only; all were fi tted with screw-in plugs plicit in vibrator advertising; the tone is through the twenties.[34] vague but provocative, as in the Swedish All types of vibrators were advertised Vibrator advertisement in Modern Pris- as benefi ting health and beauty by stim- cilla of 1913, offering “a machine that gives ulating the circulation and soothing the 30,000 thrilling, invigorating, penetrat- nerves. The makers of the electromechani- ing, revitalizing vibrations per minute . . . cal American vibrator, for example, recom- Irresistible desire to own it, once you feel mended their product as an” . . . alleviating, the living pulsing touch of its rhythmic curative and beautifying agent . . . It will vibratory motion.” Illustrations in these increase defi cient circulation-develop the layouts typically include voluptuously muscles-remove wrinkles and facial blem- proportioned women in various states of ishes, and beautify the complexion.”[35] déshabillé . The White Cross vibrator, made Advertisements directed to male purchas- by a Chicago fi rm that manufactured a va- ers similarly emphasized the machine’s riety of small electrical appliances, was also advantages for improving a woman’s ap- advertised in Modern Priscilla, where the pearance and disposition. And ad in a 1921 maker assured readers that “It makes you issue of Hearst’s urges the considerate hus- fairly tingle with the joy of living.”[38] It is band to “Give ‘her’ a Star for Christmas” on worth noting that the name “White Cross” the grounds that it would be “A Gift That was drawn from that of an international Will Keep Her Young and Pretty.” The same organization devoted to what was known device was listed in another advertisement in the early twentieth century as “social with several other electrical appliances, hygiene,” the discovery and eradication and labelled “Such Delightful Compan- of masturbation and prostitution wher- ions!”[36] A husband, these advertisements ever they appeared. The Chicago maker of seem to suggest, who presented his wife White Cross appliances, in no known way with these progressive and apparently reaffi liated with the organization, evidently spectable medical aids might leave for work hoped to trade on the name’s association in the morning secure in the knowledge that with decency and moral purity.[39] A 1916 his spouse’s day would be pleasantly and advertisement from the White Cross man- productively invested in self-treatment. ufacturer in American Magazine neverthe- Like other electrical appliance advertising less makes the closest approach to explicit of the time, electro mechanical vibrator sexual claims when it promises that “All 164 | RACHEL MAINES

the keen relish, the pleasures of youth, will This dearth of data renders sales tracking of throb within you.”[40] The utility of the the electromechanical vibrator extremely product for female masturbation was thus diffi cult. The omissions from engineering consistently camoufl aged. literature are worth noting, as the electro- Electromechanical vibrator advertis- mechanical vibrator was one of the fi rst ing almost never appeared in magazines electrical appliances for personal care, selling for less than 5 cents an issue (10 to partly because it was seen as a safe method 20 cents is the median range) or more than of self-treatment.[46] 25 cents. Readers of the former were un- The marketing strategy for the early likely to have access to electrical current; electromechanical vibrator was similar to readers of the latter, including, for exam- that employed for contemporaneous and ple, Vanity Fair, were more likely to re- even modern technologies for which social spond to advertising for spas and private camoufl age is considered necessary. Tech- manual massage. While at least a dozen nologically, the devices so marketed differ and probably more than twenty U.S. fi rms from modern vibrators sold for explicitly manufactured electromechanical vibrators sexual purposes only in their greater overall before 1930, sales of these appliances were weight, accounted for by the use of metal not reported in the electrical trade press. A housings in the former and plastic in the listing from the February 1927 NELA Bulle- latter. The basic set of vibratodes is identi- tin is typical; no massage equipment of any cal, as is the mechanical action. The social kind appears on an otherwise comprehen- context of the machine, however, has un- sive list that includes violet-ray appliances. dergone profound change. Liberalized at- [41] A 1925 article in Electrical World , under titudes toward masturbation in both sexes the title “How Many Appliances are in and increasing understanding of women’s Use?”, lists only irons, washing machines, sexuality have made social camoufl age cleaners, ranges, water heaters, percola- superfl uous. tors, toasters, waffl e irons, kitchen units In the case of the vibrator, the issue is and ironers.[42] Scientifi c American listed one of acceptability, but there are many in 1907 only the corn popper, chafi ng dish, examples of similarly marketed technol- milk warmer, shaving cup, percolator and ogy of which the expected use was actually iron in a list of domestic electrical appli- illegal. One of these, which shares with the ances.[43] References to vibrators were ex- vibrator a focus on women’s sexuality, was tremely rare even in popular discussions of that of “emmenagogues” or abortifacient electrical appliances.[44] The U.S. Bureau drugs sold through the mail and sometimes of the Census, which found 66 establish- even off the shelf in the fi rst few decades ments manufacturing electro-therapeutic of this century. Emmenagogues, called in apparatus in 1908, does not dis aggregate by pre-FDA advertising copy “cycle restorers,” instrument type either in this category or in were intended to bring on the menses in “electrical household goods.” The 1919 vol- women who were “late.” Induced abortion ume, showing the electro medical market by any means was of course illegal, but late at a fi gure well over $2 million, also omits menses are not reliable indicators of preg- detailed itemization. Vibrators appear by nancy. Thus, women who purchased and name in the 1949 Census of Manufactures , took “cycle restorers” might or might not but it is unclear whether the listing for be in violation of antiabortion laws; they them, aggregated with statistics for curling themselves might not be certain without irons and hair dryers, includes those sold a medical examination. The advertising of as medical instruments to physicians.[45] these commodities makes free use of this SOCIALLY CAMOUFLAGED TECHNOLOGIES: THE CASE OF THE ELECTROMECHANICAL VIBRATOR | 165 ambiguity in texts like the following from spices.”[50] Burglary tools are marketed in Good Stories of 1933: some popular (if lowbrow) magazines with the ad monition that they are to be used Late? End Delay-Worry. American Periodic only to break into one’s own home or auto- Relief Compound double strength tablets mobile, in the event of having locked one- combine Safety with Quick Action. Relieve self out. The camoufl age rhetoric seems to most Stubborn cases. No Pain. New dis- suggest that all prudent drivers and home- covery. Easily taken. Solves women’s most owners carry such tools on their persons perplexing problem. RELIEVES WHEN ALL at all times. Most recently, we have seen OTHERS FAIL. Don’t be discouraged, end worry at once. Send $1.00 for Standard size the appearance of computer software for package and full directions. Mailed same breaking copy protection, advertised in day, special delivery in plain wrapper. Ameri- terms that explicitly prohibit its use for pi- can Periodic Relief Com pound Tablets, extra racy, although surely no software publisher strength for stubborn cases, $2.00. Generous is so naive as to believe that all purchasers Size Package. New Book free.[47] intend to break copy protection only to make backup copies of legitimately pur- The rhetoric here does not mention the chased programs and data.[51] As in vibra- possibility of pregnancy, but the product’s tor advertising, the product’s advantages selling points would clearly suggest this to are revealed to knowledgeable consumers the informed consumer through the men- in language that disclaims the manufac- tions of safety, absence of pain, and stub- turers’ responsibility for illegal or immoral born cases. The readers of the pulp tabloid uses of the product. Good Stories clearly did not require an ex- The marketing of socially camoufl aged planation of “women’s most perplexing technologies is directed to consumers who problem.” already understand the design purpose Distilling technology raises similar is- of the product, but whose legally and/or sues of legality. During the Prohibition culturally unacceptable intentions in pur- period, the classifi ed section of a 1920 Ains- chasing it cannot be formally recognized lee’s sold one and four gallon copper stills by the seller. The marketing rhetoric must by mail, advising the customer that the ap- extoll the pro duct’s advantages for achiev- paratus was “Ideal for distilling water for ing the purchaser’s goals-in the case of the drinking purposes, automobile batteries vibrator, the production of orgasm-by in- and industrial uses.”[48] Modern adver- direction and innuendo, particularly with tisements for distilling equipment contain reference to the overall results, i.e., relax- similar camoufl age rhetoric, directing at- ation and relief from tension. The same tention away from the likelihood that most pattern emerges in the advertisement of consumers intend to employ the device in emmenagogues: according to the manu- the production of beverages considerably facturer, it is “Worry and Delay” that are stronger than water.[49] ended, not pregnancy. In the case of soft- Although changes in sexual mores have ware copyright protection pro grams, drug liberated the vibrator, social camoufl age paraphernalia and distilling equipment, remains necessary for stills and many other the expected input and/or output are sim- modern commodities, including drug par- ply misrepresented, so that an expensive aphernalia. The Deering Prep Kit, for ex- fi nely-calibrated scale with its own fi tted ample, is advertised at nearly $50 as a carrying case may be pictured in use in superlative device for grinding and prepar- the weighing of jelly beans. As social val- ing fi ne powders, “such as vitamin pills or ues and legal restrictions shift, the social 166 | RACHEL MAINES

camoufl aging of technologies may be ex- are illustrated in Gorman, Sam J., Electro Thera- pected to change in response, or to be dis- peutic Apparatus . l0th ed. Chicago: Sam J. Gor- pensed with altogether, as in the case of man, c1912; Wappler Electric Manufacturing Co. Inc. Wappler Cautery and Light Apparatus and the vibrator. Accessories . 2nd ed. New York: Wappler Electric Manufacturing, 1914, pp. 7 and 42–43; Manhat- NOTES tan Electrical Supply Co., Catalogue Twenty-Six: Something Electrical for Everybody . New York: This research was made possible in part by a MESCO, n.d.; and Snow, Mary Lydia Hastings Ar- grant from the Bakken (Museum and Library of nold, Mechanical Vibration and its Therapeutic Electricity in Life), August 1985. Application. New York: Scientifi c Author’s Publi- 1. Harious versions of this paper have benefi tted cation Company, 1904 and 1912. For modern vi- from comments and criticism from John Senior brators, see Kaplan, Helen Singer, “The Vibrator: at the Bakken, Joel Tarr of Carnegie Mellon Uni- A Misunderstood Machine,” Redbook , May 1984, versity, Shere Hite of Hite Research, Karen Reeds p. 34; and Swarz, Mimi, “For the Woman Who Has of Rutgers University Press, my former students Almost Everything,” Esquire , July 1980, pp. 56–63. at Clarkson University, and participants in the 5. See, for examples of such advertising, which in Social and Economic History Seminar, Queens fact included a persistent abdominal emphasis, University (Canada), the Hannah Lecture series “Amazing New Electric Vibrating Massage Pillow,” in the History of Medicine at the University of Ot- Niresk Industries (Chicago, IL) advertisement in tawa, and the 1986 annual meeting of the Society Workbasket, October 1958, p. 95; “Don’t be Fat,” for the History of Technology with the Society for body massager (Spot Reducer) advertisement in the Social Study of Science. Anonymous refer- Workbasket, September 1958, p. 90; and “Uvral ees of this and other journals have also provided Pneumatic Massage Pulsator,” in Electrical Age for valuable guidance in structuring the presentation Women , January 1932, vol. 2, no. 7, pp. 275–276. of my research results. 6. This therapy is extensively documented but 2. Sokolow, Jayme A., Eros and Modernization: Syl- rarely noted by historians. For only a few exam- vester Graham, Health Reform and the Origins ples of medical discussions of vulvular massage of Victorian Sexuality in America . Rutherford, in the hysteroneurasthenic disorders, see Are- NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1983, taeus Cappadox, The Extant Works of Aretaeus the pp. 77–99; Haller, John S., and Robin Haller, The Cappadocian, ed. and transl. by Francis Adams. Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America . London: Sydenham Society, 1856, pp. 44–45, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973, pp. 285–287, and 449–451; Forestus, Alemarianus 184–216; Greydanus, Donald E., “Masturbation; Petrus (Pieter van Foreest), Observationem et Cu- Historic Perspective,” New York State Journal of rationem Medicinalium ac Chirurgicarum Opera Medicine, November 1980, vol. 80, no. 12, pp. Omnia. Rothomagi: Bertherlin, 1653, vol. 3, book 1892–1896; Szasz, Thomas, The Manufacture of 28, pp. 277–340; Galen of Pergamon, De Locis Af- Madness. New York: Harper and Row, 1977, pp. fectis, transl. by Rudolph Siegel. Basel and New 180–206; Hare, E. H., “Masturbatory Insanity: York: S. Karger, 1976, book VI, chapter II: 39; and The History of an Idea,” Journal of Mental Sci- Weber, A. Sigismond, Traitement par l’Hectricite ences , 1962, vol 108, pp. 1–25; and Bullough, Vern, et le Massage . Paris: Alex Coccoz, 1889, pp. 73–80. “Technology for the Prevention of ‘Les Maladies Of modern scholars, only Audrey Eccles discusses Produites par Ia Masturbation,’ ” Technology and this therapy in detail in her Obstetrics and Gynae- Culture , October 1987, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 828–832. cology in Tudor and Stuart England . London and 3. On the vibrator in stag fi lms, see Blake, Roger, Canberra: Croom Helm, 1982, pp. 76–83. Sex Gadgets . Cleveland: Century, 1968, pp. 33–46. 7. Baruch, Simon, The Principles and Practice of Hy- An early postwar reference to the vibrator as an drotherapy: A Guide to the Application of Water in unabashedly sexual instrument is Ellis, Albert, If Disease. New York: William Wood and Company, this be Sexual Heresy . New York: Lyle Stuart, 1963, 1897, pp. 101, 211, 248 and 365; Dieffenbach, Wil- p. 136. liam H., Hydrotherapy . New York: Rebman, 1909, 4. Vibrators and dildoes are illustrated in Tabori, pp. 238–245; Good Health Publishing Company. Paul, The Humor and Technology of Sex . New 20th Century Therapeutic Appliances . Battle Creek, York: Julian Press, 1969; the dildo is discussed in MI: Good Health Publishing, 1909, pp. 20–21; a clinical context in Masters, William H., Human Hedley, William Snowdon. The Hydro-Electric Sexual Response . Boston: Little, Brown, 1966. Vi- Methods in Medicine. London: H. K. Lewis, 1892; brators of the period to which I refer in this essay Hinsdale, Guy, Hydrotherapy . Philadelphia and SOCIALLY CAMOUFLAGED TECHNOLOGIES: THE CASE OF THE ELECTROMECHANICAL VIBRATOR | 167

London: W. B. Saunders Company, 1910, p. 224; Association, October 1981, vol. 36, no. 10, pp. Kellogg, John Harvey, Rational Hydrotherapy . 300–306; Ehrenreich, Barbara and D. English, Philadelphia: Davis, 1901; Irwin, J. A., Hydro- Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics therapy at Saratoga . New York: Casell, 1892, pp. of Sickness. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 85–134 and 246–248; Pope, Curran, Practical 1973, pp. 15–44; and Trail, Russell Thacher, The Hydrotherapy: A Manual for Students and Practi- Health and Diseases of Women. Battle Creek, MI: tioners. Cincinnati, OH: Lancet-Clinic Publishing Health Reformer, 1873, pp. 7–8. Co., 1909, pp. 181–192 and 506–538; and Trail, 10. Sydenham Thomas, “Epistolary Dissertation on Russell Thacher, The Hydropathic Encyclopedia . Hysteria,” in The Works of Thomas Sydenham, New York: Fowlers and Wells, 1852, pp. 273–295. transl. by R. G. Latham. London: Printed for the Women were reportedly in the majority as pa- Sydenham Society, 1848, vol. 2, pp. 56 and 85: and tients at spas, and some were owned by women Payne, Joseph Frank, Thomas Sydenham. New entrepreneurs and/or physicians. See Whyman, York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1900, p. 143. T., “Visitors to Margate in the 1841 Census Re- 11. Only a minority of writers on hysteria associated turns,” Local Population Studies, vol. 8, 1972, p. the afﬂ iction with paralysis until Freud made this 23. Since at least the time of Jerome, baths and part of the canonical disease paradigm in the watering places have had a reputation for en- twentieth century. couraging unacceptable expressions of sexuality. 12. Gall, Franz Josef, Anatomie et Physiologie du For female masturbation with water, see Aphro- Systeme Nerveux en General. Paris: F. Schoen, dite, J. (pseud.), To Turn You On : 39 Sex Fantasies 1810–1819, vol. 3, p. 86; Tripier, Auguste Elisa- for Women . Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1975, beth Philogene, Leçons Cliniques sur les Maladies pp. 83–91; and Halpert, E., “On a Particular Form de Femmes. Paris: Octave Doin, Editeur, 1883, of Masturbation in Women: Masturbation with pp. 347–351; Highmore, Nathaniel, de Passione Water,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Hysterica et Affectione Hypochondriaca. Oxon.: Association , 1973, vol. 21, p. 526. Excudebat A. Lichﬁ eld impensis R. Davis, 1660, 8. A bibliography of nineteenth century American pp. 20–35; and Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of works on women and sexuality in relation to hys- Sex, vol. I, p. 225; see also Briquet, Pierre, Traite teria is available in Sahli, Nancy, Women and Sexu- Clinique et Therapeutique de l’Hysterie. Paris: J. B. ality in America: A Bibliography. Boston: Hall, 1984. Bailliere et Fils, 1859, pp. 137–138, 570 and 613. See also Shorter, Edward, “Paralysis: the Rise and 13. Cullen, William, First Lines in the Practice of Fall of the ‘Hysterical’ Symptom,” Journal of Social Physic. Edinburgh: Bell, Bradfute, etc., 1791, History , Summer 1986, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 549–582; pp. 43–47; Burton, Robert, The Anatomy of Mel- Satow, Roberta. “Where Has All the Hysteria Gone?” ancholy, Floyd Dell and Paul Jordan Smith, eds. Psychoanalytic Review, 1979–80, vol. 66, pp. 463– New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1927, pp. 353–355; 473; Bourneville, Desire Magloire and P. Regnard. Horst, Gregor, Dissertationem . . . inaugura- Iconographie Photographique de la Salpetriere . lem De Mania. . . . Gissae: typis Viduae Friederici Paris: Progres-Medical, 1878, vol. 2, pp. 97–219; Kargeri, 1677, pp. 9–18; King, A. F. A., “Hysteria,” Charcot, Jean-Martin. Clinical Lectures on Certain American Journal of Obstetrics, May 18, 1891, Diseases of the Nervous System , transl. by E. P. Hurd. vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 513–532; Medieval Woman’s Detroit: G. S. Davis, 1888, p. 141; Ellis, Havelock. Guide to Health, transl. by Beryl Rowland. Kent, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. I, New York: OH: Kent State University Press, 1981, pp. 2, 63 Random House, 1940, p. 270; Krohn, Alan, Hysteria: and 87; Pinel, Philippe, A Treatise on Insanity, The Elusive Neurosis. New York: International Uni- transl. by D. D. Davis. Facsimile edition of the versities Press, 1978, pp. 46–51; McGrath, William London 1806 edition; New York: Hafner, 1962, J., Freud’s Discovery of Psychoanalysis: The Politics pp. 229–230; and Reich, Wilhelm, Genitality in the of Hysteria . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, Theory and Therapy of Neurosis, transl. by Philip 1986, pp. 152–172; Veith, Ilza, Hysteria: The History Schmitz. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, of a Disease . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980 (reprint of 1927 edition), pp. 54–55 and 93. 1965; Wittels, Franz, Freud and His Time . New York: 14. Zacuto, Abraham. Praxis Medica Admiranda. Grosset and Dunlap, 1931, pp. 215–242; and Ziegler, London: Apud Ioannem-Antonium Huguetan, Dewey and Paul Norman, “On The Natural History 1637, p. 267. Zacuto is at pains to point out that of Hysteria in Women,” Diseases of the Nervous Sys- some physicians regard vulvular massage as in- tem , 1967, vol. 15, pp. 301–306. decent: “Num autem ex hac occasione, liceat 9. Bauer, Carol, “The Little Health of Ladies: An Anat- Medico timenti Deum, sopitis pariter cunctis omy of Female Invalidism in the Nineteenth Cen- sensibus, & una abolita respiratione in foem- tury,” Journal of the American Medical Woman’s inis quasi animam agentibus, seu in maximo 168 | RACHEL MAINES

vitae periculo constitutus, venefi cium illud 17. Dowse, Thomas Stretch, Lectures on Massage and semen, foras ab utero, titillationibus, & friction- Electricity in the Treatment of Disease. Bristol: bius partium obscoenarium elidere, different el- John Wright and Co., 1903, p. 181. oquenter . . .” 18. Smith, E. H., in Pacifi c Medical Journal, February 15. October-November, p. 4. Kellogg’s background 1903. is described in detail in Schwarz, Richard W., 19. For examples of spa expenses in the United John Harvey Kellogg, MD. Nashville: Southern States, see Cloyes, Samuel A., The Healer; the Publishing Association, c1970. Story of Dr. Samantha S. Nivison and Dryden 16. Women who regularly undergo the discomfort of Springs, 1820–1915. Ithaca, NY: DeWitt Historical gynecological examination with this instrument Society of Tompkins County, 1969, p. 24; Karsh, are justifi ably amused by its nineteenth cen- Estrellita, “Taking the Waters at Stafford Springs,” tury mythology. For an example of conservative Harvard Library Bulletin, July 1980, vol. 28, no. views on the speculum, see Griesinger, Wilhelm, 3, pp. 264–281; McMillan, Marilyn, “An Eldorado Mental Pathology and Therapeutics, transl. by of Ease and Elegance: Taking the Waters at White C. Lockhart Robinson and James Rutherford. Sulphur Springs,” Montana, vol. 35, Spring 1985, London: New Sydenham Society, 1867, p. 202. pp. 36–49; and Meeks, Harold, “Smelly, Stagnant On the ineffi ciency of penetration as a means and Successful: Vermont’s Mineral Springs,” Ver- to female orgasm, the standard modern work is mont History, 1979, vol. 47, no. I, pp. 5–20. of course Hite, Shere, The Hite Report on Female 20. Taylor wrote indefatigably on the subject of Sexuality. New York: MacMillan Company, 1976, physical therapies for pelvic disorders, and de- but the phenomenon was widely noted by pro- voted considerable effort to the invention of gressive physicians and others before the sev- mechanisms for this purpose. See Taylor, George enties. Most of these latter, however, regarded Henry, Diseases of Women. Philadelphia and the failure of penetration to fully arouse about New York: G. McClean, 1871; Health for Women. three-quarters of the female population as either New York: John B. Alden, 1883 and eleven sub- a pathology on the women’s part or as evidence sequent editions; “Improvements in Medical of a natural diffi dence in the female. Hite is the Rubbing Apparatus,” U.S. Patent 175,202 dated fi rst to point out that the experience of the ma- March 21, 1876; Mechanical Aids in the Treatment jority constitutes a norm, not a deviation. For of Chronic Forms of Disease. New York: Rodgers, examples of various male views on this subject, 1893; Pelvic and Hernial Therapeutics. New York: see Hollender, Marc H, “The Medical Profession J. B. Alden, 1885; and “Movement Cure,” U.S. Pat- and Sex in 1900,” American Journal of Obstetrics ent 263,625 dated August 29, 1882. and Gynecology, vol. 108, no. I, 1970, pp. 139– 21. An example of the early Weiss model is available 148; Degler, Carl, “What Ought to be and What for study at the Bakken (Library and Museum), Was,” American Historical Review, vol. 79, 1974, Minneapolis, MN, accession number 82.100. pp. 1467–1490; and his At Odds: Women and the 22. Mortimer Granville, Joseph, Nerve-Vibration Family in America from the Revolution to the and Excitation as Agents in the Treatment of Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980, Functional Disorders and Organic Disease. Lon- pp. 249–278; and Tourette, Gilles de Ia., Traite don: J.&A. Churchill, 1883, p. 57; his American Clinique et Therapeutique de l’Hysterie Parox- colleague Noble Murray Eberhart advises against ystique. Paris: Pion, 1895, vol. I, p. 46. Feminine vibrating pregnant women “about the genera- views are seldom recorded before this century; tive organs” for fear of producing contractions. a few examples are those reported by Katherine See his A Brief Guide to Vibratory Technique. 4th B. Davis, summarized in Dickson, Robert L. and ed. rev. and enl. Chicago: New Medicine Pub- Henry Pierson, “The Average Sex Life of Amer- lication, c1915, p. 59. For examples of enthu- ican Women,” Journal of the American Medical siastic endorsements of the new technology, Association, vol. 85, 1925, pp. 113–117; Lazars - see Gottschalk, Franklin Benjamin, Practical feld, Sofi e, Woman’s Experience of the Male. Lon- Electro-Therapeutics. Hammond, IN: F. S. Betz, don: Encyclopedic Press, 1967, pp. 112, 181,271 1904; the same author’s Static Electricity, X-Ray and 308. It has also been noted that few women and Electro-Vibration: Their Therapeutic Ap- have diffi culty achieving orgasm in masturbation, plication. Chicago: Eisele, 1903; International and that the median time to orgasm in masturba- Correspondence Schools, A System of Electro- tion is substantially the same in both sexes: Kinsey, therapeutics. Scranton, PA: International Text- Alfred Charles, Sexual Behavior in the Human book Company, 1903, vol. 4; Matijaca, Anthony, Female. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1953, p. 163. Principles of Electro-Medicine, Electro-Surgery SOCIALLY CAMOUFLAGED TECHNOLOGIES: THE CASE OF THE ELECTROMECHANICAL VIBRATOR | 169

and Radiology. Tangerine, FL, Butler, NJ and 25. Vibrator Instrument Company, Chattanooga Vi- New York, NY: Benedict Lust, 1917; Monell, brator. Chattanooga, TN: Vibrator Instrument, Samuel Howard, A System of Instruction in 1904, pp. 3 and 26. X-Ray Methods and Medical Uses of Light, Hot 26. Vigouroux, Auguste, Etude sur la Resistance Air, Vibration and High Frequency Currents. Electrique chez les Melancoliques. Paris: J. Rueff New York: E. R. Pelton, 1902; Pilgrim, Maurice et Cie, Editeurs, 1890; Cowen, Richard J., Elec- Riescher, Mechanical Vibratory Stimulation; tricity in Gynecology. London: Bailiere, Tindall its Theory and Application in the Treatment of and Cox, 1900; Engelmann, George J., “The Use Disease. New York City: Lawrence Press, c1903; of Electricity in Gynecological Practice,” Gyne- Rice, May Cushman, Electricity in Gynecol- cological Transactions, vol. 11, 1886; Reynolds, ogy. Chicago: Laing, 1909; Rockwell, Alphonse David V., “A Brief History of Electrotherapeu- David, The Medical and Surgical Uses of Elec - tics,” in Neuroelectric Research, D. V. Reynolds tricity. New ed. New York: E. G. Treat, 1903; Snow, and A. Sjoberg, eds. Springfi eld, IL: Thomas, Mechanical Vibration and its Therapeutic Ap- 1971, pp. 5–12; and Shoemaker, John V., “Elec- plication; Waggoner, Melanchthon R. The Note tricity in the Treatment of Disease,” Scientifi c Book of an Electro-Therapist. Chicago: Mcintosh American Supplement, January 5, 1907, vol. 63, Electrical Corporation, 1923; Wallian, Samuel pp. 25923–25924. Spencer, Rhythmotherapy. Chicago: Ouellette 27. “Vibratory Therapeutics,” Scientifi c American, Press, 1906; and the same author’s “Undulatory vol. 67, October 22, 1892, p. 265. Theory in Therapeutics,” Medical Brief, May and 28. O’Neill, John J., Prodigal Genius: The Life of June, 1905. Nikola Testa. New York: Ives Washburn, Inc., 1944, 23. See for example, Smith, A. Lapthorn, “Disorders p. 210. of Menstruation,” in An International System 29. Medical Brief, May 1905, p. 417. See also the the- of Electro-Therapeutics, Horatio Bigelow, ed. ory of light vibrations employed in the Master Philadelphia: F. A. Davis, 1894, p. G163. Electric Company’s advertising brochure The 24. Covey, Alfred Dale, Profi table Offi ce Special- Master Violet Ray. Chicago: n.d. ities. Detroit: Physicians Supply Co., 1912, 30. Monell, A System of Instruction. . . , p. 595; Snow, pp. 16, 18, and 79–95; Bubier, Edward Trevert, Mechanical Vibration. Electro-Therapeutic Hand Book. New York: Man- 31. Monell, A System of Instrumentation . . . , p. 591. hattan Electric Supply Co., 1900; Duck, J. J. Co., 32. See for example, “Wanted, Agents and Salesman Anything Electrical: Catalog No. 6. Toledo, OH: . . . ” Swedish Vibrator Company, Modern Priscilla, J. J. Duck, 1916, p. 162; Golden Manufacturing April 1913, p. 60. Co., Vibration: Nature’s Great Underlying Force 33. “Agents! Drop Dead Ones!” Blackstone Water for Health, Strength and Beauty. Detroit, MI: Power Vacuum Massage Machine, Hearst’s, Golden Manufacturing Co., 1914; Gorman, Sam J. April 1916, p. 327; and “Hydro Massage” Warner Co. Physician’s Vibragenitant. Chicago: Sam J. Motor Company, Modern Women, vol. 11, no. I, Gorman and Co., n.d.; Keystone Electric Co., December 1906, p. 190. Illustrated Catalogue and Price List of Electro- 34. Wall receptacles are a relatively late introduc - Therapeutic Appliances . . . etc. Philadelphia: tion. See Schroeder, Fred E., “More ‘Small Things Keystone Electric Company, c1903, pp.63–66; Forgotten:’ Domestic Electrical Plugs and Re - Schall and Son, Ltd., Electro-Medical Instruments ceptacles, 1881–1931,” Technology and Culture, and their Management . . . 17th ed. London and July 1986, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 525–543. Glasgow: Schall and Son, 1925; Vibrator Instru- 35. “Massage is as old as the hills . . . ,” American Vi- ment Co., A Treatise on Vibration and Mechancial brator Company, Woman’s Home Companion, Stimulation. Chattanooga, TN: Vibrator Instru- April 1906, p. 42. ment, 1902; Vibrator Instrument Co. Clinical 36. “Such Delightful Companions!” Star Electrical Dept., A Course on Mechanical Vibratory Stimu- Necessities, 1922, reproduced in Jones, Edgar R., lation. New York City: Vibrator Instrument, 1903; Those were the Good Old Days. New York: Fireside “Vibratory Therapeutics,” Scientifi c American, Books, 1959, unpaged; and “A Gift that will Keep vol. 67, October 22, 1892, p. 265. Most of these her Young and Pretty,” Star Home Electric Mas- manufacturers were quite respectable instru- sage, Hearst’s International, December 1921, p. 82. ment fi rms; see Davis, Audrey B., Medicine and 37. See for example, the Ediswan advertisement in its Technology: An Introduction to the History of Electrical Age for Women, January 1932, vol. 2, Medical Instrumentation. Westport, CT: Green- no. 7, p. 274, and review on page 275 of the same wood Press, 1981, p. 22. publication. 170 | RACHEL MAINES

38. “Vibration is Life,” Lindstrom-Smith Co., Modern Domestic Uses,” Harper’s Bazaar, April 1910, vol. Priscilla, December 1910, p. 27. 44, p. 285; and Knowlton, H.S., “Extending the 39. Pivar, David J. Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality Uses of Electricity,” Cassier’s Magazine, vol. 30, and Social Control, 1868–1900. Westport, CT: June 1906, pp. 99–105. Greenwood Press, 1973, pp. 110–117. 45. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Census of Manufac- 40. See also American Magazine, December 1912, tures, 1908, 1919, and 1947, pp. 216–217, 203, and vol. 75, no. 2, January 1913; vol. 75, no. 3, May 734 and 748 respectively. 1913; vol. 75, no. 7, p. 127; Needlecraft, Sep- 46. On the early history of appliances, see Lifshey, tember 1912, p. 23; Home Needlework Maga- Earl, The Housewares Story. Chicago: House- zine, October 1908, p. 479, October 1915, p. 45; wares Manufacturers’ Association, 1973. For the Hearst’s, January 1916, p. 67, February 1916, safety issue, see “Eiectromedical Apparatus for p. 154, April 1916, p. 329; June 1916, p. 473, and Domestic Use,” Electrical Review, October 22, National Home Journal, September 1908, p. 15. 1926, p. 682. 41. Davidson, J. E., “Electrical Appliance Sales 47. Good Stories, October 1933, p. 2; see also similar During 1926,” NELA Bulletin, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. advertisement in the same issue for Dr. Roger’s 119–120. Relief Compound, p. 12. 42. December 5, 1925, vol. 86, p. 1164. See also 48. “Water Stills,” Ainslee’s Magazine, October 1920. Hughes, George A. “How the Domestic Electrical p. 164. Appliances are Serving the Country,” Electrical 49. See for example, Damark International, Inc., Review, June 15, 1918, vol. 72, p. 983; Edkins, E. A., Catalog B-330. Minneapolis, MN: Damark Inter- “Prevalent Trends of Domestic Appliance Market,” national, 1988, p. 7, which emphasizes the “Aiam- Electrical World, March 30, 1918, pp. 670–671; and biccus Distiller’s” usefulness for distilling herbal “Surveys Retail Sale of Electrical Appliances,” extracts. Printer’s Ink, vol. 159, May 19, 1932, p. 35. 50. Mellow Mail Catalogue. Cooper Station, New York 43. “Electrical Devices for the Household,” Scientiﬁ c City: 1984, pp. 32–39. American, January 26, 1907, vol. 96, p. 95. 51. Levy, Steven, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer 44. The vibrator is not included in extensive lists of Revolution. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/ appliances in Lamborn, Helen, “Electricity for Doubleday, 1984, p. 377. CHAPTER 11

The Need to Bleed? A Feminist Technology Assessment of Menstrual-Suppressing Birth Control Pills Jennifer Aengst and Linda L. Layne

Seasonale 1 , a low-dose, extended-regimen, taken twenty-four, instead of twenty-one, birth control pill approved by the U.S. Fed- days, followed by four “reminder” placebo eral Drug Administration (FDA) in Sep- pills, therefore offering shorter (three-day), tember 2003, regulates menstruation so lighter, monthly periods. Issues raised that it occurs only four times a year. Sea- by Seasonale apply equally to these and sonale shares the same chemical makeup other menstrual-suppressing birth control as monthly birth control pills, so it shares technologies.6 with conventional pills a high level of con- The subject of menstrual suppression traceptive effi cacy (99 percent if used con- has been debated in both medical and sistently)2 , and a number of possible health popular literature. Several of these articles benefi ts (a reduced risk of cancers of the make use of the responses of over 900 visi- ovaries and uterus, pelvic infl ammatory dis- tors to the online Museum of Menstruation ease, ovarian cysts, ectopic pregnancy, and and Women’s Health (MUM) to the ques- noncancerous lumps or cysts of the breast) tion, “Would you stop menstruating in- (Duramed 2005b). Like conventional pills, defi nitely—for years, maybe—if you could Seasonale also increases the risk of “blood start up again easily if you wanted a child?,” clots, stroke, and heart attack,” all of which which has been posed on this Web site since are greater among smokers, and like other 2000. 7 We too draw on these data, along oral contraceptives, Seasonale “doesn’t pro- with a small survey of Aengst’s social net- tect against HIV or other sexually transmit- work,8 and a review of the writings of advo- ted diseases” (Duramed 2005a).3 cates and opponents to show how physical The unique purported benefi t of Seaso- and attitudinal differences among women nale is that it offers women “Fewer Periods. complicate the question of “feminist tech- More Possibilities,” 4 and it is this aspect nologies.” 9 We also consider how different of the technology on which our analysis feminist theories shape the evaluation of focuses. Several other birth control pills technologies for menstrual suppression as with a range of menstrual-suppressing we address the meanings of “nature,” “nor- features are also coming to market5 includ- mality,” and “necessity,” gender norms, and ing Seasonique (similar to Seasonale), Ly- the appropriation of technology. The result brel (which suppresses indefi nitely), and is what Layne calls a “feminist technology Yaz and Loestrin24Fe, both of which are assessment.” 172 | JENNIFER AENGST AND LINDA L. LAYNE

They end their book celebrating the THE EXPERTS: FOR AND AGAINST liberatory feminist potential of this drug. MENSTRUAL SUPPRESSION They envision a future in which women use Women’s health experts are widely divided menstrual-suppressing drugs, and as they on the issue of menstrual-suppressing grow “more confi dent, would lengthen birth control pills. The most common ar- the menstruation-free interval . . . other gument made in favor of suppression is women would be encouraged to try” and that promoted by a Brazilian gynecologist, medical researchers would be motivated Elsimar Coutinho, and Sheldon J. Segal, an to fi nd more advanced methods. . . . This endocrinologist at the Population Coun- would forge a major advance in women’s cil.10 Coutinho did research in 1959 at the health, led by women. The pioneer femi- Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research nist Margaret Sanger wrote, ‘No woman is with Dr. George Corner, one of the codis- completely free unless she has control over coverers of progesterone. After returning her own reproductive system.’ Let this new to Brazil he conducted a clinical trial of freedom begin” (1999, 1603–4). Depo Provera. The drug was being tested Other supporters, Charlotte Ellertson, for the prevention of threatened sponta- Ph.D. (also of the Population Council), and neous abortion and premature delivery, at Sarah Thomas, B. A.,12 argue that the “view which it failed, but the trial inadvertently that menses, even debilitating ones, are revealed the drug’s capacity to suppress normal, stigmatizes menstrual disorders ovulation and menstruation. He then and deprives millions of women of legiti- conducted a series of clinical trials for the mate and easily available help” (Thomas maker, Upjohn, on volunteers who did not and Ellertson 2000, 924). Using the liberal want to become pregnant, which showed feminist tropes of personal control, choice, how Depo Provera could prevent ovula- and liberation, they construe menstrual tion and menstruation for one, three, or six suppression as feminist, asserting that months depending on the dose (Coutinho the use of contraceptives such as Seaso- and Segal 1999, 9). This side effect, referred nale “lets women control their hormonal to in the women’s health movement as a profi les as well as whether and when they “menstrual disturbance” (Hardon, this vol- choose to bleed” and that menstrual sup- ume) is lauded by Coutinho and Segal as a pression will “contribute to happier, less marketable benefi t of the drug. encumbered lives ” (2000, 922, emphasis The argument put forward in their book added).13 They situate menstrual suppres- is one that had been articulated nearly sion as just one of several choices women twenty years earlier by Dr. Barbara Har- routinely make about menstrual and birth rell (1981, 816): menstruation is “relatively control products and in so doing suggest uncommon” for preindustrial women be- that the decision to suppress menstruation cause of frequent pregnancies and pro- is a simple consumer choice, no different longed lactation resulting in amenorrhea than deciding which type of sanitary prod- and that “continuous menstrual cycling is uct to buy (2000, 923).14 not a natural attribute of human females.” In the twenty-two American and Cana- Coutinho and Segal (1999, 2) go further and dian articles published in the popular press suggest that “repeated menstruation” could between the 1999 publication of Coutinho be harmful to women’s health (1999, 5) and and Segal’s book and the FDA approval of that suppressing menstruation would have Seasonale in 2003, advocates of menstrual health benefi ts for “women who suffer from suppression like these were quoted “twice anemia, endometriosis, or PMS.”11 as often as opponents” (Johnston-Robledo THE NEED TO BLEED? A FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT OF MENSTRUAL-SUPPRESSING | 173 et al. 2006) and in 40 to 50 percent of the arti- skipping the conventional monthly pla- cles (2006, 357), proponents praised the way cebo pills puts users more at risk for breast this drug “expand[ed] women’s choices” and cancer, heart attacks, and strokes. A further gave women “more control over their lives, negative is the expense—one package of a menstrual cycles or reproductive health.” single cycle of Seasonale (ninety-one tab- Those against argue that there are un- lets) ranges from $100 to over $200 (generic certainties about the effects of long-term or brand name), which may or may not be usage, and note that menstrual-suppressing covered by insurance. This is in contrast to drugs like Seasonale reinscribe negative monthly birth control pills that typically attitudes toward women’s bodily pro- range in cost between twenty to thirty dol- cesses (Prior and Hitchcock 2006).15 Chris- lars per month, the equivalent of sixty to tine Hitchcock, a research associate at the ninety dollars for three months.16 Center for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Opponents also voice concern about Research, points out that the same hor- use by teens17 who are perceived to be mones that create menstrual cycles “act especially vulnerable to marketing ef- in the brain, bones and skin” (Saul 2007, forts because they are more likely to have C4) and so altering them may contribute negative attitudes toward menstruation to unknown long-term health risks for (Johnston-Robledo et al. 2006, 354), be un- women. She also worries about “the idea comfortable with their bodies, and partic- that you can turn your body on and off ularly concerned about issues of personal like a tap” (Saul 2007, A1). The Society for hygiene and the scrutiny and judgment Menstrual Cycle Research issued a posi- of others. Furthermore, since many teens tion statement on menstrual suppression are only sexually active intermittently, the in 2003 that cautioned that more research health risks of continuous birth control was needed regarding not only the medical pills are considered an unnecessary risk. consequences of use but also the psycho- Contributors to the MUM Web site men- social dimensions of suppression before tion special concern for this population women could make informed decisions. and observed that they themselves prob- The authors recognized “that menstrual ably would have welcomed the chance to suppression may be a useful option for suppress when they were young, but now women with severe menstrual cycle prob- that they are older/wiser, see the harm in it. lems such as endometriosis,” but argued Underlying this debate are confl icting against use that would suppress “normal, interpretations of both Seasonale’s and healthy menstrual cycle[s]” and expressed women’s relationship to nature. Women special concern for the use of extended have long been culturally associated with oral contraceptives by adolescents. nature, and feminists have been, and con- Opponents also point out that Seasonale tinue to be, deeply divided about whether does not deliver on the purported “conve- this association is benefi cial or detrimental nience of four periods a year.” During the for women’s status. Seasonale thus makes a fi rst year of use, women are “more likely to particularly good case for considering the have breakthrough bleeding (which varies notion of “feminist technology” through from slight spotting to a fl ow much like a the lenses of diverse feminist theories. regular period) than with a 28-day birth control pill” (Duramed 2005b). In fact, IS MENSTRUATION NATURAL? during the fi rst year, “total bleeding days are similar to a traditional birth control pill” Proponents of suppression challenge the (Duramed 2005b). They also point out that naturalness of monthly menstruation. They 174 | JENNIFER AENGST AND LINDA L. LAYNE

suggest that the view that menstruation MIMICKING NATURE is natural is simply a myth (Thomas and Ellertson 2000, 922), and urge us to reexam- Both traditional birth control pills and Sea- ine “the credo that frequent and prolonged sonale create planned periods that deviate menstruation is the ‘natural’ state.” Other from the normal menstrual cycle while ap- times, they agree with opponents that men- pearing to mimic nature. With traditional struation is natural but differ with them on birth control pills, women take seven days the meaning and value attributed to this. of placebo sugar pills after twenty-one Whereas opponents to suppression be- days of oral contraceptives, which allows lieve that menstruation is natural and thus them to mimic the “normal”—that is, should not be tampered with, supporters of “natural”—monthly cycle. Seasonale users suppression scorn such views. For instance take the placebo pills after eighty-four Coutinho and Segal criticize those who days. The substitution of four so-called “adopt the view that since it is ‘natural’ for seasonal periods with Seasonale (instead women to menstruate, it must be good for of, say, fi ve a year), is also clearly designed their health. They seem to believe that ‘you to appear “natural.” can’t fool Mother Nature!’ The logic is that To counter the possible perception of things natural, such as pain, physical or unnaturalness of four periods, the makers mental impairment, or even disease should of Seasonale stress that the monthly peri- be accepted simply because they are natu- ods with traditional birth control pills are ral” (1999, 138). not in fact “real,” “natural,” or “normal” pe- Similarly, Thomas and Ellertson cast riods. As a promotional brochure for Sea- menstruation as natural but treat the nat- sonale explains, “when you take the Pill, ural as something we can and often should you don’t ovulate. This means your ova- change: “Health professionals and women ries don’t release an egg, the lining of your ought to view menstruation as they would uterus doesn’t build up, and you don’t get any other naturally occurring but frequently a menstrual period. Instead, you get a ‘Pill undesirable condition”; that is, by “elimi- period’ ” (Duramed 2005b). Women using nating” it.18 They argue that “[s]uppression the pill, whether traditional or extended- should be just one option for women and regimen, simply “appear to menstruate.” 20 those who choose not to avail themselves of The seven-day placebo week was histori- it certainly deserve to have their choices re- cally included because of cultural notions spected 19 . . . just as do women who choose of “normalcy.” According to Carolyn West- to use ‘natural’ family planning methods hoff, M.D, professor of obstetrics and gy- in place of hormonal ones or ‘natural’ necology at Columbia University, “It was menstrual sponges in place of commer- thought that women would fi nd it reassur- cial tampons or sanitary pads” (2000, 923). ing to get a period every month. The week In this passage they treat menstruation as off was inserted not for biological reasons, natural but destabilize “natural” by put- but just to make women and doctors more ting it in quotes, liken menstruating (which comfortable” (Davis 2003). most American women do) to the use of In a New Yorker profi le of John Rock, the natural birth control methods and natural devout Catholic physician who was one of menstrual sponges (which most American the inventors of the birth control pill, Glad- women do not use), and suggest choosing well explains that one of the reasons Rock not to take a drug to suppress “natural” believed that the pill would be acceptable monthly menses is something only a small to the church is that it “was a ‘natural’ portion of women would embrace. method of birth control . . . Progestin . . . is THE NEED TO BLEED? A FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT OF MENSTRUAL-SUPPRESSING | 175 nature’s contraceptive. And what was the illustrate how bodily processes that are Pill? Progestin in tablet form” (Gladwell considered “undignifi ed” and detrimental 2000, 2). 21 Furthermore, Pope Pius XII had to one’s sexual appeal are, at least by some, sanctioned the rhythm method in 1951 be- no longer thought to be necessary. cause he deemed it a “natural” method of regulating procreation, and Rock saw the MENSTRUAL SUPPRESSION: AN pill as an extension of this. He “insisted ENHANCEMENT TECHNOLOGY? on a twenty-eight-day cycle for his pill” in order to preserve the natural “menstrual “Enhancement technologies” have been rhythms” (Gladwell 2000). described as those aimed at “improving human characteristics, including appearance and mental or physical functioning, IS MENSTRUATION NECESSARY? often beyond what is ‘normal’ or necessary Proponents of menstrual suppression argue for life and well-being” (Hogle 2005, 695). that menstruation is unnecessary. Accord- These new, body-altering techniques re- ing to Dr. Mitchell Creinin, director of pair, replace, and even redesign the human family planning in the Obstetrics and Gy- body in response to individual wants necology Department of the University (Hogle 2005, 696). Well-known examples of Pittsburgh’s Magee-Women’s Hospital, include the use of anabolic steroids for “The idea that a woman ‘needs’ to have a athletic performance enhancement, hor- period is folklore” (Shaw 2003). Coutinho mones for rejuvenation, and the use of and Segal (1999, 159) assert, “Recurrent human growth hormone for short children menstruation is unnecessary. . . . It is a because height is thought to improve an needless loss of blood.” individual’s chances for success. These cul- Thomas and Ellertson (2000, 923) draw turally shaped needs and desires reinforce analogies with other conditions now com- already existing gender norms. For exam- monly controlled with pharmaceuticals, ple, drugs are now sometimes being used noting that “modern medicine is all about to limit the height of tall girls who would the artifi cial control of conditions that range otherwise exceed the standards of feminin- from the life threatening, debilitating, and ity. Are menstrual-suppressing birth con- uncomfortable to matters of mere taste.” trol pills performance-enhancing drugs? An apt comparison might be made with Do they improve an individual’s chances aging. As with menstruation, some now see for success, and, if so, how? aging as a biological process that is “neither Just as with soldiers, truck drivers, and natural nor inevitable” (www.antiagingny. test takers who are being given or self- com). Groups like the New York City–based administering drugs to enhance perfor- PhysioAge Medical Group purport to “stop” mance, the demands for productivity in the or “slow” the aging process through the workplace may be legitimating hormonal use of hormonal replacement therapies menstrual suppression. For example, (HRT), which had initially been targeted to ob-gyn Shari Brasner explained how she women for menopause. They believe that began adapting normal birth control pills they can “correct hormonal imbalances” to suppress her periods (by skipping the so as to maintain youth longer and to pre- placebo pills) when she “decided that my vent diseases associated with aging such busy schedule really precluded the ability as osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, to take a break to go to the bathroom every and Alzheimer’s. 22 Both hormonal men- couple of hours to take care of personal strual suppression and anti-aging HRTs needs” (Harris and Saul 2006). Adds Linda 176 | JENNIFER AENGST AND LINDA L. LAYNE

C. Andrist, a professor at Massachusetts Delaney, Lupton, and Toth devote a chap- General Hospital’s Institute of Health Pro- ter, entitled “ ‘Not Tonight, Dear,’ ” to the fessions in Boston, “[W]e don’t want to con- subject. They observe, “What is so remark- front our bodily functions anymore. We’re able about the sex taboos against menstru- too busy ” (Saul 2007, A1, emphasis added). ating women is that they have not faded Proponents of suppression often high- into vestigial reminders of a primitive past; light the economic consequences of men- they are still very much a part of everyday struation. For example, Andrew Kaunitz, a life for most people” (1976, 14).24 gynecologist who was one of the site-testers Submissions to the MUM Web site indi- for Seasonale, notes that “[m]enstrual dis- cate that the taboo is still a factor for some orders represent a major cause of absentee- women. Some don’t have sex during their ism from work” (Chesler 2006). A Canadian periods either because of their own beliefs study that found that women affl icted by or those of their sexual partners, while oth- heavy menstrual bleeding give up $1,692 a ers do but recognize that others might dis- year in lost wages (Saul 2007, C4). Accord- approve. 25 “I would gladly have sex while ing to Thomas and Ellertson, “menstrual on my period, as I fi nd it really does tend to disorders cost U.S. industry about 8 per- lessen cramps, provided my partner wasn’t cent of its total wage bill” (2000, 922). With disgusted by the whole affair.” Another gendered attitudes about work productiv- woman who would like to suppress her ity, women’s absenteeism is often inter- periods writes, “I don’t like having my hus- preted as another example of how women’s band be so disgusted by my menstrual fl uid reproductive processes (menstrual cramps, that he will not have sex with me during pregnancy, child care) interfere with the that week. That hurts my feelings, and the effi ciency of the workplace. A number of worst part is it’s not his fault. He was raised contributors to the MUM Web site men- by women who were disgusted by their own tion how the economic system does not bodies, and through them he was taught to accommodate women’s bodily needs. For be disgusted.” Another confesses she “even example, one woman writes, “I don’t judge ha[s] sex during that time and that always anyone who wishes to stop their menstrua- makes me feel better. Disgusting? Well, tion, but I think that modern western exis- I don’t care. It’s not to me and it’s not dis- tence is fundamentally anti-feminine, and gusting to my husband. It’s just the normal that we are being reshaped into suffering me. You can say what you want but I have worker drones for capitalism.” Another the feeling it’s a lot more fun the way I do it woman writes, “In this world of male cor- instead of . . . pushing my husband out of porate culture, where most women work bed.” One woman advises, “Have sex if you outside the home, it is diffi cult to take time want to when you’re bleeding—men need for oneself as a woman without feeling like to get over their fear of blood—it’s only your a ‘whiner’ and ‘complainer.’ ” mind holding you back. I have been blessed In addition to its potential for enhancing with men in my life that have no issues with productivity, menstrual suppression might menstruation and sex.”26 be considered an enhancement technology along the lines of cosmetic surger- SCHEDULED MENSTRUATION: ies intended to improve appearance and THE MODERN, YET FEMININE increase sexual attractiveness, given the ALTERNATIVE? fact that taboos against having sex while menstruating appear to still be diminish- One important feature of Seasonale is that ing women’s sex lives. 23 Writing in 1976, it allows women to schedule their periods. THE NEED TO BLEED? A FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT OF MENSTRUAL-SUPPRESSING | 177

In this regard, menstruating is compara- to add a professional loss to her personal ble with other reproductive events that one. Although this practice may be rare, American women are increasingly likely many women with diagnosed fetal de- to schedule, including birth (either via mise choose to schedule a D&C or induc- scheduled induction or scheduled caesar- tion, depending how far along they are, ian sections) and pregnancy loss. Induced rather than waiting for “nature to take her labor has become much more common in course.” the United States in the past fi fteen years. The ability to schedule one’s periods is The rate of inductions doubled, growing being pitched as a sign of modern wom- from 9.5 percent in 1990 to 20.3 percent in anhood. In their book, Is Menstruation 2003.27 This trend is seen as “a product of Obsolete?, Coutinho and Segal argue that our times” (Fink 2000) that suits “our fast- menstrual suppression is a distinctly “mod- paced lives” and allows women to exercise ern” solution for the problems of modernity their “choice” and ensure that the baby (including unnaturally frequent menses), not “arrive at an inconvenient time” (Lane because it is modern life that has led women 2006). In this way, Lane reports, families to deviate from what the authors believe is can plan on being home for the holidays, be their “natural” state of continual pregnan- sure the baby is born when the family is all cies and breast-feeding. Similarly, Dr. Leslie together (e.g., before the father is shipped Miller, associate professor of obstetrics and to Iraq), and accommodate the “career gynecology at the University of Washington, demands of both parents” (Lane 2006). It is quoted as saying, “[S]uppression of men- also spares women the “discomforts of late strual cycles is a modern solution to a mod- pregnancy” (Lane 2006). Similarly, the rate ern lifestyle” (www.noperiod.com). 31 of elective caesareans has increased in the On the Seasonale/Seasonique Web site United States. In 2006, 31 percent of births (2007), women are invited to use the “Per- were c-sections, up 50 percent from 1996 sonal Planner” to schedule “events like (Park 2008). Estimates of how many of vacations, business travel, romantic en- these were elected are as high as 18 per- counters, and family reunions based on cent (Park 2008).28 The growth is attributed your inactive Pill dates,” and a write-up in part to a growing number of women about Seasonale on the Cleveland Clinic’s who are requesting elective caesarians. Health Information Center Web site as- The reasons given are for “convenience— sures, “[O]n a wedding day, honeymoon, the ability to fi t childbirth into their work or family vacation, for example, no woman schedules, plan for the care of their other wants to have the added burden of men- children, or have spouses, parents, or both struation.” 32 The examples typify femi- present at the birth” (Brody 2003).29 Others ninity, with honeymoons and weddings prefer it for cosmetic reasons, to avoid the also signifying normative, heterosexual “vaginal stretching and mauling” of natu- sexual activity. The type of woman who is ral birth (Hamer 2007a). Anecdotally, there envisioned in Seasonales marketing cam- is evidence that because of the tax benefi ts paign is young, middle or upper middle of having a dependent, the planned in- class, 33 works outside of the home, is het- duction and c-section rates are highest in erosexual, and is a “modern” yet feminine December.30 woman. Modernity is invoked as a way to Layne (2003, 4) describes having used differentiate Seasonale from “traditional” injections of the hormone progesterone to birth control pills. An early advertisement postpone an imminent miscarriage until shows women choosing one of a group of after a professional conference, so as not items (airport chairs, high-top sneakers, 178 | JENNIFER AENGST AND LINDA L. LAYNE

yoga mats) that are colored gray, and se- Users simply skip the placebo pills of their lecting the one that is pink. A more recent monthly cycle. In their 1976 book, The brochure develops the same trope, using Curse: A Cultural History of Menstruation, the contrast between black and pink to Delaney, Lupton, and Toth devote a chap- promote the desirability of this product ter to various techniques women have (Duramed 2005b). An attractive, young, used in “escaping the monthlies,” among feminine (skirt- and high-heel-wearing) which they single out hormones as “un- woman is shown walking by a long row of doubtedly the least unsafe suppressor” identical black armchairs glancing back (1976, 215). Hormones have been given over her shoulder at the one pink chair. as menstrual suppressors to “paraplegic On the next page she is pictured sitting and severely handicapped women and to on the pink chair; that is, having chosen it women in plaster casts,” used by prosti- and made it her own through the deploy- tutes to stop their periods indefi nitely, and ment of her body. On another double-page by athletes to delay a period until after an spread at the center of the brochure she important athletic competition although is pictured looking down, admiring the women have won “gold medals and estab- pretty pink shoes she is wearing that she lished new world records in the . . . Olym- has clearly chosen out of an endless line pics during all phases of the menstrual of identical black ones. In addition to sig- cycle” (1976, 57). There is no accurate data naling femininity with pink, Seasonale on how many women are now regularly uses the various versions of this visual skipping placebo pills, but medical organi- metaphor to distinguish itself from boring, zations and reproductive health centers— old-fashioned, ordinary birth control pills, such as Reproductive Health Technologies and at the same time suggests that the con- Project and Association of Reproductive sumer can distinguish herself as a young, Health Professionals—acknowledge the attractive, feminine, fun-loving woman by practice (Thomas and Ellertson 2000). choosing this form of birth control. The One contributor to the MUM Web site, a metaphor can also be read as referring twenty-three-year-old biologist from Ma- to the way one’s period days are different laysia, reports that “dancers, athletes, and from ordinary days. In this reading, the oc- other women who fi nd periods inconve- casional period is a fun, feminine alterna- nient have known about this trick for a tive to ordinary, undifferentiated days. And long time” and she recalls an experience with Seasonale, the pink days will be even from her childhood when they “were going more special because they are more rare to the beach for a camp with their church and, like the pink shoes, an expression of and her twelve-year-old sister and her personal choice. This trope also suggests best friend were on their periods” and the the ease of use: chairs and shoes are famil- friend’s father, a gynecologist, “gave them iar technologies that women already know some pills to stop their periods so they how to use to accessorize their bodies. could swim.” Gottlieb (2002, 388) reports that some Balinese women take birth control pills in order to delay the onset of their SEASONALE: THE MAINSTREAMING periods, “precisely timing the menstrual OF AN APPROPRIATED TECHNOLOGY cycle” so that they can “participate in tradi- Seasonale presents an interesting example tional temple rituals from which menstru- of “appropriated technology.”34 Birth con- ating women are still actively banned.” She trol pills have long been adapted by users interprets this “cultural conservatism” as to schedule or eliminate their periods. being, like the veil, an expression of “ethnic THE NEED TO BLEED? A FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT OF MENSTRUAL-SUPPRESSING | 179 pride and nationalism in the face of inter- site expressed similar views. One thirteen- national pressure to Westernize” (Gottlieb year-old reports that although she “HATEs 2002, 388). period pains” she “always feels blessed “Appropriated technologies” represent when ‘it’s that time of the month.’ I love the a reversal of the typical power fl ow in feel of being a woman . . . I . . . like that I technology design and production from am growing up and . . . it makes me really those with high social power to consumers happy and proud to be a woman.” A thirty- who may be outside the centers of social six-year-old woman says she would never power, and thus may incline us to be pos- give up her period. “I like that it is regular, itively predisposed to them. Indeed, we I love to feel the cramps. It reminds me of might interpret Seasonale as an example being in labor and the power that I found of “the collective force of [women] in shap- there. The power that resides deep within ing technology design through market me, connecting me to all women who have demands” (Eglash 2004, xvi). But appro- lived before, and all to come.” She is teach- priated technologies are not necessarily ing her daughters by example that “cramps liberatory. As Eglash (2004, xvii) observes, are part of the power of being a woman.” “[A]ppropriated technologies do not have A thirty-two-year-old U.S. mother of three an inherent ethical advantage. First, inso- who is a graduate student in Southern far as appropriation is a response to mar- California and “would never give up [her] ginalization, we should work at obviating periods” says, “I am the woman I am in a the need for it by empowering the margin- large part because of my relationship with alized. Second, not all forms of resistance my body—my awareness of my cycle, my are necessarily benefi cial in the long run.” knowledge of how my parts work, my con- Furthermore, Seasonale and the other “me- nection to my fertility.” Another contribu- too” menstrual-suppressing birth control tor writes, “To suppress menstruation is to pills coming to market are simply packag- suppress being a woman.” ing this already-appropriated technology A woman from Zambia notes that even and selling it back to women at infl ated though it’s inconvenient when traveling, prices. “it’s a wonderful experience of womanhood. It makes us different from men.” Another writes, “[I]t’s what makes us spe- MENSTRUATION = WOMANHOOD? cial.” Several refer to their periods as “a Underlying much of the discussion sur- gift.” “You bleed each month because each rounding menstrual-suppressing birth month you have the potential to create control are essentialist claims about female- LIFE. Screw being envious of men. We cre- ness. For example, psychiatrist Dr. Susan ate men! We can make men and women Rako, author of No More Periods? The right in our bodies and it is a beautiful and Risks of Menstrual Suppression (2003), amazing privilege!” Another says, “[O]ur maintains that these new technologies periods are like our trademark,” and coun- are “doing away with women’s normal sels that others should “be proud to be a hormonal menstrual cycle, which is re- woman.” A forty-eight-year-old woman ally responsible for what fundamentally explains why she would not choose men- makes a woman a woman” (Cox and Feig strual suppression: “I feel connected to 2003).35 The respondents in Aengst’s sur- other women around me and throughout vey who were reluctant to use Seasonale time.” A thirteen-year-old says, “I feel like linked a monthly cycle with femininity. it is a bond with all women, one of my few Many of the contributors to the MUM Web assurances that I’m normal. It assures me 180 | JENNIFER AENGST AND LINDA L. LAYNE

that I am healthy and similar to half of the in fl ux and corporeal bodies aren’t the same earth’s population.” at all times.” A contributor to the MUM Many others react to these expressed Web site who self-describes as “a pagan” views. Of women who say that “they didn’t uses her “blood in rituals” and likes “how feel like women without their periods,” it connects me with the earth, especially in one mother replies “Bah!” and shares how our modern world.” Another contributor much she would welcome “never hav- writes, “I almost always get my period right ing to deal with a bloody tampon again.” around or after the full moon, . . . and I like A woman who has menstruated for thir- that vague connection to the moon/the ty-fi ve years says that she has “appreciated universe.” A twenty-eight-year-old from the feminine, the moon cycles, the fecun- Alabama states, “[T]here’s no way that I dity, the fertility. It’s awesome, . . . now go would give up my Moon cycle other than away, shoo. I am woman, hear me roar.” for pregnancy or naturally occurring One woman who reports she “would stop menopause!” A thirty-four-year-old from in a heartbeat if [she] could” explains, “I Virginia writes, “I enjoy the regular re- have been a teenager bleeding, a young minder of my power as a womyn and of woman bleeding, and a mother bleeding. my connection to the moon and the tides.” Now I’m tired of bleeding. My womanhood And a woman in her early thirties says that has been proven!” A nineteen-year-old although “at an earlier stage of my life I with very diffi cult periods replied, “I love would have said yes” to suppression, “I being a woman and I feel empowered be- learned later in my life that our moon cycle cause of who I am, but my period does not is a gift from the Goddess. . . . In ancient make me a female. I don’t need my period times women were revered and respected to remind me ‘oh yeah, I am female.’ ” A because she could bleed without a wound. forty-three-year-old from the United States The blood was given to Mother Earth to says, “[T]his doesn’t make me feel like a nourish her.” Another writes, “Menstrual woman. It makes me feel dirty, like hiding blood has been used to fertilize plant life (I all day. I feel like a woman when I can put give it to my plants—they love it!)” and one on a pretty dress, not worry it’ll get stained, urges other women “to engage with our and be intimate with my husband.” An- connection to the planet and stop harm- other writes that menstruation does not ful . . . activities. I wish every woman could “prove your femininity. Hell, if I want to get observe nature on a daily basis, sit in her in touch with my feminine side I’ll look in garden and tend vegetables, have time to my heart and mind, not at the red blood in make a simple meal, be able to sit, chat, the toilet.” sew and comfort.” Some object to the views of those who link menstruation with nature/womanhood. MENSTRUATION = WOMYN/NATURE? For example, one writes, “Those moon-wo- Many of the arguments against menstrual myn with their raspberry leaf tea just make suppression not only allude to the special me tired. Menstruating smells. Get over it. bond that menstruating creates among There’s an odor and it isn’t raspberry tea, women, but also to the bond it creates be- sweetheart.” Another contributor quips, tween women and nature. One of the re- “I think all these folks going on about their spondents to Aengst’s survey commented, ‘Moon Time’ are full of it. They have never “I think the monthly cycle represents a had a painful period.” A more tolerant powerful connection with the cycles of response is expressed by a woman who nature—a reminder that life is constantly states, “I’m happy for women who feel that THE NEED TO BLEED? A FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT OF MENSTRUAL-SUPPRESSING | 181 having their period connects them with dirty, messy, ritually polluting, and/or in- the moon and the tides. For me, though, all convenient, and, like menstrual suppres- that my period connects me with is a 500- sion, ejaculate suppression could serve as count bottle of Advil and a heating pad.” a method of birth control. Even though And a fi fty-year-old who gets migraines several drugs suppress ejaculation (e.g., before her period starts and has gotten Flomax, a drug prescribed to men who her periods “regular as clockwork since I have enlarged prostates), this is not being was 12” writes, “I don’t need this any more. marketed as a sales point but as an un- Mother Nature, lay off already.” wanted side effect. 38

IS SEASONALE A FEMINIST Liberal Feminism TECHNOLOGY? Liberal feminism has tended to celebrate Different feminist theories render different the expansion of choices for women, includ- answers to this question. In this section, ing increasing the number of options that we begin by using the “how would this women have for birth control. Thus, from a look if it were men” technique to begin our liberal feminist point of view, Seasonale and feminism assessment. We then consider other menstrual-suppressing birth control the issue through the lenses of liberal, rad- pills would likely be embraced as expanding ical, socialist, essentialist/cultural, eco-, women’s choices. Dr. Ruth Murkatz of the African American, existential, and cyborg Population Council, who believes menstru- feminism36 and conclude with our own al-suppression birth control pills provide evaluations. Readers should keep in mind “another choice for women, so they can con- that we are describing feminist theories trol their destiny” and concludes “choice is and that feminists often embrace more good” (Chesler 2006), provides an example of than one of these perspectives. this approach. In addition, since liberal feminists tend to focus on equity, to the extent that THE “HOW WOULD THIS LOOK IF IT menstruation makes it more diffi cult for WERE MEN?” TEST women to compete equitably at work or to One technique often used in thinking about enjoy vacations and sex as much or as fre- whether a technology or social arrangement quently as men, one could argue that, from is feminist (or sexist) is to consider how the a liberal feminist perspective, eliminating issue would look if the sexes were switched. menstruation would be benefi cial. In the case of menstrual-suppressing drugs, perhaps a comparable male case would be Radical Feminism a semen- or ejaculation-suppressing drug. This comparison is in fact made by a twenty- Whereas liberal feminism embraces the six-year-old Portuguese contributor. She notion of expanded “choices” as a bene- writes, “Look at men—do you think they see fi t in and of itself, radical feminism high- their sperm as repulsive? Oh, God, no! They lights how the choices offered to women tend to be proud of it. They’re proud of their are shaped by patriarchal systems and sexuality. . . . And do you think a period is may in fact harm women. Radical fem- more repulsive than sperm? Well, I person- inists would likely deem Seasonale an ally don’t think so.”37 antifeminist technology. Rather than sup- As this woman points out, like men- pressing menstruation, a radical feminist strual blood, ejaculate could be considered approach might be to redesign workplaces, 182 | JENNIFER AENGST AND LINDA L. LAYNE

schedules, and expectations to accommo- these differences. . . . Cultural feminists date women’s cyclically changing capaci- are usually non-political, instead focus- ties and predilections. This is the position ing on individual change and infl uencing taken in Martin’s classic The Woman in the or transforming society through this in- Body (1987, 122–25), in which, after dis- dividual change. They usually advocate cussing the problems for women caused separate female counter-cultures as a way by late industrial society’s demand for reg- to change society but not completely dis- imented physical and mental discipline connect” (Stewart 2003). An example of while on the job, she refers to Beng women this approach is found in a contribution to from the Ivory Coast as an example of a the MUM Web site from a woman in Chi- culture that plans on and accommodates a cago who writes, “I love my period. It’s my cyclic change in women’s usual activities. Moontime, my time to relax, pamper myself, and be creative. . . . I listen to female musicians, read female authors, admire Socialist Feminism female artists, and chat about intimate is- This approach is based on the belief that sues with my female friends. I eat healthier “there is a direct link between class struc- and indulge in the richest, darkest choco- ture and the oppression of women” and late. I also feel a greater spiritual connec- that we must therefore challenge both “the tion during my Moontime.” Through this ideologies of capitalism and patriarchy.” lens, menstrual-suppressing drugs are not Women must work side by side with men only not feminist, but antifeminist. in order to achieve this (Stewart 2003). To the extent that menstrual-suppress- Ecofeminism ing technologies are perceived as tools to render women more willing and able to be This approach is premised on a deep link subjected to the physical and mental disci- between women and nature, and patri- pline that capitalism requires to maximize archy is understood as the simultaneous productivity and effi ciency in the work- domination of both nature and women. place (Martin 1987, 122), socialist feminists In ecofeminism, women’s special under- are likely to oppose them. Like the contrib- standing of nature enables them to provide utor to the MUM Web site who perceived progressive solutions for “how humans a link between menstrual suppression can live in harmony with each other and and the way men and women are being with nature” (Stewart 2003). We saw exam- “reshaped into suffering worker drones ples of this in the contributions of those for capitalism,” socialist feminists would who feel their periods provide a special likely prefer to organize labor in such a way link to nature. These contributors tended that both men and women would be able to also embrace an essentialist/cultural to take more paid personal days. perspective. Thus, it seems that from an ecofeminist point of view, like that of the essentialists/culturalists, menstrual sup- Essentialist Feminism/Cultural pression is not only not feminist, but anti- Feminism feminist. However, because with drugs like Essentialist feminism (now known more Seasonale women will no longer be pur- commonly as cultural feminism)39 is based chasing disposable, one-use only sanitary on the idea that “there are fundamental, pads and tampons that end up in landfi lls biological differences between men and (Strasser 1999, 161–70), one might argue women, and that women should celebrate that it therefore qualifi es as an ecofeminist THE NEED TO BLEED? A FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT OF MENSTRUAL-SUPPRESSING | 183 technology. The counterargument is that Existential Feminism there are other technologies that already Existential feminism derives from the work exist (e.g., reusable cotton pads, men- of Simone de Beauvoir. In The Second Sex strual cups)·40 that meet this need without Beauvoir describes the ways women’s women having to suppress their cycles by bodies make them subservient to the de- making themselves dependent on a con- mands of the species to procreate in a way sumer product that must continuously be replenished. that greatly exceeds the demands placed on men. She has a very negative view of menstruation, which she sees as a use- African American Feminism less burden “from the point of view of the African American feminism focuses on individual” (1989/1949, 27). She writes: “the promotion of black female empow- “Menstruation is painful: headaches, over erment” and is characterized by “the pre- fatigue, abdominal pains, make normal sentation of an alternative social construct activities distressing or impossible; psy- for now and the future based on African chic diffi culties often appear: nervous and American women’s lived experiences.” It irritable, a woman may be temporarily in a is based on the recognition of “multiple state of semi-lunacy. . . . The body seem[s] systemic forces of oppression” and thus a screen interposed between the woman’ entails “fi ghting against race and gender and the world . . . stifl ing her and cutting 42 inequality” (Barnes 2008, 1). her off” (1989/1949, 329). She sees the This perspective has been noticeably end to menstruation with menopause as absent both in the public debate and in the the only way that “women escape the iron self-reports on the MUM Web site. (Only grasp of the species” (1989/1949, 31). one of the contributors self-identifi es as From this, it seems evident that she would black and she is against suppression: “I am have embraced menstrual-suppressing a black student doctor of a natural health drugs had they been available. This view is care approach and a woman. I wouldn’t also supported in her general stance vis-à- stop menstruating if I had the chance (invis nature. She celebrates human society cluding after having children).” An Afri- that exerts mastery over nature. “Human can American feminist perspective would society is an antiphysis—in a sense it is be cognizant of the many reproductive against nature; it does not passively submit rights abuses that have been directed at to the presence of nature but rather takes African American women (as well as other over the control of nature on its own be- women of color in the United States and half” (1989/1949, 53). She has a generally globally). The early birth control move- positive attitude toward technology be- ment was associated with the eugenics cause of the potential to equalize men and movement, which often singled out black women’s physical abilities.43 women (Roberts 1997, 70–79). Forced ster- However, other elements of The Second ilization and the targeting of blacks for Sex suggest that she had some positive atti- new, inadequately tested, extended-regi- tudes toward women’s reproductive biology, men hormonal birth control in the form of linking ovarian function to women’s vitality Norplant and Depo Provera (Nelson 2003; (1989/1949, 27). But although she recognized Roberts 1997), suggests that African Amer- the body as “one of the essential elements ican feminism would be wary of Seasonale in her situation in the world,” Beauvoir as- and other “extended-regimen” birth con- serted “that body is not enough to defi ne trol pills. 41 her as woman” (1989/1949, 87). Instead, 184 | JENNIFER AENGST AND LINDA L. LAYNE

Beauvoir privileges individual conscious- the constraints of essentialism but will ness manifested through activities. Women’s also allow us to conceive of and employ second-class status is a result of broader so- science and technology to further wom- cial traditions. She uses pregnancy as an ex- en’s aims in a more nuanced manner. The ample to illustrate the way the same biologic cyborg—a heterogenous mix of human phenomenon differs depending on social and machine—moves beyond binaries and arrangements. The burdens of maternity in essentialism. Among cyborgs, it becomes societies where women do not have repro- more diffi cult to distinguish dualistic cat- ductive freedom and little social support “are egories such as “nature” and “culture.” A crushing,” whereas in societies where “she cyborg feminist position poses unsettling procreates voluntarily” and “society comes to (yet also liberating) questions: what counts her aid . . . the burdens of maternity are light as “nature”? What counts as a “woman”? and can be easily offset by suitable adjust- The ambiguity, in Haraway s view, is liber- ments in working conditions” (1989/1949, 54). ating. Hence, a technology like Seasonale, Thus, we might infer from this that she might which compels us to confront our cultural favor similar social accommodations rather ideas of “normalcy? “nature,” and “neces- than drugs to alter women’s biology. sity,” can be considered feminist for this Finally, Beauvoir urged women to reason. Haraway’s cyborg is a compelling “confront internalized desires that lead image because it reveals the arbitrariness, to acceptance, and thus perpetuation, of and thus instability, of our categorizations. society’s conventional defi nitions and expectations of femininity” (Marso 2006, 17). TWO SOCIALLY/MATERIALLY Hence, existential feminists might object SITUATED CONCLUSIONS to menstrual suppression as an unthinking compliance with conventional defi ni- Given that whether or not a person consid- tions of femininity; for example, the ability ers menstrual-suppressing birth control to wear a “pretty dress” without worry of pills to be a feminist technology appears staining. Furthermore, given Beauvoir’s to be shaped both by one’s personal expe- emphasis on individual intellectual and rience with menstruation and the type of creative actualization, one would expect feminism(s) she or he embraces, it is not her to celebrate the achievements of surprising that we (Layne and Aengst) dif- women like this contributor to the MUM fer in our assessment of this issue. We pro- Web site who reports enjoying her great- vide two alternative sets of conclusions as est productivity during her menses. “I am well as points of convergence. an artist and a feminist article writer and I Layne: I am a perimenopausal woman come up with my most powerful, eloquent, who has experienced regular, unremark- meaningful pieces during my Moontime.” able menses for thirty-seven years or so. For the vast majority of my adult life I have used a diaphragm and contracep- Cyborg Feminism tive jelly for birth control, a method that According to Donna Haraway, the per- I have found effective, safe, and easy to son most closely associated with cyborg use, and one that has the added benefi t of feminism, the separation of nature and containing menses. I am pleased there are culture has been particularly detrimental a growing number of ways to alleviate the to women (Haraway 1991). Cyborg fem- suffering of women with “menstrual disor- inists believe that disrupting the nature/ ders.” Given that two of the most of com- culture duality will not only free us from mon therapies (hysterectomy and uterine THE NEED TO BLEED? A FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT OF MENSTRUAL-SUPPRESSING | 185 ablation) preclude future child bearing, control over our own bodies” (1976, 217). alternatives are clearly needed. But even This is a safer, less expensive, and more self- for women with menstrual disorders, I am controlled alternative than daily drug use reluctant to deem menstrual-suppressing for those who wish to be spared the task drugs as feminist technologies because the of managing their menstrual cycles more recent invention of the Vipon, a vibrating conventionally. This technique has the tampon that appears to relieve the men- added benefi t of enabling early abortion, strual pain of women with endometriosis should that be desired. (Vostral, this volume), alerts us to the fact A fi nal consideration for me of the that even if menstrual-suppressing birth feminist/antifeminist valence of menstrual- control pills are the best option for women suppressing drugs stems from the fact that with menstrual disorders now, there is no these pills have been so newsworthy. Part reason to think that there are not better al- of the reason these drugs make such good ternatives that have not yet been created news copy is that women are so sharply by feminist designers.44 divided on the subject. As we have seen As for the use of menstrual-suppressing from the contributions to the MUM Web drugs to suppress “normal” menses (being site, not only do women differ physically cognizant, of course, of how both the (in their experience of menstruation) and notions of “normal/abnormal” are cul- attitudinally about the value/meaning of turally shaped), as a radical feminist, I menstruation, they also are sometimes am opposed. Rather than women using highly judgmental of those who differ from technologies to alter themselves to more them. Could it be that this subject is so me- comfortably fi t the demands of a patri- diagenic precisely because of its catfi ght archally shaped world, I would prefer to potential? The tampon, the home preg- reshape the world to better accommo- nancy test, and the breast pump have not date women. Furthermore, as a medical generated such heated divisions between anthropologist working in the era of “big women, nor have they been the subject of pharma” (Angell 2005), I am oriented comparable media attention. I suggest that against the expansion of drug regimens, the valence of a technology, either to pit and prefer mechanical (mostly reusable) women against each other or bring them menstrual-management technologies into solidarity, might be added to the list like menstrual cups (see illustration), dia- of criteria that qualify/disqualify technol- phragms, reusable cloth pads (Vostral, this ogies as feminist. Note, I am not suggest- volume), or even menstrual extraction. ing that there should be a single feminism Menstrual extraction is a technique devel- or that women could or should see things oped by a group of feminists in Los Ange- the same way. The diversity of the femi- les at the Self-Help Clinic of the Feminist nist movement is what makes it such “a Women’s Health Center, in which a woman many splendor’d thing” (Meyer 1987, 389) or a friend inserts a thin tube into her and this diversity will be an important re- uterus when her period begins, and uses source for the proliferation of feminist a syringe to suction out the endometrial technologies. lining, a procedure that takes only minutes Aengst: I fi rst became interested in Sea- (Delaney, Lupton, and Toth 1976, 215–16). sonale when my gynecologist told me that Delaney, Lupton, and Toth deemed men- she could make my periods disappear. strual extraction as “by far the most ex- “Women don’t have to have a period any- citing discovery of the women’s health more,” she said to me, “nowadays, there movement” because it provides “newfound are just so many more options.” I left the 186 | JENNIFER AENGST AND LINDA L. LAYNE

offi ce disturbed by her comments, which world—infl uence those in the policy and seemed to be a bit too cavalier, although development world, which ultimately de- I was equally intrigued by the thought of termines where reproductive technologies having more reproductive health options. travel (Sen, Germain, and Chen 1994). Unfor- I realized that my own misgivings about tunately, because the development and pol- taking long-term birth control pills was icy literature often suggests that women in bound up in the fear of a new technology, the developing world cannot be trusted to re- essentialist ideas about gender, and fairly liably take a daily pill, and because of the ex- ingrained ideas about what was “natural.” pense, menstrual-suppressing birth control After much consideration, I am still un- pills are less likely to be available for women comfortable with Seasonale and have no in the developing world. desire to use menstrual-suppressing drugs. Seasonale might very well be a useful tech- Because I have been a regular user of “tra- nology for middle- and upper-class women ditional” birth control pills for many years, who seek convenience and can afford to Seasonale is appealing in its similarity to choose among many contraceptive technol- the pill regimen I am already taking. Yet, as ogies. Disrupting deeply entrenched norms someone who spent much of my adoles- of “nature” and “necessity” is a great step— cence wishing my periods were more reg- and this is what makes Seasonale a worth- ular, I fi nd the idea of going many months while technological development—but it has without a period disturbing. Despite being not gone far enough. aware of how the notion of “natural” is socially and culturally constructed, I fi nd CONCLUSIONS myself still preferring to have a monthly, more regular period. Seasonale proves to be an excellent test Although I like that Seasonale disrupts case for honing the defi nition of feminist notions of biological female essentialism, it technology and for modeling a feminist leaves essentialist ideas about men uncon- technology assessment. As we have seen, tested. 45 In addition, this technology main- menstrual suppression raises to the fore- tains the well-entrenched belief that women front differences among women—physical, are the ones ultimately responsible for birth social, cultural, and attitudinal. It also control. The development, distribution, and highlights differences within feminism. It use of male methods of birth control is long is by struggling to take into account these overdue. Male-oriented birth control meth- differences that we can make headway in ods will not only disrupt gendered notions defi ning, recognizing, calling for, and cre- of female and male essentialism but will ating feminist technologies. also challenge the idea that contraception is solely a “women’s issue.” Furthermore, there are underlying class NOTES and sexist and racist ideologies related to Thanks to Shirley Gorenstein and Deborah John- menstrual suppression. Seasonale is an ex- son for helpful editorial suggestions; to Harry Fin- pensive technology that remains inacces- ley, the director of the Museum of Menstruation for sible to lower-income women and to those providing such a wealth of cultural data; to Si Ming within the developing world. Many theorists Lee for tallying the MUM results; to Nancy Camp- have pointed out how cultural norms—such bell, Ben Barker-Benfi eld, Ron Eglash, and Lori Marso for sharing their books and knowledge of as determinations of who takes birth con- feminist theory; and to Michael Halloran and Maral trol pills and what methods are deemed Erol for the helpful perspective their own work “appropriate” for women in the developing provided. Versions of this paper were presented THE NEED TO BLEED? A FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT OF MENSTRUAL-SUPPRESSING | 187

at the Society for Social Studies of Science con- and why. Of the nineteen women who reference in Pasadena, to the Women’s Studies Pro- sponded, eighteen had taken birth control pills; gram at Union College, and at Society for Medical however, only four said they would take Seaso- Anthropology/Society for Applied Anthropology nale. The two main reasons they gave for this meetings in Memphis, the Department of Anthro- was because they liked the monthly reassurance pology and Women’s Studies, State University of that they were not pregnant and they felt that New York–Oneonta; Gender and Women’s Studies, taking Seasonale would disrupt the “natural” University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and monthly cycle. In contrast, a much higher pro- the Cambridge Interdisciplinary Reproduction portion of the 919 respondents to the question Forum (CIRF) in Cambridge, England. Thank you posed on the MUM Web site said they would to Sallie Hahn, Gail Landsman, Charlotte Faircloth, suppress: 545 said they would, 374 said they Sharra Vostral for those invitations. The essay was would not. Women who post on the MUM Web strengthened as a result. site may be more likely to experience menstruation as problematic and have discovered the 1. Seasonale is a trademark of Duramed Pharma- Web site while searching the web for help and ceuticals, Inc. support. 2. Their actual effectiveness is estimated to be only 9. These physical differences include endometri- 92 percent, with 8 of 100 women on the pill get- osis, blood disorders, and mental (Thomas and ting pregnant each year. According to Gawande Ellertson 2000, 922) or physical (Colligan 1994) (2007), “[W]ith lower dose hormone formula- disabilities that make managing menstruation tions,” like Seasonale, “missing a dose by even particularly diffi cult. six hours puts a woman at” such risk he advises 10. See for comparison Hardon’s discussion of the the use of condoms for that whole month. role of the Population Council in the develop- 3. These and other risks are discussed in detail ment and testing of two other long-acting con- in the six-page, small-print, black-and-white traceptives, Norplant and antifertility vaccines, product insert. and the women’s health movement’s response 4. This marketing slogan is trademarked by Barr (this volume). Laboratories, of which Duramed is a subsidiary. 11. Coutinho reports that his work with Depo Pro- 5. This is a classic case of the proliferation of what vera showed that “women who suffered from are known as “me-too” drugs, new products that premenstrual tension and other menstrual dis- “are no better than drugs already on the market orders welcomed the long menstruation-free to treat the same condition” (Angell 2005, 75). intervals.” He moves directly from these partic- According to Angeli (2005, 75), 77 percent of all ular women to generalize about “women”—“it new drugs approved by the FDA between 1998 was clear, that, contrary to conventional wis- and 2002 were “me-too” drugs. According to their dom, women not only accepted the idea of not Web site, www.shortperiod.com, “Loestrin 24 Fe menstruating, they appreciated it as a benefi t uses the lowest dose of estrogen (20 mcg per pill) of the treatment” (1999, 10). Later, however, he currently approved by the FDA for effective birth reports on a ten-country study of menstruation control.” conducted by the World Health Organization 6. Other hormonal contraceptive methods can in 1983, which found that the majority of re- also suppress menstruation. The contraceptive spondents of all cultures related some physical cervical ring, NuvaRing, is being used by some discomfort and some mood changes linked to to suppress menstruation (Associated Press menstruation. Yet in what he sees as a “para- 2006a), and Implanon, a birth control rod im- dox,” given “the many negative aspects of men- planted into the upper arm that works for three struation, . . . the majority . . . did not wish to years “stops menstruation in many women.” A use a contraceptive method that would suppress feminist comedic video on menstrual-suppress- menstruation” (1999, 12). ing forms of birth control can be seen at http:// 12. They acknowledge their debt to Coutinho and www.feministing.com/archives/010078.html. Segal for their “ideas and suggestions imparted 7. Respondents are encouraged to tell their age over many years” (Thomas and Ellertson 2000, and where they are from. 924). 8. Aengst asked sixty women on her e-mail 13. Thomas and Ellertson (2000, 922) also draw on list (who are white, middle-class, educated feminist rhetoric in questioning why “no other women, ages twenty-fi ve to forty) whether disease or condition that affects so many peo- they have ever taken birth control pills, ple on such a regular basis with consequences, whether or not they would take Seasonale, at both the individual and societal level, is not 188 | JENNIFER AENGST AND LINDA L. LAYNE

prioritized in some way by health professionals 22. The Life Extension Institute of Palm Springs or policy makers.” also offers anti-aging individualized regimens 14. See Solinger (2001) on how “the language of of “Total Hormone Replacement Therapy” that choice” has come to replace “the language of “may include injections of testosterone and rights” and how decisions about women’s repro- human growth hormone, topically applied tes- duction came to be cast in terms of “the individ- tosterone gel, tablets of melatonin and as many ualistic, marketplace term ‘choice.’ ” as six other hormones that are supposed to slow 15. According to Johnston-Robledo et al. 2006, 359), the aging process and intensify the patient’s the fi rst opponents (i.e., those whose views ap- sense of well-being and sexual vigor” (Hober- peared in the popular press between 2000 and man 2005, 13). 2003) focused on safety issues rather than socio- 23. Again, HRT provides a fruitful comparison. Ac- cultural or psychological concerns. cording to radical feminists Germaine Greer and 16. In 2006, Seasonales sales reached $120 million Sandra Coney, HRT is an attempt by patriarchal (for the twelve months ending in June). A ge- medicine to “keep women young and ‘contribut- neric equivalent produced by Watson has since ing,’ if not to the continuation of the species, at entered the market. Seasonale and Seasonique least to the pleasure of men (both sexually and make up only 0.9 percent of the $1.7 billion an- temperamentally” (Roberts 2002, 39). nual US. market for oral contraceptives (Saul 24. They describe religious prohibitions in the 2007, C4). Koran and the Old Testament, and cite a 1973 17. It is worth noting that there was comparable study by Karen Page that found the prohibition concern about the adoption by teens of tampons much more frequently observed by Catholic and as a new menstrual-managing technology when Jewish women than by Protestants. They also they were introduced (Vostral, this volume). cite a study of black, medically indigent women 18. In Turkey, when patients resist using hor- in Georgia among whom the taboo was “over- mone-replacement therapy (HRT) for meno- whelmingly observed” (1976, 22). In addition pause because they see HRT as “unnatural,” to religion, other explanations for the taboo in- some doctors argue “not everything natural is clude beliefs that it is bad for men’s health, for a good thing,” such as fl oods and earthquakes women’s health, for the health of the unborn, (Erol 2008, 134). and that women are not aroused during their 19. This is a skillful and unconventional use of an periods. They also mention the case of a woman enthymeme to persuade readers that it goes who had an elective hysterectomy “so that she without saying that menstrual suppression is [wouldn’t] have to say no to her husband at that the preferred choice, but that we should be tol- time” (1976, 23). According to Coutinho and erant of those who make other, less enlightened, Segal (1999, 12), the majority of women respon- personal choices like choosing to continue dents in the WHO 1983 survey from all ten of menstruating. the countries in the study (Egypt, India, Indone- 20. It is worth noting that not all “natural,” “real” pe- sia, Jamaica, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, riods involve ovulation. According to Weideger Korea, United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia) “be- (1977, 6), “The majority of adolescents and the lieved that sexual intercourse should be avoided majority of women approaching menopause have during menstruation.” cycles in which there is no ovulation, while most 25. Sometimes these prohibitions are religious. For women in the 20–40 age group have menstruation example, according to Jewish law, a man may without ovulation only once or twice a year.” not have sexual relations with his wife during 21. An interesting comparison might be made with menstruation nor for the seven days following HRT for menopause. In Turkey, doctors respond her bleeding, and even then not until she has to women who are reluctant to take HRT be- performed the ritual purifying bath, a mikvah cause hormones are “artifi cial” with a number (Alexander 2003). Menstruation is also consid- of strategies, including arguing that “the estro- ered ritually polluting in Islam. gen that a menopausal woman takes [is a] part 26. Several studies have found that men report of nature. Like an apple tree presents the sub- more negative attitudes toward menstruation stance it takes from the earth to us as an apple than women (Johnston-Robledo et al. 2006, and an apple is part of nature; the drugs that 354), and one author suggests that “as mem- people make in the factories by substances they bers of a culture that sexualizes or objectifi es take from nature are the fruits of humans, so a their bodies, [women] are motivated to distance piece of nature” (Kadayifci 2006, 37, quoted in themselves or dissociate from bodily func- Erol 2008, 134). tions such as menstruation that are deemed THE NEED TO BLEED? A FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT OF MENSTRUAL-SUPPRESSING | 189

incompatible with their sexual attractiveness 36. Rosser (2006) provided a model for this section. or desirability.” Women who reported higher 37. The same contributor writes, “I never would levels of self-objectifi cation had more nega- have thought that in the 21st-century, women tive attitudes toward menstruation (Johnston- would feel this way about their own body!” She Robledo et al. 2006, 354). makes a distinction for women who have very 27. England reached this rate, one out of every fi ve painful periods, and those who complain that pregnancies, in 1997 (Edozien 1999). “it smells” or that it’s “disgusting,” “ . . . having 28. About 10–15 percent are emergency c-sections. my period doesn’t make me dirty or repulsive. 29. The rate for caesarian births for fi rst pregnancies It’s not disgusting. Do you say blood is disgust- increased to 29.2 percent, an increase of more ing when you cut yourself? I don’t think so. You than 40 percent since 1996 (Bakalar 2005). A sim- may even automatically lick it when it’s a lit- ilar trend is seen in Australia where the c-section tle scratch or something like that (please don’t rate has risen from about 5 percent in the 1970s shoot me! I’m not telling we should do the same to 19 percent in 1994, 27 percent in 2002, and 28.5 with the period). But period should be disgust- percent in 2003 (Hamer 2007a). Of these it is esti- ing because it comes out of your sex? This way mated that 5–10 percent are scheduled at a wom- of thinking . . . shows how much women don’t an’s request (Hamer 2007b, 11). really love or accept themselves. They consider 30. Interestingly, Brazil, where Seasonale was de- their body beautiful as long as it’s attractive to veloped, has particularly high rates, with some the opposite sex: how nice it is to have big tits hospitals reporting 80 percent of babies deliv- nowadays (even if it means back pains or prob- ered this way (Park 2008). lems, even if it has to be achieved through sur- 31. It is not just users who are invited to assert their gery and looks completely fake and unnatural)! modernity by choosing this drug, but physi- Guys love it. But how disgusting it is having your cians too. Coutinho and Segal (1999, 163) cas- period: it’s not attractive to men . . . “Why can’t tigate those who subscribe to “the traditional we women be proud of what we are, no matter if paradigm, ordained by Hippocrates in an era it is pleasant to men or not.” of medical naiveté, that regular menstruation is 38. According to Georges (2009:100) in Greece men- good for women.” Thomas and Ellertson (2000, strual blood and semen are considered similar 922) link the belief that monthly menstruation is but in both cases, the discharge of these bodily healthy to the outdated and “universally harm- fl uids is understood to rid men’s and women’s ful medical practice” of therapeutic, induced bodies of accumulated impurities (of male and “bleeding” of “previous centuries.” Similar argu- female dirt) and the regular expulsion of both ments are made by Turkish doctors in the face are considered essential for health. of resistance to HRT. The doctor of one woman 39. Probably as the result of what Fuss (1989:1) de- who explained that she wanted to stop HRT be- scribes as “paranoia around the perceived threat cause “her grandmother or her mother never of essentialism.” took anything and they were fi ne” replied that 40. The Lunapads website argues, “Like recycling they also rode in ox-carts instead of taking the bottles and newspapers, washing Lunapads or plane (Erol 2008, 134). rinsing out the DivaCup is a little more work than 32. http://www.clevelanddinic.org/health/health- throwing away your used pads and tampons. But info/docs/32oo/3296.asp?index=11283. with over 14 billion pads, tampons and applica- 33. The woman who goes on family vacations, at- tors going into North American landfi lls every tends yoga classes, travels for business, and year, it’s a small but important way of taking per- can choose fun, distinctive shoes from ample sonal responsibility for a massive environmental consumer choices is the woman who can afford problem.” www.lunapads.com. Seasonale. 41. The same may be true for other methods of 34. Of the three types of appropriation delineated menstrual suppression such as hysterectomies. by Eglash (2004:x–xii), this represents an exam- Whereas black women have too often been urged ple of “adaptation,” which involves a change in or coerced into having hysterectomies, contrib- use but not structure, and also illustrates the utors to the MUM Web site, who are presumed collective force of consumers in shaping tech- white unless they mention their race or ethnic- nology design through marked demands”. (Eg- ity, complain about their diffi culties in obtaining lash 2004:xvi). surgical menstrual-suppression. For instance, a 35. noperiod.com and Cox, Amy and Christy Feig self-reportedly healthy woman who has never (September 8, 2003) “New Birth Control to Limit had bad cramps just heavy bleeding writes, “I’m Women’s Periods” CNN. interested in other forms of suppression since 190 | JENNIFER AENGST AND LINDA L. LAYNE

they refuse to give me an elective hysterectomy. provided the means for women’s liberation from Nor will they offer me endometrial ablation . . . their biology. Hence, menstrual suppressing would love something permanent . . . I even drugs that help women “outgrow nature” and asked the vet if I could be spayed along with the “liberate them from their biology,” would thus be cat. He just laughed. He thought I was kidding.” supported by this strand of existential feminism. Similarly, a 43-year-old reports “from home due 44. As always, technologies that would address cause to missing yet another day from work because of rather than symptoms would be preferable. my periods,” of her inability to get elective sur- 45. According to Oudshoorn, “only about 17 percent gical suppression. “I had my tubes tied 11 years of contraceptive users rely on so-called male ago, and the doctor at that time refused to do a methods.” hysterectomy or oophorectomy [removal of the ovaries] to stop my periods, saying I was “too young.” Another woman, a stripper who laments REFERENCES the trouble her periods cause her at work has been denied a hysterectomy. “I have to work very Alexander, Elizabeth Shanks. 2003. “Healing Waters: hard to conceal my period. The club where I work Turning to Jewish Ritual After Miscarriage.” Mo- will not give you time off for your period so here ment (October): 50–55, 70–72. I am trying to ﬁ nd ways to conceal my period Angeli, Marcia. 2005. The Truth about the Drug Com- while dancing nearly nude . . . most gyno’s won’t panies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do even consider giving me a hysterectomy since “I about It. 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Hardwired for Sexism? Approaches to Sex/Gender in Neuroscience Rebecca M. Jordan-Young and Raffaella I. Rumiati

We use the composite term ‘sex/gender,’ INTRODUCTION which will be unfamiliar and perhaps even Gender theorists and some feminist scien- jarring to some readers, especially those tists approach gender as a multilevel and who have worked hard to ensure that com- complex structure that shapes human re- plex social phenomena related to mas- lations and perceptions, cognition, and culinity and femininity (gender) are not institutions, including the research ques- simply reduced to or confused with aspects tions and methods used in science (Fausto- of the physical body that can be designated Sterling 2000b; Risman 2004; Ridgeway as ‘male’ or ‘female’ (sex). We nonetheless 2009). Neuroscientists, on the other hand, favor this composite term when discussing typically approach gender as a status or a neuroscientiﬁ c investigations into male/ collection of characteristics that male ver- female differences or similarities in pat- sus female people (and sometimes other terns of brain structure or function. While animals) have, and the goal of many neuro- conceptual differences between the two science studies is to add to an ever-growing are important, ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ are, in catalogue of male/female differences— practical terms, inseparable. Numerous both what they are, and how they arise (e.g. empirical studies demonstrate the prob- Hines 2004: vii). Disagreements over the lematic task of distinguishing between sex nature of gender are unlikely to be resolved and gender in practice (Oudshoorn 1994; anytime soon, but we suggest that whether Kessler 1998; Fausto-Sterling 2005; Kaiser et understood as a cultural frame or as an al. 2007). The patterning of life experiences individual cognitive structure, gender is according to social structures of gender has so powerful that it is difﬁ cult to get a use- material effects on the body (Willis et al. ful purchase on how it operates. It is a bit 2001; Fausto-Sterling 2005, 2008). These ef- like the sun: there is a limit to what we can fects show up, in turn, as biologically based learn by looking straight at it, and we might ‘sex differences.’ Feminist epidemiologists, just go blind trying. Thus, we argue that a biologists, and other scientists increasingly more sophisticated and ethical approach replace the discrete concepts of ‘sex’ and to understanding sex/gender in the brain ‘gender’ with more complex formulations, and behavior will require the somewhat such as Nancy Krieger’s notions of “bio- paradoxical strategy of turning away from logic expressions of gender” and “gendered sex/gender differences in our research. expressions of biology” (Krieger 2003). 194 | REBECCA M. JORDAN-YOUNG AND RAFFAELLA I. RUMIATI

Thus, we adopt the term ‘sex/gender’ as sex/gender differences. In science as in suggested by Kaiser and colleagues, who popular culture, sex, gender, and sexual- observed that “sex is not a pure bodily and ity are frequently merged into the simple material fact, but is deeply interwoven with composite ‘sex’: a package deal, with both social and cultural constructions of gender” the origin and the ultimate purpose being (Kaiser et al. 2009: 49). With this composite reproduction. (Note that research has re- term, we hope to underscore the impor- peatedly demonstrated that heterosexuals tance of problematizing bodily as well as in the contemporary U.S. context interpret behavioral and psychological attributions ‘having sex’ to be synonymous with penile- of female/feminine and male/masculine. vaginal intercourse (Sanders and Reinisch Next, we address the dominant paradigm 1999; Bogart et al. 2000).) In this frame- of sex/gender differences in contemporary work, if one part of the ‘package’ is atypi- neuroscience. This consists of a broad con- cal, it is frequently assumed that the other sensus that there are important ‘original’ parts will also be atypical. Moreover, since sex differences in brain structure and func- sex is conceived as a binary, male/female tion, organized by sex-differentiating pre- phenomenon, being ‘not typical for males’ natal hormone exposures (the ‘hardwiring’ is generally read as being feminine, and paradigm). This paradigm shapes the work being ‘not typical for females’ is read as of both those who frame sex/gender differ- masculine. Since the late nineteenth cen- ences as sweeping and largely independent tury, same-sex desires have been viewed of socialization, as well as those who em- through this lens, and homosexuals of both phasize the role of gender socialization in sexes have been understood to be interme- amplifying male/female distinctions (Baron- diate sexual types, whose ‘cross-sex’ desires Cohen 2003; Eliot 2009). But we argue that are grounded in some kind of ‘cross-sex’ this consensus is both unscientifi c and far physicality—most often the brain or the from politically neutral. Evidence has long hormones (Kenen 1997; Steakley 1997; Terry suggested that ‘hardwiring’ is a poor met- 1999). Brain organization research builds aphor for brain development. But the met- upon this way of conceptualizing sex, and aphor may be an apt one for the dominant uses these presumed links between (bodily) research paradigm, which pushes inexora- sex, (behavioral and psychological) gender, bly towards the ‘discovery’ of sex/gender and sexuality to construct research hypoth- differences, and makes contemporary gen- eses. We do not endorse this ‘package’ view der structures appear to be natural and of sex, gender, and sexuality, but it is neces- inevitable. Finally, we begin to elaborate sary to grasp it in order to understand the an alternative research program. While the logic of brain organization research hypoth- question of origins can’t be studied experi- eses that we describe below. mentally in humans, it is possible to design experiments to address questions of variability and plasticity, an approach that we THE ‘HARDWIRED’ PARADIGM argue has much greater promise from both Scientifi c Shortcomings scientifi c and ethical perspectives. Before proceeding further, it is worth ad- At present, neuroscientifi c research on dressing how sexuality, the realm of erotic sex/gender in humans has stalled on ster- desires and practices, fi ts with sex and ile approaches encouraged by the domi- gender. Ideas about sexuality—including nant brain organization paradigm, which but going beyond sexual orientation— holds that steroid hormones at a critical play a major role in dominant ideas about period of fetal development give rise to HARDWIRED FOR SEXISM? APPROACHES TO SEX/GENDER IN NEUROSCIENCE | 195 permanent structural and functional sex/ development indicate far longer develop- gender differences in the brain and be- mental periods and extraordinary plas- havior (Hines 2004; Cahill 2006; Bao and ticity, raising doubts about the usefulness Swaab 2010). The paradigm, known collo- of the organization/activation distinction quially as ‘hardwiring,’ has moved beyond (Balaban 2006). There is also far less conti- the level of theory to be treated as a simple nuity across species in terms of the specifi c fact of human development (Jordan-Young relationships between steroid hormones 2010). and neuro-behavioral development or And yet there are many compelling rea- function than between steroids and geni- sons to reject this ‘fact,’ beginning with tal development (Resko and Roselli 1997; fl aws in the developmental model that draw Tilbrook et al. 2000; Bester-Meredith and incorrect parallels between genitals and Marler 2001; Sheng, Kawano et al. 2004). other reproductive structures, on the one The hardwiring paradigm seems to offer hand, and the brain, on the other. Accord- an answer to the common question of how ing to the classic paradigm of Alfred Jost it is that widespread sex/gender differences (1953), a minimum level of androgens— in the brain and behavior arise. Yet that specifi cally testosterone—is necessary question already presupposes that sex/ to direct development away from the de- gender differences are in fact pronounced fault ‘female’ pathway to develop the male and wide-ranging, while the reality is phenotype. In 1959, William Young and his quite a bit more complex. In spite of the colleagues applied Jost’s model to brain de- much-trumpeted ‘female brain’ and ‘male velopment (Phoenix et al. 1959). They dif- brain,’ the brain simply cannot be ‘sexed’ ferentiated between the initial ‘organizing’ as genitals can. Imagine that one were to effect of hormones, which are understood take scientifi c photographs of the genitals to permanently determine the character of 1000 human adults, and present these of the brain and behavior as masculine photos to a team of judges without any or feminine, and the ‘activating’ effects, other contextual cues as to the sex/gender which essentially determine the level of of the individual to whom the genitals be- later activity or expression. Multiple dis- long. Even if our judges were ordinary peo- continuities suggest that this initially ple with no special training or insights, it promising extension of Jost’s paradigm to would be possible to sort the photographs the brain is greatly limited. The brain is into ‘male’ versus ‘female’ piles with almost far less dimorphic than genitals in virtu- 100 percent accuracy. This is not to suggest ally all species studied, and behavior even that there is no intra-sex variety in genital less so (van den Wijngaard 1997; Bishop size and shape, but in a group of only 1000 and Wahlsten 1997; Schum and Wynne- people, it will be possible to clearly place Edwards 2005). Moreover, behaviors that almost all human genitals into one of two are reliably sex-differentiated in some spe- main types. Human brains are another cies are not sex-differentiated in others, matter entirely. Consider fi rst the issue even in closely related species (e.g. spatial of brain structure. Some scientists claim ability (Costanzo et al. 2009), tendency to that there are no clear-cut structural dif- monogamy vs. polygamy (Lim et al. 2005), ferences, others claim that there are some and parenting behavior (Lonstein 2002). subtle average differences, and still others Genitals—at least in most vertebrates—do claim that sex/gender differences in the have a developmental moment at which an brain are dramatic (Fausto-Sterling 2000b; irreversible commitment to a male or fe- Nopoulos et al. 2000; Canill 2006). When male form takes place, while data on brain important covariates such as brain weight 196 | REBECCA M. JORDAN-YOUNG AND RAFFAELLA I. RUMIATI

are controlled, and the specifi c meaning Another misleading aspect of the hard- of ‘difference’ is not glossed in a way that wiring paradigm is the way it is fueled by equates aspects such as cell number and systematically omitting evidence that the regional volume, the only structural dif- behavioral patterns that follow early hor- ference that has been independently rep- mone exposures can and do change. As licated is in INAH-3, a tiny cell group in the early as 1969, it was known that many of the hypothalamus that is larger in men than ‘organizing’ effects of hormones are not ac- in women (Allen et al. 1989; LeVay 1991; tually permanent, but are easily modifi able Byne et al. 2000, 2001). The situation is by experience. In a little-cited study by re- even murkier when we add the question searchers at UCLA, for example, scientists of function. While we may speculate that found that allowing an androgenized fe- INAH-3 may be related to some aspect of male rat to have just two hours to adapt to sexual function, no one really knows what a stud male completely eliminated the be- the area does—it may be elated to some- havioral effects of prenatal testosterone in- thing as mundane and ‘non-psychological’ jections (Clemens, Hiroi, and Gorski 1969). as menstruation or erectile function. Subsequent experiments have shown a All indications are that human brains are great many of the sex-typed behaviors that not ‘sex dimorphic’—they do not occur in are supposedly permanently organized by two distinct forms. There may indeed be prenatal hormones can be dramatically differences in the average size of specifi c modifi ed or even reversed by simple and regions between men’s and women’s brains relatively short-term behavioral interven- (Goldstein et al. 2001), and many activation tions such as neonatal handling (Wakshlak studies suggest that there are average dif- and Weinstock 1990), early exposure to ferences in the way that men and women pups (in rats) (Leboucher 1989), and sexual ‘recruit’ different regions of the brain when experience (Hendricks, Lehman, and Os- performing emotional and cognitive tasks walt 1982), to cite just a few examples. (see review in Cahill 2006). In fact, with new There are two sorts of evidence available methods for measuring small regions in liv- to indicate that sexed/gendered traits pre- ing brains, and statistical approaches that sumably organized by early hormones in allow the detection of increasingly subtle humans are likewise impermanent. The differences between groups, it seems likely fi rst sort involves group-level data indicat- that more such average differences will ing both variability and change in the shape be reported. But these differences are un- of sex/gender differences in cognitive abil- like genital differences in two key ways: (1) ities, occupational interests, educational they are perceptible only at the group level, interests and attainment, and even sexual rather than being distinct forms that can orientation (Smith 1995; Huang et al. 2000; be identifi ed in individuals; and (2) there is Jorm et al. 2003; Buchmann and DiPrete no reason to assume that these differences 2006; Hyde et al. 2008; Hyde and Mertz do not arise, at least in part, from gendered 2009; National Center for Education Sta- patterns of social roles and behaviors— tistics 2009). Although indirect, such data that is, brain differences may result from bear on the notion of ‘permanent’ sex/gen- the very characteristics that are supposedly der differences by undermining the clarity ‘hardwired’ into the brain in the fi rst place. of the classifi cation of traits themselves as The point is not that there are ‘no sex differ- masculine or feminine. Put simply, it is dif- ences’ in the brain, but instead is that the fi cult to see how early hormones could di- analogy from genitals to brains is extremely rect the brain toward masculine or feminine misleading. cognitive or affective phenotypes, when HARDWIRED FOR SEXISM? APPROACHES TO SEX/GENDER IN NEUROSCIENCE | 197 the masculinity or femininity of the phe- is not well-supported empirically, which notypes in question is a moving target. The has been much more fully addressed else- second sort is recent data on individual- where (Jordan-Young 2010). Here, we focus level capacity for change in supposedly on the lack of data triangulation across permanent traits, even in adulthood. Par- study types. Brain organization studies can ticularly dramatic evidence involves the be broadly divided into two types. The fi rst most reliably observed sex/gender differ- type is cohort studies—those that begin ence in cognitive skill: mental rotation abil- with some knowledge about early hormone ity, which consistently favors males (Hyde exposures, and investigate whether catego- 2005). For instance, in a study conducted ries of exposure correlate with categories among women and men college under- of later brain function. The cohort stud- graduates, Feng, Spence, and Pratt (2007) ies comprise many studies of people with found that just 10 hours of training on an unusual hormone exposures, as from the action video game virtually eliminated the condition congenital adrenal hyperplasia sex/gender difference in spatial attention (Berenbaum 1999; Meyer-Bahlburg 2001; and simultaneously decreased the sex/ Hines, Brook and Conway 2004), as well as gender disparity in mental rotation ability, studies of offspring from hormone-treated a higher-level process in spatial cognition, pregnancies (e.g. Ehrhardt, Grisanti, and with women benefi ting more than men. In Meyer-Bahlburg 1977; Reinisch and Sanders contrast, control participants who played a 1992), and some more recent studies that non-action game showed no improvement. track proxy measures of fetal hormones Finally, the idea that the human brain in non-clinical populations (Knickmeyer is ‘hardwired’ for sex/gender can never be and Baron-Cohen 2006). The second type settled by experiments. Scientists simply is case-control studies—those that begin cannot randomly assign human fetuses with some knowledge about the behavioral to different hormone exposures in order or functional phenotype (the presumed to determine how these affect subsequent outcome of the brain organization pro- structure and function. Instead, we must cess), and work backwards to search for ev- rely on various quasi-experimental designs idence that distinct phenotypes correlate that search for correlations between sex/ with distinct hormones on the front end of gender-linked behaviors, on the one hand, development. The case control studies al- and indications of early steroid hormone most entirely comprise within-sex/gender exposures, on the other. But evaluating comparisons of sexual minorities and cis- quasi-experiments requires a different ap- gender (i.e. non-transgender) heterosex- proach than evaluating experiments. Be- uals (Gladue and Bailey 1995; Lalumière, cause we cannot control the variables, we Blanchard, and Zucker 2000; Byne et al. have to do a very careful and comprehen- 2001; Blanchard and Lippa 2007). sive appraisal that places all the evidence In other words, these two broad sets of from multiple study designs into the same studies involve studying either unusual picture. Different designs have different inputs (i.e. unusual prenatal hormone ex- strengths and weaknesses, so it is critical posures) or unusual ‘outcomes’—that is, to avoid piecemeal evaluation of the multi- studies that compare people with psycho- ple research streams, determining whether sexual phenotypes that are considered dis- they ‘add up’ to some overall positive fi nd- tinctive, such as heterosexuals compared to ings, on balance (Jordan-Young 2010). homosexuals. In epidemiology, where quasi- In the following paragraphs we briefl y re- experimental or observational studies are view evidence that the dominant paradigm the norm, it is well recognized that causal 198 | REBECCA M. JORDAN-YOUNG AND RAFFAELLA I. RUMIATI

associations are only established when ev- with CAH are compared to women in idence from substantially different research the general population (Sell et al. 1995; designs converges (Cook and Campbell form et al. 2003; Savin-Williams 2006) 1979). We review the various associa- rather than to their own same-sex relations that are examined in the cohort and tives (Zucker et al. 1996; Hines, Brook and case-control studies bearing on the brain Conway 2004; Gastaud et al. 2007; Meyer- organization or ‘hardwiring’ paradigm in Bahlburg and Dolezal 2008). The possible humans. For the paradigm to be well sup- exception to this pattern is women with ported, evidence from the different designs CAH who were initially assigned as male, should allow us to trace one or more com- in whom same-sex behavior and identity plete paths from early hormone exposures, do seem to be elevated above “population through specifi c psychosexual traits, and rates (Meyer-Bahlburg and Dolezal 2008). back again to early hormone exposures. Even these differences cannot be con- In fact, however, it is not possible to trace clusively attributed to hormones, in part such complete loops, because these two because CAH has wide-ranging effects types of studies give us irreconcilable data, on postnatal physiology (e.g. disrupted with different designs showing associations synthesis of mood-regulating hormones; between different specifi c behavioral do- short stature; and high rates of obesity, cys- mains, and contradicting dose-response tic acne, hirsutism, and male-pattern bald- expectations. The following summarizes the ness) (White and Speiser 2000; Lin-Su et al. evidence for various two-way associations 2008; Jordan-Young in press). As a group, between prenatal hormones and fi ve broad girls with CAH also have very unusual rear- domains of traits that are hypothetically ing experiences and extremely intrusive sex-differentiated by hormones, as well as medical interventions and monitoring, between these various traits. due both to concerns about ‘virilization’ For genetic females, at fi rst glance, it and to the diffi culty of achieving hor- seems that there is one complete ‘loop’ of mone control in the condition (Karkazis evidence supporting this paradigm, which 2008). relies especially on evidence from girls Notably, no behavioral differences are and women with congenital adrenal hy- found in the only other group of girls perplasia (CAH). Yet there are important and women who are known to have been problems with building the brain organi- exposed to high levels of ‘masculinizing’ zation paradigm on this case. In spite of hormones in utero, namely those exposed the fact that they have the highest prenatal to diethylstilbestrol (DES), a synthetic es- androgen exposures of any known group trogen with androgenic properties in most of human females (and in spite of com- species studied (Lish et al. 1992; Titus- mon claims that there are differences in Ernstoff et al. 2003). In particular, in spite other domains), only childhood toy pref- of some early reports that DES-exposed erences and adult sexual orientation are women were more likely than unexposed consistently different in girls and women comparison woman to be left-handed with CAH compared to unaffected women (Schachter 1994; Scheirs and Vingerhoets and girls. Moreover, the much-touted in- 1995; Smith and Hines 2000) or lesbian crease in same-sex orientation among or bisexual (Ehrhardt et al. 1985; Meyer- women with CAH is generally limited to Bahlburg et al. 1995), these associations fantasy or attraction, while rates of actual could not be replicated when repeated with same-sex “behavior are only slightly el- more appropriate comparison groups, in- evated, if at all, especially when women cluding the only large, longitudinal cohort HARDWIRED FOR SEXISM? APPROACHES TO SEX/GENDER IN NEUROSCIENCE | 199 study of psychosexuality and DES expo- rather than a domain of power relations sure, which included nearly 4000 DES- and marked inequalities. But the contin- exposed women (Titus-Emstoff et al. 2003). ued existence of sex/gender inequalities Among genetic males, there is an even adds an additional problem. The hardwir- greater dissociation between evidence ing paradigm erases the effect of the social from research designs that begin by com- world in producing sex/gender differences, paring people with different psychosex- so that sex/gender hierarchies appear nat- ual profi les (case-control designs), on ural. Neuroscientifi c explanations of sex/ the one hand, and studies of hormone- gender differences have added new allure exposed subjects (cohort designs), on the to an old-fashioned sexism (Fine 2008b). other. In particular, no cohort design shows The endorsement by neuroscientists of a consistent correlation between prena- innate accounts of differences has inevi- tal androgens and any aspect of psycho- tably reinforced the status quo and non- sexuality in genetic males (Jordan-Young interventional policies. This has been am- 2010). plifi ed also by the popularization of these ideas in the press. In a study that appeared in 2004, Victoria L. Brescoll and Malienne LaFrance examined 290 articles taken Ethical Shortcomings from 29 U.S. newspapers which refl ected, For all the reasons outlined above, the more or less explicitly, whether the cause hardwiring paradigm is plainly unscien- of a given sex/gender difference was innate tifi c; it is at odds with many kinds of evi- or acquired. These authors found that the dence both about the nature of traits and ideology of the newspaper—established by about the actual observed associations be- taking into consideration its political view tween early hormones and sex/gender in on a selection of issues (e.g. presidential humans. Given this, continued use of the endorsement and whether women should hardwiring metaphor is also unethical. be admitted to military academies)— The hardwiring paradigm locks neu- infl uenced the way in which the scientifi c roscience studies of sex/gender into a research was addressed. More specifi cally, framework that implies permanence for conservative newspapers were more in- any randomly observed correlations be- clined to attribute sex differences to bio- tween sex/gender, on the one hand, and logical cause than were liberal newspapers. brain structure or function, on the other. Moreover, Brescoll and LaFrance further It encourages ongoing material and social demonstrated that the type of explanation investment in the primacy and irreducibil- endorsed by the newspaper infl uenced the ity of sex/gender differences. In particular, beliefs of the readers. the notion of innate sex differences has led As Cordelia Fine (Fine 2010a), we (Young both lay observers and some scientists to and Balaban 2006) and others have docu- suggest that social policies directed toward mented, scientists who double as popu- gender equity in education, occupation, or larizers of the sexed brain knit more than other aspects of social life are either use- a few elaborations and conjectures to- less or actually damaging (Holden 2000; gether with neuroscientifi c facts to support Udry 2000; Hewlett 2002). the hardwiring paradigm (Baron-Cohen Hardwiring is an unethical metaphor be- 2003; Brizendine 2006; Swaab and Garcia- cause it says ‘what is, must be.’ That would Falgueras 2009). But we suggest that even be scientifi cally unsatisfying even if sex/ careful studies of sex/gender differences, at gender were simply a domain of difference, this time, may be missing the point. Rather 200 | REBECCA M. JORDAN-YOUNG AND RAFFAELLA I. RUMIATI

than continuing to build and revise the list point in the lifespan—mental rotation is of differences (which are inevitable so long a good example, but there are others like as social life is pervasively structured by strong contextual verbal ability or empa- gender), the question to ask now is why is thy. Why not decide that we want to cul- it that we want to know about sex/ gender tivate these skills or traits, and encourage differences? What do we wish to do with or creative research designs that would help about them? We write this, with humility us to establish effective strategies for doing and some concern, as scientist-critics who so? Likewise, we could build upon experi- have both written books reviewing sex/ ments that show how invoking either pos- gender difference research, for audiences itive or negative stereotypes can stimulate that we hope will be broad. So we aren’t sex/gender differences as large as those picking on others here, but raising con- that are usually taken to be innate (Hyde cerns about where we hope that we might and Mertz 2009). all go from here, most productively. A second promising direction is to turn our backs on sex/gender differences. Be- cause sex/gender differences are so mes- WHERE SHOULD WE GO NEXT? merizing, and because we ourselves are We close by considering the messages we immersed in the “cultural frame of gender” convey by continuing to invest our scien- (Ridgeway 2009), we may do much better to tifi c resources in extending, revising, or understand development and plasticity by refi ning the catalogue of sex/gender dif- looking at other kinds of variation, where ferences. One very strong message is that our models and our interventions are less sex/gender differences are crucial funda- confounded by the complex and unavoid- mental facts, that simply knowing about able overlay of gendered socialization and them in minute detail will guide us in im- ingrained research hypotheses. Sex/gender portant ways. Together with the pervasive differences exist, but so do differences be- belief that such differences are original, tween groups that we might want to defi ne essential—that is, innate—this catalogue of on many other dimensions—social class, differences distracts us from the extensive occupation, development index or global evidence on how the shape of sex/gender region, specifi c training experiences, to differences changes across both time and name just a few. And each of these catego- place, and can be altered by both natural ries are themselves heterogeneous; more experiences and deliberate interventions. research on the ways in which sex/gender If we want to know about sex/gender patterns in brain and behavior are specifi c differences because we are interested in to social class, ethnicity, and nation might empirically grounded understanding of provide much more illumination on the human development and potential, we concrete mechanisms through which the can look in two promising directions. social world shapes behavior, and even First, we can focus directly on plasticity, becomes embodied (brain) difference. instead of using it as background informa- Suggestive evidence in this direction is tion against which we interpret fi ndings of available from cross-national and ethnic difference. We might build on Feng et al.’s comparisons of sex/gender difference in video game intervention (described above, math and science tests. For example, both Feng, Spence, and Pratt 2007) by identify- the size and the direction of sex/gender ing some skills and traits that we can agree difference vary across ethnic groups. In are desirable, and for which there seem to the U.S., whites show the familiar pattern be reliable sex/gender differences at some that boys score slightly higher (d = 0.13), HARDWIRED FOR SEXISM? APPROACHES TO SEX/GENDER IN NEUROSCIENCE | 201 whereas Hispanics show no discernible surprising to see more structural differ- sex/gender difference ( d = 0.00), and Afri- ences than there seem to be. What’s the big can Americans and Asian Americans show deal? Certainly it makes a huge difference small differences favoring girls (d = –0.02 to your daily life and activities whether you and d = –0.09, respectively) (Hyde and Linn are male or female, without question more 2006). Further, in 2008, Guiso et al. ana- difference than whether or not you are a lyzed mathematical and reading test scores taxicab driver. Continuing to treat fi ndings (from the Programme for International of sex/gender difference as if they are reve- Student Assessment—PISA) of 276,165 lations feeds the commitment to and mys- male and female adolescents from 40 dif- tifi cation of sex/gender differences, and ferent countries; in particular, the math- distracts us from serious science. ematical gap favoring boys is attenuated, Sex/gender is, for most purposes, at best and sometimes even reversed, depending an imperfect proxy of the variables we ac- on a measure of sex equity of the country tually need to understand. Recent analyzes (Guiso et al. 2008). These and similar fi nd- by feminist epidemiologists show that ings clearly should remind us that we are studies that treat ‘sex difference’ as an ex- not measuring ‘biological sex’ when we planation actually obscure more than they record students’ sex/gender. Instead, we explain (Krieger 2003; Messing and Stell- are measuring a composite variable that man 2006). Instead of treating sex/gender includes sexism, as well as other aspects of as the denominator of difference, it turns social structure and experiences, including out to be far more informative to focus on regionally and ethnically specifi c modes of specifi c mechanisms (such as hormone ‘doing’ sex/gender. activity, body size differences, occupatio- Another compelling example of dimen- nal differences, and co-morbidities) that sions of difference that might prove more themselves show meaningful variability tractable than sex/gender for focused within sex/gender groups that are rou- study is Maguire and colleagues’ fairly re- tinely treated as homogeneous. Data on cent data on differences in neural struc- differences in neural structure and func- ture and even function in a group defi ned tion in groups that are defi ned only by oc- only by occupation—namely, long-term cupation and hobbies, including pianists taxicab drivers compared with those who and jugglers, in addition to the aforemen- haven’t driven cabs (Maguire et al. 2000, tioned taxicab drivers (Maguire et al. 2003; 2003). Why not follow Maguire’s lead, Driemeyer et al. 2008; Lappe et al. 2008) and think about other occupations that offer a useful start for thinking about how might involve suffi ciently distinct tasks pervasive organization of daily tasks and that we could trace their effects in actual social assignment of appropriate emotion, structural differences or brain activation movement, and affect by gender becomes patterns? embodied as measurable ‘sex difference.’ Given pervasive gender socialization Most importantly, it provides a ground and widespread gender segregation in oc- for thinking about what we actually wish cupation and family responsibilities, it is to do with the information we have about utterly predictable that we would observe difference and variability. What traits group-level differences between men and do we value, and what might we wish to women in various cognitive functions. It cultivate? is frankly somewhat surprising to us that Steven Rose and colleagues (2009) we do not see greater differences and less wrote that “In a society in which racism overlap, and also would not be especially and sexism were absent, the questions 202 | REBECCA M. JORDAN-YOUNG AND RAFFAELLA I. RUMIATI

of whether whites or men are more or Students’ Interpretations of Sexual Behavior Ter- less intelligent than blacks or women minology. Journal of Sex Research 37: 108–116. would not merely be meaningless—they Brizendine, L. (2006) The Female Brain (New York: Broadway). would not even be asked.” It follows that Buchmann, C. and DiPrete, T. A. (2006) The Grow- it would be better to abstain (at least for ing Female Advantage in College Completion: now) from trying to deal with unanswer- The Role of Family Background and Academic able questions about origins of sex/gen- Achievement. American Sociological Review 71(4): der differences, or to continue building a 515–541. Byne, W., Lasco, M. S. et al. (2000) The Interstitial Nu- catalogue of ‘differences’ when we know clei of the Human Anterior Hypothalamus: An that this catalogue is neither stable nor Investigation of Sexual Variation in Volume and innocent. Cell Size, Number and Density. Brain Research 856(1–2): 254–258. Byne, W., Tobet, S. et al. (2001) The Interstitial Nuclei Acknowledgment of the Human Anterior Hypothalamus: An Inves- tigation of Variation with Sex, Sexual Orientation, This essay is reprinted with permission and HIV Status. Hormones and Behavior 40(2): from Neuroethics. 86–92. Cahill, L. (2006) Why Sex Matters for Neuroscience. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 7: 477–484. REFERENCES Clemens, L. G., Hiroi, M. and Gorski, R. (1969) Induc- tion and Facilitation of Female Mating Behavior Allen, L. S., Hines, M. et al. (1989) 2 Sexually Dimor- in Rats Treated Neonatally with Low Doses of phic Cell Groups in the Human Brain. Journal of Testosterone Propionate. Endocrinology 84(6): Neuroscience 9(2): 497–506. 1430–1438. Balaban, E. (2006) Cognitive Developmental Biology: Cook, T. D. and Campbell, D. T. (1979) Quasi- History, Process and Fortune’s Wheel. Cognition Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for 101(2): 298–332. Field Settings (Boston: Houghton Mifﬂ in). Bao, A. M. and Swaab, D. F. (2010) Sex Differences in Costanzo, M. S., Bennett, N. C. et al. (2009) Spatial the Brain, Behavior, and Neuropsychiatric Disor- Learning and Memory in African Mole-Rats: The ders. Neuroscientist 16(5): 550–565. Role of Sociality and Sex. Physiology and Behavior Baron-Cohen, S. (2003) The Essential Difference: Men, 96(1): 128–134. Women and the Extreme Male Brain (London: Driemeyer, J., Boyke, J. et al. (2008) Changes in Gray Allen Lane). Matter Induced by Learning-Revisited. Plos One Berenbaum, S. A. (1999) Effects of Early Androgens on 3(7): e2669. Sex-Typed Activities and Interests in Adolescents Ehrhardt, A. A., Grisanti, G. C. and Meyer-Bahlburg, with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia. Hormones H. F. L. (1977) Prenatal Exposure to Medroxypro- and Behavior 35: 102–110. gesterone Acetate (MPA) in Girls. Psychoneuroen- Bester-Meredith, J. K. and Marler, C. A. (2001) Va- docrinology 2: 391–398. sopressin and Aggression in Cross-Fostered Ehrhardt, A. A., Meyer-Bahlburg, H. F. L. et al. (1985) California Mice ( Peromyscus californicus ) and Sexual Orientation after Prenatal Exposure to Ex- White-Footed Mice ( Peromyscus leucopus). Hor- ogenous Estrogen. Archives of Sexual Behavior mones and Behavior 40(1): 51–64. 14(1): 57–77. Bishop, K. M. and Wahlsten, D. (1997) Sex Differences Eliot, L. (2009) Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Dif- in the Human Corpus Callosum: Myth or Real- ferences Grow into Trouble-some Gaps – and What ity? Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 21: We Can Do About It (New York: Houghton Mifﬂ in 581–601. Harcourt). Blanchard, R. and Lippa R. A. (2007) Birth Order, Sib- Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000b) Sexing the Body: Gender ling Sex Ratio, Handedness, and Sexual Orien- Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (New tation of Male and Female Participants in a BBC York: Basic Books). Internet Research Project. Archives of Sexual Be- Fausto-Sterling, A. (2005) The Bare Bones of Sex: Part havior 36: 163–176. I – Sex and Gender. Signs 30(2): 1491–1527. Bogart, L. M., Cecil, H., Wagstaff, D. A., Pinkerton, S. D. Fausto-Sterling, A. (2008) The Bare Bones of Race. So- and Abramson, P. R. (2000) Is it “Sex”? College cial Studies of Science 38: 657–694. HARDWIRED FOR SEXISM? APPROACHES TO SEX/GENDER IN NEUROSCIENCE | 203

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Making Males Aggressive and Females Coy: Gender across the Animal-Human Boundary Erika Lorraine Milam

Sexual selection, as conceived by Charles few biologists found Darwin’s proposed Darwin in the mid-nineteenth century, mechanism for sexual selection—female explained the origins of phenomena in choice—plausible, as they rejected the the animal kingdom that could not be at- idea that animals possessed the capac- tributed to natural selection—why males ity to aesthetically evaluate and choose a and females differed in their appear- mate. Animals in the early twentieth cen- ance and behavior and the presence of tury functioned as mechanical foils against beauty. 1 To explain beauty in the natural which zoologists sought to defi ne what it is world—from the gregarious displays of to be human. After World War II, however, wild turkeys in the spring to the vibrant animals as social beings became sources contrast of red cardinals against the win- for understanding our human instincts. ter snow—without reference to our own Men were quickly bestialized because of pleasure presented a diffi cult problem for their association with aggressive, warlike biologists committed to naturalistic expla- behavior, whereas women were exempted nations. Darwin suggested mate choice as from such degenerate stereotypes. Yet, less a solution: beauty was useful for animals than a decade later, biological anthropolo- because it helped them attract mates. The gists and zoologists began to frame female idea of choice vexed other zoologists, how- animals as possessing equal agency, albeit ever, because it seemed to grant to animals by acting sexually coy and exercising their the same capacity for aesthetic appreci- natural prerogative—female mate choice. ation and decision making that humans A history that combines theories of animal enjoyed. As Donna Haraway’s Primate and human behavior thus provides a dy- Visions (1989) so vividly illustrates, the namic tool for thinking about the scientifi c relationship between the animal and the construction of sexual roles throughout human informs our scientifi c and cultural the century. perceptions of what it means to be male or Feminist scientists and historians have female today, much as it did for Darwin. incisively explored the gendered dimen- In this article, I interweave two polarities, sions of Darwin’s theory of sexual selec- animal and human, male and female, to tion.2 Darwin proposed two mechanisms elucidate the evolution of biological con- by which sexual selection might function. structions of animality and gender. In the The fi rst, female choice, took place when early decades of the twentieth century, males displayed their fi nery and females MAKING MALES AGGRESSIVE AND FEMALES COY | 207 compared the males, selecting one with female (Darwin 1871, 1:273; Wallace 1871, whom to mate. The second, male-male 178). For evolutionary biologists Robert competition, occurred when males fought Trivers and George Williams, on the other over access to females and resulted in the hand, females actively played coy as part development of armor, horns, antlers, or of an evolutionary strategy to evaluate the other weapons of minor destruction. The potential commitment of the male to par- result of sexual selection over time was two- ticipating in offspring care (Williams 1966, fold: the traits selected helped animals ob- 186; Trivers 1972, 148–49). This difference tain mates and leave more offspring (rather between biological identity and reproduc- than fi t their environment, as expected with tive strategy underpinned two rather dif- natural selection), and males and females ferent ways of looking at animal behavior began to look and act differently—females as the result of instinct or negotiation. became coy and males ardent. The standard history of sexual selection— Although “coy” as a term applied to and by association, female choice—frames the mating behavior of female birds and these works in a single linear heritage, women has a long tradition (e.g., see carrying Victorian stereotypes of “eager” “Tuesday” 1756, 162), in zoological circles males and “comparatively passive” females coy females came to be primarily associ- into the 1970s (Darwin 1871, 1:273). It is a ated with Darwinian sexual selection and story of mostly male biologists who either Darwin’s description of females as requir- (in a sympathetic reading) botched the ing courtship to overcome their natural transition from their favorite model or- tendency to run from males (Darwin 1871, ganism to primate behavior or (less sym- 1:273). Darwin seems to imply that despite pathetically) imposed their own biases their apparent passivity, by differentially about sex and gender onto their animal fl eeing suitors females were choosing ei- subjects. 3 Either way, for many feminist ther the least distasteful or most attractive critics of evolutionary accounts of human male with whom to mate. Darwin’s rival behavior, zoologists’ conclusions became discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Rus- suspect for naturalizing a vision of women sel Wallace, also used the term in debates as behaviorally passive, sexually coy, and over female mating behavior (Wallace inevitably maternal.4 This was so much the 1871, 178). Following their example, agron- case that biologists like Sarah Blaffer Hrdy omist Angus John Bateman described the and Patricia Gowaty, who identify as both reproductive behavior of female fruit fl ies feminists and evolutionary theorists, have as passive (Bateman 1948, 350). In turn, felt the need to justify their evolutionary citations of Bateman’s work on the “tra- research as feminist (Hrdy 1999a, xiii–xxxii; ditional coyness of the female” appeared Gowaty 2003). again among evolutionary biologists in In this article, I add another dimension the late 1960s (Williams 1966, 183; see to this history: the relation between animal also Trivers 1972). By the mid-1970s, these and human minds. On both sides of the evolutionary accounts of coy females were Atlantic, theories of animal minds in the gaining wider readership among a popular early twentieth century—including both academic audience (Wilson 1975; Dawkins American behaviorism, which focused on [1976] 2006). Yet not all zoologists meant the capacity of conditioning to alter the the same thing when they used the word behavior of an animal or person (Watson “coy.” For Darwin and Wallace, for example, 1914; Skinner 1938; Lemov 2005), and Eu- being sexually coy was a passive quality; ropean ethology, which focused instead it was a biological consequence of being on the evolution of behavior in natural 208 | ERIKA LORRAINE MILAM

environments—tended to frame animal words, through a newfound concern with behavior in mechanistic, reactive terms.5 the instinctual aggression of men following Biologists from both traditions emphasized the Second World War, male animals were a fundamental gulf separating human and rehabilitated within theories of animal be- animal minds. Humans could manufacture havior into active, plotting, hunting, and and use tools to manipulate their envi- social beings. This new vision of animals ronment, communicate abstract concepts as capable of manipulating their social through language, and choose rationally— environments began to collapse the hard animals could not. Thus, for much of the and fast division between human and an- century following Darwin’s publication of imal minds that had largely dominated the The Descent of Man, and Selection in Re- study of animal behavior in the fi rst half of lation to Sex (1871), biologists were largely the twentieth century. unwilling to grant animal minds the cogni- The minds of female animals were re- tive capacity of choice that Darwin’s theory habilitated secondarily within this frame- seemed to require. work, through the recognition that female By the 1960s, however, biologists and choice in animals could actively alter male anthropologists increasingly described behavior and, in humans, that women’s animals as active agents due to their con- work contributed substantially to the inter- cern with the seemingly innate tendency of nal social dynamics and long-term survival men to wreak war and violence in society. of the group. Biologists and anthropolo- The pop-ethology and pop-anthropology gists appropriated sexual selection and literature of the 1960s emphasized the im- female choice as active evolutionary strat- portance of atavistic animal instincts in egies only after animal minds were consid- humans as a possible cause of male ag- ered capable of true choice. Additionally, gression (Ardrey 1961; Lorenz 1966). Men even playing coy represented only one pos- lacked appropriate outlets for their natural sible mating strategy females might adopt. aggression, and even in combat the ability As biologists came to know more about to kill at great distances prevented one-on- female social interactions, any adherence one physical encounters that might diffuse to a strict promiscuous-male/coy-female soldiers’ aggressive drives. Simultaneously, framework came under attack from within American and British biological anthropol- the scientifi c community. ogists took advantage of the newly decolo- In short, during the fi rst half of the cen- nized African savanna to study other social tury, scientifi c attempts to use choice as primates.6 Baboons were seen as the prime a biological characteristic distinguishing representative of a primate species in an humans from other animals yielded the- ecological transition from trees to savanna, ories of animal behavior that emphasized much like human ancestors had been the unconscious nature of animal actions. millions of years earlier (DeVore 1965). Pri- Biologists discounted Darwinian female matologists saw parallels between the im- choice not because it involved females but portance of male aggression in structuring because the theory required that animals baboon social interactions and the issue possess the mental capacity to choose a of aggression in humans. In equally gen- mate. During the second half of the cen- dered stereotypes, primatologists and evo- tury, biologists and anthropologists began lutionary theorists saw women and female to investigate social interactions in pri- primates as less likely to succumb to the mates and other animals as models of early ravages of anger or the aggressive instincts human societies. As scientists recognized that beset men or male baboons. In other that humans were more animal-like than MAKING MALES AGGRESSIVE AND FEMALES COY | 209 they had thought, animals reciprocally be- applied to birds, we can trace changing as- came capable of being more human—more sumptions about the animal mind through- active, more competitive, more coy—than out the fi rst half of the twentieth century. in earlier decades. Biologists made females Darwin’s theory of natural selection, coy as a result of making males aggressive, based on competition among members of and both moves required rethinking a fi xed the same species for limited ecological re- boundary between animals and humans. sources, was a powerful tool that he used to explain the speciation of plants and animals and how they became adapted to the NEGOTIATING CHOICE: ANIMAL environments in which they lived (Darwin MINDS AND HUMAN INSTINCTS 1859). Yet Darwin despaired of using natu- In the decades following Darwin’s publica- ral selection to explain beauty in animals tion of The Descent of Man, and Selection in because the extravagant traits so lauded Relation to Sex (1871), most biologists be- by humans hardly seemed to help the an- lieved that humans differed fundamentally imals that exhibited them survive in their from animals, whether because humans local environments. If anything, the traits possessed a soul whereas animals did not made the animals more visible to pred- or because humans, through the develop- ators and made it harder for them to es- ment of conscious thought and civiliza- cape. Additionally, he could not see how tion, were no longer governed by the same natural selection might explain why males nat ural forces that dictated animal survival and females differed in their appearance and reproduction. Turn-of-the-century con- and behavior. Surely any trait that helped cerns over the increasing remove of human a male rabbit escape a fox would also help civilization from nature inspired both con- a female rabbit! Sexual selection provided servation movements, to preserve what an answer, which Darwin applied to ani- little wilderness remained, and eugenics mals and humans equally. In humans, he movements, to protect the future of West- suggested, sexual selection might explain ern civilization now that natural selection the origin of races (Desmond and Moore was no longer at work in human society 2009), which he saw as providing a simi- (Richardson 2003; Kingsland 2005). In stud- lar problem to that of sex differences: both ies of animal behavior, similar concerns led were stable variations in the appearance biologists to frame the actions of animals as of groups of individuals within a single the result of either behavioral or evolution- species. I mention this by way of illustrat- ary programming. ing that for Darwin animal and human Such mechanical frameworks worked minds were distinguished by differences well for understanding how animals learned in degree, not in kind (Richards 1987). For to solve puzzles or react to a threat from an- example, in The Descent of Man, and Se- other individual but not for explaining why lection in Relation to Sex, Darwin argued some species were far more beautiful than that just as a human breeder could “give others. The eye-catching plumage of many elegant carriage and beauty to his ban- male birds posed a particular problem for tams, . . . female birds, by selecting . . . the evolutionary biologists because they sur- most melodious or beautiful males, ac- mised that if the brightly colored feathers cording to their own standard of beauty, caught their attention, then surely it would might produce a marked effect” (Darwin also attract the attention of animal preda- 1859, 89). Like people, animals could com- tors (Kellogg 1907). By following the thread pare and evaluate the aesthetic beauty of of Darwin’s theory of female choice as other individuals. 210 | ERIKA LORRAINE MILAM

Many of Darwin’s contemporaries, in- offspring. For Wallace, then, the differences cluding Wallace, found his failure to cate- between male and female coloration were gorically distinguish between animal and the result of natural selection for female human minds problematic at best. Framed maternal success, not sexual selection for within his increasingly spiritualist under- male grandeur (Wallace 1877). standing of life, Wallace argued instead For mathematical geneticist Ronald for a strong divide between human and Fisher, much as for Wallace, natural se- animal mental capacities. Whereas ani- lection could explain the evolution of the mals were subject to natural selection as a organization and physical structures of mechanism for environmental adaptation, animal and human bodies. He reserved human capacity for mental deliberation the evolution of human ethics, aesthetics, allowed us to escape its ravages. Wallace and morality as the special jurisdiction insisted that animals could not choose and of sexual selection: “All the refi nements therefore sexual selection was not at work of beauty, all the delicacy of our sense of in birds, even though mate selection could beauty, our moral instincts of obedience be a powerful force of evolution in human and compassion, pity or indignation, our society. In his book The Socia l Environment moments of religious awe, or mystical an d Mora l Progress, Wallace wrote that penetration” were the result of conscious “sexual selection possesses the potential- selection in humans (Fisher 1914, 309). ity of acting in the future so as to ensure Marriage selection, a form of mate choice intellectual and moral progress, and thus in humans, formed a crucial part of posi- elevate the race to whatever degree of civ- tive eugenic discourse throughout the fi rst ilization and well-being it is capable of decades of the twentieth century (Richard- reaching in earth-life” (1913, 140–41). son 2003). 7 This association of choice and Wallace provided his own explanation aesthetic beauty lay at the heart of Fisher’s of sex differences in the coloration of birds conviction that sexual selection was more based instead on natural selection. He important for the improvement of human- contended that beautiful male plumage ity’s biological future than it was for animal was a physiological result of the body’s evolution. exuberance. Patches of brightly colored To explain the evolution of beauty in feathers would be produced wherever ex- animals, who lacked the higher conscious- cess energy was expended, resulting in ness of humans, Fisher (1930) proposed a the red chest of the singing robin, for ex- theory called “runaway” (137) sexual selec- ample, or the male peacock’s blue train, tion. In runaway sexual selection, female which he delighted in shaking before the choice for a trait and the male expression female. Wallace reasoned that males were of that trait became genetically linked and generally more active than females, so log- so coevolved together. If a female, for no ically we should expect that males would particular cause, happened to prefer the also be more colorful than females. The male with the longest tail, then their off- real phenomenon in need of explanation, spring would consist of males with long he continued, was why the plumage of fe- tails and females who preferred long-tailed males was so consistently nondescript and males. Over several generations, Fisher brown. This Wallace easily explained as posited, the average tail length of the males the result of natural selection for camou- would increase and female preference for fl age during the nesting season. If a female long-tailed males would grow stronger. To were caught by a predator, then she would be the longest-tailed male of the group, lose her own life and the future lives of her a male’s tail would have to be longer than MAKING MALES AGGRESSIVE AND FEMALES COY | 211 his father’s or his grandfather’s before him. Julian Huxley. Huxley argued that appar- Even if males with extraordinarily long and ent female choice in animals was really the bright tails caught the eyes of predators, se- result of some males courting more vigor- lection for this trait would continue as long ously than others and that most sex differ- as the males possessing the trait managed ences in appearance and behavior could be (on average) to leave more offspring than attributed to the need for sex recognition, those males with duller or shorter tails. aggression toward potential competitors, Through female choice, then, evolution and warnings to predators (Huxley 1938). could drive populations to express traits To him, all these factors were really natu- that decreased individuals’ chances of sur- ral selection, not sexual selection. Based vival (Fisher 1930, 131–39). on earlier observations of the courtship Despite his use of bird plumage in de- behavior of the great crested grebe, Huxley scribing the effects of runaway sexual se- noted that most courtship displays took lection, it seems likely that Fisher still had place after pairing. Courtship was thus key human evolution in mind. For example, he to extended pair bonding, not to the initial used the runaway process to explain male choice of mates. Huxley drew a bright line heroism in battle (Fisher 1930, 162, 247). As between human and animal cognitive abil- with bird plumage, he found it diffi cult to ities. A popular textbook that Huxley co- explain altruistic tendencies solely in terms authored proposed that “the human lover of natural selection, which he thought woos with the cerebral cortex, he (or she) should act to cull such phenomena from is plastic and responsive, and adapts the a population very quickly. He hoped that means to the occasion.” In stark opposi- human mate choice for good, moral char- tion, “the impassioned bird woos ardently acters would help the British population but automatically with the corpus stria- recover from their huge losses of prom- tum. . . . The human lover may do a thou- ising young men in World War I. Yet mate sand things; the courting bird is an elegant choice gone wrong could be devastating. determinate machine” (Wells, Huxley, and He worried that the evolutionary future of Wells 1931, 742). By describing animal Britain was in grave danger because men behavior as automatic and determinate, and women of the working classes were ap- Huxley hoped to professionalize the study parently reproducing at a higher rate than of animal behavior and distance the grow- their more genteel countrymen. Fisher de- ing fi eld from the anthropomorphic sto- voted the second half of The Genetical The- ries he associated with amateur writings ory of Natural Selection (1930) to describing (Burkhardt 2005). the evolutionary causes of contemporary Huxley also worked with a group of biol- social degeneration and outlining a plan of ogists seeking to make zoology more evolu- economic incentives designed to alleviate tionary in focus. The research of population the difference between the birth rates with geneticists like Theodosius Dobzhansky which he was so preoccupied. Although and zoologists like Ernst Mayr had trans- Fisher used mate choice as a tool to describe formed defi nitions of female choice from a the evolutionary past and future of human matter of beauty or aesthetic comparison society, he doubted the ability of any biol- to one of recognizing a mate of the ap- ogist to demonstrate the effi cacy of female propriate species. 8 Rather than observing choice in animals. the mating behavior of a few individuals, Another biologist writing in the late evolutionary biologists turned to statisti- 1930s who deemed it unlikely that animals cal analyses of many copulations. If only could choose their mates was zoologist a male of the right species could stimulate 212 | ERIKA LORRAINE MILAM

a female to mate, then biologists could tell neither intelligence nor conscious estheti- if two populations were really separate cism is involved in the bower birds’ behav- species by allowing them the opportunity ior. The bird’s selection and placement of to interbreed. If just a few individuals did, decorations in its bower is purely mechan- say less than 1 percent, then the popula- ical” (Marshall 1956, 52). The architectural tions were reproductively isolated—they marvel of a bower itself he attributed to a were “good” species. If a much higher per- male’s nervous activity as he waited for the centage of individuals interbred, perhaps females to become sexually responsive. 30 percent, then the two populations were Marshall earned the respect of his peers by simply subspecies. Population geneticists providing an account of bower bird behav- began to use female choice as a diagnos- ior that eliminated the need for recreation tic tool to analyze the process of speciation and aestheticism. After reading Marshall’s rather than looking at mating behavior as book, one reviewer brought this point home a mechanism for changing the appearance by suggesting that bower birds provide “an of a single species. extravagant example of the amazing com- Although most animals could fi t within plexity of behaviour which instinctive pat- this new evolutionary agenda, there were still tern can initiate and control.” 9 a few species that caused evolutionarily in- Like Marshall and the zoologists who clined zoologists a bit of a headache—most preceded him, British theoretical biologist notably the bower birds. Male bower birds John Maynard Smith was interested in ex- decorate their bowers with color-specifi c plaining the evolution of beauty within a odds and ends, and they arrange the twigs single species, but he questioned whether and bits of color into amazing display are- such extravagant behavior and colorful nas (Marshall 1954). Even as late as 1944, plumage could be so easily dismissed as a popular article described the underlying resulting from a need to coordinate the function of the male’s behavior as hav- sexual readiness of males and females and ing “gone far beyond” a “purely utilitarian to ensure species-appropriate couplings. usage” (Chaffer 1944, 179). The author fur- Maynard Smith posited that the tail of the ther posited that the birds derived “a great peacock could be explained only as an deal of satisfaction and pleasure in such ac- advertisement to attract the attention of tivities” (Chaffer 1944, 180). Their penchant females. He asked his readers to imagine for play and aesthetically pleasing architec- bird plumage as a signal. If the point of the ture set bower birds apart as prime candi- plumage was to function as a simple traffi c dates for wanton anthropomorphism. sign—to go to Brighton, turn right—then Part of an answer came from an Austra- the plumage needed to be easily recog- lian earning his PhD in physiology at Ox- nized but not fl ashy, like the simple black ford in the 1950s. Alan John “Jock” Marshall and white coloration of black-headed gulls. was fascinated by the possible correlations Yet advertisements, he suggested— Come between bower birds’ exotic behavior and to Brighton! —were only employed when their internal reproductive physiology. As the viewer had not yet made up her mind a result of his research, Marshall suggested if Brighton was truly where she was headed that the behavioral antics of male bower (Maynard Smith 1958, 237, fi g. 47). May- birds fulfi lled a biologically necessary nard Smith argued that although many an- function—these behaviors helped both imal courtship displays could be reduced sexes come into sexual readiness at the to functionalism, very extravagant displays same time (Marshall 1954, 69–71). Marshall should be understood instead as competi- considered himself “reasonably sure that tions for the attention of females. In other MAKING MALES AGGRESSIVE AND FEMALES COY | 213 words, sexual selection was still needed. Detroit, Newark, Baltimore, and other When a male failed to attract a female, it major cities around the country (Gerstle was not because of a lack of interest on the 2001). Newspapers carried accounts of part of the male. The signal worked, but his political revolutions in Africa, Asia, and lack of ability failed to arouse the female. Latin America. Combined, these events Beauty and female choice were linked emphasized the importance of violence in once again in his explanation of courtship structuring the political and social events behavior. Yet Maynard Smith’s chapter on of the day. Given this context, perhaps it is sexual selection failed to attract much at- unsurprising that the rehabilitation of the tention when it was published in 1958. Not animal mind began with aggression and until fi fteen years later did evolutionary ex- began in anthropology. planations of beauty in the animal kingdom Anthropologists in the 1960s self- once again enter the zoological spotlight. consciously distanced themselves from rac- In the fi rst half of the twentieth century, ist accounts of human evolution common biologists depicted male behavior as the before the Second World War, hoping to re- result of biological imperatives and replace them with a vision of humanity that jected female choice in animals because of held all cultures as equally complex and the cognitive functions they assumed were valuable (Proctor 2003). They also sought necessary for choosing a mate. If we take as to understand why humans, of all animal our baseline the mechanical assumption species, were capable of killing each other that dominated much research in animal (Carthy and Ebling 1964; Proctor 2008). Ar- behavior in the fi rst decades of the twen- chaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and tieth century (that animal actions should physical anthropologists produced a vision best be understood as evolutionary or psy- of humanity based on universal roles for chological reactions to their environment men and women grounded in biological in- rather than an active intervention), then stincts. Man the hunter (or man the killer) the growing biological interest in sexually provided food and social status for his fam- aggressive males competing for the atten- ily, while woman the gatherer (or woman tions of females stands out as peculiar and the mother) raised the children and ran the in need of explanation. To understand this household. Ironically, as anthropologists transformation in the fi eld of animal be- sought to distance themselves from overtly havior, we must turn to a slightly different racist accounts of human evolution, they community of scientists—those explicitly reinscribed sex differences as the biological interested in the evolution of humanity. basis of gender in all human societies (Har- away 1989). In archeological reconstructions of NEGOTIATING GENDER: AGGRESSIVE human history, for example, the use and MALES AND COY FEMALES manufacture of weapons was often taken The 1960s was a decade imbued with vi- as a key process driving the continued olence. In the United States, the GI ex- evolution of human society. In 1959, Mary perience in Korea had presaged the Leakey and her husband Louis Leakey discontentment and eventual anger with shocked the world with their announce- the war in Vietnam that now lit up televi- ment of the 1.75 million-year-old Zinjan- sion screens (Hallin 1986; Anderegg 1991). thropus in the Olduvai Gorge in Kenya—at Civil rights protesters became increasingly the time, the oldest known “manlike crea- frustrated with the slow pace of change, ture” (Leakey 1961, 564; Ward 2003). In Na- leading to urban unrest and riots in Watts, tional Geographi c Magazine, the Leakeys 214 | ERIKA LORRAINE MILAM

vividly described their reconstruction of Contemporary research on extant so- human social evolution based on their called Stone Age cultures similarly em- archeological fi nds, accompanied by a phasized the importance of male hunting six-panel, two-page image of the place and female domestic labor. For cultural of “Zinj” in human history (Leakey 1961, anthropologists, it made sense to theorize 570–71). According to the copy above the about the culture of early humanity based image, the fi rst panel depicts the “earliest on what they knew about human societ- known hunters” from the site, who lacked ies that had remained relatively free from weapons and survived by catching their contact with Western culture and tech- food with their bare hands. In the second nology (Clark 1968; cf. Berndt 1981). The panel, Zinj brings down a zebra colt with pages of National Geographic, television a large wooden club, with the caption de- specials, and books written by anthropolo- claring him “a true man in the tool-making gists claimed that each new tribe was more sense.” The third panel portrays “the dawn “primitive” than the last (Kirk 1969; von of the spear,” in which the putative de- Puttkamer 1975). To be fair, these anthro- scendants of Zinj work together to kill a pological studies emerged out of concern large swamp antelope. The fourth panel that such cultures would inevitably be lost represents a time of drought and climate to the inexorable creep of technological change at Olduvai Gorge and thus pictures progress through contact with the Western only small desert rodents. Hunters return world. Yet these studies also refl ected the in the fi fth panel, as men and women same gendered division of labor as arche- gather around a large elephant-like crea- ologists’ visions of early humanity: man ture stuck in the mud. The men carry the killer, women the reproducer (Tanner spears and the women rocks. The fi nal 1981). panel illustrates cheering men (still carry- By the late 1960s, however, the idea of ing spears) who have successfully stopped using “Stone Age” human cultures to stand a giant ram in its tracks by throwing a Chel- in for man at the dawn of humanity became lean bola around its front legs. Later in the increasingly unpalatable to anthropolo- article, Leakey (1961) described the virtues gists. Both physical and cultural anthro- of the bola at greater length, calling it “an pologists saw the promise of using primate ingenious arrangement of three hide- societies as a mirror or foil for recon- wrapped stones connected by thongs” structing a universal human nature from that when tangled around the legs of large the animal side, rather than the human running prey would bring them crashing (Le´vi-Strauss 1968). Using primates rather to the earth (579). So what distinguished than human cultures served to equalize “true man” from his bestial brethren in this all contemporary human cultures as more developmental sequence of humanity? Not complex than early human societies. Addi- the ability to hunt or to plan ahead for the tionally, if social behaviors were identifi ed hunt, nor the ability to communicate with in the primate species that accorded with other members of the group for the pur- anthropological knowledge of human cul- poses of hunting together—these activities tures, then it seemed likely that such traits were clearly depicted in the fi rst panel. It were universal for all humanity. Two species was the manufacture of tools, and weap- dominated early discussions of primate ons in particular. As the rest of the article behavior—baboons and chimpanzees. made clear, the manufacture of weapons To biological anthropologists like Irven and humans’ evolutionary success was the DeVore (1965), baboons were the primate work of men. species that most closely adhered to the MAKING MALES AGGRESSIVE AND FEMALES COY | 215 ecological environment that characterized Leakey’s patronage of the young women the dawn of humanity, which made them who ventured into the wild to study great an excellent source of information about ape behavior in nature rather than zoos: our ancestors. Baboons—like early hom- Goodall’s work with chimpanzees in Tan- inids, he suggested—lived partly in the zania, Dian Fossey’s research on upland safety of the trees and partly in the open gorillas in Rwanda, and Birute´ Galdikas’s savannah; they were highly social, and studies of orangutans in Indonesian Borneo the males banded together to protect the (Haraway 1989). Goodall’s initial research females and young in the event of a threat painted a kinder picture of early humanity (DeVore 1965). Male dominance and ag- than that provided by DeVore’s baboons. gression appeared to structure their social In her fi rst article for National Geographic, organization even more than in humans. Goodall suggested that chimpanzee ba- According to biological anthropologists Li- bies played much like human children and onel Tiger and Robin Fox (1971), male ba- that adult chimpanzees led rich emotional boons entirely controlled the hierarchical lives and communicated with each other status relations of the group, while females through vocalizations (Goodall 1963). Per- bonded with their offspring. In Fox’s writ- haps most exciting were her discoveries ings in particular, the ultimate family unit that chimpanzees consumed meat and was simply mother and child, while the manufactured tools to help them eat. In males drove the intellectual evolution of the mid-1970s, however, Goodall witnessed hominids through their ability to negotiate the gradual extermination of one group of their dual desires for sex with females and chimpanzees by another—a shocking se- for social status derived from aggressive ries of events that made her question her encounters with other males (Fox 1968). previous assessment of chimpanzees as In a telling moment, Fox (1968) asked off- gentle (Goodall 1979). The aggressors were handedly about the other sex, “Was she almost always males, and she concluded simply a passive mechanism for passing that war, kidnapping, and killing were not along the genes of the big-brained males?” unique to humans. In unrelated circum- (93). His explicit answer provided only one stances, she also observed cannibalism on way in which females might have contrib- the part of three female chimps—for a brief uted to the evolutionary progress of hu- period of time, they had eaten the babies of manity: through concealed estrus, females other members in the troop (Goodall 1979). made themselves constantly available for Although Goodall painted the violent males sex, thereby forcing males into the role of as natural aggressors, she described this provider and into semipermanent familial new horror as a psychological abnormality relationships. Through the late 1960s, the that the females in question were ultimately primate literature largely concerned itself able to overcome. In the public sphere, with how aggression and dominance rela- these events further reinforced the notion tionships in males structured monkey, ape, that chimpanzees were strikingly similar to and human societies and evolution (Zuk humans and that males were innately more 1993). violent than females. One headline even Not all views of the barely human were asked, “Chimp Killings: Is It the ‘Man’ in quite so dismal. Jane Goodall, supported by Them?” (Goodall 1978). Louis Leakey, believed that humans’ closest For universal sex differences to be found living relatives, the great apes, were better in humans, baboons, and chimpanzees, models for human behavior than baboons many anthropologists believed that there (Strier 2003). This assumption underpinned might be a biological explanation. DeVore, 216 | ERIKA LORRAINE MILAM

for example, suggested that sex differences resources in variously producing eggs, giv- in primates were associated with a nonar- ing birth, and raising offspring. As a result, boreal lifestyle. He reasoned that as early females would be sexually coy—alternating human ancestors left the trees for the sa- bouts of intense courtship with periodic vanna, it became more important to protect fl ights—to test the mettle of the males and the group, and selection favored larger and gauge their ability to commit to offspring more aggressive males, as it had in baboons care (Trivers 1972, 148–49). Trivers sug- (DeVore 1965, 62, 182). Because males were gested that because males could invest in charge of protecting the group, a female very little in their offspring, they had the did not need to defend either herself or her opportunity to mate with multiple females young, so she would never develop into “a by abandoning each mate immediately fol- fi ghting animal” (DeVore 1965, 38). This ex- lowing copulation. From the female’s per- planation also seemed to account for the spective, if a male would not engage in a less aggressive nature of the more arboreal prolonged courtship, then he was likely not chimpanzees described in Goodall’s early to engage in extensive offspring care. Most research (see also Rowell 1974). Tiger, for animals exhibited some form of differential his part, linked aggression with exclusively parental investment, and therefore most male activities: “Human violence is almost animals probably exhibited both female exclusively a male problem linked to our choice and male-male competition over hunting history. . . . War is the product of mates. Trivers’s point was twofold: that by male bonding” (Tiger 1969, 42). By any ac- playing coy, female animals actively chose count, sex differences were linked to a new better partners and that such female choice understanding of males as driven by hostile was far more common in nature than biol- encounters with other males, as possessing ogists had previously supposed. far more than a passive animal mind. Scien- Trivers attributed his interest in animal tists still discussed female animal actions in and human behavior to his involvement terms of the nonaggressive, predominantly with a post-Sputnik federally funded cur- reactive behaviors that characterized de- riculum reform program called Man: A scriptions of prewar animal behavior. Course of Study, or MACOS, in the 1960s Sexual selection, in reference to either (Nelkin 1977; Trivers 2002, 57). As part of male-male competition or female choice, the MACOS team, Trivers worked under was not a common explanation for human DeVore (and educational psychologist or primate sex differences until the mid- Jerome Bruner) writing booklets about 1970s. At this time, fi eld zoologists re- animal behavior and reproduction for a turned to a Darwinian model of female fi fth-grade audience. The booklets created behavior that emphasized a continuity of for the program spanned the animal king- choice across the animal-human bound- dom and covered salmon, herring gulls, el- ary (Milam 2010). As a young maverick in ephants, rats, chimpanzees, baboons, and evolutionary biology, Trivers (1972) pro- more. 10 After his experience at MACOS, vided an easily accessible theoretical basis Trivers decided to pursue a PhD at Harvard, for female choice as a mechanism of evo- where he worked closely with DeVore, and lution by reviving the idea that females his early writings demonstrate his intellec- were certainly the choosier sex because tual indebtedness to the anthropologists they invested more in each offspring than and zoologists involved with the MACOS did males. He reasoned that if females project.11 It is of little surprise, then, that mated only once per mating season, then Trivers’s theories of sexual selection in an- they would invest substantial energetic imals tracked so well with anthropological MAKING MALES AGGRESSIVE AND FEMALES COY | 217 theories of sex difference in primates and preoccupied earlier generations, in part humans from the same time. because they meant something different by Trivers’s conviction that female choice female “choice” (Frankel 1994). Building on could play an important role in the evolu- the same ethological framework Marshall tion of animal and human mating behav- used when discussing bower birds, evo- ior rather quickly caught a lot of attention. lutionary biologists began to suggest that Entomologist Edward O. Wilson, also at naturally coy females were stimulated to Harvard, was thoroughly impressed by mate by the male courtship displays (Hrdy Trivers’s ideas and based much of Sociobi- and Williams 1983; Hrdy 1986). Human be- ology’s fi fteenth chapter, “Sex and Society,” havior, in other words, could be analyzed on them (Wilson 1975). In the most recent with the same behavioral tools developed introduction to The Selfi sh Gene, Richard to understand animal actions. Yet biolo- Dawkins referred to Trivers as one of his gists’ renewed interest in understanding “four intellectual heroes” and further sug- the biological basis of human sexual be- gested that “his ideas dominate large parts havior by comparing it to the courtship ac- of Chapters 9, 10, and 12, and the whole of tivities of nonprimates (following Wilson’s Chapter 8” (Dawkins [1976] 2006, xiv). It sociobiological example) struck many bi- was through these two books that Trivers’s ologists and humanists alike as a cavalier research gained wider circulation among dismissal of those cultural and biologi- evolutionary theorists. The popularity of cal traits that distinguished humans from the word “coy,” however, should probably other mammals, rats, or even asparagus be attributed to Dawkins, as Trivers used (Leonard 1969). the word only once and Wilson not at all. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, fem- Dawkins went into great detail describing inist scientists and historians pushed “coy” as only one possible mating strategy against the sexual stereotypes embedded for females—the other being “fast”—in in these anthropological and biological contrast to the “faithful” and “philanderer” theories (Hubbard, Henifi n, and Fried strategies that males might adopt (Dawkins 1982; Bleier 1984; Fausto-Sterling 1985). [1976] 2006, 151). Perhaps most interest- Elaine Morgan (1972) and Sally Slocum ingly, both Wilson and Dawkins painted (1975) were some of the fi rst women to sexual behavior as a negotiation between vocally attack the sexism inherent in con- two equally active and obstinate partners— temporary theories of human evolution males and females. and their overemphasis on hunting and The subsequent fl urry of research activ- meat. Critiques by others soon followed. ity among fi eld biologists took for granted Anthropologists Adrienne Zihlman and that female animals chose their mates and Nancy Tanner, for example, emphasized began to question the basis of that choice. the crucial role of women in providing al- Was female choice arbitrary (as supposed most all of a group’s nutrition through their by Fisher’s theory of runaway sexual se- gathering of foodstuffs and critiqued the lection), did females judge the genetic anthropological theories of human evo- quality of males through the expression lution as failing to incorporate women’s of their exaggerated trait, or did the trait contributions to the ecological survival itself correlate with some direct benefi t of the species (Tanner and Zihlman 1976; to the female, like a high-quality territory Zihlman 1978; Tanner 1981). Primatolo- (Cronin 1991)? Biologists seemed uncon- gists Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (1977, 1999b) and cerned with the assumptions about aes- Linda Marie Fedigan (1982) suggested that theticism and mental capacity that had so mother love, far from being instinctual and 218 | ERIKA LORRAINE MILAM

kind, involved a great deal of learning and companions (Morris 1967). Anthropolo- active negotiation with other members of gists and biologists actively appropriated the group to protect themselves and their coy females in the 1970s as a reaction to young. The earliest of these critiques, by these earlier scientifi c theories about the Morgan and Slocum, barely mentioned biological basis of male aggression. Darwinian sexual selection, whereas later evaluations of biological explanations of CONCLUSION human difference devoted considerable attention to the theory. By the mid-1980s, Although Darwin posited a continuity be- referencing Darwinian sexual selection was tween human and animal minds, each in necessary given its rising popularity (Hub- degrees capable of aesthetic evaluation bard 1990, 97–100; Cronin 1991, 113–230). and choice, by the fi rst decades of the twen- Both Fedigan and Hrdy specifi cally took tieth century scientists had largely rejected contemporary evolutionary theorists to the notion that any animal was capable of task for appropriating Darwin’s Victorian evaluative choice. Rather, they portrayed sexual stereotypes along with his theories, animals’ behavior as mechanical reactions but for other scientists female choice of- to environmental surroundings and their fered a way of portraying females as active evolutionary past. By the time Trivers, agents in their own evolution.12 Wilson, and Dawkins refurbished sexual The active rehabilitation of animal selection in the 1970s, male animal minds minds and actions may have begun with had already been transformed within bio- male animals and men, but it quickly ex- logical anthropology. In the early 1960s, fe- tended to encompass the wide variety males may have waited for their big strong of strategies female animals and women males to bring home the mastodon bacon might utilize to structure the societies in in exchange for sex, but by the end of the which they lived—from woman the gath- decade they were actively engaged in elab- erer to “woman the mate chooser, woman orate courtship rituals that tested males’ the mother, woman the aunt, woman the long-term commitment. As biologists and communicator, woman the power, woman anthropologists increasingly emphasized the ritual actor, and woman the hunter” animalistic instincts as important com- (Dahlberg 1981, xi). These newly created ponents of human behavior, they simul- roles for female animals and women as taneously began to see the antecedents of active participants in their own evolution human behaviors in animal actions. These provided a place where questions of gender two trends of zoomorphism and anthro- and sex were not easily resolved, a space pomorphism, respectively, were intimately where anthropologists and biologists con- linked in the 1960s. Aggressive males and tinued to butt heads over the equally sticky coy females were thus active constructions dichotomy of nurture and nature (de Waal of this scientifi c community, not passive 1999). The biological females in these nar- importations from Darwin’s century-old ratives ranged from “unaggressive, coop- theory of sexual selection. erative and bonded with other women” The legacy of female choice has been to “assertive, status-seeking, [and] domi- double-sided (Fausto-Sterling 1995).13 Crit- nance-oriented” (Zihlman 1985, 372). ics of parental investment theory and sexual In sum, the depiction of man as a “naked selection suggest that the gendered stereo- ape” in the 1960s rehabilitated the evolu- types embedded in evolutionary narratives tionary and behavioral complexity of male of human behavior are cultural artifacts of animals to the detriment of their female questionable scientifi c value (for a recent MAKING MALES AGGRESSIVE AND FEMALES COY | 219 attempt to dismiss sexual selection entirely, 1. Darwin fi rst introduced sexual selection, includ- see Roughgarden 2009). Other evolutionary ing both competition between males and selec- theorists see female choice as liberating. tion by females, in On the Origin of Species (1859, 87–89, 156–58, 196–99), and he extensively elabo- Biologist Patricia Gowaty, for example, ar- rated sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and gues that Trivers’s paper “legitimize[d] the Selection in Relation to Sex (1871). study of female choice” (Gowaty 2003, 901; 2. Biologists’ critiques of “coy” as a descriptor of see also Vandermassen 2005). Similarly, so- female mating behavior have taken at least two ciobiologist and feminist Hrdy (1999a) sug- forms: male and female parental investment may not be so different after all; and, even if gests that Darwinian theory, when applied females do invest more in their offspring, that carefully to human and primate popula- does not make them passive. For example, see tions, yields a picture far different than that Hrdy (1986), Tavris (1992), Gowaty (1994), Tang- provided by 1960s anthropology— females Martinez (2000), and, most recently, Rough- now possess as much agency in their be- garden (2009). For historical and philosophical critiques of coy females, see, e.g., Bleier (1984), havioral choices as males. Trivers, Wilson, Haraway (1989), Russett (1989), Hubbard (1990), and Dawkins may have waltzed into a con- and Cronin (1991). troversy with anthropologists over the cul- 3. See Bleier (1978), Hrdy (1986), Cronin (1991), and tural authority to pronounce on human Tavris (1992). nature (see Segerstråle 2000), but Gowaty 4. See, e.g., Tanner (1981), Zihlman (1985), Fedigan (1986), Haraway (1989), Cronin (1991), and and Hrdy both insist that they also (per- Gowaty (2003). haps unwittingly) developed a robust and 5. See von Uexküll ([1909] 1957), Tinbergen (1951), powerful framework for incorporating fe- Lorenz (1952), and Burkhardt (2005). male choice into the evolution of human 6. The strong tradition of primatology in Japan de- social behavior. veloped under a different set of cultural circumstances and is beyond the scope of this article Female choice and other theories of (see Asquith 2000; de Waal 2003). It is worth not- animal behavior as keys to human nature ing, however, that these studies focused on both maintain a powerful hold over our imagi- female and male roles as actively contributing to nation not just because we recognize an- the social structure of Japanese macaques (see, tecedents of our own actions in animals e.g., Imanishi and Altmann 1965). 7. Literature that focused specifi cally on mate but also because we have been taught to choice in animals was less common, resulting see the animal within ourselves. Due to in a spottier chronology. For a more complete these earlier debates over the biological history of sexual selection during this time, see basis of human and animal behavior, we Milam (2010). can reject simple masculine-feminine and 8. See Dobzhansky (1937), Mayr (1942), Smocovitis (1996), and Cain and Ruse (2009). animal-human dichotomies and instead 9. M.G.B., “Review of A. J. Marshall, Bower Birds,” recognize the multiple and diverse strate- Biology (June 1955); clipped copy in Alan John gies and behaviors that constitute sexual “Jock” Marshall Papers, Series 15, File 3, MS 7132, identity in both animals and humans. National Library Australia, Canberra. 10. Many of the educational materials for the MACOS program are available online at http://www.macos online.org/. NOTES 11. Trivers cites the work of anthropologist Asen Balikci (who developed fi lms on the Netsilik), I gratefully thank Lindley Darden, Pamela Hen- ornithologist William Drury (Trivers’s mentor), son, Joan Straumanis, Shannon Withycombe, anthropologist Richard Lee (a close collaborator and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful of DeVore’s who worked on the !Kung Bushmen), suggestions on early versions of this article, and Lorna Marshall (who was approached about de- Sarah Blaffer Hrdy for a long and illuminating veloping fi lmic materials on the !Kung Bushmen), phone conversation about the nature of research and, of course, DeVore himself (see Trivers 1971, on female choice. 1972). 220 | ERIKA LORRAINE MILAM

12. See Fedigan (1982, 269–86; 1986, 26–32) and Hrdy Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the Origin of Species by (1986, 120, 122; 1999b, 22–32); see also Hrdy’s Means of Natural Selection, or, the Preservation of preface to the new edition of The Woman That Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: Never Evolved (1999b), “On Raising Darwin’s Murray. Consciousness” (xiii-xxxi). See also Tanner (1981, ———. 1871. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Re- 1–14, 163–67) and Zihlman (1985). lation to Sex. 2 vols. London: Murray. 13. Since the 1980s, there has been considerable re- Dawkins, Richard. (1976) 2006. The Selfi sh Gene. Ox- search on the evolution of sex differences in an- ford: Oxford University Press. imals and people (e.g., Strum and Fedigan 2000; Desmond, Adrian, and James Moore. 2009. Darwin’s Clutton-Brock 2007). Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Dar- win’s Views on Human Evolution. Boston: Hough- ton Miffl in Harcourt. REFERENCES DeVore, Irven, ed. 1965. Primate Behavior: Field Stud- ies of Monkeys and Apes. New York: Holt, Rinehart Anderegg, Michael, ed. 1991. Inventing Vietnam: The & Winston. War in Film and Television. Philadelphia: Temple de Waal, Frans. 1999. “The End of Nature versus Nur- University Press. ture.” Scientifi c American 281(6):94–99. Ardrey, Robert. 1961. African Genesis: A Personal In- ———. 2003. “Silent Invasion: Imanishi’s Primatology vestigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of and Cultural Bias in Science.” Animal Cognition Man. New York: Atheneum. 6(4):293–99. Asquith, Pamela. 2000. “Negotiating Science: Interna- Dobzhansky, Theodosius. 1937. Genetics and the Ori- tionalization and Japanese Primatology.” In Strum gin of Species. New York: Columbia University Press. and Fedigan 2000, 165–83. Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 1985. Myths of Gender: Biolog- Bateman, Angus John. 1948. “Intra-sexual Selection in ical Theories about Women and Men. New York: Drosophila. ” Heredity 2(3): 349–68. Basic. Berndt, Catherine H. 1981. “Interpretations/Facts in ———. 1995. “Attacking Feminism Is No Substitute Aboriginal Australia.” In Woman the Gatherer, ed. for Good Scholarship.” Politics and the Life Sci- Frances Dahlberg, 153–203. New Haven, CT: Yale ences 14(2):171–74. University Press. Fedigan, Linda Marie. 1982. Primate Paradigms: Sex Bleier, Ruth. 1978. “Bias in Biological and Human Sci- Roles and Social Bonds. Montreal: Eden. ences: Some Comments.” Signs: Journal of Women ———. 1986. “The Changing Role of Women in Mod- in Culture and Society 4(1):159–62. els of Human Evolution.” Annual Review of An- ———. 1984. Science and Gender: A Critique of Biology thropology 15:25–66. and Its Theories on Women. New York: Pergamon. Fisher, Ronald Aylmer. 1914. “Some Hopes of a Eu- Burkhardt, Richard W., Jr. 2005. Patterns of Behavior: genist.” Eugenics Review 5(4): 309–15. Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and the Founding ———. 1930. The Genetical Theory of Natural Selec- of Ethology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. tion. Oxford: Clarendon. Cain, Joe, and Michael Ruse, eds. 2009. Descended from Fox, Robin. 1968. “The Evolution of Human Sexual Darwin: Insights into the History of Evolutionary Behavior.” New York Times, March 24, 32–33, 79, Studies, 1900– 1970. Philadelphia: American Philo- 82–89, 92–97. sophical Society. Frankel, Simon J. 1994. “The Eclipse of Sexual Selec- Carthy, J. D., and F. J. Ebling, eds. 1964. The Natural tion Theory.” In Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Science: History of Aggression. New York: Academic Press. The History of Attitudes to Sexuality, ed. Roy Por- Chaffer, Norman. 1944. “The Spotted and Satin Bower- ter and Mikuláš Teich, 158–83. Cambridge: Cam- Birds: A Comparison.” Emu 44(3):161–81. bridge University Press. Clark, J. Desmond. 1968. “Studies of Hunter-Gatherers Gerstle, Gary. 2001. American Crucible: Race and as an Aid to the Interpretation of Prehistoric Soci- Nation in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: eties.” In Man the Hunter, ed. Richard B. Lee and Princeton University Press. Irven DeVore, 276–80. Chicago: Aldine. Goodall, Jane. 1963. “My Life among Wild Chimpan- Clutton-Brock, Tim. 2007. “Sexual Selection in Males zees.” National Geographic 124(8):272–308. and Females.” Science 318(5858):1882–85. ———. 1978. “Chimp Killings: Is It the ‘Man’ in Them?” Cronin, Helena. 1991. The Ant and the Peacock: Altru- Science News 113(17):276. ism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today. ———. 1979. “Life and Death at Gombe.” National New York: Cambridge University Press. Geographic 155(5):592–621. Dahlberg, Frances. 1981. “Preface.” In Woman the Gath- Gowaty, Patricia. 1994. “Architects of Sperm Competi- erer, ix–xi. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. tion.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 9(5):160–62. MAKING MALES AGGRESSIVE AND FEMALES COY | 221

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Asking Different Questions: Feminist Practices for the Natural Sciences Deboleena Roy

Sometimes a pipette is just a pipette. As greatest impact in such disciplines as prima- a feminist scientist, I have been party to tology, archeology and biology by motivating more than several skirmishes over my in- scientists to “ask new questions” (1999, 187), tentions of bringing feminism and science thereby altering the scientifi c knowledge together and have found myself retreating that is produced. I am interested in examin- at times into conciliatory bottom lines just ing more precisely, however, what it means to keep the conversations alive. Yes—in a to say that feminist scientists ask new or dif- science infl uenced by feminism, pipettes ferent questions and the political practices will still be pipettes, one plus one will still that a feminist draws from in order to arrive equal two, and as Ruth Hubbard has said of at these different questions. 1 My interest gravity, “apples will indeed continue to fall stems from a very intimate relationship with unless someone throws them up in the air” the natural sciences. (1995, 206). I have come to realize however Several years ago, I completed my Ph.D. that for many individuals, the mere idea of in reproductive neuroendocrinology. The mixing feminism and science together sets importance of my doctoral work was in its well—established modes of reasoning (per- contribution to understanding the actions haps even gravity) into topsy—turvy motion. of hormones at the level of the brain, in- In the past few decades, we have wit- cluding the gonadal hormones estrogen nessed outcomes of a feminist restructuring and androgen, and the pineal hormone of science and it is evident now that the an- melatonin (Roy et al. 1999, 2002; Belsham swer to the question “Has feminism changed et al. 1998). I was involved in research proj- science?” is “Yes!” But how has feminism ects that examined the effects of estrogen, changed science? According to feminist his- androgen, and melatonin on an in vitro cell torian of science Londa Schiebinger (1999) line of gonadotropin—releasing hormone and many more feminist science studies en- (GnRH) neurons of the hypo thalamus.2 thusiasts, feminism has changed science not My scientifi c work contributed to evidence only by inviting more women to enter into that suggests that the hypothalamic—pitu- science and pointing out gender biases pres- itary—gonadal (HPG) axis in the body func- ent in the language and paradigms of sci- tions through a series of feedback loops rather ence but also by changing the ways in which than a hierarchy controlled at the level of science is “done.” For example, Schiebinger the brain. 3 This fi nding has far—reaching demonstrates that feminism has had its impacts on women’s health and sexuality 224 | DEBOLEENA ROY

as it also suggests that hormone—based questions if we are to continue encourag- contraceptives or hormone replacement ing young feminists to pursue careers in therapies may have broader neurological science. If we want the feminist scientist implications (Roy 2007). to thrive, I suggest that an effort must be As a feminist scientist, I was able to con- made to articulate concrete strategies as to tribute to a new understanding of the body how she can overcome her dilemmas and through reproductive biology research. How- go about “asking different questions.” ever, I could not have made this contribution From many projects within feminist sci- without using an in vitro cell line model or ence studies, two questions are being put without using molecular biology techniques. forward to address the tensions involved Furthermore, because of my decision to in conducting scientifi c research, namely: conduct research in reproductive neuroen- (1) How can feminism infl uence the ways docrinology, not a day went by during my in which we gain scientifi c knowledge? doctoral work where I didn’t face some kind And (2) how can the feminist scientist proof anxiety—producing dilemma.4 These di- duce scientifi c knowledge that is relevant lemmas often stemmed from my hesitations to and considerate of those who are mar- regarding which scientifi c questions I should ginalized within dominant cultures? These ask, which scientifi c theories and paradigms two questions, I believe, relate to the issue I should follow, and which methods and of research agenda choice, which does not technologies I should use to conduct my begin and end with the concern for inte- science. I knew that I wanted to create new grating feminist epistemologies into the scientifi c knowledges of the body, but I could sciences. Research agenda choice may have used some guidance with what can be begin with choosing between hypotheses, referred to as my research agenda choice. In but it also operates at a much more mun- many instances, I wasn’t sure how to apply dane level within the enterprises of science. my feminist analyses to the “technical core” It has an impact on many more processes of of the science that I practiced. scientifi c knowledge production, including I think that if we are willing to accept the everyday choices between paradigms, the idea that feminism and science do language, methodologies, methods, appa- meet, and that feminists should engage in ratuses, techniques, and the tools needed the production of scientifi c knowledge, we to conduct scientifi c research. In her work cannot just plant a feminist in the lab and focusing on issues in the epistemology of hope for the best. Despite encouragement science, Helen Longino has suggested that from within feminism for feminists to enter feminist interventions in science have into careers in science and technology and helped identify “contexts of discovery” thereby contribute to meaning—making (1993, 109) and thus have shown how so- processes of our time, once the feminist cial values, such as gender biases, can be answers this call and dedicates herself to introduced into the sciences. However, becoming a scientist, there exists very lit- Longino distinguishes between those fem- tle support on the other end. Is it simply inist analyses that serve a descriptive pur- enough that she identify as being feminist pose and those that involve a normative while conducting her science? What if she or “prescriptive” purpose. “One way to ar- faces a dilemma between the feminism that ticulate the distinctions l am urging,” she she practices and the paradigms, methods, states, “is to treat analysis of the context of technologies, or tools that she uses to con- discovery as a primarily descriptive analy- duct science? How can these tensions be sis of how hypotheses are generated and to resolved? We must begin to address these treat analysis in the context of justifi cation ASKING DIFFERENT QUESTIONS: FEMINIST PRACTICES FOR THE NATURAL SCIENCES | 225 as involving a normative or prescriptive natural and social environments” (Longino analysis regarding the appropriate criteria 1993, 116). I believe that these iterations of for the acceptance of hypotheses” (102). practice may provide the feminist scientist My interest in exploring the issue of re- with the necessary framework to create search agenda choice in the natural sci- and carry through with political interven- ences corresponds to what Longino has tions in the sciences—where the scientist described as analysis in the context of jus- can become, or realizes that she has always tifi cation, but is not restricted to the accep- been, part of the phenomenon.5 Once she tance of a hypothesis alone. I agree with realizes that she is implicated and part of Longino’s assertion that “although many of the phenomenon, which “scientifi c” ques- the most familiar feminist accounts of sci- tions she asks and to whom she asks these ence have helped us to redescribe the pro- questions, is part of the contingency and cess of knowledge (or belief) acquisition, “various performances” (Rouse 2002, 161) they stop short of an adequate normative that get played out in any political prac- theory” (102). Prescriptive analysis for the tice. I also intend to take seriously Longi- natural sciences is a critical area of schol- no’s strategy of using a model—theoretic arship within feminist science studies that analysis of theories. While highlighting the must be further developed. I would suggest, importance of models in the way that they however, that in order to be useful for fem- structure our knowledge, Longino states: inist scientists in the natural sciences, an “adequate normative theory” should also be The adequacy of a theory conceived as a somewhat fl exible and “semiprescriptive” model is determined by our being able to in its gestures. Longino’s own contribution map some subset of the relations/structures toward creating a prescriptive theory that posited in the model onto some portion of the experienced world. . . . Its adequacy is can be applied to the natural sciences in- not just a function or isomorphism of one of volves redefi ning scientifi c objectivity and the interpretations of the theory with a por- scientifi c knowledge in the context of com- tion of the world but of the fact that the re- munities. She puts forward her criteria for lations it picks out are ones in which we are objective communities as a set of prescrip- interested. A model guides our interactions tions, and suggests two important strategies with and interventions in the world. We want in order for these com munities to function. models that guide the interactions and inter- The fi rst strategy involves treating science ventions we seek. (1993, 115) “as a practice or set of practices.” The second involves taking up a “model—theoretic My intention is to suggest a suitable fem- theory of theories” (114). inist model for the practice of research Following Longino’s advice, it is my in- agenda choice, so that we may guide the tention in this paper to develop a rough interactions and interventions that we seek sketch of a semiprescriptive analysis by to make in the natural sciences. This way, treating the issue of research agenda choice the feminist scientist will be able to con- in the natural sciences as a type of prac- tinue asking different questions—hope- tice. Other feminist science scholars, such fully, with a little more help. as Donna Haraway (1997), Karen Barad (2003), and Joseph Rouse (1996; 2002), FEMINIST STANDPOINT THEORY AND have also developed the idea of science as THE NATURAL SCIENCES practice. Similar to Longino, they have articulated science itself as a set of practices In my search for a model that will help that involves “ongoing interaction with our the feminist scientist with the practice of 226 | DEBOLEENA ROY

research agenda choice, I am interested in to me because of the necessary “insider— starting with the highly contested stand- outsider” sensibilities I have had to hone point theory, which like many of its users, as a feminist scientist. Although I may remains marginalized within mainstream have been somewhat isolated in the lab, philosophy of science and science studies I reached out to and was embraced by a (Harding 2004a; Wylie 2004). As Harding community of feminist activists and schol- comments, this is “intriguing because one ars from other disciplines. This sense of of its central conceptual innovations is to community made it possible for me to stay describe and prescribe the practice of tak- in the sciences but also made me appreci- ing on the cognitive, technical core of the ate the importance of starting my scientifi c natural sciences and their philosophies” thoughts from the lives of marginalized (2004a, 26, emphasis added). While de- others. While putting forward the notion scribing standpoint theory, Harding states: that it matters who the knower is, Lorraine Code notes that this proposition also raises Starting thought from the lives of those peo- the issue of epistemic relativism. But she ple upon whose exploitation the legitimacy argues that epistemic relativism need not of the dominant system depends can bring be immediately aligned with idiosyncratic into focus questions and issues that were not or purely subjective thinking. According visible, “important,” or legitimate within the to Code, “Schemes, practices, and para- dominant institutions. . . . Such standpoints digms evolve out of communal projects of are critically and theoretically constructed dis cursive positions, not merely perspec- inquiry. To sustain viability and authority, tives or views that fl ow from their authors they must demonstrate their adequacy in unwittingly because of their biology or lo- enabling people to negotiate the every- cation in geographical or other such social day world and to cope with the decisions, locations. (1998, 17) problems, and puzzles they encounter daily” (1991, 3). In theory then, the femi- As far as its impact on the natural sciences nist scientist may be able to reveal herself can be measured, standpoint theory has as a knower and still use standpoint theory been used primarily in two ways—to de- as a “communal project of inquiry” in order scribe the biases present in hypotheses and to negotiate and cope with the decisions methods constituted by dominant groups of research agenda choice. But why hasn’t and to describe the inadequacy in the stan- this been the case? Why hasn’t standpoint dards for achieving objectivity (2004a, 26). theory been clearly articulated for the nat- I am interested in pursuing the argu- ural sciences? The challenge may be that ment that standpoint theory can be used a transposable model of stand point the- to prescribe new practices, such as research ory, appropriate for the natural sciences, agenda choice for the natural sciences. De- is yet to be developed. The feminists with spite the controversies surrounding stand- whom I had formed a community while point theory, I am drawn to the promise conducting scientifi c research taught me of an approach whose innovations, as de- some skills so that I could negotiate my ev- scribed by Harding, “bring into focus fresh eryday world as a feminist scientist. Most perspectives on some of the most diffi - important, they taught me to think about cult and anxiety—producing dilemmas my political location and markers such as of our era” (2004b, 1). I am also drawn to gender, race, class, and sexuality while I the call put forward by standpoint theo- worked in a reproductive neuroendocri- rists for starting off thought from the lives nology lab. I didn’t know it then, but look- of marginalized peoples. This idea appeals ing back now, perhaps I did use a form of ASKING DIFFERENT QUESTIONS: FEMINIST PRACTICES FOR THE NATURAL SCIENCES | 227 standpoint theory to address the technical approaches that are foundational to the core of the science I practiced. scientifi c method. However, to put forward In her paper “Why Standpoint Matters” the claim that some people (those who (2004), Alison Wylie outlines a framework are marginalized) know better than oth- for standpoint analysis of scientifi c prac- ers (those who are not marginalized) as a tice. She is convinced of the value of fem- foundational precept of standpoint theory, inist standpoint theory but is troubled by is too dangerous. In order to make its move the ways in which this theory is commonly into the natural sciences, Wylie’s above cri- reduced by its opponents to a notion of so- teria for standpoint theory is pivotal. Once cial locations of individuals and to the rel- the feminist scientist acknowledges that as ativism of identity politics (341). Although an insider—outsider she knows differently, Wylie is concerned with the potential for the applicability of standpoint theory for standpoint theory’s impact on the analyses the natural sciences also becomes clear. of scientifi c practice within the disciplines Wylie further argues that standpoint of science studies and philosophy of sci- theory “offers a framework for under stand- ence, she also makes a case for the imple- ing how, far from compromising epistemic mentation of standpoint theory within the integrity, certain kinds of diversity (cul- production of scientifi c knowledge itself. tural, racial, gender) may signifi cantly en- Wylie notes that standpoint theory can rich scientifi c inquiry” (339). She suggests exist as a commitment to some form of that there is value in what the marginalized situated knowledge (343). In this sense, or insider—outsider standpoint has to offer. it allows us to “develop a stand point on The values she refers to include: (1) access knowledge production, a critical conscious- to evidence whereby the position of mar- ness about the nature of our social location ginality makes one see evidence not nor- and the differences it makes epistemically” mally seen; (2) inferential acuity whereby (344). For the feminist scientist, devel- an individual makes connections between oping an awareness of “how” knowledge power dynamics; (3) an expanded range of is produced is integral to seeing the ap- interpretations and explanatory hypothe- plicability of standpoint theory for the ses for making sense of the evidence; and practice of research agenda choice in the as a condition for the fi rst three values, natural sciences. The point Wylie empha- (4) critical dissociation from the taken— sizes however is that standpoint theory for—granteds that underpin authoritative must exist without “embracing essential forms of knowledge (346). The moment ism or an automatic privilege thesis” (345). the feminist scientist realizes that her lo- In order for standpoint theory to survive cation, relations, and position held within and not continually be misread, “It must power dynamics give her the required crit- not be aligned with a thesis of automatic ical consciousness needed to bring a “new epistemic privilege; standpoint theorists angle of vision to bear on old questions and cannot claim that those who occupy par- raise new questions for empirical investi- ticular standpoints (usually subdominant, gation” (349), the hesitations regarding the oppressed, marginal standpoints) auto- relevance of standpoint theory in the nat- matically know more, or know better, by ural sciences should be put to rest. Wylie’s virtue of their social, political location” list of values provides the reasons for in- (341). In order for standpoint theory to cluding standpoint theory in the practice move into the natural sciences and as- of research agenda choice in the natural sist in the production of scientifi c knowl- sciences. By listing a set of values, Wylie an- edge, it must take the place of dominant swers the question why the marginalized, 228 | DEBOLEENA ROY

insider—outsider standpoint is important objectivity opposes a distinct form of sub- and can enrich scientifi c inquiry by pro- jectivity; each is defi ned by censuring some ducing different knowledges. In fact, her (by no means all) aspects of the personal. analysis makes it clear as to why we should The history of the various forms of objec- seek to occupy this standpoint. However, tivity might be told as how, why, and when for the feminist scientist who is working various forms of subjectivity came to be in the natural sciences, sitting at her lab seen as dangerously subjective” (1992, 82). bench and scratching her head, I believe Daston argues that two particular forms the question that remains is how? of objectivity, namely aperspectival objectivity (1992) and mechanical objectivity (Daston and Galison 1992), have come to RECONFIGURING OBJECTIVITY play crucial roles in practically every step To address this last question, I am inter- of modem—day scientifi c inquiry, but that ested in drawing from standpoint theory they did not originally develop within sci- but moving toward strong objectivity and entifi c traditions. Rather, Daston suggests situated knowledges, and through to agen- that aperspectival objectivity, the idea that tial realism. For the feminist scientist then, one can be a “featureless observer,” origi- who by the very “nature” of her existence nated in moral and aesthetic philosophy qualifi es as a marginalized knower, the idea in the late half of the eighteenth century of developing feminist theories such as (1992). As she explains, “Just as the tran- standpoint theory for the natural sciences scendence of the individual viewpoints in should be attractive, but not without one deliberation and action seemed a precon- signifi cant hesitation (at the very least). dition for a just and harmonious society to The main hesitation, I believe, in making eighteenth century moralists, so the tran- such a move has to do with reconfi guring scendence of the same in science seemed her ideas of objectivity. If she bases her to some nineteenth—century philoso- practice of research agenda choice on a set phers a precondition for a coherent scien- of values derived from feminism, can she tifi c community” (1992, 607). Mechanical still be objective? objectivity, associated with automated or In order to address this issue, the femi- mechanized procedures, also had as its pri- nist scientist should be made aware of the mary function a “morality of self restraint” fact that her training as a scientist would (Daston and Galison 1992). The goal of this have required her to think about objec- form of objectivity was to remove human tivity in a very limited way, one that is emotion or judgment, and therefore any appropriate for producing knowledge spe- idiosyncrasies from observations made of cifi cally through the scientifi c method. It one’s surroundings. has to be brought to her attention that the Heather Douglas has also recently sug- concept of objectivity is much more com- gested that there is no single meaning of plex. As has been noted by many historians objectivity, and has in fact been able to and philosophers of science, “objectivity identify eight distinct senses of the con- is not and has never been a monolithic cept. She suggests that the senses of ob- and immutable concept, at least since the jectivity most commonly deployed in seventeenth century” (Daston 1992, 598). scientifi c research are “manipulable” and However, the many different forms of ob- “convergent” objectivity (2004, 457). Both jectivity do indeed share one purpose. of these senses, similar to aperspectival As Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison and mechanical objectivity, deal with at- note, “Each of the several components of tempts made by humans to “directly get ASKING DIFFERENT QUESTIONS: FEMINIST PRACTICES FOR THE NATURAL SCIENCES | 229 at the objects” (455) of their surroundings Irwin has described the notion of “citizen without interfering with them. From her science” while bringing to light the impor- account of the various senses of objectiv- tance of local and particular knowledges ity, Douglas makes an extremely insightful (1995). He suggests that communities of comment that is pivotal for a feminist re- knowers, as in the case of sustainable de- confi guration of objectivity. She states: velopment, play a crucial role in “criticiz- ing expert knowledge but also generating The complexity of objectivity provides for forms of knowledge and understanding— both its fl exibility in usage and the strength in serving as ‘living laboratories’ in an active of its normative force. There are multiple as well as passive fashion” (1995, 112). Also grounds from which to call for trust of a in the context of local and participatory claim, from which to endorse that claim to knowledge, Frank Fischer has provided an others. It should also be clear that the com- extraordinary example of how a commu- plexity allows room for change. We might de- nity of knowers can provide the grounds for cide that some meanings should be dropped (as I think value—free objectivity should be). laying trust in a claim. While discussing the And we might fi nd that new meanings will example of the people’s science movement be added as our practices change over time. in the Indian state of Kerala, Fischer notes There is no ahistorical fi xed ness to objectiv- that the success of this participatory strat- ity to date; there is little reason to think we egy lies in the fact that it “speaks directly are fi nished developing the term. (468) to the concerns of citizen empowerment, democratic theory, and environmental As Douglas suggests, by tracing these democracy” (2000, 168). The citizens of accounts of objectivity the feminist scien- Kerala designed research projects related tist can realize not only the freedom that to the everyday issues of their own lives. comes with complexity but also the possi- However, the local knowledge that they bility for change. In fact, Harding has put produced, which was “designed to help forward one of these new meanings of ob- less—privileged citizens in their struggles jectivity and developed the term with her to better understand and confront the re- idea of ‘strong objectivity.’ Strong objectiv- alities and choices that shape their own in- ity extends the notion of scientifi c research terests and concerns” (145), also informed to include systematic observations of the type of “expert” scientifi c knowledge background beliefs, and also draws atten- that was produced. tion to ideological assumptions built into While struggling with my own research scientifi c research (1991, 149). agenda choices, I arrived at a need to ques- Douglas also proposes that there are tion my notions of scientifi c objectivity by many locations from which one may gather way of Donna Haraway’s work. It was her “trust” for making a claim. The idea of ideas on partial vision and more import- strong objectivity allows us to see that there ant, my own dilemma of having formed a may be different ways of knowing and not kinship with a transgenic mouse and her in just one adequate standard for knowledge vitro cell line of hypothalamic neurons that that is gained only through traditional brought me to this place. In my simultane- modes of objectivity. More important, it ous workings as a lab dweller, transgenic provides the grounds for placing trust in a mouse cell line handler, and member of community of marginalized knowers. For a feminist community of knowers, I had instance, related to the ideas of strong ob- cause to refl ect on the meanings of objec- jectivity and the importance of acknowl- tivity in deep and intimate ways. Haraway edging a community of knowers, Alan states that “feminist objectivity is about 230 | DEBOLEENA ROY

limited location and situated knowledge, what has been referred to as social con- not about transcendence and splitting of structivist approaches. While describing subject and object. In this way we might social studies of science and technology, become answerable for what we learn how David Hess states that “the term ‘social to see” (1991, 190). Haraway’s concept of constructivism’ is often used as a general situated knowledges is intimately con- label for studies that examine how social nected to standpoint theory. Emphasizing variables shape the pattern of choices location and partial vision, Haraway be- about what research gets done, how it is lieves that knowledge can never be uni- done, how choices among theories are versal. However, at the same time, situated made in controversies, and the extent to knowledges should not be reduced to indi- which observations, laws, theories, and vidual idiosyncrasies or to epistemic rela- other knowledge claims become accepted tivism. Like standpoint theory, it advances in wider scientifi c com munities” (1997, knowledge by helping make visible aspects 34). Harding has suggested using the term of nature, science and social relations that co—constructivism instead to better repre- are not usually seen or are kept hidden.6 sent how science and culture “co—evolve.” Objectivity becomes a “positioned rational- For Harding, the term constructivism im- ity” (1991, 196), open to multiple connec- plies that “pre—existing, fully—formed tions. The reason that stand point theory, ‘societies’ just make up or construct the strong objectivity, and situated knowl- representations of nature that they want edges offer potentially mind altering ex- regardless of how the world around them periences for the feminist scientist is that is ordered” (1998, 4). I believe however, rather than placing value solely on aper- that to align research agenda choice in the spectival and mechanical objectivity, they natural sciences with social constructivist invite the engaged and invested investiga- or co—constructivist arguments would tor, who belongs to a community of know- be highly problematic. Feminist science ers, to practice her research agenda choice studies scholars, such as Haraway (1991), through a “positioned rationality.” Barad (2003), and Nancy Tuana (2001), have forwarded sharp criticisms of social constructivist arguments by raising POSITIONED RATIONALITY AND diffi cult questions regarding the issue of MATERIALITY materiality, particularly in the case of the Situated knowledges should be acknowl- natural and physical sciences. Both Barad edged for not being a theory that simply and Tuana suggest that when it comes reduces itself and the matter it touches, to the issue of materiality, the tendency into matter made apparent or assembled of feminist scholars and philosophers of only by the processes of social construc- science has been to easily slip into the tion. Rather, situated knowledge positions scientifi c realism versus social construc- the feminist scientist in order to engage tivism debate. Reiterating the tensions in a performative (to borrow from Barad’s and problems of this debate is not feasible use of the term) account of scientifi c in the scope of this essay, nor is it my in- knowledge production—one with which tention. Suffi ce to say, for the purposes of she is intimately connected and politically developing research agenda choice into a concerned. practice and putting to proper use our re- Indeed, some feminist science studies confi gured conceptions and possibilities scholars have previously attempted to infor objectivity, feminist interventions into corporate feminist values into science by science cannot be sustained if these efforts ASKING DIFFERENT QUESTIONS: FEMINIST PRACTICES FOR THE NATURAL SCIENCES | 231 are aligned with either realist or social con- conducting research if she were not constructivist arguments. Barad suggests: cerned with the questions she was asking or the outcomes of her work? But what A performative understanding of discursive happens after the feminist scientist has re- practices challenges the representationalist confi gured her sense of objectivity and be- belief in the power of words to represent pre- comes aware that she is embedded within existing things. . . . The move toward performa- the phenomenon? Can she take advantage tive alternatives to representationalism shifts the focus from questions of correspondence of a momentary “agential cut” (815) and use between descriptions and reality (for example, her feminist politics to have a hand in the do they mirror nature or culture?) to matters of arrangement of intra—actions for which practice/doings/ actions. (2003, 802) she will be held accountable? In other words, even though she may realize that Barad’s theory of posthumanist performa- she is part of the phenomenon, how can tivity offers new possibilities for dealing with she defi ne and then utilize her standpoint matter and bodies in the natural and physi- or situatedness in the scientifi c research cal sciences. While describing the problems that she conducts or research agenda in linking discursive practices to the materi- choices she makes? In their own ways, ality of the body and explaining her idea of strong objectivity, situated knowledges, agential realism, Barad also brings together and agential realism all help the feminist for us a reconfi gured objectivity that fully scientist reconfi gure her ideas of objectiv- employs the freedom of complexity. Mov- ity and connect with the scientifi c research ing Harding’s idea of strong objectivity and she conducts in more intimate and impli- Haraway’s depiction of objectivity as a posi- cated ways. I think, however, that we may tioned rationality even further, she states, best be able to address the issue of how the feminist scientist can localize her politics On an agential realist account, it is once again while she “enacts a local resolution” (815) possible to acknowledge nature, the body, within a phenomenon by turning to Chela and materiality in the fullness of their be- Sandoval’s concept of differential con- coming without resorting to the optics of sciousness (2000). transparency or opacity, the geometries of absolute exteriority or interiority, and the theorization of the human as either pure cause or MOVING TOWARD DIFFERENTIAL pure effect while at the same time remaining CONSCIOUSNESS: HOPSCOTCHING resolutely accountable for the role ‘we’ play in IN CYBERSPACE the intertwined practices of knowing and becoming. . . . On an agential realist account of In order to address the issue of how the technoscientifi c practices, the ‘knower’ does feminist scientist can engage in scien- not stand in a relation of absolute externality tifi c inquiry and practice research agenda to the natural world being investigated—there choice that is informed by the local politics is no such exterior observational point. It is of communities to which she belongs, I be- therefore not absolute exteriority that is the lieve that we must take a leap of faith, or at condition of possibility for objectivity but rather agential separability—exteriority least a leap between disciplines. My hope within phenomena. ‘We’ are not outside ob- here is to describe the process entailed in servers of the world.” (2002, 812, 828) taking such a leap, and in doing so, also fi nally attempt to develop a semiprescrip- Remaining accountable for the roles tive model of practices that can be used “we” play is the political part of this prac- by other feminist scientists to address the tice. Why would the feminist scientist be problem of research agenda choice. In her 232 | DEBOLEENA ROY

work, Chela Sandoval utilizes Haraway’s race, class, age, and more.8 She must also ideas of the cyborg identity and suggests learn to resist, for example, the sexist and that the cyborg is not just a human(oid) racist biases that run rampant within the creature born of our technological present theories, paradigms, and language used to and future. Although many theorists treat produce scientifi c knowledge. She is used the idea of the cyborg as a futuristic entity to “resistance—building.” But to be “effec- that has evolved through an age of opposi- tive in opposition,” the feminist scientist tional politics with globalization and tech- must also have a way to express her “differ- nology, Sandoval explains: ential consciousness” in the space where she resists.9 What I would like to suggest My argument has been that colonized peo- here is that while suspended in an “agen- ples of the Americas have already developed tial cut” (Barad 2003, 815), the expression the cyborg skills required for survival under of her differential consciousness can guide techno—human conditions as a requisite the feminist scientist through the practice for survival under domination over the last of research agenda choice, allowing her three hundred years. . . . Cyborg consciousness can be understood as the technologi- to politicize her engagement within the cal embodiment of a particular and specifi c processes of the scientifi c method and to form of oppositional consciousness that I embed her knowledge practices within a have elsewhere described as “U.S. third— community of marginalized knowers. world feminism.” (1995, 408) Sandoval argues that U.S. third—world feminism presents a new form of “histor- Like Sandoval, I interpret Haraway’s cy- ical consciousness” that developed just borg as a trope not only for the union of or- outside of the dominant feminist theory ganic material and technological machine that emerged in the 1970s (2004, 195). In but also primarily as a type of conscious- this consciousness, “no enactment is priv- ness that is based on the lived experiences ileged over any other, and the recognition and skills developed by several types of that each site is as potentially effective in marginalized people, including the colo- opposition as any other makes possible nized in the United States. In an attempt to another mode of consciousness” (200). integrate “U.S. third—world feminism” into Her aim is to harness the collective ener- U.S. feminist theory, Sandoval argues that gies of people seeking “affective liberatory the differential forms of oppositional con- stances in relation to the dominant social sciousness do not solely belong to the U.S. order” (2000, 43– 44). Sandoval states, third—world feminist but rather is threaded throughout the experience of social mar- The idea here, that the citizen—subject ginality and cyborg “politics” (1995; 2004). can learn to identify, develop, and control The feminist scientist is such a being the means of ideology, that is, marshal the who exists on the social margins she is knowledge necessary to “break with ideol- a cyborg.7 Bound to be an insider—out- ogy” while at the same time also speaking sider—within type of hyphenated creature, in, and from within, ideology, is an idea that cyborg politics may offer her a space for lays the philosophical foundations enabling us to make the vital connections between theoretical asylum. We can all agree that the seemingly disparate social and political in order for the feminist scientist to be- aims. . . . Differential consciousness is the ex- come a mutated modest witness and sur- pression of the new subject position called vive within the scientifi c institution, she is for by Althusser—it permits functioning required to form a resistance to a number within, yet beyond the demands of domi- of factors, depending on her sex, gender, nant ideology. (2000, 44) ASKING DIFFERENT QUESTIONS: FEMINIST PRACTICES FOR THE NATURAL SCIENCES | 233

Sandoval is suggesting that one can (5) differential movement (1995, 409). Put to- reside within an “ideology” in order to gether, these technologies are seen as a form change that ideology. This is where the of cyborg resistance. There are two main feminist scientist is at an advantage. As an reasons for choosing the methodology of the insider, she has intimate knowledge of the oppressed for my own work. First, I think that traditional scientifi c method and the dom- this methodology can be seen as an intricate inant ideologies infl uencing her research extension of standpoint theory and situated agenda choice. But as Sandoval suggests, knowledges, and is both logical and creative in order to change the dominant social in its design. Because of both its structure order created by traditional conceptions and fl exibility, it can be used to develop a of objectivity and scientifi c method, and semiprescriptive model of practices for the go on to create different scientifi c knowl- feminist scientist in the natural sciences. edge by “asking different questions,” the The second argument for using the method- feminist scientist must learn to identify, ology of the oppressed in my project is that develop, and control the means of ideology. it is simply too tempting not to. Sandoval is Indeed, Sandoval has named a “set of pro- fond of using technological metaphors, such cesses, procedures, and technologies for as vectors, for the description of very real so- decolonizing the imagination as the meth- cial maneuvers. I appreciate this willingness odology of the oppressed” (2000, 69). to move across disciplines, across liberat- Standpoint theory and situated knowl- ing causes, and across cyborg—inhabited edges help us recognize our place within spaces. Indeed, she has already started the ex- dominant ideologies. Sandoval’s methodol- periment from her location in the labs of the ogy of the oppressed takes this further and humanities and social sciences. But in order shows us how to develop and control these to make this political practice more acces- ideologies. As is the case with most feminist sible to the feminist scientist in the labs of theory, however, the insights and approaches the natural sciences, I would like to conduct of the methodology of the oppressed read- a technology—transfer of sorts. I would like ily translate into new research agendas for to mutate Sandoval’s mathematical vectors feminists residing within the humanities into biological vectors, also known as plas- and social sciences, while remaining an ab- mids. Biological vectors are used to introduce stract notion (if at all) to feminists within the “new” information into an organism. This natural sciences. For the remaining portion molecular biology—based technology is re- of this paper, I will attempt to begin this ferred to as transfection. For the remainder process—to move the feminist scientist from of this paper, I share a series of transfections a state of anxiety to a place of mutant mod - that introduces the methodology of the op- est witnessing by demonstrating the appli- pressed into the natural sciences. My hope cability of the methodology of the oppressed is to illustrate the relevance of this feminist in the practice of research agenda choice. theory to the feminist scientist and provide her with an example of how this political practice can be used to conduct her research VECTORS, TRANSFECTIONS, AND agenda choice. TRANSFORMATIONS Sandoval has described the methodology of TRANSFECTION 1: DIFFERENTIAL the oppressed as consisting of fi ve compo- MOVEMENT nents that she alternately refers to as “technologies”: (1) semiology; (2) deconstruction; For Sandoval, differential movement is a (3) meta—ideologizing; (4) democratics; and “split consciousness” where one is able to 234 | DEBOLEENA ROY

“shuttle between realities” and “see from practices while simultaneously seeing from the dominant viewpoint as well as one’s the dominant scientifi c viewpoint that ulti- own” (2000, 83). By shuttling between re- mately stabilizes her in “differential move- alities, a hyphenated creature is able co ment,” providing her with the impetus to go back and forth from the inside to the “ask different questions.” outside, and by doing this, even exist in In my case, for instance, the very fi rst an “interstitial site or third space” (2000, dilemma I faced in my Ph.D. work was re- 83). As described earlier, this third space, garding the use of animals in my research. or cyborg—space, is a familiar site for the In reproductive biology research, it is un- feminist scientist. Engaging in differen- usual to conduct experiments without tial movement will likely be dizzying for using what is referred to as “animal mod- the feminist scientist in the beginning, els.” I knew that killing and conducting but acknowledging a “split consciousness” research on animals was going to be exis a necessary fi rst step in developing the pected of me as a graduate student. And practice of research agenda choice. There- so, when the question came whether I had fore, the fi rst mutation to Sandoval’s meth- done animal work before, I responded that odology of the oppressed is to bring her I hadn’t and in fact planned on never con- last technology, the vector of differential ducting in vivo research to do my scientifi c movement, upfront in a feminist practice work. This dilemma produced a diffi cult of research agenda choice. If the feminist moment in my Ph.D. interview and in the scientist is able to appreciate the relevance years that followed. Fortunately, my su- of feminist theory for the natural sciences pervisor was supportive. She allowed me and reformulate her ideas of objectivity, to use an in vitro neuronal cell line to con- she should also have come to the realiza- duct my work and never pressured me into tion that her position as an insider outsider doing animal work. But at every step of the allows her to see from the dominant view- way, including my Ph.D. defense, I had to point as well as her own. This split con- defend myself to other scientists for not sciousness allows or even forces her to look conducting any of my research on “whole” at science differently than her nonfeminist animals. In retrospect, I now see that my peers. By looking at science differently, I decision not to conduct animal work was mean to suggest, for example, that she may not in and of itself what made my project be concerned with what counts as knowl- feminist, but was in fact an example of my edge and how knowledge is produced. She practice of research agenda choice. I was may be concerned about the theories and making a choice between using biological paradigms used to organize and conduct theories that support in vivo research ver- her experiments. She may also be con- sus those that support in vitro research. I cerned with the techniques used to con- was also making a theoretical choice be- duct research, gather evidence, and put her tween the materials of my research, which fi ndings into scientifi c language. Any one directly infl uenced the methods and tech- or all of the concerns above may present a nologies I used. Instead of using cages and dilemma for the feminist scientist and send an animal facility to house mice, I used her whirling. But at the same time, these plastic Petri dishes and a 37°C incubator to concerns present opportunities for prac- grow neuronal cells. My decision to use an ticing research agenda choice as a political in vitro model had its own problems, but action and from a position of differential ultimately, it was a very important decision consciousness. In fact, it is her ability to 6rst that stabilized me in my own differential articulate a dilemma in the science that she movement. Articulating my dilemma while ASKING DIFFERENT QUESTIONS: FEMINIST PRACTICES FOR THE NATURAL SCIENCES | 235 simultaneously seeing from the dominant distribution and dynamics of power that scientifi c tradition—at least enough to de- informs her as to what needs to change in fend my decision to conduct only in vitro this distribution. This may include changes research to other scientists—allowed me to in the ways an individual researcher inter- continue contributing to the production of acts with other researchers within the in- scientifi c knowledge. timate settings of her own lab, the ways in which experimental materials or subjects are handled, the language used to repre- TRANSFECTION 2: DEMOCRATICS sent scientifi c fi ndings, or even on a differ- I interpret Sandoval’s technology of dem- ent scale, the inequities within science that ocratics to be the driving force, the inspi- are produced at an institutional level such ration, and the motivation for wanting as gender disparities in hiring practices. change. Sandoval notes that such authors She may, however, have to choose the bat- as Frantz Fanon and Patricia Hill Collins tles for egalitarian relationships in which have referred to this technology as a type to invest her energies—step–by–step and of politics that demands for “egalitarian perhaps even day by day. social relations” (2000, 83). The demand In order to briefl y illustrate how the fem- for “egalitarian social relations” also ap- inist scientist may implement “democrat- plies to the feminist scientist, who like ics” into the practice of research agenda all other feminists is concerned with the choice, take for instance once again, the “redistribution of power” so as to elimi- choice between conducting in vivo and in nate injustices based on differences coded vitro research. A feminist scientist, con- under categories of race, gender, sex, age, cerned with the “redistribution of power” class, and others (112). In the case of the may be concerned with eliminating injus- feminist scientist in the natural sciences, tices based on perceived differences estab- she would be concerned with practicing lished through not only the categories of research agenda choice in such a way as to race, class, sex, and gender and so forth, but eliminate injustices that result from deci- also that of species. My exposure to animal sions regarding which scientifi c knowledge facilities, to some scientists who seemed to gets produced, the ways in which this sci- draw pleasure from killing animals, and to entifi c knowledge is produced, and whose the language of science which misleadingly lives are affected by this knowledge, both referred to the killing of animals as “sacri- in its production and consumption. For fi ce”—as if the animals willingly gave their instance, she may want to practice her lives for research purposes—led me to the research agenda choice so as not to base decision to use a cell line instead of ani- her research on the naturalization of in- mals. I chose to put my energies toward a equities that may be rooted in biological specifi c redistribution of power by fi nding determinism. alternate ways to continue my scientifi c However, to develop a strategy for the research. But my decision to redistribute “redistribution of power” in the natural power in this way was not without its own sciences, the feminist scientist must fi rst apprehensions. Starting from the mice that have a grasp of the “distribution of power” had to be killed years before I started my in her specifi c scientifi c setting. Her edu- Ph.D. work in order to develop the in vitro cation and training within the dominant cell line model that I used, to the principles traditions and institutions of science of reductionism and targeted mutagenesis would have provided her with this insight. used to create the cell line in the fi rst place, In fact, it is the experience of knowing the my demand for one egalitarian social 236 | DEBOLEENA ROY

relation led to an awareness of different case of designing transgenic animal mod- but related tensions that I would later try els for the study of disease. Scientists have to address within my scientifi c research. come to rely on these animals—these interested constructions—for their access to scientifi c knowledge and breakthroughs. TRANSFECTION 3: SEMIOTICS These transgenic animal models simulta- This technology has already been dealt neously represent that which we have no with to some degree while discussing previous knowledge of and therefore must Haraway’s theory of situated knowledges. become aware, that which is diffi cult to In the case of the methodology of the op- interpret and therefore requires endless pressed, semiotics involves learning the study, and that which we as scientists can “science of signs in culture” (Sandoval 2000, control and create—answers to our own 82) and “recognizing the dominant social riddles. Realizing the construction of this reality as an interested construction” (86). social reality and the contradictions that Drawing from the work of Frantz Fanon emerge can free the feminist scientist from and Roland Barthes, Sandoval states that following along with this particular domi- the “science of semiology,” so named by nant social order. Barthes, is a method for freeing consciousness from the domination of social order TRANSFECTION 4: DECONSTRUCTION and identifying the grounds for coalition among the “subordinated” (88). She goes Directly connected to the technology of on to say that a “commitment to sign read- semiotics is the technology of “decon- ing emerges as a means of survival” (86). struction,” which Sandoval defi nes as “the For the feminist scientist who has articu- process of challenging dominant ideologi- lated her anxiety—producing dilemma(s) cal forms” (2000, 83). The realization that through the technology of differential “ideology is a pattern” is integral to this movement, and is formulating her ideas on technology. Sandoval’s vector of decon- the distribution of power in the technol- struction aims to “un form” dominant so- ogy of democratics, the next step involves cial ideologies. To deconstruct dominant transforming her relationship within the social ideologies, however, the feminist sci- science that she practices. She begins this entist, being a novice sign—reader, must transformation with semiotics, the pro- once again go to the beginning and bring cess of sign reading. form to that which she must un—form. For For example, part of the dominant so- example, she must start seeing patterns in cial reality held by scientists in reproduc- the ideologies or paradigms used to create tive biology research is a shared belief in scientifi c knowledge. She must “tease open the validity of using in vivo animal models. to show the sticky economic, technical, po- The “animal model” is a sign that exists in litical, organic, historical, mythic, and tex- the culture of scientifi c enterprise. Har- tual threads,” which wound together make away has already discussed the sign of the the “knots of knowledge making practices” oncomouse at great length (1997). As the (Haraway 1997, 68) and thereby bring to term “model” connotes, these animals are light the socially produced consciousness used for the processes of meaning making. of her surroundings. Deconstruction in But not only are they used for the processes this sense then is the practice of revealing of meaning making, they are in some cases patterns of ideology by making connec- entirely constructed, literally and fi gurations not normally made, or in fact con- tively for this purpose, particularly in the structing new and alternate connections ASKING DIFFERENT QUESTIONS: FEMINIST PRACTICES FOR THE NATURAL SCIENCES | 237 while located within the margins. For the TRANSFECTION 5: feminist scientist, the fourth step of a fem- META—IDEOLOGIZING inist practice of research agenda choice involves bringing to light the hidden, but The last mutation to the methodology of ever present patterns of ideology that in- the oppressed places meta—ideologizing fl uence both the scientifi c paradigms and in the fi nal position in the practice of re- nonscientifi c beliefs on which she herself search agenda choice. As stated earlier, relies to produce scientifi c knowledge. one reason for choosing the methodology In my example, the sign of the animal of the oppressed is that it provides a semi- model represents a dominant ideological prescriptive analysis and practical frame- form. Most of the scientists with whom I work for change. According to Sandoval, have worked accept that one should never the technology of meta—ideologizing is rely completely on in vitro work as using the “operation of appropriating dominant an in vivo animal model interestingly ideological forms, and using them whole enough has come to represent a “(w)ho- in order to transform them,” which “is ab- listic” approach to conducting reproduc- solutely necessary for making purposeful tive biology research. It is conveniently interventions in social reality” (2000, 83). put aside that inserting genes into animal The feminist scientist is at an advantage as embryos in order to create transgenic an- an insider—outsider and has the opportu- imal models, keeping animals locked up nity to use this technology to intervene in in cages, or removing their gonads and the production of scientifi c knowledge by pumping them up with hormones may asking different questions.” She is perfectly be counterintuitive to the idea of working poised to meta—ideologize. She has the po- with “whole” animals. In fact, this is one tential through new scientifi c discoveries rare instance (and only because it is con- “either [to] display the original dominant venient) when most scientists will take a ideology as naive—and no longer natu- stance against reductionism. In vivo re- ral—or to reveal, transform, or disempower search or animal model work is a dominant its signifi cation in some other way” (109). ideological form in this scientifi c research With the goal of revealing, transforming, because there are knots of knowledge and/or disempowering dominant forms making practices that have supported it in of scientifi c ideology, meta—ideologizing making it so. In thinking about transgenic comprises the last step in the practice of animal model work, it is not a diffi cult task research agenda choice. to see the patterns in this dominant ideol- One last time, let us consider the de- ogy, starting from the use of subordinated cision to conduct in vitro versus in vivo bodies in medical and scientifi c research, research and what this may mean for a where the bodily histories of animals and feminist scientist in terms of practicing re- women have so often converged, to the search agenda choice as a political action. lucrative economic potential of a circular As a foundational tenet of modern science, ideology, whereby the scientist must con- reductionism—the idea that every complex stantly create and destroy the “object” of biological organism can be understood by study. These hidden patterns of ideology examining individual components and easily unwind in the case of transgenic an- simple mechanisms—is perhaps one of the imals and animal models more generally most dominant ideological forms that a to bring to light the socially produced con- feminist scientist will encounter. However, sciousness under which most scientists in in my own research in reproductive biology, this fi eld operate. I was concerned with another dominant 238 | DEBOLEENA ROY

ideology that although related to a great feminist scientist can use in her everyday extent to the ideology of reductionism, scientifi c activities. But by aligning dilem- also specifi cally framed parts of the female mas, research agenda choice and the ability body involved in reproduction in a hierar- to “ask different questions” with feminist chical relationship. My belief was and still practices, I have also attempted to create is that much of the scientifi c research that a conversation among feminist scientists, affects the reproductive and sexual health feminist science studies scholars, and phi- of millions of women around the world is losophers of science who, in my estimation, deeply infl uenced by this dominant ideol- are all concerned with these issues, even if ogy that places the brain in control of the for distinct reasons. As Rouse has stated pituitary gland and gonads. In my scientifi c while defi ning his idea of practice: work, I decided to use molecular biology techniques on an in vitro cell line, which This normative conception of practices . . . was itself produced through the principles changes how one should think about the se- of reductionism, to counter this hierarchi- mantic, epistemic, and political dimensions cal ideology. As an insider—outsider within of scientifi c practices, and about the ways they are interconnected. . . . Philosophical the dominant traditions of science, my refl ection upon practices conceived in this double serving of reductionism was in fact way must critically engage with the practices driven by my desire to intervene in a sci- themselves, in ways that are also account- entifi c construction that directly affected able to what is at issue and at stake in those the lives of women who use contraceptives practices. (2002, 162) and other hormone mediated reproductive technologies. I used the principles of re- This is where the creation and use of ductionism in order to develop a new fem- new feminist technologies as practices be- inist practice. By using reductionism in the come pivotal. Technology may be evil, but form of conducting molecular biology as technological illiteracy is worse. Calling well as in vitro research, I attempted to ap- upon technologies such as vectors and propriate this dominant ideology in order transfections in order to describe the po- to create new scientifi c knowledge and to litical maneuvers of a practice is a political speak to the very scientists who use reduc- maneuver. It is a way to engage critically tionism to develop the hierarchical model with the scientifi c practices themselves. If of reproductive biology in the fi rst place. It there is to be an ongoing interdisciplinary can be said that I “used” reductionism to conversation on practices between the au- try to “reveal, transform, and disempower” diences above, all parties concerned may the signifi cation of reductionism in an- have to tolerate metaphors, analogies, and other form. The research agenda choice perhaps even a little bit of humor. to conduct in vitro research may therefore I have chosen somewhat of a rhizom- be seen as a political maneuver, one that atic approach to map connections among has the potential to function at the level of standpoint theory, strong objectivity, situ- meta—ideologizing. ated knowledges, agential real ism, and the methodology of the oppressed, in order to develop what I think may serve as a series THE PROMISE OF NEW FEMINIST of loosely defi ned prescriptions and a suit- TECHNOLOGIES able framework for the practice of research I have attempted in this paper to speak to a agenda choice in the natural sciences. I have few different audiences. I am of course con- also attempted to reach out as a feminist cerned with formulating strategies that the scientist and follow the cues for transposing ASKING DIFFERENT QUESTIONS: FEMINIST PRACTICES FOR THE NATURAL SCIENCES | 239

differential consciousness into the natural scientists to conceptualize the female hypotha- sciences. More specifi cally, I have demon- lamic—pituitary gonadal (HPG) axis was that of a strated how the methodology of the hierarchy, with a region of the brain known as the hypothalamus in control (41). oppressed can be used to transform the tra- 4. I borrow the phrase anxiety—producing dilemma ditional scientifi c practices—from the inside. from Harding (2004b, 1). Drawing from the strengths of an insider— 5. I am drawing here from Barad’s use of the term outsider positionality, a feminist practice phenomena to mean “the ontological insepara- of research agenda choice is not meant to bility of agentially intra—acting ‘components.’ That is, phenomena are ontologically primitive completely discard or erase all of the tra- relations—relations without preexisting relata” ditional activities of scientifi c inquiry, but (2003, 815). rather to provide the feminist scientist with 6. While describing Haraway’s theory of situated the necessary tools to produce interruptions knowledges, Campbell notes that “situated or positive disruptions in the processes of knowledges then, offers a strategy for developing a feminist model of refl exive science stud- scientifi c knowledge making. It is a prac- ies but ultimately does not develop that model. tice that can transform anxiety—producing Despite its promise, “Situated Knowledges” does dilemmas into the ability to “ask different not answer the science question in feminism” questions.” This ability ultimately translates (2004, 173). I would disagree with Campbell’s into her power to produce different scien- assessment of the progress made by Haraway in developing and delivering a feminist model rel- tifi c knowledge, which at the end of the day, evant to the sciences. I see situated knowledges is the goal for every feminist scientist. and Haraway’s conception of the technoscientifi c body as stem cells and sticky threads as a “model in progress” that was not necessarily designed with the intent of providing an answer—or the NOTES answer. Rather they serve as means to fi nding I am grateful to the participants of the Feminist answers and toward developing feminist prac- Epistemologies, Methodologies, Meta physics, tices. Although it may not have “answered” the and Science Studies (FEMMSS) conference at the science question in feminism, I believe that situ- University of Washington for helping me formu- ated knowledges addressed the science question late ideas for this paper and to the participants of in feminism in a way that no other previous at- the Philosophy of Social Sciences Roundtable at tempts at theorizing feminist scientifi c practices the University of California, Santa Cruz, for com- had succeeded in doing. menting on an earlier draft. I would also like to 7. I am aware that Haraway, in her own words, has thank Hypatia’s reviewers for their generosity as “gone to the dogs.” In her recent work, The Com- academic mentors and for providing extremely panion Species Manifesto (2003), Haraway moves thoughtful criticisms. away from her use of the cyborg, explaining, “I have come to see cyborgs as junior siblings in the 1. “Asking different questions” is a phrase feminist much bigger, queer family of companion species” philosophers of science and feminist scientists (11), and that cyborgs can “no longer do the work commonly use while trying to describe the ways of a proper herding dog to gather up the threads in which feminism can intervene in the processes needed for critical inquiry” (4). of science. I fi rst came across this expression I choose, however, to continue using this while watching the fi lm Asking Different Ques- queer sib as a trope for the feminist scientist. At tions: Women in Science (1996). this point in my project, I may be more success- 2. I am grateful to my Ph.D. supervisor Denise ful in bringing feminist theory to the feminist Belsham for providing me the opportunity to par- scientist who is isolated in her lab by reaching ticipate in these research projects and to benefi t out with a cyborg appendage rather than a paw. from her expertise in reproductive neuroendocri- Once they’re in, I am all for things going to the nology and molecular biology. dogs. 3. In her infl uential work The Woman in the Body 8. Haraway has created the fi gure of the mutated (1987), Martin critiqued scientifi c theories used modest witness to help us imagine construc- to study menstruation and menopause. She made tive feminist engagements within the worlds of the observation that a common paradigm used by science and technology. She explains that her 240 | DEBOLEENA ROY

modest witness, instead of being “simply op- Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose science? Whose knowl- positional,” is by necessity implicated in the edge? Thinking from women’s lives. Ithaca, N.Y.: “net of stories, agencies, and instruments that Cornell University Press. constitute technoscience.” The task of the mu- — — — . 1998. Is science multicultural? Postcolonial- tated modest witness is to “learn and practice isms, feminisms, and epistemologies. Blooming- the mixed literacies and differential conscious- ton: Indiana University Press. ness that are more faithful to the way the world — — — . 2004a. A socially relevant philosophy of sci- works” (1997, 3). By moving from Haraway to ence? Resources from standpoint theory’s contro- Sandoval, my hope is to tease out and further versiality. Hypatia 19 (1): 25– 47. explain the relevance of practicing differential — — — . 2004b. Introduction: Standpoint theory as a consciousness to the feminist scientist who is site of political, philosophic, and scientifi c debate. living in the domains of the natural sciences. In The Feminist standpoint theory reader: Intellec- She is already an implicated modest witness, but tual and political controversies, ed. Sandra Hard- her mutation is required in order to ask different ing. New York: Routledge. questions successfully. Hess, David. 1997. Science studies: An advanced intro- 9. Resistance building, effective in opposition, and duction. New York: New York University Press. differential consciousness are all terms used by Hubbard, Ruth. 1995. Profi table promises: Essays on Sandoval (2000). women, science, and health. Monroe, Me.: Com- mon Courage Press. Irwin, Alan. 1995. Citizen science: A study of people, REFERENCES expertise, and sustainable development. New York: Routledge. Asking different questions: Women and science. 1996. Longino, Helen. 1993. Subjects, power, and knowl- Montreal: National Film Board of Canada. edge: Description and prescription in feminist Barad, Karen. 2003. Posthumanist performativity: philosophies of science. In Feminist Epistemol- Toward an understanding of how matter comes ogies, ed. Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter. New to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and York: Routledge. Society 28 (3):801– 31. Martin, Emily. 1987. The woman in the body: A cul- Belsham, Denise, et al. 1998. Regulation of gonadotro- tural analysis of reproduction. Boston: Beacon pin—releasing hormone (GnRH) gene expression by Press Books. 5a—dihydrotestosterone in GnRH—secreting GT1–7 Rouse, Joseph. 1996. Engaging science: How to un- hypothalamic neurons. Endocrinology 139: 1108–14. derstand its practices philosophically. Ithaca, N.Y.: Campbell, Kirsten. 2004. The promise of feminist Cornell University Press. refl exivities: Developing Donna Haraway’s proj- — — — . 2002. How scientifi c practices matter: Reclaim- ect for feminist science studies. Hypatia 19 (1): ing philosophical naturalism. Chicago: University 162– 82. of Chicago Press. Code, Lorraine. 1991. What can she know? Ithaca, Roy, Deboleena. 2007. Somatic matters: Becoming N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Daston, Lorraine. molecular in molecular biology. Special issue, Rhi- 1992. Objectivity and the escape from perspective. zomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge 14 Social Studies of Science 22 (4): 597– 618. (Spring). — — — ,and Peter Galison. 1992. The image of objec- — — — , and Denise Belsham. 2002. Melatonin recep- tivity. Special issue, Representations 40: 81– 128. tor activation regulates gonad otropin—releasing Douglas, Heather. 2004. The irreducible complexity of hormone (GnRH) gene expression and secretion objectivity. Synthese 138:453– 73. in GTl—7 GnRH neurons: Signal transduction Fischer, Frank. 2000. Citizens, experts, and the envi- mechanisms. Journal of Biological Chemistry 277: ronment: The politics of local knowledge. London: 251– 58. Duke University Press. — — — et al. 1999. Estrogen directly represses gonad- Haraway, Donna J. 1991. Simians, cyborgs, and women: otropin—releasing hormone (GnRH) gene ex- The reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge. pression in estrogen receptor—a (ER—a)— and — — — . 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.Fe- ER —expressing GT1–7 GnRH neurons. Endocri- maleMan©_Meets_Oncomouse™: Feminism and nology 140: 5045– 53. technoscience. New York: Routledge. Sandoval, Chela. 1995. New sciences: Cyborg fem- — — — . 2003. The companion species manifesto: Dogs, inism and the methodology of the oppressed. In people, and signifi cant otherness. Chicago: Prickly The cyborg handbook, ed. Chris Hables Gray. New Paradigm Press. York: Routledge. ASKING DIFFERENT QUESTIONS: FEMINIST PRACTICES FOR THE NATURAL SCIENCES | 241

— — — . 2000. Methodology of the oppressed. Minneap- Tuana, Nancy. 2001. Material locations: An interac- olis: University of Minnesota Press. tionist alternative to realism/social construc- — — — . 2004. U.S. third—world feminism: The theory tivism. In Engendering Rationalities, ed. Nancy and method of differential oppositional conscious- Tuana and Sandra Morgen. New York: SUNY ness. In Harding, Feminist standpoint theory reader. Press. Schiebinger, Londa. 1999. Has feminism changed sci- Wylie, Alison. 2004. Why standpoint matters. In Hard- ence? Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ing, Feminist standpoint theory reader.

CHAPTER 15

“Keep Life Simple”: Body/ Technology Relationships in Racialized Global Contexts Chikako Takeshita

After the birth of my second child in 2005, monthly period. As an environmentalist, I had my second IUD inserted. This time it I was pleased not to have to produce any was a Mirena, which releases a synthetic more tampon and sanitary napkin trash. progestin, levonorgestrel, from an intra- This was a wonderfully liberating corpo- uterine capsule and prevents pregnancy real experience.1 Mirena users who post for fi ve years without replacement. The their experience on the Internet often echo device is one of the most effective contra- my sentiment. One thirty-fi ve- year- old ceptive methods, comparable to surgical woman, for instance, wrote, “I LOVE my sterilization. In clinical trials, the preg- Mirena. . . . Mirena has made me feel free, nancy rate was less than I percent, and fer- not moody, no pain, no period.” 2 Internet tility returned to normal levels after users postings also reveal, however, that a sig- discontinued the device. The ParaGard, the nifi cant number of women are experienc- other IUD product available in the United ing undesirable side effects such as weight States, is a copper-bearing IUD that lasts gain, mood swings, and loss of libido. These ten years. Although the two types of de- symptoms were not frequently observed in vices have similar contraceptive effi cacy clinical trials but nevertheless are real and and reversibility, users of the two different bothersome for these women.3 Still other devices typically experience signifi cantly postings indicate that many women who different side effects. Whereas the copper are on Mirena after having tried other contends to increase menstrual bleeding and traceptive methods are satisfi ed with the cramping, the levonorgestral-releasing device. Sometimes Internet blogs mention IUD (LNG- IUD) reduces them. Clinical the women’s gynecologists, who are equally trials found that menstrual bleeding com- enthusiastic about this highly effective con- pletely stops in 20 percent of Mirena users, traceptive. These doctors believe the device a condition known as amenorrhea. is safe and free of adverse side effects, and Several months after the Mirena insertion, they view the altered menstrual pattern in a I developed amenorrhea, which I embraced. favorable light. As someone not particularly attached to Mirena is marketed successfully within menstruation as something that defi nes a pharmaceutical-marketing rubric of “life- my femininity, I greatly appreciated not style drugs.” In other words, when a woman having to endure the inconveniences and has a positive Mirena experience, the device physical discomfort that accompanied the is functioning as a pharmaceutical product KEEP LIFE SIMPLE | 243 that “promise[s] a refashioning of the mate- the cultural narrative that renders men- rial body with transformative life- enhancing strual suppression a positive lifestyle choice results.”4 In recent years, pharmacological had already been solidifi ed with period- therapies claiming to treat baldness, sleep reducing oral contraceptives, viewers were diffi culties, excessive weight gain, mild de- prepared to accept and appreciate the depression, general aging, and sexual perfor- vice’s major side effect as a bodily enhance- mance have become increasingly popular. ment. The advertisement, which shows a These medications are not treatments for mother of three young boys appreciating serious diseases. Rather, they treat or pre- her freedom from having to worry about vent various mild conditions that are often birth control, conveys two additional ways labeled a “problem.” Taking a drug not only the device improves women’s lives through resolves the problem, but may also enhance transforming the body. First, the ad sug- the individual’s life experience and produc- gests that the easy- to- use long- acting con- tivity. For instance, low libido is now consid- traceptive enables a woman to “keep life ered to be a health issue that can be fi xed by simple.” Second, it sends the message that medication for erectile dysfunction, which retaining the option to have more children could simultaneously contribute to a man’s is another lifestyle choice that Mirena, overall well- being by increasing his sexual a reversible method, allows a woman to appetite, restoring what he perceives to be make. To this end, the clip announces that his manliness, and improving his outlook the mother has “changed her mind” and on life.5 Similarly, decreased productivity at concludes with a picture of her holding an work might be treated with antidepressants, adorable new baby girl standing with the which are presumed to lift one’s mood and rest of her happy upper-middle- class sub- help get through tasks more easily. 6 urban white family. Menstrual regulation and suppression To an average TV watcher, Mirena ap- medications that have become popular are pears to be a new contraceptive product yet another type of lifestyle drug. Feminist with unique features that promise to make scholars Laura Mamo and Jennifer Fosket a user’s life better. The representation of the show that menstruation is cast as incon- lifestyle IUD, however, obscures the history venient, undesirable, and even unnatural of the device and the broad spectrum of bio- in the marketing campaigns of Seasonale, political interests that its development has the fi rst oral contraceptive to reduce the engaged along the way. This essay exam- number of menstrual periods from twelve ines the making of Mirena, while revealing to four a year. Various similar products are the behind-the- scenes aspects of this now now being offered as a seemingly natural increasingly popular contraceptive method solution to what is sometimes viewed as a and reconstructs the historical paths that nagging female problem. By changing the produced this device. This activity, which I material body, lifestyle drugs transform call diffraction after Donna Haraway’s op- life from the inside out. Direct marketing tical metaphor, shows how contemporary to consumers of pharmaceutical products IUDs came to be, while simultaneously communicate this idea by presenting im- grasping the multiple meanings the device ages of people whose lives are positively now embodies. The historical trajectories transformed by the medication. that made Mirena and the copper-bearing When Mirena appeared on the TV screen IUD ParaGard what they are today involved around 2007, the commercial only briefl y creating and reinforcing inequities among mentioned shorter, lighter periods as a women of different races, classes, nation- common occurrence in users. Yet because alities, ages, and levels of modernity. By 244 | CHIKAKO TAKESHITA

tracking the backstories of how Mirena is rates of the existing plastic devices, which represented, marketed, and embodied in ranged from 2.3 to 10.8 per 100 women in the global North, this essay brings into relief one year. The researchers were pleased to the transnational and racial political econo- fi nd that no one wearing the progesterone- mies of women’s bodies, health, and repro- releasing device got pregnant during the ductive interests. study. The hormonal compound available at the time, however, lasted for only about twelve weeks, making the life span of the FROM A POPULATION CONTROL device “too short . . . to be meaningfully TOOL TO A COMMERCIAL PRODUCT used in population control.”9 Nevertheless, The period- free IUD that some of us love the authors decided that what they had ob- was created over the course of three de- served showed enough promise to suggest cades. The fi rst study to look at the effect of further development of this method. intrauterine administration of hormones was supported by the Ford Foundation THE NEXT-GENERATION IUD and published in the journal Fertility and Sterility in 1970.7 The Chicago researchers Research on hormone-releasing IUDs who inserted progesterone- releasing cap- started at a time when developers were be- sules into the womb observed changes in coming frustrated with the performance the uterine lining similar to those induced of plastic IUDs. The effort to improve the by oral contraceptives. They concluded that inert devices by tinkering with their physi- locally administering a hormonal substance cal confi gurations seemed to take them no- in the uterus could be a way to increase the where. In the late 1960s, developers began contraceptive effectiveness of IUDs. investigating bioactive substances that Using discriminatory language common could be added to IUDs to simultaneously at the time to describe ideal IUD users, the increase contraceptive effi cacy, reduce ex- authors related their study to the need for pulsion rates, and decrease bleeding and population control. According to them, pain. The Population Council started de- women “in the less advanced countries” veloping copper-bearing devices with this who lack “sophistication and motivation” intention in 1969. Other bioactive com- were good candidates for this method be- pounds such as estrogen and antiproges- cause it achieves prolonged contraception tin substances were also experimentally “without special patient cooperation.”8 added to intrauterine devices, but these Early IUD studies presumed that women did not yield promising results. of the global South were not self- motivated This was also a time when the safety to contracept, which justifi ed the need for of the oral contraceptives was starting to this new birth control method that could be publicly questioned. It was becoming be imposed on women who, according to apparent that hormones from the oral the population control advocates, were contraceptive entering the bloodstream otherwise unwilling to limit their fertil- could cause severe headache, breast ten- ity or incapable of doing so. Studies of derness, and mood change, as well as rare hormone-releasing IUDs initially drew but serious adverse consequences such as their justifi cation from a perceived need to a fatal blood clot. This realization boosted increase reproductive control over former the idea of administering hormones lo- colonial subjects. cally in the uterus, which theoretically The primary goal of adding progester- would avoid systemic hormonal side ef- one to an IUD was to decrease pregnancy fects. Within a few years, the authors of KEEP LIFE SIMPLE | 245 the 1970 study managed to develop a de- Rebranded as Mirena in some other coun- vice that lasted six months. After testing tries, the device was inserted in approxi- it for twelve months, they concluded that mately 1 million women around the globe its contraceptive effect was very good, al- before it received approval from the U.S. though it needed to last longer for popu- Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in lation management.10 By the mid-1970s, a 2000 and started being sold to American California-based company independently women in 2001. developed and started marketing a one- year progesterone-releasing IUD they called THE NORPLANT SAGA Progestasert, which stayed on the market on a small scale for the next couple of Ironically, the Norplant, to which Mirena decades. 11 owed its hormonal compound, had been The development of a multiyear virtually withdrawn from the American hormone-r eleasing IUD, however, had to market by 2001. The social reception of wait for the discovery of a synthetic proges- the Norplant after its introduction in the tin with high potency per unit weight that United States in 1990 was “mired in contro- can be released slowly over many years. versy, suspicion, and even ethnic confl icts” Such a compound emerged several years due to socially problematic applications of later from the Population Council’s work to the device.16 The idea of the under- the- skin develop a hormone-releasing subdermal pill was conceived when the Population contraceptive implant. Sheldon Segal re- Council was seeking a superior long-acting counts his excitement when the idea of the reversible contraceptive after it had come “under-the- skin pill” came to him, and he to realize that the IUD would not fulfi ll its experimentally implanted capsules fi lled expectation to become the one- size- fi ts- with various hormones into rats in the all solution for the problem of excess fer- council’s laboratory. 12 Soon after, in 1970, tility in the global South. Norplant was in the Population Council established the In- essence the next-generation imposable ternational Committee for Contraception method and carried with it all of the prob- Research (ICCR) to facilitate collaboration lematic assumptions about controlling among a team of international scientists. what the council saw as “excessively fertile” The committee embarked on the develop- women’s bodies. The biopolitical quality ment of the subdermal contraceptive with embedded in the implant technology was Elsimar Coutinho of Brazil as the head of immediately expressed in the applications the project. 13 After testing no fewer than of Norplant in the United States. Within a ten compounds and a number of differ- few years, lawmakers proposed more than ent capsules and rods, the research team forty bills that either mandated Norplant selected levonorgestrel as the most prom- use for women who received government ising progestin and ultimately produced assistance or targeted women who are the contraceptive method known as the poor, convicted, or addicted to drug and Norplant.14 alcohol in order to prevent them from hav- Another ICCR scientist, Tapani Luuk- ing children.17 Norplant was also offered kainen of Finland, led the development of to poor inner-city adolescents at no cost the levonorgestrel-releasing IUD, and after in school- based clinics in Baltimore. The more than a decade of testing to determine contraceptive implant was also distrib- the appropriate dosage through a series of uted to the Native American population.18 clinical trials, he introduced it in Finland All of these applications were met with in 1990 with the brand name Levonova.15 suspicion due to the “deep worries about 246 | CHIKAKO TAKESHITA

discrimination in the United States on the Controversies and ethical debates around basis of class, race, and gender.”19 Norplant most likely discouraged lawmak- Some Norplant users also experienced ers to recommend any new policies that undesirable and often unbearable hor- involved long- term contraceptive meth- monal side effects, including headache, ods. Mirena has thus far not become a tar- acne, nausea, depression, scalp hair loss, get of public outrage, which has helped the weight gain, and irregular or heavy vaginal device maintain a neutral image. The pos- bleeding. 20 Yet these users could not easily itive acceptance of Mirena also can be at- discontinue the medication; they had to tributed to the fact that by 2001, the tragic have a trained health care provider remove incidents around the Dalkon Shield in the the Norplant, a painful procedure that in- 1970s had been forgotten and a new gener- volves making incisions in the arm, and ation of physicians and women was ready often had to pay for this as well. Thousands for a new contraceptive method. of women fi led lawsuits against its dis- Mirena’s manufacturer has also kept a tributor, Wyeth-Ayerst Pharmaceuticals, low profi le, advertising the product in par- claiming that the company failed to prop- enting magazines with images of content- erly inform users about removal problems looking well- to- do families and staying and adverse side effects. Most of the law- away from the population traditionally suits were settled out of court or dismissed, targeted in these problematic applications and the company never lost a suit. Wyeth of imposable methods. In constructing an nevertheless suspended Norplant sales in attractive product, the long- lasting effect the United States in 2000 after recalling a of the device, which was problematized in defective batch of the product and eventu- the context of coerced contraception, has ally withdrew the product completely from been recast as convenience with the assur- the American market. ance that the device can be removed if the Although Mirena is also a long- acting woman changes her mind. The device’s as- provider-dependent method using the sociation with population control has been same progestin as Norplant and both were virtually wiped out by the clean and liber- developed by many of the same research- ating image created by its TV commercial. ers, it has avoided being accused of dis- But this transformation did not occur criminatory applications and becoming a automatically or overnight. Changes in the target of concerted efforts to sue the pro- bleeding pattern caused by LNG-IUD took vider. In part, Mirena has been helped by the device down a meandering path that the timing of its release, which came after necessitated sorting out the meaning of lessons were learned from the Norplant this side effect. downfall. The Norplant controversy led to a public debate concerning moral and pol- THE PROBLEM OF MENSTRUAL icy challenges of long- acting birth control BLEEDING methods. The Hastings Center, a nonpar- tisan research institute specializing in bio- To discuss the issue of bleeding in IUD ethics and public policy, assembled a task users, it is necessary to start back once again force that issued a report in 1995 on the in the late 1960s when researchers admit- ethics of long- term contraceptives.21 Most ted that they had failed to develop an ideal members of the task force explicitly stated plastic device. They conceded that design that compulsory use of contraceptives innovation efforts focused too much on inis unjustifi ed for welfare recipients and creasing the contraceptive effi cacy and uter- generally in most other circumstances. ine retention and not enough on reducing KEEP LIFE SIMPLE | 247 side effects. Pain and bleeding resulted in so health concern; hence, some researchers many discontinuations of the contraceptive turned to measuring it in their studies. method that the U.S. Agency for Interna- Studies found that, on average, women lose tional Development (USAID) eventually de- about 35 milliliters of blood during a men- cided to prioritize funding for research on a strual period. Common plastic IUDs, which “bloodless, comfortable IUD.”22 Incidentally, were larger in size and therefore more irri- the 1970 study had found that intrauter- tating to the uterus than smaller copper- ine hormone capsules decreased uterine bearing IUDs, increased the blood loss by contractions and vaginal bleeding. IUD re- 20 to 50 milliliters. The smaller copper- searchers hence characterized progesterone bearing IUDs increased blood loss by only as a “uterine tranquilizer” and hoped that 10 to 30 milliliters, although they pro- future hormone-releasing IUDs would im- longed the period by two days. The partic- prove the overall effi cacy of the contracep- ular progesterone- releasing devices being tive method by reducing cramping, pain, tested decreased blood loss by 40 percent.25 and bleeding.23 Although no research had confi rmed that Although researchers knew these side IUDs could cause anemia, developers sug- effects were an obstacle to broader ac- gested that increased menstrual bleeding ceptance of IUDs, data to understand the might cause the health of poor women of problem in detail were scarce. Complaints the global South to decline since approxi- of pain and discomfort were often charac- mately half of them already had anemia or terized as psychological, and physicians were borderline anemic. These data raised dismissed them as a normal part of using some hope in the minds of researchers that the device for which certain women had hormone-releasing IUDs might be distrib- low tolerance thresholds. The Coopera- uted to women of the global South as pro- tive Statistical Program (CSP), the mul- tection against anemia.26 tilocation large-scale statistical program that took place between 1963 and 1968 THE CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF and validated the contraceptive effi cacy MENSTRUATION of the IUD, refl ects a lack of emphasis on women’s subjective experiences. The study In the meantime, IUD developers also simply bundled “bleeding and/or pain” began to notice that dropout rates of sub- as a single category of reason for IUD rejects from their studies who complained of moval.24 It did not provide information on bleeding and pain varied dramatically from whether the patient requested removal place to place. A 1970 study of 14,000 users because she could not tolerate menstrual in thirty countries found that removal due cramping, had debilitating abdominal or to bleeding and pain was relatively rare in back pain, experienced too much bleed- Europe. Yet they found signifi cant variance ing, found her period unacceptably pro- in the global South. Parts of India, for ex- longed, had too much midcycle spotting, ample, had a much higher incidence of or experienced some combination of sym- dropouts from studies compared to other ptoms. This made it impossible to analyze parts of the country, whereas incidents in the relationship between side effects and the Philippines were much lower.27 removal in detail. These fi ndings prompted the Popula- Because pain is diffi cult to measure ob- tion Council to sponsor another study, jectively, systematic research on pain with this one investigating the effect of culture IUD use is almost nonexistent. Blood loss, on IUD acceptance. Elizabeth Whelan re- however, is quantifi able and is a source of ported that Orthodox Jewish women were 248 | CHIKAKO TAKESHITA

fi ve times more likely than non- Orthodox and Pakistan and three- quarters of Yugosla- Jewish women to discontinue the IUD on vian Muslim women believed that a woman account of prolonged or irregular bleed- should not visit temples when she is bleeding because their religious practice man- ing. The study also found that while many dated that women refrain from various women felt that increased blood loss would religious, daily, and sexual activities during make them physically weaker, some also their period. She also identifi ed religious believed that decreased blood loss would texts that could have similar effects on cause discomfort due to retention of blood women of other faiths.28 Subsequently the within the body. Importantly, the study con- 1979 Population Reports, which summa- cluded that most women did not want any rized the status of IUD research for family changes in their menstrual patterns. planning programmers and other health As the WHO report was coming out, professionals, stated: “In countries where the Population Council discovered that menstruating women are not permitted to its latest levonorgestrel-releasing device prepare certain foods, carry on their usual was experiencing a 20 percent discontin- household tasks, perform religious rites, uation rate due to amenorrhea or other or engage in sexual intercourse, any pro- hormonal side effects.31 At this early phase longation of bleeding or midcycle spotting in the testing of the device, researchers disrupts personal and household routines. had not understood that levonorgestrel As a result, not only the IUD user but also stopped menstrual bleeding altogether in her husband and mother-in- law may in- 20 percent of users. The initial high drop- sist on removal of the device.” 29 This shows out rate therefore was later attributed to that users’ cultural beliefs began to be seen uninformed physicians who removed the as part of the problem that led to the dis- device out of concern that was actually un- continuation of IUDs. warranted. But this explanation provided As an organization overseeing repro- only a small consolation since the WHO ductive health around the globe, the World study had also found that the majority of Health Organization (WHO) also recog- women interviewed stated that they were nized that menstrual disturbances, such as “not prepared to accept” a contraceptive if no bleeding, excessive bleeding, or irregular it led to amenorrhea. 32 The rates of women bleeding, were responsible for one-fourth to rejecting amenorrhea varied from 53 per- one-half of all fi rst-year dropouts of contra- cent of British women to 91 percent of Pun- ceptive methods such as the IUD, progestin- jab women in Pakistan, while their reasons only oral contraceptive, progestin-estrogen ranged from fear of impairing their health combination pill, and progesterone injec- by disallowing what they viewed as “bad tion. Between 1973 and 1979, the WHO con- blood” to purge and reluctance to tamper ducted an investigation of attitudes toward with nature to the negative indications of menstruation among 5,000 women from menopause and infertility associated with fourteen cultures.30 Interviews with women having no periods. affi rmed that an increase in the number Defying the original expectation that re- of bleeding days might be unacceptable in duced blood loss and less cramping with certain cultures because it interferes with progesterone- releasing devices would in- day-today household or religious activities. crease IUD acceptance in the global South, Three- quarters of the Hindu women inter- the 1982 Population Reports concluded that viewed, for instance, said they avoided cook- removal rates in several trials were similar to ing for their families during menstruation; or worse for the hormone- releasing devices almost all respondents in Egypt, Indonesia, as compared to the copper- bearing ones.33 KEEP LIFE SIMPLE | 249

Although levonorgestrel had achieved the the copper-bearing to the levonorgestrel- “bloodless, comfortable IUD” sought by releasing device found that the continu- USAID, the cultural signifi cance of men- ation rate of the latter was signifi cantly struation appeared to be working against lower due to amenorrhea and irregular the acceptance of an otherwise effective de- bleeding.36 The seven-year study initiated vice. As this perception unfolded, the con- by the Population Council, which took ceptual division between users of the global place mostly in clinics located in the global North and South widened. South, including Brazil, Egypt, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, and Singa- pore, also showed a better continuation CONFIGURING THE MODERN rate for the copper- bearing device.37 The WOMAN/CONSUMER double-blind test protocols that prevented The WHO study also offered subtle yet physicians from providing adequate coun- signifi cant insight into who may be more seling about amenorrhea may have in- inclined to accept modern contraceptive creased the number of removals in these methods that alter menstrual patterns. trials. But this background was obscured For instance, the report noted that be- when the 1995 Population Reports simply liefs associated with menstruation, such noted that LNG-IUD removal rates were as that one should not bathe or visit the higher than copper- bearing IUDs in the temple while bleeding, were more com- global South due to amenorrhea.38 The re- monly held by “older, less educated, rural port left the impression that LNG- IUD was women.” In contrast, a woman who was not well suited for women in underdevel- “prepared to accept” amenorrhea was re- oped areas who embody premodern ideas portedly “younger, better educated, [and] about menstruation. urban.”34 Family planning in the global The Population Reports then presented South has been closely linked to the idea a contrasting conclusion from a European of modernity representing enlightenment study, which had resulted in less common values of secularism, rationality, scientism, discontinuation for bleeding and pain with and optimism for the future. As Nilanjana the LNG- IUD than with the copper IUD.39 Chatterjee and Nancy Riley point out, the The comparable success of the LNG- IUDs modern subject has been construed as a in the European study conducted in Den- rational, autonomous individual who can mark, Finland, Hungary, Norway, and Swe- control her environment and shape her den was attributed to having provided own future by embracing scientifi c knowl- detailed information regarding the contra- edge and technological innovations.35 As ceptive method to the women who recei- researchers took notice of the cultural sig- ved it. Health care personnel in the European nifi cance of menstrual disturbance, how- trial explained to their patients how the ef- ever, they began to see that some women fect of the hormone reduces the buildup of who lacked education and led a preindus- the uterine lining that sheds during men- trial lifestyle were not modern enough to struation. They also informed them that accept scientifi c methods of fertility con- amenorrhea is not a sign of pregnancy or trol that change bleeding patterns. menopause, that the ovarian function is The presumed unpreparedness of women continuing even in the absence of men- of the global South to accept the new contra- struation, and that amenorrhea does not ceptive was compounded by the way clinical reduce the ability to conceive after remov- studies in the region were interpreted and ing the device. In addition, Scandinavian represented. An Indian study comparing women were told that the LNG- IUD had a 250 | CHIKAKO TAKESHITA

high level of effectiveness, which moti- always cultural and there exists no neu- vated them to continue using the method. tral biological language that is equivalent Some were also advised of the device’s across cultures. Insisting on Western scien- benefi ts, such as increased hemoglobin, tifi c understandings of reproduction thus better iron stores, general well-being, and could constitute “epistemological coloni- relief from dysmenorrhea and prolonged zation” or violence.43 bleeding. Information regarding what women should expect to experience with WRITING OFF LESS MODERN WOMEN this device as well as its health benefi ts were also disseminated through mass After the comparative clinical trials in the media. Tapani Luukkainen, whose name is global South showed a lower retention rate often associated with the invention of for hormonal devices, there has been lit- LNG- IUDs, explains that offering open tle attempt to see if acceptance by these and accurate information has contributed women could be improved if they were to the acceptance of this method of “adequately advised.” In fact, interest in contraception.40 women who were not ready to accept Based on the positive responses in Eu- amenorrhea faded as researchers turned rope, Luukkainen announced: “When ade- their attention to women who might “learn quately advised beforehand, most women to like” the period- less lifestyle. If there are who develop amenorrhea learn to like the indeed health benefi ts of this device, such new freedom.”41 This seemingly nonprob- advantages are being denied to women of lematic statement fails to recognize that the global South, who are implicitly writ- a medicalized explanation of the female ten off as being not modern enough to ap- reproductive system may have resonated preciate the new technology. with the women in the European study Perhaps IUD developers have simply lost due to their cultural upbringing. Medical interest in women who they deem as less anthropologist Emily Martin has found modern. But there is also little incentive that middle-class American women more for family planning supporters to strongly readily identifi ed with the scientifi c model promote the distribution of this device of menstruation as compared to working- overseas, now that the copper-bearing de- class women, who resisted medical expla- vices are widely accepted. This is partic- nations of their embodied experiences.42 ularly so since they are just as effective in Martin’s fi ndings suggest that certain preventing pregnancy and are much more groups of women are more amenable to economical. When asked whether USAID seeing their bodies in physiological terms, would provide Mirena to overseas family making them good candidates for accept- planning programs, Dr. James D. Shelton, ing the information of the hormonal effects senior medical scientist of the agency’s Of- on their reproductive systems. Luukkainen fi ce of Population, gave this answer on his does not address how “adequate advising” Q&A Web site, Jim Shelton’s Pearls: “Cost may work for women whose understand- is likely to be an insurmountable hur- ing of their bodies departs signifi cantly dle. . . . Bear in mind, the Copper- T- 380A from the medicalized version. His sugges- is an excellent and inexpensive IUD. So tion to educate women may certainly be after factoring in the costs of introducing effective for the middle class of the global a new method, the advantages of Mirena North but does not necessarily take all would only justify USAID large-scale pro- women into consideration. In fact, as Stacy curement in the face of a very attractive Pigg points out, knowledge of bodies is price.” 44 This statement construes Mirena KEEP LIFE SIMPLE | 251 as being too expensive for aid agencies to acceptance evaporated. Developers instead supply to women in the global South be- found new interest in applying the device’s cause the copper T is an adequate cheaper unique side effect to gynecological treat- alternative. ments, as we shall see next. Looking at In order to close some of the economic these ironic transitions teaches us a few gap, the Population Council and Mirena things: biopolitical investments in women’s manufacturer Schering Oy established the bodies diverge over space and time; devel- International Contraceptive Access Foun- opers transfer their interests from one type dation (ICA) in 2004. ICA offers a combi- of device application to another without nation of donation and subsidized sale explicit refl ections on how they perpetuate (for a maximum of $40 per device) to the inequality; and technological practices are public sector for a limited number of units. imagined with implicit assumptions about The ICA also conducts projects in twelve differences between women of the global countries supporting Mirena use in family South and North. Signifi cantly, shifting in- planning programs.45 Nevertheless, the $40 terests kept the momentum for the explo- price tag is still vastly more expensive than ration of hormone- releasing devices. the $1.64 that USAID supplies the copper T for. Copper IUDs can actually be obtained A CONTRACEPTIVE WITH as cheaply as $0.25 a unit. 46 The economic THERAPEUTIC PROPERTIES factor clearly widens the gulf between the reproductive choices of women in the One such interest was the idea of turn- global North and South. ing the hormone-releasing IUD into a The economic divide is present in the therapeutic device. When the original United States as well. Mirena costs around progesterone- releasing devices were found $500 at a doctor’s offi ce, compared to to decrease menstrual blood loss by 40 about $250 for ParaGard, in addition to the percent, researchers toyed with the idea offi ce visit charges and fees for screening of using hormonal IUDs to treat or pre- tests.47 State Medicaid programs may cover vent anemia. Applying the device to ane- Mirena at various levels of reimbursement, mia was a logical extension of their initial and an uninsured patient whose income goal to improve the method’s acceptance is below the poverty level can apply for in the global South: the device would be a free device with her provider through more attractive if it could be argued that it a program funded by Bayer HealthCare had additional health benefi ts for the pop- Pharmaceuticals.48 More often than not, ulation. To this end, the ICCR conducted however, women must cover all or part of a study in the Dominican Republic in the the expense. Paradoxically, despite the high late 1980s and found that the LNG- IUD ap- initial cost, IUDs, including the Mirena, are pears to reduce the proportion of women the most cost-effective form of reversible with clinical anemia and improve their contraception. 49 iron level.50 Researchers concluded that As ideas formulated regarding who would the device might become a strong health- accept a device that dramatically changes enhancing tool since it both prevents preg- menstrual patterns, who could be edu- nancy, which depletes women’s energy, cated to appreciate decreased menstrual and decreases blood loss that leads to ane- bleeding, and who could afford the high mia. In other words, investigation into ap- initial expenses, the original intention to plying the device for the improvement of promote the hormone- releasing IUD in women’s health was initiated in relation- the global South to boost contraceptive ship to a disease that is more prevalent in 252 | CHIKAKO TAKESHITA

the global South. Applications to other gy- endometriosis (uterine-lining- like tissue necological conditions, however, quickly growing outside the uterus, which can took over. cause debilitating pelvic pain and can also In a 1995 article, Tapani Luukkainen cause internal organs to fuse together), ad- and Juhani Toivonen reconceptualized the enomyosis (uterine lining tissue that grows levonorgestrel-IUD as a contraceptive with inside the muscular wall of the uterus, “therapeutic properties.”51 They reported causing pain), uterine fi broids, uterine that the LNG- IUD dramatically improved polyps, and endometrial carcinoma (uter- the conditions of women who suffered ine cancer).53 The possibility of seeking excessive menstrual bleeding, a condi- FDA approval to prescribe the device as tion called menorrhagia, and that the de- the progestin component of hormone re- vice might offer an alternative for surgical placement therapy for menopausal women treatments such as hysterectomy and was also discussed. 54 Overall, the research- endometrial ablation (destroying of the ers were excited about conducting more uterine lining). They introduced fi ndings studies and the possibility of their device’s that showed the LNG- IUD reduces endo- being offered as an alternative treatment metrial hyperplasia, or the excess growth to surgery or oral progestin treatments for of the uterine lining, which occasionally many gynecological disorders. Incidentally, leads to uterine cancer. They announced Mirena received FDA approval in early 2010 that these “promising fi ndings” warrant for the treatment of menorrhagia. further investigations into the use of the The growing interest in the therapeu- device to treat this problem. 52 They also re- tic use of the LNG-IUD further steered its ported that some observations suggested researchers away from their initial neo- that long-time use of the device reduced Malthusian intentions to distribute the the incidence of uterine fi broids (benign device to women in the global South. Pre- uterine tumors that can cause painful peri- venting or healing disease and maintain- ods, back pain, and sometimes infertility). ing the health of their own patients as well And they added that the LNG- IUD could as encouraging their colleagues to adopt also be used to prevent the endometrium this new technique, have instead become from cancerous growth in women who are the new biopolitical interest for Mirena taking estrogen to manage menopausal researchers. symptoms. Luukkainen’s enthusiasm was amplifi ed THE BIOPOLITICAL SCRIPT ten years later, in 2005, at the Fifth Inter- OF MENSTRUAL SUPPRESSION national Symposium on the Intrauterine TECHNOLOGIES Devices and Systems for Women’s Health sponsored by the Population Council Surpassing the device’s promise for the and the United Nations Population Fund, diseased patients is the appeal that device- which I attended. Nearly half of the pre- induced menstrual pattern changes has for sentations focused on the levonorgestrel general consumers. Contraceptives that intrauterine system, many of them dis- are approved as menstrual management cussing experiences or the possibilities of methods have paved the way for Mirena applying the device to treatment or preven- to be perceived as having a similar benefi t. tion of gynecological conditions. Illnesses Less apparent is the fact that the histories mentioned included menorrhagia, dys- of these medications are intimately linked menorrhea (menstruation accompanied to the development of the LNG- IUD with by severe pain), endometrial hyperplasia, overlapping researchers. KEEP LIFE SIMPLE | 253

natural event that is somehow benefi cial to IS MENSTRUATION OBSOLETE? women has no scientifi c basis. Contraceptive developers were paying at- Since there were no products indicated tention to altered menstrual patterns be- for menstrual suppression on the market yet, fore they became an issue for IUD users. Coutinho and Segal proposed that women During the 1950s, Gregory Pincus, the should start using available methods to stop inventor of the fi rst oral contraceptive, menstruation “with the cooperation and su- noticed that his trial subjects became dis- pervision of their physicians.”58 This could tressed when they experienced amenor- be done, for instance, by skipping the sugar rhea, which led him to believe that women pills in standard oral contraceptives. The wanted to feel that they were menstruating authors predicted that suppressing men- naturally. Then the director of biological struation “would forge a major advance in research of G. D. Searle, the fi rst company women’s health, led by women” and that to market oral contraceptives, told Pincus “today’s proposal would become tomor- that he “did not want to take part in the row’s new paradigm.” 59 Subscribing to the development of any compound that might idea that biological differences hold women interfere with the menstrual cycle.”55 In re- down and proposing to liberate them from sponse, Pincus devised a way of mimicking their innate imperative, the authors quoted nature by creating the seven-day bleeding the most prominent birth control activist of period every twenty-one days, which is all times, ending the book by stating, “The actually caused by taking sugar pills for a pioneer feminist Margaret Sanger wrote ‘No week instead of hormones.56 The inventors woman is completely free unless she has of the oral contraceptive thus effectively control over her own reproductive system.’ confi gured a woman whose “normal” pe- Let this new freedom begin.”60 Their pre- riods consist of a twenty-eight- day men- diction about the new paradigm has for the strual cycle twelve times a year. most part come true. Although pharmaceu- Forty years later, contraceptive research- tical companies, instead of women, led the ers started to reconfi gure the menstruat- way with their new products, the idea that ing subject. After decades of experience a woman could suppress her menstruation with contraceptive methods that inadver- to free herself from an unnecessary burden tently affected menstrual patterns, Elsimar has taken hold among consumers in North Coutinho and Sheldon Segal, who were America and Europe. involved in the development of both the Norplant and the LNG-IUD, published Is MARKETING MENSTRUAL Menstruation Obsolete? Their 1999 book SUPPRESSION PRODUCTS contends that menstruation is “an unnecessary, avoidable byproduct of the human Laura Mamo and Jennifer Fosket illustrate reproductive process.” 57 The authors state how Seasonale, an oral contraceptive that that regular and recurrent menstruation produces menses-like bleeding cycles four throughout most of a woman’s fertile years times a year, rewrote the norms of menstru- is a fairly recent phenomenon of the ination and menstruating subjects through its dustrialized world: women used to have product campaign. In the absence of either very few periods when they nursed babies pathology or an at-risk state that requires for an extended period of time and gave medication, the Seasonale campaign con- birth multiple times throughout their re- structed menstruation as an inconvenience productive lives. The authors argue that the and an obstacle that the drug could elimi- common perception that menstruation is a nate. It told women, “There is no medical 254 | CHIKAKO TAKESHITA

reason to have [a period] when you are on meaningful positive changes in the identi- the pill,” suggesting that since the periods ties and lives of their users. that pill users experience are in effect created by the medication, reducing the fre- MIRENA’S ADDITIONAL BENEFIT AND quency of unnatural periods is perfectly GOVERNMENTALITY reasonable. 61 Its marketing discourse also “produced associations between cleanli- Mirena is not explicitly marketed as a men- ness and femininity, between freedom of strual regulation product. Yet some of its movement and women’s bodies, and be- informational material, such as the pam- tween limited menstrual fl ow and natural phlet provided to prescribing physicians, embodiment,” thereby reconfi guring the highlights the side effect as an “additional nonmenstruating woman as desirable and benefi t.”63 The 2006 educational DVD for feminine.62 patients also promotes this aspect with Since the launch of Seasonale by Du- an illustrative episode of an apparently ramed Pharmaceuticals in 2003, a number athletic career- oriented woman, who rec- of similar products have been introduced. ommends Mirena to her sister because Seasonique from Duramed also induces she likes not having her period. The 2008 menstrual-like bleeding every three months. TV commercial, which introduced the The TV commercial for this product shows product widely to prospective consum- a physician, who announces, “There is no ers, merely mentions a “shorter lighter medical need to have a monthly period period” as a common side effect. Yet since on the pill. Lots of women are having four many women are already familiar with periods a year.” Based on what she learned menstrual- suppression contraceptives, from the doctor, a young woman in the ad they are likely to interpret reduced bleed- decides to use the drug, conveying to the ing as a bonus feature. viewers that such a decision is a logical Women who blog about how much they one. A rival product, Loestrin 24 Fe from love Mirena regularly attribute their satis- Warner Chilcott, reduces monthly bleed- faction to their nonmenstruating bodies ing to three days or less. This product is as much as they do to not having to worry marketed with a catchphrase, “Say so long about forgetting to take the pill.64 The pre- to a period that’s too long.” Its advertise- cedence of menstrual-suppression med- ment features Cammie, a young, active, ications prepared Mirena users to view and attractive woman living in an artsy their experience with the device as an en- neighborhood in New York City. Suggestive hancement of lifestyle. These commercial scenes of a bouquet of red roses and of a products have reconfi gured menstruation man’s arm around her waist send the mes- and the menstruating subjects, success- sage that the drug produces an appealing fully transforming the meaning of monthly heterosexual female body that is available periods from a necessary part of womanly for sex for more days each month. Finally, embodiment to an event that can be ma- the most recent product, Lybrel from nipulated to suit one’s lifestyle. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (now Pfi zer), elim- A biopolitical script based on market inates bleeding entirely within about six logic and capitalist lifestyle has been co- months by continuously taking progestin- confi gured into menstrual- suppressing estrogen combination birth control pills. contraceptives. As Patrick Joyce points out, As with other lifestyle drugs, modifying the the emergence of liberalism in Europe “dematerial body with menstrual suppression pended on cultivating a certain sort of self, products produces culturally and socially one that was refl exive and self-watching.” 65 KEEP LIFE SIMPLE | 255

The enlightened women who make con- racialization and economics, promotional scious decisions about how they are going materials for the devices within the United to manage their reproductive lives and States reveal that biopolitical interests are maximize their bodily functions to live segmented based on race and class, mir- life smartly and productively are ruled roring American social relations. through freedom. The marketing of this Terri Kapsalis makes a similar obser- lifestyle drag relies on self-governing sub- vation in a three-page Norplant adver- jects whose desires are cultivated through tisement printed in a nurse practitioner’s the advertising, who exercise their right to journal in 1992, arguing that they implic- manage their own fertility, and who choose itly reinforce race-based reproductive to maintain their reproductive health. In politics.66 Both of the two white women the context of the American market, the featured in the ad have children and ap- biopolitical subjects of the long-acting pear modern, wealthy, and family oriented. menstrual-free IUD are largely invested The fi rst woman chose Norplant because in as a site of consumption rather than she is mostly certain that she completed as an overtly fertile population. They are her family but would like to leave open the subjects of liberal governmentality. A the option of having more children, while closer investigation of how IUD users are the second one is using the implant to represented in product promotional ma- time the birth of the next child she plans terials, however, offers additional insight to have. Both are photographed with their into how governance over women’s bodies children. The African American woman is delicately differentiated at intersections in the advertisement, in contrast, has no of race and class. children. Rather, she is using Norplant so that she can fi nish nursing school before she has a family. Kapsalis points out that THE RACIAL ECONOMY OF IUD the representation of the childless African PROMOTION IN THE UNITED STATES American woman refl ects the idea that a Marketing endorsements of IUDs today black woman should establish herself eco- argue that the contraceptive method has nomically before she has children and sig- advantages over the pill and barrier meth- nals that Norplant will aid this process. She ods because it has long-term effectiveness argues that these advertisement images that offers convenience and a lower rate of and narratives “play into current dominant user failure. They also promote it as being constructions of proper African American favorable compared to surgical steriliza- women’s reproductive identity.” 67 I would tion: the device’s contraceptive effect is add that a strong expectation toward fam- reversible, and it preserves future fertil- ily orientedness in white women is also ity. Not all women’s reproductive choices, embedded in these advertisements. however, are represented equally in the ad- Subtle but racially distinct similar mes- vertisements. The device’s benefi ts tend to sages are present in the marketing of be advertised through representations of IUDs. Of the two products available in women who are subtly differentiated in ac- the United States, the ParaGard Web site cordance with cultural expectations about shows far more diversity than the Mirena how certain groups of women should reg- site.68 Women represented on the Mirena ulate their reproductive capacities. While site are mostly upper-middle- class white the construction of the North/South di- women with their male partners and chil- vide in IUD applications refl ected ideas dren; only one light- skinned African Amer- about modernity based on regionalized ican woman can be found posing with her 256 | CHIKAKO TAKESHITA

even lighter- skinned baby girl, but without as a good option for them because their a male partner, in a tastefully decorated chaotic lives with children make it chal- nursery.69 One can deduce that the primary lenging to remember to take the pill. One target niche market for this product is well- of them (whose feature can also be read as to- do mothers. a non–African American woman of color) In comparison, ParaGard reaches out is pregnant with her second child and asks to a broader consumer base, includ- her gynecologist if Mirena is right for her; ing women who have not had children. the white female doctor assures her that it The product home page features fi ve ra- is not too early to plan on getting it during cially diverse women. With a scroll of the her postnatal checkups. An ideal user for mouse, the viewer can read the reason Mirena as represented in this episode reit- each woman chose ParaGard. The Asian erates the notion that the IUD is a suitable woman, who is “single and planning for contraceptive for women who are unre- the future,” is “in a serious relationship, liable pill users (who are often marked by but not ready for a family.” She represents their race, class, and young age) and for a woman of color who is expected to es- restraining the fertility of women of color. tablish her livelihood before she has chil- The three educational DVD episodes dren. The race of the woman in a business involving white women include the one I suit standing confi dently in the center have already mentioned, which features can be read as either a dark-haired white an athletic businesswoman who appre- person or a very light-skinned Latina. She ciates not having her period. The second represents a career- oriented woman who skit shows a new mom with her husband. wants to put off having a family. One of the She wishes she did not have to fi ddle with African American women appeals to pro- the diaphragm whenever the couple fi nally spective users who are “concerned about has a moment to themselves. Sure enough, hormonal health risks” and want “highly her doctor recommends Mirena. This sce- effective birth control” without hormones nario highlights the sexual spontaneity and their side effects. The other African and convenience that Mirena users in a American woman is “living the change stable relationship enjoy. The last episode of life” and represents older consumers. presents a blond white woman with three Her testimony reads: “Done with family. children. She says she considered tubal li- Done with pills, patches, and rings. Wants gation, but decided to get a Mirena instead simple birth control to last until meno- because she is not completely sure if she is pause.” Whereas the Asian and Latina/ done having children. white women clearly express the desire to There is a striking similarity between have children in the future, the two Afri- this woman and the fi fth woman shown can American women do not. The second on the ParaGard Web site. She is also a woman explicitly states her childbearing is blond white woman, who “loves being a complete, and the fi rst woman makes no mom.” With a scroll of the mouse, we learn mention of wanting a child. that she “adores her kids. Wonders what it African American women’s desire to re- would be like to have more. Wants hassle- strain their fertility is a culturally appro- free birth control that won’t limit her op- priate script that is also played out in the tions.” The Mirena TV commercial also representation of Mirena users. The Mirena emphasizes reversibility as an advantage patient education DVD features women of of this contraceptive method, concluding color in only one of the four episodes: two the clip with a picture- perfect American African American women discuss Mirena family with their fourth newborn child. KEEP LIFE SIMPLE | 257

But with a closer and critical look, this so- too many children and become “welfare called option is presented as appropriate queens.” Collins argues that both positive only for middle- to upper- middle- class and negative eugenics, which are based white family- oriented mothers. There is on the race and class of the mothers, are an enduring pattern that shows a cultural still present in contemporary American preference toward fecund women to be society. We indeed see them manifest in portrayed as white and well-to- do and to- contraceptive advertisements. ward women of color to express the need On the surface, ParaGard and Mirena to suppress reproduction. IUDs have joined the myriad birth control In an essay titled “Will the ‘Real’ Mother options available to American consumers. Please Stand Up?: The Logic of Eugenics Yet various aspects of the contraceptive and American National Family Planning,” method are matched up with culturally Patricia Hill Collins argues that in the sanctioned body/technology relationships. United States, “where social class, race, Although sometimes bodies cross over the ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and nation- dichotomous categories, reversibility is ality comprise intersecting dimensions generally stressed for what are viewed as of oppression, not all mothers are created real American mothers, and other aspects, equal.”70 The idealized mother best suited such as the ease of use and long-term effec- for the tasks of reproducing both the tiveness, are promoted through the bodies American nation and seemingly Amer- of women of color. The initial emphases ican values is embodied by an affl uent IUD researchers placed on controlling the white woman bearing American citizen- birthrates of undesirable populations and ship who reproduces her biological chil- disciplining women’s bodies to suppress dren and physically participates in every socially problematic pregnancies are still facet of their lives. These kinds of moth- embodied by this seemingly progressive ers, whom Collins calls “real” mothers, lifestyle product. encounter social policies, institutional arrangements, and ideological messages BODY/TECHNOLOGY RELATIONSHIPS that encourage and support them to IN RACIALIZED GLOBAL CONTEXTS continue to reproduce. For instance, the availability of medical services to com- During its fi fty years of development, the bat infertility simultaneously supports IUD discourse has generated diverse body/ and obligates upper- middle- class white technology relationships while represent- women to reproduce their biological off- ing scientifi c fi ndings in biopolitically spring. Images of large, happy families and geopolitically meaningful ways. From with distinctly white upper- middle- class being the population control tool it once features such as the ones shown on IUD was foreseen to become, the hormone- commercials are examples of the encour- releasing device diversifi ed into a gyneco- agement that “real” mothers receive. In logical treatment, a menstrual-suppression contrast, mothers who are considered technique, and an alternative to tubal liga- less fi t and even unfi t are discouraged tion. The diversifi cation, however, applies from having children and do not receive for the most part only to the global North. similar support for parenting. The repro- The International Contraceptive Access ductive options that are prescribed to Foundation, an organization that donates working-class black women, in particu- free LNG- IUDs to family programs over- lar, often derive from the racist notion of seas, states, “ICA aims to serve the needs poor African American women who have of women and families in the developing 258 | CHIKAKO TAKESHITA

world to achieve their desired family size higher productivity, and a happier life con- and birth spacing.”71 As this statement nects the desiring consumer to this new suggests, the biopolitics of contraceptive contraceptive with an additional benefi t. technologies in the global South continue The latest body/technology relation- to focus on fertility, although the rhetoric ships in IUD promotional materials also has moved away from justifying mass in- represent contemporary eugenics ideol- sertions. The pairing of excessively fertile ogies promoted within the framework of bodies and an effective long-acting contra- individualism. The 1995 Hastings Center ceptive technology remains the dominant Report on the ethics of long- acting contra- paradigm there. ceptives signify a shift in the approach to Contested meanings of menstruation suppressing undesirable pregnancies from have contributed to reinforcing the divide targeting specifi c groups to holding individ- between bodies in the global South and uals responsible. Authors of the report take North by creating an additional dichotomy great caution not to approve of broad use between “backward” and “modern” con- that may suggest racial and class discrimi- traceptive users. Women who were deemed nation. Yet at the same time they explore ac- not ready to appreciate amenorrhea due to ceptable ways to discourage what they see their cultural beliefs about menstruation as irresponsible reproduction. The overall were left behind in the popularization of report leaves an opening for an argument the hormone-releasing device. Meanwhile, to be made for promoting long-acting con- those regarded as accepting of the scien- traceptive methods in limited cases that tifi c explanation of why women should are evaluated on an individual basis. The embrace less menstrual bleeding were individualist approach easily blends with a thrust into a new paradigm of bodily en- consumerist framework and naturalizes the hancement and lifestyle medications. The coupling of racialized bodies, understood cost of Mirena, too, has contributed to as potentially “unfi t mothers,” with long- the separation between underprivileged acting and user-failure- free contraceptives. women, for whom effective contraceptives Meanwhile, white mothers’ bodies are un- are rendered adequate, and economically problematically paired with the reversible privileged women, for whom a favorable feature of the IUD, implicitly promoting contraceptive should offer extra benefi ts. positive eugenics through consumption. As Mirena’s common side effect acquired By following the development of Mirena, new meanings, body/technology relation- this essay traced how diverse biopolitical ships in the global North expanded. IUD subjects were constructed within the IUD developers interested in treating menstrual discourse in accordance with cultural ex- disorders and uterine ailments reconceptu- pectations about race and class, as well as alized the device as a therapeutic technol- the global political economy of women’s ogy and gynecological patients as treatable bodies that render some as overproduc- bodies. Much less concerned with repro- ing fertility machines and others as sites duction, this body/technology coupling of consumption of medical services and represents the biopolitics of health main- devices. It also revealed how various body/ tenance. The menses-free body/device also technology pairings were confi gured, entered a market already sold on the idea of forming a network of relationships that artifi cial menstrual suppression as lifestyle refl ect the racialized global context within choice. Liberal governmentality or self- which technoscientifi c interventions in management for achieving better health, women’s bodies are imagined. KEEP LIFE SIMPLE | 259

NOTES Sind), the Philippines, United Kingdom, and Yugo- slavia (Muslim, non- Muslim). 1. For more detailed perspective on my academic 31. See Liskin (1982). and personal journey with an IUD, see Takeshita 32. WHO (1981, 12). (2010). 33. See Liskin (1982). 2. Posting on an online medication discussion 34. WHO (1981, 13). resource, medications.com: http://www.med- 35. Chatterjee and Riley (2001). ications.com/effect/view/34880 (accessed No- 36. The continuation rates for the levonorgestrel vember 2010). IUD were 74.5, 58.7, and 38.8 percent at one, two, 3. See for example, http://lifeaftermirena.blogspot. and three years respectively. The continuation of com copper devices ranged from 82.4 to 84.4 percent 4. See Mamo and Fosket (2009). at year 1, 66.6 to 69.9 percent at year 2, and 45.4 5. See Loe (2004) and Mamo and Fishman (2004). to 50.4 percent at year 3. This was a double- blind 6. Blum and Stracuzzi (2004). trial, which disallowed physicians to provide 7. Scommegna et al. (1970). consultation to women who received the LNG- 8. Ibid. (201, 202). IUD about possible amenorrhea. Thus the high 9. Ibid. (209). discontinuation rate may have partly been cor- 10. See Scommegna et al. (1974). This research was rected with counseling. See Indian Council of also funded by the Ford Foundation. This time, Medical Research (1989). they tested a T-shaped progesterone-releasing 37. See Sivin et al. (1991). device in 249 women for twelve months. No preg- 38. Treiman et al. (1995). nancies resulted. 39. Ibid. For the original report of the European study, 11. See Huber et al. (1975) and Piotrow, Rinehart, and see Andersson, Odlind, Goran Ryobo (1994). Schmidt (1979). 40. Luukkainen (1994). 12. See Segal (2003). 41. Ibid. (39). 13. Population Council (1970). 42. Martin (2001). 14. Norplant consists of six levonorgestrel- containing 43. See Pigg (2001). See also Adams and Pigg (2005). matchstick-size rods that are implanted beneath 44. Jim Shelton, “IUD Mirena,” Dr. Jim Shelton’s the skin of a woman’s forearm to prevent preg- Pearls. January 15, 2001. http://info.k4health. nancy for fi ve years. org/pearls/2001/01- 15.shtml (accessed Novem- 15. Prager and Darney (2007). ber 2010) Shelton explains: “In the private sector 16. Moskowitz, Jennings, and Callahan (1995, S1). at least, the price is likely to be in the hundreds 17. See Watkins (2010a, 2010b). of dollars. Over the years AID staff have had dis- 18. Smith (2005b). cussions with Schering (and with its predecessor 19. Moskowitz, Jennings, and Callahan (1995, S2). Leiras) about an acceptable public sector price. 20. The documentary fi lm Skin Deep by Frances Reid Although we have never been able to reach ac- records testimonies of women who suffered side cord, we will keep trying.” USAID was not supply- effects from Norplant. See Reid (1995). ing Mirena at the time of writing this book. 21. This report, Moskowitz, Jennings, and Callahan 45. Under their agreement, product donations to (1995), from the Hastings Center has been pub- international development agencies and public lished as an edited volume: Moskowitz and Jen- health organizations can be made up to 1 percent nings (1996). of non- U.S. market unit sales (about 53,000 IUDs 22. Huber et al. (1975, B- 38). by 2007). In addition, the company will sell up to 23. “Uterine tranquilizer” appears in ibid. 3 percent of non-U.S. market unit sales for under 24. See Tietze and Lewitt (1968). $40 to qualifi ed public sector organizations. ICA 25. See Liskin (1982). has projects in Brazil, Curaçao, Dominican Re- 26. See Treiman and Liskin (1988). public, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Kenya, Indo- 27. See Bernard (1970). nesia, Nigeria, Paraguay, Saint Lucia, and South 28. Whelan (1975). Africa. http://www.ica-foundation.org/ (accessed 29. Piotrow, Rinehart, and Schmidt (1979, B- 66). November 2010). 30. The WHO (1981) study was conducted between 1973 46. Rademacher et al. (2009). Available at http:// and 1979 and involved 5,322 parous women from www.k4health.org/toolkits/iud/essential-know fourteen cultural groups in Egypt, India (Hindu high ledge- about- lng- ius (accessed November 2010). caste, Hindu low caste), Indonesia (Javanese, Suda- 47. These cost fi gures are based on my own ex- nese), Jamaica, Korea, Mexico, Pakistan (Punjab, perience between 2002 and 2005. Prices vary 260 | CHIKAKO TAKESHITA

depending on the provider, and distributors’ Collins, Patricia Hill. 1999. Will the “Real” Mother business decisions may affect future prices. Please Stand Up? The Logic of Eugenics and Amer- 48. ARCH Foundation, http://www.archfoundation. ican National Family Planning. In Revisioning com/ (accessed November 2010). Women, Health, and Healing: Feminist, Cultural, 49. Rademacher et al. (2009). See also Trussell, Lalla, and Technoscience Perspectives. Edited by Adele. E. and Doan (2008). Clarke and Virginia L. Olsen. New York: Routledge. 50. Faundesa et al. (1988). Coutinho, Elsimar, and Sheldon J. Segal. 1999. Is Men- 51. Luukkainen and Toivonen (1995). struation Obsolete? New York: Oxford University 52. Ibid. (274). Press. 53. See Fraser (2007). Faundesa, Anibal, Francisco Alvarez, V. Bracheb, and 54. See Rarick (2007). A. S. Tejadab. 1988. The Role of the Levonorgestrel 55. Oudshoorn (1994, 121). Intrauterine Device in the Prevention and Treat- 56. Ibid. ment of Iron Deﬁ ciency Anemia during Fertility 57. Coutinho and Segal (1999, 163). Regulation. International Journal of Gynaecology 58. Ibid. and Obstetrics 26:429–433. 59. Ibid. (164). Fraser, Ian. 2007. The Promise and Reality of the In- 60. Ibid. trauterine Route for Hormone Delivery for Pre- 61. Mamo and Fosket (2009, 933). vention and Therapy of Gynecological Disease. 62. Ibid. (931). Contraception 75 (S6): S112–S117. 63. Mirena promotional material from October 2006 Huber, Sallie C., P. T. Piotrow, F. Barbara Orlans, and for prescribing physicians. Geary Kommer. 1975. IUDs Reassessed: A Decade 64. See note 2. of Experience. Population Reports , Series B (2). 65. Joyce (2003, 4). Indian Council of Medical Research. 1989. Random- 66. Kapsalis (1997). ized Clinical Trial with Intrauterine Devices: A 36- 67. Ibid. (53). month Study. Contraception 39 (1): 37–52. 68. ParaGard product Web site: http://www.paragard. Joyce, Patrick. 2003. The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism com/home.php (accessed November 2010). and the Modern City. London: Verso. 69. Mirena product Web site: http://www.mirena- us. Kapsalis, Terri. 1997. Public Privates: Performing com/index.jsp (accessed November 2010). Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum. 70. Collins (1999, 266). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 71. www.ica- foundation.org (accessed November Liskin, Laurie. 1982. IUDs: An Appropriate Contra- 2010). ceptive for Many Women. Population Reports Se- ries B (4). Loe, Meika. 2004. The Rise of Viagra : How the Little REFERENCES Blue Pill Changed Sex in America. New York: New York University Press. Adams, Vincanne, and Stacy Leigh Pigg. 2005. Sex in Luukkainen, Tapani. 1994. Progestin-Releasing Intra- Development: Science, Sexuality, and Morality in uterine Contraceptive Device. In Proceedings from Global Perspective. Durham, NC: Duke University the Fourth International Conference on IUDs. Ed- Press. ited by C. W. Bradin and Daniel R. Mishell Jr. Bos- Andersson, Kerstin, Viveca Odlind, and Goran Ryobo. ton: Butterworth-Heinemann. 1994. Levonorgestrel-Releasing and Copper- Luukkainen, Tapani, and Juhani Toivonen. 1995. Releasing (Nova T) IUDs during Five Years of Use: Levonorgestrel-Releasing IUD as a Method of A Randomized Comparative Trial. Contraception Contraception with Therapeutic Properties. Con- 49:56–71. traception 52:269–276. Bernard, R. R. 1970. IUD Performance Patterns: A Mamo, Laura, and Jennifer Fishman. 2009. Potency in 1970 World View. International Journal of Gynae- All the Right Places: Viagra as a Technology of the cology and Obstetrics 8 (6): 926–940. Gendered Body. Body and Society 7 (4): 13–35. Blum, Linda M., and Nena Stracuzi. 2004. Gender in Mamo, Laura, and Jennifer Ruth Fosket. 2009. Script- the Prozac Nation: Popular Discourse and Pro- ing the Body: Pharmaceuticals and the (Re)Mak- ductive Femininity. Gender and Society 18 (3): ing of Menstruation. Signs 34 (4): 925–949. 269–286. Martin, Emily. 2001. The Woman in the Body: A Cul- Chatterjee, Nilanjana, and Nancy E. Riley. 2001. Plan- tural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon ning an Indian Modernity: The Gendered Politics Press. of Fertility Control. Signs: Journal of Women in Moskowitz, Ellen H., Bruce Jennings, and Daniel Cal- Culture and Society 26 (31): 811–845. lahan. 1995. Long-Acting Contraceptives: Ethical KEEP LIFE SIMPLE | 261

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Technologies of Sex, Gender, and Difference This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 16

Science, Power, Gender: How DNA Became the Book of Life Ruth Hubbard

Natural science, which is what we usually have made, in the course of the twentieth mean by science, involves interacting with century, to our understanding of how nature in ways that produce certain kinds of genes function and to raise the question of interpretations of how nature works. There what ways gender can be said to have en- are different styles of doing science, depend- tered their scientifi c accomplishments and ing on what aspects of nature scientists are careers. But, fi rst, I need to review briefl y exploring, but all of them are constrained how, during this period, genes and DNA by rules of what constitutes evidence and have come to be the iconic objects they what conclusions are considered permissi- currently are. ble. The different ways in which scientists pursue their work, however, do not easily fi t I into male/female categories. The fact that, in the United States, many Genetics, of course, starts with the Czech more physicists are men than women has monk Gregor Mendel. Using pea plants to do with the social and economic struc- as his experimental objects, Mendel ex- ture of domestic life, with processes of amined the transmission of fl ower color education and professionalization, and and of the shape and texture of the seeds with the social history of the disciplines, to successive generations. He deliberately not with the intrinsic nature of physicists’ chose discrete traits, such as red or white knowledge base or the nature of women petals, or smooth or wrinkled seeds, rather and men. We live in a gendered society, than traits that vary continuously, such as and it should not surprise us if women weight or size. He also only kept track of the and men tend to develop different tastes in mathematical regularity with which these the kinds of knowledge they seek and the traits are transmitted and did not specu- ways they seek it, but this fact cannot be late about what processes inside the plants used to predict the practices of individual are involved in transmitting the traits. He scientists. Besides, science imposes a he- simply assumed that “factors” inside the gemony within which all its practitioners plant mediate their transmission. must operate if they want what they do to The publication of Mendel’s paper, in be acknowledged as science. 1865, provoked little notice. But by 1900, In this essay, I want to describe the contri- when the paper was “rediscovered,” it butions two outstanding women scientists aroused immediate interest. The reason 266 | RUTH HUBBARD

is that, in the intervening years, scientists and phosphate and four different kinds of had learned a great deal about the inter- the “bases,” whose designations— A, G, T, nal structure of cells and about what hap- and C—have become part of our ordinary pens when a cell divides and gives rise to vocabulary (as has the acronym DNA). two daughter cells. Stainable bodies, called It seemed hard to imagine how combi- chromosomes, had been observed in the nations of only these six subunits could cell’s nucleus, and scientists had noted specify all the different characteristics or- that different cells of the same organism ganisms inherit from their parents. Protein all contain the same number of chromo- molecules, by contrast, are composed of somes. Scientists also noted that, when some twenty different subunits and come cells divide, their nuclear chromosomes in many different shapes and sizes. It split in two, which is how each daugh- therefore was logical to assume that genes ter cell ends up with the same number of were made of proteins. chromosomes as were present in the par- By the early 1950s, however, experi- ent cell. On the basis of such observations, ments with bacteria and viruses showed by 1900 biologists accepted that chromo- quite clearly that heritable characteristics somes have something to do with the way are transmitted by DNA, not by proteins. traits are trans-mitted from parents to Thus DNA was generally accepted as the offspring, and Mendel’s hypothetical “fac- substance that mediates inheritance—in a tors” came to be conceptually associated word, the gene. with the chromosomes. The Danish botanist Wilhelm Johannsen, II in 1905, invented the word genetics to signify biological inheritance, and, in 1909, This brings us to April 1953, when three he coined the word gene to lend more con- papers appeared side by side in one issue crete reality to Mendel’s “factors.” At a time of the British science weekly Nature. The when invisible atoms and quanta were fi rst, from Cambridge University, was co- being accepted into the world of chemis- authored by James D. Watson and Francis try and physics, biologists had little prob- Crick; the other two, from King’s College, lem accepting that heredity is mediated London, were authored by, respectively, by invisible material particles, carried on Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins the chromosomes. And soon, as biological with their coworkers. The Watson and chemists came to identify all sorts of mole- Crick paper announced the now- familiar cules that function in cells, one of the ques- double- helical structure of DNA. The other tions they tried to answer was what kinds of two offered evidence in support of this molecules the chromosomes and genes are structure. James Watson has described made of and how they function. how he and Crick arrived at the DNA struc- Once chemical analyses had shown that ture in his best-selling memoir, The Double chromosomes contain two types of very Helix, published fi fteen years later, in 1968. large molecules, proteins and DNA, some What immediately got scientists excited scientists suggested that DNA provides the about the Watson- Crick model was that it chromosomes with a structural framework can be made to explain how DNA—“the to which proteins attach themselves to gene”—gets copied when cells replicate. form the genes. What gave this model plau- The point is this: Let us picture the double sibility was that DNA, though very large, is helix as two railings of a spiral staircase, a relatively simple molecule, containing each of which is composed of a long, large numbers of just one kind of sugar invariant sequence of sugar-phosphate- SCIENCE, POWER, GENDER | 267 sugar-phosphate- sugar- phosphate units. of President Clinton’s referring to DNA as The two railings are connected by a regu- “the language in which God created life”— larly spaced series of rungs, which make underlines the ideological content of mo- them run parallel to each other. Each rung lecular genetics.1 is composed of a pair of bases, and the geometry of the double helix is such that, for III two bases to form a rung, an A on one railing must meet a T on the other and a G on What relevance does all this have to gen- one railing must meet a C on the other. der? To answer this question, I want to This geometrical requirement means look at the contributions two outstanding that, when cells divide and their chro- women scientists have made to our un- mosomes and genes get copied, the two derstanding of genetics and DNA. I refer to strands of the double helix need merely Barbara McClintock and Rosalind Frank- unravel bit by bit. The sequence of bases lin. I have written about Franklin’s contri- on one strand then specifi es the base se- butions before (Hubbard 1990, chap. 5), quence for the synthesis of its partner. but as DNA has come to occupy not only Thus, DNA (“the gene”) gets copied by vir- a central role in biology but a larger-than- tue of the requirement that an A on one life role in the culture, certain elements of strand of the double helix meet a T on the both her story and McClintock’s story have other and a G on one strand meet a C on taken on new signifi cance. the other, an incredibly simple and excit- Born in 1902 and dying in 1992, Bar- ing outcome. bara McClintock’s life spanned the twenti- Yet this very simplicity conceals a con- eth century. She earned a Ph.D. in botany ceptual trap, because it led scientists to from Cornell in the early 1920s and stayed describe DNA as a “self-replicating” mole- on at Cornell’s College of Agriculture on cule. And this has endowed the gene with fellow- ships for several years, working the supposed power of not just participat- on the structure of the cells and chromo- ing in the metabolic and synthetic activities somes of corn (maize) and on its genet- of cells and organisms but of mastermind- ics. At Cornell, McClintock had access to ing and directing them. But, of course, a good-sized plot in which to breed corn. DNA does nothing of the sort. Without the She needed that because she felt she had metabolic activities of cells, DNA is neither to get to know the individual, living plants copied nor does it participate in specifying if she was to make sense of what she ob- traits. Indeed, left to itself, DNA is one of served when she later studied the detailed the most inert and stable molecules in bi- structure of their chromosomes under the ology, which is why it can be isolated, still microscope. 2 When it became clear that intact, from ancient fossils. she was not going to be offered a position Only by ignoring the participation of on the Cornell faculty, McClintock began the rest of the cell and organism have mo- to look around and eventually ended up lecular geneticists enshrined the magic accepting an assistant professorship at the of DNA—the autonomous, all-powerful University of Missouri. There she spent a gene that does not just specify traits but few scientifi cally productive, but other- produces and controls them. The fact that wise not very satisfying, years. The facili- biologists, who are not usually known for ties were not all that good, so she needed their religious commitments, have selected to maintain her plantings at Cornell and “the Holy Grail” and “the book of life” as shuttle back and forth. She also did not in- their metaphors for DNA— not to speak teract too well with some of her colleagues, 268 | RUTH HUBBARD

nor did she particularly enjoy teaching. as seriously as they would have taken a When she was passed over for promotion, male colleague of comparable experience she felt it was time to move on. With strong and stature. The degree to which McClin- support from older, established (male) col- tock was something of an outsider and a leagues, McClintock was invited to spend loner in her scientifi c life (though she al- a year at the laboratory of the Carnegie ways had close friends) probably also had Institution at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Is- something to do with gender. But the con- land, and it became her permanent home. tent of her science? McClintock’s lack of academic success did Some people have suggested that Mc- not stand in the way of her recognition Clintock relied more on intuition than do within the profession. She was elected vice most male scientists. Probably so, but so do president of the Genetics Society of Amer- some men. In a recent biography of Henry ica in 1939 and its president in 1945. More Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt’s two-term important, she was elected to the National secretary of agriculture and one-term vice Academy of Sciences in 1944— only the president, who was a world-famous plant third woman member since its founding breeder (and founder of Pioneer- Hi- Bred, by President Lincoln. And she won a Nobel the foremost supplier of hybrid corn), I Prize in 1983— only the second woman sci- found the following story. Late in Wallace’s entist to win an unshared Nobel, the other life, a group of New York writers and artists being Marie Curie. asked him to what he attributed his suc- From the start, McClintock made path- cess as a plant breeder. Wallace responded, breaking contributions. But since she was “Sympathy with the plant” (Culver and committed to looking at genes in the con- Hyde 2000, 518), quite like McClintock’s text of the whole organism, which was not “feeling for the organism,” her phrase that the usual perspective in her fi eld, many of Evelyn Fox Keller uses as the title for her her fellow geneticists simply did not un- biography. derstand her experiments or the way she interpreted them. When she concluded IV that genes can change their positions on the chromosomes, along with their func- Rosalind Franklin’s is a much sadder story. tions, in response to changes within the Franklin was born in 1920 into an estab- plant and around it, this was so contrary to lished Anglo-Jewish family in London. what geneticists believed possible at mid- She graduated from Cambridge University century that many of them simply wrote during World War II with a degree in phys- her off. Not until the 1970s and 1980s, when ical chemistry and went to work doing comparable observations were made with war- related research on different confi gu- bacteria, was what McClintock had been rations of carbon in coal. At the end of the saying accepted into the canon of the fi eld. war, she moved to Paris and took a position So what does any of this have to do with in a French government laboratory, using gender? Certainly, McClintock’s failure to X- ray diffraction techniques to analyze the be promoted within academia had a lot to structure of different types of coal. After do with it, though it must also be said that four happy years there, she reluctantly de- she was not an easy colleague; but neither cided to return to England and, because are many male academics. That colleagues she wanted to learn about molecules of bi- chose to ignore her rather than make the ological interest, accepted a fellowship in effort to understand what she was saying the biophysics unit at King’s College, Lon- suggests that they may not have taken her don, directed by Professor John Randall. SCIENCE, POWER, GENDER | 269

The unit was working on the structure of immediately realized that it was com- DNA, and Randall asked Franklin to build pletely inconsistent with the data she had a high-resolution camera with which to presented at the seminar Watson had at- make more detailed measurements of the tended and decided he was not to be taken X-ray diffraction patterns of DNA than had seriously. In consequence of this fi asco, previously been possible.3 their superiors at Cambridge told Watson King’s was a much less collegial and and Crick to keep their hands off DNA and more hierarchical place than the labora- leave it to the group at King’s. (Watson tells tory in which Franklin had been working all this in the The Double Helix. ) During in Paris, with gender- segregated “combi- the next months, unbeknownst to Frank- nation rooms” where the staff took their lin, two crucial things happened. One was tea and morning coffee. Also, intentionally that Wilkins showed Watson Franklin’s best or not, Randall put Franklin into a highly X- ray diffraction image, which clearly in- ambiguous situation by leading Maurice dicated that DNA forms a helix. The other Wilkins, the unit’s assistant di-rector, to was that Max Perutz, a senior researcher believe that Franklin and he would be at Cambridge, received a research report working on DNA together, while telling the King’s group had submitted to their Franklin she would be doing the X-ray dif- funders. Knowing of Watson’s and Crick’s fraction studies on her own. 4 When person- interest in DNA, he showed them the report, ality confl icts began to develop between which included the conclusions Franklin Franklin and Wilkins, she decided they had drawn on the basis of her X-ray image, would not be able to work together and conclusions that specified all the critical set about to build a powerful X- ray camera dim ensions of the DNA helix. with which she and Wilkins’s former grad- At just about this time, Watson and Crick uate student R. G. Gosling began to make a found out that the famous U.S. chem- series of groundbreaking observations on ist Linus Pauling was about to propose a DNA fi bers. And before long, she obtained transparently incorrect structure for DNA. the sharpest X-ray diffraction image of With that, they decided they no longer DNA in existence that clearly showed that needed to consider DNA the property of DNA can form a helix. King’s. Armed with Franklin’s calculations Shortly after Franklin joined the group against which to check possible models, at King’s, James Watson came to Cam- they went into a frenzy of model building bridge University planning to work with and, within about six weeks, came up with Francis Crick on the structure of DNA, the now- famous double helix. which the two of them considered to be The fi rst time the group at King’s real- “the secret of life.” As Watson recounts in ized that Watson and Crick had gone back The Double Helix, his fi rst encounter with to working on DNA was when Wilkins re- Franklin was a disaster. Soon after coming ceived in the mail a copy of the note Wat- to Cambridge, Watson went to King’s to at- son and Crick were submitting to Nature. tend a seminar by Franklin, but he was too He promptly decided to write an accompa- busy critiquing her clothes and hairstyle to nying note with his coworkers Stokes and listen properly. Having misunderstood her Wilson, and so did Franklin with her co- presentation, he told what he remembered worker Gosling. Franklin framed her note of it to Crick, and they promptly decided as though her data confi rmed the Watson- to use his recollection to build a model of Crick structure, since she had no idea that DNA. They then invited the King’s group those data had been in their hands while to come and look at their model. Franklin they puzzled out the structure. And she 270 | RUTH HUBBARD

never realized it because fi ve years later, in to read The Double Helix, the creation of 1958, at thirty- seven years old, she died of “Rosy,” the humorless, dowdy, castrating cancer. She was dead when Watson, Crick, female who, rather than help her ded- and Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in 1962 icated male “superior” Wilkins, as she and, of course, when Watson published was meant to do, insists on imposing her The Double Helix in 1968. own ideas, has the function of getting the In fact, Watson could never have pub- reader not to notice that Watson and Crick lished that book had Franklin been alive. had access to Franklin’s unpublished data In addition to the personal jabs and the while they made their biology- shaking book’s crude sexism, until Watson wrote discovery. The Double Helix only he and Crick knew If not for the fact that Franklin had long that they were in possession of Franklin’s since died, Watson could not have written calculations while they constructed their that story the way he did—or, more likely, model. Clearly, except for Franklin’s clos- at all. That he wrote it and that his breezy est friends, the book’s readers continued description of the way he and Crick came to overlook that fact. But certainly Franklin to the double helix succeeded in bury- would have noticed! ing the unsavory details can surely be at- As it was, in 1953, when the three Na- tributed to sexual politics. But, as I have ture papers appeared in print, Franklin argued before, gender was not an issue in was in the process of moving from King’s Franklin’s science any more than it was in to the much more collegial laboratory of McClintock’s. J. D. Bernal at Birkbeck College, which is That McClintock’s science was highly where she spent her few remaining years individual is clear. Indeed, some have ar- doing outstanding work on the structure gued that her scientifi c iconoclasm was of viruses. not unrelated to the apparent comfort she So, again, how does gender come into took in her outsider status, which must this story? Gender no doubt had some- have at least partly had to do with being thing to do with Franklin’s unsatisfactory a nontraditional woman. Also, Franklin’s experience at King’s. It probably also had work was probably infl uenced by her ex- something to do with the way Watson and clusion from the King’s/Cambridge fra- Crick dealt with her data (though the mis- ternity, though she, too, did not let that appropriation of data need not involve stop her. Other women, in addition to gender). It perhaps also was at least partly McClintock and Franklin, have been at responsible for Franklin’s lowly academic the forefront of genetics and molecular status, though she was still young and, at biology. The fact that news stories about the time of her death, was in the midst of this highly publicized fi eld usually feature negotiating a move to a research position male scientists (and especially Watson) with secure, long-term funding at Cam- simply illustrates the gender politics of bridge University for herself and her prin- our culture. cipal collaborators at Birkbeck. 5 All this is not to say that being a woman Perhaps the most interesting aspect in or a man is irrelevant to the way one does terms of gender politics, however, is the science. No doubt, our experiences affect way Watson used sexist stereotypes to what aspects of the world interest us and obscure what should have become a sci- how we come to think about them, but entifi c scandal. As Franklin’s friend Anne ovaries or testes do not directly affect what Sayre recognized the moment she began science we do and how we do it. SCIENCE, POWER, GENDER | 271

NOTES Helix (1974). I have also consulted some of Frank- lin’s own publications and articles colleagues and This essay is based on a talk, given in February friends have written about her and have spoken 2001, as part of a series of lectures organized by the with some of her friends, including Sayre. Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study on “Femi- 4. Maddox 2002, 132–33. nism and Science in Civil Society.” 5. Maddox 2002, 304–5. 1. “Reading the Book of Life: White House Remarks on Decoding of the Genome,” New York Times REFERENCES (June 27, 2000), 8. 2. My information about Barbara McClintock Culver, John C., and John Hyde. 2000. American comes largely from Evelyn Fox Keller’s McClin- Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace. tock biography (Keller 1983), from McClintock’s New York: W. W. Norton. Nobel Lecture, from conversations with some of Hubbard, Ruth. 1990. The Politics of Women’s Biology. her friends and colleagues, and from a conversa- New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. tion I had with her in the early 1980s. Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1983. A Feeling for the Organism: 3. I draw my information about Franklin from The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock. San Brenda Maddox’s recent biography Rosalind Francisco: W. H. Freeman. Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA (2002); from Maddox, Brenda. 2002. Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Anne Sayre’s Rosalind Franklin and DNA (1975), Lady of DNA. New York: HarperCollins. which Sayre wrote as a much-needed corrective Olby, Robert. 1974. The Path to the Double Helix. Lon- to James D. Watson’s The Double Helix (1968); don: Macmillan. Sayre, Anne. 1975. Rosalind Frank- from Watson’s book itself; and from the historian lin and DNA. New York: Norton. Watson, James D. of science Robert Olby’s The Path to the Double 1968. The Double Helix. New York: Atheneum. CHAPTER 17

The Bare Bones of Sex: Part 1— Sex and Gender Anne Fausto- Sterling

Here are some curious fads about bones. increased bone density despite bone re- They can tell us about the kinds of physi- sorption caused by total lack of menstru- cal labor an individual has performed over ation (Robinson et al. 1995). Consider also a lifetime and about sustained physical some recent demographic trends: in Europe trauma. They get thinner or thicker (on av- during the past thirty years, the number of erage in a population) in different historical vertebral fractures has increased three- to periods and in response to different colo- fourfold for women and more than fourfold nial regimes (Molleson 1994; Larsen 1998). for men (Mosekilde 2000); in some groups They can indicate class, race, and sex (or is it the relative proportions of different parts of gender- wait and see). We can measure their the skeleton have changed in recent gener- mineral density and whether on average ations. 2 (See also table 17.1. ) someone is likely to fracture a limb but not What are we to make of reports that Af- whether a particular individual with a par- rican Americans have greater peak bone ticular density will do so. A bone may break densities than Caucasian Americans (Aloia more easily even when its mineral density et al. 1996; Gilsanz et al. 1998),3 although remains constant (Peacock et al. 2002).1 this difference may not hold when one Culture shapes bones. For example, compares Africans to British Caucasians urban ultraorthodox Jewish adolescents (Dibba et al. 1999), or that white women have lowered physical activity, less expo- and white men break their hips more often sure to sunlight, and drink less milk than than black women and black men (Kellie their more secular counterparts. They also and Brody 1990)? 4 How do we interpret re- have greatly decreased mineral density in ports that Caucasian men have a lifetime the vertebrae of their lower backs, that is, fracture risk of 13–25 percent compared the lumbar vertebrae (Taha et al. 2001). with Caucasian women’s lifetime risk of 50 Chinese women who work daily in the ﬁ elds percent even though once peak bone mass have increased bone mineral content and is attained men and women lose bone at density. The degree of increase correlates the same rate (Seeman 1997, 1998; NIH with the amount of time spent in physical Consensus Statement Online 2000)? activity (Hu et al. 1994); weightlessness in Such curious facts raise perplexing ques- space ﬂ ight leads to bone loss (Skerry 2000); tions. Why have bones become more break- gymnastics training in young women ages able in certain populations? What does it seventeen to twenty- seven correlates with mean to say that a lifestyle behavior such as THE BARE BONES OF SEX | 273

Table 17.1 Culture Changes Bones Observation Reference

Vertebral BMD (gm/cm2 ) increased in young women during an eight-month Snow-Harter et al. 1992 program of running or weight-training compared with untrained controls. Two years of aerobics and weight training enhances BMD in young women; Friedlander et al. 1995; gymnastics training im proves mechanical competence of skeleton in boys. Daly et al. 1999 Intensive tennis playing increases bone mineral content, BMAD, and Jones et al. 1977; thickness of the humerus of the racket arm; the effect is especially Haapasalo et al. 1996 noticeable in players who began at ages 9-10, and the effect is there for both males and females. Later-in-life start-up (29 years) resulted in more marginal effects. Cross-country skiers who train year-round have site-speciﬁ c increases Pettersson et al. 2000 in BMD (study on females age -16). In late-adolescent women, weight-bearing activities are important for Soderman et al. 2000 determining bone density; high-impact activities modifY bone width due to increased muscle strength and lean body mass; lean mass, fat mass, weight, BMI, years of menstruation, and type of physical activity explained 81.6 percent of bone variation. In Japanese women with a genetic variant that impairs vitamin D Fujita et al. 1999 receptor, exercise, vitamin D, and calcium intake can increase BMD. Long-term exercise improves balance in older osteoarthritic adults Messier et al. 2000 (fewer falls). In a longitudinal study of youth ages 13-27, maintain ing at least an Welton et al. 1994 average weight was the best predictor of high BMD in females. Premenopausal, but not postmenopausal, women re spond to a regime Bassey and Ramsdale of vertical jumping exercises with increased BMD in their femurs. 1994; Bassey et al. 1998 Physical activity and muscle strength independently predict BMD in Nordstrom, Nordstrom, total body and in the proximal fe mur in young men. and Lorentzan 1997 Amateur sports at ages 11-30 improves bone density in a site- or Nordstrom et al. 1996; stress-speciﬁ c fashion (study done on young men). Morel et al. 2001 Prepubertal Asian Canadian boys have lowered femoral neck BMC and McKay et al. 2000 BMD, ingest 41 percent less cal cium, and are 15 percent less active than Caucasian Canadian boys. Over three years, men and women over age 65 receiving calcium and Dawson-Hughes et al. vitamin D supplements show less bone loss in the femur and spine 1997 and a lower incidence of nonvertebral fractures. Ninety percent of adolescent girls and 50 percent of adolescent boys Bachrach 2001 consume less than optimal amounts of dietary calcium. Fifty percent of 12- to 21-year-olds exercise vigorously and regularly; 25 Bachrach 2001 percent report no vigorous physical activity. Alcohol consumption correlates with higher BMD, smoking with lower Siris et al. 2001 BMD.

(Continued) 274 | ANNE FAUSTO- STERLING

Table 17.1 (Continued) Observation Reference

Anorexia nervosa injures bone development and maintenance. Munoz and Argente 2002 In the twentieth century, American youth of African, European, and Meredith 1978 Japanese ancestry increased in height due to changes in sitting height and increase in lower limb length.

Note: BMD = bone mineral density, BMAD = bone mineral apparent density (the measure is independent of size), BMI = body mass index, and BMC = bone mineral content.

exercise, diet, drinking, or smoking is a risk prediction of individual health conditions, factor for osteoporosis? Why do we screen and the treatment of individuals with un- large numbers of women for bone density healthy bones.6 To see why we should follow even though this information does not tell new roads, I consider gender, examining us whether an individual woman will break where we- feminist theorists and medi- a bone?5 Why was a major public policy cal scientists have recently been. In the statement on women’s health unable to second part of this study (Fausto- Sterling offer a coherent account of sex (or is it gen- in preparation) I will engage with current der?) differences in bone health over the life discussions of biology, race, and medicine cycle (Wizemann and Pardue 2001)? Why, if to explore claims about racial difference in bone fragility is so often considered to be a bone structure and function. sex- related trait, do so few studies examine the relationships among childbirth, lacta- SEX AND GENDER (AGAIN) tion, and bone development (Sowers 1996; Glock, Shanahan, and McGowan 2000)? For centuries, scholars, physicians, and Such curious facts and perplexing ques- laypeople in the United States and Western tions challenge both feminist and biomed- Europe used biological models to explain ical theory. If “facts” about biology and the different social, legal, and political sta- “facts” about culture are all in a muddle, tuses of men and women and people of perhaps the nature/nurture dualism, a different hues. 7 When the feminist second mainstay of feminist theory, is not working wave burst onto the political arena in the as it should. Perhaps, too, parsing med- early 1970s, we made the theoretical claim ical problems into biological (or genetic that sex differs from gender and that social or hormonal) components in op position institutions produce observed social dif- to cultural or lifestyle factors has outlived ferences between men and women (Rubin its usefulness for bio medical theory. I pro- 1975). Feminists assigned biological (espe- pose that already well- developed dynamic cially reproductive) differences to the word systems theories can provide a better un- sex and gave to gender all other differences. derstanding of how social categories act “Sex,” however, has become the Achilles’ on bone production. Such a framework, heel of 1970s feminism. We relegated it to the especially if it borrows from a second an- domain of biology and medicine, and biolo- alytic trend called “life course analysis of gists and medical scientists have spent the chronic disease epidemiology” (Kuh and past thirty years expanding it into arenas we Ben- Shlomo 1997; Ben- Shlomo and Kuh fi rmly believed to belong to our ally gender. 2002; Kuh and Hardy 2002), can improve Hormones, we learn (once more), cause nat- our approaches to public health policy, urally more assertive men to reach the top THE BARE BONES OF SEX | 275 in the workplace (Dabbs and Dabbs 2001). In drawing on philosophers such as Mau- Rape is a behavior that can be changed only rice Merleau- Ponty (1962) and Alfred North with the greatest diffi culty because it is wired Whitehead ([1929] 1978), Grosz differenti- somehow into men’s brains (Thornhill and ates herself from Butler, holding that mate- Palmer 2001). The relative size of eggs and riality is “primordial, not merely the effect of sperm dictate that men are naturally polyg- power” (Alcoff 2000, 858). Primordial materi- amous and women naturally monogamous. ality, however, does not mean that purely bio- And more. (See Zuk 2002; Travis 2003 for a logical accounts of human development- no critique of these claims.) Feminist scholars matter how intricate their stories of cellular have two choices in response to this spread- function- can explain the emergence of lived ing oil spill of sex. Either we can contest and differently gendered realities.10 each claim, one at a time, doing what Susan Psychologist Elizabeth Wilson offers one Oyama calls “hauling the theoretical body of the most interesting and far- reaching back and forth across the sex/gender bor- critiques of feminist attempts to reclaim der” (2000a, 190), or, as I choose to do here, the body (Martin 1997; Wilson 1998, 1999). we can reconsider the 1970s theoretical ac- Reaching back to Sigmund Freud’s work on count of sex and gender. hysteria, Wilson emerges with a new pur- In thinking about both gender and race, chase on biology itself. Re iterating the var- feminists must accept the body as simul- ied symptoms produced by psychic trauma taneously composed of genes, hormones, (blindness, localized pain, loss of smell, cells, and organs all of which infl uence paralysis), she focuses on the “ biologic” of health and behavior- and of culture and these physical manifestations (1999). “The history (Verbrugge 1997). As a biologist, neurology, physiology, or biochemistry of I focus on what it might mean to claim hysterical symptomology,” she writes, “can that our bodies physically imbibe culture. be disregarded only in a theoretical milieu How does experience shape the very bones that takes certain modes of materiality to that support us?8 Can we fi nd a way to talk be inert” (1999, 10). She suggests that just as about the body without ceding it to those “culture,” “signifi cation,” or “sociality” con- who would fi x it as a naturally determined tribute to the production of complex bodily object existing outside of politics, culture, responses, “biology itself” ought to be inves- and social change? This is a project already tigated as a “site of . . . complex ontological well under way, not only in feminist theo- accomplishment” (10). Such investigation, retical circles but in epidemiology, medical Wilson argues, opens the door for a funda- sociology, and anthropology as well. mental reexamination of biomedical analyses of sex differences in physiology and disease patterns. The idea of embodiment EMBODIMENT MERGES as a dynamic system of biocultural forma- BIOLOGY AND CULTURE tion reaches beyond discussions of gender During the 1990s, feminist reconsideration (e.g., Csordas 1990; Ingold 1998; Williams of the sex/gender problem moved into full and Bendelow 1998) 11 swing.9 Early in the decade Judith Butler ar- Efforts to reincorporate the body into so- gued compellingly for the importance of cial theory also come from the fi eld of dis- reclaiming the term sex for feminist inquiry ability studies. Here too an emphasis on the but did not delve into the nuts and bolts social construction of disability has been of how sex and gender materialize in the enormously productive. Yet several authors body. Philosopher Elizabeth Grosz (1994) have broached the limitations of an exclu- claimed that sex is neither fi xed nor given. sively constructivist approach. At least two 276 | ANNE FAUSTO- STERLING

different types of critique parallel and fore- with sex in the 1970s feminist meaning of shadow possible feminist approaches to a the word, sex sometimes strays into arenas reconsideration of the body. The fi rst de- that traditional feminists claim for gender. mands that we recognize the material con- Consider a presentation that was said to straints on the disabled body in its variable provide evidence that prenatal testoster- forms and that we integrate that recogni- one exposure affects which toys little girls tion into theory (Williams and Busby 2000). and boys prefer to play with (Berenbaum The second, more radical move is to sug- 2001). Working within a 1970s defi nition of gest that “the disabled body changes the the sex/gender dualism, the author of this process of representation itself’ (Siebers study logically extends the term sex into 2001, 738). This latter approach offers a the realm of human behavior. rich resource for feminist theories of repre- For those familiar with contemporary sentation and another possible entry point feminist theory, it might seem that the large into the analysis of materiality in actual, number of biological psychologists who lived- in bodies (see also Schriempf 2001). follow similar re search programs and the biomedical researchers interested in tracking down all of the medically interesting SEX AND GENDER IN THE WORLD differences between men and women live OF BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE in a time warp. But members of the fem- In contrast to these new feminist explora- inist medical establishment, that is, those tions of the body, in the fi eld of medicine researchers and physicians for whom the a more limited view of sex differences pre- activities and programs of the SWHR make vails. Consider a recent report on sex dif- eminent sense, see themselves perched on ferences issued by the National Institute the forward edge of a nascent movement of Medicine and, more broadly, the pro- to bring gender equity to the health care fessional movement called “ gender- based system. These feminists work outside of an medicine” promoted by the Society for intellectual milieu that would permit the Women’s Health Research (SWHR). The more revolutionary task proposed by Grosz SWHR describes itself as “the nation’s only and Wilson, among others, that of contest- not- for- profi t organization whose sole ing not only “the domination of the body by mission is to improve the health of women biological terms but also [contesting] the through research . . . The Society . . . en- terms of biology itself” (Grosz 1994, 20). courages the study of sex differences that Within medicine there is a lot of confu- may affect the prevention, diagnosis and sion about the terms sex and gender. Many treatment of disease and promotes the medical texts use the terms interchange- inclusion of women in medical research ably, while some scientists apply the term studies” (Schachter 2001, 29).12 The society gender to the study of nonhuman animals, lobbies Congress, sponsors research con- a problem also debated in the primary bi- ferences, and publishes a peer- reviewed ological literature (Pearson 1996; Thomas academic journal, the Journal of Women’s et al. 2000). Lack of consistent usage pro- Health and Gender- Based Medicine. motes confusion among scientists, policy A traditional biomedical model of makers, and the general public, in effect health and disease provides the intellec- foreclosing any space for the analysis of so- tual framework for the research confer- cial causes of differences in health outcomes ences (Krieger and Zierler 1995). Although between men and women (Krieger 2003). much of the research publicized through Helen Keane and Marsha Rosengarten such conferences seems strictly to deal (2002) have explored the body as a dynamic THE BARE BONES OF SEX | 277 process out of which gender emerges. In a brief three pages on osteoporosis, the a fi rst example they examine the signifi - monograph cites dramatic statistics on cance of anabolic steroid use on the alter- the frequency of osteoporosis in Euro- ation of sexed bodies, concluding that “the pean and Caucasian American women hormonal body is always in process rather and the dangers of the condition. The re- than fi xed” (269); they further explore the port offers a laundry list of factors believed notion of sex/gender fi xity through a dis- to affect bone health. Jumbled together, cussion of organ transplantation between with no attempt to understand their in- XX and XY individuals. Finally, they exam- terrelationships or their joint, cumulative ine “the biological as a fi eld of transforma- contributions to bone development and tions, as active, ‘literate matter’ as well as an loss, are hormones, diet, exercise, genetic effect of mediation and intervention” (275). background, vitamin D production, and I have chosen bone development- an area the bone- destroying effects of drugs such often accepted as an irrefutable site of sex as cortisone, tobacco, and alcohol. In an difference- to examine Keane and Rosengar- anemic end- of- chapter recommendation ten’s formulation. First, to what extent can the authors urge researchers to control for we understand bone formation as an effect all of the above factors as they design their of culture rather than a passive unfolding research studies. Indeed, failure to engage of biology? Second, can we use dynamic the task of formulating new approaches (developmental) systems to ask better re- to biology prevented them from making a search questions and to formulate better stronger analysis. public- health responses to bone disease? But osteoporosis is a condition that reveals all of the problems of de fi ning sex apart from gender. A close reading of the WHY BONES? osteoporosis literature further reveals the Bones are eloquent. Archaeologists read diffi culties of adding the variable of race to old bone texts to fi nd out how prehistoric the mix (a point I will develop in a forth- peoples lived and worked. A hyperfl exed coming paper [ Fausto- Sterling in prepa- and damaged big toe, a bony growth on ration]) while also exemplifying the claim the femur, the knee, or the vertebrae, that disease states are socially produced, for example, tell bioarchaeologist Theya both by rhetoric and measurement (e.g., Molleson that women in a Near Eastern Petersen 1998) and by the manner in which agricultural community routinely ground cultural practice shapes the very bones in grain on all fours, grasping a stone grinder our bodies (Krieger and Zierler 1995). with their hands and pushing back and forth on a saddle- shaped stone. The bones OF BONES AND (WO)MEN of these neolithic people bear evidence of a gendered division of labor, culture, and The accuracy of the claim that osteoporo- biology intertwined (Molleson 1994)13 sis occurs four times more frequently in Given that modern forensic pathologists women than in men (Glock, Shanahan, and also use bones to learn about how people McGowan 2000) depends on how we defi ne live and die, it seems odd that a report from osteoporosis, in which human populations the National Institute of Medicine, pre- (and historical periods) we gather statis- sented as a state- of- the- art account of gen- tics, and what portions of the life cycle we der and medicine, deals only superfi cially compare. The NIH (2000) defi nes osteopo- with the sexual differentiation of bone rosis as a skeletal disorder in which weak- disease (Wizeman and Pardue 2001). 14 In ened bones increase the risk of fracture. 278 | ANNE FAUSTO- STERLING

When osteoporosis fi rst wandered onto the density (BMD, or grams/cm2 ) accounts for medical radar screen, the only signal that approximately 70 percent of bone strength, a person suffered from it was a bone frac- while the other 30 percent derives from the ture. Post hoc, a doctor could examine a internal structure of bone and overall bone person with a fracture either using a biopsy size. And while women with lower bone to look at the structural competence of the density are 2.5 times more likely to experi- bone or by assessing bone density. ence a hip fracture than women with high If one looks at lifetime risks for fracture, bone densities, high risks of hip fracture contemporary Caucasian men range from emerge even in women with high bone 13 to 25 percent (Bilezikian, Kurkland, and densities when fi ve or more other risk fac- Rosen 1999) while Caucasian women (who tors are present (Cummings et al. 1995).17 also live longer) have a 50 percent risk. But Furthermore, it is hard to know how to not all fractures result from osteoporosis. apply the criterion, based on a baseline of One study looked at fracture incidence in young white women, to men, children, and men and women at different ages and found members of other ethnic groups. To make that between the ages of fi ve and forty- fi ve matters worse, there is a lack of standard- men break more limbs than women.15 The ization between instruments and sites at breaks, however, result from signifi cant which measurements are taken. 18 Thus work- and sports- related trauma suffered by it comes as no surprise that “controversy healthy bones. After the age of fi fty, women exists among experts regarding the con- break their bones more often than men, al- tinued use of this [WHO] diagnostic crite- though after seventy years of age men do rion” (NIH Consensus Statement Online their best to catch up (Melton 1988). 2000, 3). The most commonly used medical There is a complicated mixture at play. standard for a diagnosis of osteoporosis First, osteoporosis- whether defi ned as fra- no longer depends on broken bones. With ctures or bone density- is on the rise, even the advent of machines called densitome- when the increased age of a population is ters used to measure bone mineral density taken into account (Mosekilde 2000). At (of which more in a moment), the World the same time, it is hard to assess the dan- Health Organization (WHO) developed a ger of osteoporosis, in part due to drug new “operational” defi nition: a woman has company- sponsored “public awareness” osteoporosis if her bone mineral density campaigns. For example, in preparation for measures 2.5 times the standard deviation the sales campaign for its new drug, Fos- below a peak reference standard for young amax, Merck Pharmaceuticals gave a large (white) women. The densitometer manu- osteoporosis education grant to the Na- facturer usually provides the reference data tional Osteoporosis Foundation to educate to a screening facility (Seeman 1998), and older women about the dangers of osteo- thus rarely, if ever, do assessments of oste- porosis (Tanouye 1995).19 Merck also di- oporosis refl ect what Margaret Lock calls rectly addressed consumers with television “local biologies” (Lock 1998, 39).16 With the ads contrasting frail, pain- wracked older WHO defi nition, the prevalence of osteo- women with lively, attractive seniors, imply- porosis for white women is 18 percent, al- ing the urgent need for older women to use though there is not necessarily associated Fosamax (Pugh- Berman, Pearson, Allina, pathology, since now, by defi nition, one Zones, Worcester, and Whatley 2002). can “get” or “have” osteoporosis without Mass marketing a new drug, however, ever having a broken bone. The WHO defi - requires more than a public awareness nition is controversial, since bone mineral campaign. There must also be an easy, THE BARE BONES OF SEX | 279 relatively inexpensive method of diagno- accounts of bones and why they break. sis. Here the slippage between the new The transformation is driven by a combi- technological measure- bone density- and nation of cultural forces (why are fracture the old defi nition of actual fractures and rates increasing?) and new technologies direct assessment of bone structure looms generated by drug companies interested in large. Merck promoted afford able bone creating new markets, disseminated with density testing even before it put Fosamax the help of market forces drummed up by on the market. The company bought an the self- same drug companies, and aided equipment manufacturing company and by consumer health movements, including ramped up its production of bone density feminist health organizations such as the machines while at the same time helping Society for Women’s Research, which argue consumers fi nd screening locations by giv- that gender- based differences in disease ing a grant to the National Osteoporosis have been too long neglected. Foundation to push a toll- free number that Analyzing bone development within consumers (presumably alarmed by the the framework of sex versus gender (na- Merck TV ads) could call to fi nd a bone den- ture vs. nurture) makes it diffi cult to un- sity screener in a locale near them (Tanouye derstand bone health in men as well as 1995; Pugh- Berman, Pearson, Allina, Zones, women. Those trying to decide on a proper Worcester, and Whatley 2002). standard to measure fracture risk in men The availability of a simple technolog- (should they use a separate male base- ical measure for osteoporosis also made line or the only one available, which is scientifi c research easier and cheaper. The for young, white women?) struggle with majority of the thousands upon thousands this problem of gender standardization of research papers on osteoporosis pub- (Melton et al. 1998). There are differences lished in the ten years from 1995 to 2005 use between men and women, although oste- BMD as a proxy for osteoporosis. This is true oporosis in men is vastly under studied. In despite a critical scientifi c literature that a bibliography of 2,449 citations of papers insists that the more expensive volumetric from 1995 to 1999 (Glock, Shanahan, and measure (grams/cm3 ) more accurately mea- McGowan 2000), only 47 (2 percent) ad- sures bone strength and that knowledge of dressed osteoporosis in men. But making internal bone structure (bone histomor- sense of patterns of bone health for either phometry) provides essential information or both sexes requires a dynamic systems for understanding the actual risk of fracture approach. A basic starting place is to ask (Meunier 1988).20 The explosion of knowl- the development question. edge about osteoporosis codifi es a new dis- For instance, we fi nd no difference in order, still called osteoporosis but sporting bone mineral density in (Caucasian) boys a newly simplifi ed account of bone health and girls under age sixteen but a higher and disease. 21 Ego Seeman (1997) laments bone mineral density in males than in fe- the use of the density measure, which, he ar- males thereafter (Zanchetta et al. 1995). gues, “affects the way we conceptualize the This difference (combined with others skeleton (or fail to), and the way we direct i:hat develop during middle adulthood) (or misdirect) our research,” and “blind[s] becomes important later in life, since men us to the biology of bone” (510). and women appear to lose bone at the Weaving together these threads- increasing same rate once they have reached a peak lifetime risk, new disease defi nitions, and bone mass; those starting the loss phase of easier measurement- produces an episte- the life cycle with more bone in place will mological trans formation in our scientifi c be less likely to develop highly breakable 280 | ANNE FAUSTO- STERLING

bones. Researchers offer different expla- factors are specifi cally linked to physical nations for this divergence. Some note that activity, and thus amenable to change ear- boys continue to grow for an average of lier in life. two years longer than girls (Seeman 1997). Indeed, many studies on children and The extra growth period strengthens their adolescents address the contribution so- bones by adding overall size. Others point ciocultural components of bone develop- additionally to hormones, diet, physical ment make to male female differences that activity, and body weight as contributing emerge just after puberty (see table 17.1). to the emerging sex (or is it gender?) differ- But the overwhelming focus on meno- ence at puberty (Rizzoli and Bonjour 1999). pause as the period of the life cycle in So differences in bone mineral density which women enter the danger zone steers between boys and girls emerge during us away from examining how earlier socio- and after puberty, while for both men and cultural events shape our bones (see Lock women peak bone mass and strength is 1998). Once menopause enters the picture, reached at twenty- fi ve to thirty years of the idea that hormones are at the heart of age (Seeman 1999). Vertebral height is the the problem overwhelms other modes of same in men and women, but vertebral thought.24 Nor is it clear how hormones af- width is greater in men. The volume of the fect bone development and loss. In child- inner latticework does not differ in men hood, growth hormone is essential for long and women, but the outer layer of bone bone growth, the gonadal steroids are im- (periosteum) is thicker in men. Both width portant for the cessation of bone growth at and outer thickness strengthen the bone. puberty, and probably both estrogen and In general, sex/gender bone differences testosterone are important for bone health at peak are in size rather than density maintenance (Damien, Price, and Lanyon (Bilezikian, Kurkland, and Rosen 1999). 1998). The details at the cellular level have This lifecycle analysis reveals three yet to be understood (Gasperino 1995). major differences in the pattern of bone growth and loss in men compared with BASIC BONE BIOLOGY that in women. First, at peak, men have 20 to 30 percent more bone mass and strength In the fetus, cartilage creates the scaffold- than women. Second, following peak, men ing onto which bone cells climb before but not women compensate for bone loss secreting the calcium- containing bone with new increases in vertebral width matrix that becomes the hard bone. 25 The that continue to strengthen the vertebrae. cells that secrete the bone matrix are called Over time both men and women lose 70 osteoblasts. As they grow, bones are shaped to 80 percent of bone strength (Mosekilde by the strains and stresses put on them by 2000), but the pattern of loss differs. In the activity of their owner. Osteoblasts de- men the decline is gradual, barring sec- posit matrix at some sites, while another ondary causes.22 In women it is gradual cell type, the osteoclast, can chip away at until perimenopause, accelerates for sev- areas of too much growth. Growing bones eral years during and after the menopause, change shape through this give and take of and then resumes a gradual decline.23 Lis osteoblast and osteoclast activity in a pro- Moskilde (2000) points out that the rush cess called bone remodeling. 26 Long bones to link menopause to osteoporosis has led increase in length throughout childhood to the neglect of two of the three major by adding on new material at their growing differences in the pattern of bone growth ends. These growth sites close as a result between men and women. Yet these two of hormonal changes during puberty, but THE BARE BONES OF SEX | 281 bone reshaping continues over the course functional adaptation. Although a great of a life (Currey 2002). deal remains to be under stood about the Bone contains two important types of biology of use and disuse, some basic prin- tissue, which can be seen if one cuts it ciples are already evident. First, both dis- across the middle. The outer dense, hard use and predictable moderate use result layer is called compact tissue; the inner in bone resorption and increased porosity. layer contains cancellous tissue consist- However, dynamic strain, that is, strain ing of a latticework of slender fi bers. The that is unpredictable and of varied impact fi bers of this interior bone lattice fuse level, can lead to a linear increase in bone into longer structures called trabeculae mass (Mosley 2000). 28 Bones may adopt (Latin for “small beam”) that crisscross strain thresholds such that only strains the interior of the bone. The periosteum above such thresholds induce new bone (literally, “around the bone”), a layer of formation. Strain thresholds may change tissue through which blood vessels and over the life cycle. Perhaps the decline in nerves pass into the interior, covers the estrogen associated with menopause re- bone. sets the threshold to a higher strain level, Osteoblasts clinging to the periosteum thus requiring very high levels of bone and around the trabecular struts of the stress to stimulate new bone formation. bone’s interior can produce new bone in Such dynamic theories allow us to under- both locations. Osteoblasts can also trans- stand how behavior (e.g., changing forms form into osteocytes, cells found in large of exercise) and hormonal changes in the numbers inside the hard bone tissues body might together produce bone loss or (Currey 2002). Osteocytes probably play an gain (Frost 1986, 1992). important role in bone regeneration when Even such a simplifi ed account of bone they produce chemical signals that tell os- development and maintenance shows how teoblasts that the bone is under mechani- hard it can be to understand why people in cal strain and needs to grow (Mosley 2000). one group break their bones more often Osteoblasts cannot form new bone unless than people in another. Groups may differ the surface on which they sit is under a in peak bone size even if bone loss later mechanical strain, which explains why ex- in life is the same. The trabeculae on the ercise remains such an important compo- bone’s inside might be thicker in one group nent of bone health while weightlessness than another, or the outside, compact bone in space or prolonged bed rest result in the layer might be thicker. There could be less loss of bone thickness.27 bone loss or a reduction in bone turnover Moreover, osteoblasts only add new bone (the balance between osteoclast and os- on preexisting surfaces. A person with oste- teoblast activity). Trabecular loss could re- oporosis develops breaks in the tiny cross sult from thinning rather than perforation, beams, and these widen into holes that rid- or there could be more new bone forma- dle the bone’s interior. A lost strut cannot tion in the periosteum or less resorption be replaced because there is no old surface in the bone’s interior. What is most striking on which to lay down a new mineral layer. about the medical literature on osteopo- A thinning strut, however, can thicken again rosis is that “whether these differences in if the osteoblast produces more new bone bone size, mass, or structure, or bone turn- than the osteoclast breaks down (Parfi tt over among ethnic groups or between men 1988; Mosekilde 2000). and women even partly account for the Bone development, then, is profoundly corresponding group differences in frac- infl uenced by what physiologists call ture rates is unknown” (Seeman 1997, 517). 282 | ANNE FAUSTO- STERLING

Genes, of course, are involved in all of the brain and the sympathetic (involun- the events described in the previous few tary) nervous system.30 The fi rst system paragraphs. Rather than as causes of bone includes three major hormones that main- construction and destruction, however, tain proper calcium levels through out the genes are best understood as mediators, body, dipping into the bone calcium reser- suspended in a network of signals (includ- voir as needed.31 The hormones (the active ing their own) that induce them to synthe- form of vitamin D; parathyroid hormone size new molecules. 29 The molecules they [PTH], which is made by a small pair of make may help to produce more bone or glands called the parathyroid glands; and to break down existing bone. Either action calcitonin, which is secreted by the thyroid may, in turn, be a direct effect (e.g., mak- glands) regulate blood calcium levels and ing a structural element such as collagen) bone metabolism.32 At low concentrations or an indirect effect (e.g., causing the death PTH maintains a stable level of mineral or sustaining the life of bone making cells). turnover in the bone, but at high levels it Researchers have identifi ed over thirty stimulates osteoclast activity, thus releas- genes that affect bone development either ing calcium into the bloodstream. 33 Al- positively or negatively in mice (Peacock et though calcitonin counteracts the effects al. 2002), and scientists continue to iden- of PTH on osteoclasts, its functions and tify genetic variants affecting bone density mode of action are still poorly understood, in humans (Boyden et al. 2002; Little et al. but PTH affects bone, kidney, and intes- 2002; Ishida et al. 2003). tine using vitamin D as an intermediary- a Finally, how do hormones fi t into all point that returns us to the contributions of this? Part of the initial logic of thinking of sunlight and diet. Our diets and cellular about osteoporosis as a basic biological machinery provide inactive forms of vita- (sex) difference between men and women min D, but these require the direct energy derives from the observation that bone from sunlight hitting the skin to change thinning increases dramatically around into potentially active forms. Final trans- the time of menopause. Most thus assume formations from inactive to active forms that declining estrogen causes bone loss. of vitamin D occur in the liver and kidney Since estrogen codes in most people’s (Bezkorovainy and Rafelson 1996). minds as a quintessentially female mole- Although gonadal hormones- both estro- cule, it becomes extraordinarily diffi cult gens and androgens- are clearly important to conceptualize osteoporosis as a disease for bone development and maintenance, with many contributors stretching over the how they regulate bone metabolism re- entire life cycle. Here, gender constructs mains uncertain (Kousteni et al. 2001, (Fausto- Sterling 2000) combined with the 2002). Recently, some fascinating studies profi ts derived from selling estrogen re- done on mice have suggested that both an- placement have contributed mightily to drogens and estrogens operate in a fashion shaping the course of scientifi c research unusual for steroid hormones by prevent- in this fi eld. Estrogen, though, is only one ing the death of bone- forming cells with- of a number of hormones linked to bone out stimulating new gene activity. Whether physiology. these results will hold for humans re mains At least three major hormone systems to be seen.34 Other information from ani- acting both independently of one another mal models suggests that bone response to and through mutual infl uence regulate mechanical strain requires the presence of bone formation and loss. Fascinatingly, at an estrogen receptor on the osteoblast cell least two of these operate at times through surface (Lee et al. 2003), but a clear story of THE BARE BONES OF SEX | 283 the role of estrogens and androgens in bone age, to name some most relevant to bone formation and maintenance throughout formation, produce a particular bone the life cycle remains to be told. structure in a particular individual with Last but certainly not least a hormone a particular life history? To even begin to called leptin, announced to the world with set up this problem in a manner that can great fanfare in 1995 as a possible “magic stimulate future work and ultimately bring bullet” for weight control (Roush 1995), us better answers, we need to learn how to also affects bone formation. Like the sex handle complex, dynamic systems. And so, steroids, leptin works via a relay system in fi nally, I turn to a discussion of two over- the hypothalamus, a part of the brain linked lapping sets of ideas—developmental and to the pituitary gland. Fat tissue produces dynamic systems theory. leptin, which signals specialized nerve cells in the hypothalamus; these activated THINKING SYSTEMATICALLY neurons pro duce two effects- lowering the ABOUT BONE appetite and stimulating basal metabolism (via the sympathetic nervous system). In There are better ways to think about gen- mice, leptin has a second, apparently in- der and the bare bones of sex. One cannot dependent effect, also mediated through easily separate bone biology from the ex- the hypothalamus and the sympathetic periences of individuals growing, living, nervous system. Increased leptin signals and dying in particular cultures and his- nerves in the bone to depress bone forma- torical periods and under different reg- tion. This presents an interpretive paradox: imens of social gender. 37 But how can we obesity provides some protection against integrate the varied information presented osteoporosis. But the more fat cells, the in this essay in a manner that helps us ask more leptin is made, which in theory ought better research and public policy ques- to depress bone formation. There are sev- tions and that, in posing better questions, eral possible explanations for this paradox. allows us to fi nd better answers? By bet- In mice it may be that the very overweight ter, I mean several things: in terms of the body becomes insensitive to its high leptin science I want to take more of the “curi- levels, just as obesity contributes to insu- ous facts” about bone into account when lin insensitivity in type 2 diabetes. Or the responding to public health problems. I stimulation of bone formation from the favor emphasizing lifelong healthful habits mechanical stress of increased weight that might prevent or lessen the severity of might trump the effects of leptin, and/ bone problems in late life, but I would also or leptin physiology in mice and humans like us to have a better idea of how to help might differ in important ways.35 people whose bones are already thin. What In the next decade we will surely learn dietary changes, what regimens of exer- a lot more about the relationships among cise and sun exposure, what body mass bone formation, leptin, and the sympa- index work best with which medications? thetic nervous system.36 But we also must How do the medications we choose work? learn how to study the balances and in- What unintended effects do they have? Fi- teractions among all of the various factors nally, better includes an ability to predict that impinge on bone formation. How do outcomes for individuals, based on their social systems that infl uence what we eat, particular life histories and genetic make- how and when we exercise, whether we ups, rather than merely making probability drink or smoke, what kinds of diseases we statements about large and diverse catego- get and how they are treated, and how we ries of people. 284 | ANNE FAUSTO- STERLING

How can we get there from here? Below, organisms develop through a process of I outline in fairly general form the possibil- self- organization rather than according to a ities of dynamic systems and developmen- preformed set of instructions.40 The varying tal systems approaches. Such formulations relationships among system components allow us to work with the idea that we are lead to change, and new patterns are dy- always 100 percent nature and 100 percent namically stable because the characteris- nurture. I further point to important theo- tics of the system confer stability. But if the retical and empirical work currently under system is suffi ciently perturbed, instability way by social scientists who study chronic ensues and signifi cant fl uctuations occur diseases using a lifecourse approach. Be- until a new pattern, again dynamically sta- fore turning to the specifi cs of bone devel- ble, emerges. Bone densities, for example, opment, let me offer a general introduction are often dynamically stable in mid life but to these complementary modes of thought. destabilize during old age; most medical in- Figure 17.1 presents a visual scheme terventions aim to restabilize the dynamic of the larger systems arena. Ludwig von system that maintains bone density. But we Bertalanffy is usually cited as the origina- really do not understand how the transition tor of “general systems theory,” a program from a stable to an unstable system of bone for studying complex systems such as or- maintenance occurs. ganisms as whole entities rather than the To address the bare bones of sex, I high- traditional approach of reducing the whole light, in fi gure 17.2, seven systems that to its component parts (Bertalanffy 1969), contribute to bone strength throughout but the idea of studying developmental the lifecycle.41 I also describe some of the outcomes as a result of the combined ac- known interrelationships between them.42 tion of genes and environment began in Each of the seven—physical activity, diet, the early twentieth century before a clear drugs, bone formation in fetal devel- theoretical statement was achieved in the opment, hormones, bone cell metabo- 1940s. 38 lism, and biomechanical effects on bone Systems theorists also write about the formation—can be analyzed as a complex brain and behavior. D. O. Hebb (1949) system in its own right. Bone strength linked psychology and physiology by emerges from the interrelated actions of thinking about how functional cellular each (and all) of these systems as they act groups develop in the brain, thus devel- throughout the life cycle. As a fi rst step oping a form of systems theory called con- toward envisioning bone from a systems nectionism. As Esther Thelen and Linda viewpoint we can construct a theoretical Smith put it, “the connection weights be- diagram of their interactions. The diagram tween layers—the response of the net work in systems approaches can be thought to a particular input—thus depend on the of as a theoretical model, to be tested in statistical regularities in the network’s his- part or whole and modifi ed as needed. 43 tory of experiences” (Thelen and Smith As ways to describe each component sys- 1998, 580). Thus an organism’s current and tem using numerical proxies become future behaviors are shaped by past expe- available, the pictorial model can provide riences via a direct effect on the strength of the framework for a mathematical model. connections between cells in the brain.39 Figure 17.2 represents one possible dia- The varied systems approaches to gram of a lifecourse systems account of understanding development share cer- bone development. tain features in common. All understand This feminist systems account em- that cells, nervous systems, and whole beds the proposed subsystems within the self organization from multiple processes

processes are both internal and external to the organism embryology epigenesis relationships among components lead to Bertalanffy (General Systems Theory) change: not a set of instructions

patterns are both stable and adaptable cybernetics Historical Common Principles Roots applies to open systems that can be genetics: norm of reaction perturbed from both the inside and the outside Waddington and epigenetic landscapes nonlinear connections between Dynamic systems applied to psychology mechanisms and behaviors and ethology (large effects from small changes)

equifinality SYSTEMS THEORY centrality of developmental process

Current Models of Cell and Developmental Biology Dynamic (Developmental) dynamic systems: a class of describe time-based systems Systems Theory mathematical equations complex, nonlinear over time

Current Models of developmental process itself is the Neural Development center of knowledge acquisition final outcome represents fraction of possible outcomes networks of neural connections: strengthened or weakened neural equifinality (varied pathways can lead transmissions Developmental Psychobiological to common developmental endpoints) Connectionism Systems response of network to a new stimulus depends on the history of prior EXPERIENCE=functional activity experiences and is distinct from ENVIRONMENT facilitative experience influences thresholds, rates of maturation, or behavioral development

maintenance (sustains or stabilize induced systems)

Figure 17.1 Overview of systems theories Bone formation Fetal life • Pattern genes • Cell differentiation genes • Bone metabolism genes

Socioeconomic position

Drugs Diet Bone • Maternal use • Maternal intake Strength • Fetal metabolism • Fetal metabolism

Infancy and Play and Diet Biomechanical childhood sports effects on bone 3 2 maintenance 1 Bone Hormones 4 Bone cell metabolism Strength • Growth • Cell division and death • Of Ca++ metab. • Osteoclast/blast activity

Sex/gender, socioeconomic position, and culture

1 Puberty and young adulthood Labor- Biomechanical exercise Diet Drugs effects on bone maintenance 2 3 Bone Strength Hormones Bone cell metabolism • gonadal • Cell division and death ++ • Of Ca metab. 4 • Osteoclast/blast activity • Pregnancy lactation

Sex/gender, socioeconomic position, and culture

Middle to Labor- Diet Drugs Biomechanical old age exercise effects on bone 1 maintenance 2 3 Bone Hormones Bone cell metabolism Strength • Gonadal (decline) 4 • Cell division and death • Of Ca++ metab. • Osteoclast/blast activity

Sex/gender, socioeconomic position, and culture

Figure 17.2 A life history–systems overview of bone development. (1) Physical activity has direct effects on bone cell receptors and indirect effects by building stronger muscles,which exert physical strain on bones, thus stimulating bone synthesis. (2) Physical activity that takes place outdoors involves exposure to sunlight, thus stimulating vitamin D synthesis, part of the hormonal system regulating calcium metabolism. (3) Biomechanical strain affects bone cell metabolism by activating genes concerned with bone cell division and bone (re)modeling. (4) Hormones affect bone cell metabolism by activating genes concerned with bone cell division, cell death, bone (re)modeling, and new hormone synthesis. THE BARE BONES OF SEX | 287 dimensions of gender, socioeconomic po- point builds on what has gone before. Im- sition, and culture.44 Consider the diet sys- portant events with regard to bone devel- tem. Generally, of course, diet is shaped by opment may be clustered and interrelated. culture and sub culture, including race and For both the diet and physical activity sys- ethnicity (Bryant, Cadogan, and Weaver tems, it should be possible to design math- 1999). But gender further infl uences diet. ematical models based on some measure For example, one study reports that 27 per- of bone strength that would incorporate cent of U.S. teenage girls (compared with the effects of each of these social systems 10 percent of adolescent boys) who think on bone development through out the life they weigh the correct amount are never- cycle; once we have plausible models of theless trying to lose weight (Walsh and each system, we can ask questions about Devlin 1998). It may also be true that there their interactions. are sex/gender differences in basal metab- The remaining four systems are often olism rates that infl uence food intake. considered within the realm of biology, as Figure 17.2 also indicates the cumula- if biology were separate from culture, al- tive effects of diet on bone formation. Key though recent work from some medical events may be clustered at certain points epidemiologists challenges this distinction in the life cycle.45 For example, adolescent (Ellison 1996; Hertzman 1999; Lamont et al. girls in the United States often diet more 2000). The system of biomechanical effects and exercise less than during earlier child- on bone synthesis, for example, requires hood. Diseases such as anorexia nervosa, further investigation of all of its inputs which have devastating effects on bone (physical strain, activation of genes that development, may also emerge during ad- stimulate bone cell development or death, olescence. As Yoav Ben- Shlomo and Diana etc. [Harada and Rodan 2003]), but these Kuh (2002) point out, such clustering of must then be studied in relationship to adverse events is common and may be the gender- differentiated physical activity thought of in terms of “chains of risk” (or system. The different body shapes of adult benefi t). In a lifecourse approach, prior men and women (related to hormones events set the limits on later ones. If girls at puberty among other things) may also and women enter into adulthood with affect bone biomechanics, and we need, weakened bones, therefore, they can re- too, to know more about how growth and build them, but their peak density may be development affect the number of bone less than if they had built stronger bones in mechanoreceptors- molecules that trans- adolescence.46 late mechanical stress in biochemical activ- Alternatively, achieving a safe peak ity (Boman et al. 1998; Pavalko et al. 2003). bone density might require more sus- The impact of hormones on bone de- tained and intense work for a person of velopment and maintenance re quires re- one history compared with a person of a search attention of a sort currently lacking different history. Sex/gender, race, class, in the bone literature. We need to know and culture also differentiate individuals both about the molecular biology of hor- by forms of play in childhood and beyond mones and bone cell hormone receptors (Boot et al. 1997), by choices of formal ex- and about lifecourse effects on hormone ercise programs, and, in adulthood, by systems (Ellison 1996; Worthman 2002). forms of labor, physical and otherwise. In Finally, genes involved in bone cell me- analyzing the system of physical activity tabolism, pattern formation, hormone one again applies lifecourse principles by metabolism, drug processing, and many considering that what happens at any one other processes contribute importantly to 288 | ANNE FAUSTO- STERLING

the development of bone strength (Zelzer 2. For example, sitting height reﬂ ects trunk length and Olsen 2003). Understanding how they (vertebral height) vs. standing height, which function within both the local and global reﬂ ects the length of the leg bones. These can change independently of one another. Thus (body and sociocultural) networks con- height increases can result from changes in long tributing to bone development requires a bone length, vertebral height, or both. See Mer- systems- level analysis not yet found in the edith 1978; Tanner et al. 1982; Malina, Brown, literature. and Zavaleta 1987; Balthazart, Tlemani, and Ball 1996; Seeman 1997. 3. The use of racial terms such as Caucasian and CONCLUSION others in this article is fraught. But for the duration of this article I will use the terms as they This article is a call to arms. The sex- appear in the sources I cite, leaving an analysis gender or nature- nurture accounts of of this problematic terminology to future publi- difference fail to appreciate the degree to cations, e.g., Fausto Sterling 2004. 4. Since a number of studies show no sex differ- which culture is a partner in producing ence in hip fracture incidence between African body systems commonly referred to as American men and women, the “ well- known” biology—something apart from the social. gender difference in bone fragility may really I introduce an alternative—a lifecourse only be about white women. As so often hap- systems approach to the analysis of sex/ pens, the word gender excludes women of color (Farmer et al. 1984). gender. Figure 17.2 is a research proposal 5. Peacock et al. write, “Key bone phenotypes infor multiple programs of investigation volved in fracture risk relate not only to bone in several disciplines. We need to ask old mass but also to bone structure, bone loss, and questions in new ways so that we can think possibly bone turnover” (2002, 306). systematically about the interweaving of 6. I am grateful to Peter Taylor for insisting that I read the work in lifecourse analysis. bodies and culture. We will not lay bare 7. Stepan 1982; Russett 1989; Hubbard 1990; the bones of sex, but we will come to un- Fausto- Sterling 1992. derstand, instead, that our skeletons are 8. I use the term experience rather than the term part of a life process. If process rather than environment here to refer to functional activity. stasis becomes our intellectual goal, we For more detail see Gottlieb, Whalen, and Lick- liter 1998. will improve medical practice and have a 9. Butler 1990, 1993; Gatens 1996; Kirby 1997; Birke more satisfying account of gender and sex 1999. as, to paraphrase the phenomenologists, 10. The “rediscovery” of phenomenology and its ap- being- in- the world. plication to gendered body image remains a fruitful arena of feminist body theory, e.g., Weiss 1999. 11. Although Thomas J. Csordas (1999) suggests that cultural phenomenological analyses trans- NOTES form understandings of both biology and cul- Thanks to the members of the Pembroke Seminar ture, he is more concerned with how the body on Theories of Embodiment for a wonderful year changes culture than vice versa. For a different of thinking about the process of body making and anthropological point of view, see Ingold 1998. for their thoughtful response to an earlier draft of 12. Since the society receives both foundation this essay. Credit for the title goes to Greg Downey. and pharmaceutical company funding, its Thanks also to anonymous reviewers from Signs claim to independence requires scrutiny. The for making me sharpen some of the arguments. Sex and Gene Expression conferences were funded by Aventis Pharmaceuticals as well 1. Munro Peacock et al. write: “The pathogenesis of as private foundations. Industry and main- a fragility fracture almost always involves trauma stream medical care sponsorship does not and is not necessarily associated with reduced unethically direct work, but it limits the per- bone mass. Thus, fragility fracture should neither missible ontological and epistemological ap- be used synonymously nor interchangeably as a proaches to the study of women’s health and phenotype for osteoporosis” (2002, 303). sex differences. THE BARE BONES OF SEX | 289

13. Perhaps because the fi eld of archaeology is still mineral density concluded: “Measurements of struggling to bring gender into the fold, its prac- bone mineral density can predict fracture risk titioners often insist on the centrality of the sex/ but cannot identify individuals who will have a gender distinction. Yet their own conclusions fracture. We do not recommend a programme of undermine this dualism, precisely because they screening menopausal women for osteoporosis use a biological product, bone, to draw con- by measuring bone density” (Marshall, Johnell, clusions about culture and behavior (Ehren- and Wedell 1996, 1254). See also Nelson et al. berg 1989; Gero and Conkey 1991; Wright 1996; 2002. Armelagos 1998). 21. For a history of the concept of osteoporosis, see 14. The validity of using bones to identity race is Klinge 1998. contested (Goodman 1997). 22. A secondary cause might be bone loss due to an 15. This study (cited in Melton 1988) dates from eating disorder or a metabolic disease, or the 1979, and it seems likely that subsequent cul- prolonged use of a bone- leaching drug such as tural changes have led to different patterns of cortisone. breakage; fracture incidence is a moving target. 23. When I use the words men and women I refer 16. Local biologies refl ect local differences in biol- to particular populations on which these stud- ogy. For example, hot fl ashes are far less frequent ies were done. These are mostly Caucasian and in Japan than in the United States, possibly for Northern European or North American. Most of reasons pertaining to diet. The normalization the studies have been done since the 1980s, but question here is: Is it best to compare a popula- bone size, shape, and growth patterns would tion to its own group or some group with similar have differed at the beginning of the twentieth environmental and genetic histories, or to some century compared with their appearance at the outgroup standard? beginning of the twenty- fi rst. I will not make 17. These factors include: a mother having broken these points every time I use these words. her hip, especially before age eighty; height at 24. So powerful is the focus on old age that the long age twenty- fi ve (taller women are more likely NIH bibliography on menopause completely to break hips); extreme thinness; sedentary life- ignores the possible importance of pregnancy style; poor vision; high pulse rate; the use of cer- and lactation on bone development. These two tain drugs; etc. processes are profoundly implicated in calcium 18. One researcher states: “I think what is also of metabolism, and if there is no effect on later note, is that the between- center differences are bone strength it would be important to fi nd out greater than between- sex differences within cer- why. What physiological mechanisms protect tain centers” (Lips 1997, 95). the bone of pregnant and lactating women? This 19. Fosamax seems to be able to prevent further is an example of a biological question that lies bone loss in people who are losing bone and to fallow because of the focus on supposed estro- build back lost bone at least in the hip and spine. gen defi ciency in old age. In discussing Merck’s campaign, I do not argue 25. The bone matrix is made up primarily of a that the drug is useless (in fact, I am taking it!), substance called hydroxyapatite that is mostly merely(!) that drug companies play an import- composed of crystalline forms of the molecules ant role in the creation of new “disease” and calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, and profi t as a result. small amounts of magnesium, fl uoride, and 20. “An association between the change in areal sulfate. bone density and the change in fracture rates 26. One memory device for remembering which cell has never been documented” (Seeman 1997, is which is to think that osteoBlasts Build bone 517). According to the NIH Consensus State- and osteoClasts Chomp on bone. ment Online: “Currently there is no accurate 27. Stress can be from direct impact or from tension measure of overall bone strength” (2000, 5). placed on the bones by attached muscles. For But BMD is often used as a proxy. The Na- more details on the importance of mechanical tional Women’s Health Network cites the pit- strain on bone development, see Skerry and falls of using BMD to predict future fractures Lanyon 1995; Mosekilde 2000; Mosley 2000. (Fugh- Berman, Pearson, Allina, Zones, Worces- 28. In animal models it is possible to induce new ter, Whadey, Massion, et al. 2002), but others bone formation (modeling) without fi rst having cite a strong association between BMD and caused bone resorption (Pead, Skerry, and Lan- fracture rate (e.g., Melton et al. 1998; Siris et al. yon 1988). 2001). One overview of studies that attempted to 29. One review states that mechanical receptors predict osteoporosis- linked fractures with bone transform signals from deforming bones into 290 | ANNE FAUSTO- STERLING

changes in the shape of DNA regions that regulate in adults suggests that far from being destiny, the activities of genes involved in bone formation. anatomy is dynamic history. A rich literature The authors write that “bending bone ultimately that joins mathematical models of nonlinear bends genes” (Pavalko et al. 2003, 104). equations (Kelso 1995) has begun to join forces 30. Physiological functions such as heart and with experimental scientists who study animal breathing rate and energy metabolism are reg- behavior (Gottlieb 1997) and those who now ulated through involuntary nerves belonging to use dynamic systems approaches to reconcep- the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous tualize human behavioral development (Smith systems. These systems balance each other out and Thelen 1993; Thelen and Smith 1994, 1998; by stimulating or inhibiting various functions. Thelen 1995; Thelen et al. 2001). They are controlled through brain centers with- 40. Among biologists the idea that genes provide out our having to think about them. such instructions is giving way to a systems 31. All cells, but especially nerve and muscle cells, account of cell function. The metaphor of the need calcium. So bone is essential not only for genome (DNA) as a blueprint or set of direc- structural support but also to maintain healthy tions for building cells and organisms is giv- calcium levels throughout the body. ing way to a new metaphor- genomes as parts 32. The active form of vitamin D is 1,25-dihydroxy- list (Vukmirovic and Tilghmann 2000; Tyson, cholecalciferol. Csikasz- Nagy, and Novak 2002). If the genome 33. Parathyroid hormone also increases Ca++ reab- lists only the component parts (codes for RNA sorption in the kidney and absorption in the and protein), the location of the assembly direc- small intestine. tions becomes uncertain: one needs to specify 34. The negative effects of estrogen treatment a cell or organism’s past history and current come from the hormone’s more common conditions in order to predict a current devel- mode of action- stimulating gene activities opmental event accurately. Cell biologists have after binding to the nucleus. The researchers now turned in earnest to complexity and sys- cited have a compound that has none of the tems theory to help learn the rules by which gene- activity- stimulating actions but does be- organisms are assembled. (See entire Decem- have like androgens and estrogens by prevent- ber 2002 issue of BioEssays devoted to “Model- ing the death of osteoblasts. See also Moggs ing Complex Biological Systems.”) In another et al. 2003. example, authors extend and twist the book 35. Ducy et al. 2000; Flier 2002; Takeda et al. 2002; metaphor: “Just as words must be assembled Harada and Rodan 2003. into sentences, paragraphs, chapters and books 36. Leptin may also regulate the onset of puberty, to make sense, vital cellular functions are per- thus linking gonadal hormones and the leptin formed by structured ensembles of proteins . . . hormone system (Chehab et al. 1997). not by freely diffusing and occasionally colliding 37. I found one eloquent but wordless example on proteins” (Sali et al. 2003, 216). the Web in an article on causes of vitamin D 41. I use Peter Taylor’s defi nition of systems as defi ciency. The short segment titled “Insuffi - “units that have clearly defi ned boundaries, co- cient Exposure to Sunlight” was accompanied herent internal dynamics, and simply mediated by a photograph of two women, standing in the relations with their external context” (personal blazing sun, covered from head to toe in burkas, communication 2003). clearly insuffi ciently exposed to sunlight but not 42. This choice of systems emerges from the data for want of being outdoors in the sun. presented earlier in this article. Since this is a 38. Brief histories of these ideas as well as accounts of model, others might argue for dividing the pie present- day embryology, genetics, and evolu- in a different way. To keep the diagram read- tion based on systems theory may be found in able and the discussion manageable, I have Waddington 1957; Kauffi nan 1993; Webster and not emphasized that the entire grouping of Goodwin 1996; Schlichting and Pigliucci 1998; systems is embedded in a larger system I call van der Weele 1999; Oyama 2000a, 2000b. “general health.” There are many disease states 39. The implications of these ideas for an integra- that secondarily affect bone (e.g., kidney dis- tive theory of the development of gender dif- ease or endocrine disorders) by affecting cal- ferences in behavior and psychological skills cium metabolism or preventing exercise. The has not escaped me and is the subject of a work relationships among the systems affecting bone in progress. The explosion of knowledge about strength would be shifted in dramatic ways the plastic nature of brain development and worthy of study in their own right under such an increasing understanding of neuroplasticity circumstances. THE BARE BONES OF SEX | 291

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Constructing Gender from the Inside Out: Sex- Selection Practices in the United States Rajani Bhatia

In the July 2010 issue of the Atlantic , Hanna States do mark a signifi cant socio-cultural- Rosin published a provocative article pro- technical shift that feminists should be claiming “the end of men.” Among the evi- paying attention to— even if they do not dence provided— increased rates of female portend the hyperbolic “end of men.” employment and their higher levels of For more than a decade now, mass print education— Rosin highlights girl preference and television media have been herald- data stemming from U.S. sex- selection ing the development and marketing of practices. Her “unambiguous proof” of a new technologies as the answer to a long signifi cant cultural transformation, which quest for scientifi cally proven methods she purports has left boys and men in for selecting the sex of a child. MicroSort the dust, is that a majority (75 percent) and PGD are new methods of sex selection of those participating in a clinical trial of used in conjunction with assisted repro- one new sex- selection method known as duction such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) MicroSort sought girls.1 Rosin neglects or intrauterine insemination (IUI). Micro- to mention that MicroSort is technolog- Sort involves sorting sperm based on the ically more effective at raising a couple’s chromosomes determinative of sex. PGD is chances of producing a girl rather than a a diagnostic technology that involves test- boy, because its sperm-sorting technique ing embryos produced through IVF for the produces purer samples of X— rather than characteristic of sex and then preselecting Y—chromosome- bearing sperm. It would embryos for implantation based on sex follow, then, that couples preferring boys preference. MicroSort and PGD both cir- would less likely utilize this method, but cumvent the politically contentious abor- would turn instead to a second, also new, tion issue because they are applied before sex- selection method— preimplantation pregnancy (although PGD may involve the genetic diagnosis (PGD)—that, unlike Mi- discarding of viable embryos). The impor- croSort, does not carry a technical bias tance of this feature in the U.S. context can- toward the production of girls over boys. not be overstated, and it is precisely what Rosin, however, provides no data from makes these technologies so marketable. clinics offering PGD. And yet, in spite of At the same time, prospective customers of these oversights, I will be arguing in this sex selection increasingly have found each article that recent sex-selection practices other on the Internet, developing a col- involving new technologies in the United lective identity based on their desire for a 298 | RAJANI BHATIA

child of a particular sex. Patient/consumer signifi cance of that critique for feminist activism via the Internet provides sympa- theory. Through a rhetorical analysis of thetic, self-help spaces that allow individ- sex-selection discourses by marketers, the uals to express their intention to preselect medical establishment, and private con- their offspring’s sex or their disappoint- sumers, I contribute to theorizing the so- ment at birthing a child of the “wrong sex.” cial relations of technology and resist the Taken together, these developments signal mass media representation of sex selection a new era in which there is a potential for as an inevitable consequence of “freedom the practice of sex selection in the United of choice.” I hope to persuade U.S.- based States to become increasingly normalized. feminists of the growing relevance of the In the late 1970s, the development of pre- issue to feminist concerns. My entrée into natal diagnostic technologies announced a the issue of sex selection came from lis- fi rst generation of medicalized sex- selective tening to fi rst- hand accounts of women’s methods. Ultrasound scanning and amnio- health activists in Mumbai who had since centesis to detect sex, if followed by sex- 1985 organized a campaign against sex- selective abortion, however, remains highly selective abortion. I thus came to view controversial and presents a dilemma for sex selection as a form of gender-based prochoice feminists, who are wary of en- violence. Sex selection is now a transna- dorsing any restrictions on abortion. Now, tional feminist issue, but I hope to make much has changed in the move from fi rst- to clear why new technologies and practices second-generation sex-selection technolo- of sex selection should be of grave concern gies such as MicroSort and PGD. Whereas to U.S. feminists and why we also have a the use of prenatal diagnostic technologies stake in how new technologies are intro- for sex selection was a perhaps unforeseen duced, marketed, and used. In the United consequence of the increased medical sur- States, it is presumed, sex selection does veillance of pregnancy, second-generation not constitute a gender discriminatory sex-selection technologies became pos- practice because of the lack of percepti- sible because of the medicalization of in- ble son preference. Libertarian feminist fertility since the 1970s. First-generation perspectives that critique government in- sex- selection technologies afforded a “de- trusions into matters considered private selection” of sex, which through its active reduce the issue to a question of “freedom negation or choice against a particular sex of choice.” Yet we need to look beyond the via abortion carries negative connotations; individual level of consumer choices to second-generation technologies allow for grasp more fully the implications of sex se- sex “preselection,” which seems to imply lection in the United States. choice in a more positive sense, that is, My approach to this issue combines choice “for” rather than “against.” Such pos- several bodies of feminist inquiry: sex and itive choice is illusory, as a choice “for” a gender; reproductive rights; cultural differ- boy necessarily involves a choice “against” a ence; and gender, health, and illness. My girl. Nevertheless, second- generation tech- analysis puts these discursive fi elds into nologies benefi t from association with as- conversation in order to arrive at a broader sisted reproduction as opposed to abortion. framing that highlights the issues at stake Fertility clinics can use demand for sex se- for U.S. feminists and their allies. While fo- lection to attract a wider range of customers cusing on sex selection in the United States, who are not infertile. I intentionally hold in view the context of This article is a critique of the practice sex selection in India for two reasons. First, of sex selection and an argument for the my refusal to separate the Indian and U.S. CONSTRUCTING GENDER FROM THE INSIDE OUT: SEX-SELECTION PRACTICES | 299 contexts contrasts with popular, medical, the formation of active Internet support and bioethical discourses that situate sex groups for individuals who desire to prese- selection in India (or, more generally, Asia) lect the sex of their children. as a polar opposite to U.S. practices. View- ing Eastern and Western contexts as oppo- New Prepregnancy Technologies sitional and unequal immunizes U.S. sex selection from interrogation on cultural Two forms of sex-selection technologies grounds. Second, by merging U.S. and In- were developed in the 1990s: MicroSort, a dian contexts, I aim to seek new directions sperm-sorting method, and PGD, a genetic for a feminist politics of reproduction that test performed on embryos prior to their can bridge a number of increasingly un- transfer into the uterus of a woman during tenable binaries: (over)fertility/(in)fertility, IVF. MicroSort operates by sorting and contraception/conception, developing/ separating a man’s sperm into X-bearing developed, irrational/rational, modern/ sperm that produce girls and Y-bearing postmodern, and population control/indi- sperm that produce boys. Developed origi- vidual control. The discussion begins with nally by the U.S. Department of Agriculture a short background of the factors that drive to sort bull sperm, the method underwent the gradual normalization of sex selection a trial in humans between June 1994 and in the United States. This article then ex- March 2010. The Genetics and In Vitro plores fi ve main issues: constructing gender Fertilization (GIVF) Institute in Virginia, from the inside out, that is, engaging U.S. which holds an exclusive license to apply sex- selection practices in the meanings of the technique in humans, has applied to sex and gender; the right to have versus the the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “right” to choose children; making parents; for approval of the technique and cur- cultural double standards concerning sex rently awaits determination by the FDA of selection; and sex selection as a potential its application.2 During the trial, the GIVF case study of new forms of medicalization. Institute used two laboratories for sorting Ultimately, I argue that the normaliza- sperm, one in Virginia and the other in Cal- tion of U.S.- based sex- selection practices ifornia. A number of collaborating assisted comes with high stakes. These include the reproductive technology (ART) centers reinforcement of sex and gender binaries, around the country provided the method, the undermining of the very meaning of re- using frozen, sorted sperm samples ob- productive rights, and the construction of tained from the two laboratory sites. The “Third World women” as the site of irratio- MicroSort process involves fi rst applying a nal practices of sex selection. dye to sperm and then sending it through a fl ow cytometer device that causes the dyed sperm to fl uoresce. The device then FACTORS DRIVING THE detects and quantifi es the amount of fl u- NORMALIZATION OF SEX SELECTION orescence (more dye binds to X-bearing IN THE UNITED STATES sperm). Subsequently, the device defl ects Three main coinciding factors drive the X- from Y-bearing sperm to produce the trend toward sex selection in the United sorted samples.3 A trial participant who States. They are the emergence of a second would like a girl, for example, used the generation of medicalized sex-selection X-bearing sorted sample of sperm in con- technologies performed prior to preg- junction with ART methods such as IUI or nancy, the increasing publicity about these IVF to become pregnant. Among those who technologies in the popular media, and did get pregnant, GIVF claimed increasing 300 | RAJANI BHATIA

the chances for a girl to 91 percent and for offering PGD for sex selection. A feature a boy to 76 percent.4 In the trial, MicroSort article on sex selection in Spirit, South- cost $3,400 for the sperm- sorting proce- west Airlines’ in-fl ight magazine, reported dure, which did not include the additional that fertility doctor Jeffrey Steinberg qua- necessary costs of ART.5 Most women at- drupled his business after offering PGD tempted MicroSort on average three times for sex selection. In fall 2006, the Genetics before either getting pregnant or drop- and Public Policy Center concluded that ping out of the trial. Recruitment ads for 42 percent of 415 clinics surveyed offered the trial appeared in the New York Times PGD for nonmedical sex selection.8 Sunday magazine and in airline infl ight magazines. 6 Popular Media and Marketing First tested on humans in 1990, PGD came into more routine use by the end of Since 1998, articles on the new sex- selection that decade among infertile couples un- technologies have appeared widely in pop- dergoing IVF in order to screen for disease- ular media, including the New York Times causing chromosomal arrangements or Magazine, the Washington Post, Newsweek, genetic sequences. The test involves ex- Vogue, Fortune, Time, an Oprah show, and tracting a single cell from each embryo in a a CBS News program. I examine the ways batch created via IVF. Thus, if using PGD to in which mass media abet normalization of select a girl, only embryos with XX chromo- sex selection with a critical reading of two somes would be implanted in a woman’s texts: a Newsweek magazine cover story body. Combined PGD and IVF cost around and a CBS News 60 Minutes report. I argue $20,000. PGD is highly accurate in deter- that the main effect of this coverage is a de- mining the sex of tested embryos, although contextualized “freedom of choice” narra- pregnancy rates using IVF are variable. tive that evades relevant social issues. Many ART clinics openly advertise sex- Titles such as “Brave New Babies” ( News- selection services for nonmedical reasons.7 week ) and “Choose the Sex of Your Baby” Functioning as a trade association for (60 Minutes) introduce the issue of sex the ART industry, the American Society selection to popular audiences. Popular of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) issues media dramatize a fundamental transfor- policy recommendations on the ethical mation in reproduction signaled by the use of technologies, but clinics are not renew sex- selection technologies. They sen- quired to follow them. In 1999, the ASRM sationalize the transformative possibilities Ethics Committee issued a report stating of the technologies at the individual level. that PGD solely for sex preference (a.k.a. Claudia Kalb writes in the Newsweek story, “nonmedical” sex selection) should be dis- “The brave new world is defi nitely here. couraged because of “risk of unwarranted After 25 years of staggering advances in gender bias, social harm, and the diver- reproductive medicine . . . technology is sion of medical resources from genuine changing baby-making in a whole new way. medical need.” Sex selection is sometimes No longer can science simply help cou- practiced on medical grounds to detect ples have babies, it can help them have the sex-linked diseases such as hemophilia kind of babies they want.” In a similar vein, and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. In 60 Minutes reports, “Want to design the spite of the ASRM opinion and because of perfect baby? It’s not as farfetched as you lack of regulation of the ART industry, clin- may think. . . . A new technology is help- ics have in growing numbers begun to cash ing couples manipulate Mother Nature in in on the lucrative sex- selection market by their favor.”9 Sex-selection technologies CONSTRUCTING GENDER FROM THE INSIDE OUT: SEX-SELECTION PRACTICES | 301 are posed as an “enhancement” of personal 60 Minutes end by recounting the happi- liberty and a win for science in a struggle ness and joy of the parents in the success- to control nature. Both Newsweek and 60 ful cases, using melodramatic narratives Minutes begin and end with case studies of of individual healing and the overcoming couples who used the technologies to fulfi ll of obstacles in order to achieve a happy personal “dreams.” We hear of Sharla and ending. Rather than present the cases as Shane Miller, who used PGD, and of Mary oddities, Newsweek and 60 Minutes bol- and Sam Toedtman and Lizette Frielings- ster the notion that these individual stories dorf, who were enrolled in the MicroSort are common, with suggestions of high de- trial. The Miller, Toedtman, and Frielings- mand for the technologies. Popular media dorf families each had three boys before representations of sex selection do include attempting sex selection for a girl.10 The de- confl icting opinions about the practice but sire to select sex after three children of the downplay the concerns of medical pro- same sex is represented as rational rather fessionals or medical ethicists in compar- than frivolous or indulgent. ison with the narratives of scientifi c and By highlighting these stories, popular personal or family success. There are no discourses support medical discourses that personal stories of individuals adversely defi ne sex-selection technologies as socially affected by pressures to select the sex of acceptable. According to Marcy Darnovsky, their children nor are there contrary opin- feminist science scholar and associate ex- ions from members of civil society. ecutive director of the Center for Genetics Mass media discourses treat sex selec- and Society, the GIVF Institute in Virginia, tion as similar to other kinds of new med- which ran the clinical trial on MicroSort, ical enhancement drugs or treatments appears to have played a large role in pop- for behavior, cognition, athleticism, and ularizing the concept of “family balancing.” so forth. Presumably, as long as no harm This notion presupposes that families with- is done to anyone else, individuals have out children of both sexes are “incomplete” the right to alter or enhance themselves or “unbalanced.” Recruitment ads for the or their lifestyles. In the case of sex selec- MicroSort trial marketed the sex- selection tion, popular media assume that the right technology for aiding in “family balancing” to have a particular kind of child simply or “gender variety.” In order to participate extends from the right to have children, in the MicroSort trial, a couple must already at least for those who can afford the tech- have children of a sex opposite to that de- nologies. Newsweek and 60 Minutes do not sired. Initially Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg’s fertility question the implications of stratifi ed use. clinics also restricted access to PGD for sex They do not ask how the treatment of non- selection to those who used it for “family medical preferences of a few affects access balancing” but gave this up because of high to the medical treatment needs of many. demand among couples without children. 11 They do not ask whether assisted repro- Popular media does not mention, let alone duction clinics, as they increasingly vie to scrutinize, the preferences of families who attract wealthy, fertile consumers, will only clearly desire to select sex apart from “fam- deepen racial and socioeconomic dispar- ily balancing” reasons. ities in access to fertility technologies for The popular media also obscure the those who are infertile. fact that the majority of individuals who Although they mention the high price attempt these technologies do not achieve tag for the technologies and the lengthy, a pregnancy, let alone the birth of a child cumbersome procedures involving as- of the desired sex. Both Newsweek and sisted reproduction, the articles neglect 302 | RAJANI BHATIA

to mention health risks posed by PGD or the “Determining Sex” and “Disappointed discuss how the risk/benefi t profi le of un- about Gender” bulletin boards at baby- dergoing sex selection and assisted repro- center.com; the “Gender Determination” duction technologies might change for board at ivillage.com; and various forums nonmedical uses by fertile couples. Pre- at In-gender. com including one on “Gen- sumably, acceptable levels of risk should der Disappointment” that stipulates, “This be lower for “healthy” (that is, fertile) users is a support forum, not a debate forum. Any of the technologies, wishing to select non- comments along the lines of ‘you should medical traits in their offspring. Yet pop- just be glad you can have children when ular media depictions do not scrutinize others can’t’ or ‘you ought to be happy with safety and related regulatory issues. what you have’ will be swiftly deleted with- In sum, the mass media celebrate the out apology.”13 The self-help and support arrival of new sex-selection technologies provided by these Internet communities as a revolution in the way people have chil- do much to bolster the social legitimacy of dren. The theme of scientifi c “technolog- sex- selection practices. In an article in the ical breakthrough” surfaces prominently New York Times on sex selection, Lisa Belkin in these mass media depictions of current comments on Internet support forums: and future practices and prospects of sex selection. Replete with personal stories of These women do not question whether the those who have used the new technologies sex of a child should matter. They take it as a successfully, media representations stress given. Just as it is different being a boy than the individual benefi ts of the technologies. a girl, they say, it is equally different being a parent to a boy than to a girl. Yes, they un- Media stories do highlight controversy, yet, derstand that the health of a child is most in spite of the inclusion of critical voices important, but that does not mean that on nonmedical sex selection, the media do everything else is unimportant. They talk not investigate the issues raised. It portrays about sex selection as if it were the norm, sex- selection practices, for better or worse, their right. And all their talk goes a long way as a fait accompli. In these ways, the mass toward making it so.14 media drive the momentum behind the increasing normalization of sex selection in In these ways, Internet support forums do the United States. much not only to popularize and spread information on second-generation sex- selection technologies but also to demon- Internet Support Groups strate demand for them. The development of Internet support groups The advent of second- generation tech- has also increased public awareness of sex nologies alongside the increased presence selection. Jennifer Merrill Thompson pref- of sex selection in popular media and In- aces her book, Chasing the Gender Dream: ternet support communities signal the in- The Complete Guide to Conceiving Pink or creasing normalization of sex selection in Blue with the Latest Sex Selection Technology the United States. That two separate meth- and Tips from Someone Who Has Been There, ods of prepregnancy sex selection appeared with a description of her interaction with at more or less the same moment may have an online virtual community and friends been a factor in the normalization process. “who had a similar obsession.”12 Several Although different in design and function, Internet Web sites provide forums where both MicroSort and PGD have been able those who desire sex- specifi c children can to make plausible claims of ethical ac- meet and support each other. These include ceptability, compared to fi rst-generation CONSTRUCTING GENDER FROM THE INSIDE OUT: SEX-SELECTION PRACTICES | 303 sex-selection methods utilizing abortion. really wow!!!where is it in mexico again and Also, competitive assertions of superiority what are hotel costs down there . . . maybe undoubtedly increased the visibility of both. there is [sic] resorts where you can get a pack- (PGD wins on relative effi cacy, because age to stay down there awhhh it would be a MicroSort merely raises one’s chances of nice get away hubby,sand,beach my dream of dd [darling daughter]coming true. . . . 16 achieving a child of desired sex while PGD virtually guarantees it, if one can get preg- And while sex- selection practices via Mi- nant and carry to term. MicroSort, however, croSort may move across the border to wins for limiting intrusiveness and the pro- Mexico where they can circumvent FDA duction of ethically problematic objects restrictions, some U.S.-based clinics using such as undesired embryos.) The push and PGD technologies increasingly cater to an pull of such assertions against one another international clientele. Touting itself as has not only shaped the direction of ethical “the world’s largest and most successful debate, but seems to have emboldened the gender selection program,” the Fertility development of both. While the FDA has a Institutes in Encino, California, utilize a hand in the outcome of MicroSort use in the number of advertising techniques to offer United States, PGD use for nonmedical sex PGD to reproductive “tourists” from out- selection continues to expand. Outside of side the United States, thereby establishing the minimal reporting requirements of the itself as another new node amid circuits of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention travel in the transnational reproductive for IVF success rates, no federal regulatory economy. Clearly, the transnational im- mechanisms have extended their reach plications of U.S. sex- selection practices over the primarily self-regulating U.S.- need further study. based ART clinics. I turn now to a more theoretically rooted Moreover, regardless of the still-pending discussion for scholars and activists who FDA determination on MicroSort, GIVF take into account social justice frameworks seems to have extended the commer- at least as much as they do individual lib- cial life of its experimental sperm-sorting erties and whose work can benefi t from an method through the “outsourcing” of Mic- increased attention to sex selection. roSort laboratories to Mexico. Even though a recently appearing MicroSort statement CONSTRUCTING GENDER FROM THE posted on its international Web site (mic- INSIDE OUT: REINFORCEMENT OF rosort.com as opposed to microsort.net) SEX AND GENDER BINARIES carefully explains that “MicroSort is not for sale in the United States” and “In the Controversy around sex selection stems United States, MicroSort is available only partly from public discomfort with human to qualifi ed participants through a clinical intervention into nature or “divine will.” trial,” U.S. clients can now easily access For example, an article by Tanya Wenman the method outside the jurisdiction of the Steel on MicroSort in Child, a magazine for FDA in Mexico for a sort fee signifi cantly parents, reports on the case of a Catholic less (nearly one- third) than in the United couple who successfully conceived a girl States. 15 This news created a buzz of activ- after three tries using the sperm-sorting ity on In-gender.com after someone using method. In answer to the moral dilemma the site name “Diego” fi rst posted this in- of whether sex selection represents a form formation on May 18, 2009. Among the of “playing God,” the mother replied, responses, “I Luv My Kids˜˜˜” posted on “God has made this technology avail- September 28, 2009: able and he’d want us to use it.” 17 While 304 | RAJANI BHATIA

second-generation methods of sex selec- After achieving her “gender dream” of tion might defy notions of sex as a pre- having a girl through MicroSort, Jennifer ordained trait, they do not challenge the Thompson concludes her guide to sex se- dominant construction of sex and gender lection, “The fi rst time I went to purchase a as dualistic categories. This section argues little dress and hairbows for my daughter, that although sex has increasingly become I almost welled up with tears.” 20 New York biomedically alterable (at least within the Times reporter Lisa Belkin sums up post- confi nes of the female/male binary), gen- ings to Internet sites by those desiring girls, der becomes more determined by body “They speak of Barbies and ballet and but- geography. Even consumers with feminist terfl y barrettes. They also describe the de- impulses, who desire to rear empowered sire to rear strong young women.”21 These girls and women, base conceptions and examples raise a number of questions re- the possibility of girlhood within a rigidly lated to how one “does” gender through defi ned, unambiguous female body. In sex selection, even understandings of gen- this way, sex- selection practices represent der apparently motivated by feminist ideas a kind of body politics in which girlhood of strong girls and women. Although the becomes geneticized, and sex and gender use of sex selection does not necessarily binaries are reinforced. foreclose raising children in nonnorma- Evidence that sex-selection practices tive gendered ways, anecdotes in popular reinforce the gender binary can be found media suggest that gender expectations through popular media on the subject and and desires of parents are fueled by nor- Internet support Web sites, which reveal mative stereotypes of gender. that the motivations of those who desire Furthermore, discourses around sex se- to choose the sex of their children hinge lection reinforce the idea of sex as a foun- on common gender stereotypes. The CBS dational category of gender, because the News Early Show quoted Monique Col- choice between blue and pink ultimately lins, a participant in the MicroSort trial: “I translates to the chromosomal options wanted to have someone to play Barbies of either XX or XY. Consumers of second- with and to go shopping with; I wanted the generation sex- selection technologies not little girl with long hair and pink and doing only seek to choose the sex of embryos, but fi ngernails.”18 they also do so on the basis of an imagined Contemplating sex selection, Steel writes: already gendered child. In effect, consumers choose the sex of babies as a guarantee I knew I was in trouble when I bought the of child gender, thereby re-affi xing gender pink tutu. This piece of fl owery femininity to sex. Sex selection seems to lock in or fuse had caught my eye as it hung in the window societal or parental gender expectations of a children’s clothing store. I thought about and desires at the site of the sexed infant it for weeks before buying it for a friend’s body, fetus, embryo, or sex chromosome of daughter. But for whom was I really buying sorted sperm. it? For my friend’s little girl or for myself, to How should current sex- selection prac- feed an unspoken hunger within? Four years tices in the United States affect the way ago, I conceived (naturally) twin sons. Now theorists have conceptualized sex and gen- that they’re “big boys,” my house has become a shrine to Power Rangers. We have der? Early feminist theories constructed a enough Matchbox cars to fi ll a real garage. liberatory version of a sex/gender binary When I watch the boys interacting with fe- in order to oppose arguments that related male playmates, I fantasize about raising a women’s oppression to a fi xed biologi- daughter myself.19 cal destiny of females and to highlight the CONSTRUCTING GENDER FROM THE INSIDE OUT: SEX-SELECTION PRACTICES | 305 social construction of gender. New forms sex selection in the gene age promises a de- of activism and theory since the 1990s have naturalization of sex, the ultimate ability extended construction arguments to the of humans to self- determine biologies and category of sex and in the process have re- thereby identities, subjectivities, and desti- conceptualized sex as socially constructed. nies. Yet, we know that the real world makes Anne Fausto-Sterling and Judith Butler are this possibility contingent upon social and among the more infl uential theorists who cultural power dynamics and inequalities. have questioned the sex/gender binary. Il- The use of PGD for sex selection in the luminating the highly integrated social con- United States and the possibility that Mic- structions of sex, gender, and sexuality, their roSort may become widely available appear analysis is closely connected with queer and more likely to represent a renaturalization lesbian/gay/bisexual/transexual/ intersex of gender in sex that undermines decades (LGBTI) activism and movements. Fausto- of feminist theoretical work insisting on the Sterling explains, “Our bodies are too com- social construction of gender. Moreover, plex to provide clear- cut answers about the potential to abuse these technologies in sexual difference. The more we look for a gender discriminatory ways warrants scru- simple physical basis for ‘sex,’ the more it tiny by feminists. becomes clear that ‘sex’ is not a pure phys- The Right to Have versus the Right to ical category. What bodily signals and func- Choose Babies Feminist inquiry has long tions we defi ne as male or female come addressed issues related to reproduction, already entangled in our ideas about gen- such as pregnancy, abortion, adoption, der.” 22 Similarly, Butler contends, fertility, sexuality, conceptive or contraceptive technologies, and pronatal or And what is “sex” anyway? Is it natural, an- antinatal population policies. Many po- atomical, chromosomal, or hormonal, and sitions characterize the debate. Feminists how is a feminist critic to assess the scientifi c have both celebrated and denigrated discourses which purport to establish such motherhood, both embraced and repu- “facts” for us? . . . If the immutable character diated technologies in their visions and of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called “sex” is as culturally constructed as movements for self- determination, liber- gender; indeed, perhaps it was always al- ation, and/or justice. Here I consider how ready gender, with the consequence that the feminists concerned about reproductive distinction between sex and gender turns rights and justice might think about sex out to be no distinction at all.23 selection. In spite of real differences, feminist scholars and activists have to a large These ideas radically altered former fem- extent reached consensus in support of a inist theorizations that posited gender as a reproductive right for individuals to have social construct against the “biologically or not have children. The International determined” category of sex. Patient rights- Conference on Population and Devel- based activism by Suzanne Kessler and the opment (Cairo, 1994), in which feminist Intersex Society of North America provides advocates from all over the world partici- an additional basis for theoretical explo- pated in unprecedented levels, produced rations into the social construction of sex. a concluding document that codifi es “the Just as LGBTI activisms required feminists basic right of all couples and individuals to to rethink the distinction between sex and decide freely and responsibly the number, gender, it might now be the time to engage spacing and timing of their children and to practices of sex selection in our theoretical have the information and means to do so” explorations into sex and gender. At its best, (Article 7.3). 24 It makes no reference to an 306 | RAJANI BHATIA

individual’s right to choose characteristics Rapp put forth a defi nition of stratifi ed of children, nor is this anywhere implied. reproduction as “power relations by which Yet, the availability of sex selection in the some categories of people are empowered United States and elsewhere bolsters ex- to nurture and reproduce, while others treme libertarian perspectives on repro- are disempowered.”26 Given that second- ductive rights that stray a long way from generation practices of sex selection re- this meaning. quire assisted reproduction, sex selection For example, bioethicist John Robertson is an expensive practice accessible only views the selection of genetic characteris- to wealthy women. However, the practice tics in offspring as an extension of an indi- of sex- selective abortion continues as the vidual’s right to procreate: low- income option. In this way, we see a growing trend of stratifi ed practices of sex Some right to engage in genetic selection selection within overall stratifi ed practices would also seem to follow from the right to of reproduction. The possibility or indeed decide whether or not to procreate. People likelihood that moral distinctions may make decisions to reproduce or not because be made according to type of technology of the package of experiences that they think used, that is, assisted reproduction (read: reproduction or its absence would bring. good sex selection) versus abortion (read: In many cases, they would not reproduce if bad sex selection), may unwittingly grant it would lead to a packet of experiences X, antichoice activists another opportunity but they would if it would produce packet Y. to gain the upper hand in questions of Since the makeup of the packet will determine whether or not they reproduce, a morality that permeate the U.S. abortion right to make reproductive decisions based debate. Indeed, U.S. Representative Trent on that packet should follow. Some right to Franks (R-AZ) proposed antichoice laws choose characteristics either by negative ex- in 2008 and 2009 at the federal level that clusions or positive selection, should follow would prohibit sex- selective abortions on as well, for the decision to reproduce may the grounds that such a law would deter often depend upon whether the child will sex discrimination. 27 have the characteristics of concern.25 Second, Robertson promotes a market approach in which “freedom of choice” is Signifi cantly, Robertson supports selec- seen to be the ultimate good regardless of tion of nonmedical genetic characteristics the context of the “choices” or the differ- in children as well as human reproductive ential way in which women can partici- cloning, basing his positions on a liberal pate in this “choosing” depending on their and individualist view of reproduction. Al- social location. Gail Weiss, who provides though Robertson presents the right to one of the few feminist perspectives on choose characteristics of children as a logical sex-selective abortion stemming from the extension of the right to decide whether to United States, argues that “the decision to have children, his “freedom of choice” par- perform SSA [sex-selective abortion] is . . . adigm, like media portrayals, masks a num- almost never made by the pregnant woman ber of social issues related to reproduction. alone.” Weiss analyzes sex-selective abor- First, Robertson’s notion of procreative tion from the standpoint of family and liberty ignores the ways in which power community practices that “make it ap- relations stratify the reproduction of dif- pear to be a desirable (and, for many, the ferent groups of people. In Conceiving the only viable) option.” 28 Correspondingly, New World Order: The Global Politics of Re- an awareness of the ways in which con- production, Faye D. Ginsburg and Rayna text determines women’s choices has led CONSTRUCTING GENDER FROM THE INSIDE OUT: SEX-SELECTION PRACTICES | 307 advocates against widespread sex- selective Some critics of reprogenetic technol- abortion of female fetuses in India to in- ogies fi nd the prospect of choosing char- sist that any regulatory measure designed acteristics through negative or positive to curb the practice must not punish the selections disturbingly reminiscent of eu- woman who undergoes the technology. genics and tending toward the commodifi - Not only does context matter for those cation of children. In a commentary on sex groups of relatively disadvantaged women selection published in 2002 in the Atlantic facing multiple constraints on their Monthly, Margaret Talbot writes, decision-making power, but also feminist sociologists and disability scholars increas- It might sound harmless enough, maybe ingly point out that the commercialization even kind of cute— this impulse to pick and of reproduction can circumscribe choice choose, pink or blue. But if we allow people even for those who have fi nancial access to select a child’s sex, then there really is no barrier to picking embryos—or, ultimately, to expensive technologies. Sociologists genetically programming children—based Anne Kerr and Sarah Cunningham-Burley on any whim, any faddish notion. . . . A world note that as new technologies become in which people (wealthy people, anyway) operationalized in service of existing so- can custom- design human beings unham- cial conventions that confi ne and restrain pered by law or social sanction is not a dys- the abnormal, they represent a limitation topian sci- fi fantasy any longer.30 rather than an expansion of real choice for individuals: “Bodies remain docile when Feminist critics of population control, the options for their reinvention follow women of color advocates of reproductive the conventions of beauty and health; and justice, and disability scholars, in particu- reproduction remains a fateful process be- lar, have drawn parallels between past and cause of the very ability to eliminate the present forms of eugenics in order to em- undesirable in favor of a norm.” Disability phasize the recurrent devaluation of the scholar Shelley Tremain elaborates on this reproduction of marginalized groups in theme through the now widely practiced dominant popular discourses.31 In contrast use of prenatal screening technologies. to Robertson’s notion of reproductive rights, Tremain argues that “the government of feminist theorizations on reproduction impairment in utero is inextricably inter- have a long tradition of analysis of social twined with the government of the mater- (rather than exclusively individual) aspects nal body.” Rather than simply expanding of reproduction voiced in critiques of strat- choice, Tremain interprets prenatal screen- ifi cation, choice, and eugenics. Applying ing technologies as effectively limiting these perspectives to a discussion thus far “the fi eld of possible conduct in response dominated by medicine, professional bio- to pregnancy.” Silja Samerski similarly ethics, and popular media can productively critiques prenatal genetic counseling as ground limited and erroneous notions of a form of “professionally imposed self- rights and choice that accompany the con- determination” that “does not empower versation about U.S. sex selection. patients” but rather presents them with a “fi ction of choice.”29 These perspectives CHOOSING BABIES, MAKING provide a counterpoint to the simplistic PARENTS “technology as progress and expansion of choice” messages expressed in both popu- Feminist theories of reproduction increas- lar media and libertarian statements about ingly have moved from the limited no- reproductive technologies. tion of individual agency in “reproductive 308 | RAJANI BHATIA

choice” to a broader view of reproduc- not because they face infertility. Like single tion as a complex social process involving adults and lesbian and gay parents, they what women’s health and science studies may perceive a climate of public disap- sociologist Adele E. Clarke calls “messy, proval for their reproductive “choices.” In ‘sticky’ and ‘distributed’ ” agencies among her sex-selection guide, for example, Jen- different human and nonhuman actors.32 nifer Thompson writes that she does not Given that the second generation of sex- reveal her participation in the MicroSort selection technologies can be viewed as trial while attending an IVF class with other one outcome of ARTs, an analysis of the patients, nor does she tell her regular ob- current trends in sex selection can derive stetrician to whom she is transferred once much from Charis Thompson’s Making her pregnancy via IVF is established.35 Parents: The Ontological Choreography “Making parents” further suggests a kind of Reproductive Technologies. Thompson of identity politics. Jennifer Thompson, in uses ethnographic research involving pa- a description of her “obsession” to have a tients both inside and outside of the fer- girl child, writes, “I didn’t want to be just tility clinic setting to interrogate what she a ‘boy mom.’ ”36 This comment suggests names the “ontological choreography” of that the ﬂ ip side of “making particular ba- assisted reproduction and the biomedical bies” is the “making of particular parents.” mode of reproduction. 33 In the case of sex selection, new identities Thompson emphasizes the messiness may include “girl mom,” as in Thompson’s of the clinical experience, including the case, or family identities such as “com- scheduling of intensive monitoring tests plete” or “balanced.” The notion that sex through regular ultrasounds and blood selection may have something to do with work, the timing of ovulation, the drug the identity construction of parents opens regimens, the egg retrieval, and embryo up many new questions about the practice transfer processes. She analyzes the rela- that extend far beyond individual “procre- tional work among many parties, includ- ative liberty” alone. How is gender con- ing reproductive partners, egg and sperm structed relationally within families (both donors, surrogates, and physicians. Like the normative heterosexual family and other feminist theorists of reproductive other types)? How does the sex of children technologies emerging in the 1990s, she have a bearing upon the gendered iden- highlights agency through a methodolog- tity of parents? Sex-selective choices relate ical emphasis on the multiplicity of wom- not merely to the embodiment of a desired en’s experiences with technologies. gender in the resulting child but to the gen- Charis Thompson focuses on “making dered identities and practices of parents/ parents” rather than making babies partly families as well. to stress how ARTs since the 1990s have Few studies exist on the inﬂ uence of a increasingly become accessible to single child’s sex or gender on family process in adults and lesbian and gay couples, that the United States. In a literature review on is, those groups for whom it is important this subject, sociologists Sara Raley and to assert “reproductive privacy” in under- Suzanne Bianchi conclude that a son pref- going ARTs and for whom infertility issues erence exists in the United States in spite are not the primary reason for seeking of relatively even child sex ratios and pre- them out. 34 Similarly, many consumers of sumed gender egalitarianism: second- generation sex- selection technologies avail themselves of ART services as a As a whole, the literature suggests that gen- means to select the sex of their offspring, der of children has implications for the ways CONSTRUCTING GENDER FROM THE INSIDE OUT: SEX-SELECTION PRACTICES | 309

in which parents treat, spend time with, “othering.” For example, Jennifer Thomp- invest in, and ultimately receive care from son contrasts a brief mention of son pref- their children later in life. Although some of erence in “underdeveloped areas” with the the evidence is inconclusive, boys, on aver- U.S. experience: “In the United States . . . age, do less housework than girls, have more there appears to be more interest in try- engaged and perhaps committed fathers, ing to conceive a girl— maybe because of have higher paternal earnings, and have parents with greater marital happiness. In short, American women’s increased roles and boys are more likely than girls to reap the fi - rights, their ability to say what they want nancial and emotional benefi ts associated and to ‘go for it,’ and they often want with two- parent families.37 daughters.”39 Throughout this personal narrative, Thompson uses “gender” in There is also a dearth of studies on sex place of “sex” (for example, gender selec- preferences of individuals who would use tion, gender dream, gender determina- sex-selection technologies. According to tion, gender balance). U.S. popular media one study done by Roberta Steinbacher and MicroSort recruitment ads also almost and Faith Gilroy, birth order may be an- exclusively refer to “gender selection” in other factor infl uencing sex preferences. place of “sex selection,” a word usage that Of 179 young adults they surveyed who in- exploits associations of “gender” with em- dicated a sex preference for their fi rstborn powerment and development. child, 72 percent wanted boys.38 Professional bioethics discourse has as- Although data on child sex preferences cribed son preference as the moral basis in the United States remain scant, the idea for condemning sex-selection practices that these preferences link in complex in China and India and “family balanc- ways to parental identity and family pro- ing” as the basis for allowing sex- selection cesses seems probable. practices in the West. Bernard Dickens et al. invert “the principle of justice that like cases be treated alike” and suggest that DOUBLE STANDARDS— SEX similar approaches to sex selection in dif- SELECTION AND CULTURAL ferent settings around the world amount DETERMINISM to an ethical injustice. The authors argue New and emerging transnational dimen- that “sex selection for family balancing sions of sex selection increasingly defy of subsequent births is not based on cul- explanation though feminist theories on tural discrimination against either sex, cultural difference. The defense of sex se- and tends to maintain rather than upset a lection in the United States has depended population’s overall birth ratio.” They then on the alterity of sex-selection practices argue against son preference as an incen- in other nations and cultures, primarily tive, which they see as illegitimate, unlike India and China. The social legitimacy of “family balancing.” Prohibitions on sex sex selection in the United States is based selection in countries such as Canada, the on the claim that Western societies re- authors insist, do not serve to eliminate sex spect genders equally, lacking any sex- or discrimination and are “both unjust and gender-based discrimination that would oppressive.”40 negatively infl uence sex-selection prac- Without denying the importance of tices. The discursive use of “sex selection” cultural specifi city, “cultural difference” to denote practices in India and China and arguments related to the issue of sex se- “gender selection” to denote practices in lection assert Western superiority while the United States is one such practice of creating an undifferentiated Other in their 310 | RAJANI BHATIA

representation of Eastern sex- selection pra - Bumiller decides that she cannot reconcile ctices. They assume the existence of singular the differences between the United States and coherent “cultural worlds.” “Cultural dif- and India. Like the aforementioned pro- ference,” as maintained by Dickens et al., fessional bioethicists, she would not ban justifi es the use of double standards that sex- selective abortions in the United States exacerbate inequalities between women but fi nds state regulation to prevent these across cultures. They rule out the possibility in India warranted. Likening female infan- of a common alternative ethical basis be- ticide stories from a small, impoverished yond son preference or family balancing for village in India to accounts of sex- selective evaluating sex-selection practices that does abortions in wealthy parts of Mumbai, she not limit our understanding of the tech- blames static Indian culture. “Ultimately,” nology’s meaning to two neatly polarized writes Bumiller, “the ‘sex test’ was proof contexts. Rather than deny the importance that education and material progress alone of context to understanding sex- selection cannot alter traditional attitudes.”41 A practices, we need to move beyond simple number of feminist postcolonial theorists either/or descriptions that obscure multi- have pointed out similar traps like the one scalar (local to global) social, political, eco- laid here by Bumiller that condemn, in this nomic, and cultural processes at work. case, “Indian culture” for sexist practices at Elisabeth Bumiller’s May You Be the the same time as they exonerate Western Mother of a Hundred Sons from the 1980s ex- practices from criticisms related to culture. emplifi es a quintessential Western gaze that Bumiller’s argument resembles the condemns Indian practices of sex selection, “death by culture” rhetoric of “othering” representing them as primarily culturally that Uma Narayan illuminates in her anal- determined. During her travels in India she ysis of contrasting perceptions of dowry spoke about sex selection with physicians, murders in India and domestic violence feminists, and women desiring to abort fe- murders in the United States. Similarly, male fetuses. Invited by one physician to Nira Yuval- Davis underlines that “essen- observe a chorionic villus sampling test for tialized constructions of ‘cultural differ- sex determination, Bumiller writes: ence’ constitute one of the major modes of As I watched the wire’s journey on the contemporary popular racisms.” Cultural screen of the ultrasound machine, I slowly difference gets marked through discur- became disgusted. It had been building all sive objects such as “Third World Women,” week, but I think seeing this woman with which can assist the boundary construc- her legs spread on the examination table, tion of sex-selection practices along “cul- so exposed, and in a sense, so violated by tural world” lines. Chandra Mohanty has the forces of her society, caused something contrasted portrayals of Western women to snap in me. What right did India have, I in scholarship “as educated, as modern, thought, to take the newest technology from as having control over their own bodies the West and use it for something as repre- and sexualities, and the freedom to make hensible as the slaughter of female babies? their own decisions” with that of the Third Although she recognizes the irony of World woman as “an essentially truncated her own use of “slaughter,” given her sup- life based on her feminine gender (read: port of women’s abortion rights, she repri- sexually constrained) and her being ‘third mands as “more emotional than rational” world’ (read: ignorant, poor, uneducated, Indian feminists who use similar language tradition- bound, family- orientated, vic- (as, for example, “female feticide”) in their timized).” 42 The construct, “Third World campaigns against sex- selective abortions. women,” then, fl exibly fi ts notions of “bad” CONSTRUCTING GENDER FROM THE INSIDE OUT: SEX-SELECTION PRACTICES | 311 sex- selection practices in faraway cultures, media plays in the spread of upper caste val- whether that Third World woman is viewed ues and the accompanying anti-female bias. as an ignorant perpetrator or as oppressed Adoption of these norms by communities victim of violence against women. Similar that have traditionally been more egalitarian to (mis)understandings of other issues of towards women has also served to intensify discrimination against women.43 violence against women in India represented across borders, sex selection has become strongly decontextualized in the U.S. Mallik’s insight troubles depictions prof- popular imagination. Media, professional fered by Jennifer Thompson and Bumiller bioethics, and some academic discourses that underdetermine individual agency just in the United States reinforce simplistic as they overdetermine notions of ahistori- cultural explanations for what has gone cal cultural forces in defi ning Eastern sex- wrong with sex selection in the East. selection practices. Just as we cannot deny Applying a singular standard to evaluate that individuals in India may seek sons in sex selection in countries of Asia obscures an effort to balance their families, we cannot the varied factors that drive sex-selection overlook that sex preferences in the United practices in those regions beyond son States may be tied to larger familial and cul- preference alone. For example, sex selec- tural pressures. On the other hand, media tion is often practiced among the Indian accounts in the United States portray science middle and upper classes, which desire (not culture) as compelling Western sex- smaller families and face neoliberal con- selection practices undertaken by techno- sumerist pressures. Rupsa Mallik adds to logically enabled, autonomous individuals. son preference a host of other factors that Emerging U.S. sex selection calls for drive sex- selective abortions in India, such new feminist analysis that can dislodge as state population policies that impose a widely held assumptions about agency, ac- two- child norm; prosperity in states such cess, and constraints related to technology as Punjab and Haryana, which as a result use, which are bound to particular geopo- of rapid upward mobility have seen a de- litical contexts. For example, India too has crease in female labor participation and become a site where transnational con- an increase in dowry payments; and even sumers (not to mention its own growing high levels of female education, combined middle class) can access state- of- the- art with access to information and technology ARTs relatively inexpensively. Shree Mulay in Delhi and Chandigarh, which Mallik ar- and Emily Gibson, in their research on In- gues have led to greater autonomy among dian marketing of assisted reproductive women seeking sex selection. Jennifer services to foreigners, uncover evidence of Thompson generalizes discriminatory this trend, including a marked rise in Web forms of sex selection as all stemming from sites soliciting medical tourism (these sites “underdeveloped areas,” but Mallik pro- quadrupled in just two years, from 2004 vides an alternative understanding that im- to 2006); the advent of the twelve- month plicates the very forces of “development” in “medical visa” (unlike the six-month tour- India’s rising sex- selective abortions: ist visa); presence of a strong private sector with “up- market tertiary hospitals”; and Modernization, defi ned as increased access state, federal, and international (World to education and communication technol- Trade Organization) economic policies ogy, has also contributed in the diffusion of that promote medical tourism.44 SD [sex determination] and SSA [sex-selective Second- generation sex- selection technol- abortion]. This is notable in the role that mass ogies and a burgeoning market for assisted 312 | RAJANI BHATIA

reproduction services led the Indian gov- Siemens provide information on the indi- ernment to expand its regulation of prenatal viduals or groups to whom they sold ultra- diagnostic technologies to include prepreg- sound machines in the previous fi ve years. nancy sex selection. Yet imperialist “other- Another American company, Gen-Select, ing” perceptions obscure an understanding recently marketed dubious sex-selection of high-tech prepregnancy methods in India kits in the Times of India.48 as well as use of sex-selective abortion in the Furthermore, the United States has a long United States. history of supporting population control The practices of “othering” sex selection measures in India, and some proponents of also obscure the fact that cultural differ- sex selection view it as an ideal form of fam- ences rarely coincide neatly with geopolit- ily planning and population control. The ical boundaries. The targeted marketing of U.S. Agency for International Development sex selection to U.S.-based immigrant com- (USAID) has infl uenced the formation of munities with known son preference45 and population policies that promote a two- the phenomenon of “reproductive tourism” child norm in states such as Uttar Pradesh to the United States by persons who wish to and Andhra Pradesh. These have led to in- bypass regulatory restrictions to these tech- tensifi cation in sex-selection use. USAID nologies in their own countries provide evi- has notably remained silent on the issue of dence to the contrary. For example, National increased sex- selection practices in India.49 Public Radio (NPR) reported on December Although the defense of “gender” selec- 20, 2006, that 90 percent of foreign-born tion in the United States has depended on patients from Korea, India, or China who contrasting and fl attening perceptions of access the Huntington Reproductive Center “sex” selection in India, the political and in Southern California for sex selection ask economic factors affecting sex selection for a boy. Moreover, the NPR report inter- often occur transnationally, as do practices viewed an Indian-born couple now residing of sex selection, The factors that drive sex in British Columbia, Canada. After having selection practices around the world are two girls conceived naturally, the couple increasingly complex, defying explanation traveled to California to access PGD for se- through cultural or economic difference lecting a male embryo.46 alone. They necessitate moving away from Political- economic factors that im- double standards in evaluating the social plicate the United States in India’s rising and ethical implications of these technol- sex- selective abortions debunk the wide- ogies. We need broader frames that can spread perception of sex- selection prob- encompass all of the messiness and contra- lems there as solely culturally determined. dictions associated with transnational sex- The U.S. company, General Electric (GE), selection practices. In the next section, I for example, captured the largest market explore one possible alternative framework share for ultrasound scanners in India. that stems from new feminist theorizations GE sold a disproportionate number of in the sociology of health and illness. these machines in northwest India, where the female-to- male child sex ratio is now TOWARD AN ALTERNATIVE among the lowest in the country.47 In an ef- FRAMEWORK: SEX SELECTION fort to enforce implementation of the 1994 AS A CASE STUDY OF act that banned sex selection, the Indian BIOMEDICALIZATION Supreme Court in 2001 ordered, among other measures, that companies such as To suggest a potentially productive, the- Wipro GE, Philips Medical Systems, and oretical site for analyzing sex selection, I CONSTRUCTING GENDER FROM THE INSIDE OUT: SEX-SELECTION PRACTICES | 313 draw on theories of “biomedicalization” the model of a socially controlled group by feminist sociologists Adele E. Clarke, imposed upon by an all-powerful medi- Janet K. Shim, Laura Mamo, Jennifer Ruth cal establishment, I fi nd this framework Fosket, and Jennifer R. Fishman. Clarke particularly useful in analyzing second- et al. illuminate five politico-economic, generation sex- selection practices. Clarke technoscientifi c, and sociocultural processes et al. defi ne biomedicalization as “the that together constitute biomedicalization, increasingly complex, multisited, multi- expanding on Irving Zola’s approach to directional processes of medicalization, medicine as an institution of social control. both extended and reconstituted through According to Clarke and her coauthors, the new social forms of highly technosci- medicalization refers to “the extension of entifi c biomedicine.”51 I argue that sex medical jurisdiction, authority, and prac- selection constitutes a case study of bio- tices into increasingly broader areas of medicalization. I briefl y return to some people’s lives.” Medicalization is the pro- points made in prior sections to highlight cess by which previously social issues come how they pertain to biomedicalization under the medical gaze. The authors claim processes. that technoscientifi c innovations in bio- PGD and MicroSort were developed in a medicine since around 1985 have led to “a new era of medical science and technology second ‘transformation’ of American med- that increasingly focuses on genes, pro- icine” revealed through new social forms teins, and genomes. They represent a trend and major changes in the organization and that some scholars call “geneticization,” practices of contemporary medicine. which refers to the study of differences in In the current technoscientifi c revolu- humans at chromosomal and DNA levels. tion, “big science” and “big technology” Clarke et al. refer to the merging of genet- can sit on your desk, in a pillbox, and in- icization with computer and information side your body. That is, the shift to biomed- technology as the technoscientization of icalization is from enhanced control over biomedicine. In PGD, social differences in external nature (i.e., the world around us) human gender are constructed at the level to the harnessing and transformation of of chromosomes extracted from day- old internal nature (i.e., biological process of embryos. human and nonhuman life forms), often The development and spread of new transforming “life itself.”50 knowledges on second-generation sex- “From the inside out” is a repeated met- selection technologies by consumers via aphor in the paper on biomedicalization, the Internet and popular media represent which captures the basic idea of “harness- the changing faces of information pro- ing and transformation of internal nature.” duction and distribution indicative of bio- I have borrowed it here to highlight how medicalization. No longer does medical new forms of sex selection represent a so- knowledge simply emanate from scientifi c cial and cultural construction of gender literature and medical professionals. Pop- from within bodies. ular media, Internet support forums, and Central to the defi nition of biomedi- other literature stemming from nonmedi- calization is a notion of power far more cal professionals, along with medical dis- fl exible, contingent, and less essentialized courses, have paved the way for the growing than in former social critiques of biomed- social legitimacy of sex selection. Concur- icine. Given the privileged social locations rent with the rise of second- generation of patients/consumers of sex selection in sex-selection technologies came advance- the United States, who do not readily fi t ments in information technology and its 314 | RAJANI BHATIA

rapid accessibility across national bound- has taken place without the oversight of aries. By serving as the foundation for the U.S. federal regulatory and data collection development of chat rooms and medical authorities.54 tourism enterprises, information technol- Recent developments in sex selection ogy propelled the transnationalization of precipitated by the advent of second- sex selection. generation technologies require a broader One outcome of a gene age beginning framework of analysis in order to accom- in the 1990s is that genetics (and a kind modate the multiplicity of social, cultural, of genetic determinism) has attained cul- economic, political, and ethical implica- tural primacy over environmental, social, tions. Biomedicalization describes many cultural, political, and economic determi- new transformations since 1985 that mark nants of human subjectivity. The construc- the confl uence of medicine and the larger tion of identity through technoscientifi c U.S. society. Conversely, the applicability means represents another process that of these processes to sex selection may signals biomedicalization. Clarke et al. help validate the emerging concept of bio- explain that “biomedicalization enacts medicalization itself. its regulation of bodies through offering Since the late 1990s several factors have not just ‘control over’ one’s body through led to an increased acceptance of sex se- medical intervention (such as contracep- lection in the United States, including the tion) but also ‘transformation of’ one’s development of new marketable forms of body, selves, health” that can create “new prepregnancy technologies that do not selves and identities (mother, father, require an abortion. Receiving much at- walker, hearer, beautiful, sexually potent tention in popular media, these methods person).”52 As discussed above, consumers have also been publicized through Inter- of sex selection often seek new individual net consumer activist and support sites (“girl mom”) or family (“balanced”) iden- for those who desire to select the sex of tities. In this way, sex selection represents their children. In spite of these trends, the a customization of children’s sex to fi t in- issue of sex selection remains underthe- dividual adult preferences and to create orized among U.S. feminists. In the past, technoscientifi cally based parental or fam- the reluctance to engage the issue of sex ily identity. selection came about because of its close In a discussion on the economics of association with abortion and because it biomedicalization, Clarke et al. stress the was viewed as irrelevant to U.S. concerns growing privatization and corporatization and contexts. I argue that now it is time for of medical research and practice as well as U.S. feminists to investigate and weigh in other globalization trends. They coin the on this issue. We should not allow medi- term “Biomedical TechnoService Complex, cal, bioethical, and popular discourses, Inc.” to describe the current manifestations which currently present a simplistic “West of a medical industrial complex in order is best” picture, to monopolize this dis- to stress the multinational and globaliz- cussion. Instead, we should realize that ing “ corporatized and privatized (rather in comparison to other postindustrial than state-funded) research, products countries such as the United Kingdom and services made possible by technosci- and Canada, regulation of sex selection entifi c innovations that further biomed- marketing and practices in the United icalization.” 53 These developments ring States is inadequate. Minimally, U.S. fem- especially true for assisted reproduction inists should demand that fertility clinics industries. Research on PGD, for example, adhere to ASRM ethical guidelines that CONSTRUCTING GENDER FROM THE INSIDE OUT: SEX-SELECTION PRACTICES | 315 discourage the use of PGD for nonmed- NOTES ical sex selection and stop advertising This article is the winner of the 2009 Feminist sex- selection services. They should also Studies Award for the best article written by a question the promotion of “family balanc- graduate student. ing” as an ideal. For support and inspiration I am grateful to Deb- The increasing availability of U.S.- based orah Rosenfelt, Laura Mamo, Katie King, Marcy sex-selection practices comes with high Darnovsky, Rupsa Mallik, Shamita Das Dasgupta, stakes. These include the very meaning of Sujatha Jesudason, Yin Ling Leung, Chayanika reproductive rights, the deployment of sex Shah, Swatija Manorama, and Manisha Gupte. I and gender binaries, and the application of also thank the Feminist Studies editorial collective and two anonymous reviewers for editorial insights. double standards in the way sex- selection practices are evaluated transnationally. In this article, I have argued that feminist 1. Hanna Rosin, “The End of Men,” Atlantic, July/ sociologists who view U.S. sex-selection August 2010. 2. David S. Karabinus, “Flow Cytometric Sorting of practices in the frame of biomedicaliza- Human Sperm: MicroSort Clinical Trial Update,” tion may provide a more varied and com- Theriogenology 71 (2009): 74– 79. plex picture of the dimensions of power 3. Marcy Darnovsky, “Revisiting Sex Selection: and difference effaced by libertarian views The Growing Popularity of New Sex Selection on sex selection. Sex selection has the po- Methods Revives an Old Debate,” GeneWatch 17, no.1 (2004): 3–6; www. microsort.net/tech tential to complicate notions of stratifi ed nology.php. See Joseph D. Shulman and David S. reproduction and undo singular notions Karabinus, “Scientifi c Aspects of Preconception of stratifi ed reproductive identity (whether Gender Selection,” Ethics, Law, and Moral Phi- valued or despised). Viewing sex selection losophy of Reproductive Biomedicine 1 (March as a transcultural issue helps us to move be- 2005): 111. 4. Charlotte Huff, “Custom Kids,” Southwest Air- yond long-standing binary ways of think- lines Spirit, April 2006, 88. ing about reproductive technology across 5. See Genetic and IVF Institute, MicroSort, 2006, global divides. We need a more complex www.microsort.net. picture of reproductive stratifi cation that 6. Lisa Belkin, “Getting the Girl,” New York Times does not pigeonhole particular categories Magazine, 25 July 1999; Darnovsky, “Revisiting Sex Selection.” of women into particular strata, associat- 7. Darnovsky, “Revisiting Sex Selection”; Huff, ing sex- selective abortion exclusively with “Custom Kids,” 86; Susannah Baruch, David population subjects in the global South Kaufman, and Kathy L. Hudson, “Genetic Test- and “gender preselection” with individual ing of Embryos: Practices and Perspectives of subjects in the United States. In an age of U.S. IVF clinics,” Fertility and Sterility 89, no. 5 (2008): 1057. globalization and medical tourism, it is 8. See the Ethics Committee of the American clear that U.S. feminisms must engage sex Society of Reproductive Medicine, “Sex Se- selection in a way that accounts for the lection and Preimplantation Genetic Diagno- multiple and varied social, cultural, and sis,” Fertility and Sterility 72, no.4 (1999): 598, medical worlds that increasingly overlap, www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/ 002051.htm; Huff, “Custom Kids,” 88, Baruch, here and abroad. In this way, U.S. feminists Kaufman, and Hudson, “Genetic Testing of Em- have something to gain from an incorpora- bryos,” 5. tion of sex selection into our understand- 9. Claudia Kalb, “Brave New Babies,” Newsweek, ings of reproductive politics, long centered 26 Jan. 2004; and Rebecca Leuing, “Choose the here on the issue of abortion. Attention to Sex of Your Baby,” 60 Minutes, CBS, 11 Aug. 2004, www.cbsnews.com/ stories/2004/04/13/60II/ this issue may help build solidarities for a main611618.shtml. renewed transnational feminist politics of 10. Kalb, “Brave New Babies”; 60 Minutes, “Choose reproduction. the Sex.” 316 | RAJANI BHATIA

11. Darnovsky, “Revisiting Sex Selection”; see also of Impairment in Utero,” Hypatia 21, no.1 (2006): Huff, “Custom Kids,” 84. 35, 37; Silja Samerski, “Genetic Counseling and 12. Jennifer Merrill Thompson, Chasing the Gender the Fiction of Choice: Taught Self- Determination Dream: The Complete Guide to Conceiving Pink as a New Technique of Social Engineering,” Signs or Blue with the Latest Sex Selection Technology 34, no. 4 (2009): 735. and Tips from Someone Who Has Been There 30. Margaret Talbot, “Jack or Jill? The Era of (Imperial Beach, CA: Aventine Press, 2004), 1. Consumer-Driven Eugenics Has Begun,” Atlan- 13. Gender Disappointment Forum at In- Gender. tic Monthly, March 2002, 25. com, www.in-gender.com/cs/forums/114/Show 31. Betsy Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Post.aspx. Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Con- 14. Belkin, “Getting the Girl.” trol (Boston: South End Press, 1995); Incite! 15. See www.microsort.com/en/howmuchdoesit Women of Color against Violence, Color of Vio- cost.shtml and http://microsort.net/fees. php. lence: The Incite Anthology (Boston: South End 16. MicroSort Facility Now in Mexico, www.ingender. Press, 2006); Gregor Wolbring, “Where Do We com/cs/forums/t/92900.aspx?PageIndex=1. Draw the Line? Surviving Eugenics in a Techno- 17. Tanya Wenman Steel, “Would You (Should You) logical World,” in Disability and the Life Course: Choose Your Baby’s Sex?” Child, December- Global Perspectives, ed. Mark Priestley (Cam- January 2003, 60. bridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 18. See Tatiana Morales, “Choosing Your Baby’s 38– 50. Gender: Technology Is Becoming More Avail- 32. Adele E. Clarke, Situational Analysis: Grounded able but Ethical Questions Persist, The Early Theory after the Postmodern Turn (Thousand Show, www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/06/ Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2005), 298. earlyshow/contributors/emilysenay/main 33. Charis Thompson, Making Parents: The Onto- 528404.shtml. logical Choreography of Reproductive Technolo- 19. Steel, “Would You,” 58. gies (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 8, 11. 20. Jennifer Thompson, Chasing the Gender Dream, 34. Ibid, 5– 7. 139. 35. Jennifer Thompson, Chasing the Gender Dream, 21. Belkin, “Getting the Girl.” 89, 102. 22. Anne Fausto- Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender 36. Ibid., 61. Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (New 37. Sara Raley and Suzanne Bianchi, “Sons, Daugh- York: Basic Books, 2000), 4. ters, and Family Processes: Does Gender of Chil- 23. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and dren Matter?” Annual Review of Sociology 32 the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, (August 2006): 417. 1999), 10– 11. 38. Roberta Steinbacher and Faith Gilroy, “Sex Selec- 24. United Nations, Report of the International tion Technology: A Prediction of Its Use and Ef- Conference on Population and Development, fect,” Journal of Psychology 124, no. 3 (1990): 285. 18 Oct. 1994, www.un.org/popin/icpd/confer 39. Jennifer Thompson, Chasing the Gender Dream, ence/offeng/poa.html. 11. 25. John Robertson, “Liberty, Identity, and Human 40. Bernard Dickens et al., “Sex Selection: Treat- Cloning,” Texas Law Review 76, no. 6 (1998): ing Different Cases Differently,” International 1390– 91. Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics 90 (2005): 26. Faye D. Ginsburg, and Rayna Rapp, eds., Con- 171– 77. ceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics 41. Elisabeth Bumiller, May You Be the Mother of of Reproduction (Berkeley: University of Califor- a Hundred Sons (New Delhi: Penguin Books, nia Press, 1995), 3. 1990): 118, 119, 121– 22, 124. 27. Generations Ahead, National Asian Paciﬁ c 42. Uma Narayan, Dislocating Cultures: Identities, American Women’s Forum, and Asian Commu- Traditions, and Third World Feminisms (New nities for Reproductive Justice, Tools for Action York: Routledge, 1997), 86– 87; Nira Yuval- Davis, on Sex Selection (not dated): 25– 26. Gender and Nation (London: Sage Publications, 28. Gail Weiss, “Sex- Selective Abortion: A Relational 1997), 40; Chandra Mohanty, quoted in Sarah Approach,” Hypatia 10, no. 1 (1995): 206, 202–3. Gamble, ed., “Third World Feminism,” Routledge 29. Anne Kerr and Sarah Cunningham- Burley, “On Critical Dictionary of Feminism and Postfemi- Ambivalence and Risk: Reﬂ exive Modernity and nism (New York: Routledge, 1999). the New Human Genetics,” Sociology 34, no. 43. Rupsa Mallik, “Negative Choice,” Seminar 532 2 (2000): 294; Shelley Tremain, “Reproductive (December 2003), www.india- seminar. com/ Freedom, Self-Regulation, and the Government 2003/532.htm. CONSTRUCTING GENDER FROM THE INSIDE OUT: SEX-SELECTION PRACTICES | 317

44. Shree Mulay and Emily Gibson, “Marketing of India,” DifferenTakes: A Publication of the Popu- Assisted Human Reproduction and the Indian lation and Development Program at Hampshire State,” Development 46, no. 4 (2006): 84– 86. College 31 (Spring 2005); Rupsa Mallik, “A Less 45. Susan Sachs, “Clinics’ Pitch to Indian Émigrés,” Valued Life: Population Policy and Sex Selection New York Times, 15 Aug. 2001. in India,” Center for Health and Gender Equity 46. Lonny Shavelson, “Many Clinics Use Genetic (October 2002). Diagnosis to Choose Sex,” National Public Radio, 50. Adele E. Clarke et al., “Biomedicalization: Tech- 10 Dec. 2006, www.npr.org/templates/story/ noscientifi c Transformations of Health, Illness, story.php?storyId=6654619&ps=rs. and U.S. Biomedicine,” American Sociological 47. Sabu M. George, “Sex Selection/Determination Review 68, no. 2 (2003): 164, 161, and Adele E. in India: Contemporary Developments,” Repro- Clarke et al., “Biomedicalization: Technosci- ductive Health Matters 10, no. 19 (2002): 184–97. entifi c Transformations of Health, Illness, and 48. Manisha Gupte, “A Walk Down Memory Lane: U.S. Biomedicine,” in The Sociology of Health An Insider’s Refl ections on the Campaign and Illness: Critical Perspectives, 7th ed., ed. against Sex- Selective Abortions,” in Background Peter Conrad (New York: Worth Publishers, Materials on Sex Selection, ed. Rajani Bhatia 2005), 444. et al. for the Conference Beyond Human Na- 51. Clarke et al., “Biomedicalization,” American So- ture, Berlin, Germany. October 2003, available ciological Review, 161. at http://geneticsandsociety.org/downloads/ 52. Ibid., 182. 200308_gupte.pdf. 53. Ibid., 167. 49. Aniruddha Malpani, “Why Shouldn’t Couples 54. Audrey Huang, “Oversight of Preimplantation Be Free to Choose the Sex of Their Baby?” Re- Genetic Diagnosis,” Genetics and Public Policy productive Health Matters 10, no. 19 (2002): Center Issue Brief, 27 Feb. 2006, www.dnapolicy 193; Rajani Bhatia, “Ten Years after Cairo: The .org/policy.issue.php?action=detail&issue Resurgence of Coercive Population Control in brief_id=8.

CHAPTER 19

Race, Gender, and Genetic Technologies: A New Reproductive Dystopia? Dorothy E. Roberts

In the 1980s, Margaret Atwood, Gena Corea, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), and other feminists imagined dystopias in clinicians can biopsy a single cell from which white women’s reproduction was early embryos, diagnose it for the chance valued and privileged and the reproduc- of having hundreds of genetic conditions, tion of women of color was devalued and and select for implantation only those em- exploited. In The Handmaid’s Tale, pub- bryos at low risk of having these conditions lished in 1985, Atwood envisioned the (Robertson 2003; Spar 2006; Singer 2007). repressive Republic of Gilead, where hand- As Reprogenetics, a New Jersey genetics maids were forced to serve as breeders for laboratory that specializes in PGD, puts it, elite men and their infertile wives in order this technique allows for the “replacement to perpetuate the white race, while blacks, to the patient of those embryos classifi ed as well as handmaids who failed to bear by genetic diagnosis as normal.” 1 children, were exiled to toxic colonies (At- At a time when wealthy white women wood 1985). That same year, in The Mother have access to technologies that assist them Machine, Corea predicted that white in having children who not only are genet- women would hire surrogates of color in ically related to them or their partners but reproductive brothels to be implanted have also been genetically screened, vari- with their eggs and gestate their babies at ous laws and policies discourage women of low cost (Corea 1985). color from having children at all (Roberts Two decades later, feminist scholars have 1998; Smith 2007). As Rapp stated at a Rad- continued to critique the hierarchy that cliffe Institute conference, Reproductive anthropologist Rayna Rapp aptly calls Health in the Twenty-fi rst Century, in Octo- “stratifi ed reproduction” by contrast- ber 2004, “Some women struggle for basic ing the opposing relationships of white reproductive technologies, like a clinic women and women of color to reproduc- where sterile conditions might be available tion-assisting technologies (1999, 310). At to perform C-sections, while others turn to the turn of the twenty-fi rst century, even cutting-edge genetic techniques” (quoted more advanced reproductive technolo- in Drexler 2005). African American studies gies that combine assisted conception scholar Marsha Darling similarly writes, with genetic selection, or reprogenetics, “This stunning array of biotechnology is threaten to intensify this opposition (Rob- being directed at developing eugenical erts 2005; Parens and Knowles 2007). With population control strategies especially for RACE, GENDER, AND GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES | 319 low-income and poor women of color glob- privatizing remedies for illness and social ally,” while “reproduction enhancement inequity. options under the rubric of ‘choice’ ” are re- Population control ideology attributes served “for economically and racially privi- social inequities to childbearing by poor leged women in the global North” (2004b). women of color, thereby legitimizing puni- While welfare reform laws aim to deter tive regulation of these women’s reproduc- women receiving public assistance from tive decisions (Roberts 1998). Stereotypes having even one additional healthy baby of black female sexual and reproductive (Mink 2002; Smith 2007), largely unreg- irresponsibility support welfare reform ulated fertility clinics (Arons 2007, 1; Pa- and law enforcement policies that severely rens and Knowles 2007) regularly implant regulate poor black women’s sexual and privileged women with multiple embryos, childbearing decisions (Neubeck 2001). knowing the high risk multiple births By identifying procreation as the cause of pose for premature delivery and low birth deplorable social conditions, reproduc- weight (Helmerhorst et al. 2004; Mundy tive punishments divert attention away 2007; Reddy et al. 2007). The public be- from state responsibility and the need for grudges poor mothers a meager increase social change. Black mothers’ crack use, in benefi ts for one more child, but it cel- for example, became a primary explana- ebrates the birth of high-tech septuplets tion for high rates of black infant mortal- that require a fortune in publicly supported ity, although this disparity long predated hospital care (Andrews 1999, 55–61). The the crack epidemic (Roberts 1998, 154–59; multibillion-dollar apparatus devoted to Zerai and Banks 2002; McCaughey 2005). technologically facilitating affl uent cou- Like punishments for poor women’s ples’ procreative decisions stands in glar- childbearing, reprogenetics also shifts re- ing contrast to the high rate of infant death sponsibility for promoting well-being from among black people, which remains more the government to the individual by mak- than twice the rate for whites (Mathews ing women responsible for ensuring the and MacDorman 2007). Indeed, the infant genetic fi tness of their children. The indi- mortality rate is climbing in Mississippi vidual woman becomes the site of gover- and other southern states (Eckholm 2007). nance through self-regulation of genetic My prior writing on this reproductive risk (Mykitiuk 2000). The medical model caste system also contrasted policies that of disability that promotes eugenic elim- penalize poor black women’s childbearing ination of genetic risk instead of ending with the high-tech fertility industry that discrimination against disabled people promotes childbearing by more affl uent supports state reliance on individuals to white women (Roberts 1998, 246–93). I secure their own well-being through the recently reconsidered the positioning of use of genetic technologies. This diver- white women and women of color in the sion of attention away from social causes reproductive hierarchy, however (Roberts and solutions reinforces privatization, the 2005). Rather than place these women in op - hallmark of a neoliberal state that seeks position, I tied them together in relation to to reduce social welfare programs while the neoliberal trend toward privatization and promoting the free market conditions punitive governance. Both population conducive to capital accumulation. Thus, control programs and genetic selection reproductive health policies involving technologies reinforce biological expla- women at opposite ends of the reproduc- nations for social problems and place re- tive hierarchy play an important role in the productive responsibility on women, thus neoliberal state’s transfer of services from 320 | DOROTHY E. ROBERTS

the welfare state to the private realm of In this article, I critically explore the role family and market. of race and racism in the emergence of re- In the last several years, while working productive technologies that incorporate on a book project exploring the growth of advances in genetic science. What are the biotechnologies that incorporate race as a implications of including women of color genetic category, I have come to reconsider in the market for reprogenetic technolo- once again the opposition of white women gies, particularly when this is done with and women of color in the reproductive the expectation that women will use these caste system in relation to reproductive technologies to manage genetic risk? In technologies. The position I just described, investigating this question, I hope to shed like the 1980s reproductive dystopias, still light on the critical relationship between casts white women as the only consumers racism, neoliberalism, and reproduction. of reproductive technologies and women of color only as victims of population con- EXPANDING THE MARKET FOR trol policies. It assumes that white women REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES are the only ones with access to these technologies and that women of color play no In Killing the Black Body, I discussed the part in the politics of reprogenetics, except role of race in images promoting the fertil- by their exclusion or exploitation. ity industry (Roberts 1998, 251). I pointed The recent expansion of both repro- out that pictures showing the success of ductive genetic screening and race-based reproduction-assisting technologies were biomedicine, however, signals a dramatic always of white babies, usually with blond change in the racial politics of reproduc- hair and blue eyes, as if to highlight their tive technologies. First, the important role racial purity. When the New York Times of genetic screening, which makes indi- launched a prominent four-article series vidual citizens responsible for ensuring called “The Fertility Market” in January good health by reducing genetic risk, may 1996, for example, the front page displayed support the wider incorporation of repro- a photograph of the director of a fertility genetic technologies into the neoliberal clinic surrounded by seven white children health care system. Second, companies conceived there (Gabriel 1996, A1). The that market race-based biotechnologies continuing page contained a picture of a now promise to extend the benefi ts of ge- set of beaming in vitro fertilization (IVF) netic research to people of color (Bloche triplets, also white (Gabriel 1996, A18). 2004; Kahn 2007). Media promoting ge- In the 1990s, the only time black babies netic technologies prominently feature fi gured in media coverage of these tech- people of color in images representing nologies was in stories intended to evoke the new genetic age, in contrast to prior revulsion precisely because of their race. portrayals that emphasized whiteness as One instance was a highly publicized law- the exclusive standard of genetic fi tness.2 suit brought by a white woman against a Moreover, some clinics that offer high-tech fertility clinic she claimed had mistakenly reproductive services, including PGD, ex- inseminated her with a black man’s sperm, plicitly appeal to clients of color. 3 Women resulting in the birth of a mixed-race child of color are now part of the market and cul- (Schatz 1990; Sullivan 1990). Two report- tural imaginary of the new reprogenetics. ers covering the story speculated that “if We need a new reproductive dystopia that the suit goes to trial, a jury could be faced accounts for the changing racial politics of with the diffi cult task of deciding damages genetics and reproduction. involved in raising an interracial child” RACE, GENDER, AND GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES | 321

(Kantrowitz and Kaplan 1990). The per- from billowing white clouds to illustrate its ceived harm to the mother of receiving the promise of “turning your dreams of starting wrong sperm was intensifi ed by the clinic’s a family into reality.” 5 Sher Institutes for Re- failure to deliver a white baby. productive Medicine, with nationwide lo- Other notorious news stories from the cations, streams photo strips of its “success 1990s included the case of twin boys born stories,” showing dozens of children, all of to a white Dutch couple who discovered whom appear to be white. 6 when the babies were two months old that Similarly, a full-page advertisement for one was white and one was black (Elliot the Virginia-based Genetics and IVF In- and Endt 1995). The fertility clinic had fer- stitute, which recently appeared in the tilized the mother’s eggs with sperm from New York Times Magazine, features a giant both her white husband and a black man. photo (taking up about half the space) of A landmark California dispute from 1993, a white baby with blonde hair, blue eyes, Johnson v. Calvert, involved a black ges- and rosy cheeks. 7 The headline asks, “Over tational “surrogate,” Anna Johnson, who 40 and thinking of having a baby?” fol- was denied any rights to the child she lowed by the solution: “DONOR EGG Im- bore for the genetic parents, a white man mediate Availability.” In the text below, and his Filipina wife, Mark and Crispina the company boasts of offering “Doctoral Calvert.4 The press paid far more atten- Donors with advanced degrees and nu- tion to Anna Johnson’s race than to that of merous other donors with special accom- Crispina Calvert. It also portrayed the baby plishments and talents.” The assumption as white. By relying on the Calverts’ genetic that whiteness, intelligence, and talent are tie to the child to determine legal parent- connected and hereditary remains robust hood, the California courts ensured that a in the reprogenetic marketplace. black woman would not be considered the Nevertheless, the images associated natural mother of a white child (Roberts with reproductive technologies have dra- 1998, 280–81). While the stories involving matically diversifi ed in recent years. Re- whites portrayed the positive potential of productive Health Specialists in Illinois new reproductive technologies, the stories displays a photograph of a large group of involving women and children of color re- white couples holding white babies, cap- vealed their potential horror. tioned “Baby Picnic.”8 But its Web site also Today, however, the high-tech fertility contains a photograph of a smiling black business, including genetic-screening ser- man and woman and a drawing of a preg- vices, no longer appeals to an exclusively nant black woman attended to by a black white clientele. Although fertility clinics male partner and female physician. Like- perform sex selection for a range of clients, wise, Houston IVF’s Web site shows a beam- the controversy surrounding this service ing black couple holding a black baby. 9 has centered on Chinese and Indian women The Illinois-based Karande and Associates (Darnovsky 2004; Bumgarner 2007). Images takes a very multicultural approach, using on fertility clinic Web sites routinely show a photo of a pregnant East Asian woman people of color alongside claims advertis- for scheduling an appointment, a black ing clinic services and their benefi ts. To be woman and child for its link to donor egg sure, pictures of white babies continue to information, and a South Asian man and dominate some Web sites. The home page child for the insurance information link. 10 of the Rinehart Center for Reproductive There are numerous advertisements Medicine in Illinois displays the head of a on craigslist.com explicitly soliciting egg blond-haired baby emerging like the sun donors of color. For example, a posting by 322 | DOROTHY E. ROBERTS

Beverly Hills Egg Donation notes, “ALL ETH- variation, including the Human Genome NICITIES WELCOME!” 11 F. Williams Donor Project, showing high levels of genetic sim- Services’ listing states, “Ethnic Diverse Egg ilarity among people of all races (Graves Donors Needed” and includes a photo of 2001; Cooper, Kaufman, and Ward 2003). an Asian, a white, and a black woman. 12 At the onset of the Human Genome Proj- Happy Beginnings, LLC, advertises, “EGG ect, some scholars believed that the sci- DONORS WANTED ALL ETHNIC BACK- ence of human genetic diversity would GROUNDS,” specifying, “WE HAVE A replace race as the preeminent means of VERY HIGH DEMAND FOR JEWISH, EAST grouping people for scientifi c purposes INDIAN, MIDDLE EASTERN, ASIAN, (Lewontin 1995; Reardon 2005). Yet the use ITALIAN, AND BLONDE DONORS.” 13 Sim- of race as a biological category in genetic ilarly, Pacifi c Fertility Center boasts that it research and biotechnology is intensifying “maintains a diverse egg donor database (Burchard et al. 2003; Bonham, Warshauer- including Jewish egg donors, Asian egg Baker, and Collins 2005; Duster 2005). donors, and a variety of backgrounds and The marketing of high-tech reproduc- ethnicities.” 14 tive services to women of color is part of Some fertility clinic Web sites not only a broader inclusion of minority groups in market their reprogenetic services to peo- the testing and production of cutting-edge ple of color, but they also perform race- biotechnologies. In June 2005, the Food based genetic testing as part of those and Drug Administration (FDA) approved services. Pacifi c Fertility Center’s Web site the fi rst race-based pharmaceutical, BiDil, includes the statement, “Genetic screen- to treat heart failure specifi cally in African ing is also recommended, based on ethnic American patients (Saul 2005). BiDil is the background.” 15 combination of two generic drugs that doc- Reproductive Genetics Institute in Chi- tors were already prescribing regardless of cago similarly includes race in the factors race. Yet the FDA permitted its maker, Ni- it takes into account in its genetic testing: tromed, to market BiDil as a drug for black “Screening Results and Accuracy: By com- people. Making BiDil race specifi c also bining the results of the ultrasound and allowed Nitromed to extend its patent to blood test along with the age, race and the year 2020, giving the company market weight of the mother, a number can be exclusivity and the potential to reap huge generated by computer which represents profi ts on drug sales (Kahn 2004). The man- the risk of the pregnancy being affected by ufacturer’s unproven theory supporting the Down syndrome or another chromosome need for a race-specifi c therapy is that the problem. Experience has shown that, to- reason for higher mortality rates among gether, the ultrasound and blood screen black heart patients lies in genetic differ- will identify approximately 90% of babies ences among “races,” in either the reason with chromosome abnormalities.”16 for getting heart disease or the reason for Fertility clinics’ use of race in genetic responding differently to medications for it selection procedures may help to rein- (Kahn 2004; Sankar and Kahn 2005). force the erroneous belief that race is a BiDil is only one example of the grow- biological classifi cation that can be de- ing trend toward “the strategic use of race termined genetically or that genetic traits as a genetic category to obtain patent pro- occur in human beings according to their tection and drug approval” (Kahn 2006, race. Social scientists’ demonstration that 1349). In his survey of gene-related pat- race is an invented social grouping was ent applications, legal scholar Jonathan confi rmed by genomic studies of human Kahn discovered that the use of race has RACE, GENDER, AND GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES | 323 increased fi vefold in the past twenty years to get prenatal diagnoses for certain ge- (2006). Claims about justice in scientifi c netic conditions such as Down syndrome research have shifted away from protect- or dwarfi sm (Powell 2007; Saxton 2007). ing socially disadvantaged subjects from It is also often expected that they will opt unethical practices and toward promoting for abortion to select against any disabling access to clinical trials and biotech prod- traits identifi ed by genetic testing. Many ucts (Epstein 2007). There is strong sup- obstetricians provide these tests without port for racial therapeutics among some much explanation or deliberation because black advocates, researchers, and physi- they consider such screenings to be a nor- cians precisely to redress past discrimina- mal part of treating their pregnant patients. tion and fulfi ll long-standing demands for The director of reproductive genetics at a science to attend to the health needs of Af- large Detroit hospital reported that at least rican Americans (Puckrein 2006; see Rob- half of the women referred there with an erts 2008). This increased commercial and abnormal amniocentesis result were “un- popular demand for race-specifi c pharma- certain about why they even had the test” ceuticals threatens to reinforce a false be- (Consumers Union 1990, 486). Moreover, lief in the biological origin of race. current tort case law creates incentives in Advanced reproductive technologies sim- favor of genetic testing by imposing legal ilarly constitute a form of race-based medi- duties on obstetricians to offer it (Weil 2006, cine. Rather than serve an exclusively white 52; Ossorio 2007, 330). While there are virtu- clientele, fertility clinics are marketing ge- ally no legal consequences for doctors who netic technologies to women of color on the encourage genetic tests, doctors who fail basis of race and ethnicity and incorporating to use them may be liable for damages in race in genetic-screening procedures. Con- “wrongful birth” lawsuits.17 temporary reproductive dystopias, then, Although genetic counseling should be should not categorically exclude women of nondirective, many counselors show dis- color from their imagined users of genetic approval when patients decide against se- selection technologies. As I explain below, lective abortion. A genetic counselor asked the expansion of race-based biotechnology, a woman who decided to bear a child with including genetic selection, fi ts within the Down syndrome, “What are you going to neoliberal trend toward privatization and say to people when they ask you how you punitive governance and requires adjusting could bring a child like this into the world?” feminist reproductive dystopias. (quoted in Helm, Miranda, and Chedd 1998, 59). Brian Skotko’s survey of 985 mothers who received postnatal diagnoses of Down NEOLIBERALISM AND syndrome for their children similarly dis- REPRODUCTIVE DYSTOPIA covered that many of the mothers were The marketing of reprogenetics to women chastised by health care professionals for of color is taking place in the context of not undergoing prenatal testing: neo liberal shifts in governance that may encourage the expansion of genetic-screening “Right after [my child] was born, the doctor fl at out told my husband that this could have technologies to a broader clientele. Wide- been prevented or discontinued at an earlier spread prenatal testing has already gener- stage of the pregnancy,” wrote one mother ated greater surveillance of pregnant women who had a child with DS in 2000. A mother and assigned them primary responsibility who had a child in 1993 recalled, “I had a res- for making the “right” genetic decisions. It ident in the recovery room when I learned is increasingly routine for pregnant women that my daughter had DS. When I started to 324 | DOROTHY E. ROBERTS

cry, I overheard him say, ‘What did she ex- have to pay for the cost of selective abor- pect? She refused prenatal testing.’ ” . . . An- tions themselves. Yet it is not hard to fore- other mother reported, from her experience see future federal and state legislation that in 1997, “The attending neonatologist, rather exempts “therapeutic” abortions based on than extending some form of compassion, genetic testing from the ban on abortion lambasted us for our ignorance in not doing funding. Prior to the 1973 passage of Roe v. prior testing and for bringing this burden to society—noting the economical, educa- Wade, upholding the constitutional right to tional, and social hardships he would bring.” abortion, many states permitted therapeu- Regarding a postnatal visit, a mother who had tic abortions recommended by physicians a child in 1992 wrote, “[My doctor] stressed while criminalizing elective abortions ‘next time’ the need for amniocentesis so that sought by women with unwanted preg- I could ‘choose to terminate.’ ” (2005, 70–71) nancies (Schoen 2005, 153–86). Indeed, some clients of reprogenet- As a result of such pressure, many preg- ics have claimed moral superiority over nant women now view genetic testing as women who have had abortions for non- a requirement of responsible mothering selective reasons. In a July 22, 2004, op-ed (Harmon 2007). piece in the New York Times, Barbara Eh- Poor women, especially women of color, renreich calls on women who had aborted currently face fi nancial and other barriers fetuses based on prenatal diagnosis to sup- to receiving high-tech infertility services port the general right to abortion (2004). (Elster 2005). Because genetic screen- She notes that these women sometimes ing is now considered an essential part distinguish themselves from women who of preventive medicine, however, these have “ordinary” abortions. One woman technologies are becoming integrated who aborted a fetus with Down syndrome into social welfare systems and private states, “I don’t look at it as though I had an insurance schemes and are likely to be- abortion, even though that is technically come increasingly available to poor and what it is. There’s a difference. I wanted this low-income women (Van den Daele 2006; baby” (quoted in Ehrenreich 2004, A21). Bumiller 2009).18 Unlike IVF, whose pri- On a Web site for a support group called “A mary purpose is to increase fertility, PGD Heart breaking Choice” a mother who went functions to help women avoid starting a to an abortion clinic complains, “I resented pregnancy that entails disfavored genetic the fact that I had to be there with all these traits (Franklin and Roberts 2006, xx, 97).19 girls that did not want their babies” (quoted The aim of IVF is to produce the birth of in Ehrenreich 2004, A21). The incorpora- a live baby; the aim of PGD and fetal diag- tion of eugenic values in arguments for nosis is to prevent the birth of certain chil- women’s reproductive freedom neglects dren. While government welfare systems the history of abortion regulation, which have disdained facilitating childbearing by limited women’s reproductive freedom by poor women of color by declining to fund distinguishing between approved thera- fertility treatments, they may therefore peutic and disapproved elective abortions. treat genetic testing differently. An attempt to solicit supporters of selec- The current ban on federal funding of tive abortion to join the cause of abortion abortion places a signifi cant limit on state rights misunderstands the nature of reprogenetic selection programs (Powell 2007, ductive politics in the neoliberal age. 49–50). In states that do not provide Medic- The expansion of genetic research and aid funding for abortion, poor women can technologies has helped to create a new receive state-sponsored genetic testing but biological citizenship that enlists patients RACE, GENDER, AND GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES | 325 to take unprecedented authority over their deregulation that typically occurs in the health at the molecular level (Rose 2007). service of big business, the new duties im- According to British sociologist Nikolas posed on women constitute a reregulation Rose, “our very biological life itself has en- that supports capital investment in mar- tered the domain of decision and choice” ket-based approaches to health care and (2007, 40). Some scholars have highlighted other social needs while state investment the enhancement of human agency, as in public resources shrinks (2000). “patients are increasingly urged to become In addition, reprogenetics incorporates active and responsible consumers of med- a seemingly benign form of eugenic think- ical services and products ranging from ing in its reliance on reproductive strategies pharmaceuticals to reproductive technol- to eliminate genetic risk rather than social ogies and genetic tests” (2007, 4) and to strategies to eliminate systemic inequities. form alliances with physicians, scientists, Some disability rights advocates oppose and clinicians to advocate for their inter- prenatal genetic diagnosis that leads to ests (Franklin and Roberts 2006, xvii). discarding embryos and fetuses predicted Biological citizenship also refl ects the to have disabilities because these proce- shift of responsibility for public welfare dures devalue people who have disabili- from the state to the private realms of mar- ties, sending the message that they should ket and family. As Rose observes, respon- never have been born (Wendell 1996, 151– sibility for the management of health and 56; Parens and Asch 2007; Saxton 2007). reproduction has devolved from the “for- They argue that although disabilities cause mal apparatus of the government” to “qua- various degrees of impairment, the main si-autonomous regulatory bodies” such diffi culty in having a disability stems from as bioethics commissions, professional pervasive discrimination. “Rather than im- groups, and private corporations (2007, 3). proving the medical or social situation of Selling genetic testing products directly to today’s and tomorrow’s disabled citizens,” consumers is big business for private fer- write bioethicists Erik Parens and Adri- tility clinics and biotechnology companies. enne Asch, “prenatal diagnosis reinforces Biomedical research and technology have the medical model that disability itself, correspondingly become major sources of not societal discrimination against peo- capital accumulation, aided by federal pat- ple with disabilities, is the problem to be ents on genetic information, FDA approval solved” (2007, 13). of pharmaceuticals, and public funding of The reasons why some parents do not lucrative private research ventures, such as want a disabled child are varied. While California’s stem cell research initiative. some women may use genetic selection In this neoliberal context, genetic test- in an upwardly mobile quest for the “per- ing serves as a form of privatization that fect child,” others want to prevent their makes the individual the site of gover- children from suffering the pain, illness, nance through the self-regulation of ge- and physical limitations that accompany netic risk (Mykitiuk 2000). Reproductive disabilities or worry that they are not capa- genetic technologies, in particular, intro- ble of dealing with disability’s social con- duce a new gendered division of labor and sequences (Wendell 1996, 82–83; Franklin surveillance as women bear the brunt of and Roberts 2006, 132–62; Baily 2007). Yet reprogenetics’ contribution to the neolib- given medical professionals’ implicit di- eral restructuring of health care (Mykitiuk rective favoring genetic selection and pow- 2000). Canadian legal scholar Roxanne erful stereotypes that negatively depict Mykitiuk points out that, contrary to the disabled people, many women are left with 326 | DOROTHY E. ROBERTS

a false impression of the nature of parent- of choice, the desire for self-fulfi llment, ing a disabled child and the quality of dis- and the wish of parents for the best lives for abled people’s lives (which genetic testing their children,” Rose concludes (2007, 69). cannot predict; Bumiller 2009). Pregnant Rose dismisses the relevance of eugen- women are rarely able to make truly in- ics to contemporary biopolitics too cate- formed decisions about what to do with gorically. He downplays critical aspects of test results because they, obstetricians, and the past eugenics regime that characterize counselors typically have little information both contemporary population control about the lives of disabled people and their policies and genetic-screening technolo- families (Wendell 1996, 81–84; Parens and gies such as PGD. By eugenic thinking or Asch 2007, 33–37).20 values, I refer to the belief that reproduc- Moreover, some of the undesirable tive strategies can improve society by re- events likely to happen to a child with a ducing the births of socially marginalized serious disability that parents may reason- people. The eugenic approach to social ably wish to prevent, such as limited edu- problems locates them in reproduction cational and employment opportunities, rather than social structure and therefore are caused by social as much as physical seeks to solve them by eliminating disfa- impediments (Steinbock 2007, 119). Un- vored people instead of social inequities. able to count on societal acceptance or Its chief epistemological device is to make support, many women feel compelled to the social order seem natural by casting turn to genetic testing to ensure their chil- its features as biological facts. As Donald dren’s welfare (Lippman 1991, 39; Kittay MacKenzie observes, eugenic theory is 2007, 181). Without judging the morality “a way of reading the structure of social of individual women’s decisions, we must classes onto nature” (1981, 18). Programs critically evaluate the social, political, and based on such a belief set up standards for legal incentives for genetic testing as well reproduction that subsume childbearing as consequences of genetic testing for peo- under prevailing hierarchies of power. ple with disabilities. Building on the dis- Eugenics did not function only “in the ability critique, we must also question the service of a biological struggle between na- role that the eugenic approach to disability tion-states” (Rose 2007, 66); it functioned plays in neoliberal governance. to maintain the racial, gender, and class Rose, the British sociologist discussed order within the nation. (Moreover, alli- above, rejects critical intellectuals’ use of ances between American and Nazi eugen- eugenics rhetoric to contest PGD and other icists in the 1930s show a willingness to aspects of contemporary biological politics cross national boundaries in the interest of (2007, 54–68). He argues that the eugenics white supremacy.)21 Thus, contemporary practiced in the fi rst half of the twentieth proposals to solve social problems by curb- century was a particular biopolitical strating black reproduction, such as the Phila- egy that sought to improve the population delphia Inquirer ’s suggestion to distribute as a whole through deliberate state action. the long-acting contraceptive Norplant as This effort “to control the biological makeup a remedy for black poverty, are similar to of the population” as a whole, he claims, past eugenic policies in that they make ra- distinguishes eugenics from the new bio- cial inequality appear to be the product of politics’ concern with the genetic health of nature rather than power (Kimelman 1990). individuals (2007, 56). “What we have here, By identifying procreation as the cause of then, is not eugenics but is shaped by forms black people’s condition, they divert at- of self-government imposed by obligations tention away from the political, social, and RACE, GENDER, AND GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES | 327 economic forces that maintain the U.S. ra- programs obscures the crucial role of pri- cial order. I therefore believe it is accurate vate enterprises in disseminating and im- and helpful to identify the ways in which plementing eugenics. Just as infl uential as contemporary reproductive health policies the mandatory sterilization laws passed incorporate essential features of eugenic in most states were the campaigns waged ideology, despite the important differences by private groups such as the American that Rose highlights. Eugenics Society, the Human Betterment Furthermore, the distinction between Association, and the American Genetics past state-imposed and current voluntary Association to educate the American public programs is not as clear-cut as Rose sug- about the benefi ts of eugenics, as well as the gests. On the one hand, Rose ignores the American Birth Control League’s programs system of punitive governance that ac- to distribute birth control to the unfi t (Kev- companies the neoliberal shift to individ- les 1985). As Rose acknowledges, “Eugenics ual self-governance. Welfare is no longer was not disreputable or marginal: it de- a system of aid but rather a system of be- fi ned one dimension of mainstream think- havior modifi cation that attempts to reg- ing about the responsibilities of politicians, ulate the sexual, marital, and childbearing professionals, scientists, and individuals in decisions of poor unmarried mothers by the modern world” (2007, 59). placing conditions on the receipt of state Some feminists who use eugenics rhet- assistance (Roberts 1998; Mink 2002; Smith oric to critique modern genetic selection 2007). Meanwhile, federal and state gov- technologies explicitly acknowledge the ernments aggressively intervene in mar- distinction between state-imposed pro- ginalized communities to manage their grams and private decisions made by in- social deprivation with especially punitive dividuals. For example, U.S. sociologist measures. The U.S. prison population has Barbara Katz Rothman calls the marketing grown to proportions unprecedented in of prenatal diagnostic technologies a form the history of Western democracies, as an of microeugenics, focused on the individ- astounding number of young black men ual, in contrast to macroeugenics, focused are locked up (Garland 2001; the Sentenc- on populations (2001). I also explicitly ing Project 2005). The racial disparity in distinguish between population control the foster care population mirrors that of policies and those that promote repro- the prison system, as child protection au- genetics while drawing attention to their thorities remove grossly disproportion- common support of neoliberal approaches ate numbers of black children from their to social inequities (Roberts 2005). This homes (Roberts 2002). Population control distinction, however, should not eclipse policies that attribute social inequities to the coercive nature and social function the childbearing of poor minority women of contemporary reprogenetics (Wendell are a critical component of this punitive 1996, 156; Ward 2002). As I discuss above, trend away from state support for families genetic selection procedures are increas- and communities (Roberts 1998; Smith ingly treated as social responsibilities re- 2007). Rose’s reference to “the enabling inforced not only by cultural expectations state, the facilitating state, the state as an- but also by legal penalties and incentives. imator” (2007, 63) does not apply to poli- Does the state-supported reproductive ge- cies designed to penalize childbearing by netics industry exist only to give individual poor women and women of color. citizens more reproductive choices, or, as On the other hand, Rose’s focus on Laura Hershey asks, is it “primarily for the state direction of twentieth-century eugenic benefi t of a society unwilling to support 328 | DOROTHY E. ROBERTS

disability-related needs?” (1994, 31; see also name of women’s reproductive freedom Wendell 1996, 154). (Rothman 1989, 116; Darling 2004a). Ex- Rose’s analysis of contemporary biopol- tending the availability of genetic selec- itics helps to illuminate the radical change tion technologies to women of color does from state management of the popula- not correct the role played by reprogenet- tion’s health to individual management of ics in advancing a neoliberal agenda. The genetic risk, aided by new genetic tech- depletion of public resources for general nologies. These technologies facilitate the health care and for supporting people shift from state responsibility for ensuring with disabilities would exacerbate eco- health and welfare to private responsibil- nomic inequities along racial lines, hitting ity, all within the context of persistent race, poor minority communities the hardest. In gender, and class inequities; devastating addition, the expectation of genetic self- reductions in social programs; and intense regulation may fall especially harshly on state surveillance of marginalized commu- black and Latina women, who are stereo- nities. Genetic screening is increasingly typically defi ned as lacking the capacity for recommended not only to avoid having self-control. The use of high-tech, expen- children with serious early onset disabil- sive technologies by a privileged slice of ities or diseases with a high likelihood of women of color suggests that those who do occurring but to eliminate the risk of de- not use them for fi nancial, social, or eth- veloping certain diseases as an adult (Oba- ical reasons may be blamed for the social sogie 2006). A recent article in the Journal consequences. of the American Medical Association, for There may always be certain repro- example, encouraged families affected by ductive technologies that are reserved for hereditary cancer syndromes, including the wealthiest people and are outside the breast, ovarian, and colon cancer, to use reach of most women of color. The market PGD to screen out embryos genetically will privilege a tiny elite among people of predisposed to develop cancer (Offi t, Sagi, color who can afford high-tech reproduc- and Hurley 2006). In the neoliberal future, tive innovations while relegating the vast the state may rely on the expectation that majority to the state’s most intense repro- all pregnant women will undergo genetic ductive surveillance. Indeed, the neolib- testing to legitimize not only its refusal to eral reifi cation of market logic is likely to support the care of disabled children but expand the hiring of poor and low-income also its denial of broader claims for public women of color for their reproductive ser- provision of health care. vices. The incidence of payments to these women to gestate fetuses or to produce eggs for genetic research could intensify EXTENDING CHOICE TO WOMEN (Haworth 2007) even as they are encour- OF COLOR aged to use genetic technologies to screen The role reprogenetics plays in neoliber- their own children. alism’s integrated system of privatization In addition, marketing race-based bio- and punitive governance is obscured by technologies to consumers of color can liberal notions of reproductive choice. reinforce the biological meaning of race. Despite the potential for reprogenetics to By incorporating invented racial catego- diminish public health care and intensify ries into genetic research, scientists and regulation of women’s reproductive deci- entrepreneurs are producing biotechnol- sions, its sponsors often defend the indus- ogies that validate people’s belief that race try’s immunity from state regulation in the is a natural classifi cation. A renewed trust RACE, GENDER, AND GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES | 329 in inherent racial differences provides that incorporate race as a biological cat- an alternative explanation for persistent egory reinforce class divisions between gross inequities in blacks’ health and wel- elite people of color who can afford the fare despite the end of de jure discrimi- full array of high-tech procedures and the nation. These technologies promote the masses who suffer most from neoliberal view that deepening racial inequities that policies bolstered by these very biological result from neoliberal policies are actually explanations of racial inequities. But I can caused by genetic differences between also imagine a new utopia arising from whites and other racialized groups. The feminists’ radical resistance to enlisting biological explanation for racial dispar- women as genetic screeners in service ities provides a ready logic for the stag- of a neoliberal agenda, a resistance that gering disenfranchisement of people of is emboldened by new alliances—joining color through mass incarceration and reproductive justice with antiracist, other punitive policies, as well as the per- disability rights, and economic justice fect complement to color-blind policies movements that recognize their common implementing the claim that racism has interest in contesting a race-based repro- ceased to be the cause of their predica- genetic future. ment. Including women of color in the market for reprogenetic technologies does not eradicate the racial caste system un- NOTES derlying reproductive stratifi cation. I am grateful to Adrienne Asch, Kristin Bumiller, A reproductive dystopia for the twenty- Sujatha Jesudason, Molly Shanley, and Anna fi rst century could no longer exclude wo- Marie Smith for their extremely helpful com- men of color from the market for high-tech ments on prior drafts of this article. Jessica Har- reprogenetics. Rather, it would take place ris provided valuable research assistance. This in a society in which racial and economic material is based on work supported by the Na- tional Science Foundation under grant 0551869. divisions are reinforced by the genetic test- Support for this article was also provided in part ing extended to them. In this new dystopia, by an RWJF Investigator Award in Health Policy the biological defi nition of race is stronger Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foun- than ever, validated by genetic science dation, Princeton, NJ, and by the Kirkland & and cemented in popular culture by race- Ellis Fund. based biotechnologies. The state has dis- 1. See the Reprogenetics Web site at http://www claimed all responsibility for supporting its .reprogenetics.com/default.html. citizens, placing the duty of ensuring pub- 2. See the Web sites of DNA Tribes (http://www .dnatribes.com), GeneTree (http://www.genetree. lic welfare in all women’s self-regulation com), and National Geographic’s Genographic of genetic risk. The medical model of dis- Project (https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/ ability is embedded in a neoliberal health genographic/index.html). policy that relies on widespread use of 3. See the Pacifi c Fertility Center’s appeal to pro- genetic technologies to disqualify citizens spective donors at http://www.donateyoureggs .com and information about egg donation at from claiming public support and to avoid http://www.pacificfertilitycenter.com/treat/ the need for social change. The new biolo- agency_donation.php. gization of race may seem to unite blacks, 4. Johnson v. Calvert, 5 Cal. 4th 84, 19 Cal. Rptr. 494 and other nonwhite “races,” by confi rming (1993), cert. denied, 114 S. Ct. 206 (1993). the genetic uniformity of people belong- 5. See the Rinehart Center for Reproductive Medi- cine Web site at http://www.illinoisivf.com. ing to the same race and their genetic dif- 6. See the Sher Institutes for Reproductive Medi- ference from others. In the new dystopia, cine Web site at http://www.haveababy.com/ss/ however, genetic selection technologies index_ss.cfm?&cityplocal&sitepss2. 330 | DOROTHY E. ROBERTS

7. See Genetics and IVF Institute, advertisement, aggregate patterns of overall adjustment and New York Times Magazine, July 29, 2007, 21. well-being to be similar across groups of fami- 8. See images of the “baby picnic” at http://www. lies with and without children with disabilities” reproductivespecialist.com/baby_parties.htm. (Ferguson, Gartner, and Lipsky 2007, 85). 9. See the Houston IVF Web site at http://www. 21. When the leading American eugenicist, Harry houstonivf.net/houstonivf/OurServices/ Our- Laughlin, received an honorary degree from Services.asp. the University of Heidelberg in 1936, he wrote 10. For images from the Karande and Associates Web to German offi cials that the award represented site, see http://www.karandeivf.com/appoint “evidence of a common understanding of Ger- ment.html, http://www.karandeivf.com/eggd man and American scientists of the nature of onorprogram.html, and http://www.karandeivf. eugenics” (quoted in Kevles 1985, 118). com/insurance.html. 11. See Beverly Hills Egg Donation, advertisement, Los Angeles craigslist.com, SF Valley, etcetera REFERENCES jobs, November 22, 2008. 12. See F. Williams Donor Services, advertisement, Andrews, Lori B. 1999. The Clone Age: Adventures in Inland Empire craigslist.com, etcetera jobs, No- the New World of Reproductive Technology. New vember 24, 2008. York: Holt. 13. See Happy Beginnings, LLC, advertisement, Arons, Jessica. 2007. “Future Choices: Assisted Repro- Reno craigslist.com, etcetera jobs, November ductive Technologies and the Law.” Report, Center 13, 2008. for American Progress, Washington, DC. 14. See the Pacifi c Fertility Center’s appeal to pro- Atwood, Margaret. 1985. The Handmaid’s Tale. To- spective donors at http://www.donateyour ronto: McClelland & Stewart. Baily, Mary Ann. eggs.com. 2007. “Why I Had Amniocentesis.” In Prenatal 15. See the Pacifi c Fertility Center’s Web site at Testing and Disability Rights, ed. Erik Parens and http://www.pacificfertilitycenter.com/treat/ Adrienne Asch, 64–71. Washington, DC: George- agency_donation.php. town University Press. 16. See the Reproductive Genetics Institute’s Bumgarner, Ashley. 2007. “A Right to Choose? Sex Web page on fi rst trimester screening at Selection in the International Context.” Duke http://www.reproductivegenetics.com/first_ Journal of Gender Law and Policy 14 (May): trimester.html. 1289–1309. Bloche, M. Gregg. 2004. “Race-Based 17. For example, the Supreme Court of Ohio re- Therapeutics.” New England Journal of Medicine cently held that parents of an unhealthy child 351(20):2035–37. born following negligent failure to diagnose Bonham, Vence L., Esther Warshauer-Baker, and a fetal defect or disease may bring suit under Francis S. Collins. 2005. “Race and Ethnicity in the traditional medical malpractice principles for Genome Era: The Complexity of the Constructs.” the costs arising from the pregnancy and birth American Psychologist 60(1):9–15. of the child: Schirmer v. Mt. Auburn Obstetrics Bumiller, Kristin. 2009. “The Geneticization of Au- and Gynecologic Associates, Inc., 108 Ohio St. tism: From New Reproductive Technologies to the 3d 494, 2006-Ohio-942 (Ohio S. Ct. 2006). For Conception of Genetic Normalcy.” Signs: Journal an argument in favor of using tort law to com- of Women in Culture and Society 34(4):875–99. pensate for “procreative injury” caused by re- Burchard, Esteban González, Elad Ziv, Natasha Coyle, production assisting technologies, see Kleinfeld Scarlett Lin Gomez, Hua Tang, Andrew J. Carter, (2005). Joanna L. Mountain, Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, Dean 18. For an extensive review of insurance coverage Sheppard, and Neil Risch. 2003. “The Importance of infertility treatments, see Arons (2007, 8–13): of Race and Ethnic Background in Biomedical Re- “Fourteen states currently require some types of search and Clinical Practice.” New England Jour- health insurance plans to include coverage of nal of Medicine 348(12):1170–75. certain infertility services or to make such cov- Consumers Union. 1990. “The Telltale Gene.” Con- erage available” (8). sumer Reports 55(7):483–88. 19. PGD also serves to increase fertility when it is Cooper, Richard S., Jay S. Kaufman, and Ryk Ward. undertaken to improve IVF success rates (Frank- 2003. “Race and Genomics.” New England Journal lin and Roberts 2006, 97). of Medicine 348(12):1166–70. 20. A recent survey of research on the experience of Corea, Gena. 1985. The Mother Machine: Reproductive disability in families concluded, “There is an in- Technologies from Artifi cial Insemination to Artifi - creasingly dominant body of research that fi nds cial Wombs. New York: Harper & Row. RACE, GENDER, AND GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES | 331

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CHAPTER 20

Sexing the X: How the X Became the “Female Chromosome” Sarah S. Richardson

“Unexpected.” “Counterintuitive.” “Intel- the X itself and assume that female genes lectually surprising.”1 These were among and traits are located on it. Researchers the exclamations of researchers upon the look to the X to explain sex differences and 2001 discovery that the human X chro- female quirks and weaknesses and have mosome carries a large collection of male argued that men are superior because they sperm genes (Wang et al. 2001). Although possess one fewer X than females. both males and females possess an X chro- The X chromosome offers a poignant mosome, the X is frequently typed as the example of how the gendering of objects of “female chromosome” and researchers as- biological study can shape scientifi c knowl- sume it carries the genes for femaleness. edge. Moving freely between stereotypical This essay traces the origins of this long- conceptions of femininity and models of standing and infrequently questioned the X chromosome, X-chromosomal theo- association of the X with femaleness and ries of sex differences reveal a circular form examines the infl uence of this assumption of reasoning that is familiar in gender anal- on historical and contemporary genetic ysis of biology. As Evelyn Fox Keller writes: theories of sex and gender difference. “A basic form common to many [feminist Humans possess twenty-two pairs of au- analyses of science] revolves around the tosomal chromosomes and one pair of sex identifi cation of synecdochic (or part for chromosomes— X and Y for males, X and X whole) errors of the following sort: (a) the for females. Today it is well established that world of human bodies is divided into two the Y carries a critical genetic switch for kinds, male and female (i.e., by sex); (b) male sex determination. The X, however, additional (extraphysical) properties are has no parallel relationship to femaleness. culturally attributed to these bodies (e.g., Female sexual development is directed by active/passive, independent/dependent, hormones acting in concert with genes primary/secondary: read gender); and (c) carried by many chromosomes and is not the same properties that have been as- localized to the X. Indeed, the X is arguably cribed to the whole are then attributed to more important to male biology, given the the subcategories of, or processes associ- large number of X-linked diseases to which ated with, these bodies” (1995, 87). A clas- men are uniquely exposed. Despite this, sic historical example of this phenomenon researchers attribute feminine behavior to is the gendering of the egg and sperm in SEXING THE X: HOW THE X BECAME THE “FEMALE CHROMOSOME” | 335 mid- twentieth- century medical textbooks, THE FEMININE CHROMOSOME documented by Emily Martin (1991). A second example is the gendering of the Scientifi c and popular literature on the sex sex steroids estrogen and testosterone, as chromosomes is rich with examples of the told by Nelly Oudshoorn (1994) and Anne gendering of the X and Y. The X is dubbed Fausto- Sterling (2000). the “female chromosome,” takes the fem- Rooted in history and philosophy of sci- inine pronoun “she,” and has been de- ence, and drawing on the interdisciplinary scribed as the “big sister” to “her derelict methods and questions of feminist science brother that is the Y” (Vallender, Pearson, studies forged by scholars such as Fausto- and Lahn 2005, 343) and as the “sexy” chro- Sterling, Keller, Donna Haraway, and Mar- mosome (Graves, Gecz, and Hameister tin, this essay investigates the sexing of the 2002). The X is frequently associated with X in a variety of scientifi c materials both the mysteriousness and variability of the internal and external to the biosciences. feminine, as in a 2005 Science article head- The sexing of the X, I argue, represents a lined “She Moves in Mysterious Ways” and case of gender-ideological bias in science, beginning, “The human X chromosome is both historically and in the present day. a study in contradictions” (Gunter 2005, More generally, it demonstrates how bio- 279). The X is also described in tradition- logical objects and concepts may take on ally gendered terms as the more sociable, a gendered valence as they circulate be- controlling, conservative, monotonous, tween popular and scientifi c realms. and motherly of the two sex chromosomes. The female X has its roots in early sex Similarly, the Y is a “he” and ascribed tradi- chromosome science, which assumed for tional masculine qualities—macho, active, half a century—until the 1950s, when the clever, wily, dominant, as well as degener- Y was confi rmed as the carrier of the sex- ate, lazy, and hyperactive.2 determining locus—that the X was female There are three common gendered determining in humans. In the fi rst part tropes in popular and scientifi c writing on of what follows, I document the contin- the sex chromosomes. The fi rst is the por- gent technical, material, and ideological trayal of the X and Y as a heterosexual cou- factors that led to the feminization of the ple with traditionally gendered opposite or X during the fi rst decades of sex chromo- complementary roles and behaviors. For some research and track the introduction instance, MIT geneticist David Page says, of the “female chromosome” into human “The Y married up, the X married down. . . . genetics at midcentury. In the second part, The Y wants to maintain himself but I demonstrate the continuing infl uence doesn’t know how. . . . He’s falling apart, like of the historical feminization of the X on the guy who can’t manage to get a doctor’s genetic research, exemplifi ed by “X chro- appointment or can’t clean up the house or mosome mosaicism” theories of female apartment unless his wife does it” (Dowd biology, behavior, and disease. Focusing 2005). Biologist and science writer David on the case of X-mosaicism theories of Bainbridge (2003) describes the evolution- the higher incidence of autoimmunity in ary history of the X and Y as a “sad divorce” women, I show how the assumption that (56) set in motion when the “couple fi rst the X is the female chromosome operates stopped dancing,” after which “they almost to sustain and cohere hypotheses of dubi- stopped communicating completely” (58). ous empirical merit in research areas ur- The X is now an “estranged partner” of the gently relevant to women’s health. Y, he writes, “having to resort to complex 336 | SARAH S. RICHARDSON

tricks” (145). Oxford University geneticist Women Really Think”; it is also the name Brian Sykes (2003) similarly describes the of an annual competition for female video X and Y as having a “once happy marriage” gamers. 3 The promotional video for the (283– 84) full of “intimate exchanges” (42– Society for Women’s Health Research, de- 43) now reduced to only an occasional signed to convince the viewer of how very “kiss on the cheek” (44). A 2006 article on different men and women really are, is ti- X-X pairing in females in Science by Penn- tled “What a Difference an X Makes!” (So- sylvania State University geneticist Laura ciety for Women’s Health Research 2008). Carrel is headlined “ ‘X’- Rated Chromo- somal Rendezvous” (2006). HOW THE X BECAME THE Second, sex chromosome biology is FEMALE CHROMOSOME often conceptualized as a war of the sexes. In Matt Ridley’s Genome: The Autobiogra- The notion of the X as the female chromo- phy of a Species in 23 Chapters (1999), the some arises from its history as an object of chapter on the X and Y chromosomes is ti- research and its ensuing gendered valence tled “Confl ict” and relates a story, straight within biological and popular theories of from Men Are from Mars, Women Are from sex. It was originally assumed that the X, Venus (Gray 1992), of two chromosomes not the Y, was the sex-determining chromo- locked in antagonism and never able to some in humans. Theophilus S. Painter, the understand each other (Ridley 1999, 107). American cytogeneticist who in 1924 fi rst A 2007 ScienceNOW Daily News article described the human sex chromosomes, similarly insists on describing a fi nding dubbed XX “the female chromosome about the Z chromosome in male birds complex” (1924, 509), the X the “female- (the equivalent of the X in humans) as producing chromosome” (509), and males demonstrating “A Genetic Battle of the as “heterozygous for sex” (522), as they pos- Sexes” (Pain 2007), while Bainbridge (2003) sess only one X. This founding idea, that describes the lack of a second X in males the X is “female-producing” (509) or female as a “divisive . . . discrepancy between boys tending, focused theories of the biological and girls” (83), a genetic basis for the sup- determination of femaleness exclusively on posed war of the sexes. the X well into the twentieth century. Third, sex chromosome researchers Historically contingent technical and promote the X and Y as symbols of male- material factors also helped to brand the X ness and femaleness with which individ- as female. The dominance of studies of the uals are expected to identify and in which fruit fl y Drosophila in the fi rst half-century they might take pride. Sykes offers the Y of genetic research played a central role. chromosome as a totem of male bond- Unlike in mammals, in Drosophila the X is ing, urges males to celebrate their unique female determining. This is a threshold ef- Y chromosomes, and calls for them to join fect, in which sex is determined by the ratio together to save the Y from extinction in of autosomes to X chromosomes, with his 2003 Adam’s Curse: A Future without more Xs producing femaleness. In text- Men. Females are also encouraged to iden- book explanations of sex chromosomes tify with their Xs. Natalie Angier (1999) from the fi rst quarter of the century, an ink urges that women “must take pride in our drawing of Drosophila chromosomes was X chromosomes. . . . They defi ne female- ubiquitously used to illustrate the section ness” (26). The “XX Factor” is a widely syn- on the chromosomal theory of sex (Mor- dicated column about women’s work/life gan 1915, 7; Wilson 1925). So pervasive issues on Slate.com, with the slogan “What were Drosophila’s X and Y as the model SEXING THE X: HOW THE X BECAME THE “FEMALE CHROMOSOME” | 337 for the sex chromosomes that the leading marked the demise of the X-chromosomal American geneticist, Thomas H. Morgan, model of human femaleness. After World dubbed the XX/XY chromosome consti- War II, human genetics research reemerged tution the “Drosophila type,” writing that in the wake of massive US investments “The genetic evidence so far gained has in education, life science research, and placed in the Drosophila type the following medicine. Charged with the task of assess- animal forms: Drosophila, man, cat; and ing the long-term health and biological the plants, Lychnis and Bryonia ” (1915, consequences of nuclear fallout, human 78– 79). The Drosophila model suggested cytogenetics— the study of the struc- that in humans, as in fl ies, the X should be ture, behavior, and function of human expected to determine femaleness. chromosomes—burst onto the scene in In the early days chromosomes were the 1950s with a series of profound and tri- also studied almost exclusively in male umphant discoveries. These included con- gametes— the sperm. Looking at sperm, fi rmation that humans possess forty-six which as reproductive cells possess only chromosomes (rather than forty-eight, as one member of each chromosome set, had been universally believed); the revela- a perfect dichotomy appeared: half the tion that an extra chromosome 21 causes sperm cells had the X, and half did not. This Down syndrome; the understanding that led to a hyperbinary view of the X and Y. the Y, not the X, is sex determining; and the The sperm with an X always produces a identifi cation, through population screen- female, and the X in the males’ sperm is ing, of a host of surprisingly common always inherited from the female parent. human sex chromosome anomalies (see Failing to distinguish between the “sex” of de Chadarevian 2006; Harper 2006). the gamete and the sex of the organism, The fi rst signifi cant breakthrough for this distorted perspective helped to pre- human sex chromosome research was the maturely assign the X to femaleness. identifi cation of a condensed body present Cytologists were originally “sperma- only in female cells. Discovered in 1949, the tologists” (Voeller 1968, 78–80), and sper- Barr body, an artifact of the presence of two matology played a large role in setting the X chromosomes, suddenly allowed nuclear research agenda, context, and motivation sexing of any human cell (Barr and Ber- for sex chromosome studies. Sperm are tram 1949). Murray Barr described the rev- plentiful, accessible, and easier to study elation that the “nuclei bear a clear imprint than eggs or other human tissue. Thus, of sex” (Barr 1959, 681) as the “principle there are good reasons that male gametes of nuclear sexual dimorphism” (682). The were early chromosome researchers’ tissue notion that every cell has a sex shifted the of choice. Nonetheless, the focus on sperm terms of human sex research and ushered introduced a bias into early sex chromo- sex difference into the genetic age. Screen- some research. The centrality of maleness ing for the presence of a Barr body allowed and male tissue to this research led scien- sex chromosome aneuploidies (numerical tists to the conclusion that the X is female errors), such as Turner syndrome (XO) and and the Y is male. Had researchers looked Klinefelter syndrome (XXY), as well as a at somatic tissue, the dichotomy would host of exotics, such as XXXs, XXXYs, XYYs, have been far less clear-cut: both males to be detected well before more detailed and females possess at least one X. chromosome analysis and visualization The human cytogenetic research revo- techniques became available. lution of the late 1950s and 1960s, which By the 1960s, human sex chromosome revealed that it is the Y that determines sex, aneuploidies and other chromosomal 338 | SARAH S. RICHARDSON

anomalies had become potent symbols irresistible. As the Y would be the male of the fascinating and exciting new genet- chromosome, the X would continue to be ics. The historian of midcentury genetics the female one. Soraya de Chadarevian (2006, 724– 25) ar- Researchers did not give up the search gues that this chromosome symbolism, for a relationship between the double X along with the representational schema of and femaleness in the wake of the 1959 the human karyotype, was the public icon fi nding that the Y is sex determining. They of modern genetics in the 1950s and 1960s, would continue to ask: What does the before the double helix took its place. It extra X do for females? What does an ex- was through this imagery, and the novelty posed, single X do for males? Elaborated in of sex chromosome aneuploidies, that the human genetics over the coming decades, public fi rst became widely conscious of the the X and Y became sites for the enactment X and Y as the molecular pillars of biologi- and rediscovery of traditional gender roles cal femaleness and maleness. and stereotypes. The offi cial fi ndings of human cytogenetics of the 1950s and 1960s were as fol- X- CHROMOSOMAL THEORIES lows: Human males and females possess OF HUMAN SEX DIFFERENCES twenty-two pairs of autosomes and a pair of sex chromosomes. Males have an X and The question of whether the second X a Y, and females have two X chromosomes. bestows human females with something In females one X in each cell is inactivated extra, or whether it is more advantageous early in development, equalizing dosage to have a single X chromosome, a question of X- chromosomal genes in males and fe- charged with gender politics, stalked the males. Subsequent research revealed that X from its earliest appearance in the pub- the Y chromosome primarily carries a gene lic and scientifi c consciousness. Though that initiates male sexual development human chromosome research was spo- and bears few other genes. In contrast, the radic prior to the 1950s, the notion that X chromosome is similar to an autosome, human females carry an extra chromosome with more than a thousand genes. The X found its way into the scientifi c and social plays no special role in female develop- discourse around gender, a discourse that ment, which is controlled by a variety of seems to have widely accepted the idea genes on several different chromosomes. that the facts of biology would help to set- The idea that the X was female deter- tle the sex wars and that we should expect mining was promptly discarded in light of to fi nd defi nitive proof in the X of a sexual these new fi ndings. The female or feminine hierarchy. resonance that had accumulated around On one side was the idea that double- X the X chromosome, however, did not fall females are superior, advantaged, or spe- away. As Fiona Alice Miller (2003) notes cial as a result of their extra X. This was with respect to the term “Mongolism” for appropriated by women’s advocates: “The trisomy 21 (Down syndrome), “Contrary ancient idea that the female is essentially to conventional beliefs about new, break- an undeveloped male seems to be fi nally through technologies, the introduction disproved by the fact that it requires more of chromosome analysis in the late 1960s determiners—usually one more chromo- did not displace existing standards of in- some, or a larger sex chromosome— to pro- terpretation and practice” (76). Old habits duce a female than a male,” pronounced and the force of the idea of a molecular the feminist psychologist Helen Thompson gender binary revealed in the X and Y were Woolley (1914, 354). Even the notorious SEXING THE X: HOW THE X BECAME THE “FEMALE CHROMOSOME” | 339 antifeminist Louis Berman conceded in his that “females have a little extra determi- 1921 The Glands Regulating Personality that nant” compared with males, which “be- biologists could no longer seek the source stows a remarkable biological advantage” of female inferiority in the chromosomes: (2007, 208). “When it comes to the battle “For the time being, let the feminists glory of the sexes,” writes E. J. Mundell (2007), in the fact that they have two more chromo- reporting on Migeon’s work, “nature hands somes to each cell than their opponents. women extra ammunition right from the Certainly there can be no talk here of a nat- start. The reason, according to geneticists: ural inferiority of women” (1921, 136).4 The Females are gifted with two copies of the anthropologist and public intellectual Ash- powerful X chromosome, while males are ley Montagu marshaled the notion of fe- born with only one X, plus the relatively male X chromosome advantage in his 1953 weak Y chromosome.” Migeon, whose re- text The Natural Superiority of Women. search I will return to below, even argues In a chapter titled “ ‘X’ Doesn’t Equal ‘Y,’ ” that the extra genetic material might ac- Montagu argued that it is “to the presence count for why females and males have a of two well appointed, well furnished X- different sense of humor and could explain chromosomes that the female owes her bi- why “from the fi rst days of school, girls out- ological superiority” (1953, 76). Males, with perform boys, are more attentive, and are their “X- chromosomal defi ciency” (76), fall more persistent at tasks” (2006, 1432–33). 5 prey to such diseases as hemophilia and Countering claims of female X- colorblindness, and countless other spec- chromosome superiority has been the ulated weaknesses, while females, owing far more infl uential notion that females to an extra X, are “constitutionally stronger are the weaker sex precisely because they than the male” (81). Montagu asserted that carry an extra X chromosome. In the early females’ extra X “lies at the base of practi- twentieth century, prominent scientists cally all the differences between the sexes asserted that the single X provided the bi- and the biological superiority of the female ological mechanism for superior male cog- to the male” (74). nition. They argued that while the single X The discourse of female X-chromosomal may subject males to damaged genes on superiority persisted in the second half of the X, it also exposes them more wholly to the twentieth century and even continues advantageous genes. The risks that males today. The size of the X and its large number take with their sole X are countered by rich of genes is frequently celebrated, and great potential rewards. While females enjoy the emphasis is placed on the notion that, due security of a second X, it dulls their poten- to the second X, females have more genetic tial for extraordinariness. Males are supe- material than males. For example, Time rior where it counts: intelligence. magazine reported in 1963: “Because the X Highly infl uential in sex difference re- chromosome is so much bigger than the Y, search, the “greater male variability” the- women with two X’s have 4 percent more ory of male intellectual superiority framed genetic material— the vital deoxyribonu- research on cognitive differences between cleic acid, or DNA—than men. Geneticists males and females from the 1870s to the have speculated that this might explain 1930s. It was subsequently discredited with women’s longer life span. . . . [This] defi - the rise of new experimental techniques, nitely gives women an inherent advantage greater statistical sophistication, and over men” (“Research Makes It Offi cial,” large-scale empirical psychological test- 1963). Johns Hopkins geneticist Barbara ing. These studies showed no signifi cant R. Migeon argues that the second X means differences between males and females 340 | SARAH S. RICHARDSON

in overall intelligence and demonstrated complex is necessarily different. The con- that, while men were more likely to be at trast in these two conditions is obvious the very low end of the IQ scale, they were and the interpretation strongly suggested” not equally likely to be at the high end. (162). The X- chromosomal theory of male Charles Darwin was among the most intellectual superiority cyclically resur- prominent adherents of the concept of faced in sex difference research through- greater male variability. In The Descent of out the twentieth century, and continues Man ([1871] 1897), he argued that males are to lurk in X chromosome studies today. As the engine of evolution, accumulating vari- the BBC reported in 2005: “Men also have ations that lead to species divergence and another reason for feeling upbeat about evolution. For this reason, he wrote, “Man their genetic lot. New Scientist reports that is more courageous, pugnacious, and ener- although men are more likely to be men- getic than woman, and has a more inventive tally retarded, they are also more likely to genius” (557). In the nineteenth and early be geniuses. Although the average IQ of twentieth centuries, the principal evidence men and women is equal, men are more for the greater male variability hypothe- frequently found at both extremes of in- sis was the long-observed predominance telligence. This is because, if you have very of males among residents of what were good intelligence genes on your X chro- then known as institutions for the “feeble- mosome, it pays not to have them muf- minded” and, conversely, among the ranks fl ed by more average genes on another X of genius and the socially eminent. Early chromosome” (Kettlewell 2005). Robert twentieth-century observations of an excess Lehrke’s Sex Linkage of Intelligence (1997) of males among the intellectually disabled exhumes and reasserts, in near entirety, and documentation of a large number of the greater male variability theory of the mentally impairing X- linked conditions ex- late nineteenth and early twentieth cen- clusive to males led to speculations that the turies. Ongoing research programs at the single X was a mechanism for the observed Medical Research Council in London and “greater variability” in male intellect—and University of California–Los Angeles in the that the double X was a source of female United States continue to engage in X chro- dullness (Stevenson et al. 1994, 538). mosome research on the subject—a pur- The earliest geneticist to attach the X to suit that has only been heightened in the male variability and female conservatism wake of the sequencing of the human X in was Clarence E. McClung (1899, 1902), 2005. As a Nature article puts it, today “the who fi rst discovered the link between the ‘feminine’ X chromosome is a prime hunt- X and sex. McClung later wrote of the X ing ground for geneticists interested in the chromosome, “It is possible that we have evolution of the cognitive and cultural so- here the explanation of the greater vari- phistication that defi nes the human spe- ability of the male” (1918, 162). He contin- cies” (Check 2005, 266). ued, “There is a possibility that in the male, the sex [X] chromosome being unmated, TRACKING THE FEMALE X or opposed by an inactive element, may INTO HUMAN GENETICS be more free to react with the other chromosomes and in this way change their The cases of Turner and Klinefelter syn- constitution, being in turn affected by the dromes demonstrate how the idea of the reaction. By the nature of its transmission female-engendering X was carried for- it must, after this experience, pass into ward into the human genetics era and the female line where its relation to the how the notion of the female chromosome SEXING THE X: HOW THE X BECAME THE “FEMALE CHROMOSOME” | 341 continued to infl ect reasoning about both observational and genetic, for believ- human health and biology even after the X ing that human beings with chromatin- was found not to determine femaleness in positive nuclei are genetic females having humans. Both Turner and Klinefelter were two X chromosomes. The possibility can- well- documented syndromes of gonadal not be excluded, however, that the ad- dysgenesis prior to human chromosome ditional chromosome is an autosome research. Physicians in the United States carrying feminizing genes” (302). A 1967 identifi ed Turner syndrome in 1938 as a New York Times article similarly captures syndromic— meaning characterized by a this mode of reasoning. With the headline complex of symptoms not localized to any “If her chromosomes add up, a woman is single organ system— phenotype found sure to be woman,” it describes XXY males exclusively in women. Traits included as having “a few female traits” (Brody 1967, short stature, infertility, and neck webbing 28). Studies were even undertaken to de- (Turner 1938). A Massachusetts General termine whether Turner women show a Hospital physician described Klinefelter tendency toward lesbianism or Klinefelter syndrome in 1942 as a disorder of gonadal men incline toward homosexuality or underdevelopment in males, resulting in cross- dressing.6 hormonal defi ciencies causing infertility These assumptions about the X as fem- and limited body hair (Klinefelter, Reifen- inizing distorted understanding of these stein, and Albright 1942). disorders, stigmatized individuals carry- Barr body screening in the 1950s re- ing them, and misdirected research and vealed that Turner females lack a second X clinical care. Today, clinicians specializing and that Klinefelter males carry an extra X. in Klinefelter and Turner management Once associated with sex chromosome an- emphasize that these are not diseases of euploidy in the 1950s, the disorders were gender confusion. Klinefelter patients are redescribed in more strongly sexed and phenotypic males, and Klinefelter is not a gendered terms. The infertility of the XO syndrome of feminization. We now know Turner woman was portrayed as evidence that Klinefelter is one of the most common of her masculinity rather than a disorder genetic abnormalities and often has so few of female sexual development and of de- manifestations that men live out their lives velopment in general. Turner women were never knowing of their extra X. Writes Rob- claimed to have masculine cognitive traits ert Bock (1993), “For this reason, the term such as facility with spatiality, discomfort ‘Klinefelter syndrome’ has fallen out of with female gender roles, and defeminized favor with medical researchers. Most pre- body shape. XXY Klinefelter males were fer to describe men and boys having the portrayed as feminine, with much em- extra chromosome as ‘XXY males.’ ” Simi- phasis on their purportedly unmuscular larly, XOs are phenotypic females. Turner body frame, female body-fat distribution, syndrome, which has more profound and lack of body hair, and infertility. The em- systemic phenotypic effects than XXY, is inent British geneticist Michael Polanyi emphatically not a masculinizing condi- even proposed that XO females were “sex- tion. Physical deformities, heart trouble, reversed males” (Harper 2006, 79). Patricia infertility, and, occasionally, social and A. Jacobs and John Anderson Strong (1959) cognitive diffi culties are the principal con- described an XXY individual as “an appar- cerns for Turner females. ent male . . . with poor facial hair- growth Throughout the history of twentieth- and a high-pitched voice” (302). They century genetics, gendered conceptions continued, “There are strong grounds, of the X chromosome fueled ideological 342 | SARAH S. RICHARDSON

conceptions of femaleness and maleness. diseases such as Duchenne muscular dys- Today the conception of the X as the female trophy or hemophilia are infrequent in chromosome is not obsolete. It remains women and generally affect only men. a common assumption in twenty-fi rst- In rare cases, X mosaicism will begin to century genomics and a source of distor- skew, resulting in tissues biased toward the tion and bias in genetic reasoning. We have maternal or paternal X chromosome. Tis- already visited, briefl y, some of the areas in sues grow clonally, so skewing can happen which the female chromosome appears randomly as a result of a bias in the cells in contemporary biomedical research: from which the tissue grows. As we age, the surprise over the fi nding of spermato- chromosomes fray, whither, and disappear genesis genes on the X chromosome and due to the erosion of genetic repair mech- X- linked theories of sex differences in in- anisms, making skewing more common. telligence. Perhaps the most prominent Usually, skewed X mosaicism has no phe- case of how the sexing of the X as female notypic consequence and goes unnoticed. continues to operate today, however, is If a woman carries an X chromosome dis- found in “X mosaicism” theories of female ease allele, however, extreme skewed X biology, health, and behavior. inactivation leading to dominance of the chromosome carrying the disease- causing allele can, in rare cases, cause women to FEMALE X MOSAICISM exhibit classic X-linked diseases generally Mammalian females are genetic mosaics restricted to men. Thus, the primary clini- for the X chromosome. In order to equalize cal implication of skewed X mosaicism for the expression of X- linked gene products in females is that it may leave them function- males and females, one of the Xs in each so- ally monosomic for the X— like males— matic cell is randomly inactivated early in making them vulnerable to male-typical female development. Approximately half of X- linked diseases. a female’s cells will express the maternal X Developed in the 1960s by British cy- chromosome and half the paternal X chro- togeneticist Mary Lyon, the X inactivation mosome. Thus, females have two popula- hypothesis began as a theory of an evolu- tions of cells, identical with respect to the tionary fi x that could equalize the X gene twenty-two pairs of autosomes but variable product between males and females (Lyon in X- chromosomal gene expression when 1992). It was transformed in the 1980s and females carry functionally different ver- 1990s into a theory of genetic difference sions of an X- chromosomal allele. between males and females, and among X mosaicism has some implications for females. Today, X chromosome mosaicism, human female biology. Random X inacti- the consequence of random X inactiva- vation early in development leaves most tion, is strongly identifi ed with female- women with a 50 : 50 ratio of cells express- ness and used loosely and fl exibly, often ing either their paternal or maternal Xs. As without any gesture toward experimental a result, females carrying a disease allele validation, to explain biological sex differ- on one of their X chromosomes will gen- ences. The identifi cation of the X with fe- erally not develop the disease, since cells males, the cultural association of females carrying the other X usually produce ade- with chimerism, and the assumption that quate amounts of the needed gene prod- the sex binary observed in the world will uct to compensate for any dysfunction. For eventually be revealed at the molecular this reason, X mosaicism shields females level help to fi ll in the gaps in the X mo- from X-linked diseases. Classic X-linked saicism theory of sex differences, veil its SEXING THE X: HOW THE X BECAME THE “FEMALE CHROMOSOME” | 343 empirical defi ciencies, and glue its prem- These metaphors and gender assump- ises together. tions are widely shared by present- day sex chromosome researchers. Duke University geneticist Huntington Willard, for instance, GENDER IN X MOSAICISM RESEARCH is quoted saying, “Genetically speaking, if From its inception, the hypothesis that fe- you’ve met one man, you’ve met them all. males are cellular mosaics for X-chromo- We are, I hate to say it, predictable. You somal genes was received as confi rmation can’t say that about women,” and Massa- of dominant cultural assumptions about chusetts Institute of Technology geneticist gender difference. The characterization of David Page says, “Women’s chromosomes females as mosaics or chimeras resonated have more complexity, which men view with conceptions of women as more mys- as unpredictability” (Dowd 2005). British terious, contradictory, complicated, emo- geneticist Robin Lovell- Badge has simi- tional, or changeable.7 The future Nobel larly said that “10% [of genes on the X] are laureate molecular biologist Joshua Leder- sometimes inactivated and sometimes berg wrote in 1966, “The chimerical nature not, giving a mechanism to make women of woman has been a preoccupation of much more genetically variable than men. poets since the dawn of literature. Recent I always thought they were more interest- medical research has given unexpected ing!” (Kettlewell 2005). scientifi c weight to this concept of femi- Barbara Migeon, the Johns Hopkins X ninity” (1966, E7).8 Reporting on the new chromosome geneticist mentioned above fi nding in 1963, Time magazine asserted and author of the book Females Are Mo- that “the cocktail-party bore who laces saics (2007), is a leading promoter of the his chatter with the tiresome cliché about theory that X mosaicism is a fundamen- ‘crazy, mixed-up women’ has more medi- tal mechanism of sex differences and a cal science on his side than he knows. . . . hallmark of female biology and behavior. Even normal women, it appears, are mix- Migeon claims that “somatic cellular mo- tures of two different types of cells, or what saicism . . . has a profound infl uence on the the researchers call ‘genetic mosaics’ ” phenotype of mammalian females” (1994, (“Research Makes It Offi cial,” 1963). 230). According to Migeon, X mosaicism Today, the notion of X mosaicism as “creates biological differences between the scientifi c confi rmation of traditional ideo- sexes that affect every aspect of their lives, logical conceptions of female instability, not just the sexual ones” (2007, 211). Mi- contradiction, mystery, complexity, and geon proposes that “cellular mosaicism . . . emotionality is thoroughly entrenched. As is likely to contribute to some of the gender science writer Nicholas Wade told the New differences in behavior” (209), including York Times in 2005, “Women are mosaics, females’ response to humor and differ- one could even say chimeras, in the sense ences in aggression, emotionality, and ed- that they are made up of two different kinds ucational performance between males of cell. Whereas men are pure and uncom- and females (2006, 1432–33). Molecular replicated, being made up of just a single kind search on X chromosome mosaicism, Mi- of cell throughout” (Dowd 2005). A 2005 geon argues, offers a promising platform Pennsylvania State University press release for uncovering sex differences in the brain similarly announced, “For every man who that studies of brain anatomy have not, thinks women are complex, there’s new evi- thus far, revealed: “Despite dramatically dence they’re correct; at least when it comes different behavior between the sexes, sur- to their genes” (“Men and Women,” 2005). prisingly few anatomical differences have 344 | SARAH S. RICHARDSON

been identifi ed,” she writes, “[Perhaps] bodies truly are mixed—in a very real mosaicism for X- linked genes . . . may conway. . . . Each woman is one creature and tribute to some of these sex differences in yet two intermingled” (151). behavior” (2007, 211). These speculative scientifi c conceptions CASE STUDY: X MOSAICISM THEORIES of X mosaicism and femaleness are present OF FEMALE AUTOIMMUNITY in popular discourse around gender differences. Science reporter Natalie Angier, The case of X mosaicism theories of female in Woman: An Intimate Geography (1999), autoimmunity shows clearly how con- celebrates female X chromosome mosa- temporary biomedicine continues to fi nd icism as a privilege of womanhood and a resources in the mercurial links between source of special womanly qualities. “Every the X chromosome and femaleness. Auto- daughter,” she writes, “is a walking mosaic immune disorders are more prevalent in of clamorous and quiet chromosomes, of women than men. 9 The current medical fatherly sermons and maternal advice, model holds that autoimmunity occurs while every son has but his mother’s voice when the immune system misrecognizes to guide him” (25). She posits what she calls the body’s own tissues as invaders, lead- “the mystical X” as a source of “female in- ing the system, fi nely tuned to eliminate tuition” and asserts that women “have . . . foreign agents, to continually attack the with the mosaicism of our chromosomes, body’s tissues with all of its resources. Some a potential for considerable brain com- researchers, noting the female prevalence plexity” (25). Angier imagines a woman’s X of autoimmune diseases and seeing a par- chromosomes as animating her brain with allel between the self-on- self attacks of confl icting voices: “a woman’s mind is truly autoimmunity and mosaic female tissues a syncopated pulse of mother and father made up of cells expressing the maternal voices, each speaking through whichever or paternal X chromosome, have sought a X, maternal or paternal, happens to be ac- mechanism for autoimmunity in X mosa- tive in a given brain cell” (25). icism. These theories draw on the notion Female X mosaicism is also invoked to that the X chromosome mediates female bring the authoritative veneer of molec- biology and health, as well as gender- ular science to traditional and pejorative inscribed conceptions of the female body views of femininity. Bainbridge’s The X in as fundamentally chimeric, to link female Sex: How the X Chromosome Controls Our autoimmunity to X mosaicism.10 Lives (2003), for instance, asserts that X The most basic version of the X mosa- chromosome mosaicism confi rms that icism hypothesis of female autoimmunity “women are mixed creatures and men is that simple mosaicism of the X chromo- are not . . . in a way far deeper” than pre- some, in cases in which the X produces viously thought (130). Citing the roots of two confl icting immune products, leads this notion in the Christian vision of Mary to autoimmunity. There is also a more as “both virgin and mother” (129), Bain- sophisticated version, which holds that bridge claims that women “represent some if mosaicism is skewed so that an immu- intermediate hybrid state” (128), revealed nologically relevant organ, such as the in their “unpredictable, capricious nature” thymus gland, contains a majority of one (127). X mosaicism is a “natural reminder X, the immune system may misrecog- of just how deeply ingrained the mixed nize tissues that carry the other X, leading nature of women actually is” (148), writes to an autoimmune reaction (Kast 1977; Bainbridge. He continues: “So women’s Stewart 1998). Evidence for X mosaicism SEXING THE X: HOW THE X BECAME THE “FEMALE CHROMOSOME” | 345 hypotheses of female autoimmunity has but this skewing was not also found in the been sought in studies of skewed X mosa- skin cells—the tissue of interest for the dis- icism in women with autoimmune disor- order in question. Second, these studies do ders. In these studies, researchers look at not rigorously account for the confounding the percentage of cells carrying the mater- effect of age. Rates of both autoimmunity nal or paternal X chromosome (typically in and X skewing increase with age in women a blood sample). When one predominates, (Russell et al. 2007), and to date studies of X if it is above a threshold of either 80 or 90 mosaicism pattern variation do not persua- percent, the woman is deemed to have sively disambiguate aging and autoimmu- skewed X mosaicism. nity. 11 Third, the X mosaicism hypothesis These studies provide little evidence does not explain enough specifi c features that X mosaicism is implicated in female of female predominance in autoimmunity predominance in autoimmunity. A higher to stand as a candidate for an explanation rate of skewed X mosaicism than the gen- of the greater prevalence of autoimmunity eral population has been demonstrated in in females. For example, the theory cannot just two cases: scleroderma (Ozbalkan et explain the following: why the incidence of al. 2005) and autoimmune thyroid disor- autoimmunity, but not the severity of the ders (Ozcelik et al. 2006). It has not been disease, differs between males and females; found in the cases of lupus (Invernizzi et al. why female predominance is much more 2007), multiple sclerosis (Accelerated Cure pronounced among the cohort diagnosed Project 2006; Knudsen et al. 2007; Knudsen with autoimmune disorders under age 40, 2009), type 1 diabetes (Chitnis et al. 2000), with rates becoming more equal between or juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (Seldin the sexes as they age; why some autoim- et al. 1999), nor has it been found in the mune disorders are female predominant, female-predominant and potentially au- some are male predominant, and others toimmune disorders of simple goiter (Brix are sex neutral; how X mosaicism interacts et al. 2009) and recurrent pregnancy loss with the signifi cant and well-documented (Pasquier et al. 2007). There is confl icting, role of environmental factors involved in weak, or ambiguous evidence of an asso- sex differences in autoimmunity (such as ciation with skewed X mosaicism in the chemicals in cosmetics or the workplace); case of primary biliary cirrhosis (Invernizzi and fi nally, why there is wide variability in 2007; Svyryd et al. 2010) and adult onset sex ratios of autoimmune diseases between rheumatoid arthritis (Svyryd et al. 2010). different ethnicities, nations, and in devel- Even if studies were to document high oped versus less- developed regions of the rates of X skewing in women with certain world (see Lockshin 2006, 2010; Oliver and autoimmune disorders, this would not, in Silman 2009). any case, constitute suffi cient evidence that In sum, although research is ongoing, skewed X mosaicism predisposes women the evidence for the X mosaicism hypoth- to those disorders or that women are more esis of female autoimmunity is weak. De- inclined, in general, to autoimmunity. First, gree of X skewing has not been found to be almost all X mosaicism studies use blood a predictive biomarker of autoimmunity, samples, looking at peripheral lymphocytes nor of response to therapy, and it has not rather than cell types within the immune re- been demonstratively linked to autoim- action pathways or organ systems of interest. munity in animal models or in humans. Yet This limits their signifi cance. For example, researchers confi dently assert that X mosa- women with the skin disease scleroderma icism mediates female autoimmunity: “au- show skewed mosaicism in their blood, toimmune diseases revolve around the sex 346 | SARAH S. RICHARDSON

chromosomes,” writes Carlo Selmi (2008, sex in biology leading to fl awed scientifi c 913). Zoltan Spolarics (2007) claims that reasoning. “X-chromosome mosaicism represents an adaptive cellular system” (599) bestowing CONCLUSION females with “potentially two distinct regulatory and response arsenals” (598) and Currently, there is a broad popular, sci- predisposing them to autoimmunity. entifi c, and medical conception of the X Such assertions by biomedical research- chromosome as the mediator of the dif- ers that the XX chromosome complement ferences between males and females, as inclines women to autoimmunity are clearly the carrier of female- specifi c traits, or unwarranted. Studies of associations be- otherwise as a substrate of femaleness. As tween X mosaicism patterns and autoim- this essay has documented, associations munity do not substantiate a causal link between the X and femaleness are the ac- between the two phenomena, nor do they cumulated product of contingent histor- show precisely how the presence of two ical and material processes and events, populations of cells might contribute to au- and they are infl ected by beliefs rooted in toimmune reactions. The evidence suggests, gender ideology. The still very contempo- rather, that X mosaicism is far from a general rary view that the double X makes females theory of, or a major factor in, higher rates of unpredictable, mysterious, chimeric, and autoimmune disorders in females. conservative, while the single X allows men The notion that X mosaicism under- to learn, evolve, and have bigger brains lies female autoimmunity has become but also makes them the more risk taking so commonplace that it now regularly of the two sexes, shows how conceptions appears as authoritative medical knowl- of X chromosome structure and function edge in health news reports and is consid- often refl ect and support traditional gen- ered a leading viable hypothesis in much der stereotypes. of the literature on autoimmunity.12 The In light of the empirical and conceptual immediate credibility given by molecu- weaknesses of these theories, scientists lar biologists to X mosaicism theories of must work to develop alternative mod- female autoimmunity, and the theory’s els of the relationship between the X and widespread uncritical repetition in a vari- sex. They must cultivate an active prac- ety of research, clinical, and health media tice of gender criticality, exposing their contexts, requires explanation given the theories to rigorous examination from all theory’s weak empirical basis. The cred- perspectives. While the presence of a sin- ulous reception of the theory is driven in gle X in males and a double X in females part by the stubborn and commonplace does have different implications for male belief, documented in this essay, that the and female biology, historical and contem- gender binary of male and female is pres- porary speculations over the relation be- ent, writ molecular, in the sex chromo- tween the X and femaleness show that this somes. Just as the Y is putatively the male assumption has consistently contributed chromosome, the X chromosome must, it to erroneous biological reasoning and that is assumed, be a fundamental mediator the X has been overburdened with explain- of femaleness. Rooted in notions of the X ing female biology and sex differences. As as female, and chimerism as feminine, X this essay has shown, the X chromosome mosaicism theories of female autoimmu- has not only become female identifi ed as nity, I argue, present a contemporary case an object of biological research, but has, of synecdochic gendered conceptions of more broadly, become a highly gendered SEXING THE X: HOW THE X BECAME THE “FEMALE CHROMOSOME” | 347 screen upon which cultural theories of sex 8. Lederberg also notes, however, that the case of and gender difference have been projected XXY males “complicates the myth that chime- throughout the twentieth century and up rism is femininity” (1966, E7). 9. For statistics on male and female incidence and to the present day. The case of how the X prevalence of autoimmune diseases, see Jacob- became the female chromosome presents son et al. (1997), Walsh and Rau (2000), Lock- a prominent example of how unques- shin (2006), Eaton et al. (2007), Cooper, Bynum, tioned gender assumptions can distort and Somers (2009), and McCombe, Greer, and and mislead, not only within the biological Mackay (2009). 10. Feminist science studies scholars Donna Haraway sciences but more generally in the produc- (1991), Emily Martin (1999), and Lisa H. Weasel tion of knowledge. (2001) are among those who have explored the relationship between immunity discourse and gendered metaphors and imagery, unpacking the NOTES parallels between “horror autotoxis” (medical researcher Paul Ehrlich’s 1957 term for autoimmu- Thank you to the anonymous reviewers for helpful nity) and traditional conceptions of femininity. As comments. This research was supported in part by Martin (1999) notes, the greater susceptibility of the American Association for University Women females to autoimmune disease, leading to sug- and by the Mary Anne Bours Nimmo Fellowship at gestions that females are biologically “hybrid” Stanford University. (101) and “mixed-up” (103), aligns with ideologi- 1. Seema Kuman, “Genes for Early Sperm Production cal notions of females as double, divided against Found to Reside on X Chromosome,” Massachu- themselves, contradictory, unstable, and lacking setts Institute of Technology press release, April in unitary selfhood. 4, 2001. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffi ce/2001/ 11. The background picture of diversity of X mosa- sperm- 0404. icism patterns in the general female population 2. See, e.g., Burgoyne (1998), Angier (1999, 2007), is also, on the whole, not well understood. James Graves (2000), and Bainbridge (2003). Amos-Landgraf et al. (2006), in the most credi- 3. See Slate ’s “The XX Factor: What Women Really ble study of its kind, looked at patterns in 1,005 Think” blog at http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_ phenotypically unaffected females, fi nding that factor.html. skewing was relatively common. The study re- 4. Berman’s assertion that females possess “two ported that fully 25 percent of females had pat- more chromosomes” refl ects the understand- terns skewed at least to 70:30 and concluded that ing of female-determining gametes as carrying “with advancing age, there is greater variation in an “extra” X chromosome. If females receive an X inactivation-ratio distribution” (497). extra chromosome from each parent, then in the 12. See, e.g., Nature Genetics (2000), Kruszelnicki full chromosome complement, females would be (2004), Davies (2005), McCoy (2009), and Tingen expected to have two more chromosomes than (2009). males. 5. While it is certainly true that a second X shields REFERENCES females from many X- linked diseases, the presence of “extra” genetic material cannot be said Accelerated Cure Project. 2006. “Analysis of Genetic to establish any of these claims to female superi- Mutations or Alleles on the X or Y Chromosome ority. 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Thinking Theoretically This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 21

Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, Gender, and Embodiment Jessie Daniels

“If you can’t slap him, snap him,” is the tag economy alongside analyses that high- line for the website HollaBackNYC (http:// light the lived experience and actual In- www.hollabacknyc.com). The site’s cre- ternet practices of girls and self-identiﬁ ed ators, fed up with everyday harassment by women. 1 While some cyberfeminists con- men exposing themselves on New York’s tend that the Internet shifts gender and ra- streets and subways, encourage women to cial regimes of power through the human/ use their Internet-enabled cell phones to machine hybridity of cyborgs (Haraway snap photos of harassers and upload them 1985), identity tourism (Nakamura 2002; to the site. This ingenious use of technology Turkle 1997), and the escape from em- is emblematic of an array of new expres- bodiment (Hansen 2006; Nouraie-Simone sion of feminist practices called “cyber- 2005b), I argue that the lived experience feminism.” Among cyberfeminists (Orgad and actual Internet practices of girls and 2005; Plant 1997; Podlas 2000), some have self-identiﬁ ed women reveals ways that suggested that Internet technologies can they use the Internet to transform their be an effective medium for resisting repres- material, corporeal lives in a number of sive gender regimes and enacting equal- complex ways that both resist and rein- ity, while others have called into question force hierarchies of gender and race. such claims (Gaijala 2003). Central to such While drawing on academic disciplines, claims and counterclaims about the sub- I also focus rather deliberately on the theo- versive potential of Internet technologies is retically informed empirical investigations theorizing that constructs women of color by sociologists into Internet practices. as quintessential cyborgs (Fernandez 2002, Saskia Sassen’s work addresses the em- 32), as when Haraway writes about the “cy- beddedness of the digital in the physical, borg women making chips in Asia and spi- material world, and she catalogs the ways ral dancing in Santa Rita” (1985, 7). In this that digital technologies “enable women to essay, I offer an overview of cyberfeminist engage in new forms of contestation and in theories and practices. Drawing on a wide proactive endeavors in multiple different array of theoretical literature and empiri- realms, from political to economic” (2002, cal research, I review cyberfeminist claims 368). In contrast, Lori Kendall (1996, 1998, about the subversive potential of human/ 2000, 2002), in her richly nuanced ethnog- machine cyborgs, identity tourism, and raphy of the gendered dynamics in the disembodiment within a global networked multiuser domain (MUD) BlueSky, argues 354 | JESSIE DANIELS

that digital technologies reproduce rather “new” cyberfeminism, which is more about than subvert white, heterosexual, mascu- “confronting the top down from the bot- line cultures and hierarchies of power. In tom-up” (Fernandez, Wilding, and Wright a 1997 article “Changing the Subject,” Jodi 2003, 22–23). Thus, any attempt to write O’Brien writes eloquently about the strict about cyberfeminism as if it were a mono- policing of gender identity online and the lith inevitably results in a narrative that is limitations of identity tourism. And Vic- inaccurately totalizing. However, what pro- toria Pitts’s (2004) research about wom- vides common ground among these vari- en’s use of the Internet on breast cancer ants of cyberfeminism(s) is the sustained forums offers an important corrective to focus on gender and digital technologies the discourse about disembodiment pop- and on cyberfeminist practices (Flanagan ular in cyberfeminist writing. My focus is and Booth 2002, 12; Chatteijee 2002, 199; based at least partly on familiarity; I am a Fernandez, Wilding, and Wright 2003, 9– 13). sociologist by background and training, so Cyberfeminist practices involve exper- it is the fi eld in which I am most conver- imentation and engagement with various sant. Focusing on empirical sociological Internet technologies by self-identifi ed research about Internet practices is also women across several domains, includ- an effective strategy for informing theoret- ing work (Scott-Dixon 2004; Shih 2006), ical claims about the subversive potential education (Clegg 2001), domestic life (Na of digital technologies. Finally, my focus 2001; Ribak 2001; Singh 2003), civic enon sociological research is meant to serve gagement (Harcourt 2000), feminist polit- as a challenge to those who claim to want ical organizing (Everett 2007; Sutton and to transform as well as inform society yet Pollock 2000), art (Fernandez, Wilding, have little engagement in the cyberfi eld. and Wright 2003), and play (Bury 2005; Cassell and Jenkins 2000; Flanagan 2002; Kendall 1996).While there is no consistent BEYOND “ZEROES AND feminist political project associated with ONES”: GENDER, RACE, AND cyberfeminist practices, within a culture CYBERFEMINISM(S) in which Internet technology is so perva- Cyberfeminism is neither a single theory sively coded as “masculine” (Adam 2004; nor a feminist movement with a clearly Kendall 2000), there is something at least articulated political agenda. Rather, “cy- potentially transgressive in such practices berfeminism” refers to a range of theories, (Fernandez, Wilding, and Wright 2003). debates, and practices about the relation- Rosalind Gill takes exception to the no- ship between gender and digital culture tion that there is anything subversive in (Flanagan and Booth 2002, 12), so it is these practices when she describes “wom- perhaps more accurate to refer to the plu- en’s depressingly familiar . . . use of the ral, “cyberfeminism(s).”Within and among Internet in affl uent northern countries . . . cyberfeminism(s) there are a number of primarily for e-mail, home shopping and distinct theoretical and political stances in the acquisition of health information” relation to Internet technology and gender (2005, 99; see also Herring 2004). Indeed, as well as a notice able ambivalence about the commercialization of the Internet at a unifi ed feminist political project (Chat- sites such as iVillage.com (“the Internet for terjee 2002, 199). Further, some distinguish women”) co- opts the rhetoric of feminism between the “old” cyberfeminism, charac- for profi t (Royal 2005), as does much of terized by a utopian vision of a postcorpo- the health information online (Pitts 2004). real woman corrupting patriarchy, and a While it is true that many affl uent women RETHINKING CYBERFEMINISM(S): RACE, GENDER, AND EMBODIMENT | 355 in the global North have “depressingly fa- the ideas of cyberfeminism beyond the miliar” practices when it comes to the In- academy. While Plant has been justifi ably ternet, this sort of sweeping generalization criticized for reinscribing essentialist no- suggests a lack of awareness about the tions of gender (Wilding 1998), Wajcman innovative ways women are using digital (2004) writes that Plant’s optimism about technologies to re- engineer their lives.2 the potential of gender equality in cyber- Sue Rosser, in her expansive review of space must be understood as a reaction information technology through different against previous conceptualizations of feminist lenses, concludes that although technology as inherently masculine. In cyberfeminism uses “aspects of different addition to essentializing gender, Plant’s feminist theories,” it lacks a suffi ciently binary of “zeroes” and “ones” leaves no coherent framework to be characterized conceptual room for understanding how as anything but a “developing feminist gen der intersects with “race.” In this way, theory” (Rosser 2005, 19). 3 Other schol- Plant’s writing is characteristic of the fi eld, ars writing about cyberfeminism(s) are as there is relatively little discussion of the less concerned with the lack of a coher- intersections of gender with “race,” except ent framework and, indeed, revel in the in cases where “race” is included in a long “sporadic, tactical, contradictory set of list of additional variables to be added on theories, debates and practices” (Booth to “gender.” Thus, when cyberfeminists ex- and Flanagan 2002, 12) that constitute cy- plicitly engage both gender and race it is berfeminism(s). Yet it is exceedingly rare both conspicuous and instructive. within both cyberfeminist practices and In their edited volume, Domain Errors! critiques of them to see any reference to Cyberfeminist Practices, Fernandez, Wild- the intersection of gender and race (Fer- ing, and Wright highlight cyberfeminist nandez, Wilding, and Wright 2003, 21); in- practices that eschew the exclusionary stead both the practices and the critiques aspects of earlier forms of feminism, and suggest that “gender” is a unifi ed category they remind us “the lives of white women and, by implication, that digital technol- and women of color are mutually reliant” ogies mean the same thing to all women (2003, 25). Yet, as Fernandez and Wild- across differences of race, class, sexuality. ing point out, cyberfeminist writing often In her book Zeroes and Ones, Sadie Plant assumes an “educated, white, upper- is exuberant about the potential of Inter- middle-class, English-speaking, culturally net technologies to transform the lives of sophisticated readership,” which ironically women. Plant conceptualizes cyberspace ends up replicating the “damaging univer- as a liberating place for women because, salism of ‘old- style feminism’ ” (Fernandez as she sees it, the inherently textual nature and Wilding 2003, 21). Given the “dam- of the Internet lends itself to “the female” aging universalism” of some forms of cy- (1997, 23). Her title refers to the binary berfeminism, what, then, do we make of code of zeroes and ones that constitutes claims for the subversive potential of the the basic programming language that Internet? computers use. Plant symbolically renders In the following two sections, I explore zeroes as “female” and ones as phallic and the evidence for the view that the Internet “male,” predicting that the digital future is is a technology that facilitates gender and feminine, distributed, nonlinear, a world racial equality. First, I focus on questions in which “zeroes” are displacing the phallic related to political economy and internet- order of the “ones” (Gill 2005, 99). Plant is worked global feminism. Then, I turn to perhaps the leading fi gure in popularizing debates about “identity tourism” and the 356 | JESSIE DANIELS

allure of disembodiment by contrasting juxtaposition of subversive Internet tech- examples of the way girls and women are nologies, on the one hand, and global eco- using the Internet to transform their bodies. nomic inequality, on the other, is one that few scholars writing about cyberculture acknowledge. Yet, in rethinking cyberfem- “A LIBERATING TERRITORY OF inism, it is crucial to examine both. In the ONE’S OWN”: POLITICAL ECONOMY following section, I take up the empirical AND INTERNETWORKED GLOBAL evidence about political economy, gender, FEMINISM and race. A central debate within cyberfeminism has to do with the tension between the political Political Economy economy required to mass produce the infrastructure of the Internet and its reliance To take a global perspective, it is clear that on the exploited labor, on the one hand, those in industrialized nations are more and, on the other, claims for the subversive likely to own computers and have Inter- potential of those same technologies. net access than are those in developing Easily the most infl uential fi gure in cy- societies (Norris 2001). The material real- berfeminism is Donna Haraway. Her con- ity of the global political economy is that ceptualization of the cyborg, part human women remain the poorest global citizens; and part machine (1985), and the sub- the digital era has not shifted this in sig- versive potential of a cyborg future, are of nifi cant ways (Eisenstein 1998). However, particular interest to a number of schol- aggregate-level country-specifi c data show ars who come to gender and technology that women have increasing rates of par- through poststructuralism and cyberpunk ticipation online, often at faster rates than fi ction (Balsamo 1996; Flanagan and Booth men (Sassen 2002, 376). It is not surprising 2002; DeVoss 2000; Flanagan 2002; Sunden that women lag behind men globally in 2001; Wolmark 1999). In contrast to this computer use and Internet access, given promised future, critics have pointed to that these are so clearly linked to economic the problematic construction of women resources (Bimber 2000; Leggon 2006; Nor- of color working in technology manufac- ris 2001). What is intriguing is that despite turing as quintessential cyborgs (Flana- women’s place at the bottom of the global gan and Booth 2002; 12). The low- skilled economic hierarchy, their Internet partici- work in microchip production and global pation is rapidly increasing. call centers has not eased “the oppression In the United States, the empirical re- of Third World women, . . . [it] has merely search indicates that most of the apparent perpetuated their oppression in a new “digital divide” in computer ownership workplace” (Flanagan and Booth 2002,13; and Internet access, has been the effect of see also Eisenstein 1998). Radhika Gajjala class (or socioeconomic status) more than raises the central question about the pos- of gender and race (Norris 2001). In the sibility of “subaltern cyberfeminism from United States, the rate of Internet access below,” given this economic context: “If has converged for men and women who cyberspace is produced at the expense of are white (Leggon 2006, 100). There re- millions of men and women all over the main some small differences in access and world who are not even able to enjoy its kinds of usage between Hispanic women conveniences, how can we make claims and men and between African American that [these technologies] are changing women and men; these differences, how- the world for the better?” (2003, 49). This ever, are negligible (Leggon 2006, 100). Yet RETHINKING CYBERFEMINISM(S): RACE, GENDER, AND EMBODIMENT | 357 despite the convergence and negligible Sandoval refers to as “U.S. third world fem- differences across gender and race, pub- inism” (2000)—the cyberfeminist practice lic intellectuals such as Henry Louis Gates of online organizing and discursive space Jr. and Anthony Walton do not hesitate to takes on added signifi cance. Gajjala’s (2003, assert that Black culture is “the problem” 2004) writing about South Asian diasporas when it comes to the digital divide (Wright online is a case in point. Her work combines 2002, 2005). Discourse of “the digital di- critical, theoretical analysis with years of vide” that confi gures “women” or “Blacks hands-on practice building e-spaces, such and Hispanics” or “the poor” living in the as SAWnet, the women-only South Asian global South as information “have- nots” Listserv. Gajjala points out that if cyberfem- is a disabling rhetoric (Everett 2004, 1280) inist agendas are to “produce subversive that fails to recognize the agency and countercultures or to succeed in changing technological contributions of African existing technological environments so that Americans, Asians, Chicanos, Latinos, and they are empowering to women and men of working-class whites (Wright 2002, 57). lesser material and socio-cultural privilege What we need is a more multidimensional the world over, it is important to examine view of inequality of access that allows for how individuals and communities are sit- individual agency. uated” within the global political economy Conceptualizing digital technologies ex- (2003, 54). For women of color who have clusively in terms of either economic op- been systematically excluded from main- pression or lack of access is overdetermined stream civic engagement on the basis of and does not allow for women’s agency with race and gender, the political online orga- regard to the Internet. Gajjala recognizes nizing of African American women both in this agency by pointing out that the very the United States and globally around the people who are excluded from mainstream Million Woman March provides another ex- society want to include themselves in these ample of cyberfeminism. As Anna Everett new technologies on their own terms so writes: “The sistahs of the march recognized that “they can see themselves as protago- the value of new technologies to further their nists of the revolution” (2003, 49). For many own agendas and to promote their brand of women, including themselves in these new activism, which did not require choosing technologies means including themselves which liberation struggle to fi ght fi rst, gen- in internetworked global feminism. der or race oppression” (2004, 1283). In a similar vein, Michelle Wright notes the cyberfeminist practice of online com- Internetworked Global Feminism munities designed specifi cally by and Within the context of a global political for Black women, such as SistahSpace economy, internetworked global femi- (http://www.Sistahspace.com).Wright nism can and does bypass national states, exhorts other women of color to engage local opposition, mass media indifference, with the “Internet beyond Web surfi ng and and major national economic actors, thus checking e-mail” (2005, 57). The kinds of cy- opening a whole new terrain for activism berfeminist practices suggested by Gajjala, that addresses gender and racial inequality Everett, and Wright are more overtly politi- (Sassen 2002; Earl and Schussman 2003; cal than other cyberfeminist practices and Everett 2004; Kahn and Kellner 2004; Lang- are part of what Sandoval (2000) refers to as man 2005; Sutton and Pollock 2000). an oppositional technology of power. For women of color who want to con- Many women in and out of global fem- nect globally across diasporas what Chela inist political organizations view Internet 358 | JESSIE DANIELS

technology as a crucial medium for move- as internetworked social movements, or ment toward gender equality (Cherny and ISMs. These organizations, and the women Weise 1996; Harcourt 1999, 2000, 2004; writing from within them, make a strong Purweal 2004; Merithew 2004;Jacobs 2004). case that information technology facili- Wendy Harcourt, an Australian feminist tates transnational feminist networks and researcher with the Society for Interna- indicate a measure of success for global tional Development, a nongovernmental feminism Qacobs 2004). Sassen enumer- organization (NGO) based in Rome and ates dozens of women’s organizations on- the author of Women@ Internet: Creating line and argues that women’s presence in New Cultures in Cyberspace, is a leading and use of the Internet has the potential proponent of this view. She summarizes to transform a whole range of local con- this stance when she writes that there is ditions and institutional domains where “convincing evidence that the Internet is women are key actors (2002, 379). a tool for creating a communicative space Many individual women outside any that when embedded in a political real- formal political organization experience ity can be an empowering mechanism for the Internet as a “safe space” for resisting women” (1999, 219). The notion that the the gender oppression that they encoun- Internet is a “tool” to be picked up and ter in their day- to- day lives offl ine. In her “used” by women for “empowerment” is a edited volume On Shifting Ground: Muslim metaphor that is employed repeatedly in Women in the Global Era, Fereshteh No- the literature about global feminist organi- uraie Simone (2005a) includes essays about zations and the Internet. The evidence to the importance of global information tech- which Harcourt refers is written primarily nology for women living in and resisting re- by women working in NGOs that focus on pressive gender regimes. Nouraie- Simone’s gender equality in their local regions and description of the importance of the Inter- globally, a focus some have referred to net is noteworthy: “For educated young as “glocality” (1999). The mobilization of Iranian women, cyberspace is a liberating global awareness and opposition to the re- territory of one’s own— a place to resist a pressive Taliban regime by the Revolution- traditionally imposed subordinate identity ary Association of Women of Afghanistan while providing a break from pervasive Is- (http:/ I www.rawa.org) is just one exam- lamic restrictions in public physical space. ple of the effective use of the Internet by The virtual nature of the Internet—the a global feminist organization (Kensinger structure of interconnection in cyberspace 2003). Another example comes from Mex- that draws participants into ongoing dis- ico, where a number of feminist NGOs courses on issues of feminism, patriarchy, have used the Internet in their efforts to and gender politics, and the textual process cross national frontiers to establish a sys - of self- expression without the prohibition tem of global support and exchange in or limitation of physical space—offers new pursuit of a more gender- equitable society possibilities for women’s agency and em- (Merithew 2004). And global feminist net- powerment” (2005b, 61–62). works begun in South Asia have fostered a Here, Nouraie- Simone evokes Virginia challenge to gender-specifi c abortion, or Woolf’s call for a “room of one’s own” as a “son selection,” as some refer to the prac- prerequisite for feminist consciousness tice of terminating pregnancies in which when she describes her experience on- the fetus is female (Purweal 2004). Lauren line as a “liberating territory of one’s own.” Langman (2005) refers to these kinds of Rather than the “tool” imagery invoked by global social movements organized online so many of the global feminist organizations RETHINKING CYBERFEMINISM(S): RACE, GENDER, AND EMBODIMENT | 359 when describing information technology, identity tourism and disembodiment. Lisa Nouraie-Simone chooses the term “cyber- Nakamura in her book Cybertypes coins space” to suggest that she goes to a “place the term “identity tourism” to describe to resist,” where she participates in discus- “the process by which members of one sions of “feminism, patriarchy, and gender group try on for size the descriptors gen- politics.” For her, cyberspace makes global erally applied to persons of another race or feminism possible in her life offl ine on an gender” (2002, 8). The allure of changing intimate, immediate, and personal level. identities online has been part of the so- While the evidence presented here about ciological writing about the Internet since the political economy and global feminist Sherry Turkle’s Life on the Screen. Turkle organizations and individuals using In- contends that assuming alternate identi- ternet technologies in ways that resist op- ties online can have positive psychological pressive regimes of gender and sexuality is and social effects by loosening repressive admittedly anecdotal, it does offer some in- boundaries (1997, 12; see also Westfall sight into the questions, Is the Internet sub- 2000; Whitley 1997). The idea that racial versive? If so, for whom? Sassen’s concept oppression is linked to embodied visibility of embeddedness, that is the Internet as is one about which African American so- embedded in materiality, is useful here. As ciologists and other scholars have written Sassen notes, there is no “purely digital” or eloquently, going back to W. E. B. Du Bois exclusively “virtual” electronic space; rather, (Du Bois 1903/1995; Tal 2001).This idea ap- the digital is always “embedded” in the ma- pears frequently in mainstream press ac- terial (2002, 367–68). Melanie Millar (1998) counts as well as the scholarly literature on calls attention to the uneven effects of digital “race” and the Internet, as in this passage technologies on diverse groups of women. from Mark Hansen: “The suspension of the For the women working in a microchip fac- social category of visibility in online en- tory in China or a call center in India, the vironments transforms the experience of Internet is not a subversive potential future race in what is, potentially a fundamental but a work place rooted in economic neces- way: by suspending the automatic ascrip- sity. For women in global feminist organization of racial signifi ers according to visible tions outside the affl uent global North, the traits, online environments can, in a cer- Internet is a “tool” to be used for addressing tain sense, be said to subject everyone to gender inequality in local regions and lever- what I shall call a ‘zero degree’ of racial dif- aging connections to feminists in other reference” (2006, 141). gions. For Nouraie-Simone, the Internet is a However, changing identities online may “safe space” to occupy away from a repres- not be as subversive an experience as Turkle sive gender regime in the offl ine world. Each and others suggest. Jodi O’Brien notes that has different relations to digital technolo- gender-switching online is only acceptable gies, and these are embedded in present- within very narrow boundaries and that tense, material, embodied lives rather than there is an “earnestness with which gender- imagined cyborg futures. policing is conducted” when gender switching occurs (1999, 82).4 O’Brien interprets the earnest “gender policing” to mean that THE ALLURE OF IDENTITY TOURISM when it is intended as play or performance, AND DISEMBODIMENT switching identities is tolerated as long as After the cyborg, the two ideas that hold the there is agreement that a “natural” (read most allure for cyberfeminists interested in physical/biological) referent remains “in- the subversive potential of the Internet are tact, embodied and immutable” (O’Brien 360 | JESSIE DANIELS

1999, 82). Switching identities online seems connects liberation from gender oppres- much less prevalent than the kinds of on- sion to the absence of the body as well as line experiences that Pitts describes in her to the ability to adopt “freely chosen iden- research on women with breast cancer who tities.” While it is not clear from Nouraie- seek and fi nd real community and create Simone’s writing if her practice includes new forms of knowledge via sites such as “switching” gender or ethnic identities, Women.com’s BreastFest (Pitts 2004, 55). it seems unlikely, given that in this same Additional research into actual on- passage she writes that she goes online line practices suggests that rather than to seek out “discourse” on “issues of fem- going online to “switch” gender or racial inism, patriarchy, and gender politics,” as identities, people actively seek out online part of her “self- expression” (2005b, 61– spaces that affi rm and solidify social iden- 62).The impact of digital technologies on tities along axes of race, gender, and sex- self- identifi ed women’s lives is grounded uality. For example, young girls and teens in materiality and embodiment. Pitts is who have access to the Internet increas- instructive on this point: “Online women ingly form their identities, at least in part, with breast cancer are not necessarily in- through their online interactions (Mazza- terested in gender- play or too interested rella 2005), often via social networking sites in leaving the body behind them. Their such as MySpace or Facebook (boyd 2004); public narratives do not ‘hide’ the body, people of color affi rm racial identities on- and they generally do not abandon gender, line through BlackPlanet.com, MiGente, beauty and conventional femininity. . . . and AsianAvenue.com (Byrne 2007; Lee In detailing some of the more unpleasant and Wong 2003); and self- identifi ed QLBT bodily aspects of sickness and treatment, (queer, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) they present women’s bodies as they are women go online to “learn to be queer” really lived” (2004, 55). (Bryson 2004, 251) by using sites such as Instead of going online to escape em- QueerSisters (Nip 2004; see also Alexan- bodiment, the women in Pitts’s study seek der 2002). In large measure, the notion of out Internet spaces where they can ex- “identity tourism,” in which people switch plore and reaffi rm the bodily selves in the gender and racial identities, functions as a presence of illness, surgery, recovery, and heuristic device for thinking about gender loss. Pitts’s research is useful for consid- and race rather than this activity being a ering the impact of the Internet on self- commonplace online practice. What then identifi ed women’s lives and illustrates the of the cyberfeminist claim of dispensing ways women engage with Internet tech- with embodiment as a path to gender (and nologies in order to create meaning for racial) equality? themselves to improve, or at least change, Nouraie- Simone writes that part of the material conditions of their lives and why she fi nds the Internet so subversive their bodies. while living under a repressive sex/gen- The putative invisibility online and the der regime in Iran is the chance to escape “decoupling identity from any analogi- embodiment: “The absence of the physical relation to the visible body” (Hansen cal body in electronic space and the ano- 2006, 145) to escape race and gender vis- nymity this offers have a liberating effect ibility rests on an assumption of an ex- on repressed social identity, as ‘electronic clusively text-based online world that technology’ becomes ‘a tool for the design belies the reality of digital video and pho- of freely chosen identities’ ” (2005b, 61– tographic technologies, such as webcams 62; emphasis added). In this passage, she (and image-sharing sites, among them RETHINKING CYBERFEMINISM(S): RACE, GENDER, AND EMBODIMENT | 361

Flickr and YouTube), which make images Pro- Ana Websites of bodies a quotidian part of the gendered, and racialized, online world (White 2003). The emergence of pro-ana, a shortened Rather than a libertarian utopia of disem- term for “pro- anorexia,” sites suggests that bodiment, cyberspace must be consid- some (mostly young, predominantly white) ered an environment in which “defi nitions women form online communities in order of situation, body, and identity are both to offer each other nonjudgmental sup- contested and are infl uenced by power port in fi nding strategies and tactics for relations” (Pitts 2004, 53– 54). The allure of disordered eating behaviors, most often disembodiment for many cyberfeminists diagnosed as anorexia nervosa or bulimia. alongside the valorization of self- identifi ed These young women both resist and em- women and girls’ engagement with In- brace such diagnoses for their behavior ternet technologies suggests an inherent (Dias 2003; Fox, Ward, and O’Rourke 2005; contradiction within cyberfeminism. The Mulveen and Hepworth, 2006). As a young use of Internet technologies to (re)shape woman quoted in research by Fox, Ward, bodies by the seemingly disparate com- and O’Rourke put it, “Personally, I feel that if munities of “pro- ana” girls discussed below a person is starving themselves or throwing and transgendered women illustrates this up *solely* because of the desire to look like contradiction. kate moss, devon aoki (hehe . . . my favorite model), gisele, etc . . . they don’t have all the criteria to be considered anorexic. Anorexia THE CONTINUING SIGNIFICANCE is defi ned as a mental disease . . . the ability OF EMBODIMENT: “PRO- ANA” to play mind-games with yourself relating WEBSITES AND “TRANNY” HORMONE to anything food or exercise” (2005, 955). LISTSERVS This redefi nition of anorexia as “the Cyberfeminists have heralded the allure of ability to play mind- games” around food disembodiment as a way to subvert gender or exercise refi gures the usually disabling and gender oppression. Some cyberfemi- rhetoric of eating disorders into one of nists, such as Braidotti (2002), Plant (1997), strength and “ability” that does not include and Wilding and CA Ensemble (1998), everyone who is “starving themselves.” The recognize and celebrate the potential of a mention of this young woman’s “favorite new wave of feminist practices that engage model” is revealing here because famous with Internet technologies in ways that models and celebrities are part of the cul- chart new ground for women. However, tural products that young women engaged foregrounding women and girls’ engage- in pro-ana seek out for “thinspiration” ment with Internet technologies suggests (954). The young girls of the pro-ana com- that there is something innately feminist munities turn to the Internet to support in such practices. Wilding and other cyber- their bodily rituals of diet, exercise, and feminists (Everett 2004) have warned that purging in the relative “safety” of being the valorization of women’s cyberprac- with their pro- ana peers and away from tices without an accompanying feminist the judgments of others (mostly parents) critique is problematic. In the following (Dias 2003; Fox, Ward, and O’Rourke 2005; section, I offer two examples that illustrate Walstrom 2001).Young women who iden- both the continuing signifi cance of em- tify as pro-ana report that the bodily rituals bodiment online and the problematic of associated with this community provide uniformly regarding all women’s engage- participants with a sense of “control over” ment with cyberspace as feminist. their bodies (Dias 2003; Fox, Ward, and 362 | JESSIE DANIELS

O’Rourke 2005; Walstrom 2001). And in- Internet, writes: “Internet tools and com- creasingly, these images of “thinspiration” munities serve a variety of functions that are appear on YouTube, the video-sharing relevant to, and scaffold, the lives of QLBT site, as well as on personal websites (Dan- women, including . . . interaction with other iels and Meleo- Erwin 2008).Whatever one queer women in a space that is relatively thinks of these practices, the young girls safe” (2004, 249). Like Nouraie-Simone, involved with pro-ana sites are engaging the women in Bryson’s study experience with Internet technologies in ways that are life online as a safe space, an observation both motivated by and confi rm (extremely that serves to set up an oppositional rela- thin) embodiment. While those partici- tionship to life offl ine (“real” life) as space pating in pro- ana sites may appear to be that is not safe. The Internet provides QLBT ambivalent about their own embodiment, women with opportunities to experiment the fact is that they are not going online with gender identity and practices, as well to avoid corporeality but rather to engage as a cultural context within which to learn with others about their bodies via text and how to be queer through participation in a image in ways that make them feel in con- subculture (Bryson 2004, 249). Indeed, the trol of those bodies. experience of Anita, included in Bryson’s research, illustrates this point: “Tranny” Hormone Listservs Anita: I’ve gotten a lot of information A second illustration of the way the Inter- from the tranny hormone list. It net can be a site for bodily trans formation was mainly an information sharing is that of community-based transgendered thing, and a few other lists along websites, such as GenderSanity (http:// those lines. With the web, I’ve used www.gendersanity.com), and personal web transgendered sites for looking pages, such as Christine Beatty’s WebHome up reports of surgeons, photos of (http://www.glamazon.net).These sites, surgery, information from the sur- along with Listservs and websites estab- geons here they’d posted that stuff lished by trans or trans-friendly physicians, up on the Net. Gaining informa- such as TransGender Care (http:/ /www. tion about hormones is import- transgendercare.com), provide in forma- ant. I have a fair bit of experience tion about how to transform the body in in biochemistry and can read the specifi cally gendered ways. The experience scientifi c literature. of transgendered women, such as Anita, Mary: How do you access that informa- whose pastiche of Internet technologies tion? enables her gender transition (Bryson 2004, Anita: I can get into the MedLine data- 246), is noteworthy in this context. Many base and that kind of thing. If I nonheteronormative or queer women, want information about any of whether they identify as lesbian, bisexual, that stuff, the Net is the fi rst place I or transgender, also regard global informa- go. It’s not always easy to fi nd good tion technology as an important medium information though, especially for resisting repressive regimes of gender if you are looking for knowledge and sexuality (Alexander 2002; Bryson 2004; that is community-based. And if Chatterjee 2002; Heinz, Gu, and Zender you are going to read the medical 2002). Combining the metaphors of “tool” articles, you really need to know and “place,” Mary Bryson, in her study of the jargon and be able to read be- Australian QLBT women’s experiences of the tween the lines. (2004, 246) RETHINKING CYBERFEMINISM(S): RACE, GENDER, AND EMBODIMENT | 363

Here, Anita describes her use of the In- Racialized Embodiment Online/Offl ine ternet to navigate the biomedical sex/ gen- The allure of disembodiment pointed der establishment (Butler 2004; Epstein to by cyberfeminists is understand able, 2003). She reports getting information given the signifi cance of racialized em- from an e- mail Listserv, pursuing further bodiment (Du Bois 1903/1995; Fernandez information on particular surgeons, looking for digital photographic evidence of 2003;Tal 2001) for understanding the lived their work, and reading the peer-reviewed experience of racism. Yet racialized em- medical literature culled from the database bodiment and the ways this offl ine reality MedLine. Both her technique for fi nding is embedded in online worlds is not often information and her assessment of what remarked upon in the literature about gen- she fi nds demonstrate an example of so- der online. phisticated digital fl uency (Green 2005, In the study of pro-ana online commu- 2006). Anita’s bricolage strategy combines nities by Fox, Ward, and O’Rourke (2005), a number of internet technologies, includ- the authors curiously do not take up racial ing search engines; web-based databases; identity as a point of analysis even when websites dealing with transgender issues; one of the participants explicitly refer- community- based Listservs; and digital ences it: “It started in 8th grade. I had never photography of surgical outcomes. Anita’s been really overweight, but I was average- goal in using a patchwork of digital technol- about 115 at 5’3. [T]here was just too much ogies is not to pretend to be another gender going on in my life . . . mostly, I didn’t know online; instead, her aim is to fi nd help in who I was maybe I was having a really early transforming her body offl ine in ways that mid-life crisis. I’m adopted, and my whole align with her own sense of gender identity. family is white, while I’m Asian. I had/have Anita’s piecing together of diverse Internet a lot of issues circling around feelings of sources to navigate gender transition sug- abandonment which I partially translated gests that we need a much more nuanced into ‘no one loves me . . . not even my real and complex understanding of digital tech- parents’ type stuff” (957). nologies, gender, and feminist politics. The young girl quoted here indicates Anita’s experience indicates that rather that her racial identity, and the discor- than using the technology to escape em- dant racial identity of her (adopted) fam- bodiment or temporarily “switch” identi- ily, is a contributing factor in her desire ties online, she and other self-identifi ed to be involved with pro-ana practices. Yet women (and men) are actively engaging the authors do not address the issue of ra- with digital technologies to more perma- cial identity. This is a lost opportunity for nently transform their bodies offl ine. Anita an analysis that would further illuminate goes on line not to experience “the absence the connection between gender, race, and of the body” (as Nouraie- Simone does) but online identity by speaking to the compel- to access the information, resources, and ling research that exists involving gender, technologies that allow her to transform “race,” and disordered eating (Lovejoy her body into a (differently) gendered body 2001; Thompson 1992). that aligns with her identity. And in ways In contrast, Bryson acknowledges the that are analogous to the pro-ana girls’ use racial dynamics at work even though in her of the technology, transgendered women, research her sample of QLBT women in- and men, use digital images as a crucial cludes only one woman of color. The white part of the strategy in gathering reliable in- participants in her study rarely identifi ed formation about gender transition. racism as a problem of online communities, 364 | JESSIE DANIELS

whereas “the discursive construction of ra- offl ine, counters the oft- repeated assertion cial identity online was a persistent prob- that cyberspace is a disembodied realm lem for the Aboriginal participant whose where gendered and racialized bodies can Net experiences were frequently charac- be left behind. terized by marginalization, silencing and These two examples, the pro-ana and enforced segregation” (2004, 246). The transgendered online communities, shed marginalization, silencing, and enforced light on gender, race, and the subversive segregation that the Aboriginal woman potential of the Internet. In both instances, in Bryson’s study faces in online spaces is self- identifi ed girls and women engage in characteristic of what many experience in practices with Internet technologies to man- online communities across lines of differ- age, transform, and control their physical ence. Kendall’s ethnography on the online bodies in ways that both resist and reinforce community BlueSky is informative on this hierarchies of gender and race. Instead of point. While BlueSky is relatively inclusive, seeing cyberspace as a place in which to ex- and certainly not “racist” (or “sexist”) in any perience the absence of the body, or even a overt way, the inclusive ness is predicated text-only place with no visible representation on social structure in which “white middle- of the body, these girls and self-identifi ed class men continue to have the power to women use digital technologies in ways include or not to include people whose gen- that simultaneously bring the body “online” der, sexuality or race marks them as other” (through digital photos uploaded to the web) (Kendall 2000, 272). BlueSky’s text only na- and take the digital “offl ine” (through infor- ture facilitates greater inclusiveness across mation gleaned online to transform their differences of gender, sexual orientation, embodied selves). Here, digital technolo- and race, yet the predominance of white gies embedded in everyday life allow for the men simultaneously “limits the inclusive- transformation of corporeal and material ness to ‘others’ who can fi t themselves into lives in ways that both resist and reinforce a culture by and for those white men” (272). structures of gender and race. BlueSky, like the queer online spaces that the QLBT women in Bryson’s study seek out CONCLUSION and the pro- ana spaces that many young girls fi nd empowering, are predicated on an This review of different forms of cyberfem- assumption of whiteness. Unlike either the inism(s) suggests a reality in which the In- cyberracism of white supremacists online ternet is embedded in material, corporeal (Daniels 2009) or the white, masculine de- lives in complex ways. To return to the illus- sire for community expressed by neocon- trative example that opened the essay, the federates on Dixie- Net (McPherson 2000), cyberfeminists who created HollaBackNYC the whiteness that Kendall describes in are engaged with technologies in ways that BlueSky is very much like whiteness in the highlight race, gender, and embodiment offl ine world: an unmarked category that is in the digital era. Mobile phone technolo- taken for granted in daily life. Race matters gies, even in the current political economy, in cyberspace precisely because “computer are widely affordable and extremely popu- networks are social networks” (Wellman lar globally (Rheingold 2006). The tag line 2001) and those who spend time online “If you can’t slap him, snap him,” suggests bring their own knowledge, experiences, both the resistance of internetworked global and values with them when they log on feminism and a strategy of resistance that is (Kolko, Nakamura, and Rodman 2000, 5). simultaneously embedded in daily life, dig- The fact that race matters online, as it does ital technologies, and embodiment. In this RETHINKING CYBERFEMINISM(S): RACE, GENDER, AND EMBODIMENT | 365 instance, to “hollaback” means to oppose Scholar- activists who wish to challenge an embodied notion of harassment (men the status quo of racial and gender domina- exposing their genitals) with an embodied, tion have also been slow to seize the oppor- and embedded, form of resistance (taking tunity of engaged public discourse offered digital photos of those exposed bodies). by the Internet. Risman (2004) urges femi- However, given that the resisters pictured nist sociologists to fi nd means to transform on the site are exclusively white and pre- as well as inform society, and the Internet dominantly female, we must ask whether offers such an opportunity. Yet, curiously, HollaBackNYC and its many imitators are most academic sociologists do not have disrupting or reinforcing the culture of sur- an Internet presence beyond their college veillance focused on minority men in urban or university- sponsored faculty webpage, areas. Internet technologies offer women they do not create content for the Inter- who are harassed on city streets and sub- net, and they do not participate in online ways a mechanism for resisting such a gen- communities or social networks. I echo dered and racialized practices, at the same Michelle Wright’s call for scholar-activists time that they reinforce established hierar- to engage with the Internet “beyond email” chies of gender and race. (Wright 2005, 57). It is critically important While some cyberfeminists are wildly for those of us who hope that our work can enthusiastic about the subversive poten- and should speak to audiences beyond the tial of a cyborg future, identity tourism, academy to follow the lead of critical cy- and disembodiment that is offered by berfeminists and “hollaback” by engaging digital technologies, evidence from cyber- the Internet as a discursive space and a site feminist practices and empirical research of political struggle. on what people are actually doing online points to a more complicated reality. For son1e, the Internet economy reproduces NOTES oppressive workplace hierarchies that are rooted in a global political economy. For 1. Throughout this essay I use the term “self- others, the Internet represents a “tool” for identifi ed woman” and its plural to both recognize the problematic universalizing of difference global feminist organizing and an oppor- in the terms “woman” and “women” and to signal tunity to be protagonists in their own revo- the inclusion of queer and transgendered women lution. For still others, the Internet offers a who may or may not have biologically female “safe space” and a way to not just survive, anatomy. but also resist, repressive sex/ gender re- 2. For example, U.S.-based GenX blogger Kristie Helms writes: “I’ve been posting journal-type en- gimes. Girls and self-identifi ed women tries online in some form or another since 1996 are engaging with Internet technologies in when I was. Oh. 25. Various places. . . . Through ways that enable them to transform their all of that, I’ve gotten divorced, gotten annulled, embodied selves, not escape embodiment. changed/ discovered sexual orientation, . . . moved Girls involved in pro- ana com munities from Manhattan to Brooklyn to Boston, met three lifelong best friends over the Internet, . . . bought deploy Internet technologies that include a house and had . . . urn . . . six jobs, . . . gotten a text and images in order to control their book published, one essay published, one piece bodies in ways that are both disturbing for of erotica published (twice), bought three cars, others and deeply meaningful for them. sold two of them, stopped talking to my mother, Self- identifi ed queer and transgendered started talking to my mother, had my father tell me I’m going to hell and just generally keep fi nd- women en gage with digital technologies ing myself periodically” (personal communi- in order to transform their bodies, not to cation, June 2007). While Gill may regard these play at switching gender identities online. elements as “depressingly familiar,” I think that 366 | JESSIE DANIELS

such an assessment, like history that is only con- Cherny, Lynn, and Elizabeth Reba Weise, eds. 1996. cerned with the events of powerful political lead- Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyber- ers, invalidates the substance of what constitutes space. Seattle: Seal Press. women’s lives. Clegg, Sue. 2001. “Theorising the Machine: Gender, 3. Rosser reviews women’s participation in the in- Education, and Computing.” Gender and Educa- formation technology workforce along with “de- tion 13(3):307– 24. sign” and “use” of technology through the lenses Daniels, Jessie. 2009. Cyber Racism: White Supremacy of liberal feminism, radical feminism, “African Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights. New American and Racial/Ethnic” feminism, and York: Rowman and Littleﬁ eld. postcolonial feminism. Offering a review that Daniels, Jessie, and Zoe Meleo-Erwin. 2008. “YouTube speaks to all the nuances in this literature is well Bodies: An Analysis of User Generated Videos beyond the scope of my project here. About Weight Loss, ‘Thinspo,’ and Fat Accep- 4. O’Brien does not explicitly address switching of tance” (currently unpublished). racial identities, but in Kali Tal’s (2001) review of Devoss, Danielle. 2000. “Rereading Cyborg(?) Women: Nakamura, Tal likens this phenomenon to “racial The Visual Rhetoric of Images of Cyborg (and passing,” about which African American scholars Cyber) Bodies on the World Wide Web.” CyberPsy- have written extensively. chology & Behavior 3 (5):835– 845. Dias, Karen. 2003. “The Ana Sanctuary: Women’s Pro- anorexia Narratives in Cyberspace.” Journal of In- WORKS CITED ternational Women’s Studies 4(2):1– 31. Du Bois, W.E.B. 1903/1995. The Souls of Black Folk. Adam, Alison E. 2004. Hacking into Hacking: Gender New York: Penguin Classics. and the Hacker Phenomenon. ACM SIGCAS Com- Earl, Jennifer, and Alan Schussman. 2003. “The New puters and Society 32 (7):0095– 2737. Site of Activism: On-line Organizations, Move- Alexander, Jonathan. 2002. “Queer Webs: Represen- ment Entrepreneurs, and the Changing Location tations of LGBT People and Com munities on the of Social Movement Decision Making.” Research World Wide Web.” International Journal of Sexual- in Social Movements 24:155– 87. ity and Gender Quarterly 81:868– 76. Eisenstein, Zillah. 1998. Global Obscenities: Patriar- Balsamo, Anne. 1996. Technologies of the Gendered chy, Capitalism, and the Lure of Cyberfantasy. New Body: Reading Cyborg Women. Durham, N.C.: York: New York University Press. Duke University Press. Epstein, Steven. 2003. “Sexualizing Governance and Bimber, Bruce. 2000. Measuring the Gender Gap on the Medicalizing Identities: The Emergence of State- Internet. Social Science Quarterly 81 (3):868– 876. Centered LGBT Health Politics in the United boyd, danah. 2004. “Friendster and Publicly Artic- States.” Sexualities 6(2):131– 71. ulated Social Networks.” Paper presented at the Everett, Anna. 2004. “On Cyberfeminism and Cyber- Conference on Human Factors and Computing womanism: High- Tech Mediations of Feminism’s Systems (CHI 2004).Vienna:ACM,April24– 29. Discontents.” Signs 30:1278– 86. Bryson, Mary. 2004.”When Jill Jacks In: Queer Women — — — , ed. 2007. Learning Race and Ethnicity. MacAr- and the Net.” Feminist Media Studies 4:239– 54. thur Series, Digital Media and Learning. Boston: Bury, Rhiannon. 2005. Cyberspaces of Their Own: Fe- MIT Press. male Fandoms Online. New York: Peter Lang. Fernandez, Maria. 2003. “Cyberfeminism, Racism, Butler, Judith P 2004. Undoing Gender. New York: Embodiment.” In Domain Errors! , eds. Maria Fer- Routledge. nandez, Faith Wilding, and Michelle M. Wright. Byrne, Dara. 2007. “The Future of (the) Race: Iden- Brooklyn, N.Y.: Autonomedia. tity and the Rise of Computer Mediated Public Fernandez, Maria, Faith Wilding, and Michelle M. Spheres.” In Learning Race and Ethnicity, ed. Wright, eds. 2003. Domain Errors! Cyberfeminist Anna Everett. MacArthur Series, Digital Media and Practices. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Autonomedia. Learning. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Fernandez, Maria, and Faith Wilding. 2003. “Situat- Cassell, Justine, and Henry Jenkins. 2000. From Bar- ing Cyberfeminisms.” In Domain Errors!: Cyber- bie(r) to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer feminist Practices, eds. Maria Fernandez, Faith Games. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Wilding, and Michelle M. Wright. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Chatterjee, Bela Bonita. 2002. “Razorgirls and Cyber- Autonomedia. dykes: Tracing Cyberfeminism and Thoughts on Flanagan, Mary. 2002. “Hyperbodies, Hyperknowl- its Use in a Legal Context.” International Journal edge: Women in Games, Women in Cyber- of Gender and Sexuality Studies 7(2/3):197– 213. punk, and Strategies of Resistance.” In Reload: RETHINKING CYBERFEMINISM(S): RACE, GENDER, AND EMBODIMENT | 367

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CHAPTER 22

Gender and Technology Francesca Bray

have to use machines, in the workplace INTRODUCTION or in the home, but they neither love nor One fundamental way in which gender is seek to understand them: They are consid- expressed in any society is through tech- ered passive benefi ciaries of the inventive nology. Technical skills and domains of fl ame. The modernist association of tech- expertise are divided between and within nology with masculinity translates into the sexes, shaping masculinities and femi- everyday experiences of gender, historical ninities: Maybe the iconic womanly skill is narratives, employment practices, educa- basketmaking, whereas men should excel tion, the design of new technologies, and at hunting (MacKenzie 1991); or boys must the distribution of power across a global learn to clean their fathers’ tools to get a society in which technology is seen as the feel for grease before they are taught to use driving force of progress. them (Mellström 2004); or poor women “Since technology and gender are both raise silkworms and sell the cocoons to rich socially constructed and socially perva- households where the mistress organizes sive, we can never fully understand one the tasks of reeling, spinning, and weaving without also understanding the other” among her servants (Bray 1997); or boys (Lohan & Faulkner 2004, p. 319). A dense huddle around the computer screen prac- web of debate within the fi eld of gender ticing hacking skills, while girls develop and technology studies, or feminist tech- new communication codes using emoti- nology studies (FTS), catalyzes continual cons (Lægran 2003b, Miller 2004). In the advances in studying what FTS terms the contemporary world, or at any rate in the coproduction of gender and technology. Western nations which pioneered indus- Explorations of “constructive” tensions in trialization and have thus been able for so FTS (Lohan 2000) aim to develop innova- long to dominate worldwide production of tive analyses of the material worlds we are material and intellectual goods, services, creating through technology, and of tech- and desires, technology is fi rmly coded nology’s role in shaping local and global male. Men are viewed as having a natural confi gurations of power, forms of identity, affi nity with technology, whereas women and ways of living. Although expressed supposedly fear or dislike it. Men actively in different terms, this debate shadows engage with machines, making, using, tin- current anthropological concerns with kering with, and loving them. Women may the transformative role and destabilizing GENDER AND TECHNOLOGY | 371 potential of technology in emergent con- unfortunately space precludes discussing fi gurations of oikos (what are the forms of them here (see Freeman 2001, Ortiz 2002, human community?) and anthropos (what Mills 2003). Rather, to highlight the ideolog- is a human being?) (Collier & Ong 2005). ical and methodological contrasts between Yet curiously the two debates are not in di- social and cultural analyses of technology alogue but remain largely unconnected. and the implications for gender analysis, I Theoretical debates around the gender- discuss the treatment of technology in two and- technology pair principally engage leading theoretical fi elds in the cultural feminist sociologists and historians work- anthropology of modernity and globaliza- ing in critical technology studies. Nordic tion: the anthropology of technoscience, social anthropologists and one or two rep- and material culture studies. I conclude by resentatives of the Anglophone and French asking what forms of engagement might be school of the anthropology of technology envisaged between the fi elds. also contribute to the debates. These scholars argue with each other, collaborate, and FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY contribute to the same collections. FTS STUDIES: THE COPRODUCTION OF scholars draw on feminist philosophers of TECHNOLOGY AND GENDER science and technology such as Harding (1986) and Haraway (1991), and gender Feminist technology studies has devel- theorists such as Butler (1993), who are oped in dialogue with the history and so- also regular sources of theoretical inspira- ciology of technology, disciplines in which tion to anthropologists. Yet the absence of feminist critiques have played a central overlap between FTS and cultural anthro- part in overturning grand narratives and pology is striking. The latter is conspicuous developing new analytical models (Ler- by its absence from FTS state-of- the- fi eld man et al. 1997, Faulkner 2001, Wajcman essays (Lerman et al. 1997, Wajcman 2002, 2004). Feminist sociologists and histori- Lohan & Faulkner 2004) and important ans based in the Netherlands, the United FTS anthologies (MacKenzie & Wajcman Kingdom, and Australia, and a network of 1999, Lerman et al. 2003). Conversely, most Norwegian scholars that includes social cultural anthropologists grappling with anthropologists, have played a prominent fl ows and subjectivities in the contempo- role in developing the fi eld. rary world, even when they put “technol- Arguing that in the modern world an ogy” at the heart of their research, ignore effective engagement with technology is FTS scholarship and defi ne, delineate, and essential to feminist praxis, FTS strives to articulate their key questions and objects develop the theoretical and methodological of inquiry in subtly different terms. tools to analyze technology and gender si- This essay begins by looking at FTS, its multaneously in equal depth (Lohan 2000, origins and goals, and the concepts and Faulkner 2001). Unlike much other feminist methods it has developed for relating gen- research on technology, which tends to treat der and technology. I then turn to the an- technological artifacts as ready-mades, FTS thropology of technology, which does looks to the production of technology as a not highlight gender to the same degree point of political leverage. but nevertheless offers useful concep- One infl uential narrative of modernity, a tual frameworks and methods for explor- “standard view” (Pfaffenberger 1992) still ing gender regimes. Gender-technology in common currency today, designates sci- relations also feature in the anthropol- ence as the purest and most powerful form ogy of work, labor, and development, but of knowledge, the driving force of 372 | FRANCESCA BRAY

modernity; technology is essentially the rather than freeing women from domestic application of science to practical prob- drudgery. Through interrogating concepts lems. Technology studies long ago rejected such as technological effi ciency and signif- this model, insisting that technology must icance (Stanley 1993), FTS has broadened be studied in its own right as a distinctive the scope of technology studies to include practice; in the 1980s science studies also such assemblages as the brassiere, the came to acknowledge the critical role of closet, and the white collar (McGaw 1996). technology and its epistemologies in shap- Feminist studies of the engineering profes- ing the production of scientifi c knowledge. sion charted the institutional, social, and Despite exploring the political, cultural, cultural barriers against women (Arnold & and even cosmological dimensions of tech- Faulkner 1985, Cockburn 1985, Bucciarelli nical projects, technology studies long re- 1994). The FTS agenda was both intellec- mained gender-blind, focusing on modern tual and political: While undermining gen- industrial and military technologies and re- der stereotypes and masculinist accounts fl ecting the social realities of the engineer- of modernity, the ultimate goal of feminist ing and business worlds in foregrounding technology studies was, and remains, the Man the Machine-Maker (Staudenmaier translation of scholarship into feminist 1985). praxis (Faulkner 2001, Wajcman 2004). FTS In the 1970s radical feminists and follows the technology studies agenda in ecofeminists initiated a critique of the in- studying technology as a distinctive do- herently patriarchal nature of technol- main, but like feminist science studies ogy, and of technoscience more generally. (Harding 1986) it interrogates its gendering Here the perils of essentialization surfaced: at every level (Cockburn & Ormrod 1993). Some feminists condemned all technology In the late 1980s constructivist ap- as intrinsically oppressive of women; oth- proaches emerged in technology studies ers perpetuated stereotypes of women as that shifted theoretical and empirical at- inherently nurturing. Socialist feminists tention from engineers’ decisions to the generally tried to be more contextual in complex social negotiations and contes- their work, pushing Marxist analysis be- tations, the heterogeneity of expertise, of yond class to ask why and how modern interest groups, and of material or institu- Western technology had become a male tional networks involved in technological domain; to address the gendering impact innovation and in the stabilization or rede- of modern divisions of labor and of the assigning of artifacts (Bijker et al. 1987). The signation of women to the domestic sphere; concept of “sociotechnical systems” re- to expand the spectrum of signifi cant tech- fl ected the principle that the social and the nologies to include refrigerators as well as technological are inseparable, a “seamless space probes and suspension bridges; and web” (Hughes 1986). Marxist scholars un- to explore the reproductive and ethical as masked the politics embodied or encoded well as the productive effects of labor orga- in the design of technological artifacts nization or of technological design (Oakley (Winner 1986, Feenberg 1999). Actor net- 1974, Cockburn 1983, Corea et al. 1985, work theorists proposed treating artifacts Kramarae et al. 1988, Wajcman 1991). Cow- as having agency: These nonhuman actors an’s landmark study of household tech- may resist enrollment into our technolog- nologies (1983) undermined the common ical projects; furthermore we may dele- belief that technology makes our lives gate to nonhuman actors moral as well as easier, showing how mechanization served material roles, inscripted into their design to raise cultural standards of cleanliness (Akrich 1992, Latour 1992). GENDER AND TECHNOLOGY | 373

A core interest of constructivist studies studies consumers are users (or refusers), of technology is how artifacts (mass- engaging actively—sometimes positively, produced bicycles, electrical supply sys- sometimes negatively— with the physical tems) come to be as they are (Hughes 1983, as well as the symbolic dimensions of the Pinch & Bijker 1987). This approach initi- artifact (Oudshoorn & Pinch 2003). New ally tended to keep the focus of analy- technologies are often threatening and un- sis upstream, looking at the processes of familiar. To be incorporated into our lives conceptualization and the marshalling of they must be successfully “domesticated” resources that go into design, production, (Sørensen & Berg 1991, Silverstone & and marketing. As feminist critics noted, in Hirsch 1992, Lie & Sørensen 1996). At one modern industrial societies an upstream level we learn to adapt to the technologies, focus may exclude women. However, the acquiring and communicating technical artifact itself, or its representation through skills and developing uses and meanings— instruction manuals, advertisements, mar- including gendered subjectivities— within keting, or the media, can often be shown “communities of consumer organizations to incorporate “confi gurations of the user,” in the postwar incorporation of American- including “gender scripts,” for instance, style kitchens into European homes, con- shaver models that inscript male desires to sumption styles, and social values— and tinker versus female preferences for sim- also into safety regulations, systems of plicity (van Oost 2003) or cars marketed energy supply, and brand rankings. Other to men as powerful, to women as reliable studies compare patient activism around (Hubak 1996). cancer testing in the United States and the FTS scholar Cowan fi rst brought atten- United Kingdom (Parthasarathy 2003) or tion to the importance of the consumer in the impact on regulatory policy of global determining the success or failure of tech- practice” (Wenger 1998, Mellström 2004, nologies. She defi ned the “consumption Paechter 2006). Equally important is the junction” as “the place and time at which feedback upstream of intended and un- the consumer makes choices between intended uses. So-called “user-centered competing technologies” (1987, p. 263). design” is now routine in many industries Once consumers (or rather users), like (Oudshoorn et al. 2004), and the choices producers, were treated as rational actors and subjectivities of nonusers are becom- embedded in complex sociotechnical and ing just as important to industry (and to cultural systems, it became easier to ex- social scientists) as those of users (Kline plain their decisions to adopt or to refuse 2003, Wyatt 2003). a technology, as well as the degrees of “in- In the introduction to the second edi- terpretive fl exibility” to which they might tion of their infl uential collection on the subject it (Parr 1999, Lægran 2003a). social shaping of technology, Mackenzie & This shift of attention downstream, to Wajcman urge researchers to continue to consumers, mirrored a broader trend in examine “the specifi c ways in which this social and cultural analysis toward study- shaping takes place . . . [for] if the idea of ing consumption as the principle site for the social shaping of technology has in- the production of meaning and the re- tellectual or political merit, this lies in the production of power relations in modern details” (1999, p. xvi). But how might case societies. In technology studies, however, studies best be connected to cast light the role of consumer is more complex, on broader political confi gurations? FTS interesting, and powerful than is usually does not share the current obsession of the case in cultural studies. In technology anglophone anthropology with theorizing 374 | FRANCESCA BRAY

globalization. Rather, it proposes the their Toys? (2001) examines “manhood in concept of integration as an approach to the workplace,” “learning to be men” and processes of interpenetration and pat- “manhood at play.” Faulkner and her col- terns of homogenization or heterogeneity leagues explore different ways in which within a community, nation, region, or men and women talk about their technical global network. On one level, technologi- aptitude, setting these self-representations cal integration hinges on the effective in- against actual practice (Faulkner 2000, terconnection of technical hardware and Kleif & Faulkner 2003). Mellström (2003) expertise; on another level, it is a political, has studied the relation between tech- social, and cultural process (Arnold 2005, nologically confi gured masculinities and Misa & Schot 2005). Although “users” re- state ideologies of modernity in Malaysia; main a key focus in FTS, one recent inte- how the embodied “learned dispositions” grative approach, the “mediation junction” of mechanics are fostered and transmuted (Oldenziel et al. 2005), locates stakeholder from father to son (2002); and the uses of interactions, coalitions, and contestations leisure artifacts such as motor-bikes in within overarching contexts of regulation male bonding in Sweden and Malaysia or policy, and of state, market, and civil (2004). Although the equation between society (see also Oudshoorn & Pinch 2003, masculinity and technology in Western pp. 101–90). Oldenziel et al. highlight the societies is durable, there are often huge importance coalitions supporting or con- mismatches between image and practice testing genetically modifi ed crops (Bray so that fractured and contradictory con- 2003). structions of masculinity often coexist Another prominent concern in current (Faulkner 2000). Meanwhile research on FTS is the exploration of femininities and non-Western societies challenges these masculinities, their performance through associations. Lagesen’s research in Malay- technology, and issues of practice, skill, sia, for example, shows that young women and embodiment, including emotions, enter the profession of software engineer- pleasure, sexuality, and eroticism (Law ing in roughly equal numbers to men and 1998, Law & Singleton 2000). Together believe that their different practices of with Butler’s analysis of gender as perfor- problem-solving are equally conducive to mance, Connell’s (1995) concept of “hege- excellence (Lagesen 2005). monic masculinity,” “the confi guration of FTS scholars use the term coproduc- gender practice which embodies the cur- tion to designate the dialectical shaping rently accepted answer to the problem of of gender and technology. The concept is the legitimacy of patriarchy” (p. 77), serves intended to highlight the performative, FTS scholars as a tool to explore how par- processual character of both gender and ticular gendered identities are attributed, technology and to avoid the analytical achieved, and performed and their place and political pitfalls of essentializing ei- within broader confi gurations of power. ther (Grint & Gill 1995, Berg 1997, Faulk- Wajcman has noted a distinction be- ner 2001). In modern societies gender is tween two expressive and constitutive constitutive of what is recognized as tech- forms of masculinity, both connected to nology, determining whether skills are cat- the mastery of technology. One is based egorized as important or trivial (Bowker & on toughness and practical skills (e.g., Star 1999). An electric iron is not technol- the mechanic), the other on intellectual ogy when a woman is pressing clothes, but acuity (e.g., the software designer) (Wajc- it becomes technology when her husband man 1991). Horowitz’s collection Boys and mends it. A woman engineer who tests GENDER AND TECHNOLOGY | 375 microwave ovens is told by her male col- women to become engineers or to reshape leagues that her job is really just cooking state or industry policies of training and (Cockburn & Ormrod 1993). In the 1970s employment (Kvande 1999, Gansmo 2003). computers were thought of as “information technologies” and coded male; it was ANTHROPOLOGY OF TECHNOLOGY, widely assumed that women would have ANTHROPOLOGY OF TECHNIQUES problems with them. By the 1990s computers had also become “communication Within the American tradition of cultural technologies”; now it was presumed that anthropology, technology has generally women would engage with them enthusi- been viewed “as a context for, rather than astically. “New technologies spur processes a central part of, culture” (Wilson & Peter- of boundary work and renegotiations of son 2002, p. 450). Pfaffenberger (1992) lays what is to be considered masculine and out a melancholy history of neglect, dating feminine” (Lie 2003a, p. 21; Lohan 2001). back to Malinowski’s declaration that the In terms of praxis, the overarching goal study of technology alone was scientifi - of FTS is to analyze how technology is im- cally sterile (1935, p. 460) and to Kroeber & plicated in gender inequalities to work Kluckhorn (1952, p. 65), who rejected the toward more democratic forms of technol- term material culture on the grounds that ogy. Noting the relatively limited potential the culture was the idea behind the artifact. of consumer intervention for democratiz- Technology continued to be studied by ar- ing technologies from the outside in, some chaeologists, cultural ecologists [includ- FTS scholars suggest that rather than con- ing Geertz at an early point of his career tinuing to focus predominantly on con- (1963)], and development anthropologists; sumption, identity, and representation, feminist archaeologists have been partic- FTS should return to production and work, ularly productive in rethinking gender- or to the gendering of design processes technology relations (Gero & Conkey 1991, and the gender subjectivities of designers, Wright 1996). Yet within mainstream cul- as research sites (Oudshoorn et al. 2004, tural anthropology in the United States, Wajcman 2004). An important paper by technology was not an object of analysis Suchman (1999), based on an anthropo- in its own right, and no recognized fi eld logical consultancy for technology design of anthropology of technology emerged in a large industrial enterprise, draws on (Pfaffenberger 1992, Suchman 2001). This Haraway and on labor theory to propose antimaterialist aversion was less marked new modes of feminist objectivity, rooted in British social anthropology, but despite in densely structured and dynamic land- some distinguished studies and original scapes of working relations that destabi- theoretical claims (Goody 1971, 1986; Silli- lize the boundaries between producer and toe 1988; Gell 1992; Ingold 2000), there too user. Documenting the masculinist ideolo- anthropological interest in technology as a gies of the engineering world and exposing theorizable category has remained muted. prevalent stereotypes about women and In 1992 Pfaffenberger published an im- technology may both contribute to democ- passioned call to anthropologists to take ratizing technology from the inside out. technology seriously. Anthropology was Eventually they might infl ect prevailing uniquely qualifi ed, he argued, to answer ideologies of technology. More modestly, important questions about technology as given that gender systems are more diffi - a universal human activity. He proposed cult to change than are material technolo- translating the concept of “sociotechni- gies, they suggest ways to encourage more cal systems,” borrowed from technology 376 | FRANCESCA BRAY

studies, into a template for anthropolog- ethnographically based design interven- ical study, laying a basis for comparative tions. Although aspect ( c ), rooted fi rmly analysis of the place of technologies in in aspects (a ) and (b ), would be the goal the generation of meaning, in precapital- of feminist technology studies, anthropo- ist as well as capitalist societies. In 2001 logical studies of technologies are usually Pfaffenberger once again lamented “the limited to aspect ( b ). In the absence of sus- enormous cost of Anglo- American anthro- tained debate around technology as a dis- pologists’ penchant to ignore technologi- tinctive category of material activity, rather cal activities” (p. 84). His paper appears in than just another source of metaphors, it a wideranging collection of perceptive and is not surprising that most anthropologists original essays on technology by archae- prefer just to look at the dimensions that ologists and anthropologists. But theoret- are most obviously cultural productions. As ically and methodologically they sprawl: a Axel (2006) notes, anthropologists writing noble attempt by the editor to extract a co- on emergent technologies, for example, herent agenda for an anthropology of tech- information and communication technol- nology reads like a list, not a program, and ogies (Hakken 1993, Escobar 1994, Wilson & gender is not mentioned (Schiffer 2001b). Peterson 2002), invariably claim that an- Among the few American anthropolo- thropology as a discipline is particularly gists to take technology seriously as tech- well suited to charting their emergence. Yet nology are Suchman and Downey. Both these are accounts not of technology per se work among engineers, focusing on the but of specifi c technologies, and it is not design and production of technologies, the clear that they offer anything distinctive business contexts in which they are devel- from analyses produced in other branches oped, and the material incorporation of of cultural studies. values and worldviews into artifacts such as Over decades of intensive debates in the bridges or CAD/CAM technology (Downey pages of Techniques et culture and other 1992, 1998; Suchman 2001). In an essay ad- francophone journals, the French school vocating “cyborg anthropology,” Downey et of anthropology of techniques, which also al. (1995) propose close anthropological at- includes archaeologists, economists, en- tention not only to representations or con- gineers, historians, and sociologists, has sumption of technology, but to the cultures developed specifi c theoretical and meth- of the technical communities that produce odological repertories for the compara- technologies and to the specifi c material ef- tive study of technologies. The convention fects of technology on perception, commu- of defi ning technique to include bodily nication, and identity. The authors propose practices (techniques du corps ) as well as cyborg anthropology as an action-oriented the use of tools dates back to Mauss, who agenda, aligned with FTS, that would en- saw techniques du corps as distinctive cul- gage the general public and unmask the tural practices, and to Leroi- Gourhan, who material as well as cultural dimensions of treated tool and anatomy as inseparable in domination by race, class, and gender. his analysis of the logic of technical action. From her uncharacteristic perspec- The French approach begins with detailed tive as an anthropologist working with attention to “operational sequences” or industry, Suchman (2001) distinguishes chaînes opératoires, “the series of opera- three aspects of research on contempo- tions involved in any transformation of rary technology: ( a ) ethnographic stud- matter (including our own body) by human ies of sites of technology production; (b ) beings” (Lemonnier 1992, p. 25). From sys- studies of technologies- in- use; and (c ) tematic observation of the operational GENDER AND TECHNOLOGY | 377 sequences of production or use, analysis or sustained a theme as in FTS, the meth- proceeds to what Lemonnier calls the “so- ods lend themselves to fi nely textured cial representation of technologies”: This studies of gendered identity, some focused denotes not only the kinds of meaning that on individual technologies or bodily prac- usually attract the attention of cultural an- tices (Desrosiers 1997, Darbon et al. 2002, thropologists, but also the ideas governing Pardo 2004), others on gendered reper- the construction and use of tools and ar- tories of technical skills (Mahias 2002). tifacts, an ethnoscience of material nature Although Latour’s study of Aramis (1996) and action. has been criticized for gender blindness Skills (savoir- faire ), documented through (Wajcman 2004), it offers rich materials operational sequences, are a key focus in for the study of masculinities. In a study of which material, mental, social, and cultural imperial China, Bray (1997) documents the resources converge (d’Onofrio & Joulian historical dynamics of a “gynotechnics,” 2006). The analysis of technological choices mutually shaping technologies of dwell- or styles goes beyond, but must account for, ing, production, and reproduction central the relevant material affordances or con- to hegemonic and pragmatic gender iden- straints and systems of technical skill and tities. Refi ning the concept of techniques understanding (Lemonnier 1993). The core du corps, Ingold (2000) proposes treating observational and analytical methods may the skills of craft and of art under the same be deployed within a variety of overarch- heading and highlights their ontogenetic ing frameworks, including actor network nature. Far from being added onto a pre- theory (Latour 1993), modes of production formed body, skills grow with the body: (Guille-Escuret 2003), or anthropology of “[T]hey are fully part and parcel of the ritual (Lemonnier 2004). The approach human organism, of its neurology, muscu- spans high tech, low tech, and no tech, from lature, even anatomy, and so are as much the design of high- speed urban transpor- biological as cultural” (p. 360). This aptation systems (Latour 1996), through the proach suggests bridges to recent FTS re- rocky negotiations of technology transfer searches, inspired by Butler (1993), on the (Akrich 1993), to gender differences in In- “achievement” of gender (Lie 2003a). dian pottery making (Mahias 1993) or the place of posture in Chinese femininities ANTHROPOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY (Flitsch 2004). Similar to the American anthropologists Classic anthropological monographs, in- of technology, the French school views cluding Malinowski’s, are rich in materials technology as a universal human activity on technical activities and their meanings and emphasizes the need to build strong (Malinowski 1935, Pfaffenberger 2001). Ex- analytical and empirical bridges between amining the articulations of work, produc- upstream and downstream, artifact pro- tion, and skills with exchange, ritual, kinship duction and use. Its conceptual frame- dynamics, and social differentiation, they works and methods are designed to apply address, as does FTS but implicitly, socio- equally to old or new technologies. Schol- technical systems, “seamless webs” of ma- ars such as Mahias (2002) have deployed terial, social, and symbolic practices and them brilliantly to illuminate the inter- relations. Although not expressed in these penetration of “traditional” and indus- terms, classic anthropology contributed trial, local and “global” technologies and some fi ne precursors to the study of tech- technological cultures. Although gender- nology and gender, for instance in studies technology relations are not as prominent 378 | FRANCESCA BRAY

of sexual divisions of labor (e.g., Richards contributing to new cultural worlds such as 1939, Hugh-Jones 1979). “cyberculture” or “techno-nature” (Escobar Once the concept of gender became a 1994, 1999). specifi c analytical focus, feminist schol- In destabilizing boundaries between the ars focused on technical practices, old human and the natural or between human and new, to retheorize core anthropolog- and machine, promoting new, troubling rela- ical concepts radically, including kinship tions of intimacy, or facilitating new forms (Strathern 1992), exchange (Weiner 1992), of governmentality, emergent technologies or space (Moore 1986). As the anthropol- such as in-vitro fertilization, transnational ogy of gender fused with the anthropology organ transplants, stem- cell research, or of modernity and of globalization, atten- data-banks raise new questions of “how to tion turned to the role of technoscience live” (Collier & Lakoff 2005). New technol- in reshaping gender regimes. And with ogies may be conceptualized as prosthe- the broader cultural turn emphasizing the ses, elements of cyborg fusions between importance of consumption as the consti- human and machine that extend our ca- tutive site of subjectivities and power, the pacities and permit enhanced modes of new fi eld of material culture studies con- being and relating; new forms of interpen- trived a radical new antiessentialist per- etration of zones of space and time; and spective on technologies. new possibilities for action at a distance, for connection, coalition, or control (Axel 2006, Rafael 2003, Wright 2001). They may Anthropology of Technoscience fi gure as tools for both research and ac- Technology and such derived concepts as cumulation, concentrating capital or bio- “technoscapes” or “techno- nature” fi gure capital in certain sites while providing the prominently in recent anthropological material procedures and equipment for theories of the place of technoscience in the domestication of new life forms such modernity and/or globalization. Key con- as stem cells (Franklin 2005). The term cerns of anthropological studies of tech- global assemblages has been proposed to noscience, as of FTS, are the formation of address the spatial and political dynamics the modern subject and the distribution of of these restless fl ows and concentrations power through emerging global networks. of material and symbolic resources (Ong & However, Escobar (1994) explicitly distin- Collier 2005). guishes the agenda of the anthropology of Most work within the anthropology of technoscience from that of the sociology technoscience that explicitly attends to of technology: “For anthropologists, ingender-technology relations addresses bio- quiry into the nature of modernity as the power and its new subjects: the new mas- background for current understanding and culinities or femininities achieved through practice of technology is of paramount im- remakings and resexings of the body; or portance. In this anthropology is closer to through cross-class, transnational, or in- the philosophy than to the new sociology ter ethnic reconfi gurations of kinship and of technology” (p. 213). The culturalist ap- reproduction (Kaufman & Morgan 2005). proach to technoscience, like the “standard Analysis focuses on the potentialities and view,” is interested fi rst and foremost in sci- interpellations inherent in the new science ence, powerful knowledge instrumental- and its representations; on users as “ethi- ized through technology. Technologies are cal pioneers”; on interactions between ex- of anthropological interest as phenomena perts and technicians and the “lay” users emerging from particular cultural contexts, (or refusers) of biomedical services; and GENDER AND TECHNOLOGY | 379 on “lay” appropriations or contestations communications technologies offer irre- of new disciplinary regimes (Rapp 1998, sistible test cases. Greenhalgh 2005). However the techno- MSC studies of the Internet in Trinidad logical apparatus itself is usually left as a (Miller & Slater 2000) or of cell-phones in black box. Despite Downey’s cyborg mani- Jamaica (Horst & Miller 2005) generate festo, there are few anthropological studies richly textured analyses of how technology of the material production or design of the use intertwines with sociality, including technologies of biopower, cybercultures, the expression and affi rmation of gendered or techno- natures. Rabinow’s illuminating identities and forms of intimacy and relat- biographies of technology, studying the edness. They also document the gratifying coproduction of technological apparatus, extension of Jamaican or Trinnie styles technocracy, research agendas, and scien- of communication across transnational tifi c imaginaries, are rare anthropological spaces, transforming the experiences of analyses of the power inherent in the nuts migration or diaspora. The point is con- and bolts of technology (Rabinow 1996, vincingly made that Caribbean Internet Rabinow & Dan-Cohen 2005). Traweek’s users are not reacting to globalization but classic upstream study of the mechanical creating it. By insisting that the new tech- foundations of high-energy physics (1988), nologies facilitate but do not determine which explicitly explores the gendering of these cultural extensions, these studies re- technocratic production and practice, is fl ect the MCS position on “materiality.” another exemplary rarity. MCS proposes the concept of materiality to transcend the object- subject divide, viewed as an enduring weakness of Material Culture Studies Western thought. One might have thought The anthropology of technoscience en- this would open up very interesting pos- gages with heroic technologies, such as sibilities for theorizing technology, skills, DNA sequencing or organ transplantation, and subjectivity. However, in repudiating that promise to transform what it means to reifi cation of the object, MCS specifi cally be human. Material culture studies (MCS) dismisses technology as an analytical cat- currently takes up the challenge of decod- egory. Although Miller develops methods ing the mundane technologies of everyday for charting the extension of technology life such as kitchen equipment or cars, an- use that correspond to the specifi c ways alyzing the role of material artifacts in pro- in which the Internet or cell- phones work, ducing subjectivities and social relations. he insists that the primary interest is how As a counterbalance to classical Marxist they are brought into being as cultural ar- analyses that treated work and produc- tifacts. It is correct, as Miller asserts, that tion as the loci where identity and mean- the Internet is in constant fl ux, its features ing were produced, the cultural Marxism continually reworked by its users. Yet even of MSC prioritizes meaning and identity the Internet involves a framework of tech- production through the social processes nical design, costing, and regulation (local of consumption (Miller 1995). One the- or transnational) that channels and con- oretical concern of MCS is to critique the strains the forms of communication and reifi cation of globalization by demonstrat- sociality it allows (Wilson & Peterson 2002, ing that the “global” is always manifested Wilk 2005). Miller’s studies of communica- and experienced as a “local” phenome- tions technologies are actually rich in detail non. Widely viewed as global in nature, yet on the political-economic context within intrinsically cultural in their use, the new which they were launched and adopted, 380 | FRANCESCA BRAY

and on user skills, technical as well as so- universal human activity, offers not only cial. Generally speaking, however, MCS is a rich spectrum of non-Western and pre- open to criticism for excessive culturalism: modern case studies, but also analytical “while the demolition of the essentialized frameworks for reintepreting historical object was an urgent necessity, the decla- and ethnographic documents from FTS ration of objects’ and images’ emptiness perspectives. has become a proof for an anthropology In its attention to the materialities of ev- committed to the victory of the cultural eryday life, the French school of anthropol- over the material, and of the discursive ogy of technology shares common ground over the fi gural” (Pinney 2002, p. 259). with MCS, but fundamental disagreement about whether technology constitutes an analytical category is a serious barrier to FRUITFUL EXCHANGES? dialogue. It is not totally insurmountable, The interdisciplinary fi eld of feminist however. Dant (2005) argues for the value studies of technology has done more than of incorporating more attention to tech- any other social science to build a vibrant nical skills and practices into MCS analy- and coherent school of gender and tech- sis; some contributors to Material Culture nology studies. FTS has drawn heavily Studies focus on technological goods as on ideas and methods developed within technologies (Shove & Southerton 2000); anthropology: the integrity of social ac- and French practitioners of MCS have suction and culture; the “micro-macro” link- cessfully borrowed from the anthropol- age of everyday skills and techniques and ogy of techniques, integrating analysis of political-economic activities; and detailed production and skills into their studies of empirical observation and broad-ranging consumer culture (Warnier 1999, Faure- comparative analysis. Could we now en- Rouesnel 2001). Were anglophone MCS to visage more explicit and sustained forms tread a similar path it might have to aban- of engagement among different branches don some ambitious idealist claims about of anthropology and FTS, to strengthen materiality. Yet valuable new insights into our understanding of gender-technology the coproduction of technology and gen- relations in a rapidly changing world? der might result if the strengths of MCS in Philosophically, FTS and the anthropology charting the coproduction of global and of technology share a strong materialism in local culture were extended to acknowl- their approach to culture- technology dialec- edge technology. This would also provide tics. Exchange between the fi elds the re fore a neat way for MCS to incorporate global presents few epistemological problems. FTS fl ows of fi nancial, corporate, and regula- lacks research on gendered dimensions of tory power more fully into their analyses. technical skills (Faulkner 2001), and here The anthropology of technoscience at- methods developed by the French school tends closely to these global fl ows of power, for documenting operating sequences and and despite signifi cant philosophical dif- savoir- faire might prove helpful. In conferences with FTS, there is a strong case sidering the full spectrum of gender sub- to be made for closer dialogue between jectivities achieved or imposed through the fi elds. Concepts such as sociotechni- technology in different contexts, another cal systems, stabilization, and integration obvious lack in FTS at present is studies allow FTS to explore how technologies of non- Western societies, past as well and the associated politics of gender travel as present. The anthropology of tech- across space and time and how they con- nology, by theorizing technology as a solidate into systems that resist change. GENDER AND TECHNOLOGY | 381

These approaches, along with FTS meth- Bray F. 2003. Genetically modifi ed foods: shared risk ods for studying the design and production and global action. In Revising Risk: Health In- of technologies, could enhance techno- equalities and Shifting Perceptions of Danger and Blame, ed. BH Harthorn, L Oaks, pp. 185– 207. science studies of biopower and of global Westport, CT: Praeger assemblages. Attention to the gendering Bucciarelli LL. 1994. Designing Engineers. Cambridge, of technical design would be particularly MA: MIT Press valuable in advancing understanding of Butler J. 1993. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive biopower. Conversely, in focusing so closely Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge Cockburn C. 1983. Brothers: Male Dominance and on the gender-technology nexus itself FTS Technological Change. London: Pluto sometimes neglects deeper-lying ideogical Cockburn C. 1985. Machinery of Dominance: Women, dimensions within which any regime of Men and Technical Know- How. London: Pluto truth concerning gender and technology Cockburn C, Ormrod S. 1993. Gender and Technology must ultimately be understood, and which in the Making. London/Thousand Oaks: Sage Collier SJ, Lakoff A. 2005. On regimes of living. See the anthropology of technoscience takes as Ong & Collier 2005, pp. 22– 39 its object, namely emergent confi gurations Collier SJ, Ong A. 2005. Global assemblages, anthropo- of oikos and anthropos. logical problems. See Ong & Collier 2005, pp. 3– 31 Connell RW. 1995. Masculinities. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press Corea G, Klein D, Hanmer J, Holmes HB, Hoskins B, et DISCLOSURE STATEMENT al. 1985. Manmade Women: How New Reproductive The author is not aware of any biases that Technologies Affect Women. London: Hutchinson Cowan RS. 1983. More Work for Mother: The Ironies might be perceived as affecting the objec- of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to tivity of this review. the Microwave. New York: Basic Books Cowan RS. 1987. The consumption junction: a proposal for research strategies in the sociology of LITERATURE CITED technology. See Bijker et al. 1987, pp. 261– 80 Dant T. 2005. Materiality and Sociality. Maidenhead, Akrich M. 1992. The description of technical objects. UK: Open Univ. Press See Bijker & Law 1992, pp. 205– 24 Darbon S, ed. 2002. Pour une anthropologie des pra- Akrich M. 1993. A gazogene in Costa Rica: an exper- tiques sportives. Propriétés formelles et rapport iment in techno-sociology. See Lemonnier 1993, au corps dans le rugby a XV. Tech. et Cult. 39:1– 27 pp. 289– 337 Desrosiers S. 1997. Textes techniques, savoir-faire et Arnold D. 2005. Europe, technology, and colonialism messages code´ s dans les textiles des Andes. Tech. in the twentieth century. Hist. Technol. 21:85– 106 et Cult. 29:155– 73 Arnold E, Faulkner W. 1985. Smothered by invention: d’Onofrio S, Joulian F. 2006. Dire le savoir-faire: gestes, the masculinity of technology. In Smothered by In- techniques et objets. Cah. Anthropol. Soc. 1:9– 12 vention: Technology in Women’s Lives, ed. W Faulk- Downey GL. 1992. CAD/CAM saves the nation: to- ner, E Arnold, pp. 18– 50. London: Pluto ward an anthropology of technology. Knowl. Soc: Axel BK. 2006. Anthropology and the new technolo- Anthropol. Sci. Technol. 9:143– 68 gies of communication. Cult. Anthropol. 21:354– 84 Downey GL. 1998. The machine in Me: An Anthropol- Berg AJ. 1997. Digital Feminism. Trondheim: Cent. ogist Sits among Computer Engineers. New York: Technol. Soc., Nor. Univ. Sci. Technol. Routledge Bijker W, Hughes TP, Pinch T, eds. 1987. The Social Downey GL, Dumit J, Williams S. 1995. Cyborg an- Construction of Technological Systems. Cam- thropology. Cult. Anthropol. 10:264– 69 bridge, MA: MIT Press Escobar A. 1994. Welcome to Cyberia: notes on the Bijker W, Law J, eds. 1992. Shaping Technology/Build- anthropology of cyberculture. Curr. Anthropol. ing Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 35:211– 31 Bowker GC, Star SL. 1999. Sorting Things Out: Clas- Escobar A. 1999. After nature: steps to an antiessen- sifi cation and its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: tialist political ecology. Curr. Anthropol. 40:1– 30 MIT Press Faulkner W. 2000. The power and the pleasure? A re- Bray F. 1997. Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power search agenda for “making gender stick” to engi- in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press neers. Sci. Technol. Hum. Val. 25:87– 119 382 | FRANCESCA BRAY

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CHAPTER 23

Queering Feminist Technology Studies Catharina Landström

This paper examines the ways in which adopt new ways of theorizing gender. One heteronormativity infl uences feminist re- reason for this shortcoming is the habitual search on gender and technology. It draws reproduction of heteronormativity, which attention to the ways in which heteronor- prevents a constructivist approach to gen- mativity shapes analyses and concepts in dered subjectivity. Instead the gendered empirical investigations, which is an issue subject functions as the determining fac- in need of more critical debate (cf. Susan tor in the gender/technology relationship, Driver (2005) and Victoria Hesford (2005) ). which counteracts the explicit objective of The discussion also addresses the divide understanding coproduction. between a theoretical discourse that fully The following discussion criticizes the accepts ‘the end of the binary of femininity ways in which heteronormativity is repro- and masculinity’, and empirical research duced in ethnographic case studies and that ‘relapse[s] into the old pattern’ (Van points to alternative feminist conceptual- Lenning, 2004: 26) within feminist tech- izations of the gendered subject. It is sug- nology studies. gested that perspectives drawing on queer The analysis focuses a particular re- theory can contribute to a rethinking of search trajectory that will be called ‘fem- gender in this strain of feminist technology inist constructivist technology studies’, studies. The examination begins with a pre- which is committed to investigating the sentation of feminist constructivist tech- ‘coproduction’ of gender and technology nology studies, illustrated with examples of (Faulkner, 2001). This sub- fi eld within the how heteronormativity shapes the repre- wider area of feminist technology studies sentations of women, men and technology. relies on ethnographic methods to anal- This is followed by a discussion of other, yse gender in relation to the construction more open-ended feminist approaches and use of technology. This sub- fi eld re- to gendered subjectivity in relationships sists technological determinism but tends with technology. Finally, the paper turns to ‘black-box’ gender identity as the major to feminist elaborations of queer theory, in cause in the gendering of technology, which an argument for the benefi ts of shifting the leads to analyses representing gender as theoretical framework, in order to facilitate stable and technology as malleable. This the objective of analysing the coproduction can be understood as a result of a failure to of gender and technology. 386 | CATHARINA LANDSTRÖM

FEMINIST CONSTRUCTIVIST integral part of the social shaping of tech- TECHNOLOGY STUDIES nology’ (2001: 90, emphasis in original). Feminist constructivist technology Feminists have interrogated the relation- studies combine this perspective on tech- ship between gender and technology for at nology with a view of gender as socially least three decades.1 The works subsumed and culturally produced. The research is under the label ‘feminist constructivist guided by ‘the sense that technology and technology studies’ in the present article 2 society are mutually constituting— hence, comprise a sub-fi eld within the area. They the coproduction of gender and technol- investigate the construction of technology’ (Faulkner, 2001: 90). Technology is, in ogy and its users in empirical case stud- this view, created and used in a changing, ies often by way of ethnographic research sociocultural system, and gender, as a fea- among engineers, designers and users of ture of this system, is also shaped by tech- technology. This empirical research is con- nology. This adoption of a constructivist ceptually interesting because it attempts perspective on technology, fused with an to formulate constructivist perspectives understanding of relationships with tech- toward both technology and gender. The nology as impacting on the processes that analyses aim to critically capture the ways shape gender, can be considered a ‘double in which technology is shaped by gender constructivism’.5 To deliver on this prom- and gender is shaped by technology. ise a symmetry in the treatment of gender Wendy Faulkner (2001) outlines the and technology, in relation to each other, agenda of this research to a wider feminist is called for. So far the bulk of research in audience in a way relevant to the present the fi eld has focussed on the gendering of article. She understands its propelling force technology. Results have confi rmed that to be the question of how technology is technology is dominated by men and as- gendered, a question that becomes possi- sociated with masculinity, and that it is ble by adopting a social constructivist per- easier for men to relate positively to tech- spective on technology. nology (Cockburn, 1985; Wajcman, 1991; Constructivist approaches to technology Rommes, 2002). A recent example is Nelly emerged in the fi eld of social studies of tech- Oudshoorn, Els Rommes and Marcelle nology as an explicit rejection of the techno- Stienstra’s (2004) article about the ways in logical determinism dominating previous which software engineering communities social, historical and philosophical analyses.3 construct the user’s position. The authors They argue that technology is always explicitly commit to a constructivist ap- shaped in complex processes that in- proach; they aim to understand the ways in volve social and cultural factors, as well which engineers’ ideas about users inform as material and technical elements. Today the design process. Through ethnographic constructivist perspectives range from research in two comparable software de- applications of social theory, to radical sign projects, both constructing systems re-conceptualizations of subjectivity and intended for public use (DDS and New causation.4 Feminists take social construc- Topia), they discovered that, despite initial tivism as one point of departure, assuming ambitions to produce designs that work for that technology is not socially neutral, but ‘everybody’, both projects ended up using that it embodies social relationships, in- what they term the ‘I-methodology’, i.e. cluding gender, which order the contexts of designers taking themselves as the model creation and use. Faulkner argues that this for the user. The user was expected to be perspective ‘obliges us to view gender as an intrinsically interested in exploring the QUEERING FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY STUDIES | 387 way the computer program worked. The malleable technology. This ‘black-boxing’ of researchers conclude that the process gen- gender undermines the aim to understand erated a user-position that favoured young the coproduction of gender and technology. men with an interest in computers: If gender is already there, as a fi xed element it can only function as a cause in relation to Since the project teams of New Topia and the socially constructed technology. When, DDS consisted mainly of men, and the few as in Oudshoorn, Rommes and Stienstra’s women involved in the design of the DDS article, the gender of the engineers is used largely adopted a masculine design style, to explain the masculinity of the projected the interests and competencies inscribed in and actual users, we end up with a ‘selective the design were predominantly masculine. The fact that DDS and New Topia failed to relativism’ in which ‘some things are seen as attract the audience they intended to reach constructed but not others’ (Gill and Grint, must therefore also be understood in terms 1995: 20). of the gender identity of the designers. (Oud- A double constructivist analysis needs shoorn et al., 2004: 53) to be able to account for the gender of engineers as also being constructed in the The conclusion that the engineers’ gender process of creating technology and pro- identity produced the effects seems strange jecting users. This is something that Oud- when the authors have conceded that shoorn, Rommes and Stienstra hint at in women can ‘adopt a masculine design style’. their observations of female software de- Men’s gender identity becomes a stable fac- signers, who do things in the same way as tor, with the force to determine technology their male colleagues do, but it does not design. The women engineers appear not to infl uence their conclusion. To address this have gender identities of the same strength, they would have to approach gender not since they can adopt the required mascu- as an identity trait that comes from within linity, while the female non-users’ position the individual and determines their rela- is determined by their gender identity. This tionships with others, but as something statement illustrates an analytical asymme- emerging in the processes in which peo- try, which has haunted feminist constructiv- ple and technology are enmeshed. Femi- ist technology studies from the outset. nist theorists have developed a number of More than ten years ago Rosalind Gill ways to think differently about gender, but and Keith Grint (1995) identifi ed several apparently these have not caught hold in points of contention in the meeting be- feminist constructivist technology stud- tween constructivist perspectives on tech- ies. Instead of addressing this head on, as nology and feminism. One was the risk of if scholars in this sub-fi eld had no knowl- ‘black- boxing’ gender as an analytical tool, edge of these approaches, I want to begin which leads to ‘an artifi cial analytic closure’ with a critique of heteronormativity, which (Gill and Grint, 1995: 20). This appears to be I believe presents a major obstacle to the what has happened in the example above adoption of more open notions of gender. and in other studies. Whilst feminist researchers have effectively appropriated and HETERONORMATIVITY IN FEMINIST further developed a constructivist approach CONSTRUCTIVIST TECHNOLOGY to technology in the ten years that have STUDIES passed, their conception of gender seems to have congealed. The gender identities of Heteronormativity, ‘as the view that institu- technology designers and users are treated tionalised heterosexuality constitutes the as stable traits that precede the creation of a standard for legitimate and expected social 388 | CATHARINA LANDSTRÖM

and sexual relations’ (Ingraham, 2002: 76), changes in her own discussion of women, infl uences the way in which gender is rep- men and technology, nor does it seem to resented and discussed in feminist con- have any impact on the fi eld, as is demon- structivist technology studies. Texts in strated in an article by Elin Kvande (1999), this fi eld do not question the defi nition of about the ways in which women graduate gender as a heterosexual coupling of op- engineers in Norway construct femininity. posites, female and male, masculine and Kvande recounts the words of one of her feminine. They represent heterosexuality interviewees: as the model for all relationships between humans and between humans and tech- ‘A female graduate engineer cannot dress in nology. The analyses take the local produc- lace and frills because she won’t be taken se- tion of feminine women and masculine riously’, says one woman working as a grad- men, who relate to each other through uate engineer. Many of these women have relatively clear ideas as to how they can ex- sexuality, as a factual premise. The absence press their femininity. We can also interpret or disapproval of, for example, masculine this to mean that female graduate engineers women or feminine men, who may (or may have to be ‘one of the boys’, or ‘social men’, to not) relate to each other in different ways in be accepted and given career opportunities the studied communities, is not seen as in in organizations. (Kvande, 1999: 305) need of explanation. Heteronormativity is not something that Kvande does not discuss the informant’s feminist constructivist technology stud- designation of femininity as ‘dressing in ies bring to their subject matter. However, lace and frills’, which I will return to later they have, as of yet, not problematized it, on. At this point another issue is in focus— neither in the communities they study, that this analysis implies that femininity nor in their own analyses; this in spite of is something that women have and can knowing that it is present in their empiri- choose to express. cal material and in the wider socio-cultural The construction of women as pos- environment. That heteronormativity in- sessing femininity, opposed to masculin- fl uences social relationships, not just inti- ity that emerges from men, runs through mate personal connections, ought to be a Kvande’s analysis. The main part of her text topic for a critical analysis in research that describes four strategies for ‘expressing’ has as its foundation a belief that tech- femininity in male dominated workplaces. nology is created in social relationships, Kvande names these ‘homeless’, ‘one of the carrying social meanings and express- boys’, ‘compensators’ and ‘challengers’. The ing social norms. Heteronormativity can ‘homeless’, often new in the workplace, ‘ad- be expected to operate in, and infl uence, here to the rules of behaviour’ in order to technological environments. Faulkner is ‘fi t in as much as possible and be accepted’ obviously aware of the link between fem- (1999: 311). The women opting to become ininity, masculinity and heteronormativity ‘one of the boys’ aim to be ‘ “like” their male as she speaks of the two genders as ‘usu- colleagues and to be treated like them’ ally posited ideologically on an attraction while they distance ‘themselves from “the of gendered opposites’ (2001: 88). She also majority” of women’ (1999: 311). These points to ‘heterosexism’ as an ‘under re- two strategies are, according to Kvande, searched theme in the gendering of tech- based on an idea of ‘sameness’ while the nology’ (2001: 88) that ‘may provide at least remaining two accentuate ‘difference’. The a partial answer’ (2001: 88).6 However, this ‘compensators’ actively distance them- insight does not lead to any discernible selves from the culture of the profession QUEERING FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY STUDIES | 389 and withdraw from it ‘in favour of their masculinity is inconceivable, and conduct other tasks, interests and values as mother that could be read in this way is deplored. and family member’ (1999: 312). The ‘chal- This echoes a more widespread practice lengers’ also reject existing norms in the in which ‘female masculinity is generally workplace but take them on, demanding received by hetero- and homo- normative changes that would allow them to achieve culture as a pathological sign of misidenti- their goals of having ‘a career as a gradu- fi cation and maladjustment’ (Halberstam, ate engineer and . . . a family and children’ 1998: 9).7 Kvande’s article reproduces het- (1999: 312). These categories are said to be eronormativity by representing the infor- ‘ideal types’, compiled from interview data, mants’ construction of gender in a way that and they reproduce the interviewees’ con- does not problematize it, but instead estab- struction of heteronormative gender by lishes and amplifi es it as an analytical fact. assuming that femininity and masculinity Another version of heteronormativity in are mutually exclusive and emerge from the fi eld is the assumption that all women female and male bodies respectively. relate to technology in a way that refl ects In Kvande’s analysis there is no possibil- heteronormative femininity. An example ity for women to express something other is Marja Vehviläinen’s (2002) article about than femininity, heteronormatively defi ned a Finnish initiative to promote computer as the opposite of masculinity. The female literacy among women. individuals who adapt to the norms of the Vehviläinen begins with a discussion of workplace and do ‘sameness’ cannot, in gender and technology and commits to a this model, be understood as doing mascu- perspective of ‘gender, agency, and technol- linity. This is strange because if the norms ogy . . . as social constructions . . . shaped of the workplace are understood to defi ne through . . . everyday practices’ (Vehviläinen, a certain type of masculinity as preferred 2002: 276). She presents ethnographies of conduct, the women who try to fi t in and two women’s groups engaged in teaching live these norms ought to be regarded to be computer skills in the late 1990s. The groups doing masculinity (or at least attempting to). were different, with one considerably more It is also obvious that Kvande regards the successful than the other at bringing skills ‘sameness’ strategies as less sound options, and confi dence to the participants. as something forced on to the women but Vehviläinen’s study is a careful empirical not tenable in a longer perspective because investigation, that most certainly captures ‘having children will shatter the illusion the reality of the participants of the two that it is possible to belong to the category groups, and her critique of ‘the liberal view’ “social men” ’ (1999: 324). Femininity is of technology as neutral and the same for thus tied to reproduction. ‘Sameness’ is also everybody is important. She concludes judged to be politically inadequate since it that ‘[I]n order to create voices of their ‘prevent[s] the development of solidarity own, women need to connect technology between themselves and other women, and to their own experiences, which means this inhibits a common insight into the con- struggle and work’ (2002: 289). She also ar- ditions women face in society in general’ gues that diversity among women will only (1999: 323). Hence, women who would fi t become visible in women’s groups that in with the men at the workplace cannot be begin from the experience of the partici- true feminists. In the article Kvande merges pants. In such groups ‘there is room for dif- a claim to apply constructivism with a het- ferences between women’ (2002: 289). This eronormative model of sexual difference. assumes that differences between women In her framework the idea of women doing have no relevance for their relationships 390 | CATHARINA LANDSTRÖM

to technology. In this analysis all women role in the coproduction of gender and relate to technology in the same way, as technology, it appears to be diffi cult for outsiders, because technology is gendered feminist constructivist technology stud- masculine. Vehviläinen, thus, represents ies to make analyses accommodate non- all women as identifying with a femininity heteronormative ways of doing gender that is the opposite of masculinity, which in relation to technology. Heterosexual determines their relationship with tech- women’s relationships with technology are nology. This may be true for women who represented as the way all women relate to identify with a heteronormative femininity technology.9 defi ned in a relationship to masculinity, Technology is understood as mascu- but not necessarily for those who do not, line and women’s relationships with tech- for example, many lesbians. nology are represented as analogous with Research on lesbians and technology heteronormative projections of women’s provides reason to believe that the assump- relationships with men. The unquestioned tion that diversity among women does not assumption that all relationships between pertain to their relationships with technol- women and men are heterosexually struc- ogy is mistaken. In relation to computer tured, and that this precedes and organizes usage Nina Wakeford’s (2002) overview of everybody’s relationships with technology, lesbians online is illustrative. She dates the produces an analytical problem. This confi rst online lesbian discussion list to May struction of gender reaffi rms the link be- 1987. She also states that the early lists tween masculinity and technology that was conceived as one of the issues that feminist . . . tended to be facilitated by women work- technology studies set out to critique. ing in the computer industry who could use Paying attention to lesbians and tech- the computers at their organisation to run nology can counteract the overgeneral- the mailing list distribution software. These ization of heteronormative femininity to women could spend up to four hours per women in general. However, it does not day administering requests for subscription, dealing with messages being returned by solve the diffi culties with the lack of sym- nonfunctioning email accounts, or simply metry in a double constructivism, partly moderating the discussion which was hap- because the focus in such studies tends to pening in the forum. (Wakeford, 2002: 119) be on technology use, and partly because they do not question the semiotics of gen- This implies a very different relationship der associated with heteronormative prac- to computers than that which Vehviläinen tices. It is not particularly radical to point assigns to ‘women’. These lesbians had out that lesbians are at ease with technol- access to technology and skills that they ogy because in heteronormative culture could use to pursue their own interests. lesbians are often considered to be more Other examples of lesbians appropriat- masculine than ‘women’. ing computer technology include explorations of hypertext as a medium for writing THE SEMIOTICS OF lesbian poetry (Hawthorne, 1999), a study HETERONORMATIVITY of how Singaporean lesbians use new media to construct identity and commu- The heteronormative representations of nity (Yue, 2003) and an online ethnography women, men and technology in this fem- in a lesbian chat room (Poster, 2002).8 inist fi eld can be examined further with Despite awareness that ‘institutionalised the aid of Judith Butler’s (1999) notion of a heterosexuality’ (Faulkner, 2001) plays a ‘heterosexual matrix’. As a ‘grid of cultural QUEERING FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY STUDIES | 391 intelligibility through which bodies, gen- automatically be positioned in opposition ders, and desires are naturalized’ (Butler, to a masculine technology. 1999: 194, note 6) the heterosexual matrix The heteronormative representations defi nes the logic of heteronormative rep- of women, men and technology reaffi rm resentation. It is ‘a hegemonic discursive/ the logic of the heterosexual matrix, which epistemic model of gender intelligibility’ reciprocates through naturalizing dichot- (Butler, 1999: 194, note 6) that organizes the omous gender as something emerging way bodies are made comprehensible. It is a from the interiors of two different kinds of logic ‘that assumes that for bodies to cohere human beings. This is a material- semiotic and make sense there must be a stable sex process repeated in the everyday of the expressed through a stable gender (mascu- technological communities studied. How- line expresses male, feminine expresses fe- ever, its habitual reproduction in the rep- male)’ (Butler, 1999: 194, note 6) in the way resentational practices of this fi eld of that the analyses discussed above do. These feminist research has further theoretical stabilized bodies of women and men are, in consequences, because it also produces these studies, also represented as ‘opposi- gender as interiority. This semiotic order tionally and hierarchically defi ned through of gender, reproduced in heteronormative the compulsory practice of heterosexuality’ practices, is intrinsic to the fi gure of the (Butler, 1999: 194, note 6). modern subject: a notion of the subject The notion of the heterosexual matrix which is not conducive to the analysis of captures the semiotic order that makes ‘coproduction’, since it stabilizes all that gender heteronormative and the exclusion is considered as human in the position of of lesbians logical in feminist constructiv- singular, autonomous agent. ist technology studies. 10 This is no surprise The combination of a ‘modern’ con- since Butler’s concept is, in part, an articu- ception of the subject with constructivist lation of critical lesbian feminist thought.11 notions produces conceptual inconsisten- Thought of as a grid with two crossing axes cies. This is visible in an article by Tine (masculine– feminine and heterosexual– Kleif and Wendy Faulkner (2003) about homosexual), the heterosexual matrix al- men’s enjoyment of working with technol- lows us to see how the signifi er ‘women’ in ogy. They compared hobby robot build- feminist constructivist technology studies is ers with software engineers. In the article, positioned in the ‘feminine’– ’heterosexual’ which is explicitly committed to the idea corner. In the same way the signifi er ‘men’ of gender as performed, they unpack the occupies the ‘masculine’ and ‘heterosex- content of the pleasure and enjoyment ual’ corner in the grid. To be recognized as that both groups used to characterize their a ‘woman’ it is necessary to remain in the relations with the respective technology. heterosexual– feminine corner.12 Technology Kleif and Faulkner analyse, in depth, the is located on the ‘masculine’ side of the grid; links between masculinity and pleasure females with close relations to technology with technology that were made explicit in are thus constructed as more masculine. both groups. They also note a discrepancy Females doing masculinity and lesbians between what the people studied said and (who are regarded as expressing a ‘mascu- what they did, with regard to gender: line’ desire for women) are not covered by the signifi er of ‘women’ in this semiotic grid. As noted earlier, women’s and men’s ac- When ‘women’ is a heteronormatively con- counts of themselves were more differenti- structed category individuals under study ated than their practices seemed to be. Such can, as in the examples presented above, fi ndings confi rm the strength of stereotypes 392 | CATHARINA LANDSTRÖM

around gender and technology as norms; also the point at which the gap between they also confi rm that gender is actively feminist theory and the empirical research performed rather than being laid down in on technology becomes visible. early psychological development. (Kleif and Faulkner, 2003: 315) GENDER, TECHNOLOGY AND With a discrepancy between saying and SUBJECTS doing in clear sight and an explicit appreci- Over the last two decades the wider fi eld of ation of the notion of gender as performed, feminist technology studies has conducted the suggested conclusion seems a bit odd: an energetic discussion about the constitution of the subject. The constructivist The authors suggest, tentatively, that technol- sub- fi eld seems oddly disconnected from ogy is a gender-authentic and gender-available avenue for those men who particularly crave this debate. This failure to appropriate new certainty because technology appears more ideas and concepts is a pity, because they certain, easier to understand, and easier to open ways of thinking about gender and master than other worlds they inhabit. (Kleif technology that are conducive to the issue and Faulkner, 2003: 296) of coproduction. Even paying some serious attention to the well-established no- ‘Gender- authentic’ is an intriguing tion of the cyborg, that set the discussion phrase in a constructivist analysis. There is off, would help. no further clarifi cation in the article, only a As a ‘theorized and fabricated’ hybrid reference to another publication and a rep- ‘of machine and organism’ (Haraway, 1991: etition of the same phrase in the abstract. It 178) the cyborg is a way to understand the seems likely that Kleif and Faulkner use the ontology of the political feminist subject term as a way to account for the way their that takes its constitution in complex rela- studied populations perform gender—as tionships into consideration.13 It is a fi gure if there is something interior to people that confuses ‘all modes of identity (par- that is expressed in their relationships ticularly gender) categorization’ (Lloyd, with technology. However, this choice of 2005: 16). However, in feminist construc- terminology results in a representation of tivist technology studies it seems to ap- gender as, on the one hand, something pear only as a ‘buzz word’, used without that is judged in terms of authenticity and, ‘effort to think through what it adds to call on the other, performed in ways that op- something a cyborg’ or ‘what difference it pose speech to conduct. The relationship makes’ when we describe the world, to re- between the observation of gender differ- state a criticism from the mid 1990s (van entiation as mainly performed in speech der Ploeg and Van Wingerden, 1995: 399, and the conclusion that technology is a emphases in original).14 ‘gender-authentic and gender-available If feminist constructivist technology avenue’ for ‘men who crave a sense of studies would fi nd Haraway’s concept certainty’ (Kleif and Faulkner, 2003: 321) overused or dated, the idea captured in the seems self- contradicting. The argument notion of the cyborg has been further elab- appears to draw on two different theories orated and reworked in the feminist dis- of gender, one focussed on doing and the cussion. The concept has matured enough other on essence. This inconsistency can to make its shortcomings visible. 15 Dianne be understood as resulting from a view of Currier argued, in this journal, that the subjects and subjectivity incongruous with cyborg ‘ultimately fails to make the break a constructivist approach to gender. This is with the logic of identity’ (Currier, 2003: QUEERING FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY STUDIES | 393

323). She also thinks that there has been a This view of subjects, subjectivity and stabilization of the cyborg as a prosthetic identity as effects emerging from com- relationship of humans and technology, plex relationships also rejects the semiotic which ‘leaves largely intact those two cat- order of the heterosexual matrix. Humans, egories– (human) body and technology— signifi ed in the heterosexual matrix, are that preceded the conjunction’ (2003: 323). produced as autonomous, unifi ed entities To approach subjects as constituted in with identity traits, such as gender and sex- contingent relationships with technol- uality, which determine their relationships ogy, Currier turns to the notion of ‘assem- with other humans and other elements in blages’ as ‘functional conglomerations of their environment. The notion of assem- elements’ that are not the result of addi- blage struggles against this ‘semiotic sub- tion because ‘the component elements jugation’19 by refusing to submit to a view of are not understood as unifi ed, stable, or the subject as a stable entity with an inner self-identical’ (Currier, 2002: 531).16 As- core that determines its relationships with semblages are emergent effects in ‘forces others. Assemblages are always in motion and fl ows of components’ that ‘meet with and cannot be kept stable in any semiotic and link to the forces and fl ows of other el- grid. This human is a being in motion, an ements’ (2002: 531). This idea entails a dif- effect of many processes, not clearly delin- ferent notion of cause and effect from that eated as outside and inside once and for employed in feminist constructivist tech- all but always in a ‘metastable assemblage’. nology studies, because ‘a self-identical Such ‘metastable assemblages’ cannot be body or object does not exist as origin, the sites of fi xed sexual, or gender, identi- prior to or outside the fi eld of encounters ties with determining functions. that articulate it within any specifi c assem- ‘Assemblage’ refi gures subjectivity as blage’ (2002: 531). The relevance of this constituted in complex relationships with approach for breaking out of analyses that technology, placing the relationship as position men’s gender identity as the cause the crucial mechanism, not identity. This of the masculinity of technology and tech- indicates the direction in which feminist nological work is obvious. It also has radi- constructivist technology studies need to cal consequences for the understanding of move in order to approach the desired ob- identity, which ‘does become peripheral: it jective of understanding the coproduction is a byproduct, which may appear within of gender and technology. It would enable the operations of assembling’ (Currier, analyses that do not commit to any par- 2003: 333). ticular understanding of what gender is, Currier draws on Gilles Deleuze and before investigating how it is produced in Félix Guattari’s (1987) critique of the mod- particular circumstances. However, the ap- ern subject. 17 They argue that subjectivity proach in itself points to description rather is not the expression of essence, hidden in than critique 20 and abandoning gender as a human bodies, but an effect of actions per- fi xed point that grounds critique can cause formed in assemblages of several humans problems for feminists. From a feminist and non- humans. Brian Massumi inter- perspective Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas prets this to mean that human ‘ “subjec- ‘seem no more attentive to questions of the tivity” in the sense of personal thought or specifi city and particularity of women than feeling is a special case existing only on one psychoanalytic frameworks’ (Grosz, 1994: level of a dissipated human body system: 182). Their thinking displays ‘little if any the bounded, dominated level of the body awareness of the masculinity of their pro- as subjected group’ (Massumi, 1992: 80).18 nouncements, of the sexual particularity 394 | CATHARINA LANDSTRÖM

of their own theoretical positions’ (Grosz, conceptualizations of the human that do 1994: 182). This problem also pertains to not rely on the idea of the modern subject social constructivist approaches to tech- to formulate criticisms of power asymme- nology; it surfaced in the meeting between tries producing sexuality and gender in this perspective and feminism in technol- specifi c constellations. ogy from the start, according to Gill and In recent works philosopher Elizabeth Grint (1995). Still, if the objective is to un- Grosz demonstrates the potential of queer derstand the coproduction of gender and theory to take the discussion beyond the technology, the critical analysis cannot well-trodden paths of identity. She ar- assume a gendered subject as the starting gues for a reorientation of feminist theory, point. Research that abandons gender as claiming that its reliance on identity pol- a fi xed heteronormative binary needs an- itics has imposed limitations by tending other platform that enables critique. In the to ‘understand identity as the synthesis of remainder of this paper I will discuss some one’s past (one is where one was born, what possibilities suggested in feminist analyses class, race, and sex one was born into, the drawing on queer theory. events or history that constitute one’s life) rather than a synthesis oriented to an open or indeterminable goal, a trajectory or di- QUEER BEYOND IDENTITY rection’ (Grosz, 2005: 213). In her view the Faced with the risk of losing the ‘sub- temporality of identity politics is mistaken: ject’ of critique, the elaborations of ‘non- ‘[O]ne’s sexuality is contained in the next humanist’ concepts by feminists inspired sexual encounter, rather than in the synthe- by queer theory can offer valuable ideas. sis of all one’s past sexual activities’ (2005: Queer theory offers ways of critiquing 213, emphasis in original). In the context power relations premised on sexuality of technology studies such a temporal re- and gender while rejecting the idea of the orientation would put humans on an equal modern subject. Already from the out- ontological footing with technology, which set, in the early 1990s, one formulation is already understood to be open to refor- of queer aimed to move beyond identity, mulation in relation to future encounters. arguing that the point with this concept Grosz further suggests that feminist theory was not to ‘confront the logic of hetero- needs to be conceived of as a ‘struggle to sexuality by being another kind of identity’ render more mobile, fl uid, and transform- (Kennedy, 1994: 140).21 In contrast to les- able the means by which the female sub- bian and gay politics that stabilize sexual ject is produced and represented’ (2005: identity, the impetus of queer is to ‘disturb 193). Adopting this aim would be bene- all sexual boundaries, and create sexual fi cial to the project of understanding the mayhem, so that any individual may oc- coproduction of gender and technology, cupy or perform any sexual or gender since it would strive to ‘mobilize and trans- identity, rather than have a true identity; form the position of women, the alignment in this way, queer undermines the very of forces that constitute that “identity” notion of a truth of sexuality’ (1994: 140). and “position,” that stratifi cation which This articulation of queer encourages the- stabilizes itself as a place and an identity’ orizing that moves beyond the critique (2005: 193). Empirical feminist studies of of heteronormativity in a rejection of the gender and technology need to be able to modern subject. The anti-identity posi- follow up on the constructivist claim that tion also resonates with Currier’s under- things could be otherwise; in order to do standing of assemblages and it promotes so they need theoretical frameworks that QUEERING FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY STUDIES | 395 are open to the idea of ‘a future in which statement can be read in relation to the forces align in ways fundamentally differ- particular situation: the interviewee as- ent from the past and present’ (2005: 193). sures the researcher that she knows how to Feminist constructivist technology stud- do femininity and how to draw the bound- ies should not be satisfi ed with struggling aries for feminine conduct. The utterance for recognition ‘by the others who occupy produces multiple belongings— with a so- social dominant positions’ (2005: 194). A ciety that distinguishes sharply between doubly constructivist analysis that aims for femininity and masculinity as interior sta- change needs to move beyond the comfort ble cores; with femininity as a project for zone of heteronormativity. women; and with the masculine norms of the workplace. The interviewee performs heteronormative gender verbally in a way RE- READING GENDER IN that produces an interior that belongs with TECHNOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES the feminine and an outside that fi ts in To move from the abstractions of queer with the masculine workplace. Instead of feminist philosophy to the critical analy- reading this speech act as bearing witness ses aimed for by ethnographers, a return to to a stable but hidden identity, Probyn’s ap- Elspeth Probyn’s discussion of ‘belonging’ proach suggests that it can be understood from the mid 1990s is useful. She proposes as a way of doing the interior/exterior dis- that ‘instead of inquiring into the depths tinction that is important for establishing of sociality, let us consider the social world subjectivity. The ‘perplexity of living’ is, in as surface’ (Probyn, 1996: 19). This sig- the few words quoted by Kvande, handled nals a departure from conventional social in a way that speaks to the ‘desire for some research that is looking for underlying sort of attachment, be it to other people, causes of phenomena, thought to merely places, or modes of being, and the ways in be expressed on the surface. which individuals and groups are caught This initial idea in Probyn’s book en- within wanting to belong, wanting to be- ables a rereading of Kvande’s represen- come, a process that is fueled by yearning tation of women engineers. Instead of rather than the positing of identity as a sta- understanding the studied engineers as ble state’ (Probyn, 1996: 19). expressing their femininity in ways calcu- Focussing on the surface and the situ- lated to fi t the implicit rules of the work- ation at hand also facilitates a rethinking place, a focus on the surface points in the of the discrepancy between the gender direction of the interview situation. The differentiating talk and the observed con- designation of femininity as ‘dressing in duct among the engineers studied by lace and frills’ and being in total opposi- Kleif and Faulkner. Instead of interpreting tion to the engineering workplace invokes this talk as expressing something non- a very unrealistic stereotype. The quoted linguistic that precedes it, paying atten- engineer constructs femininity as very tion to the surface could mean looking at different from anything that could be en- what it does. The talk performs the gen- countered in the workplace, consequently der difference that heteronormativity re- the latter will always be understood as quires, a difference that it is not possible masculine. This construction of gender is to behaviourally enact as a software engi- indicative of the heteronormative prac- neer who is committed to their work. As tice of keeping femininity and masculinity a productive force this talk produces be- apart, even when women and men work longings in the complex situation of the together and do the same things. This technical workplace. 396 | CATHARINA LANDSTRÖM

Probyn further argues for the indeter- the conditions for generating different minacy of relations and surface belong- assemblages incorporating this technol- ings: ‘such forms of sociality, driven by ogy? Perhaps the perceived masculinity desire, produce unexpected connections of the design style is constitutive to some as they rub against each other, displaying gender identities but not to others. Dif- on the surface their anteriority’ (Probyn, ferent desires to connect with that which 1996: 35). In relation to Vehviläinen’s un- is culturally masculine may produce dif- derstanding of gender, a preparedness to ferent belongings for assembled men and notice unexpected, moving connections women, heterosexual and homosexual, could have enabled links to studies of les- constituted in this technological context. bians and technology, which could have This brief re-reading does not answer opened new questions. An analysis open the question of coproduction, but it points to ‘unexpected connections’ could ask in to other ways of thinking that can gener- which ways desires for different belong- ate new empirical questions and critical ings infl uence relations with technology. analyses. If gender is coproduced with If an anterior desire to belong with other technology it needs to be approached as lesbians renders it unimportant to main- emerging in between the elements as- tain a distance to technology, this needs sembling into subjects and objects. In this to be paid serious attention because then paper I have argued that feminist con- heteronormativity is a force that disables structivist technology studies have, so far, a connection between many women and not been able to capture this. The notion technology. of assemblages, elaborated in order to cap- That ‘surface belongings and desiring ture the anti-deterministic constitution of identities refuse to stand still’ (Probyn, subjects in relationships with technology, 1996: 35) is an argument that speaks to suggests ways to analyse gendered identity the way in which futures are produced. as produced in these relationships. Think- While the modern subject was a product ing of gendered subjectivity as an effect of explained by its past, the non-humanist assembling makes it possible to get away perspective features the assemblage as from the idea that identity is the only de- moving towards the future. The human el- terminant for behaviour and experience. ement of such ‘posthuman’ subjects may This would imply ‘a shift of epistemolog- be understood to aim towards connections ical framework, where identity no longer with others. The complexity of forces that functions as the ordering framework, but infl uence the actual movement of any as- rather is itself a product of historical cir- semblage makes it impossible to predict cumstance’ (Currier, 2003: 333). Such a how these connections will occur, or what shift is what the present paper has argued effects they will have. In such a conceptual for in claiming that the current analytical framework the ways in which gender infl u- impasse in feminist constructivist technol- ences technology cannot be explained by ogy studies requires a thorough rethinking looking at the past of the humans involved. of gender, away from the heteronorma- If identity is an effect of connections made tivity that stabilizes the subject as cause, between surfaces that rub against each toward a feminism that has surpassed gen- other the failure of DDS and New Topia, der as a deterministic binary. In turning analysed by Oudshoorn, Rommes and to feminist elaborations of queer theory I Stienstra, needs to be thought of in rela- argued that rejecting the modern subject tion to which belongings are produced at as the anchor point does not have to lead the different points of contact. What are to an abandonment of critique of power QUEERING FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY STUDIES | 397 relations based on gender and sexuality. 7. Halberstam’s (1998) discussion of ‘female mas- Instead it may offer ways of reconnecting culinity’ has nothing to do with workplace empirical research among engineers and conduct, but the notion itself is illuminating because it links bodies and gender in ways less technology users with current feminist common. It is considerably more common to theorizing. view all female conduct as feminine and to associate masculinity solely with men, like Kvande does in the article discussed. Halberstam’s no- NOTES tion highlights that this is not a neutral practice but that it is based in heteronormativity and has 1. See Judy Wajcman (2004) for a recent introduc- consequences for Kvande’s analysis. tion to feminist technology studies, which she 8. The studies of lesbians and technology men- calls ‘technofeminism’. tioned here do not assume a constructivist 2. Wendy Faulkner (2001) uses the term ‘feminist perspective, nor are they substantially referred technology studies’ for this sub- fi eld to distin- to in feminist constructivist technology stud- guish it from ‘women and technology’, in which ies. I therefore regard them as outside of this technology is taken as a neutral given. The pres- fi eld. ent notion of ‘feminist constructivist technology 9. When lesbians appear in case study populations studies’ specifi es this further to indicate feminist they seem to have closer relationships with research within the fi eld of science and technol- technology, which gets mentioned as an aside ogy studies. This sets them apart from feminist re- or in the footnotes (see Rommes, 2002: 243, note search on technology pursued in other subjects. 251 for an example). 3. There are several different forms of constructiv- 10. Using the notion of ‘the heterosexual matrix’ in ism in technology studies, drawing on different relation to the written representations of gender theoretical and philosophical frameworks (see in feminist technology studies deviates from Mackenzie and Wajcman, 1999 for an introduc- Butler’s original intentions. In line with this tion). In feminist constructivist technology stud- deviation I will not engage with the extensive ies these differences tend to be less important debate on the problems with this concept that since they all challenge the presumed autonomy have been thoroughly worked through in the 15 and social neutrality of technology. years since it was fi rst introduced. 4. One radical approach is actor-network theory 11. Butler explicitly mentions the work of Adrienne which argues that social theory is mistaken in as- Rich and Monique Wittig as inspiration for the suming the existence of social structures, agency concept (1999: 194, note 6). as a human property and subjectivity as a cause 12. This interpretation of the heterosexual matrix is for actions and events (Latour, 1992). This ap- inspired by Monique Wittig’s claim that: proach demands that equal attention is paid to Lesbian is the only concept I know of which the ways in which technical artefacts exercise is beyond the categories of sex (woman and delegated agency, which would generate a dif- man), because the designated subject (les- ferent understanding of the social order as well bian) is not a woman, either economically, or as of the relationships between humans and the politically, or ideologically. For what makes non-human. Other constructivist perspectives a woman is a specifi c social relation to a are considerably less categorical in their critique man . . . which implies personal and physical of social theory (cf. Pinch and Bijker, 1987). obligation as well as economic obligation . . . a 5. The term ‘production’, used by Faulkner, marks a relation which lesbians escape by refusing to critical approach to the idea of closure, common become or to stay heterosexual. (Wittig, 1992 in constructivist technology studies. Feminists [1980]: 20, emphasis in original) argue that a technology in use is not permanently 13. Haraway also explicitly positions the cyborg as settled when it leaves the context of engineering; a fi gure outside the relationships of power cap- it is continuously being reconfi gured in relation tured in the notions of heteronormativity and to changing contexts of use and cultural interpre- the heterosexual matrix. tation. The present discussion does not address 14. For example Faulkner points to the resonance this aspect, hence, for terminological conve- between the constructivist insistence that tech- nience the terms ‘production’ and ‘construction’ nology is integral to the social fabric and Har- are used interchangeably. away’s ‘conceptualization of our cyborg-like 6. Faulkner refers to Flis Henwood (1993) on this existence’ (Faulkner, 2001: 90) without further topic but does not elaborate further. elaboration. 398 | CATHARINA LANDSTRÖM

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CHAPTER 24

Feminist Heterosexual Imaginaries of Reproduction: Lesbian Conception in Feminist Studies of Reproductive Technologies Petra Nordqvist

increasingly using clinical fertility treat- INTRODUCTION ment to conceive.2 Between the years 2000 Lesbians increasingly seek to reproduce and 2005, ofﬁ cial data suggest that the and over the past few decades a lesbian proportion of lesbian couples who sought ‘baby boom’ has emerged (Agigian, 2004). donor insemination treatment in UK clin- Reproductive technologies and donated ics more than doubled, and in 2005 lesbi- sperm constitute the starting point in les- ans constituted 14.4 per cent of all clients bians’ processes of conception. Unlike seeking donor insemination in clinics as heterosexual couples’ use of reproductive well as increasing proportions of IVF clients technologies as a corrective to failed con- (Human Fertilisation and Embryology Au- ception through heterosexual intercourse, thority, 2006). 3 Reproductive technologies, lesbian conception is from the outset dis- used in self- arranged donor insemination, connected from sex. Lesbians’ practices clinical donor insemination and in vitro thus potentially disrupt the idea that con- fertilization (IVF), can now be understood ception must follow from, and intrinsically to have an established place in lesbian re- be related to, heterosexual intercourse. productive practices.4 Considering such practices may therefore Despite reproductive technologies com- shed some light on how reproduction is monly featuring in lesbian conception, sur- constructed and represented when it in- prisingly little is known about how lesbians volves reproductive technologies. experience reproductive technologies. A According to Agigian (2004: 7), lesbians conventional literature search demon- and unmarried women in the US started to strates a very limited number of studies. conceive using self- arranged donor concep- When searching electronically, adding tion in the 1970s. In the UK, self-arranged the search terms ‘lesbian’ and ‘mother’ to conception has become a common feature ‘donor insemination’, ‘reproductive tech- of lesbian reproductive practices over re- nology’ and ‘medical technology’ signiﬁ - cent decades (Saffron, 1998). This is likely cantly lowered the recorded hits of studies to be linked in part by the legal restrictions (Table 24.1: recorded hits 1A– 3B). that have, until recently, denied lesbians While it is important to note that the access to British infertility clinics1 (Bar- recorded hits are unlikely to include all ney, 2005; Lasker, 1998). With increased relevant studies, the low hit rate provides access, there is evidence that lesbians are evidence that, in a very material and real FEMINIST HETEROSEXUAL IMAGINARIES OF REPRODUCTION | 401

Table 24.1 Recorded hit rates in literature search of donor insemination and lesbian conception

Search number Search part Search term Recorded hits

1 A (donor insemination) 322 B (lesbian*) and (mother*) and (donor insemination) 18 2 A (reproductive technology) 2338 B (lesbian*) and (mother*) and (reproductive technology) 18 3 A (medical technology) 1120 B (lesbian*) and (mother*) and (medical technology) 0

*Search results in combined search designed to identify literature on lesbian conception and reproductive technology in gateways Criminal Justice Abstracts, MEDLINE, PAIS International, Social Science Citation Index (ISI) on the Web of Knowledge, Sociological Abstracts, Web of Science (ISI) on the Web of Knowledge, University of York Library Catalogue. Search date 30 October 2006. sense, lesbians are hardly recognized as feminist literature researching technolo- reproductive agents within available re- gies relating to conception and pregnancy search. To date, only a small body of re- (Edwards et al., 1999; McNeil, 1990; Stan- search, predominantly from the UK and worth, 1987a; Strathern, 1992; Taylor, 2000). the USA, addresses lesbian conception The concept ‘reproductive technology’ has (see for example Agigian, 2004; Chabot and come to span technology used to control, Ames, 2004; Haimes and Weiner, 2000; Sul- promote and assist conception such as pre- livan, 2004; Mamo, 2007). implantation genetic diagnostics (PGD), How can we understand the marginal donor insemination (DI), intrauterine in- position of lesbians within research into semination (IUI), in vitro fertilization (IVF), reproduction and reproductive technolo- gamete intra- fallopian transfer (GIFT) and gies when the empirical evidence shows intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). that reproductive technologies have a well- The concept also refers to technologies that established place in lesbian reproduction? are used to monitor and screen women’s In order to shed light on this paradox, I have pregnant bodies and foetuses, such as ul- reviewed feminist texts concerning repro- trasound and amniocentesis, which are be- ductive technologies, considering these the coming more routine for pregnant women most likely place to ﬁ nd research into les- (Taylor, 2000: 391). bian reproduction. This article investigates There are some important distinctions to how sexuality and lesbian reproduction is be made about the above technologies and represented and constructed within such the process of medicalization. Technologies studies. ‘Feminist’ studies are deﬁ ned as such as PGD and IVF have been developed studies which are located within a theoret- in a medical context and do not exist outside ical framework that focuses on gender re- of it: they are only available in clinics, and lations and reproductive practices, studies are regulated and controlled in law. Donor which are carried out by scholars who ex- insemination, on the other hand, can be plicitly identify their work within a feminist performed both within and outside a clin- tradition of research, or research which im- ical context. While clinical DI is regulated in plicitly states an interest in how gender rela- law, self- arranged DI is not. Furthermore, it tions structure experiences of reproduction. does not require sophisticated technology Across these studies, ‘reproductive tech- (Saffron, 1998: 65). The latter is likely to ap- nologies’ is used as a generic term in peal widely to women who wish to conceive 402 | PETRA NORDQVIST

without heterosexual intercourse, and who of Amniocentesis in America. These stud- do not necessarily experience infertility ies focus on women’s lived experiences of problems, but who cannot, or do not wish IVF, fertility treatment and amniocentesis. to, access clinical treatment (Lasker, 1998). My reading illustrates in detail how repro- Screening tests, existing within a medi- duction is constructed and represented in cal context, are likely to apply to pregnant studies aiming to account for lived experi- women regardless of sexual identity or con- ences of reproductive technologies. text of their pregnancy. This article is divided into four sections CRITICAL STUDIES OF to explore the ways in which lesbian con- HETEROSEXUALITY ception fi gures within feminist studies of reproductive technologies. As back- The early writings of Adrienne Rich ([1980] ground to my review of these studies, I 1993) and Monique Wittig ([1981] 1993) outline feminist and queer critical studies have proved highly infl uential as explo- of heterosexuality, with a particular focus rations of heterosexuality. Rich suggests on the concept of ‘the heterosexual imag- that heterosexuality can be understood as inary’, as introduced by Chrys Ingraham a social force, which ‘wrench[es] women’s (1996). Drawing on Thompson (2002), a emotional and erotic energies away from distinction is then made between what themselves and other women and from can be conceptualized as an early and a woman- identifi ed values’ ([1980] 1993: more recent phase within feminist stud- 232). Wittig, developing a materialist fem- ies of women and infertility, as outlined inist perspective, argues that the struc- in sections two and three. Primarily, my tures of heterosexuality are signifi cant for interest in this distinction is in the differ- how the category ‘woman’ is socially con- ence between what Thompson identifi es structed ([1981] 1993). as a structuralist interest in stratifi cation The analysis of heterosexuality has since in earlier studies (1984–91) (Thompson, developed primarily through two dis- 2002: 53, 57), compared to more multiple tinct strands of thought: poststructuralist understandings and a focus on ‘the lived and materialist feminist. Poststructuralist worlds of infertility’ in more recent studies readings of sexuality mainly draw on Fou- (1991– 9) (Thompson, 2002: 53, 63). Poten- cauldian understandings of discourses, tially, the latter phase gives greater scope and emphasize cultural and linguistic con- for lesbian conception to be recognized. structions thereof. Notable is Judith But- It is therefore of specifi c interest to inves- ler’s theorization of a ‘compulsory order tigate how lesbian conception fi gures in of sex/gender/desire’ (1990: 6), suggesting such studies. In a fourth section, I offer an that heterosexuality is performative, and in-depth exploration of three infl uential that performance produces heterosexual- pieces of ethnographic research from this ity as the original and homosexuality as the period: Sarah Franklin’s (1997) Embodied copy. Noteworthy is also the development Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted of ‘queer theory’ which denotes multiple Conception, Charis Cussins’ (now Thomp- positions in a fi eld in which cultural sexual son) (1998) ‘Producing Reproduction: categories and identities are understood Techniques of Normalization and Natural- as discursively constructed concepts that ization in Infertility Clinics’ (a version of are transgressed by sexual practices (Fuss, this chapter was also published in Thomp- 1991; for an overview see Adam, 2002). Ma- son, 2005) and Rayna Rapp’s (1999) Testing terialist feminist perspectives, on the other Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact hand, draw on earlier understandings of FEMINIST HETEROSEXUAL IMAGINARIES OF REPRODUCTION | 403 gender and sexuality as cultural and social closes off any critical analysis of heterosex- categories, suggesting that sexual struc- uality as an organizing institution. The ef- tures cannot be studied only on cultural fect of this depiction is that heterosexuality and linguistic levels, but are also social and circulates as taken for granted, naturally institutionalized phenomena (Ingraham, occurring, and unquestioned, while gender is understood as socially constructed and 1996; Jackson, 2001). Common to both is central to the organization of everyday life. the analysis and critique of normative het- (Ingraham, 1996: 169) erosexuality, closely intertwined with a binary construction of gender. I draw on Ingraham’s term ‘the hetero- The developed concepts ‘heteronorma- sexual imaginary’ to refer to the process tivity’ and ‘heterosexual imaginary’ denote through which heterosexuality remains an mechanisms in the operations of hetero- unquestioned and ‘naturalized’ framework sexuality as a social structure. The concepts in some feminist work, a framework which describe mechanisms of socially structured seemingly renders unnecessary any analy- heterosexuality in slightly different ways sis of how heterosexuality operates. and I shall therefore outline and draw on both concepts. The term ‘heteronormativity’ has de- REPRESENTATIONS OF veloped within studies of sexualities to REPRODUCTION IN EARLY FEMINIST denote how heterosexuality is produced STUDIES OF REPRODUCTIVE as the normal sexual practice. According TECHNOLOGIES to Scott and Jackson (2006: 247), prevailing The forming of ‘The Feminist International norms of heterosexuality can be under- Network of Resistance to Reproductive and stood as operating on multiple social lev- Genetic Engineering’ (FINRRAGE), and its els. Jackson (2006) importantly notes that criticism of the impact of technology and the concept of heteronormativity does not medicine on women, can be seen as indic- encompass the full complexity of different ative of early feminist writings and engage- social dimensions of heterosexuality. I use ment with what was conceptualized as ‘heteronormativity’ to describe the way in the medicalization of reproduction (Hen- which heterosexuality is normatively con- wood, 2001; Wajcman, 1991). FINRRAGE structed, both socially and culturally. was initiated in 1984 and explicitly con- The term ‘heterosexual imaginary’ (In- demned reproductive technologies, view- graham, 1996) was developed as a critique ing them as opposed to women’s natural of unacknowledged and under-theorized experiences of conception and childbirth. heterosexuality in feminist sociology. In- In a resolution, FINRRAGE states: graham’s ‘heterosexual imaginary’ refers to the way in which heterosexuality is nor- We . . . declare that the female body, with malized, and hence is considered to re- its unique capacity for creating human life, quire neither exploration nor explanation is being expropriated and dissected as raw (1996: 177). While gender has been decon- material for the technological production of structed and analysed as a social construct human beings. (‘Resolution from the FINR- in feminist sociology, heterosexuality re- RAGE Conference’, 1987) mains ‘the normal’. Ingraham states: Few of the early writings suggested The heterosexual imaginary is that way of that there would be a need to investigate thinking which conceals the operation of the understandings and experiences of heterosexuality in structuring gender and women who themselves undergo fertility 404 | PETRA NORDQVIST

treatment (however, see for example the it possible for its practitioners to become exception of Stanworth, 1987a). Instead, the arbiters of values and standards relating studies, predominantly carried out within to women’s reproduction and motherhood. sociology and politics mainly in Britain, (Crowe, 1990: 28) Europe and North America, took a structural perspective, indicating that natural Crowe argued that the dominance of procreation is polluted by medical and medical/scientifi c knowledge of embryo technological intervention: research makes women’s bodies and perspectives invisible in the process of reproduction. A critical reading of the way in The potential of . . . technology to disconnect the foetus from a woman’s body is seen which women and reproduction are sit- as a specifi c form of the ancient masculine uated in relation to such technologies is impulse ‘to confi ne and limit and curb the echoed in strands of some later studies: creativity and potentially polluting power of female procreation’. (Oakley, 1976, quoted in The implementation of advanced tech- Wajcman, 1991: 59) niques of antenatal screening and foetal diagnosis in maternity care is underpinned In the late 1980s, three anthologies, those by the rationales of control and experimentation. (Helén, 2004: 30) of Spallone and Steinberg (1987), Stanworth (1987b) and McNeil et al. (1990), presented Reproductive technology was, in ear- essays which critiqued the development of lier studies, identifi ed within a medical reproductive technologies. Technologies framework and a biomedical discourse of were represented as confl icting with wom- reproduction. Consequently, non-medical en’s reproductive interests in earlier studies reproductive technologies were conceptu- (see, for example, Steinberg, 1990; Oakley, ally excluded. This exclusion was evident 1987). Burfoot (1990), engaging with the partly in the theoretical interest taken in process of IVF normalization, stated: the technologies, and partly in the construction of reproductive technologies as Women need to be aware of the extent to medical. While I would not wish to reject which IVF has become normalised as a fi eld in either the idea that many reproductive reproductive medicine and to realise that the high commercial gains at stake in IVF’s devel- technologies are developed in relation to opment and dissemination are likely to prevail the medicalization of reproduction and against a women- centered approach to infer- therefore only exist within a medical con- tility and reproduction. (Burfoot, 1990: 72) text, or that a process of medicalization has impacted upon the regulation and ex- Burfoot understood a ‘women-centered’ clusion of lesbians from accessing clinical approach to pregnancy and reproduction treatment, the generic conceptualization as distinct from technological interven- of such technologies as medical concealed tions and commercialism. A second exam- alternative, non-medical practices of con- ple is that of Crowe (1990), who discussed ception. From the perspective of lesbian the results of the Warnock Report and the conception, the major distinction between infl uence of scientifi c knowledge on the conceiving in a clinic or through self- discussion of ’embryo research’: arranged conception is not necessarily whether a technology is medically assisted. I . . . consider how the perception of IVF as Rather, the different effects of self-arranged being a medical/scientifi c concern, intro- conception and clinical treatment are likely duced as a ‘treatment for infertility’, makes to matter: only clinical treatment enables FEMINIST HETEROSEXUAL IMAGINARIES OF REPRODUCTION | 405 effective health- screenings of the sperm women. Assisted conception such as DI, and a legally controlled involvement of which enables lesbian couples and single the sperm donor. Lesbians’ varying use of women to conceive, for example, can be un- forms of DI is bypassed when technology derstood as reducing rather than increasing is identifi ed as medical. patriarchal control over women’s repro- Furthermore, a distinction was made be- duction. Haimes and Weiner (2000: 478) tween ‘nature’ and ‘technology’, and ‘natural’ demonstrate that donor insemination used and ‘artifi cial’, in earlier writings. Haraway’s within the context of a lesbian relationship (1991) ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, fi rst published can be experienced as a positive opportu- in 1985, and her now widespread notion of nity to conceive rather than as an unwished the ‘cyborg’ and critique of a dichotomous result of unsuccessful ‘sexual’ conception. understanding of nature and technology, Early feminist studies further identifi ed did not at that time appear to infl uence the ‘women’ in the process of reproduction as feminist studies discussed. Making a dis- the body which reproductive technologies tinction between nature and technology had act on and change, that is, the pregnant specifi c implications for the understanding body. Women who occupy other positions of different methods of conception. In stud- in the reproductive processes, for example ies such as that of FINRRAGE, ‘nature’ was women who experience conception from implicitly and intimately intertwined with the position of being the partner of a preg- understandings of pregnancy as a ‘natural’ nant woman, are unrecognized. I do not event. Nature was defi ned outside of and wish to imply that the bodily experience separate from the technology realm. This of a woman undergoing fertility treatment representation entailed specifi c, but unac- or pregnancy is the same as a partner who knowledged, assumptions about hetero- supports her through the process; how- sexuality: heterosexual reproduction was ever, the equating of ‘woman’ with ‘preg- represented as the non- technical, ‘natural’ nant woman’ is heterosexually normative. method of conception and other methods, It obscures a central feature of lesbian cou- such as DI or IVF, were defi ned as techno- ples’ reproduction: a woman may take part logical and therefore ‘unnatural’. In this way, in the process and experience of reproduc- lesbian reproduction, which from the outset tion without being pregnant. is likely to involve technological features, was implicitly positioned in the realm of the REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY, ‘unnatural’. Feminist condemnation of the WOMEN’S AGENCY AND LESBIAN reproductive technologies has the effect of CONCEPTION creating a hierarchy between ‘good’ natural reproduction and ‘bad’ technologically as- More recent feminist studies of reproduc- sisted reproduction. tive technologies suggest not only that Although some voices were raised early women may experience reproductive tech- on, declaring the potential subversiveness nology as an extension of patriarchy, but of reproductive technologies (see for ex- that reproductive technologies also can ample Firestone, [1970] 1997: 25), earlier provide women with reproductive control feminist writings constructed technology (Thompson, 2002). Thus, it is argued, ex- as patriarchal control over women’s bodies plorations of reproductive technologies and as a tool of oppression. As Thompson need to consider women’s agency in nego- (2002) indicates, such a perspective ob- tiating the role that reproductive technol- scures any understanding of technology as ogies play in their lives (Henwood, 2001; carrying different meanings for different Thompson, 2002). 406 | PETRA NORDQVIST

Like earlier studies, more recent re- to direct the sample composition towards search into reproductive technologies is heterosexual couples since single women contextually specifi c. The main body of and lesbian couples have limited access. research is produced within the USA, Brit- Peterson (2005) confi rms that this is the ain and Australia, as well as in Western Eu- case both in the UK and internationally. ropean countries such as Finland and the It is not unexpected therefore that stud- Netherlands. 5 There is an increasing inter- ies draw on the experiences of heterosex- est within the social sciences and human- ual women and couples (see, for example, ities in how reproductive technologies are Thompson, 2001; Ragoné, 1998; Ulrich and experienced and made sense of: studies Weatherall, 2000). One exception to this is are being undertaken within psychology, Parry (2005), who researches thirty married science and technology studies (STS), so- women and two lesbians’ understandings ciology, anthropology, gender studies, legal of ‘family’ in relation to their experiences studies and health studies. More recent of infertility. studies investigate a range of different tech- The sample composition in studies of nologies; for example pre-implantation medical reproductive technologies indi- genetic diagnostics (Roberts and Franklin, cates that structures of heterosexuality are 2004), IVF (Franklin, 1997), surrogacy and foundational to access to technologies. It egg donation (Ragoné, 1998; Thompson, might therefore be expected that an ap- 2001, 2005), donor insemination (Haimes, preciation of the dominance of heterosex- 1992; Lasker, 1998), amniocentesis (Rapp, uality would inform the research and that 1999; Helén, 2004; Rothman, 1994), and sexuality, as a mode of analysis, would be ultrasound and visual technology (Taylor, likely to be intrinsic to the studies. Hetero- 2000). This is by no means an exhaustive sexuality, however, does not constitute a list, but represents a sample of the range of focus of analysis in theoretical accounts. studies that investigate how different tech- Rather, the heterosexual couple constitute nologies are experienced. the taken for granted unit of reproduc- More recent studies focus on the expe- tive technologies. For example, Strathern rience of a particular technology and the (1992, 1995) theorizes the fragmentation characteristics of such technology, for ex- of motherhood and fatherhood in hetero- ample IVF. The regulations governing ac- sexual couples’ use of assisted fertilization: cess to the technologies therefore restricted the social composition and the participants [T]he substance that makes a ‘biological fa- invited to take part in these studies. Frank- ther’ is not what makes a ‘biological mother’. lin (1997), studying IVF, states in her meth- So while the biological (genetic) father is in- odological account: variably referred to as a ‘father’ . . . that person is not necessarily held to be a parent: All [participants] were white, married and in there is uncertainty about what relationship their mid-thirties to mid-forties. . . . Although the act of donation as such creates . . . Thus marriage is not a requirement for access to we have two types of parent and, potentially IVF, the medical director of the clinic has at least, two types of parenthood. (Strathern, strong views about the naturalness of the re- 1992: 149, 150) productive drive, and it is likely that unmarried or non- heterosexual women would not Haimes (1992) investigates family nor- have felt welcome[.] (Franklin, 1997: 80f.) mality in the debate about genetic parenthood and gamete donation, using a As indicated by Franklin, the method of theoretical framework of heterosexual sampling through a fertility clinic is likely couples’ reproduction, and Sandelowski FEMINIST HETEROSEXUAL IMAGINARIES OF REPRODUCTION | 407 and de Lacey (2002) investigate how the experiencing pregnancy, and therefore term ‘patient’ takes the meaning of ‘cou- illustrate how conception, technology and ple’ in infertility treatment of heterosex- sexuality are constructed, and lesbian pro- ual couples. A heterosexual framework of creation represented, at different stages of study is therefore not only a consequence reproduction. of the recruitment of heterosexual participants; it is reproduced in theoretical explo- ACCOUNTING FOR IVF rations of reproductive technologies. The heterosexual normativity evident in policy Franklin (1997) provides a cultural account regulations of access to clinical treatment of IVF in relation to understandings of con- is also reproduced in studies thereof. That ception as a ‘fact of life’. Drawing on, and reproductive technologies and infertility engaging with, 20th- century anthropolo- treatment are predominantly researched gists, she suggests that in a Euro-American from a heterosexual perspective is also context conception as ‘a fact of life’ is a evident when a broader range of feminist dominant cultural perception. Anthropo- studies were examined (for example, see logical accounts of the ‘facts of life’ tradi- Helén, 2004; Kornelsen, 2005; Taylor, 2000; tionally position conception and kinship van der Plog, 2004). as ‘biological’ and therefore ‘natural’ (pp. 21ff.). Franklin suggests that an idea of conception as ‘biology’ and a ‘fact of life’ ACCOUNTING FOR TECHNOLOGIES, is challenged by the experience of those CONSTRUCTING HETEROSEXUALITY undergoing IVF treatment. Here, the ‘facts It appears that structures of heterosexual- of life’ (as culture defi nes them) fail to pro- ity shape who is invited to take part in stud- duce a ‘successful’ conception (p. 199). ies of reproductive technologies and, more In a multifaceted and detailed way, Frank- surprisingly, are taken for granted and lin demonstrates how nature and technol- unquestioned in the theoretical accounts ogy in the context of IVF are constructed produced from these studies. Against this interchangeably. The lived experience of backdrop, I move on to consider three in- IVF is regarded as ‘natural’ at the same time fl uential pieces of research, those of Frank- as ‘natural’ conception is regarded as a ‘mir- lin (1997), Cussins (1998) and Rapp (1999), acle’ (p. 188). Franklin (pp. 187, 209) sug- to investigate in more detail the mecha- gests that biology is interpreted, by couples nisms through which technologies, con- as well as clinicians, in technological terms ception and sexuality are constructed. and technology, in turn, is experienced as Importantly, these pieces of research ‘natural’ and understood to provide what focus on different technologies. While ‘nature’ cannot deliver: Franklin (1997) focuses on the lived experience of IVF and Cussins (1998) on the . . . ‘nature’ and ‘technology’ in the context culture of infertility clinics, Rapp (1999) of IVF are not only commensurate, but sub- studies the experiences of undergoing stitutable. Just as IVF clinicians ‘learn’ from the pregnancy screening test amniocen- nature how to improve their techniques, so tesis. All studies focus on medically as- ‘nature’ can be improved by scientifi c and sisted technologies, but they are different technological assistance. (Franklin, 1997: 209) in scope, process of implementation and intended outcome. The studies investi- What is ‘new’ about IVF, according to gate technologies used at different stages Franklin, is how science and technology in a cycle of achieving conception and become confl ated with nature, and thereby 408 | PETRA NORDQVIST

contradict and challenge the cultural as- by the demands of paid, professional work; sumptions of procreation as a ‘fact of life’. and, simply, feeling that having children is Franklin’s analysis of a fusion of ‘nature’ part of the natural and normal progression and ‘technology’ is based upon, and con- of married life, some would say, even its pur- structed alongside, heterosexual couples’ pose. (Franklin, 1997: 139) non-technological conceptions as ‘natural’ Having the husband’s support during ones. The theoretical framework of procre- treatment is also, according to Franklin, es- ation as ‘a fact of life’ narrows the scope of sential for the women undergoing treatment: the study, life and coupledom to heterosexual married couples. Conception was never Almost without exception, though often with ‘a fact of life’ for gays and lesbians. Franklin a qualifi er such as ‘men feel things differently’, does not consider how, for example, IVF women praised their husbands’ supportive- may be differently experienced by lesbian ness during treatment. (Franklin, 1997: 140) couples. Lesbians are not likely to conceptualize or experience IVF as a consequence It appears that the experience of the process of ‘unsuccessful’ lesbian sex, but rather as of IVF is highly mediated through the sta- a consequence of unsuccessful attempts tus of being a heterosexual married couple. to conceive with donor insemination, thus Sexuality as a mode of analysis, however, challenging the theoretical perspective of does not fi gure in Franklin’s work. Such a conception as a ‘fact of life’. In Franklin’s perspective would clarify how experiences study, heterosexual intercourse is not ex- of IVF relate to what can be understood as amined as a method of conception but is specifi cally heterosexual life expectancies implicitly depicted as the ‘natural’ method and gender relations. Using a sample of of conception. In the context of the lesbian lesbian couples would possibly change the couple, heterosexual intercourse is not nec- way in which using IVF is understood and essarily imagined and constructed as the experienced. For example, childlessness is ‘natural’ way to conceive, in general terms not necessarily thought of as indicative of a or for the couple. It appears that Franklin’s failed lesbian relationship. In fact, lesbians theoretical interest implicitly places concep- who conceive and reproduce destabilize tion outside of heterosexual relationships. the norm; lesbian conception goes against Franklin’s sample consists of heterosex- cultural assumptions about reproduction. ual married couples (pp. 80– 1). Her data It also goes against assumptions about les- appear to suggest that this is signifi cant for bian life (Lewin, 1993). Franklin does not the way in which IVF is conceptualized. Ac- investigate how heterosexual married cou- cording to Franklin (p. 138), women think ples may experience this in specifi c ways about IVF treatment as a way to resolve because they are heterosexual and married childlessness and, thereby, an ‘incomplete and how being married shapes under- marriage’: standings of what IVF means.6 I would suggest that both in terms of [T]he idea of ‘completing’ a marriage by hav- the theoretical insights and in terms of the ing children has many components: raising study population from which the insights children together as an extension of the rela- were generated, structures of sexuality tionship between husband and wife; having worked hard to achieve a level of fi nancial infl uenced Franklin’s analysis. Franklin security by which to offer children ‘a good imagines reproduction in a framework home’; belonging to an extended family by in which heterosexuality requires neither participating in the activities of childrearing; explanation nor analysis. Gay and lesbian the desire to share an activity not defi ned life and conception are excluded by study FEMINIST HETEROSEXUAL IMAGINARIES OF REPRODUCTION | 409 defi nition, anthropological interest and undergo most of the ultrasounds, hystero- theoretical outcome. salpingograms, surgery, and other invasive procedures . . . [T]reatment has a number of paradoxical effects: ‘couple’ becomes, al- REPRODUCTION IN INFERTILITY most exclusively, the female partner[.] (Cus- CLINICS sins, 1998: 75) Cussins (1998) explores the cultural and social construction of reproduction in in- In her demonstration of how treatment fertility clinics. Studying two American of ‘the female partner’ is related to the clinics, she argues that what is considered minimal treatment of ‘the male partner’, normal within the infertility clinic is sup- Cussins implicitly positions the reproduc- ported and confi rmed by what is consid- tive process within a heterosexual frame- ered natural. Cussins (p. 67) suggests that work of procreation. While lesbians are heterosexuality is essential in this respect: likely to experience a similar medical focus considering heterosexuality to be ‘natural’ on the partner who will carry the child, the produces in the clinic notions of what is heterosexual gender relations that Cussins considered ‘normal’. Heterosexual couples describes are unlikely to be played out in do not need to be married; heterosexuality a conception that involves two women as alone is considered foundational for un- reproductive partners and a sperm donor. derstanding a couple’s wish to conceive as Further examples of unproblematized ‘natural’. Following on from this construc- heterosexuality in Cussins’ work can be tion, heterosexual couples are granted ac- found in her analysis of how the clinic is cess to treatment: spatially structured. In an account of the organization of privacy for male mastur- [A] mother- and- father family is normative for bation, Cussins states: the clinics because it is assumed to be a natural state of affairs, so clinics do not need to invoke If possible, the examination room furthest the ‘social’ convention of marriage in selecting away from the nurses’ station is assigned their patient couples[.] (Cussins, 1998: 67) for male patients to collect [sperm]. It is out of the line of sight of any of the offi ces. . . . Heterosexuality, Cussins suggests, is con- When [the technicians] hear the door open, sidered an essential criterion to provide they move to the door of their room, to make a stable, and therefore good, family. The sure that the man can hand his container sperm bank of the clinic can be used by straight to somebody who will deal with it heterosexual couples but lesbian couples technically. The transmission from private and sexual to an appropriate clinical object and single women are denied access (p. 72). is thus smoothly assured. (Cussins, 1998: 90) Cussins thus indicates that structures of heterosexuality permeate fertility treatment in clinics at a level of access. At a deeper The way in which private and public level of analysis, however, the function of are separated in the clinic and shape the heterosexuality remains unproblematized. work of the clinicians appears to be struc- In a discussion of the feminization of infer- tured around ideas of heterosexual sex and tility treatment, Cussins states: procreation as a sexual activity that needs ‘organizing’ in a clinical setting. The data Epidemiological statistics suggest that the suggest that the careful set-up for male male partner is implicated in at least 50 masturbation is structured to mark and percent of infertility cases worldwide. Yet it emphasize boundaries between private is women who take most of the drugs and sexuality and clinical conception in a public 410 | PETRA NORDQVIST

setting, and thereby implicitly construct a in her study are women who experience conceptual link between, on the one hand, genetic testing. Rapp states: conception via heterosexual intercourse and, on the other, conception via IVF. That Through observations of PDL [Prenatal Diag- these practices are specifi cally heterosex- nostic Laboratory] intake patient interviews, ual, however, remains unacknowledged by I also began to recruit a sample of women who were having amniocentesis and were Cussins. In comparison, a clinic organized willing to be interviewed at home (ideally, to treat lesbians and/or single women may during the long weeks of waiting for tests be unlikely to invoke ideas of private sex- results). I initially attempted to conduct in- uality in relation to clinical procreation, terviews with the partners and other close since these procreations are not necessar- supporters of this patient population, but ily coupled with sexual activity in the fi rst this proved a diffi cult task; I was able to inter- place. Regulations governing donor an- view only fi fteen men (or FOFs, fathers of fe- onymity make it likely, furthermore, that tuses, as I came to think of them), compared clinical space involving sperm donations to more than eighty women. (Rapp, 1999: 6) would be organized so that couples and Rapp outlines how she intended to in- donors were kept separate. clude partners and supporters of pregnant The blatant display of heterosexuality in women, but that this failed as she only ‘women’s’ magazines in the waiting room managed to recruit a small number of men, area, and magazines of the ‘ Playboy - type’ thus implicitly identifying her sample as hidden in drawers in the male masturba- heterosexual. Rapp describes how she in- tion room (p. 90), can be understood as cluded a diverse sample in terms of social objects shaped by and displayed according class and ethnicity in order to refl ect how to heterosexual gender relations. It is pos- class and ethnic background shape dif- sible, for example, that an IVF clinic open ferent understandings of amniocentesis to gay donors and lesbian patients would (p. 9). However, whether lesbians or lesbian display other magazines in the waiting couples were included in the sample is un- room and in the masturbation room. Sex- clear. Reading the research in more detail, uality used as a mode of analysis could I would suggest that lesbians are excluded clarify the role of such objects in a clinic. not only in the sampling process, but also While Cussins’ data appear to suggest in the normative assumption of heterosex- that understandings and organizations of ual procreation constructed in her account. sexuality and conception in the clinic are Rapp (pp. 5, 49) explores the complexi- inherently, and specifi cally, heterosex- ties and contradictions in the social impact ual, she does not signifi cantly interrogate of a reproductive technology, and suggests her empirical material from a perspective that women become ‘moral pioneers’ when of sexuality. involved in the practice of amniocentesis: women are made to choose who should be THE CULTURAL ORGANIZATION OF born and who should not according to ideas AMNIOCENTESIS of normalcy and quality in human genes: Rapp (1999) researches women’s experi- [I] came to think of the women who submit- ences of amniocentesis, a genetic medical ted to the discipline of a new reproductive test of the amniotic fl uid during pregnancy, technology in order to reap its biomedical in relation to how gendered divisions of pri- benefi ts as moral pioneers. At once con- vate and public spheres map onto the social scripts to technoscientifi c regimes of quality management of genetic testing. Included control and normalization, and explorers of FEMINIST HETEROSEXUAL IMAGINARIES OF REPRODUCTION | 411

the ethical territory its presence produces, procreation as a heterosexual activity, and contemporary pregnant women have be- excludes an investigation of how structures come our moral philosophers of the private. of heterosexuality shape amniocentesis. (Rapp, 1999: 306) As in the other exemplar texts that I have examined, lesbian conception is rendered In her argument, Rapp shifts between, theoretically invisible in Rapp’s study and and equates, a conceptualization of ‘women’ cannot easily be ‘added in’. In her study, with ‘pregnant women’. As the quote above there is no conceptual or empirical place signals, Rapp positions ‘women’ who come for a woman who is expecting to become into contact with and experience repro- a mother, but who is not pregnant. A les- ductive technology as ‘pregnant’. In so bian couple undergoing amniocentesis, doing, Rapp thus implicitly endorses the where one woman carries a child and the normative assumptions that women who other will be its parent but does not have experience reproductive technologies are a biogenetic relation to it, opens up ques- pregnant. It is an assumption which denies tions about genetic parenthood beyond a place in the clinic, and in her analysis, for the parental unit. Lesbians’ experiences of women who experience reproductive tech- amniocentesis are also likely to be shaped nologies as partners of other women. by the risk of encountering homopho- The exclusion of women who reproduce bic attitudes among staff (see, for exam- outside of a heterosexual couple is again ple, McManus et al., 2006). Sexualities are evident in Rapp’s discussion of gender re- therefore likely to have an impact on expe- lations. Rapp suggests that pregnancy and riences of pregnancy-related health care. amniocentesis exist within a complex con- Focused on heterosexual women’s experi- text of heterosexual gender-related negoti- ences, Rapp’s analysis does not easily en- ations, domination and resistance: compass the procreation of lesbians.

[I] do not believe that a woman’s decision to use or refuse prenatal testing is simply driven CONCLUDING REMARKS by the power of her partner’s wishes. Rather, the very fact of decision-making in a couple Reproductive technologies now have an involved in amniocentesis reveals the existing established place in lesbian reproductive gender negotiations within which a speciﬁ c practices. This article set out to investi- pregnancy is undertaken. (Rapp, 1999: 100) gate how lesbian conception ﬁ gures within feminist research into reproductive tech- While this quote might suggest a use of nologies. The exploration indicates that ‘partner’ as a gender-neutral term, a close lesbian reproduction is absent both within reading demonstrates that Rapp uses the early feminist research into reproduc- terms ‘partner’ and ‘husband’ interchange- tive technologies and, more surprisingly, ably in the section (pp. 99–100). Rapp thus within more recent feminist studies. I have explicitly and implicitly positions the users suggested that this absence relates to the of genetic counselling and testing within heterosexually normative assumptions a heterosexual familial and reproductive permeating studies on analytical and the- context. While gender is at the forefront of oretical levels. Rapp’s analysis of amniocentesis, sexuality I have argued that heterosexuality is a is invisible as a mode of analysis. The sub- foundational feature of and normative as- tle slide between ‘woman’ and ‘pregnant sumption within both early and more recent woman’ to ‘heterosexual pregnant woman’ feminist studies of reproductive technolo- normalizes and reproduces a notion of gies. The absence of an analysis of sexuality 412 | PETRA NORDQVIST

should not be taken to imply that structures into’ existing feminist theoretical frame- of sexualities do not shape the use, experi- works because it clashes with normative ences of, and research into reproductive assumptions of conception. technologies. Rather, I would like to suggest, In contrast to Thompson’s (2002) fi nd- heterosexuality constitutes a foundational ings of a distinct shift in theoretical ap- perspective which permeates and shapes proaches in early and more recent feminist feminist procreative imaginaries. But while research, my analysis points to important heterosexuality strongly infl uences the continuities between early and more re- studies, sexuality as a mode of analysis is cent feminist studies of reproductive tech- neglected and under-theorized. Other prac- nologies. Both normalize heterosexuality, tices and experiences, such as those of les- and render it at the same time fundamental bians, are excluded at the same time as the and yet theoretically insignifi cant. Lesbians need for an analysis of heterosexuality is are not identifi ed as reproductive agents— closed off (Ingraham, 1996: 169). Despite the culturally, socially or politically. Despite the potential uncoupling of sex and reproduc- fact that technologies have an established tion in the use of reproductive technologies, place in lesbian reproductive practices, les- as highlighted by lesbian conception, it ap- bians are continuously positioned as repro- pears that conception is recreated and rep- ductive outsiders in feminist procreative resented as heterosexual in feminist studies imaginaries of reproductive technologies. of reproductive technologies. Furthermore, the ways in which a heterosexual imaginary manifests itself and is NOTES normalized in both early and more recent I would like to express my deepest gratitude to studies are also the reason why lesbian re- Hilary Graham for support and insightful obser- production cannot simply be ‘added’ into vations. Thanks also to Stevi Jackson, Nik Brown, feminist research into reproductive tech- Lindsay Manning and the two anonymous referees for very useful and inspirational comments. Many nologies. Lesbians’ use of multiple non- thanks also to the editors of Feminist Theory. The medical and medical technologies in their research was supported by an ESRC (Economic route to conception challenges theoretical and Social Research Council) doctoral award (ref. frameworks developed within feminist no. PTA-031– 2006– 00503) and the British Sociolog- studies. For example, lesbian conception ical Association Support Fund. challenges assumptions that IVF is (al- 1. Lesbian couples’ access to fertility treatment in ways) a consequence of ‘unsuccessful’ the UK National Health Service is currently under heterosexual intercourse and it problema- review (Department of Health, 2006). 2. In the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Au- tizes a theoretical framework of concep- thority 2006 data, the category ‘lesbian women’ tion as a ‘fact of life’. Furthermore, issues refers to women who have sought treatment to- concerning fi nding, choosing and relating gether with a female partner. The category ‘sin- to a sperm donor are likely to be a central gle women’ refers to women who do not register feature of any lesbian conception (Chabot with a partner. It is worth noting that these categories may not refl ect the sexual identity of these and Ames, 2004), but do not fi gure in these women, or the relationship context in which they feminist studies. The potential stigma as- seek treatment. It is for example possible that sociated with being lesbian is also likely to childbearing partners in lesbian couples in some permeate experiences of health care and cases register as ‘single women’ given that lesbi- require a critique of the heteronormative ans have been denied access to treatment in clinics (Lasker, 1998). theoretical frameworks on which feminist 3. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Au- research appears largely to be based. Les- thority 2006 data indicate that lesbian couples bian conception cannot easily be ‘added constituted 6.7 per cent (N = 411) of all couples FEMINIST HETEROSEXUAL IMAGINARIES OF REPRODUCTION | 413

who sought donor insemination treatment in Chabot, J. and B. Ames (2004) ‘It Wasn’t “Let’s Get clinics in the year 2000. By 2005, the proportion of Pregnant and Go Do It”: Decision Making in Les- lesbian donor insemination clients had increased bian Couples Planning Motherhood via Donor In- to 14.4 per cent (N = 766). Furthermore, an insemination’, Family Relations 53(4): 348– 56. crease in lesbian couples’ use of IVF treatment Crowe, C. (1990) ‘Whose Mind over Whose Matter? has been demonstrated. In 2008, lesbian couples Women, in vitro Fertilisation and the Development are said to constitute 0.5 per cent of all women of Scientifi c Knowledge’, pp. 27–57 in M. McNeil, I. receiving IVF treatment (Edemariam, 2008). Varcoe and S. Yearley (eds) The New Reproductive 4. Politics of reproduction rely heavily on the con- Technologies. New York: St. Martin’s Press. struction of sexual categories, which in mate- Cussins, C. (1998) ‘Producing Reproduction: Tech- rial and discursive ways structure experiences niques of Normalization and Naturalization in of reproduction. It should be noted that these Infertility Clinics’, pp. 66–101 in S. Franklin and sexual categories are, however, not unproblem- H. Ragoné (eds) Reproducing Reproduction: Kin- atic. Categories of sexuality can be understood ship, Power and Technological Innovation. Phila- as constructed and mobilized in politics of re- delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. production, for example with regards to access Department of Health (2006) Review of the Human Fer- to fertility treatment (Bryld, 2001), rather than tilisation and Embryology Authority: Proposal for being merely ‘refl ected’ in policies. However, be- Revised Legislation (Including Establishment of the cause sexual categories are highly infl uential of Regulatory Authority for Tissue and Embryos). URL: experiences of conception, sexual practices can http://www.dh.gov.uk/assetRoot/04/14/13/15/ be understood to shape lived experiences, which 04141315.pdf (accessed 23 January 2007). is why such categorizations are still valid. Edemariam, A. (2008) ‘Do Families Need Fathers?’, 5. Van Balen and Inhorn (2002: 6) indicate that there The Guardian 20 May. is a Western domination in research into repro- Edwards, J., S. Franklin, E. Hirsh, F. Price and M. ductive technologies and infertility, resulting in Strathern (1999) Technologies of Procreation: Kin- biased understandings of technologies. ship in the Age of Assisted Conception. New York: 6. Notably, same sex couples could not enter mar- Routledge. riage or any other legally recognized partner- Firestone, S. ([1970] 1997) ‘The Dialectic of Sex’, pp. ship in the UK at the time of Franklin’s study. 19– 26 in L. Nicholson (ed.) The Second Wave: A This highlights how imagining IVF as a correc- Reader in Feminist Theory. London: Routledge. tive of a childless (failed) marriage is specifi cally Franklin, S. (1997) Embodied Progress: A Cultural Ac- heterosexual. count of Assisted Conception. London: Routledge. Fuss, D. (1991) ‘Inside/Out’, pp. 1– 10 in D. Fuss (ed.) REFERENCES Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories. Lon- don: Routledge. Adam, B. (2002) ‘From Liberation to Transgression Haimes, E. (1992) ‘Gamete Donation and the Social and Beyond: Gay, Lesbian and Queer Studies at Management of Genetic Origins’, pp. 119– 47 in M. the Turn of the Twenty-First Century’, pp. 15–26 in Stacey (ed.) Changing Human Reproduction: So- D. Richardson and S. Seidman (eds) Handbook of cial Science Perspectives. London: SAGE. Lesbian and Gay Studies. London: SAGE. Haimes, E. and K. Weiner (2000) ‘ “Everybody’s Got a Agigian, A. (2004) Baby Steps: How Lesbian Alternative Dad . . . ”: Issues for Lesbian Families in the Man- Insemination is Changing the World. 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Halperin (eds) The Lesbian ality: The Complexity (and Limits) of Heteronor- and Gay Studies Reader. London: Routledge. mativity’, Feminist Theory 7(1): 105– 21. Roberts, C. and S. Franklin (2004) ‘Experiencing New Kornelsen, J. (2005) ‘Essences and Imperatives: An Forms of Genetic Choice: Findings from an Eth- Investigation of Technology in Childbirth’, Social nographic Study of Preimplantation Genetic Di- Science and Medicine 61: 1495– 1504. agnosis’, Human Fertility 7(4): 285– 93. Lasker, J. (1998) ‘The Users of Donor Insemination’, Rothman, B. (1994) The Tentative Pregnancy: Amnio- pp. 7–32 in K. Daniels and E. Haimes (eds) Donor centesis and the Sexual Politics of Motherhood. Insemination: International Social Science Per- London: Pandora. spectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saffron, L. (1998) Challenging Conceptions: Plan- Lewin, E. (1993) Lesbian Mothers: Accounts of Gender in ning a Family by Self- insemination. (Printed by American Culture. 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New York: St. Martin’s Order: The Myth of Reproductive and Genetic Prog- Press. ress. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Mamo, L. (2007) ‘Negotiating Conception: Lesbians’ Stanworth, M. (1987a) ‘Reproductive Technologies Hybrid-Technological Practices’, Science, Technol- and the Deconstruction of Motherhood’, pp. 10–35 ogy and Human Values 32(3): 369– 93. in M. Stanworth (ed.) Reproductive Technologies: Oakley, A. (1976) ‘Wisewoman and Medicine Man: Gender, Motherhood and Medicine. Cambridge: Changes in the Management of Childbirth’, in Polity Press. J. Mitchell and A. Oakley (eds) The Rights and Stanworth, M., ed. (1987b) Reproductive Technologies: Wrongs of Women. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Gender, Motherhood and Medicine. Cambridge: Oakley, A. (1987) ‘From Walking Wombs to Test-Tube Polity Press. Babies’, pp. 36–56 in M. Stanworth (ed.) Reproduc- Steinberg, D. (1990) ‘The Depersonalisation of tive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood and Medi- Women through the Administration of in vitro cine. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fertilisation’, pp. 74–122 in M. McNeil, I. Varcoe Parry, D. (2005) ‘Women’s Experience with Infertility: and S. Yearley (eds) The New Reproductive Tech- The Fluidity with Conceptualizations of “Family” ’, nologies. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Qualitative Sociology 28(3): 275– 91. Strathern, M. (1992) Reproducing the Future: Essays Peterson, M. (2005) ‘Assisted Reproductive Technolo- on Anthropology, Kinship and the New Reproduc- gies and Equity of Access Issues’, Journal of Medi- tive Technologies. Manchester: Manchester Uni- cal Ethics 31: 280–5. versity Press. Ragoné, H. (1998) ‘Incontestable Motivations’, pp. Strathern, M. (1995) ‘Displacing Knowledge: Technol- 118– 31 in S. Franklin and H. Ragoné (eds) Repro- ogy and the Consequences for Kinship’, pp. 346– ducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power and Tech- 63 in F. Ginsburg and R. Rapp (eds) Conceiving the nological Innovation. 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Sullivan, M. (2004) The Family of Woman: Lesbian Ulrich, M. and A. Weatherall (2000) ‘Motherhood and Mothers, their Children, and the Undoing of Gen- Infertility: Viewing Motherhood through the Lens der. Berkeley: University of California Press. of Infertility’, Feminism and Psychology 10(3): Taylor, J. (2000) ‘Of Sonograms and Baby Prams: Pre- 323– 36. natal Diagnosis, Pregnancy and Consumption’, Van Balen, F. and M. Inhorn (2002) ‘Introduction. Feminist Studies 26(2): 391– 418. Interpreting Infertility: A View from the Social Thompson, C. (2001) ‘Strategic Naturalizing: Kinship Sciences’, pp. 3–32 in M. Inhorn and F. van Balen in an Infertility Clinic’, pp. 175– 202 in S. Franklin (eds) Infertility around the Globe: New Thinking and S. McKinnon (eds) Relative Values: Reconﬁ g- on Childlessness, Gender and Reproductive Tech- uring Kinship Studies. Durham, NC: Duke Univer- nologies. Berkeley: University of California Press. sity Press. Van der Plog, I. (2004) ‘ “Only Angels Can Do Without Thompson, C. (2002) ‘Fertile Ground: Feminists Skin”: On Reproductive Technology’s Hybrids and Theorize Infertility’, pp. 52–78 in M. Inhorn and the Politics of Body Boundaries’, Body and Society F. van Balen (eds) Infertility around the Globe: New 10(2– 3): 153– 81. Thinking on Childlessness, Gender and Reproduc- Wajcman, J. (1991) Feminism Confronts Technology. tive Technologies. Berkeley: University of Califor- Cambridge: Polity Press. nia Press. Wittig, M. ([1981] 1993) ‘One is Not Born a Woman’, Thompson, C. (2005) Making Parents: The Ontolog- pp. 103– 9 in H. Abelove, M. A. Barale and D. M. ical Choreography of Reproductive Technologies. Halperin (eds) The Lesbian and Gay Studies Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Reader. London: Routledge.

CHAPTER 25

From Reproductive Work to Regenerative Labour: The Female Body and the Stem Cell Industries Catherine Waldby and Melinda Cooper

The identifi cation and valorization of unac- longer explains the activity of most em- knowledged, feminized forms of economic ployees in the fi rst world economies. Here, productivity has been an important task Arlie Hochschild’s work on emotional la- for feminist theory. Since the 1960s, femi- bour1 (Hochschild, 1983) was the fi rst study nists have tried to expand existing notions to come to grips with the ways feminized of labour in order to encompass activities skills in the production of sociality and the quite at odds with the industrial model pleasing of others were being transformed of mass manufacture and the capital/la- into essential forms of labour in the new bour relationship that defi ned economic economy. Since then terms like ‘care la- productivity throughout most of the 20th bour’ (Fisher and Tronto, 1990; Duffy, 2005) century. During the 1970s and early 1980s, or ‘affective labour’ (Weeks, 2007) have pro- socialist feminists tried to rethink women’s liferated to designate spheres of work that domesticity and maternal care as a form of are generally feminized, and involve the reproductive labour, which complemented nurturing of others—from the expansion the industrial labour of the male breadwin- of nursing work to the growth in corporate ner (Barrett, 1980; Delphy, 1984). More re- childcare and the food service industries. cently, feminists have played a central role In this article, we also propose to ex- in rethinking labour as the post- Fordist pand and rethink existing concepts of la- restructuring of economies has moved the bour, in order to bring to light the essential productive emphasis away from indus- economic role of women in an emerging trial manufacture and towards the service productive sector. We refer to the stem cell and fi nancial sectors, knowledge produc- and regenerative medicine industries, new tion and the culture industries. These are fi elds of biomedical research that are rap- forms of productivity whose output is no idly expanding throughout the developed longer the stable, mass- manufactured and some developing economies—the UK, commodity, but rather less easily specifi ed North America, Western Europe but also entities—entertainment and celebrity, in- India and China. Women constitute the tellectual property, customer satisfaction, primary tissue donors in the new stem cell future value, communicative exchange. industries, which require high volumes of The industrial model of labour as machinic human embryos, oöcytes, foetal tissue and potential (Walker, 2007), operationalized umbilical cord blood. These industries through the effi cient ordering of tasks, no rely on the maternal- embryonic nexus as FROM REPRODUCTIVE WORK TO REGENERATIVE LABOUR | 417 a generative site, diverting material that fully conceptualize feminized productivity might otherwise be used in attempts to in the bioeconomy, we move beyond the generate new children towards the regen- global political economy of procurement eration of existing bodies through stem and open out the ideas of both feminized cell therapies. The procurement of this labour and female reproductive biology to material involves onerous forms of dona- critical scrutiny. Hence, we consider how tion, requiring variously super ovulation, historical transformations in the regula- in vitro fertilization (IVF), pregnancy ter- tion of feminized labour and the technical mination or birthing to disentangle it from repertoires of stem cell research renego- the maternal body. Nevertheless it is gen- tiate the productivity limits of female re- erally given for free in the advanced indus- productive biology, opening it out to novel trial democracies, constituted as a surplus and profi table forms of surplus value and (‘spare’ embryos) or waste (umbilical enrolling particular groups of women in cord ‘afterbirth’, cadaveric foetuses, poor complex negotiations over their role in quality oöcytes) whose generative pow- bioeconomic activity. ers should not be withheld from others.2 Here, female bodily productivity is mobi- FEMALE REPRODUCTIVE BIOLOGY lized to support bioeconomic research, yet AND REGENERATIVE MEDICINE this economic value remains largely unacknowledged (Dickenson, 2007). At the Regenerative medicine is a blanket term same time, among impoverished female that brings together a number of different populations in developing nations, such biological and biomedical disciplines to biological material is now often procured treat clinical conditions like cardiac dam- through frankly transactional relations, age, osteoporosis, diabetes and spinal cord where women undertake risky procedures injury, conditions associated with dam- for small fees. Women in South and East aged tissues. The regenerative medicine Asia, and Eastern Europe, can supplement methodology is still highly speculative, but their income through super ovulation and its aim is to promote in vivo tissue regen- oöcyte vending, or negotiate free IVF treat- eration, rather than relying on donated ment in exchange for embryos ‘donated’ organs, by either stimulating the patient’s for stem cell research (Waldby, 2008; Bha- own tissues or transplanted stem cell tis- radwaj and Glasner, 2009). sue. It is the latter approach that interests In this article, we consider the central- us here. ity of female productive agency in the stem Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that cell industries and investigate the rapid can both renew themselves and give rise transformations in both the regulated and to one or more specialized cell types with unregulated procurement of women’s bio- specifi c functions in the body. The most logical material. In particular we recast the celebrated type of stem cell is ‘pluripo- gift economy for such material as a form of tent’, meaning that it has the capacity to unacknowledged productive work. These develop into almost all of the body’s tissue labour relations become much more ex- types. Recent research suggests that it may plicit in developing nations where the rel- be possible to produce large numbers of ative lack of bioethical regulation and the pluripotent stem cells that differentiate on availability of impoverished female popu- demand, providing an unlimited supply lations have permitted the procurement of of transplantable tissue (Thomson, 1998). high volumes of reproductive material in The major source of pluripotent stem cells exchange for low fees. 3 However, in order to is in vitro embryos. However, other types of 418 | CATHERINE WALDBY AND MELINDA COOPER

reproductive tissues are also rich sources and its generative powers become regener- of stem cells. Umbilical cord blood, har- ative, repairing damaged sites and restor- vested at birth, has high concentrations of ing function.5 haematopoietic (blood producing) stem However, securing this generative po- cells. Cord blood stem cells are capable tential involves negotiating with poten- of regenerating the entire blood system in tial female donors in various ways. In the patients with severe blood disorders, and case of embryo donation for stem cell re- their proponents claim that they have the search, national and provincial states have potential for other kinds of regenerative taken the lead by providing regulatory action as well, for assisting in cardiac re- frameworks and encouraging bioethical pair for example (Brown and Kraft, 2006). oversight. From the early 2000s onward a Foetal tissues harvested from pregnancy number of the OECD countries have determinations are important sources of veloped regulatory systems which per- stem cells. Scientists extract stem cells mit IVF clinics to solicit so called ‘spare’ from gonadal tissue, liver tissue, neural tis- embryos—embryos produced as part of sue and mesenchymal tissue (Kent, 2008). in vitro reproductive procedures, but des- Oöcytes, while not themselves sources of ignated surplus to reproductive require- stem cells, are nevertheless essential comments (Gottweis, Salter and Waldby, 2009). ponents in Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer For women undergoing IVF and for clini- (SCNT) research, aimed at producing ge- cal staff working with them, designating netically matched transplantable tissues an embryo as ‘spare’ is not particularly for clinical use.4 straightforward (Ehrich et al., 2007). Nev- Each of these forms of stem cell tissue is ertheless, it is a locution which renders valuable because it partakes of the genera- non-implanted embryos as both a form of tive nexus of the maternal-foetal body, the waste and a valuable surplus that should ability to continuously produce organized be given so its value to others can be ac- tissue that develops along particular bi- tualized. This formulation has largely been ological pathways. The stem cell sciences successful in securing donations of em- aim to transform this generative capacity bryos to stem cell research from women into regenerative capacity— to divert this who are often knowledgeable about stem productivity away from the generation of cell research and who feel a moral obliga- new individuals and toward the regener- tion to contribute (Parry, 2006). ation of existing populations. The stem Currently many legislatures are also at- cell industries have developed a repertoire tempting to frame similar regulatory sys- of technical innovations which mobilize tems for oöcytes, but these have proved a the generative potential of such material. much more recalcitrant negotiating point These include cryopreservation (freezing) with potential donors. The production of which retains the material in a stable state multiple oöcytes is the most onerous part with its generative powers intact, and stem of any fertility procedure, involving ex- cell lines, which are made by disaggre- tended hormone treatment and surgery, gating embryos into single cells and con- and the endurance of risk and discomfort fi guring them so that the cells reproduce (Steinbrook, 2006). They are not easily themselves in the laboratory, galvanizing designated as a form of surplus, because the developmental powers of embryonic women in IVF may have relatively infer- material without producing actual em- tile oöcytes, and often want to deploy all bryos. The material can then, in theory at of them for reproductive bids. There is no least, be transplanted into a human body satisfactory way to preserve oöcytes—they FROM REPRODUCTIVE WORK TO REGENERATIVE LABOUR | 419 cannot be safely frozen—and so if do- what would otherwise be shameful waste. nated for SCNT work they must be fresh. The donation process itself is relatively un- Hence they are more rare and singular, and ceremonious, in contrast to the elaborate women have proved unforthcoming even information and consent protocols that for reproductive donation, so that IVF clin- govern embryo donation for stem cell re- ics routinely have long waiting lists for oö- search, and the donors often remain un- cytes. In the UK this recalcitrance is being easy about the unspecifi ed fi nal uses made negotiated through so called ‘egg-sharing’ of their foetal material (Pfeffer, 2008). arrangements, which sounds like a gift Finally, cord blood can be procured relation but is in fact a transactional one, for the haematopoietic stem cell indus- where women agree to donate oöcytes for try through private cord blood banking, a research in exchange for reduced IVF fees commercial contractual innovation, rather (Roberts and Throsby, 2008). In the United than a regulatory structure created by the States, oöcytes are highly transactional ob- state. Cord blood companies like Pluristem jects, circulating on an unregulated mar- and Cordlife solicit pregnant women ket, and debate rages within the stem cell through various types of advertising to research community whether to accept open a private cord blood account for their and utilize this market to obtain research child. The blood is collected during birth, oöcytes, or to introduce regulations which and the account is retained for an annual would bring US research into bioethical fee, available in case the child or another line with the regulations of collaborator compatible family member requires treat- nations. Beyond these two leading bio- ment for a blood disorder, or for conditions economies, many developing and even that may become treatable with stem cell developed nations do not regulate oöcyte therapies in the future. Private cord blood transactions, and a global market has de- banking hence relies heavily on the specu- veloped in which transnational fertility lative and promissory claims made about companies purchase oöcytes from rela- currently non-existent stem cell therapies, tively impoverished vendor populations and creates its markets in part by inviting and sell them to more wealthy fertility clients to invest in the future of their child tourists (Waldby, 2008). by investing in the future of regenerative Foetal material, perhaps the least pub- medicine. Private cord blood banking is licly known source of stem cells, has been not a gift system, but structured more harvested from pregnancy terminations like a form of investment in a commercial for medical research since abortion was bank, whose investors supply cord blood decriminalized. In the UK, for example, companies with both capital and biologi- women planning a termination in certain cal material for research (Brown and Kraft, clinics with links to research programmes 2006; Waldby, 2006). Such private, autolo- are approached by a research nurse to con- gous tissue banking services are set to ex- sent to the foetal tissue being harvested for pand as stem cell research identifi es more research. Under the Polkinghorne guide- and more sites of stem cell concentration lines which govern the fi eld, they receive (e.g. baby teeth) that may provide sources little information about the kinds of med- of self- regeneration in the future. ical research that this might involve. The So we can see that particular groups of terminated foetus itself is classifi ed as a women are being integrated into the lower cadaver, and, as Kent (2008) notes, the echelons of the stem cell industries as es- use of foetal tissue for stem cell research sential productive agents through vari- is constituted as making valuable use of ous contractual mechanisms, institutional 420 | CATHERINE WALDBY AND MELINDA COOPER

arrangements and regulatory systems. Gen- proceed without access to the biological erally speaking, the stem cell industries have capacities of living human bodies, which found ways to procure reproductive biolog- form essential components of the experi- ical material from women in the developed mental systems put in train by biomedical nations without entering into direct forms research. Nevertheless, when the bioecon- of transaction. Embryos, oöcytes, foetal ma- omy is analysed in terms of labour, atten- terial and cord blood have been confi gured, tion invariably turns to the value created by both through regulations and rhetorics, as a highly skilled, scientifi c labour, understood wasted form of vitality if they are not given to perform the work of creative innova- to stem cell research. By giving to stem cell tion necessary to transform biological life research, donors give either to a future imag- into industrial, therapeutic or agricultural ined community, rendered healthy by these processes (Ashish and Gambardella, 1994; new regenerative therapies, or to the future Gambardella, 1995). The organization of of their own children, secured through pri- intellectual property in the life sciences vate autologous tissue banking. 6 Amongst all recognizes the cognitive labour of the sci- of these new forms of negotiation, securing entist and the clinician, but not the con- access to oöcytes has been the most diffi cult, stitutive nature of the biological material and the most advanced bioeconomies, the or the collaboration of the donor (Pottage, UK and the USA, have resorted to more or 1998). It is evident then that the recognition less frank forms of transaction (egg-sharing of labour here is structured by a mind/body and market exchange respectively) to secure split, wherein the embodied productivity of supplies. Such frank transaction also char- the tissue donor does not fi gure. acterizes oöcyte procurement in Eastern In our analysis, however, this embodied and Southern Europe, and parts of South productivity is given a central place. Stem and East Asia, and there is evidence to sug- cell researchers require access to wom- gest that some women use oöcyte vending en’s in vivo reproductive biology, the liv- as a repeated and essential source of income ing interior processes of their bodies, as (Nahman, 2005; Barnett and Smith, 2006). a generative site for biological materials. The donor’s participation in this process is generally conceptualized as deliberative LABOUR AND THE STEM CELL and contractual; that is, they participate INDUSTRIES insofar as they make an informed decision We want to argue that women who donate to consent to donation. However, we would or transact their biological material to the contend that their participation should be regenerative medicine industries are en- understood as a thoroughgoing embodied gaged in a form of labour, even though the collaboration that involves not merely the terminology of labour is not used in these legal disposal of surplus biological material contexts. Tissue providers to biomedi- but rather the generative energies of the do- cal research are generally cast as altruis- nor’s biology, sustained over time. While the tic donors whose tissues are adjudicated legal act of donation takes place after IVF, through bioethical rather than economic super ovulation, termination or birth, the frameworks, even in cases where they are genesis of the materials takes place through paid a fee and the recipient is a commercial a drawn out and complex interaction be- entity (Tober, 2001). Life sciences research tween the woman’s subjectivity; the trajec- now constitutes an important sector of tory of her reproductive biology; the social several national economies (OECD, 2006) and biomedical technologies which order and bioeconomic development cannot that trajectory; the regulatory environment FROM REPRODUCTIVE WORK TO REGENERATIVE LABOUR | 421 which allows maternal populations to be So Charis Thompson, in her ethnographic solicited, informed and mobilized as do- work on North American fertility clinics, nors; and the technical repertoire of stem develops the idea of a ‘biomedical mode of cell research which redirects the develop- reproduction’ (Thompson, 2005) akin to the mental pathways of maternal fertility, em- industrial mode of production. In the bio- bryogenesis, foetal development and the medical mode of reproduction, ‘reproduc- birth process. In the process of this collab- tion [is made] productive in an industrial oration, the donor is caught up with various sense, with its product being standardized forms of effort, compliance, self-care and molecular entities like clones and cell lines’ drug administration, in vivo risk and trans- (Thompson, 2005: 253). The patients who formation (Throsby, 2002; Nahman, 2005) produce these tissues are likened to work- and this corporeal vulnerability and fl exi- ers who are alienated from their labour. bility is technically and socially confi gured Margaret Lock and Sarah Franklin draw on to the requirements of stem cell research. Thompson’s formulation7 in their analysis The labour involved in this collaboration of the contemporary life sciences, placing goes unrecognized in part because it takes the processes of reproduction at the centre place at the level of women’s biological em- of capitalized biosciences as the ‘primary bodiment, and hence it is readily natural- generator of wealth, agency and value’ ized, in much the same way that women’s (Lock and Franklin, 2003: 7). They note that emotional labour in the service industries ‘Thompson’s proposal for reconceptualiz- is taken for granted as a given feminine ating the way biocapital is generated draws tribute (Weeks, 2007). Moreover, it is a form on a long history of feminist critiques of of labour not amenable to quantifi cation Marxist approaches, which overemphasize in linear, abstract units of time and codi- production at the expense of reproduc- fi ed tasks; rather it takes place through the tion’ (p. 9) and argue that ‘reproduction— complex time of reproductive metabolism, like gender, nature and kinship, often endocrine circulation, and the unfolding of feminized— has been wrongly marginal- ontogenic processes, recalibrated through ized in accounts of economic change and assisted reproductive technologies and development’ (pp. 10– 11). stem cell technologies. Hence it is a labour Donna Dickenson has gone furthest in process that remains somewhat opaque to reworking the materialist feminist concept conventional industrial methods for the of ‘reproductive labour’. Like Thompson, calculation of productivity. she draws on the idea of alienated labour, to characterize the feminine contribution to the stem cell industries. She argues that THE REPRODUCTIVE LABOUR the neglect of women’s contribution rests DEBATES on a historical lack of recognition for the In many respects, our proposal to cast these work of maternity more generally, an in- interactions as a form of labour is not new, dication of women’s absence of property and several other feminist commentators rights in their own reproductive labour. have made similar moves with regard to She notes the history of feminist analyses the stem cell industries. These commenta- that have ‘extended the logic of alienation tors have sought to draw parallels between into the home’. She continues, industrial production and reproduction, and they explicitly build on the materialist If reproductive labour in the home can be feminist analyses of reproductive labour viewed as alienated, then certainly alien- developed in the 1970s and early 1980s. ation can be applied to reproductive labour 422 | CATHERINE WALDBY AND MELINDA COOPER

outside the home, and to a situation where multitude of tasks— childbearing, child- there need be no inverted commas around care, housework—that were not paid but ‘product’. Although children are neither were in fact essential to the whole regime property nor truly a product, stem cells are of Fordist labour relations and the organi- both. When women labour to produce the zation of the welfare state. By reconfi guring intermediate product used in the stem cell these tasks, normally understood as part of technologies, ova available for enucleation, there can be no question that their labour a ‘natural’ feminine/maternal gift economy is neither natural nor performed in a realm as ‘unpaid domestic labour’, the material- extraneous to capitalism. Their reproductive ist feminist tradition points to the founda- labour has entered into the very heart of one tional economic role of reproduction within of the most thriving applications of modern the Fordist/Keynesian social contract. biotechnology, and they are liable to oppres- The appeal of this approach for con- sion in that site. (Dickenson, 2007: 76) temporary feminist analysts of the bioeconomy (OECD, 2006) is its strong historical In each of these cases these commenta- and conceptual parallels with the post- tors have introduced the idea of industrial war development of the gift economy for production and feminized labour to counter human tissues, which also played a foun- the relegation of feminized donation to the dational role in the organization of the domain of altruism and gift relations, a welfare state. After the war, national blood domain, like the family, understood to be banks were established in Western Europe beyond the transactional relations of com- and some Commonwealth countries as merce (Titmuss, 1997). Like the materialist part of the new national health services, feminists of the 1970s and 1980s whom they and citizens were enjoined to give blood, invoke, they want to relocate this feminized and later other tissues, for their fellow cit- productivity within the circuits of economic izens and the public good, as part of the value, as do we. However, while this work redistributive ethics of the national wel- is enormously suggestive, our concern is fare state. The most eloquent expression of that it seems to reproduce inadvertently a this relationship between the welfare state Fordist industrial model of labour and the and distribution of human tissues can be nation- state model of reproduction, both of found in Richard Titmuss’s celebrated po- which have been signifi cantly displaced in lemic The Gift Relationship: From Human the emerging economies of clinical labour Blood to Social Policy, published in the late associated with regenerative medicine. 1960s. Titmuss argues that blood must be If we re-examine the premises that in- given rather than sold because the egal- formed the reproductive labour debates of itarian circulation of gifts is the essential the 1970s and 1980s we can see that they form of value which underpins the welfare are fi rmly located in the particularities of state and the relation among citizens (Tit- Fordist/Keynesian social and economic re- muss, 1997). lations. Materialist feminists such as Chris- Each of these spheres of gift exchange, tine Delphy (1984), Michelle Barrett (1980) domestic reproduction and tissue dona- and Nancy Hartsock (1998) followed Henry tion, was the product of the welfare state’s Ford himself in arguing that the Fordist/ decommodifying action (Cerny, 1997), the Keynesian model of society could only sus- regulatory exclusion of particular spheres tain itself if a certain class of women (the and social relations from markets as a way middle class) were compelled to return to promote social stability (through a gen- to the domestic space of reproduction.8 dered hierarchy in the case of reproductive Here women were expected to perform a labour). When Titmuss argues that blood FROM REPRODUCTIVE WORK TO REGENERATIVE LABOUR | 423 must be rendered as a gift and not as a that is often contracted out and sold on commercial transaction, he is formulat- the market. The neo-liberalization of for- ing an argument that is very close to Ford’s mer welfare state domains like health care in relation to domestic work. Far from in- has actually increased the demand for dicating its peripheral status, the ‘extra- care labour, but middle- and upper- class economic’ character of blood donation is professional women increasingly employ precisely what establishes its foundational other women as nannies, private nurses role in the Keynesian welfare state. and cleaners to carry out such care (Bak- As we have noted at several points, the ker, 2003). The entire lower end of the gift system for soliciting human tissues for ‘service’ sector is disproportionately de- clinical therapies and biomedical research pendent on the labour of local racial mi- is still operative, despite the wholesale com- norities and migrants, most of whom are mercialization of the human tissue econ- female (Sassen, 2003). Hence we argue a omy after donation (Waldby and Mitchell, major difference between Fordist uncom- 2006). Hence the strategy used by materi- pensated reproductive labour and the alist feminist commentators, to reposition contemporary relations of reproduction women’s gifts as a form of unrecognized and is a denationalization of the reproductive alienated reproductive labour, still seems sphere and its exposure to global precarious plausible as a way to construe the agency labour markets. The fact that these labour- and value of maternal donor populations. ers often have an uncertain relationship to However, our concern is that a concep- citizenship rights is not incidental— their tualization of labour adequate to current susceptibility to state detention, forced conditions needs to take into account the return and other punitive security inter- salient transformations in both labour and ventions is precisely what maintains their reproduction which have occurred over wages and conditions at such low levels. the last three or four decades, as well as the At the same time, the gift economy for regulatory, commercial and technical trans- human tissues, while still operative, is in- formations in biomedical research.9 In the creasingly fragmented, as the commercial following sections we will outline the fea- drive for bioeconomic innovation places tures of these transformations. more and more demand pressures on tissue procurement. In fact, gift economies have never been suffi cient to meet the clin- POST- FORDISM AND REPRODUCTION ical and research demand for tissues, and With the decline of the family wage and the have always required supplementation dramatic increase of women in the paid from less voluntary and more transactional work force from the 1970s onward, the forms of procurement. Even at the height shift towards post- Fordism undermines of the gift relation advocated by Titmuss, in the very separation of spheres that was the 1960s and 1970s, blood banks resorted constitutive of the Fordist middle class, to purchasing blood plasma from global renegotiating the boundaries between re- pharmaceutical companies, who in turn productive and productive labour, gift ex- purchased blood from impoverished, third change and transactional service. Hence world populations (Starr, 1998). Today, as the critical force of the term ‘reproductive bioeconomic innovation becomes a more labour’ is somewhat mitigated, since in important sector of the global economy, many cases what was once unpaid house- both gift and market systems of recruit- work performed by middle- class women ment are placed under increasing pres- is now unquestionably labour, a service sure and, we would argue, are losing their 424 | CATHERINE WALDBY AND MELINDA COOPER

distinctiveness. De jure, tissue donation already a problem for IVF treatment, has is still gratuitous in most Western Euro- become even more urgent, and at least one pean and Commonwealth countries, but documented case has emerged of a trans- de facto, the commercial and bioeconomic national oöcyte brokerage fi rm supplying policy pressures on donation have seen the material for stem cell research as well as multiplication of various forms of remuner- treatment (Paik, 2006). In this context, the ation and transaction. States in most of the sale of eggs has become a viable source of developed nations have managed to pre- income for some women living on the eco- serve particular sectors of tissue donation nomic margins of Eastern Europe or other hors commerce (for example solid organ transitional economies, many of whom are donation), but the borders between gifting otherwise engaged in the standard forms and transactional exchange are increasingly of female service labour such as domestic unstable. So, for example, women in British work and prostitution. Meanwhile, in the IVF programmes may fi nd themselves both United States, where oöcytes can be sold receiving heavily discounted reproduc- on an unregulated market, the demand for tive treatment in exchange for a propor- research oöcytes opens up vending oppor- tion of their oöcytes, while being asked to tunities to African- American and Latina gratuitously donate their ‘spare’ embryos women who are normally excluded from for stem cell research through a carefully the reproductive oöcyte market, which fa- worded informed consent procedure which vours fair skinned women with higher edu- emphasizes the virtues of the gift relation cation attainments (Pollock, 2003). and the donor’s lack of property rights in However, in order to fully appreciate the their donated material. Here the claims of qualitative difference between the reproduc- the gift relation are destabilized by the fact tive labour of women as maternal produc- that donors to stem cell research give not to ers and providers in Fordist society and the a fellow citizen (the ethical model described bioeconomic labour performed by women by Titmuss) but to an increasingly capital- today, it is necessary to move beyond the ized life sciences sector, which depends transformations in broad political economy. more and more transparently on the gen- We will now turn to consider in more detail erally unremunerated labour of the donor.10 the form of value produced by clinical la- At the same time, the national citizen- bour, and the kind of action it implies. While ship model of blood and tissue donation is the other feminist accounts of biomedical being undercut by emerging transnational reproductive labour discussed earlier re- circuits of tissue exchange. These circuits volve around a dynamic of alienation, we are often closely aligned with the geogra- will suggest that clinical labour is about the phies of labour migration that characterize transaction of biological potential and the more familiar forms of informal feminized creation of experimental relations. We con- service labour such as prostitution, clean- tend that the renegotiation of bodily limits ing and childcare. In parts of Eastern and and productive possibilities has become the Southern Europe for example, as we noted core business of bioeconomic innovation. briefl y above, private transnational IVF clinics broker sales between mobile oö- RETHINKING LABOUR: POTENTIAL, cyte vendors and infertile couples from EXPERIMENT, REGENERATION heavily regulated systems, such as those in Britain who are in search of reproductive Recent analysts of the ‘new economy’ argue tissues. As research using embryonic stem that its modes of value and accumulation cell lines steps up, the shortage of oöcytes, are oriented towards the organization of FROM REPRODUCTIVE WORK TO REGENERATIVE LABOUR | 425 potential: the prospecting for new sites with living bodies. This last point is crucial of possibility, vitality and future commer- for understanding what is at stake in an cial energies (Adkins, 2008). Thrift (2006) analysis of women’s labour in the stem cell argues for a similar orientation. For him, industries. post-Fordist knowledge economies are The accounts of reproductive labour oriented to the relentless search for new presented previously rely on a Marxist techniques, value-added commodities, theory of alienation applied to the indus- modes of communication and ways to trial mode of production. Where the early orient and treat the body, as essentially Marx envisaged industrial labour as a form experimental economies. As he puts it, the of estrangement in which the subjectivity post-Fordist mode of accumulation at- of the implicitly male worker is separated tempts to ‘squeeze every last drop of value from the instrumental capacities of the or- of the system by increasing the rate of in- ganic body (Marx, 1974), the feminist crit- novation and invention through the accel- ics discussed earlier (Lock and Franklin, eration of connective mutation. . . . instead 2003; Thompson, 2005; Dickenson, 2007) of being thought of as a passive store, argue that women are alienated from the knowledge is thought of as a set of contin- products of their reproductive labour—in uously operating machines for activating this case, the oöcytes and embryos that are competences, risk taking and readiness to used in both IVF and regenerative medi- innovate’ (Thrift, 2006: 281). Connective cine. Marx’s theory of alienation depends mutation here refers to the emergence of on a particular vision of the body as an or- unpredictable and potentially valuable re- ganic whole, which is then separated from lationships between expertise, technical itself through the act of exploitation; the capacity, commodity forms and consumer materialist feminist perspective extends demand.11 The experimental economy is this hypothesis to the female body, whose concerned with both the provocation of reproductive integrity is assumed to suffer unpredictable synergies and the captur- a similar estrangement when providing ing of value potentials that emerge from tissues for biomedicine. Intrinsic to the such synergies. The sociological literature concept of alienated labour is also a par- focused on biomedical innovation is sim- ticular understanding of temporality. Marx ilarly concerned with the importance of conceives of the relationship between la- promissory value, its constant appeal to fu- bour and the commodity form as a retro- ture therapeutic applications and its grow- active one, in which the living labour force ing reliance on intellectual property rights, expended in the present is congealed as which secure licensing rights over the pos- past or dead labour in the exchangeable sible future uses of an invention (Brown commodity. Again, the feminist materialist and Michael, 2003; Waldby, 2006; Cooper, perspective seeks to extend this insight to 2008). This promissory orientation derives women’s reproductive labour, arguing that in part from the uncertainty of the life the ‘products’ deployed in the contem- sciences research and development pipe- porary biosciences are merely the past or line and refl ects the centrality of fi nancial frozen products of women’s living repro- forecasting and market projection in stock ductive potential. The intellectual lineage market valuation of fi rms. However, it also of the concept of alienated labour certainly derives from the vitality and open-ended justifi es such an analogy, since Marx’s early performativity of the biological itself, pro- writing on alienated labour depends on a voked by new ways of bringing technical conception of the organic, reproductive and experimental systems into relation body that is derived directly from Hegel’s 426 | CATHERINE WALDBY AND MELINDA COOPER

Philosophy of Nature ([1830] 1970).12 Yet we institutional, legal and scientifi c context to would suggest that the very understand- a dramatically different one. Formally ‘re- ing of organic, reproductive life which is productive tissue’ enters into another epis- relayed by such a tradition has been sig- temological space where the potentiality nifi cantly displaced by the contemporary of the germ cell is defi ned in radically dif- political economy of the life sciences and ferent ways. One of the prime innovations calls for a corresponding reworking of the of stem cell science is to have reworked categories of both ‘labour’ and ‘life’. Hence, formerly orthodox understandings of cell we suggest the term ‘regenerative labour’ potentiality. This is true of both somatic rather than ‘reproductive labour’ as a more (nonreproductive) and germinal (repro- precise designation of the form of produc- ductive) cells such as the egg or sperm. In tivity at stake. each case, a notion of potentiality that for- We can explicate our claim by compar- merly limited their future possibilities of ing the biology of assisted reproduction division and differentiation to the evolving with the biology of stem cell technologies, organism now detects a radically different, and the different forms of productivity they even incommensurable spectrum of possi- engage. For the greater part of the 20th bilities in the same tissue specimen. In the century, assisted reproduction technolo- SCNT process, an oöcyte is used to reacti- gies and IVF have been devoted precisely vate the pluripotency of dedicated somatic to the mass reproduction of animal life for cells. That is, a somatic cell (a skin cell for industrialized agriculture (Clarke, 1998). example) can be taken back along its de- The technology of human IVF emerged velopmental pathway so that it regains its from the livestock industry although in former embryonic ability to unfold into all institutional and economic terms it was tissue types. SCNT was the process used never organized along the same lines of to clone Dolly the sheep in 1996, and sub- mass reproduction that reigned in the live- sequently many other animals, although stock industry. Human reproductive IVF the technology has not yet been success- does not involve reordering the develop- fully used to create human embryos. Prior mental biology of cells, but rather facilitat- to Dolly, it was assumed that the nuclei of ing fertilization; creating embryos in vitro adult cells had lost their pluripotency, that only as a preliminary to their transfer into is, once programmed to produce a particu- the woman’s uterus and the unfolding of lar kind of cell, they lost their ability to pro- the developmental pathways which may duce different kinds of cells (Keller, 2000). eventually produce a child. The process Stem cells derived from IVF embryos are is organized precisely to preserve the on- disaggregated from the blastocyst, the ele- togenic and teleological potentials of the mentary level of organization (mesoderm, germinal cells, their trajectory towards the and so on) that begins the production of reproduction of the organism in interac- the organism. Their pluripotency is instead tion with the maternal body. diverted into the production of a cell line, Stem cell technologies, however, are a technique which both immortalizes the concerned with the disruption of this te- tissue and facilitates its self-perpetuating leology and experimentation with cellular potential in vitro. The embryonic stem cell potential. They rely on IVF technologies line can produce any of the specialized, to disentangle reproductive material from fully differentiated cells that constitute a the maternal body, yet as the oöcyte or developing organism, while continuing to embryo passes from the IVF clinic to the divide and produce more stem cells in an stem cell laboratory, it also passes from one uncommitted, ex- organism state. In each FROM REPRODUCTIVE WORK TO REGENERATIVE LABOUR | 427 case, it is the cell’s potential which is at lines of Pateman’s Sexual Contract, not as stake; their future possibilities of differen- the exercise of rational, deliberative judge- tiation are always in surplus of the fi nite ment but as a transaction of the capacities possibilities of differentiation available to of the female body (Pateman, 1988). The the developed organism. Hence, their sci- technologies of stem cell research directly entifi c value resides in their promised ca- engage with these capacities, and have ex- pacity to provide ‘inexhaustible’ reserves tended them well beyond their historical of fl exible, transplantable tissue, the prom- use values for sexuality, reproduction and ise (and the fantasy) of an endlessly self- nurture, into an experimental realm of regenerating, frictionless biology. potential and regenerative action whose It is therefore not only the infrastruc- social and biological limits are presently ture of contemporary biomedicine that unknowable. Like all promissory econo- is being reorganized around an economy mies, however, both stem cell science and of promise, potentiality and expectation, the biotechnology industries speculate on but also the temporality of the cell. In the the future of innovation, and it remains to words of cell biologists Loeffl er and Potten, be seen if the promise of regenerative bi- ‘the main attributes of stem cells relate to ology can be scientifi cally or socially real- their potential in the future’ (Loeffl er and ized. Successful realization will depend in Potten, 1997: 13); ‘all statements that we part on the kind of contractual exchange can make [about stem cells] will be neces- the stem cell industries can negotiate with sarily probabilistic statements about the the particular groups of women we have future behaviour of the cell under con- identifi ed. sideration’ (p. 14); thus ‘stemness is not a property but a spectrum of capabilities CONCLUSION from which to choose’ (p. 1). According to this reworking of bodily potentiality, the We write at a time when more and more cell is no longer determined by its specifi c ways are being found to capitalize on lineage or committed to a path of progres- women’s reproductive biology. Alongside sive differentiation and loss of potency but the global market for reproductive oö- can also enter into a cycle of embryonic cytes, we see the rapid expansion of trans- self-accumulation by which bodily po- national surrogacy markets, as couples tentiality can be regenerated indefi nitely, from the developed economies turn to independently of the chronological tra- women in India to gestate their children, jectory of the organism. As a form of bio- at rates which undercut the long-standing technical regeneration, this is far removed US surrogacy industry (Prasad and Ghosh, from the model of reproductive, organic 2008). While this activity can be charac- life that Marx inherits from Hegel’s Philos- terized as reproductive labour, the con- ophy of Nature. Through the mechanism tractual production of maternal fertility of informed consent, women who donate for a purchaser, we have argued here that their tissues to the stem cell industries are the involvement of women in the stem effectively contractually engaging their cell industries requires a distinct form of bodies with these experimental systems analysis. Rather than simply adding an ad- and promissory economies, giving not ditional reproductive capacity to a female so much the products of reproduction as body already committed to reproductive technical and legal traction on their bodily labour, the stem cell industries require us potentials for regeneration. Here the act to acknowledge the mutual constitution of consent can be understood along the of politico-economic and technological 428 | CATHERINE WALDBY AND MELINDA COOPER

conceptions of potential itself. If different the highest aspiration of stem cell research, be- modes of technical production, scientifi c cause it would solve the biological problem of speculation and economic calculus call tissue matching and (in theory at least) the lo- gistical problem of organ shortages, as well as forth different capacities from the body, it facilitate treatments for currently untreatable is the very conception of what the body is degenerative conditions. It remains to be seen capable of doing— the work it is capable of if such a technique could be standardized and rendering and the experimental systems in made suffi ciently affordable for public medical which it can play a part— that is under ne- treatment however. 5. Most regenerative medicine is somewhat theo- gotiation in the encounter between repro- retical, in that many proposed treatments using ductive and regenerative medicine. While embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and cord blood are reproductive medicine demands a literal not yet clinically tested. Geron, a large US based labour of reproduction from the female stem cell company, at time of writing has just body, regenerative medicine is interested launched the world’s fi rst phase one clinical trial using ESCs for the treatment of spinal cord in- in the body’s capacity for embryonic self- jury. Many of the claimed possible uses for cord regeneration, prior to and independently blood depend on solving a range of technical of any process of development. Bodily po- problems related to differentiation and scaling tentiality is itself being reconfi gured at the up of material. interface of new labour relations and the 6. The appeal to a future imagined community is evident, for example, in a recent public appeal biological sciences. for altruistic donation of oöcytes to stem cell research. Ian Wilmut, creator of Dolly the sheep, recently called for young British women to do- NOTES nate oöcytes to assist with stem cell research into motor neurone disease. In an interview 1. In her study, the exemplars of emotional labour with The Guardian, Professor Wilmut said, ‘I were fl ight attendants. have never doubted that women would donate 2. The exception here is the unregulated US market if they thought we were helping people to have in oöcytes. treatment. Our hope and belief is that women 3. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many women who have seen the devastating effect of this dis- engaged in reproductive services in, for example, ease will be prepared to make such a donation’ India are not from the lowest social echelons but (Sample and Macleod, 2005). rather from the lower middle class, a population 7. Here the authors draw upon an earlier version of presumably preferred by clinics because of their her argument. better health. Nevertheless, such groups are rel- 8. For Henry Ford’s own refl ections on the family atively impoverished compared to the middle- wage, see May (1982). For an extensive discus- class Europeans and North Americans who sion of the value and shortcomings of the ma- purchase their services. terialist feminist tradition from a contemporary 4. SCNT, sometimes called therapeutic cloning, in- perspective, see Weeks (2007). volves the creating of an embryo not by the usual 9. This is not to say that there are no exceptions. process of in vivo conception, fusion of egg and See for example Truong (1990) and Bakker sperm, but through the in vitro insertion of the (2003) for a consideration of post-Fordist trans- nucleus of a cell from an adult’s tissues into an formations in gender, race and labour which oöcyte, an unfertilized egg. The oöcyte has in draws on the materialist feminist tradition. turn been enucleated—had its own nucleus re- 10. Tissue donation under these conditions resem- moved to make way for the introduced nucleus. bles the ‘free labour’ identifi ed by Tiziana Ter- This creates an embryo with the genome of the ranova (2004) who uses the term to describe the adult from whom the nucleus was taken. Such voluntary work performed by IT enthusiasts in an embryo could theoretically be transformed creating public content, programming code etc. into an embryonic stem cell line which could act in the digital economy. Terranova notes that ‘the as a source of perfectly histocompatible, trans- conditions that make free labour an important plantable tissues for the person who donated the element of the digital economy are based in a nucleus. This technique, which has not yet been diffi cult, experimental compromise between successfully performed with human tissues, is the historically rooted cultural and affective FROM REPRODUCTIVE WORK TO REGENERATIVE LABOUR | 429

desire for creative production and the current Berardi, F. (Bifo) (2005) ‘Biopolitics and Connective capitalist emphasis on knowledge as the main Mutation’, trans. T. Terranova and M. Cooper, Cul- source of value-added’ (p. 36). ture Machine E- Journal 7 (Biopolitics). 11. The term ‘connective mutation’ was originally Bharadwaj, A. and P. E. Glasner (2009) Local Cells, coined by Franco Berardi (2005). Global Science: The Rise of Embryonic Stem Cell Re- 12. In his early theory of labour alienation, which search in India. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. appears in the Economic and Philosophic Manu- Brown, N. and A. Kraft (2006) ‘Blood Ties: Banking the scripts of 1844 (1974), Marx refers not only to the Stem Cell Promise’, Technology Analysis and Stra- familiar dialectic of labour outlined in Hegel’s tegic Management 18(3/4): 313– 27. Phenomenology of Spirit but also and more di- Brown, N. and M. 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Hochschild, A. R. (1983) The Managed Heart: Com- Sample, I. and D. Macleod (2005) ‘Cloning Plan Poses mercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: Uni- New Ethical Dilemma: Scientist Courts Contro- versity of California Press. versy with Call for Women to Donate Eggs’, Guard- Keller, E. F. (2000) The Century of the Gene. Cambridge, ian Online 26 July. MA and London: Harvard University Press. Sassen, S. (2003) ‘Global Cities and Survival Cir- Kent, J. (2008) ‘The Fetal Tissue Economy: From the cuits’, pp. 254–74 in B. Ehrenreich and A. R. Abortion Clinic to the Stem Cell Laboratory’, So- Hochschild (eds) Global Woman: Nannies, Maids cial Science & Medicine 67(11): 1747– 56. and Sex Workers in the New Economy. London: Lock, M. and S. Franklin (2003) Remaking Life and Granta. Death: Toward an Anthropology of the Biosciences. Starr, D. (1998) Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Santa Fe and Oxford: School of American Re- Commerce. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. search Press. Steinbrook, R. (2006) ‘Egg Donation and Human Em- Loeffl er, M. and C. Potten (1997) ‘Stem Cells and Cel- bryonic Stem-Cell Research’, New England Journal lular Pedigrees: A Conceptual Introduction’, pp. of Medicine 354(4): 324– 6. 1–28 in C. Potten (ed.) Stem Cells. London: Har- Terranova, T. (2004) Network Culture: Politics for the court Brace and Co. Information Age. London: Pluto Press. Marx, K. (1974) Economic and Philosophic Manu- Thompson, C. (2005) Making Parents: The Ontolog- scripts of 1844. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ical Choreography of Reproductive Technologies. May, M. (1982) ‘The Historical Problem of the Family Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wage: The Ford Motor Company and the Five Dol- Thomson, J. A. (1998) ‘Embryonic Stem Lines De- lar Day’, Feminist Studies 8(2): 399– 424. rived from Human Blastocysts’, Science 282: Nahman, M. (2005) ‘Israeli Extraction: An Ethnographic 1145– 7. Study of Egg Donation and National Imaginaries’, Thrift, N. (2006) ‘Reinventing Invention: New Tenden- PhD Thesis, Lancaster University. cies in Capitalist Commodifi cation’, Economy and OECD (2006) The Bioeconomy to 2030: Designing a Society 35(2): 279– 306. Policy Agenda. Paris: OECD. Throsby, K. (2002) ‘Vials, Ampoules and a Bucketful Paik, Y.-G. (2006) ‘Beyond Bioethics: The Globalized of Syringes: The Experience of the Self- admin- Reality of Ova Traffi cking and the Possibility of istration of Hormonal Drugs in IVF’, Feminist Re- Feminist Intervention’, paper presented at the view 72: 62– 77. International Forum on the Human Rights of Titmuss, R. (1997) The Gift Relationship: From Human Women and Biotechnology. Seoul: Seoul Women’s Blood to Social Policy. London: LSE Books. Plaza. Tober, D. (2001) ‘Semen as Gift, Semen as Goods: Re- Parry, S. (2006) ‘(Re)Constructing Embryos in Stem productive Workers and the Market in Altruism’, Cell Research: Exploring the Meaning of Embryos Body and Society 7(2– 3): 137– 60. for People Involved in Fertility Treatments’, Social Truong, T.- D. (1990) Sex, Money and Morality: Pros- Science & Medicine 62(10): 2349– 59. titution and Tourism in Southeast Asia. London: Pateman, C. (1988) The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Zed Books. Polity Press. Waldby, C. (2006) ‘Umbilical Cord Blood: From So- Pfeffer, N. (2008) ‘What British Women Say Matters to cial Gift to Venture Capital’, BioSocieties 1(1): Them about Donating an Aborted Fetus to Stem 55– 70. Cell Research: A Focus Group Study’, Social Sci- Waldby, C. (2008) ‘Oöcyte Markets: Women’s Repro- ence & Medicine 66: 2544– 54. ductive Work in Embryonic Stem Cell Research’, Pollock, A. (2003) ‘Complicating Power in High-tech New Genetics and Society 27(1): 19– 31. Reproduction: Narratives of Anonymous Paid Egg Waldby, C. and R. Mitchell (2006) Tissue Economies: Donors’, Journal of Medical Humanities 24(3/4): Blood, Organs and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism. 241– 63. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Pottage, A. (1998) ‘The Inscription of Life in Law: Walker, J. (2007) ‘Economy of Nature: A Genealogy Genes, Patents and Biopolitics’, Modern Law Re- of the Concepts “Growth” and “Equilibrium” as view 61: 740– 65. Artefacts of Metaphorical Exchange between the Prasad, R. and A. Ghosh (2008) ‘The Fertility Tourists’, Natural and the Social Sciences’, PhD Thesis, Uni- The Guardian 30 July. versity of Technology, Sydney. Roberts, C. and K. Throsby (2008) ‘Paid to Share: IVF Weeks, K. (2007) ‘Life Within and Against Work: Affec- Patients, Eggs and Stem Cell Research’, Social Sci- tive Labour, Feminist Critique and Post-Fordist ence & Medicine 66: 159–69. Politics’, Ephemera 7(1): 233– 49. CHAPTER 26

Beyond Postcolonial Theory: Two Undertheorized Perspectives on Science and Technology Sandra Harding

Orientalism depends for its strategy on this those developed in the west. What is so strik- fl exible positional superiority, which puts the ing in retrospect is the sheer energy, volume, Westerner in a whole series of possible rela- and heroic commitment of the intellectual tionships with the Orient without ever losing as well as political opposition to colonial- him the relative upper hand. And why should ism, and that productively continued into the it have been otherwise, especially during the postcolonial period. Postcolonial studies has period of extraordinary European ascendancy developed that work to give it a disciplinary from the late Renaissance to the present? . . . focus, and foregrounds its signifi cance. For There emerged a complex Orient suitable for the fi rst time, in a move that was the very re- study in the Academy, for display in the mu- verse to that which Said describes in Orien- seum, for reconstruction in the colonial offi ce, talism (1978), the power of western academic for theoretical illustration in anthropologi- institutions has been deployed against the cal, biological, linguistic, racial, and histori- west. For the fi rst time, in the western acad- cal theses about mankind and the universe, emy, postcolonial subjects become subjects for instances of economic and sociological rather than the objects of knowledge. For the theories of development, revolution, cultural fi rst time, tricontinental knowledge, cultural personality, national or religious character. and political practices have asserted and — Edward Said, Orientalism achieved more or less equal institutional status with any other. Resistance to the critique of Eurocentrism is — Robert J. Young, Postcolonialism always extreme, for we are here entering the realm of the taboo. The calling into question According to Western policymakers after of the Eurocentric dimension of the dominant World War II, the world peace that so many ideology is more diffi cult to accept even than desired required greater investment in a critical challenge to its economic dimen- scientifi c and technical research.1 World sion. For the critique of Eurocentrism directly peace could not occur without democratic calls into question the position of the com- social relations, and this in turn required fortable classes of this world. economic prosperity for all societies. Pov- — Samir Amin , Eurocentrism erty drove desperate peoples to support Historically it was activists and intellectuals irrational beliefs of the sort that had led in or from the colonies and newly decolonized to World War II. It was only Western sci- nations that most effectively articulated the entifi c rationality and technical expertise opposition to colonialism, imperialism, and that could boost economic prosperity for eurocentrism; these critiques were allied to poor societies, thereby attracting people 432 | SANDRA HARDING

to rational forms of political participation. huge expenditure of taxpayer funds in the Consequently, it was the duty of Western Manhattan Project, which had created the societies to increase their scientifi c and atomic bomb. Nor would Congress get to technical research and to disseminate the have such oversight in how the newly es- results to poor societies. The newly established National Science Foundation tablished United Nations, joined by many would be distributing federal funds. As Western countries, moved quickly to set up one historian notes, the “autonomy of sci- agencies to deliver economic development ence” rhetoric from leaders of the scien- to poor societies around the globe. The tifi c community was specifi cally intended green revolution in agriculture was just to forestall government “meddling” in the one of the results of such research projects. agendas and practices of the scientifi c This way of looking at science and social community. Science was already a “little progress is grounded in modernization democracy,” proclaimed spokesmen for theory, which is itself rooted in the Enlight- the scientifi c community, so it needed no enment belief in the benefi cial powers of government oversight of the sort taxpayers scientifi c rationality. The West’s sciences usually expected (Hollinger 1996). Most of and technologies were supposed to be the time, this is widely regarded as a sen- the jewels in the crown of modernity. To sible precaution to protect research from achieve social progress, value- neutral sci- the shifting winds of political whim, How- entifi c rationality and technical expertise ever, skeptics could well wonder if all this must replace traditional religious beliefs, research directly sponsored and directed myths, and superstitions about nature and by government interests, in addition to cor- social relations. To be sure, valuable as- porate interests, should still be regarded as pects of this legacy endure. Some have said economically, politically, socially, and cul- that we need much more rationality and turally value neutral. modernity to engage in realistic and dem- Soon the “unaligned nations,” as they ocratic ways with global challenges today were named by the Cold War participants, (Harding 2008). transformed themselves into the Third Yet the way this view is articulated in the World. Many Third World intellectuals preceding two paragraphs obscures per- began strategizing about what should be haps as much as it reveals about science the science and technology policies of their and society in history. Indeed, at the very own newly independent countries, since moment that leaders of U.S. scientifi c in- these countries were no longer under for- stitutions were proclaiming the autonomy mal Western rule. As part of this project, of science from society as a reason to sup- they analyzed the contributions that West- port increased funding for scientifi c and ern sciences had provided to colonialism technical research, both the United States and that colonialism, in turn, had provided and its allies as well as the Soviet Union to Western sciences. These new histories were vigorously directing research toward began to appear as early as 1959. In that year projects intended to win superiority in an infl uential essay by Frantz Fanon was the Cold War arms race. Would this arms published, which demonstrated that under race bring world peace? Many believed it colonialism, just as under Nazi rule, doc- would. At any rate, at the time it seemed tors were complicit with “state-sanctioned preferable to another “hot war,” this time barbarism” (Fanon 2002). Philip Curtin’s with nuclear weapons. analysis of how Western medical achieve- Moreover, the U.S. Congress noticed that ments made it possible for Europeans to it had been permitted no oversight over the colonize the interior of Africa appeared two BEYOND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY | 433 years later. One of his examples was the de- topics.5 The third edition of a prominent velopment of quinine for use against ma- science and technology studies handbook laria (Curtin 1961). More counterhistories included a provocative review article (An- to the standard Western accounts of the derson and Adams 2007). A leading journal history of science followed, alongside anal- in postcolonial studies published its fi rst yses by anthropologists and biologists of issue devoted to the topic (Seth 2009a). Yet the strengths of traditional health, agricul- in 2009 one of the authors of that review ture, and environmental practices. These article could still say that “most STS schol- produced additional reasons to question ars have not seen the point of postcolonial central assumptions of modernization the- theory. . . . and most postcolonial theo- ory and its Enlightenment-grounded phi- rists . . . have fl ocked instead to the analysis losophy of science.2 of literary texts” (Anderson 2009, 390). Now, fi ve decades later, a good-sized We could probably identify many causes literature has further developed a postco- of this history of disinterest in the West in lonial framework for thinking about sci- postcolonial issues about science and tech- ences and technologies. 3 It has produced nology. This is so even though these issues startling insights about how sciences func- are about us in the West and our sciences tion in the everyday push and pull of local and technologies and not just about dis- and global political, economic, social, and tant others who are “out there” in the Third cultural relations. These intellectuals have World. Western self- interest, Eurocentrism, argued from the beginning that modern racism, and a fascination with globaliza- Western sciences have been “epistemolog- tion theory have been mentioned as pos- ically underdeveloped”; they lacked the sible causes. Perhaps another cause worth resources necessary to recognize their own considering is the preoccupation with Cold locations in social relations and history.4 War agendas. From the end of World War It remains puzzling that the issues raised II until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, in this literature are only now beginning to such preoccupations made it diffi cult for attract the attention of broader audiences Westerners to become interested in think- in the West. One can fi nd relatively little ening about the tension between, on the one gagement with these postcolonial science hand, assumptions that the value neutrality and technology writings in university cur- of modern sciences was both desirable and ricula or in relevant research fi elds such as possible and, on the other hand, the clearly the sciences themselves or the philosophy political and economic missions to which and social studies of science. (Histories of so much scientifi c research was dedicated.6 non-Western sciences and the anthropol- Sympathetic attention to the science and ogy of medicine provide important ex- technology concerns of these First World ceptions here.) The postcolonial writings and Third World intellectuals would have mostly seem to be over the horizon and seemed not only unrealistic but, more im- out of view of other kinds of lively discus- portantly, deeply unpatriotic. The Cold War sions of science and technology issues in was not a good time to articulate for West- our universities and research fi elds. How- ern ears skepticism about the empirical and ever, in the last few years, promising signs theoretical adequacy or the political de- of more robust encounters with issues sirability of modern Western sciences and raised in the postcolonial writings have technologies. Perhaps today, two decades begun to appear. A few journals in the fi eld after the end of such relations between the of science and technology studies have First and Second Worlds, we are ready to published special issues devoted to such move beyond a Cold War mentality. 434 | SANDRA HARDING

To be sure, the antimilitarist and radical to the two main focuses of postcolonial science movements that emerged in the science theory. United States and Europe during the Viet- nam War did attract widespread attention, A POSTCOLONIAL THEORY FOR especially among the young in the 1960s. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY And ecology movements began to raise STUDIES troubling questions about how Western sciences and technologies were affecting As noted earlier, two issues were the focus the environment. By the early 1970s, fem- of especially provocative questions from inist movements were questioning the the beginnings of postcolonial science the- sexist biases of some of the most widely ory a half century ago. One was a historical disseminated scientifi c theories, such as question: what roles had Western sciences sociobiology, biological and medical theo- and technologies played in colonial histories about reproduction, and the assump- ries, and what role had colonialism played tions about the environment that were the in the histories of Western sciences and target of ecofeminists. Yet the message that technologies? The other asked what the most scientists, engineers, the educated focus and character of science and tech- public, and even university researchers nology policy should be in the newly in- and scholars took away from these claims dependent Third World states. Attention to and analyses was about the uses and the second question had to focus also on abuses of scientifi c research. According to aligning the policies and practices of the this view, these kinds of criticisms should international and national aid agencies focus on the politics in society, not on sci- with the interests and desires of the poor entifi c and technical research itself. Such people of the world rather than with only research could itself still be defended as the interests and desires of the formerly value- free and committed to supposedly colonial powers that now were the major pure science and its basic research. funders of these programs. Many West- In the next section, I briefl y describe ern activists and researchers joined their this science- focused kind of postcolonial Third World colleagues in working on this theory, or “postcolonial science theory,” issue. As we shall see, the history and pol- as I refer to it. The third section takes up icy questions were linked. Their conjunc- another challenge for those who would tion enables us to grasp the importance of create more reliable sciences that have the thinking in terms of multiple modernities resources to advance democratic social with their multiple sciences. Yet this rec- relations in today’s world. That challenge ognition deeply challenges conventional is the continuing persistence of damag- Western epistemologies and philosophies ing gender stereotypes that guide science of science, which have deep commitments policies and practices around the globe, to the existence of only one modernity and including those of many advocates of post- one real science. colonial science theory. These gender criticisms, too, fi rst emerged during the Cold History War. 7 The third section looks at both the important assumptions that postcolonial Third World theorists found especially and gender science and technology stud- problematic the exceptionalist and trium- ies share, and the confl icting assumptions phalist assumptions of the conventional that prevent them from making good use Western views of science and technology of each other’s most valuable insights. Now in history. Exceptionalism assumes that BEYOND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY | 435 the West alone is capable of accurate un- so even though Edward Said, members of derstandings of the regularities of nature the Indian Subaltern Studies group, and and social relations and their underlying other early postcolonial theorists clearly causal tendencies. There is one world, and pointed to the role of Western sciences, it has a single internal order. One and only technologies, and their philosophies in co- one science is capable of understanding lonial projects.9 This work also did not ad- that order. And one and only one society dress the Cold War politics that had helped is capable of producing that science: our to put the very nature of modern Western Western society! This was the logic of the sciences outside the range of reasonable exceptionalist view. It has reigned in phi- criticism in university classrooms as well losophy of science as the unity- of- science as by media in the West. thesis.8 Triumphalism assumes that the To be sure, a few scholars in the early history of Western scientifi c and techno- days of the new social histories of science logical work consists only of a parade of did use a postcolonial lens to produce admirable discoveries and inventions. Any counterhistories of Western sciences and harmful events or processes in which scien- technologies and their interactions with tifi c or technical achievements are accused colonized societies.10 However, as the fi eld of playing a role—such as Hiroshima, en- of social studies of science and technology vironmental destruction, global warming, began to develop during the Cold War, its militarism, or colonialism itself—were historians, sociologists, and ethnogra- said to be caused by the ignorance and bad phers tended to focus on how scientifi c politics of political leaders and the public facts were socially constructed in labora- that they court. That is, such events or pro- tories, and on how knowledge travels from cesses cannot be attributed to any features one place to another. As Warwick Anderson of modern Western sciences and technol- points out, this interest in how knowledge ogies themselves. Those who make these travels aligns with globalization theory, not assumptions fi nd it unintelligible to claim postcolonial theory. It makes issues about that other societies can and have produced the past and present of colonial relations competent sciences or that it is reasonable no longer relevant or even comprehensi- to think that certain attributes of modern ble.11 Consequently issues about relations sciences themselves have made contribu- between sciences and technologies, on tions to natural and social disasters. the one hand, and colonialism, imperi- Of course, ignorance and bad politics alism, and their recent residues and res- have all too often left their marks on his- urrections, on the other hand, have until tory. But critics of exceptionalism and tri- recently remained largely unaddressed in umphalism think that ignorance and bad science and technology studies, as well as politics cannot be the end of the story. in academic postcolonial studies.12 They have argued that a consequence of such assumptions is that Western sciences History and Policy and technologies have seemed legitimately to escape the kind of postcolonial analyses By the mid- 1980s, UNESCO and other in- and criticisms that have been so insight- ternational agencies, as well as regional ful about other Western institutions and institutes in the Third World, were spon- practices. The postcolonial writings that soring large multinational conferences on became familiar in Western universities in the issues raised by postcolonial science the 1980s had little effect on such attitudes theorists, mostly but not entirely from the about sciences and technologies. This is Third World. From the perspective of North 436 | SANDRA HARDING

American science and technology theory cultural milieu of Third World societies will writings, it is hard to get a sense of the huge they become meaningful for our needs number of scholars, policymakers, and ac- and requirements, and express our true tivists who participated in such projects, the creativity and genius. Third World science rich institutional networks and resources and technology can evolve only through a that supported them, or the thoughtful and reliance on indigenous categories, idioms provocative character of their concerns. In and traditions in all spheres of thought and the United States at least, the occasional ap- action” (Third World Network 1993, 487). pearance of activists in these debates, such A second example is the proceedings as Vandana Shiva or Ashis Nandy, could not of an international colloquium titled “Sci- convey the extensive global networks and ence and Empires—a Comparative His- institutional supports for this kind of post- tory of Scientifi c Exchanges: European colonial science theory. Expansion and Scientifi c Development in One can get a quick grasp of the na- Asian, African, American, and Oceanian ture and range of these inquiries and de- Countries,” which was held in 1990 in the bates by examining the proceedings of unesco building in Paris. The colloquium three international conferences that were was organized by the rehseis (Research published from the mid- 1980s to the mid- on Epistemology and History of Exact Sci- 1990s. Here I can only briefl y describe ences and Scientifi c Institutions) group of them. The Revenge of Athena: Science, Ex- the French National Center for Scientifi c ploitation, and the Third World, edited by Research (cnrs). The proceedings were Ziauddin Sardar, published twenty- one of published as Science and Empires, edited the many dozens of conference presenta- by Patrick Petitjean, Catherine Jami, and tions given in November 1986 at a semi- Anne Marie Moulin. The thirty-fi ve essays nar titled “The Crisis in Modern Science” are organized into two parts, “Problems sponsored by the Consumer Association about the Integration of Classical and of Penang, Malaysia. The book is divided Modern Science” and “European Scien- into three parts: “What’s Wrong with Sci- tifi c Expansion and Political Strategies.” A ence?,” “Science and Third World Domi- number of First World scholars contribute nation,” and “Third World Possibilities.” papers, including the three editors, as well Contributors to the collection include as Nancy Leys Stepan, Lewis Pyenson, and fi gures—now well known in the fi eld—such Michael A. Osborne. as Vandana Shiva, Claude Alvares, Susan- Finally, another set of proceedings con- tha Goonatilake, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and tains papers presented at a conference Jerome Ravetz, as well as Sardar himself. sponsored by orstom, the French science In this volume as in the other two, many institute for research outside France, and of the contributors are themselves scien- unesco. The conference took place in Paris tists, engineers, or mathematicians. The in 1994. Its theme was “Twentieth Century conference’s “Declaration on Science and Sciences: Beyond the Metropolis.” It fea- Technology,” subsequently republished as tured presentations by a large number (per- The Crisis in Modern Science: A Third World haps more than half) of the approximately Perspective, by the Third World Network,13 two thousand participants from the Third provides an extensive agenda for redirect- World and Europe: researchers and schol- ing Third World science and technology ars, scientists and engineers, policymakers projects to Third World needs and desires. and activists.14 Seven volumes, edited by As the authors argue, “Only when science Roland Waast, of about 150 of the many and technology evolve from the ethos and conference papers were subsequently BEYOND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY | 437 published. They address a wide range of Thus modernity is not only dissemi- topics. For example, volume 6, Sciences in nated from the West to other societies. It is the South: Current Issues, has book parts also produced independently within each titled “Sciences on the Periphery: Assess- and every society. Whether arriving from ments,” “Privatisation and Globalization,” outside or inside a society—or, more likely, and “The Western Character of Science.” through negotiations between inside and outside—it must be “sutured” into existing economic, political, cultural, psychic, and A World of Sciences material worlds. Thus modernity will al- Postcolonial science and technology per- ways take on distinctive local features in its spectives provide distinctive arguments multiple regional appearances. Its episte- for recognizing the nature and value of “a mologies will be to some extent local.16 And world of sciences”—that is, multiple scien- it always tends to appropriate and reshape tifi c and technological traditions, each rel- to its own ends the social hierarchies that atively well adapted to regional needs and it fi nds. Feminist and postcolonial proj- interests, though never perfectly so. They ects will always have to be multiple and are joined by work in modernity studies distinctively local if they are to serve those and by minority tendencies in Western sci- escaping male-supremacist and Western- ence and technology studies itself.15 Here supremacist histories. the central argument is that modernization A number of the authors here think in is not identical to Westernization, contrary terms of a world of sciences, each serv- to Western exceptionalist and triumphalist ing the economic, political, cultural, and assumptions. Rather, most peoples around psychic needs of its peoples. And all these the world now live in societies that have sciences are in many kinds of interactions separated from hunter-gatherer economic with each other; confl icts, negotiations, and political relations and from the feudal coalitions, appropriations, integrations of political economies from which the mod- parts of one with the other, disseminations, ern West slowly emerged. Moreover, the and more.17 The urge to integrate or assim- global reach of Western modernity’s cor- ilate other knowledge systems completely porations, environmental destruction, and into modern Western sciences, leaving just arms industries, not to mention its contri- one global knowledge system, should vig- butions to the production of pandemics, orously be resisted. This would continue fi nancial disasters, immigration, and ref- the tragic destruction and suppression of ugees, permeates even societies that have fruitful cultural diversity in knowledge sys- received few or no benefi ts from Western tems that has characterized Western colo- modernity. Today every society lives in nialism and imperialism. Fortunately such global modernity, even if only in the dark- tendencies toward a monological knowl- est corners of its most hideous effects. To edge system are widely resisted at least in be sure, dissemination from the West and practice these days, as many of the essays from other societies also plays signifi cant will demonstrate. Developing epistemolo- roles in creating all societies today, but so gies adequate to a world of sciences is at too do processes internal to each society, this point an uncompleted project. as was the case in the West. Moreover, the Such theories of knowledge must con- recipient society always changes what it front the reality that the contrast between borrows so that the new ideas, processes, modernity and tradition that has been so or goods fi t into the existing social order important to modernization theorists is nei- with minimum disruption. ther as clear nor as useful as modernization 438 | SANDRA HARDING

theorists imagined. In the postcolonial lit- improving research and democratizing eratures, one can see the contrast blurred, global social relations?18 undermined, or “worked”—manipulated and destabilized—in historical practices of Third World societies and in the West. For GENDER AND POSTCOLONIAL example, the modernization theorists ar- SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY gued that the policies they recommended STUDIES: SEPARATE, CONJOINED, OR would replace supposedly backward tradi- COCONSTITUTED PATHS? tions with modern beliefs and practices. Yet No Women, So No Gender Issues? modernization, whether in the hands of the neoliberal World Bank or of post-Marxian The conquistadors, explorers, missionar- dependencia theory, simply appropriated ies, merchants, indigenous rulers, scien- and subjugated to its own ends traditional tists, historians, anthropologists and their households, women’s work, and traditional informants, and theorists of modernity and family relations in its nation-building development, as well as the leading schol- practices (Catherine Scott). Essays on the ars who contribute to postcolonial science importance of so-called indigenous knowl- and technology studies—these have been edge to indigenous societies and to ours, mostly men. Consequently some scholars as well as the complexity and sophistica- seem to think there is little reason to raise tion of indigenous knowledge, undermine gender issues in addressing topics in this modernity’s intellectual and pragmatic fi eld. Many assume that gender issues are devaluation of such knowledge systems. relevant only if women are in sight, or per- South Pacifi c navigation (Goodenough) haps even only if one is actually studying and Cree hunting practices (Colin Scott) women. Yet the assumption that gender provide good examples of such knowledge refers exclusively to women is false. It un- systems. Today advocates for traditional dermines the reliability as well as the legit- knowledge systems defend them by using imacy of accounts guided by it. In contrast, modern electronic technologies (Warren) recent studies have found ways to ask how and legal contracts (Brush, Hayden). Some the very absence of women has infl uenced do insist on the importance of further inte- the selection of scientifi c problems, the grating such systems into modern Western methods of research and the regulatory sciences (Goonatilake), and others advo- ideals that guide them, what count as sci- cate integrating selected elements of West- entifi c communities, conceptions of nat- ern sciences and technologies into them ural processes, the interpretation of data, (Hoppers, Sardar). Readers can identify the results of research, and the dissemi- additional ways in which both supposedly nation of scientifi c applications and tech- traditional and supposedly modern societ- nologies, as well as at least some prevailing ies work the boundaries between the two understandings of nature’s order. In societ- categories. ies organized by male-supremacist gender I have mentioned women here and hierarchies, men, their ideas and practices, there. Yet it would be a mistake to think cannot be unique models of the human. that gender refers only to women. What is They can only mark historically specifi c gender? How have gender issues shaped masculine examples of the human. sciences and technologies in colonial, im- The fi eld of feminist science and tech- perial, and postcolonial contexts? What nology studies has been developing in the resources can feminist (or gender) stud- global North and South since the 1970s. ies of science and technology provide for Yet this work and postcolonial science and BEYOND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY | 439 technology studies too often ignore each the design and management of which other. The assumption that gender and women have systematically been excluded. postcolonial paths are separate damages Women (as well as most men) around the the reliability and progressive promise of globe have borne disproportionate shares each.19 Arguments for their “intersection” of the costs and received relatively fewer are preferable, and they have been useful of the benefi ts of modern Western sciences in confronting the race and gender blind- and technologies. ness of U.S. law (Crenshaw et al. 1995). Moreover, both offer alternatives that However, this metaphor retains the false they claim are grounded in more realistic idea that somehow gender relations and understandings of knowledge production colonial relations were at one time both processes, are more comprehensive, and functioning, and yet were separate from can better serve the peoples for whom each each other before they “intersected.” That speaks. Thus the agendas of each are always assumption could be made only by peo- explicitly political as well as intellectual. ple privileged by their position in gender Additional reasons for each to be inter- and colonial hierarchies. For colonized ested in the projects of the other can come women, differences in their lives from the from recognition that their constituencies conditions of men, as well as from the con- are overlapping and their discourses are ditions of their colonial rulers, are part of interlocked. More than half of the formerly their everyday lived experiences. Here the colonized and those still under the control argument will be that gender and colonial of neocolonialism and neoimperialism are relations have coconstituted each other. women. Additionally, children and the elderly, disabled, and sick depend on women for their daily survival. To put the point the Gender and Postcolonial Science and other way, a huge majority of the world’s Technology Studies: Weak and Strong women and their dependents are among Complementarity formerly colonized peoples and those now The agendas of feminist and postcolonial negatively impacted by residues and resur- science and technology studies are similar rections of colonialism and imperialism. in important respects and thus would seem Furthermore, the dominant discourses to be complementary.20 For example, both that these social movements criticize, as argue that the perspectives and interests of well as the ones they themselves use, are their particular constituencies are not well deeply imbricated or locked into each served by modern Western science and other: colonialism, imperialism, and male technology policies, practices, or philoso- supremacy have persistently represented phies. To be sure, modern Western policies, gender in racial or colonial terms, and ra- practices, and philosophies of science and cial and colonial relations in gender terms technology have delivered some benefi ts to (e.g., Stepan 1986). Women supposedly are some women in the West. Yet these sciences not fully civilized, and non-Western men and technologies were not designed to re- are supposedly not as manly as are men spond to any group of women’s needs and of European descent. Nor are women and desires in the West, let alone to the distinc- non- Western men regarded as capable tive needs and desires of women in differ- of managing their own lives as well as are ent classes, races, ethnicities, and cultural men of European descent, according to groups around the globe. They have been such views. designed to respond primarily to the needs Gender and racial- colonial categories still of states, militaries, and corporations, from coconstitute each other today (Catherine 440 | SANDRA HARDING

Scott). Thus, because of their overlapping relations organize hierarchical institutional constituencies and interlocking discourses, structures of economic, political, and so- each of these science and technology move- cial power. However, gender never func- ments would seem to have to depend on tions alone; it always interacts with other the successes of the other to achieve its powerful social relations, such as race and own professed goals. In this sense, they are class. Whether one conceptualizes such in- strongly complementary. teractions as intersections or as processes Yet these two science and technology of coconstitution, gender relations are al- movements often seem committed to con- ways historically dynamic. Finally, like race fl icting assumptions about the relevant and class, gender is both a descriptive and social relations, the relevant sciences, and an analytic term. It designates both some- questions of who can and should be agents thing “out there” in social relations and also of the kinds of radical social and scientifi c a kind of analytic framework invoked to exchange for which each calls. (There are im- plain diverse manifestations of such social portant exceptions to this charge.) Under relations.21 such circumstances, neither social movement can deliver the benefi ts it envisions Gender and Science Studies to the majority of those to whom it has professed accountability. So what are the This fi eld is by now four decades old. I will contributions that gender and postcolo- not review that history here except to name nial studies of science and technology can fi ve focuses of ongoing concern in the make to each other’s projects? Before we North, as well as everywhere that Northern turn to this issue, it is worthwhile to recol- sciences have found a home in the South lect just what gender is and is not. In fem- (though there are additional gender issues inist work, the gender is used in ways that in the South). Such projects have been may not be obvious. initiated by groups with different kinds of disciplinary, political, and institutional interests in scientifi c and technological re- What Is Gender? search. One such question is where women Gender is not another word for women. in the social structures of modern sciences Rather, like class and race, it designates are (and have been), and why there have particular kinds of social relations, here be- been so few of them in the arenas of the tween men and women as well as between design and management of research. An- men and between women. These relations other is how and why “sexist sciences” have are “made, not born,” to borrow from Sim- provided empirical support for the claimed one de Beauvoir’s famous observation. inferiority of women. A third asks how Moreover, gender relations are manifested technologies and the applications of the re- not only by individuals but also in the sults of scientifi c research have been used structures and systematic practices of in- against women’s equality. Women’s health, stitutions (e.g., job classifi cations, legal reg- reproductive, and environmental concerns ulations). They also appear in our symbolic were among the earliest such focuses here. systems, our meanings, as when nations Fourth, how do scientifi c and technical ed- are represented as women (Liberty, Colum- ucation—pedagogy and curricula—restrict bia, Marianne) or when regulative ideals of girls’ and women’s (and boys’) develop- research, such as objectivity and rationality, ment as scientists and engineers?22 Finally, are represented as requiring a distinctively what is problematic about the epistemol- masculine character. Furthermore, gender ogies, methodologies, and philosophies of BEYOND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY | 441 science that produce and support such sex- science and technology scholars who are ist and androcentric practices?23 men rarely see gender relations as rele- Such issues all remain important almost vant either to the situations they observe four decades after they were fi rst posed— or to their own theoretical or empirical unfortunately. Some areas show signifi cant concerns. Similarly, far too few Western progress—for example, in increasing access feminists have focused on postcolonial for women to scientifi c educations, publica- science and technology relations. The ex- tions, organizations, and lab and classroom ceptions here are to be found primarily jobs, and in establishing at least token pres- in the long history of criticisms of science ences of women in policy contexts. Moreover, and technology aspects of development signifi cant changes in health and reproduc- policies and practices and in environmen- tive policies have occurred for women in tal studies. already advantaged groups. Some feminist More than three decades ago, histori- epistemological and methodological work ans pointed out that recognizing women has enabled new kinds of increasingly wide- to be fully human—as fully human as their spread debates about the relation of differ- brothers—undermines traditional theo- ent human experiences to the production retical and methodological assumptions of knowledge. Yet women in Africa, Asia, about social relations. This recognition and other places around the globe, as well raises provocative questions. For exam- as poor women in the West, have not much ple, how should we account for the fact benefi ted from these kinds of progress. that women’s conditions have tended to However, neither postcolonial nor North- regress at precisely the moments marked ern feminist science and technology studies in conventional histories as high points of are likely to improve women’s conditions human progress, such as the Renaissance, as long as their fundamental assumptions or the state formation resulting in Athe- confl ict. From the perspective of Northern nian democracy and, more than two mil- labs, science curricula, and federal policy, it lennia later, the United States? Even worse, is all too easy to be unaware of how North- it turns out that it was precisely because of ern sciences and technologies function the features identifi ed as progressive that globally. In none of such contexts can one women’s lives regressed. This is because easily focus on postcolonial or gendered whatever is extolled as progressive tends social relations, indigenous knowledge or to be symbolized as virile and manly in so- feminist research innovations, or the pos- cieties structured by gender hierarchy. For sibility that Northern residents, men or example, it was not an accident that in the women, will probably not be the most valu- Renaissance women lost rights and oppor- able agents of democratic social change tunities that they had earlier possessed. in science and technology worlds. What Moreover, in state formation, women have are these confl icting assumptions made invariably lost legal and political rights by feminist and postcolonial science and they had possessed in earlier periods, in- technology studies? cluding the democratic revolutions of eighteenth- century Europe and the independence movements of newly postcolo- Theoretical and Methodological Sites of nial states after World War II (Kelly- Gadol Dissonance 1976; Pateman 1988; Catherine Scott). First, what are the relevant social relations Apparently conventional theories of so- to be examined for these two kinds of sci- cial change have failed to account for ence and technology studies? Postcolonial the transformations they intend to chart 442 | SANDRA HARDING

insofar as they ignore women’s role and claims that the greatest scientifi c value fate in such processes. It has become clear should go to the discoveries and inven- that chronologies grounded only in what tions produced though the manly heroism happens in men’s lives, whether about the of scientifi c quests (Terrall); on the gender, North or the South, leave no conceptual class, and colonial structure of Jesuit sci- space for signifi cant changes in women’s entifi c communities in their overseas mis- lives or for examining the effects that the sions (Harris 2005; Rhodes 2005); on the conditions of women’s and men’s lives masculine chivalric values of the knowl- have had on each other. edge gathering by Spanish conquistadors Yet postcolonial science and technology as well as British and French colonialists studies seem to assume that women and (Canizares-Esguerra 2005); and on the ap- men benefi t equally from men’s progress, plication of gender stereotypes to colonial and that gender relations are irrelevant relations in typical British representations to the most adequate theories of social of fi tness and disease in the colonies (Har- change. With important exceptions, the rison 2005). This is an area ripe for further relevant social relations in the accounts of exploration. postcolonial science and technology stud- In a parallel way, much Western fem- ies are those of presumably gender-free inist work only rarely sees the social rela- imperialism, colonialism, nation build- tions of colonialism and imperialism as ing, and the local, apparently gender-free having anything to do with women’s or acquiescences or resistances to such pro- men’s experiences of Western scientifi c cesses. Occasional references to “women’s and technological work. These scholars concerns” do not address gendered social seem to think that as long as they are fo- structures or symbolic practices, let alone cused only on Western women and gender feminist epistemologica, methodological, relations, social relations of colonialism or philosophy of science issues. Conse- and imperialism are irrelevant to the sci- quently postcolonial theory cannot under- ences and technologies they observe. Such stand colonial, imperial, postcolonial, or assumptions leave us all ignorant both of today’s neocolonial and neoimperial pro- the history and practices of sciences and cesses as long as its assumptions obscure technologies around the globe and of women’s realities and experiences, their women’s and men’s variable participation standpoints on dominant social relations, in, and experiences of, such histories and and the gender relations that structure and practices. Thus similar arguments about give meaning to social institutions and treating non- Westerners as fully human the men’s and women’s lives lived within reveal the limitations of traditional Euro- them. Important exceptions here that are centric methodology in Western feminist focused on science and technology issues science and technology studies—one that include the work of Anne Fausto-Sterling is shared, for the most part, with the larger (1994, 2005), Donna Haraway (1989, 1991), fi eld of science studies. Each fi eld ignores and Vandana Shiva (1989). powerful kinds of social relations that It is encouraging to see that a few his- have shaped the content of sciences and torians and ethnographers have begun to technologies. identify the gendered symbolic meanings A second site of dissonance is the ques- and accompanying practices that have tion of what the relevant sciences are for shaped Western sciences and technolo- these two kinds of studies. For Western gies in colonial and imperial projects. For feminists (like Western science studies example, they have focused on scientists’ more generally), these have been almost BEYOND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY | 443 entirely modern Western ones.24 Cou- such contexts) that have informed Western rageous and brilliant work has been ac- feminism’s innovative methodological and complished here in addressing the gender epistemological strategies. Nor have post- dimensions even of the sciences thought colonial science and technology scholars least susceptible to social fi ngerprints, grasped the limitations of their own analy- such as physics and chemistry (Keller 1984; ses and recommendations from the stand- Potter 2001; Traweek 1988). Yet the history point of women’s interests. They have not of modern Western sciences and analyses treated women, their needs, interests, and of their practices today are almost never insights, as fully human, nor have they set in the context of the history of Western considered them as equally crucial to so- appropriation of signifi cant achievements cial progress as they consider their own. of other cultures’ sciences and technolo- Often feminism is perceived by men in for- gies, or of Western destruction of them. In- merly colonized societies as a Western im- digenous knowledge traditions, whether in port. In these cases, resistance to feminism the West or elsewhere, seem for the most is perceived to be an important part of re- part to be beyond the horizons of most sistance to Western imperialism. And this of this work. Western feminist work, like is so in spite of often vigorous and innova- much of the larger science studies move- tive feminist movements created locally by ment in which it is embedded, is unaware their female colleagues and compatriots. of the counterhistories, the successes of Evidently these otherwise brilliant intellec- indigenous knowledge, or the arguments tuals and activists take women to be more for valuing multiple science traditions—a easily duped by the West than are men.27 world of sciences. These kinds of studies Finally, the feminist and postcolonial call for radically rethinking conventional accounts disagree on questions of who Western assumptions about scientifi c can and should be the agents of progres- rationality and technical expertise. Con- sive transformations of societies and their sequently, the view of modern Western sciences. Neither movement seems to sciences and technologies from the stand- think it necessary to center members of point of non- Western societies is also the other group in the envisioned design missing from Western feminist science and and management of its projects. Only a technology studies.25 few women, such as Donna Haraway and Indigenous traditions, critical perspec- Vandana Shiva, appear in the citations of tives on modern Western sciences, and the contemporary postcolonial science stud- design of science and technology policies ies scholars, and these are mostly the same and practices that integrate the best of both few who appear occasionally in the femi- worlds are central projects for postcolo- nist work. 28 The standpoint of women only nial scholars. They have produced diverse rarely makes an appearance in this post- evaluations of these different traditions colonial work. Similarly, the standpoint of and accounts of possible future relations poor people in the Third World is missing between indigenous and modern Western from many Northern feminist analyses. scientifi c knowledge systems. 26 Yet there Moreover, non- Western peoples do not ap- has been little focus on women’s domains pear as the designers or leaders of radical of producing knowledge in these accounts political and intellectual transformation in of indigenous knowledge, and little aware- most Western feminist work. Other voices ness of the different kinds of experiences are hardly ever heard or reported except women have (different in different cultural occasionally as special interests. That is, contexts, but also different from men’s in the others are never represented as being 444 | SANDRA HARDING

at the forefront in conceptualizing or lead- from which a disadvantaged group learns ing social action toward goals and strate- to observe and speak for itself and to the gies that will produce widespread benefi ts, advantaged group about how unjust and including but not limited to those purport- oppressive social relations affect their edly special- interest groups themselves.29 lives. By starting off thought from the daily Neither movement can deliver social lives of workers, one could explain the oth- progress to its professed constituencies erwise mysterious phenomenon of how without attending to the full range of issues wealth accumulated in the lives of the al- addressed by both postcolonial and fem- ready advantaged while misery accumu- inist science and technology studies. The lated in the lives of the workers. One could existing separation of these two powerful do so without appealing to the typical bi- conceptual frameworks must be ended. ological, religious, social, or political jus- The preceding section focused on one tifi cations for such inequalities that were especially challenging contribution that promoted by the ruling groups of the day postcolonial science theorists have made (and still in our neoliberal days). to global thinking about sciences and Of course there are many problems with technologies. This is the conception of a using such Marxian theory today. Never- world of sciences; that is, a world of multi- theless the basic insight of this research ple modern sciences, each with distinctive methodology—its logic—has remained achievements, and each often in confl ict useful to many disadvantaged groups with other scientifi c traditions. Western around the globe. In feminist hands, the science studies itself has recently pro- standpoint strategy directed researchers to duced a similar account focused entirely begin thinking about any and every project on modern Western sciences (Galison and from the standpoint of women’s lives in- Stump 1996; Kellert, Longino, and Waters stead of from the conceptual frameworks 2006). Here we turn to just one of the com- of research disciplines or of the social insti- pelling and yet provocative contributions tutions that such disciplines serve. Women to rethinking regulative ideals of scientifi c had been excluded from the design and research made by feminist science studies. management of these disciplines and institutions. Those frameworks had been designed to answer questions that were for Standpoint Methodology the dominant social groups, not for women This way of designing and conducting re- or other exploited groups. The dominant search projects has been theorized most institutions sponsored, funded, and mon- extensively with respect to gender issues, itored research in the natural and social though its logic is also usually invoked sciences; their policies were grounded in in postcolonial accounts, as it is in many gender stereotypes. They promoted the other social justice research projects (Hard- “conceptual practices of power,” in the ing 2004b). The concept of a methodolog- words of Dorothy Smith (1990). ical standpoint arose in Marxian writings Standpoint projects “studied up” (as about the importance of taking the “stand- the Marxists put it). They began by think- point of the proletariat” to understand how ing about the dominant institutions, their capitalism actually worked, contrary to the practices and cultures, from the stand- bourgeoisie’s continual justifi cation of the point of the women’s lives affected by necessity of exploiting manual laborers. So them. Their goal was not to produce eth- this geographical metaphor directs atten- nographies of women’s worlds, valuable tion to a location, a site in social relations, as those can be. Rather, they intended to BEYOND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY | 445 explain the high-level institutional deci- and practices, and indigenous knowledge sions and practices responsible for initi- systems; or about encounters with Euro- ating and maintaining such situations. In pean voyagers, botanists, and physicians; this respect, they differed from the eth- or about modernization or development nographies that were frequently parts of theory. such projects and with which they were One can still ask, however, if stand- often mistakenly confl ated.30 Standpoints point methodology and epistemology are are not to be conceptualized only as per- too Western to be fully useful elsewhere. spectives. Everyone has perspectives on Standpoint theory was initially formulated the world, but standpoints are intellectual within the Marxian and Enlightenment and political achievements in that a group philosophical and methodological tradi- has to work together to fi gure out how to tions, even as it protests signifi cant aspects arrive at them. They require critical, scien- of such legacies. Although it is positioned tifi c study to see beneath the everyday so- against both positivist regulatory ideals cial relations in which all have been forced and practices in Western-origin natural and to live. They also require political struggles social sciences, positivism is not, to take to gain access to the sites (the boardrooms, just one case, one of the most problematic the command centers, the policy circles) aspects of Indian society for women, as the where one could see how decisions have philosopher Urna Narayan pointed out been made that directed and maintained several decades ago. Moreover, standpoint sexist and androcentric social relations theory’s appeal to the value of women’s (Hartsock [1983] 2003). experience can lose its critical edge in so- Standpoint theory produced stronger cieties that conceptualize sex and gender standards for good method in the natural differences as fundamentally complemen- as well as the social sciences. Similarly, tary rather than hierarchical, and this is it produced revisions of other regulative so regardless of whether such differences ideals of the sciences, including “strong are in fact treated as hierarchical (Narayan objectivity” and “robust refl exivity,” and 1989). There are other ways, with signifi - produced more rigorous and comprehen- cant relations to standpoint theory, to ar- sive standards for rationality (Haraway ticulate research methodologies that can 1991; Harding 2004a, 2004b). Standpoint distribute their benefi ts more effectively to methodologies have by now explicitly been the least advantaged groups.31 adopted across the social sciences, in some Yet standpoint theory remains a valu- mixed social and natural sciences such as able strategy to articulate the logic of “a environmental and health studies, in sev- space of a different kind for polemics eral areas of biology, and in some technol- about the epistemological priority of the ogy studies. Moreover, the logic of such experience of various groups or collectiv- methodologies has an organic quality in ities,” as Fredric Jameson put the point. that it seems to appear whenever a disad- “The presupposition is that, owing to its vantaged group tries to articulate the legit- structural situation in the social order and imacy of its own knowledge needs against to the specifi c forms of oppression and ex- the research practices that serve powerful ploitation unique to that situation, each groups. Thus the logic of standpoint epis- group lives in the world in a phenomeno- temology and methodology is routinely logically specifi c way that allows it to see, evoked in postcolonial writings that start or better still, that makes it unavoidable off from the lives of Third World peoples to for that group to see and know, features of think about Western assumptions, policies the world that remain obscure, invisible, or 446 | SANDRA HARDING

merely occasional and secondary for other a modern world but fi nd themselves in groups” (Jameson 2004).32 Standpoint ap- some of the most deprived locations in proaches can recognize the positive scien- that world? tifi c and political value of local knowledge By now it should be clear that there can- without falling into claims either of its not be a single recipe for science and tech- absolute, universal validity and appli- nology research projects that are desirable cability or of its legitimacy by only local from feminist and postcolonial stand- standards. That is, standpoint approaches points. We can at least agree that we should do not commit their users either to prob- not support one that conforms to the tra- lematic older positivist regulative ideals or ditional Western conception of progress to a mere relativism of claims valid only in and how to achieve it. Women and men in their local context. It is a symptom of the different eras and places experience differ- originality of this approach that so many ently the nature and effects of colonialism, readers can’t resist interpreting it only as imperialism, post-colonialism, neocolo- either absolutist or relativist in a damaging nialism, and the sciences and technologies way. Yet, it is only from the perspective of that these social relations create. Cultures the absolutists exceptionalist position that have their own distinctive histories, lega- these do appear to be the only choices. cies, resources, values, and interests, and it is the cultures themselves that must create discussions of how best to plot their own PROVOCATIONS AND futures (with certain caveats about harm- ILLUMINATIONS ing others and their own most vulnerable This essay explored two theoretical frame- members, of course). Thus it would be ar- works that can illuminate some of the rogant and ineffective for any one culture most puzzling and provocative intellec- to take it upon itself to determine what will tual and political challenges of the day. be best for all, and especially for Western Sciences (and technologies) and their so- researchers and scholars to do so for non- cieties coconstitute each other. Each pro- Western societies. There already are and vides resources for the development of the must be many different kinds of epistemo- other—and this can occur whether such logica, scientifi c, and technological strug- development is politically and intellectu- gles over priorities, goals, and strategies. ally progressive or regressive. This insight Meanwhile our natural and social envi- supports postcolonial and feminist argu- ronments themselves constantly change. ments that sciences and technologies are They continually produce unexpected phe- never completely value-free. How should nomena such as retroviruses, ozone holes, we think about the virtues of modern and global warming, as well as deadly fi - Western sciences and technologies in light nancial crises, hurricanes, fi res, and mud- of these challenging views of them? How slides. Our daily environments now seem should we think about the knowledge sys- crowded with risks to life and health that tems of other cultures? How should we were not imagined even one generation ago think about many non- Western sciences (Beck 1992). Westerners have to learn how and technologies that today function ef- to live with not knowing how such relations fectively for cognitively valuable and po- between knowledge systems and with nat- litically admirable projects in their own ural and social orders will turn out. The vi- world and yet still do not address women’s tality of both nature and global tendencies needs where these differ from men’s? What toward democracy in all their local varieties about those that do and must function in depends on our learning to tolerate—even BEYOND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY | 447 thrive—in the face of continually appear- 3. The term postcolonial is highly contested, even ing uncertainties (Sarewitz). In this kind of within the fi eld of post-colonial studies. Who world, postcolonial and feminist science and what is, and should be, included or left out of its domain? Is it by now archaic—an artifact and technology studies can help us locate of the 1980s that is no longer useful? I do not innovative strategies for moving forward, take the space to review such issues here. My not only by considering their illuminating own view is that the term has by no means ex- but provocative challenges to conventional hausted its progressive possibilities, though its assumptions but also by exploring the al- limitations, addressed in a number of the essays here, are important to ponder. For just three of ternatives that they are debating. the many illuminating discussions about the usefulness and desirable domains of the concept of postcolonialism, see Goldberg and Quayson NOTES 2002; Loomba et al. 2005; and early issues of the journal Postcolonial Studies. 1. The language I use here of West and non- West is 4. For fuller discussions of these histories, see Seth problematic. It echoes the discredited Oriental- 2009b; Anderson 2009; Anderson and Adams ism that makes the West the center of geography, 2007. history, and critical analyses and is one of the 5. Anderson 2002; McNeil 2005; Schiebinger 1989. founding targets of postcolonial criticism. It ob- 6. Discussions with Gail Kligman helped me see scures the fact, addressed in many essays here, the importance of the Cold War in masking for that the West consistently appropriated scientifi c Westerners the work of Third World science and and technological insights and achievements of technology intellectuals. other societies for its own projects, to this day 7. This may suggest some reasons in addition to almost always without acknowledgment, It oc- sexism for the hysterical demonization the fem- cludes the diffi culty of fi tting into this binary inist theorists frequently encountered. How- the science and technologies of many societies ever, one could argue that the manliness of the around the world that have developed their own militaries certainly was at issue in the Cold War, forms of modernity. See, e.g., Eisenstadt 2000; Mi- as it is in every war. Readers “of a certain age” gnolo 2000; Rofel 1999. will remember how the newspapers’ front pages Moreover, all the available alternative con- regularly featured charts depicting two piles of trasts are also problematic: First World- Third missiles. Representing the West’s arms capabil- World (an artifact of the Cold War), “developed- ities would be a large pile of big, white missiles; underdeveloped” (who defi nes this difference?), representing the Soviet capabilities would be a and more. Furthermore, any such contrast in- small pile of little black ones. The apparent inaccurately homogenizes the two groups and nocence of bygone eras can be startling. obscures the more complex social relations that 8. The unity- of- science thesis persists today in exist between and among various global group- spite of such philosophers’ criticisms, e.g., ings in the past and today, reifying a preoccupa- Dupre 1993; Galison and Stump 1996. tion with differences that hides shared interests 9. Ashcroft, Griffi ths, and Tiffi n 1989, 1995; Wil- and practices between peoples in very different liams and Chrisman 1994. social circumstances. Some authors prefer to dis- 10. See, e.g., Adas 1989; Blaut 1993; Brockway 1979; cuss today’s global social relations in supposedly Headrick 1981; McClellan 1992. more politically neutral language such as “global- 11. Anderson 2009. An exception to this judgment ization” or “transnationalism.” Such terms can be is the work of Helen Watson- Verran and David useful in some contexts. They are not politically Turnbull (1995). neutral, however, for they hide power relations 12. As noted earlier, historians of science and med- that are the focus of this book’s contributors. In ical anthropologists have long examined the light of such diffi culties with alternatives, I con- knowledge systems of other cultures, though tinue here to use primarily “West–non-West” and, much of this work does not deserve to be called where appropriate, shift to “First World–Third postcolonial. The postcolonial work in these World” or “North–South” when those terms bet- fi elds has tended to be written for, and to remain ter indicate the relevant context. primarily the concern of, specialists. 2. See Seth 2009b for these and many more citations 13. Excerpted in Harding 1993. to the rich history of anticolonial counterhisto- 14. I could identify only a dozen presenters from ries of science to the standard Western ones. North America. 448 | SANDRA HARDING

15. See, e.g., Eisenstadt 2000; Maffi e 2009; Galison of transgender and transsexuality theories and and Stump 1996. practices on ways of analyzing gender differ- 16. Several contributors to this collection discuss ences (Valentine 2007). “polycentric” or “polyvocal” epistemologies. 22. These studies can appear to focus only on For just a few of the many new explorations women, but they have always been concerned of distinctive non-Western modernities, see with how economic, political, and social gender also Mignolo 2000; Ong and Nonini 1997; Shih, inequality unfairly limited women’s interactions forthcoming; Lionnet and Shih 2005; Rofel 1999; with sciences and technologies while overadvan- Chakrabarty 2000; Eisenstadt 2000; Harding taging men’s interactions, and with how women 2008; Prakash 1999. resisted such discrimination. It is not so much 17. See, e.g., many of the chapters in parts II and IV that men are perceived to be the problem for of this collection. women. Rather, the social institutions that exclu- 18. There is no uncontroversial term to refer to this sively men have designed and managed do not kind of research. Feminist is too radical a term serve women’s interests and desires well. for many Westerners who, assisted by persistent 23. Examples of this relatively early work in- media demonization of women’s movements, clude Boston Women’s Health Collective 1970; associate the term only with the most ambitious Fausto-Sterling 1994; Haraway 1989; Harding and theatrical parts of the Western women’s 1986, 1991; Harding and Hintikka [1983] 2003; movements of the 1970s. On the other hand, Hubbard, Henifi n, and Fried 1982; Keller 1984; feminist is a conservative term for many people Longino 1990; Merchant 1980; Rossiter 1982– in the United States and around the world who 95; Schiebinger 1989, 1993; Tobach and Rosoff associate it with bourgeois women’s rights move- 1978–84; Wajcman 1991. The medical establish- ments that have had little concern for the lot of ment’s disparaging and often erroneous opin- poor women, African American women, and ions about women’s bodies were the object of other women of color. However, so- called gender much early gender and science work. For recent studies can seem to lack any awareness of in- reviews of these issues, see Harding 2008, chap. equalities between men and women, or even be- 4; and Subramaniam 2009. tween men or between women. I shall alternate 24. See, e.g., the otherwise excellent, widely used between these two inadequate terms, hoping to reader for gender and science studies courses, offend only half of the readers at any given time. Wyer et al. 2001. 19. This is not to deny either that gender relations 25. My argument is not that the feminist theorists vary immensely from one culture to another, as themselves are unaware of these matters but do colonial relations, or that in some colonial that the theoretical and methodological frame- contexts gender may not always be the most im- works that they deploy obscure or marginalize portant variable on which to focus. such issues. 20. An early form of the rest of this section appears 26. See, e.g., Denzin, Lincoln, and Smith 2008; in Harding 2009. Goonatilake 1984; Hess 1995; Hoppers 2002; 21. Two comments. First, the insistence on separat- Nader 1996; Third World Network 1993; Turnbull ing the social gender differences so fi rmly from 2000; Watson- Verran and Turnbull 1995. the biological relations of sex differences may 27. I am being a bit disingenuous here. Men in every well be on shaky ground. This is not because society have resisted giving up their gender priv- biological reductionism was right (it wasn’t) but ileges. They usually mask their interests in male because the binary of gender versus sex is a form supremacy with arguments about the trivial of the culture-versus- nature binary that has or dangerous nature of any challenges to their come under severe criticism in several branches control over women’s lives. This is so even when of biology (Fausto- Sterling 1994; Keller 1984). they have good reasons to resist continued Moreover, the culture- versus- nature binary is Western intrusions in their societies. Arriving at no longer legitimate in science studies where the best strategies for overcoming inequalities at cultures and their concepts of nature are seen least requires a lot of public dialogue between all as coconstituting each other. Nor do other cul- the relevant stakeholders. tures’ knowledge systems tend to fi nd it appro- 28. Many more appear in the larger fi eld of postco- priate. The solution is to be found in inventing lonial studies. Moreover, many additional signifi - a new kind of biology that does not depend on cant postcolonial feminist science and technology such a severe separation between the social and scholars are working in the West and around the the natural, but this we do not yet have. Sec- world. See those included in this collection, and ond, it is also worth thinking about the effects the many citations throughout this book. BEYOND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY | 449

29. Poor people and grassroots activists from Canizares- Esguerra, Jorge. 2005. “Iberian Colonial around the globe tend to have what they un- Science.” Isis 96:64–70. derstandably see as more urgent projects than Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 2000. Provincializing Europe: to write essays or books to be published in the Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. West. But there are many other ways for their Princeton: Princeton University Press. voices to be heard in the West, as many of the Crenshaw, Kimberlé, et al. 1995. Critical Race Theory. essays here demonstrate. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 30. But see D. Smith 2005 for a critical institutional Curtin, Philip. 1961, “ ‘The White Man’s Grave’: Image ethnography. and Reality, 1780–1850.” Journal of British Studies 31. See, e.g., Anzaldúa 1981; and Walter Mignolo’s 1:94–110. articulation of the “colonial difference” (2000). Denzin, Norman K., Yvonna S. Lincoln, and Linda 32. For a highly visible polemic about a standpoint Tuhiwai Smith, eds. 2008. Handbook of Critical claim, see the discussion of the U.S. Supreme and indigenous Methodologies. Los Angeles: Sage. Court (at that time) candidate Sonia Sotomay- Dupre, John. 1993. The Disorder of Things. Cam- or’s statement in a speech some years earlier bridge: Harvard University Press. that she hoped a wise Latina would make better Eisenstadt, S, N., ed. 2000. “Multiple Modernities.” decisions in some cases than a wise white man Special issue, Daedalus 129 (1). (Los Angeles Times 2009a, 2009b, 2009c). Fanon, Frantz. 2002. “Medicine and Colonialism.” In A Dying Colonialism, 121–45. New York: Grove Press. Fausto- Sterling, Anne. 1994. Myths of Gender: Biolog- REFERENCES ical Theories about Women and Men. New York: Basic Books. Adas, Michael, 1989, Machines as the Measure of Man. ——. 2005. “The Bare Bones of Sex: Sex and Gender,” Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Signs: journal of Women in Culture and Society Amin, Samir, 1989. Eurocentrism. New York: Monthly 30 (2): 1491–528. Review Press. Galison, Peter, and David J. Stump, eds. 1996. The Anderson, Warwick. 2002. “Postcolonial Technosci- Disunity of Science. Stanford: Stanford University ence.” Special issue, Social Studies of Science 32. Press. ——. 2009. “From Subjugated Knowledge to Con- Gibbons, Michael, et al. 1994. The New Production of jugated Subjects: Science and Globalisation, or Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research Postcolonial Studies of Science?” In “Colonialism, in Contemporary Societies. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Postcolonialism, and Science,” ed. Suman Seth, Sage. special issue, Postcolonial Studies 12 (4). Goldberg, David Theo, and Ato Quayson, eds. 2002. Anderson, Warwick, and Vincanne Adams. 2007. Relocating Postcolonialism. New York: Blackwell. “Pramoedya’s Chickens: Post- colonial Studies of Goonatilake, Susantha. 1984. Aborted Discovery: Science Technoscience.” In The Handbook of Science and and Creativity in the Third World. London: Zed. Technology Studies, 3rd ed., ed. Edward J. Hackett Gupta, Akhil. 1998. Postcolonial Developments: Agri- et al. Cambridge: MIT Press. culture in the Making of Modern India. Durham: Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1981. Borderlands/La Frontera. San Duke University Press. Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute. Hackett, Edward J., et al. 2007. The Handbook of Sci- Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Grifﬁ ths, and Helen Tifﬁ n, eds. ence and Technology Studies. 3rd ed. Cambridge: 1989. The Empire Writes Back. London: Routledge. MIT Press. ——, eds. 1995. The Post-colonial Studies Reader. New Haraway, Donna. 1989. Primate Visions: Gender, Race, York: Routledge. and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Mo- York: Routledge. dernity. London: Sage. ——. 1991. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Ques- Biagioli, Mario, ed, 1999. The Science Studies Reader. tion in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Per- New York: Routledge. spectives.” In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. New Blaut, J. M, 1993, The Colonizers Model of the World: York: Routledge. Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric His- Harding, Sandra, 1986. The Science Question in Femi- tory. New York: Guilford Press. nism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Boston Women’s Health Collective. 1970. Our Bodies, ——. 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Ithaca: Ourselves. Boston: New England Free Press. Cornell University Press. Brockway, Lucille H, 1979. Science and Colonial Ex- ——, ed. 1993. The “ Racial ” Economy of Science: To- pansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanical ward a Democratic Future. Bloomington: Indiana Gardens. New York: Academic Press. University Press. 450 | SANDRA HARDING

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Theoretical Horizons in Feminist Technoscience Studies This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 27

Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective1 Donna Haraway

Academic and activist feminist enquiry which dares to resist the stripped-down has repeatedly tried to come to terms with atomism of Star Wars, hypermarket, post- the question of what we might mean by modern, media-simulated citizenship. Max the curious and inescapable term ‘objec- Headroom doesn’t have a body; therefore, tivity’. We have used a lot of toxic ink and he alone sees everything in the great com- trees processed into paper decrying what municator’s empire of the Global Network. they have meant and how it hurts us. The No wonder Max gets to have a naïve sense imagined ‘they’ constitute a kind of invis- of humour and a kind of happily regre- ible conspiracy of masculinist scientists ssive, pre- oedipal sexuality, a sexuality and philosophers replete with grants and which we ambivalently—and dangerously laboratories; and the imagined ‘we’ are the incorrectly—had imagined was reserved embodied others, who are not allowed not for lifelong inmates of female and colo- to have a body, a fi nite point of view, and nized bodies, and maybe also white male so an inevitably disqualifying and pollut- computer hackers in solitary electronic ing bias in any discussion of consequence confi nement. outside our own little circles, where a It has seemed to me that feminists have ‘mass’-subscription journal might reach a both selectively and fl exibly used and been few thousand readers composed mostly of trapped by two poles of a tempting dichot- science-haters. At least, I confess to these omy on the question of objectivity. Certainly paranoid fantasies and academic resent- I speak for myself here, and I offer the spec- ments lurking underneath some convo- ulation that there is a collective discourse luted refl ections in print under my name on these matters. On the one hand, recent in the feminist literature in the history and social studies of science and technology philosophy of science. We, the feminists have made available a very strong social in the debates about science and technol- constructionist argument for all forms of ogy, are the Reagan era’s ‘special interest knowledge claims, most certainly and es- groups’ in the rarefi ed realm of epistemol- pecially scientifi c ones. 2 In these tempting ogy, where traditionally what can count views, no insider’s perspective is privileged, as knowledge is policed by philosophers because all drawings of inside– outside codifying cognitive canon law. Of course, boundaries in knowledge are theorized as a special interest group is, by Reaganoid power moves, not moves towards truth. defi nition, any collective historical subject So, from the strong social constructionist 456 | DONNA HARAWAY

perspective, why should we be cowed by cannot be allowed to decay into the radiant scientists’ descriptions of their activity and emanations of cynicism. accomplishments; they and their patrons In any case, social constructionists could have stakes in throwing sand in our eyes. maintain that the ideological doctrine of They tell parables about objectivity and scientifi c method and all the philosophical scientifi c method to students in the fi rst verbiage about epistemology were cooked years of their initiation, but no practitioner up to distract our attention from getting to of the high scientifi c arts would be caught know the world effectively by practising the dead acting on the textbook versions. Social sciences. From this point of view, science— constructionists make clear that offi cial the real game in town, the one we must ideologies about objectivity and scientifi c play—is rhetoric, the persuasion of the rel- method are particularly bad guides to how evant social actors that one’s manufactured scientifi c knowledge is actually made. Just knowledge is a route to a desired form of very as for the rest of us, what scientists believe objective power. Such persuasions must or say they do and what they really do have take account of the structure of facts and a very loose fi t. artefacts, as well as of language-mediated The only people who end up actually actors in the knowledge game. Here, arte- believing and, goddess forbid, acting on facts and facts are parts of the powerful art the ideological doctrines of disembodied of rhetoric. Practice is persuasion, and the scientifi c objectivity enshrined in elemen- focus is very much on practice. All knowl- tary textbooks and technoscience booster edge is a condensed node in an agonis- literature are nonscientists, including a tic power fi eld. The strong programme in few very trusting philosophers. Of course, the sociology of knowledge joins with the my designation of this last group is proba- lovely and nasty tools of semiology and bly just a refl ection of residual disciplinary deconstruction to insist on the rhetorical chauvinism from identifying with histori- nature of truth, including scientifi c truth. ans of science and too much time spent History is a story Western culture buffs with a microscope in early adulthood in a tell each other; science is a contestable kind of disciplinary pre-oedipal and mod- text and a power fi eld; the content is the ernist poetic moment when cells seemed form.3 Period. The form in science is the to be cells and organisms, organisms. Pace, artefactual-social rhetoric of crafting the Gertrude Stein. But then came the law of world into effective objects. This is a prac- the father and its resolution of the prob- tice of world- changing persuasions that lem of objectivity, solved by always already take the shape of amazing new objects— absent referents, deferred signifi eds, split like microbes, quarks, and genes. subjects, and the endless play of signifi ers. But whether or not they have the struc- Who wouldn’t grow up warped? Gender, ture and properties of rhetorical objects, race, the world itself—all seem just effects late twentieth-century scientifi c entities— of warp speeds in the play of signifi ers in infective vectors (microbes), elementary a cosmic force fi eld. All truths become particles (quarks), and biomolecular codes warp speed effects in a hyper-real space (genes)— are not Romantic or modernist of simulations. But we cannot afford these objects with internal laws of coherence. 4 particular plays on words—the projects They are momentary traces focused by of crafting reliable knowledge about the force fi elds, or they are information vectors ‘natural’ world cannot be given over to the in a barely embodied and highly mutable genre of paranoid or cynical science fi ction. semiosis ordered by acts of recognition and For political people, social constructionism misrecognition. Human nature, encoded in SITUATED KNOWLEDGES: THE SCIENCE QUESTION IN FEMINISM | 457 its genome and its other writing practices, hostile science by showing the radical his- is a vast library worthy of Umberto Eco’s torical specifi city, and so contestability, of imagined secret labyrinth in The Name of every layer of the onion of scientifi c and the Rose (1980). The stabilization and stor- technological constructions, and we end age of this text of human nature promise up with a kind of epistemological electro- to cost more than its writing. This is a ter- shock therapy, which far from ushering us rifying view of the relationship of body and into the high stakes tables of the game of language for those of us who would still contesting public truths, lays us out on the like to talk about reality with more confi - table with self-induced multiple personal- dence than we allow the Christian right’s ity disorder. We wanted a way to go beyond discussion of the Second Coming and their showing bias in science (that proved too being raptured out of the fi nal destruction easy anyhow), and beyond separating the of the world. We would like to think our ap- good scientifi c sheep from the bad goats of peals to real worlds are more than a des- bias and misuse. It seemed promising to do perate lurch away from cynicism and an this by the strongest possible construction- act of faith like any other cult’s, no matter ist argument that left no cracks for reducing how much space we generously give to all the issues to bias versus objectivity, use ver- the rich and always historically specifi c sus misuse, science versus pseudo- science. mediations through which we and every- We unmasked the doctrines of objectiv- body else must know the world. ity because they threatened our budding So, the further I get with the description sense of collective historical subjectivity of the radical social constructionist pro- and agency and our ’embodied’ accounts gramme and a particular version of post- of the truth, and we ended up with one modernism, coupled to the acid tools of more excuse for not learning any post- critical discourse in the human sciences, Newtonian physics and one more reason the more nervous I get. Like all neuroses, to drop the old feminist self-help practices mine is rooted in the problem of meta- of repairing our own cars. They’re just texts phor, that is, the problem of the relation anyway, so let the boys have them back. Be- of bodies and language. For example, the sides these textualized postmodern worlds force fi eld imagery of moves in the fully are scary, and we prefer our science fi ction textualized and coded world is the matrix to be a bit more utopic, maybe like Woman for many arguments about socially nego- on the Edge of Time or even Wanderground. tiated reality for the postmodern subject. Some of us tried to stay sane in these This world- as- code is, just for starters, a disassembled and dissembling times by high- tech military fi eld, a kind of auto- holding out for a feminist version of ob- mated academic battlefi eld, where blips jectivity. Here, motivated by many of the of light called players disintegrate (what a same political desires, is the other se- metaphor!) each other in order to stay in ductive end of the duplicitous objectivity the knowledge and power game. Techno- problem. Humanistic Marxism was pol- science and science fi ction collapse into luted at the source by its structuring onto- the sun of their radiant (ir)reality—war. 5 It logical theory of the domination of nature shouldn’t take decades of feminist theory in the self- construction of man and by its to sense the enemy here. Nancy Hartsock closely related impotence to historicize (1983b) got all this crystal clear in her con- anything women did that didn’t qualify for cept of abstract masculinity. a wage. But Marxism was still a promising I, and others, started out wanting a strong resource in the form of epistemological tool for deconstructing the truth claims of feminist mental hygiene that sought our 458 | DONNA HARAWAY

own doctrines of objective vision. Marxist of radical historical contingency for all starting points offered tools to get to our knowledge claims and knowing subjects, versions of standpoint theories, insistent a critical practice for recognizing our own embodiment, a rich tradition of critiques ‘semiotic technologies’ for making mean- of hegemony without disempowering ings, and a no- nonsense commitment to positivisms and relativisms, and nuanced faithful accounts of a ‘real’ world, one that theories of mediation. Some versions of can be partially shared and friendly to psychoanalysis aided this approach im- earth-wide projects of fi nite freedom, ade- mensely, especially anglophone object rela - quate material abundance, modest mean- tions theory, which maybe did more for ing in suffering, and limited happiness. US socialist-feminism for a time than Harding calls this necessary multiple desire anything from the pen of Marx or Engels, a need for a successor science project and much less Althusser or any of the late pre- a postmodern insistence on irreducible tenders to sonship treating the subject of difference and radical multiplicity of local ideology and science.6 knowledges. All components of the desire Another approach, ‘feminist empiricism’, are paradoxical and dangerous, and their also converges with feminist uses of Marx- combination is both contradictory and ian resources to get a theory of science necessary. Feminists don’t need a doctrine which continues to insist on legitimate of objectivity that promises transcendence, meanings of objectivity and which remains a story that loses track of its mediations just leery of a radical constructivism conjugated where someone might be held responsible with semiology and narratology (Harding, for something, and unlimited instrumental 1986, pp. 24– 6, 161– 2). Feminists have to power. We don’t want a theory of innocent insist on a better account of the world; it is powers to represent the world, where lan- not enough to show radical historical con- guage and bodies both fall into the bliss of tingency and modes of construction for organic symbiosis. We also don’t want to everything. Here, we, as feminists, fi nd our- theorize the world, much less act within it, selves perversely conjoined with the dis- in terms of Global Systems, but we do need course of many practising scientists, who, an earth-wide network of connections, when all is said and done, mostly believe including the ability partially to translate they are describing and discovering things knowledges among very different— and by means of all their constructing and ar- power- differentiated— communities. We guing. Evelyn Keller has been particularly need the power of modern critical theories insistent on this fundamental matter, and of how meanings and bodies get made, not Harding calls the goal of these approaches in order to deny meaning and bodies, but a ‘successor science’. Feminists have stakes in order to live in meanings and bodies that in a successor science project that offers a have a chance for a future. more adequate, richer, better account of a Natural, social, and human sciences world, in order to live in it well and in crit- have always been implicated in hopes like ical, refl exive relation to our own as well as these. Science has been about a search others’ practices of domination and the unfor translation, convertibility, mobility of equal parts of privilege and oppression that meanings, and universality— which I call make up all positions. In traditional philo- reductionism, when one language (guess sophical categories, the issue is ethics and whose) must be enforced as the standard politics perhaps more than epistemology. for all the translations and conversions. So, I think my problem and ‘our’ problem What money does in the exchange or- is how to have simultaneously an account ders of capitalism, reductionism does in SITUATED KNOWLEDGES: THE SCIENCE QUESTION IN FEMINISM | 459 the powerful mental orders of global sci- is the gaze that mythically inscribes all the ences: there is fi nally only one equation. marked bodies, that makes the unmarked That is the deadly fantasy that feminists category claim the power to see and not and others have identifi ed in some ver- be seen, to represent while escaping rep- sions of objectivity doctrines in the service resentation. This gaze signifi es the un- of hierarchical and positivist orderings of marked positions of Man and White, one what can count as knowledge. That is one of the many nasty tones of the world ob- of the reasons the debates about objectiv- jectivity to feminist ears in scientifi c and ity matter, metaphorically and otherwise. technological, late industrial, militarized, Immortality and omnipotence are not our racist and male dominant societies, that goals. But we could use some enforceable, is, here, in the belly of the monster, in the reliable accounts of things not reducible United States in the late 1980s. I would like to power moves and agonistic, high status a doctrine of embodied objectivity that ac- games of rhetoric or to scientistic, positiv- commodates paradoxical and critical fem- ist arrogance. This point applies whether inist science projects: feminist objectivity we are talking about genes, social classes, means quite simply situated knowledges. elementary particles, genders, races, or The eyes have been used to signify a per- texts; the point applies to the exact, natu- verse capacity—honed to perfection in the ral, social, and human sciences, despite the history of science tied to militarism, capital- slippery ambiguities of the words objectiv- ism, colonialism, and male supremacy—to ity and science as we slide around the dis- distance the knowing subject from every- cursive terrain. In our efforts to climb the body and everything in the interests of greased pole leading to a usable doctrine unfettered power. The instruments of vi- of objectivity, I and most other feminists sualization in multinationalist, postmod- in the objectivity debates have alterna- ernist culture have compounded these tively, or even simultaneously, held on to meanings of disembodiment. The visu- both ends of the dichotomy, which Hard- alizing technologies are without apparent ing describes in terms of successor science limit; the eye of any ordinary primate like projects versus postmodernist accounts us can be endlessly enhanced by sonogra- of difference and I have sketched as radi- phy systems, magnetic resonance imaging, cal constructivism versus feminist critical artifi cial intelligence- linked graphic ma- empiricism. It is, of course, hard to climb nipulation systems, scanning electron mi- when you are holding on to both ends of croscopes, computer-aided tomography a pole, simultaneously or alternately. It is, scanners, colour enhancement techniques, therefore, time to switch metaphors. satellite surveillance systems, home and offi ce VDTs, cameras for every purpose from fi lming the mucous membrane lining the THE PERSISTENCE OF VISION 7 gut cavity of a marine worm living in the I would like to proceed by placing meta- vent gases on a fault between continental phorical reliance on a much maligned sen- plates to mapping a planetary hemisphere sory system in feminist discourse: vision. elsewhere in the solar system. Vision in Vision can be good for avoiding binary op- this technological feast becomes unregu- positions. I would like to insist on the em- lated gluttony; all perspective gives way to bodied nature of all vision, and so reclaim infi nitely mobile vision, which no longer the sensory system that has been used to seems just mythically about the god-trick signify a leap out of the marked body and of seeing everything from nowhere, but to into a conquering gaze from nowhere. This have put the myth into ordinary practice. 460 | DONNA HARAWAY

And like the god- trick, this eye fucks the tempting myths of vision as a route to world to make techno-monsters. Zoe So- disembodiment and second-birthing, al- foulis (1988) calls this the cannibal- eye of lows us to construct a usable, but not an masculinist extra-terrestrial projects for innocent, doctrine of objectivity. I want excremental second birthing. a feminist writing of the body that met- A tribute to this ideology of direct, de- aphorically emphasizes vision again, be- vouring, generative, and unrestricted vi- cause we need to reclaim that sense to sion, whose technological mediations are fi nd our way through all the visualizing simultaneously celebrated and presented tricks and powers of modern sciences and as utterly transparent, the volume cele- technologies that have transformed the brating the 100th anniversary of the Na- objectivity debates. We need to learn in tional Geographic Society closes its survey our bodies, endowed with primate colour of the magazine’s quest literature, effected and stereoscopic vision, how to attach through its amazing photography, with the objective to our theoretical and polit- two juxtaposed chapters. The fi rst is on ical scanners in order to name where we ‘Space’, introduced by the epigraph, ‘The are and are not, in dimensions of mental choice is the universe— or nothing’ (Bryan, and physical space we hardly know how 1987, p. 352). Indeed. This chapter re- to name. So, not so perversely, objectivity counts the exploits of the space race and turns out to be about particular and spe- displays the colour-enhanced ‘snapshots’ cifi c embodiment, and defi nitely not about of the outer planets reassembled from the false vision promising transcendence digitalized signals transmitted across vast of all limits and responsibility. The moral space to let the viewer ‘experience’ the mo- is simple: only partial perspective prom- ment of discovery in immediate vision of ises objective vision. This is an objective the ‘object’.8 These fabulous objects come vision that initiates, rather than closes off, to us simultaneously as indubitable re- the problem of responsibility for the gen- cordings of what is simply there and as he- erativity of all visual practices. Partial per- roic feats of techno-scientifi c production. spective can be held accountable for both The next chapter is the twin of outer space: its promising and its destructive monsters. ‘Inner Space’, introduced by the epigraph, All Western cultural narratives about objec- ‘The stuff of stars has come alive’ (Bryan, tivity are allegories of the ideologies of the 1987, p. 454). Here, the reader is brought relations of what we call mind and body, of into the realm of the infi nitesimal, objec- distance and responsibility, embedded in tifi ed by means of radiation outside the the science question in feminism. Feminist wave lengths that ‘normally’ are perceived objectivity is about limited location and by hominid primates, i.e., the beams of la- situated knowledge, not about transcen- sers and scanning electron microscopes, dence and splitting of subject and object. whose signals are processed into the won- In this way we might become answerable derful full-colour snapshots of defending for what we learn how to see. cells and invading viruses. These are lessons which I learned in But of course that view of infi nite vision part walking with my dogs and wondering is an illusion, a god-trick. I would like to how the world looks without a fovea and suggest how our insisting metaphorically very few retinal cells for colour vision, but on the particularity and embodiment of with a huge neural processing and sen- all vision (though not necessarily organic sory area for smells. It is a lesson available embodiment and including technolog- from photographs of how the world looks ical mediation), and not giving in to the to the compound eyes of an insect, or even SITUATED KNOWLEDGES: THE SCIENCE QUESTION IN FEMINISM | 461 from the camera eye of a spy satellite or to see from their positions. To see from the digitally transmitted signals of space below is neither easily learned nor unprob- probe-perceived differences ‘near’ Jupiter lematic, even if ‘we’ ‘naturally’ inhabit the that have been transformed into coffee great underground terrain of subjugated table colour photographs. The ‘eyes’ made knowledges. The positionings of the sub- available in modem technological sciences jugated are not exempt from critical re- shatter any idea of passive vision; these examination, decoding, deconstruction, prosthetic devices show us that all eyes, and interpretation; that is, from both semi- including our own organic ones, are active ological and hermeneutic modes of critical perceptual systems, building in transla- enquiry. The standpoints of the subjugated tions and specifi c ways of seeing, that is, are not ‘innocent’ positions. On the con- ways of life. There is no unmediated pho- trary, they are preferred because in prin- tograph or passive camera obscura in sci- ciple they are least likely to allow denial entifi c accounts of bodies and machines; of the critical and interpretative core of there are only highly specifi c visual possi- all knowledge. They are savvy to modes of bilities, each with a wonderfully detailed, denial through repression, forgetting, and active, partial way of organizing worlds. disappearing acts— ways of being nowhere All these pictures of the world should not while claiming to see comprehensively. be allegories of infi nite mobility and inter- The subjugated have a decent chance to changeability, but of elaborate specifi city be on to the god-trick and all its dazzling— and difference and the loving care people and, therefore, blinding— illuminations. ‘Sub - might take to learn how to see faithfully jugated’ standpoints are preferred because from another’s point of view, even when they seem to promise more adequate, sus- the other is our own machine. That’s not tained, objective, transforming accounts alienating distance; that’s a possible alle- of the world. But how to see from below is gory for feminist versions of objectivity. a problem requiring at least as much skill Understanding how these visual systems with bodies and language, with the medi- work, technically, socially, and psychically ations of vision, as the ‘highest’ techno- ought to be a way of embodying feminist scientifi c visualizations. objectivity. Such preferred positioning is as hos- Many currents in feminism attempt to tile to various forms of relativism as to the theorize grounds for trusting especially the most explicitly totalizing versions of claims vantage points of the subjugated; there is to scientifi c authority. But the alternative to good reason to believe vision is better from relativism is not totalization and single vi- below the brilliant space platforms of the sion, which is always fi nally the unmarked powerful (Hartsock, 1983a; Sandoval, n.d.; category whose power depends on sys- Harding, 1986; Anzaldúa, 1987). Linked to tematic narrowing and obscuring. The al- this suspicion is an argument for situated ternative to relativism is partial, locatable, and embodied knowledges and against critical knowledges sustaining the possibil- various forms of unlocatable, and so irre- ity of webs of connections called solidar- sponsible, knowledge claims. Irresponsible ity in politics and shared conversations in means unable to be called into account. epistemology. Relativism is a way of being There is a premium on establishing the nowhere while claiming to be everywhere capacity to see from the peripheries and equally. The ‘equality’ of positioning is a the depths. But here lies a serious danger denial of responsibility and critical enquiry. of romaticizing and/or appropriating the Relativism is the perfect mirror twin of to- vision of the less powerful while claiming talization in the ideologies of objectivity; 462 | DONNA HARAWAY

both deny the stakes in location, embodi- A commitment to mobile positioning ment, and partial perspective; both make and to passionate detachment is dependent it impossible to see well. Relativism and on the impossibility of innocent ‘identity’ totalization are both ‘god- tricks’ promis- politics and epistemologies as strategies for ing vision from everywhere and nowhere seeing from the standpoints of the subju- equally and fully, common myths in rheto- gated in order to see well. One cannot ‘be’ rics surrounding Science. But it is precisely either a cell or molecule— or a woman, colin the politics and epistemology of partial onized person, labourer, and so on—if one perspectives that the possibility of sus- intends to see and see from these positions tained, rational, objective enquiry rests. critically. ‘Being’ is much more problematic So, with many other feminists, I want and contingent. Also, one cannot relocate to argue for a doctrine and practice of in any possible vantage point without being objectivity that privileges contestation, accountable for that movement. Vision is deconstruction, passionate construction, always a question of the power to see— and webbed connections, and hope for trans- perhaps of the violence implicit in our vi- formation of systems of knowledge and sualizing practices. With whose blood were ways of seeing. But not just any partial per- my eyes crafted? These points also apply spective will do; we must be hostile to easy to testimony from the position of ‘oneself’. relativisms and holisms built out of sum- We are not immediately present to our- ming and subsuming parts. ‘Passionate de- selves. Self-knowledge requires a semiotic- tachment’ (Kuhn, 1982) requires more than material technology linking meanings and acknowledged and self- critical partiality. bodies. Self-identity is a bad visual system. We are also bound to seek perspective from Fusion is a bad strategy of positioning. The those points of view, which can never be boys in the human sciences have called this known in advance, which promise some- doubt about self- presence the ‘death of the thing quite extraordinary, that is, knowl- subject’, that single ordering point of will edge potent for constructing worlds less and consciousness. That judgement seems organized by axes of domination. In such bizarre to me. I prefer to call this generative a viewpoint, the unmarked category would doubt the opening of non-isomorphic sub- really disappear—quite a difference from jects, agents, and territories of stories un- simply repeating a disappearing act. The imaginable from the vantage point of the imaginary and the rational— the visionary cyclopian, self-satiated eye of the master and objective vision—hover close together. subject. The Western eye has fundamen- I think Harding’s plea for a successor sci- tally been a wandering eye, a travelling ence and for postmodern sensibilities must lens. These peregrinations have often been be read to argue that this close touch of the violent and insistent on mirrors for a con- fantastic element of hope for transforma- quering self—but not always. Western fem- tive knowledge and the severe check and inists also inherit some skill in learning to stimulus of sustained critical enquiry are participate in revisualizing worlds turned jointly the ground of any believable claim upside down in earth-transforming chal- to objectivity or rationality not riddled with lenges to the views of the masters. All is not breath- taking denials and repressions. It is to be done from scratch. even possible to read the record of scien- The split and contradictory self is the one tifi c revolutions in terms of this feminist who can interrogate positionings and be ac- doctrine of rationality and objectivity. Sci- countable, the one who can construct and ence has been utopian and visionary from join rational conversations and fantastic the start; that is one reason ‘we’ need it. imaginings that change history.9 Splitting, SITUATED KNOWLEDGES: THE SCIENCE QUESTION IN FEMINISM | 463 not being, is the privileged image for fem- practised and honoured is the standpoint inist epistemologies of scientifi c knowl- of the master, the Man, the One God, whose edge. ‘Splitting’ in this context should be Eye produces, appropriates, and orders all about heterogeneous multiplicities that are difference. No one ever accused the God of simultaneously necessary and incapable monotheism of objectivity, only of indiffer- of being squashed into isomorphic slots ence. The god-trick is self-identical, and we or cumulative lists. This geometry pertains have mistaken that for creativity and knowl- within and among subjects. The topogra- edge, omniscience even. phy of subjectivity is multidimensional; so, Positioning is, therefore, the key practice therefore, is vision. The knowing self is par- grounding knowledge organized around tial in all its guises, never fi nished, whole, the imagery of vision, as so much Western simply there and original; it is always con- scientifi c and philosophic discourse is or- structed and stitched together imperfectly, ganized. Positioning implies responsibility and therefore able to join with another, to for our enabling practices. It follows that see together without claiming to be an- politics and ethics ground struggles for other. Here is the promise of objectivity: a the contests over what may count as ra- scientifi c knower seeks the subject position tional knowledge. That is, admitted or not, not of identity, but of objectivity; that is, politics and ethics ground struggles over partial connection. There is no way to ‘be’ knowledge projects in the exact, natural, simultaneously in all, or wholly in any, of social, and human sciences. Otherwise, the privileged (subjugated) positions struc- rationality is simply impossible, an optical tured by gender, race, nation, and class. And illusion projected from nowhere compre- that is a short list of critical positions. The hensively. Histories of science may be pow- search for such a ‘full’ and total position is erfully told as histories of the technologies. the search for the fetishized perfect subject These technologies are ways of life, social of oppositional history, sometimes appear- orders, practices of visualization. Tech- ing in feminist theory as the essentialized nologies are skilled practices. How to see? Third World Woman (Mohanty, 1984). Sub- Where to see from? What limits to vision? jugation is not grounds for an ontology; it What to see for? Whom to see with? Who might be a visual clue. Vision requires in- gets to have more than one point of view? struments of vision; an optics is a politics of Who gets blinkered? Who wears blinkers? positioning. Instruments of vision mediate Who interprets the visual fi eld? What other standpoints; there is no immediate vision sensory powers do we wish to cultivate be- from the standpoints of the subjugated. sides vision? Moral and political discourse Identity, including self- identity, does not should be the paradigm of rational dis- produce science; critical positioning does, course in the imagery and technologies of that is, objectivity. Only those occupying vision. Sandra Harding’s claim, or observa- the positions of the dominators are self- tion, that movements of social revolution identical, unmarked, disembodied, un- have most contributed to improvements mediated, transcendent, born again. It is in science might be read as a claim about unfortunately possible for the subjugated the knowledge consequences of new tech- to lust for and even scramble into that sub- nologies of positioning. But I wish Harding ject position—and then disappear from had spent more time remembering that view. Knowledge from the point of view of social and scientifi c revolutions have not the unmarked is truly fantastic, distorted, always been liberatory, even if they have and so irrational. The only position from always been visionary. Perhaps this point which objectivity could not possibly be could be captured in another phrase: the 464 | DONNA HARAWAY

science question in the military. Struggles the intimately personal and individualized over what will count as rational accounts body, vibrate in the same fi eld with global of the world are struggles over how to see. high tension emissions. Feminist embod- The terms of vision: the science question iment, then, is not about fi xed location in in colonialism; the science question in a reifi ed body, female or otherwise, but exterminism (Sofoulis, 1988); the science about nodes in fi elds, infl ections in orien- question in feminism. tations, and responsibility for difference The issue in politically engaged attacks in material-semiotic fi elds of meaning. on various empiricisms, reductionisms, or Embodiment is signifi cant prosthesis; other versions of scientifi c authority should objectivity cannot be about fi xed vision not be relativism, but location. A dichoto- when what counts as an object is pre- mous chart expressing this point might look cisely what world history turns out to be like this: about. How should one be positioned in order to universal rationality ethnophilosophies see in this situation of tensions, resonances, common language heteroglossia transformations, resistances, and complici- new Organon deconstruction ties? Here, primate vision is not immediately unifi ed fi eld theory oppositional a very powerful metaphor or technology for positioning feminist political- epistemological clarifi ca- world system local knowledges tion, since it seems to present to conscious- master theory webbed accounts ness already processed and objectifi ed fi elds; things seem already fi xed and distanced. But a dichotomous chart misrepresents But the visual metaphor allows one to go be- in a critical way the positions of embod- yond fi xed appearances, which are only the ied objectivity which I am trying to sketch. end products. The metaphor invites us to The primary distortion is the illusion of investigate the varied apparatuses of visual symmetry in the chart’s dichotomy, mak- production, including the prosthetic tech- ing any position appear, fi rst, simply alter- nologies interfaced with our biological eyes native and, second, mutually exclusive. A and brains. And here we fi nd highly particu- map of tensions and resonances between lar machineries for processing regions of the the fi xed ends of a charged dichotomy electro-magnetic spectrum into our pictures better represents the potent politics and of the world. It is in the intricacies of these epistemologies of embodied, therefore ac- visualization technologies in which we are countable, objectivity. For example, local embedded that we will fi nd metaphors and knowledges have also to be in tension means for understanding and intervening in with the productive structurings that force the patterns of objectifi cation in the world, unequal translations and exchanges— mat is, the patterns of reality for which we material and semiotic—within the webs must be accountable. In these metaphors, of knowledge and power. Webs can have we fi nd means for appreciating simultane- the property of systematicity, even of cen- ously both the concrete, ‘real’ aspect and the trally structured global systems with deep aspect of semiosis and production in what fi laments and tenacious tendrils into time, we call scientifi c knowledge. space and consciousness, the dimensions I am arguing for politics and epistemol- of world history. Feminist accountabil- ogies of location, positioning, and situat- ity requires a knowledge tuned to reso- ing, where partiality and not universality is nance, not to dichotomy. Gender is a fi eld the condition of being heard to make ratio- of structured and structuring difference, nal knowledge claims. These are claims on where the tones of extreme localization, of people’s Uves; the view from a body, always SITUATED KNOWLEDGES: THE SCIENCE QUESTION IN FEMINISM | 465 a complex, contradictory, structuring and everywhere and so nowhere, to be free structured body, versus the view from from interpretation, from being repre- above, from nowhere, from simplicity. sented, to be fully self-contained or fully Only the god- trick is forbidden. Here is a formalizable. Rational knowledge is a criterion for deciding the science question process of ongoing critical interpretation in militarism, that dream science/technology among ‘fi elds’ of interpreters and decod- of perfect language, perfect communica- ers. Rational knowledge is power-sensitive tion, fi nal order. conversation (King, 1987a): Feminism loves another science: the sciences and politics of interpretation, knowledge:community::knowledge:power tran slation, stuttering, and the partly un- hermeneutics:semiology::critical interpreta- derstood. Feminism is about the sciences of tion:codes. the multiple subject with (at least) double vision. Feminism is about a critical vision Decoding and transcoding plus trans- consequent upon a critical positioning in lation and criticism; all are necessary. So inhomogeneous gendered social space.10 science becomes the paradigmatic model Translation is always interpretative, critical, not of closure, but of that which is contest- and partial. Here is a ground for conversa- able and contested. Science becomes the tion, rationality, and objectivity—which is myth not of what escapes human agency power- sensitive, not pluralist, ‘conversa- and responsibility in a realm above the tion’. It is not even the mythic cartoons of fray, but rather of accountability and re- physics and mathematics—incorrectly car- sponsibility for translations and solidari- icatured in anti-science ideology as exact, ties linking the cacophonous visions and hyper-simple knowledges—that have come visionary voices that characterize the to represent the hostile other to feminist knowledges of the subjugated. A splitting paradigmatic models of scientifi c knowl- of senses, a confusion of voice and sight, edge, but the dreams of the perfectly known rather than clear and distinct ideas, be- in high-technology, permanently milita- comes the metaphor for the ground of rized scientifi c productions and position- the rational. We seek not the knowledges ings, the god-trick of a Star Wars paradigm ruled by phallogocentrism (nostalgia for of rational knowledge. So location is about the presence of the one true Word) and vulnerability; location resists the politics disembodied vision, but those ruled by of closure, fi nality, or, to borrow from Al- partial sight and limited voice. We do not thusser, feminist objectivity resists ‘simpli- seek partiality for its own sake, but for the fi cation in the last instance’. That is because sake of the connections and unexpected feminist embodiment resists fi xation and is openings situated knowledges make pos- insatiably curious about the webs of differ- sible. The only way to fi nd a larger vision ential positioning. There is no single femi- is to be somewhere in particular. The sci- nist standpoint because our maps require ence question in feminism is about objec- too many dimensions for that metaphor to tivity as positioned rationality. Its images ground our visions. But the feminist stand- are not the products of escape and tran- point theorists’ goal of an epistemology scendence of limits, i.e., the view from and politics of engaged, accountable po- above, but the joining of partial views and sitioning remains eminently potent. The halting voices into a collective subject po- goal is better accounts of the world, that sition that promises a vision of the means is, ‘science’. of ongoing fi nite embodiment, of living Above all, rational knowledge does not within limits and contradictions, i.e., of pretend to disengagement: to be from views from somewhere. 466 | DONNA HARAWAY

intervention, called into being by feminist OBJECTS AS ACTORS: THE concepts of gender as socially, historically, APPARATUS OF BODILY PRODUCTION and semiotically positioned difference. And Throughout this refl ection on ‘objectivity’, yet, to lose authoritative biological accounts I have refused to resolve the ambiguities of sex, which set up productive tensions built into referring to science without dif- with its binary pair, gender, seems to be to ferentiating its extraordinary range of con- lose too much; it seems to be to lose not just texts. Through the insistent ambiguity, I analytic power within a particular Western have foregrounded a fi eld of commonalities tradition, but the body itself as anything but binding exact, physical, natural, social, po- a blank page for social inscriptions, includ- litical, biological, and human sciences; and ing those of biological discourse. The same I have tied this whole heterogeneous fi eld of problem of loss attends a radical ‘reduction’ academically (and industrially, for example, of the objects of physics or of any other sci- in publishing, the weapons trade, and phar- ences to the ephemera of discursive pro- maceuticals) institutionalized knowledge duction and social construction. 11 production to a meaning of science that But the diffi culty and loss are not nec- insists on its potency in ideological strug- essary. They derive partly from the analyt- gles. But, partly in order to give play to both ical tradition, deeply indebted to Aristotle the specifi cities and the highly permeable and to the transformative history of ‘White boundaries of meanings in discourse on Capitalist Patriarchy’ (how may we name science, I would like to suggest a resolution this scandalous Thing?) that turns every- to one ambiguity. Throughout the fi eld of thing into a resource for appropriation, in meanings constituting science, one of the which an object of knowledge is fi nally it- commonalities concerns the status of any self only matter for the seminal power, the object of knowledge and of related claims act, of the knower. Here, the object both about the faithfulness of our accounts to guarantees and refreshes the power of a ‘real world’, no matter how mediated for the knower, but any status as agent in the us and no matter how complex and con- productions of knowledge must be denied tradictory these worlds may be. Feminists, the object. It—the world—must, in short, and others who have been most active as be objectifi ed as thing, not as an agent; it critics of the sciences and their claims or as- must be matter for the self-formation of sociated ideologies, have shied away from the only social being in the productions doctrines of scientifi c objectivity in part of knowledge, the human knower. Zoe because of the suspicion that an ‘object’ of Sofoulis (1988) identifi ed the structure of knowledge is a passive and inert thing. Ac- this mode of knowing in technoscience counts of such objects can seem to be either as ‘resourcing’— the second- birthing of appropriations of a fi xed and determined Man through the homogenizing of all the world reduced to resource for the instru- world’s body into resource for his perverse mentalist projects of destructive Western projects. Nature is only the raw material of societies, or they can be seen as masks for culture, appropriated, preserved, enslaved, interests, usually dominating interests. exalted, or otherwise made fl exible for dis- For example, ‘sex’ as an object, of bio- posal by culture in the logic of capitalist logical knowledge appears regularly in the colonialism. Similarly, sex is only the mat- guise of biological determinism, threaten- ter to the act of gender; the productionist ing the fragile space for social construction- logic seems inescapable in traditions of ism and critical theory, with their attendant Western binarisms. This analytical and possibilities for active and transformative historical narrative logic accounts for my SITUATED KNOWLEDGES: THE SCIENCE QUESTION IN FEMINISM | 467 nervousness about the sex/gender distinc- ‘death of the subject’ discourse, have made tion in the recent history of feminist theory. this point quite clear. In some critical sense Sex is ‘resourced’ for its re-presentation that is crudely hinted at by the clumsy cat- as gender, which ‘we’ can control. It has egory of the social or of agency, the world seemed all but impossible to avoid the trap encountered in knowledge projects is an of an appropriationist logic of domination active entity. In so far as a scientifi c account built into the nature/culture binarism and has been able to engage this dimension of its generative lineage, including the sex/ the world as object of knowledge, faithful gender distinction. knowledge can be imagined and can make It seems clear that feminist accounts claims on us. But no particular doctrine of of objectivity and embodiment—that is, representation or decoding or discovery of a world—require a deceptively simple guarantees anything. The approach I am manoeuvre within inherited Western an- recommending is not a version of ‘realism’, alytical traditions, a manoeuvre begun in which has proved a rather poor way of en- dialectics, but stopping short of the needed gaging with the world’s active agency. revisions. Situated knowledges require that My simple, perhaps simple-minded, ma- the object of knowledge be pictured as an noeuvre is obviously not new in Western actor and agent, not a screen or a ground or philosophy, but it has a special feminist a resource, never fi nally as slave to the mas- edge to it in relation to the science question ter that closes off the dialectic in his unique in feminism and to the linked questions agency and authorship of ‘objective’ knowl- of gender as situated difference and of edge. The point is paradigmatically clear in female embodiment. Ecofeminists have critical approaches to the social and human perhaps been most insistent on some sciences, where the agency of people stud- version of the world as active subject, not ied itself transforms the entire project of as resource to be mapped and appropri- producing social theory. Indeed, coming ated in bourgeois, Marxist, or masculin- to terms with the agency of the ‘objects’ ist projects. Acknowledging the agency of studied is the only way to avoid gross error the world in knowledge makes room for and false knowledge of many kinds in these some unsettling possibilities, including sciences. But the same point must apply a sense of the world’s independent sense to the other knowledge projects called sci- of humour. Such a sense of humour is ences. A corollary of the insistence that not comfortable for humanists and oth- ethics and politics covertly or overtly pro- ers committed to the world as resource. vide the bases for objectivity in the sciences Richly evocative figures exist for femi- as a heterogeneous whole, and not just in nist visualizations of the world as witty the social sciences, is granting the status agent. We need not lapse into an appeal of agent/actor to the ‘objects’ of the world. to a primal mother resisting becoming Actors come in many and wonderful forms. resource. The Coyote or Trickster, em- Accounts of a ‘real’ world do not, then, bodied in American Southwest Indian depend on a logic of ‘discovery’, but on a accounts, suggests our situation when power-charged social relation of ‘conver- we give up mastery but keep searching sation’. The world neither speaks itself nor for fidelity, knowing all the while we will disappears in favour of a master decoder. be hoodwinked. I think these are useful The codes of the world are not still, wait- myths for scientists who might be our ing only to be read. The world is not raw allies. Feminist objectivity makes room material for humanization; the thorough for surprises and ironies at the heart of attacks on humanism, another branch of all knowledge production; we are not in 468 | DONNA HARAWAY

charge of the world. We just live here and not that these new pictures of the biologi- try to strike up non-innocent conversa- cal female are simply true or not open to tions by means of our prosthetic devices, contestation and conversation. Quite the including our visualization technologies. opposite. But these pictures foreground No wonder science fiction has been such knowledge as situated conversation at every a rich writing practice in recent feminist level of its articulation. The boundary be- theory. I like to see feminist theory as a tween animal and human is one of the reinvented coyote discourse obligated stakes in this allegory, as well as that be- to its enabling sources in many kinds of tween machine and organism. heterogeneous accounts of the world. So I will close with a fi nal category useful Another rich feminist practice in sci- to a feminist theory of situated knowledges: ence in the last couple of decades illus- the apparatus of bodily production. In her trates particularly well the ‘activation’ of analysis of the production of the poem as the previously passive categories of ob- an object of literary value, Katie King offers jects of knowledge. The activation perma- tools that clarify matters in the objectivity nently problematizes binary distinctions debates among feminists. King suggests the like sex and gender, without however elim- term ‘apparatus of literary production’ to inating their strategic utility. I refer to the highlight the emergence of what is embod- reconstructions in primatology, especially ied as literature at the intersection of art, but not only women’s practice as prima- business, and technology. The apparatus of tologists, evolutionary biologists, and be- literary production is a matrix from which havioural ecologists, of what may count as ‘literature’ is born. Focusing on the potent sex, especially as female sex, in scientifi c object of value called the ‘poem’, King ap- accounts (Haraway, 1989b). The body, the plies her analytic frame to the relation of object of biological discourse, itself be- women and writing technologies (King, comes a most engaging being. Claims of 1987b). I would like to adapt her work to biological determinism can never be the understanding the generation—the ac- same again. When female ‘sex’ has been tual production and reproduction—of bod- so thoroughly re- theorized and revisual- ies and other objects of value in scientifi c ized that it emerges as practically indis- knowledge projects. At fi rst glance, there is tinguishable from ‘mind’, something basic a limitation to using King’s scheme inher- has happened to the categories of biology. ent in the ‘facticity’ of biological discourse The biological female peopling current bi- that is absent from literary discourse and ological behavioural accounts has almost its knowledge claims. Are biological bod- no passive properties left. She is structur- ies ‘produced’ or ‘generated’ in the same ing and active in every respect; the ‘body’ is strong sense as poems? From the early stir- an agent, not a resource. Difference is the- rings of Romanticism in the late eighteenth orized biologically as situational, not in- century, many poets and biologists have trinsic, at every level from gene to foraging believed that poetry and organisms are sib- pattern, thereby fundamentally changing lings. Frankenstein may be read as a med- the biological politics of the body. The re- itation on this proposition. I continue to lations between sex and gender have to be believe in this potent proposition, but in a categorically reworked within these frames postmodern and not a Romantic manner of of knowledge. I would like to suggest this belief. I wish to translate the ideological di- trend in explanatory strategies in biology mensions of ‘facticity’ and ‘the organic’ into as an allegory for interventions faithful to a cumbersome entity called a ‘material- projects of feminist objectivity. The point is semiotic actor’. This unwieldy term is SITUATED KNOWLEDGES: THE SCIENCE QUESTION IN FEMINISM | 469 intended to highlight the object of knowl- and meanings. Here is where science, sci- edge as an active, meaning- generating ence fantasy, and science fi ction converge axis of the apparatus of bodily production, in the objectivity question in feminism. without ever implying immediate presence Perhaps our hopes for accountability, for of such objects or, what is the same thing, politics, for ecofeminism, turn on revi- their final or unique determination of sioning the world as coding trickster with what can count as objective knowledge at whom we must learn to converse. a particular historical juncture. Like King’s objects called ‘poems’, which are sites of literary production where language also NOTES is an actor independent of intentions and 1. This chapter originated as a commentary on authors, bodies as objects of knowledge Harding (1986), at the Western Division meet- are material-semiotic generative nodes. ings of the American Philosophical Association, San Francisco, March 1987. Support during the Their boundaries materialize in social in- writing of this paper was generously provided teraction. Boundaries are drawn by map- by the Alpha Fund of the Institute for Advanced ping practices; ‘objects’ do not pre-exist Study, Princeton, New Jersey. Thanks especially as such. Objects are boundary projects. to Joan Scott, Rayna Rapp, Judy Newton, Judy But boundaries shift from within; boun- Butler, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Dorinne Kondo. 2. For example, see Karin Knorr-Cetina and dar ies are very tricky. What boundaries Michael Mulkay (1983); Bijker et al. (1987); and provisionally contain remains genera tive, especially, Latour (1984, 1988). Borrowing from productive of meanings and bo d ies. Siting Michael Tournier’s Vendredi (1967), Latour’s bril- (sighting) boundaries is a risky practice. liant and maddening aphoristic polemic against Objectivity is not about dis-engagement, all forms of reductionism, makes the essential point for feminists: “Méfi ez-vous de la pureté, but about mutual and usually unequal c’est le vitriol de l’ame” (Latour, 1984, p. 171). structuring, about taking risks in a world Latour is not otherwise a notable feminist theo- where ‘we’ are permanently mortal, that rist, but he might be made into one by readings is, not in ‘fi nal’ control. We have, fi nally, no as perverse as those he makes of the laboratory, clear and distinct ideas. The various con- that great machine for making signifi cant mis- takes faster than anyone else can, and so gaining tending biological bodies emerge at the world-changing power. The laboratory for Latour intersection of biological research and writ- is the railroad industry of epistemology, where ing, medical and other business practices, facts can only be made to run on the tracks laid and technology, such as the visualization down from the laboratory out. Those who control technologies enlisted as metaphors in this the railroads control the surroundings territory. How could we have forgotten? But now it’s not chapter. But also invited into that node of so much the bankrupt railroads we need as the intersection is the analogue to the lively satellite network. Facts run on light beams these languages that actively intertwine in the days. production of literary value: the coyote and 3. For an elegant and very helpful elucidation of a protean embodiments of a world as witty non-cartoon version of this argument, see White (1987), I still want more; and unfulfi lled desire agent and actor. Perhaps the world resists can be a powerful seed for changing the stories. being reduced to mere resource because it 4. In her analysis exploring the fault line between is— not mother/matter/mutter— but coy- modernism and postmodernism in ethnography ote, a fi gure for the always problematic, and anthropology — in which the high stakes are always potent tie of meaning and bodies. the authorization or prohibition to craft comparative knowledge across “cultures”, from some Feminist embodiment, feminist hopes for epistemologically grounded vantage point either partiality, objectivity and situated knowl- inside, outside, or in dialogical relation with any edges, turn on conversations and codes at unit of analysis — Marilyn Strathern (1987a) this potent node in fi elds of possible bodies made the crucial observation that it is not the 470 | DONNA HARAWAY

written ethnography that is parallel to the work political under the sign of simulation? One way of art as object-of-knowledge, but the culture. to read Varley’s repeated investigations of fi nally The Romantic and modernist natural-technical always limited embodiments, differently abled objects of knowledge, in science and in order beings, prosthetic technologies, and cyborgian cultural practice, stand on one side of this di- encounters with their fi nitude, despite their ex- vide. The postmodernist formation stands on traordinary transcedence of “organic” orders is the other side, with its “anti-aesthetic” of perma- to fi nd an allegory for the personal and political nently split, problematized, always receding and in the historical mythic time of the late twentieth deferred “objects” of knowledge and practice, century, the era of techno-biopolitics. Prosthesis including signs, organisms, systems, selves, and is semiosis, the making of meanings and bodies, cultures. “Objectivity” in a postmodern frame not for transcendence, but for power-charged cannot be about unproblematic objects; it must communication. be about specifi c prosthesis and translation. Ob- 8. I owe my understanding of the experience of jectivity, which at root has been about crafting these photographs to Jim Clifford, University comparative knowledge (how to name things to of California at Santa Cruz, who identifi ed their be stable and to be like each other), becomes a “land ho!” effect on the reader. question of the politics of redrawing of boundar- 9. Joan Scott reminded me that Teresa de Lauretis ies in order to have non-innocent conversations (1986a, pp. 14–15) put it like this: Differences and connections. What is at stake in the debates among women may be better understood as about modernism and postmodernism is the pat- differences within women . . . But once under- tern of relationships between and within bodies stood in their constitutive power — once it is un- and language. derstood, that is, that these differences not only 5. Zoe Sofoulis (1988) has produced a dazzlingly constitute each woman’s consciousness and sub- (she will forgive me the metaphor) theoretical jective limits but all together defi ne the female treatment of technosience, the psychoanalysis subject of feminism in its very specifi city, is inher- of science fi ction culture, and the metaphorics of ent and at least for now irreconcilable contradic- extra-terrestrialism, including a wonderful focus tion — these differences, then, cannot be again on the ideologies and philosophies of light, illu- collapsed into a fi xed identity, a sameness of all mination, and discovery in Western mythics of women as Woman, or a representation of Femi- science and technology. My essay was revised nism as a coherent and available image. in dialogue with Sofoulis’s arguments and meta- 10. Harding (1986, p. 18) suggested that gender has phors in her PhD dissertation. three dimensions, each historically specifi c: 6. Crucial to this discussion are Sandra Harding gender symbolism, the social-sexual division of (1986), Keller (1985), Hartsock (1983a, 1983b), labor, and processes of constructing individual Flax (1983, 1987), Keller and Grontkowski (1983), gendered identity. I would enlarge her point to H. Rose, (1986) Haraway (1991), Petchesky (1987). note that there is no reason to expect the three 7. John Varley’s science fi ction short story, “The dimensions to co-vary or co-determine each Persistence of Vision”, is part of the inspiration other, at least not directly. That is, extremely for this section. In the story, Varley constructs a steep gradients between contrasting terms in utopian community designed and built by the gender symbolism may very well not correlate deaf-blind. He then explores these people’s tech- with sharp social-sexual divisions of labour or nologies and other mediations of communica- social power, but may be closely related to sharp tion and their relations to sighted children and racial stratifi cation or something else. Similarly, visitors (Varley, 1978). In the story, “Blue Cham- the processes of gendered subject formation may pagne”, Varley (1986), transmutes the theme to not be directly illuminated by knowledge of the interrogate the politics of intimacy and technol- sexual division of labour or the gender symbolism ogy for a paraplegic young woman whose pros- in the particular historical situation under exam- thetic device, the golden gypsy, allows her full ination. On the other hand, we should expect mobility. But since the infi nitely costly device is mediated relations among the dimensions. The owned by an intergalactic communications and mediations might move through quite different entertainment empire for which she works as social axes of organization of both symbols, prac- a media star making “feelies”, she may keep her tice, and identity, such as race. And vice versa. I technological, intimate, enabling, other self only would suggest also that science, as well as gender in exchange for her complicity in the commodifi - or race, might usefully be broken up into such a cation of all experience. What are her limits to the multi-part scheme of symbolism, social practice, reinvention of experience for sale? Is the personal and subject position. More than three dimensions SITUATED KNOWLEDGES: THE SCIENCE QUESTION IN FEMINISM | 471

suggest themselves when the parallels are drawn. to some non-discursive grounding in “sex” and The different dimensions of, for example, gender, “nature”, perhaps what I am calling the “body” race and science might mediate relations among and “world”. dimensions on a parallel chart. That is, racial divisions of labour might mediate the patterns of REFERENCES connection between symbolic connections and formation of individual subject positions on the Anzaldúa, G (1987), Borderlands/La Frontera, San science or gender chart. Or formations of gen- Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute. dered or racial subjectivity might mediate the Bijker, W et. al. Eds (1987), The Social Construction of relations between scientifi c social division of la- Technological Systems, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. bour and scientifi c symbolic patterns. Bryan, C D B (1987), The National Geographic Society: The chart below begins an analysis by parallel 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery, New York: dissections. In the chart (and in reality?), both Abrams. gender and science are analytically asymmetri- de Lauretis, T (1986), Feminist Studies/Critical Studies, cal; i.e., each term contains and obscures a struc- Bloomington: Indiana University Press. turing hierachicalized binarism, sex/gender and Flax, J (1983), “Political philosophy and the patriar- nature/science. Each binarism orders the silent chal unconscious: a psychoanalytic perspective term by a logic of appropriation, as resource to on epistemology and metaphysics” in Harding product, nature to culture, potential to actual. and Hintikka. Both poles of the binarism are contructed and Flax, J (1987), “Postmodernism and gender relations structure each other dialectically. Within each in feminist theory” in Signs, 12(4): 621–43. voiced or explicit term, further asymmetrical Haraway, D (1989), Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and splittings can be excavated, as from gender, Nature in the World of Modern Science, New York: masculine to feminine, and from science, hard Routledge. sciences to soft sciences. This is a point about Haraway, D (1991), Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The remembering how a particular analytical tool Reinvention of Nature, London: Free Association works, willy nilly, intended or not. The chart re- Books. fl ects common ideological aspects of discourse Harding, S (1986), The Science Question in Feminism, on science and gender and may help as an analyt- Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ical tool to crack open mystifi ed units like Science Harding, S and Hintikka, M (eds.) (1983), Discovering or Woman. Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Sci- GENDER SCIENCE ence, Dordrecht: Reidel. symbolic system symbolic system Hartsock, N (1983a), “The feminist standpoint: devel- social division of labor social division of labor oping the ground for a specifi cally feminist histor- (by sex, by race, etc.) (e.g. by craft, industrial, ical materialism” in Harding and Hintikka. or post-industrial logics) Harstock, N (1983b), Money, Sex, and Power, New York: Longman. individual identity/ individual identity/ Keller, E F (1985), Refl ections on Gender and Science, subject position subject position New Haven: Yale University Press. (desiring/desired; (knower/known; scientist/ Keller, E F (1987), “The gender/science system: or, is autonomous/relational) other) sex to gender as nature is to science?” in Hypatia material culture material culture 2(3): 37–49. (gender paraphernalia (laboratories the narrow Keller, E F and Grontkowski, C (1983), “The mind’s and daily gender tracks on which eye” in Harding and Hintikka. technological, the narrow facts run) King (1987a) “Canons without innocence”, University tracks on which sexual of California at Santa Cruz, PhD thesis. difference runs) King (1987b), The Passing Dreams of Choice . . . Once dialectic of construction dialectic of construction Before and After: Audre Lorde and the Apparatus of and discovery and discovery Literary Production, book prospectus, University of Maryland at College Park. 11. Evelyn Keller (1987) insists on the important pos- Knorr-Cetina, K and Mulkay, M (1983), Science Ob- sibilities opened up by the construction of the served: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science, intersection of the distinction between sex and Beverly Hills: Sage. gender, on the one hand, and nature and science, Kuhn, A (1982), Women’s Pictures: Feminism and Cin- on the other. She also insists on the need to hold ema, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 472 | DONNA HARAWAY

Latour, B (1984), Les microbes, guerre et paix, suivi des Studies Association, Oakland, CA: Center for Third irréductions, Paris: Métailié. World Organizing. Latour, B (1988), The Pasteurization of France, fol- Sofoulis, Z (1988), “Through the lumen: Frankenstein lowed by Irreductions: A Politico–Scientiﬁ c Essay, and the optics of re-origination”, University of Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Santa Cruz, PhD thesis. Mohanty (1984), “Under western eyes: feminist schol- Strathern, M (1987), “Our of context: the persuasive arship and colonical discourse” in Boundary 2,3 ﬁ ctions of anthropology” in Current Anthropology (12/13): 333–58. 28(3): 251–81. Petchesky, R P (1987), “Fetal images: the power of Tournier, M (1967), Vendredi, Paris: Gallimard. visual culture in the politics of reproduction” in Varley, J (1978), “The persistence of vision” in The Per- Feminist Studies 13(2): 263–92. sistence of Vision, New York: Dell. Rose, H (1986), “Women’s work: women’s knowledge” Varley, J (1986), “Blue champagne” in Blue Cham- in Mitchell, J and Oakley, A eds, What is Feminism? pagne, New York: Berkeley. A Re-Examination, New York: Pantheon, pp 161–83. White, H (1987), The Content of the Form: Narrative Sandoval, C (n.d.), Yours in Struggle: Women Respond Discourse and Historical Representation, Balti- to Racism, a Report on the National Women’s more: Johns Hopkins University Press. CHAPTER 28

Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter Karen Barad

Where did we ever get the strange idea that is fi gured as passive and immutable, or at nature— as opposed to culture— is ahistorical best inherits a potential for change deriv- and timeless? We are far too impressed by our atively from language and culture? How own cleverness and self-consciousness. . . . We does one even go about inquiring after need to stop telling ourselves the same old an- the material conditions that have led us to thropocentric bedtime stories. such a brute reversal of naturalist beliefs — Steve Shaviro 1997 when materiality itself is always already Language has been granted too much fi gured within a linguistic domain as its power. The linguistic turn, the semiotic condition of possibility? turn, the interpretative turn, the cultural It is hard to deny that the power of lan- turn: it seems that at every turn lately every guage has been substantial. One might “thing”—even materiality—is turned into argue too substantial, or perhaps more to a matter of language or some other form the point, too substantializing. Neither an of cultural representation. The ubiquitous exaggerated faith in the power of language puns on “matter” do not, alas, mark a re- nor the expressed concern that language is thinking of the key concepts (materiality being granted too much power is a novel and signifi cation) and the relationship be- apprehension specifi cally attached to the tween them. Rather, it seems to be symp- early twenty-fi rst century. For example, tomatic of the extent to which matters of during the nineteenth century Nietzsche “fact” (so to speak) have been replaced with warned against the mistaken tendency to matters of signifi cation (no scare quotes take grammar too seriously: allowing lin- here). Language matters. Discourse mat- guistic structure to shape or determine ters. Culture matters. There is an important our understanding of the world, believing sense in which the only thing that does not that the subject and predicate structure of seem to matter anymore is matter. language refl ects a prior ontological reality What compels the belief that we have of substance and attribute. The belief that a direct access to cultural representations grammatical categories refl ect the under- and their content that we lack toward the lying structure of the world is a continuing things represented? How did language seductive habit of mind worth question- come to be more trustworthy than matter? ing. Indeed, the representationalist belief Why are language and culture granted their in the power of words to mirror preexisting own agency and historicity while matter phenomena is the metaphysical substrate 474 | KAREN BARAD

that supports social constructivist, as well the “scientifi c” together in an illuminat- as traditional realist, beliefs. Signifi cantly, ing way. What often appears as separate social constructivism has been the object entities (and separate sets of concerns) of intense scrutiny within both feminist with sharp edges does not actually entail a and science studies circles where consid- relation of absolute exteriority at all. Like erable and informed dissatisfaction has the diffraction patterns illuminating the been voiced.1 indefi nite nature of boundaries- displaying A performative understanding of dis- shadows in “light” regions and bright spots cursive practices challenges the represen- in “dark” regions—the relation of the social tationalist belief in the power of words to and the scientifi c is a relation of “exteriority represent preexisting things. Performativ- within.” This is not a static relationality but ity, properly construed, is not an invita- a doing— the enactment of boundaries— tion to turn everything (including material that always entails constitutive exclusions bodies) into words; on the contrary, per- and there fore requisite questions of ac- formativity is precisely a contestation of countability.3 My aim is to contribute to the excessive power granted to language efforts to sharpen the theoretical tool of to determine what is real. Hence, in ironic performativity for science studies and contrast to the misconception that would feminist and queer theory endeavors alike, equate performativity with a form of lin- and to promote their mutual consideration. guistic monism that takes language to be In this article, I offer an elaboration of the stuff of reality, performativity is actually performativity— a materialist, naturalist, a contestation of the unexamined habits of and posthumanist elaboration—that al- mind that grant language and other forms lows matter its due as an active participant of representation more power in determin- in the world’s becoming, in its ongoing ing our ontologies than they deserve. 2 “intra activity.” 4 It is vitally important that The move toward performative alter- we understand how matter matters. natives to representationalism shifts the focus from questions of correspondence between descriptions and reality (e.g., do FROM REPRESENTATIONALISM TO they mirror nature or culture?) to mat- PERFORMATIVITY ters of practices/doings/actions. I would People represent. That is part of what it is to argue that these approaches also bring to be a person. . . . Not homo faber, I say, but the forefront important questions of on- homo depictor. tology, materiality, and agency, while so- — Ian Hacking 1983, 144, 132 cial constructivist approaches get caught up in the geometrical optics of refl ection where, much like the infi nite play of im- Liberal social theories and theories of ages between two facing mirrors, the epis- sci entific knowledge alike owe much to temological gets bounced back and forth, the idea that the world is composed of but nothing more is seen. Moving away individuals—presumed to exist before the from the representationalist trap of geo- law, or the discovery of the law—awaiting/ metrical optics, I shift the focus to physi- inviting representation. The idea that be ings cal optics, to questions of diffraction rather exist as individuals with inherent attri- than refl ection. Diffractively reading the butes, anterior to their representation, is a insights of feminist and queer theory and metaphysical presupposition that underlies science studies approaches through one the belief in political, linguistic, and epi- another entails thinking the “social” and stem ological forms of representationalism. POSTHUMANIST PERFORMATIVITY | 475

Or, to put the point the other way around, quirements of those structures. If this anal- representationalism is the belief in the ysis is right, then the juridical formation of ontological distinction between repre- language and politics that represents women sentations and that which they purport as “the subject” of feminism is itself a dis- to represent; in particular, that which is cursive formation and effect of a given version of representationalist politics. And the represented is held to be independent of feminist subject turns out to be discursively all practices of representing. That is, there constituted by the very political system that are assumed to be two distinct and inde- is supposed to facilitate its emancipation. pendent kinds of entities—representations (1990, 2) and entities to be represented. The system of representation is sometimes explicitly In an attempt to remedy this diffi culty, theorized in terms of a tripartite arrange- critical social theorists struggle to formu- ment. For example, in addition to knowl- late understandings of the possibilities for edge (i.e., representations), on the one political intervention that go beyond the hand, and the known (i.e., that which is framework of representationalism. purportedly represented), on the other, the The fact that representationalism has existence of a knower (i.e., some one who come under suspicion in the do main of does the representing) is sometimes made science studies is less well known but of explicit. When this happens it becomes no less signifi cance. Critical examination clear that representations serve a medi- of representationalism did not emerge ating function between independently until the study of science shifted its focus existing entities. This taken-for- granted from the nature and production of sci- ontological gap generates questions of the entifi c knowledge to the study of the de- accuracy of representations. For example, tailed dynamics of the actual practice of does scientifi c knowledge accurately rep- science. This signifi cant shift is one way resent an independently existing reality? to coarsely characterize the difference in Does language accurately represent its emphasis between separate multiple dis- referent? Does a given political represen- ciplinary studies of science (e.g., history of tative, legal counsel, or piece of legislation science, philosophy of science, sociology accurately represent the interests of the of science) and science studies. This is not people allegedly represented? to say that all science studies approaches Representationalism has received signif- are critical of representationalism; many icant challenge from feminists, poststruc- such studies accept representationalism turalists, postcolonial critics, and queer unquestioningly. For example, there are theorists. The names of Michel Foucault countless studies on the nature of scien- and Judith Butler are frequently associated tifi c representations (including how sci- with such questioning. Butler sums up the entists produce them, interpret them, and problematics of political representational- otherwise make use of them) that take ism as follows: for granted the underlying philosophical viewpoint that gives way to this focus— Foucault points out that juridical systems namely, representationalism. On the other of power produce the subjects they subse- hand, there has been a concerted effort by quently come to represent. Juridical notions of power appear to regulate political life in some science studies researchers to move purely negative terms. . . . But the subjects beyond representationalism. regulated by such structures are, by virtue of Ian Hacking’s Representing and Inter- being subjected to them, formed, defi ned, vening (1983) brought the question of the and reproduced in accordance with the re- limitations of representationalist thinking 476 | KAREN BARAD

about the nature of science to the forefront. of wood or an aggregate of discrete entities The most sustained and thoroughgoing moving in the void? Atomism poses the critique of representationalism in philoso- question of which representation is real. The phy of science and science studies is to be problem of realism in philosophy is a prod- found in the work of philosopher of science uct of the atomistic worldview. Joseph Rouse. Rouse has taken the lead in Rouse identifi es representationalism as interrogating the constraints that represen- a Cartesian by-product— a particularly in- tationalist thinking places on theorizing the conspicuous consequence of the Cartesian nature of scientifi c practices.5 For example, division between “internal” and “external” while the hackneyed debate between sci- that breaks along the line of the knowing entifi c realism and social constructivism subject. Rouse brings to light the asym- moved frictionlessly from philosophy of metrical faith in word over world that un- science to science studies, Rouse (1996) derlines the nature of Cartesian doubt: has pointed out that these adversarial positions have more in common than their I want to encourage doubt about [the] presumption that representations (that is, their proponents acknowledge. Indeed, they meaning or content) are more accessible to us share representationalist assumptions that than the things they supposedly represent. If foster such endless debates: both scientifi c there is no magic language through which we realists and social constructivists believe can unerringly reach out directly to its refer- that scientifi c knowledge (in its multiple ents, why should we think there is neverthe- representational forms such as theoreti- less a language that magically enables us to cal concepts, graphs, particle tracks, pho- reach out directly to its sense or representa- tographic images) mediates our access to tional content? The presumption that we can the material world; where they differ is on know what we mean, or what our verbal per- the question of referent, whether scientifi c formances say, more readily than we can know knowledge represents things in the world the objects those sayings are about is a Carte- sian legacy, a linguistic variation on Descartes’ as they really are (i.e., “Nature”) or “objects” insistence that we have a direct and privileged that are the product of social activities (i.e., access to the contents of our thoughts that we “Culture”), but both groups subscribe to lack towards the “external” world. (1996, 209) representationalism. Representationalism is so deeply en- In other words, the asymmetrical faith in trenched within Western culture that it has our access to representations over things is taken on a commonsense appeal. It seems a contingent fact of history and not a logi- inescapable, if not downright natural. But cal necessity; that is, it is simply a Cartesian representationalism (like “nature itself,” not habit of mind. It takes a healthy skepticism merely our representations of it!) has a his- toward Cartesian doubt to be able to begin tory. Hacking traces the philosophical prob- to see an alternative. 6 lem of representations to the Democritean Indeed, it is possible to develop coher- dream of atoms and the void. According ent philosophical positions that deny that to Hacking’s anthropological philosophy, there are representations on the one hand representations were unproblematic prior and ontologically separate entities awaiting to Democritus: “the word ‘real’ fi rst meant representation on the other. A performa- just unqualifi ed likeness” (142). With Dem- tive understanding, which shifts the focus ocritus’s atomic theory emerges the possi- from linguistic representations to discursive bility of a gap between representations and practices, is one such alternative. In par- represented—”appearance” makes its fi rst ticular, the search for alternatives to social appearance. Is the table a solid mass made constructivism has prompted performative POSTHUMANIST PERFORMATIVITY | 477 approaches in feminist and queer studies, the site where the large-scale organiza- as well as in science studies. Judith Butler’s tion of power links up with local practices, name is most often associated with the then it would seem that any robust the- term performativity in feminist and queer ory of the materialization of bodies would theory circles. And while Andrew Pickering necessarily take account of how the body’s has been one of the very few science stud- materiality— for example, its anatomy and ies scholars to take ownership of this term, physiology— and other material forces ac- there is surely a sense in which science tively matter to the processes of material- studies theorists such as Donna Haraway, ization. Indeed, as Foucault makes crystal Bruno Latour, and Joseph Rouse also pro- clear in the last chapter of The History of pound performative understandings of the Sexuality (vol. I), he is not out to deny the nature of scientifi c practices.7 Indeed, per- relevance of the physical body but, on the formativity has become a ubiquitous term contrary, to in literary studies, theater studies, and the nascent interdisciplinary area of perfor- show how the deployments of power are mance studies, prompting the question as directly connected to the body-to bodies, functions, physiological processes, sensa- to whether all performances are performa- 8 tions, and pleasures; far from the body hav- tive. In this article, I propose a specifi cally ing to be effaced, what is needed is to make it posthumanist notion of performativity- one visible through an analysis in which the bio- that incorporates important material and logical and the historical are not consecutive discursive, social and scientifi c, human and to one another . . . but are bound together nonhuman, and natural and cultural factors. in an increasingly complex fashion in accor- A posthumanist account calls into question dance with the development of the modern the givenness of the differential categories of technologies of power that take life as their “human” and “nonhuman,” examining the objective. Hence, I do not envision a “history practices through which these differential of mentalities” that would take account of boundaries are stabilized and destabilized.9 bodies only through the manner in which they have been perceived and given mean- Donna Haraway’s scholarly opus—from pri- ing and value; but a “history of bodies” and mates to cyborgs to companion species— the manner in which what is most material epitomizes this point. and most vital in them has been invested. If performativity is linked not only to the (1980a, 151– 52) formation of the subject but also to the production of the matter of bodies, as Butler’s On the other hand, Foucault does not account of “materialization” and Haraway’s tell us in what way the biological and the notion of “materialized refi guration” sug- historical are “bound together” such that gest, then it is all the more important that we one is not consecutive to the other. What understand the nature of this production. 10 is it about the materiality of bodies that Foucault’s analytic of power links discur- makes it susceptible to the enactment of sive practices to the materiality of the body. biological and historical forces simultane- However, his account is constrained by sev- ously? To what degree does the matter of eral important factors that severely limit the bodies have its own historicity? Are social potential of his analysis and Butler’s perfor- forces the only ones susceptible to change? mative elaboration, thereby forestalling an Are not biological forces in some sense understanding of precisely how discursive always already historical ones? Could it practices produce material bodies. be that there is some important sense in If Foucault, in queering Marx, positions which historical forces are always already the body as the locus of productive forces, biological? What would it mean to even 478 | KAREN BARAD

ask such a question given the strong social forces including ones that get labeled constructivist undercurrent in certain in- “social,” “cultural,” “psychic,” “economic,” terdisciplinary circles in the early twenty- “natural,” “physical,” “biological,” “geopo- fi rst century? For all Foucault’s emphasis litical,” and “geological”—that may be im- on the political anatomy of disciplinary portant to particular (entangled) processes power, he too fails to offer an account of the of materialization. If we follow disciplinary body’s historicity in which its very materi- habits of tracing disciplinary- defi ned causes ality plays an active role in the workings of through to the corresponding disciplinary- power. This implicit reinscription of mat- defi ned effects, we will miss all the crucial ter’s passivity is a mark of extant elements intra-actions among these forces that fl y in of representationalism that haunt his the face of any specifi c set of disciplinary largely post representationalist account.11 concerns.12 This defi ciency is importantly related to What is needed is a robust account his failure to theorize the relationship be- of the materialization of all bodies—“ tween “discursive” and “nondiscursive” human” and “nonhuman”—and the practices. As materialist feminist theorist material-discursive practices by which their Rosemary Hennessey insists in offering her differential constitutions are marked. This critique of Foucault, “a rigorous materialist will require an understanding of the na- theory of the body cannot stop with the as- ture of the relationship between discur- sertion that the body is always discursively sive practices and material phenomena, constructed. It also needs to explain how an accounting of “nonhuman” as well as the discursive construction of the body is “human” forms of agency, and an under- related to nondiscursive practices in ways standing of the precise causal nature of that vary widely from one social formation productive practices that takes account to another” (1993, 46). of the fullness of matter’s implication in Crucial to understanding the workings its ongoing historicity. My contribution of power is an understanding of the nature toward the development of such an un- of power in the fullness of its materiality. derstanding is based on a philosophical To restrict power’s productivity to the lim- account that I have been calling “agential ited domain of the “social,” for example, realism.” Agential realism is an account of or to fi gure matter as merely an end prod- technoscientifi c and other practices that uct rather than an active factor in further takes feminist, antiracist, poststructuralist, materializations, is to cheat matter out of queer, Marxist, science studies, and scien- the fullness of its capacity. How might we tifi c insights seriously, building specifically understand not only how human bodily on important insights from Niels Bohr, contours are constituted through psychic Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Donna processes but how even the very atoms Haraway, Vicki Kirby, Joseph Rouse, and that make up the biological body come to others.13 It is clearly not possible to fully matter and, more generally, how matter explicate these ideas here. My more lim- makes itself felt? It is diffi cult to imagine ited goal in this article is to use the notion how psychic and socio historical forces of performativity as a diffraction grating alone could account for the production of for reading important insights from femi- matter. Surely it is the case—even when nist and queer studies and science studies the focus is restricted to the materiality of through one another while simultaneously “human” bodies—that there are “natural,” proposing a materialist and posthumanist not merely “social,” forces that matter. In- reworking of the notion of performativity. deed, there is a host of material-discursive This entails a reworking of the familiar POSTHUMANIST PERFORMATIVITY | 479 notions of discursive practices, materializa- language, then it begins to become appar- tion, agency, and causality, among others. ent that representationalism is a prisoner I begin by issuing a direct challenge to the of the problematic metaphysics it postu- metaphysical underpinnings of represen- lates. Like the frustrated would- be runner tationalism, proposing an agential realist in Zeno’s paradox, representationalism ontology as an alternative. In the following never seems to be able to get any closer section I offer a posthumanist performative to solving the problem it poses because it reformulation of the notion of discursive is caught in the impossibility of stepping practices and materiality and theorize a outward from its metaphysical starting specifi c causal relationship between them. place. Perhaps it would be better to begin In the fi nal section I discuss the agential with a different starting point, a different realist conceptions of causality and agency metaphysics.14 that are vital to understanding the produc- Thingifi cation — the turning of relations tive nature of material-discursive practices, into “things,” “entities,” “relata”—infects including technoscientifi c ones. much of the way we understand the world and our relationship to it. 15 Why do we think that the existence of relations re- TOWARD A PERFORMATIVE quires relata? Does the persistent distrust METAPHYSICS of nature, materiality, and the body that As long as we stick to things and words we can pervades much of contemporary theoriz- believe that we are speaking of what we see, ing and a sizable amount of the history of that we see what we are speaking of, and that Western thought feed off of this cultural the two are linked. proclivity? In this section, I present a rela- — Giles Deleuze 1988, 65 tional ontology that rejects the metaphys- “Words and things” is the entirely serious title ics of relata, of “words” and “things.” On of a problem. an agential realist account, it is once again — Michel Foucault 1972, 49 possible to acknowledge nature, the body, and materiality in the fullness of their be- Representationalism separates the world coming without resorting to the optics of into the ontologically disjoint domains of transparency or opacity, the geometries of words and things, leaving itself with the absolute exteriority or interiority, and the dilemma of their linkage such that knowl- theoretization of the human as either pure edge is possible. If words are untethered cause or pure effect while at the same time from the material world, how do repre- remaining resolutely accountable for the sentations gain a foothold? If we no lon- role “we” play in the intertwined practices ger believe that the world is teeming with of knowing and becoming. inherent resemblances whose sig natures The postulation of individually deter- are inscribed on the face of the world, minate entities with inherent properties is things already emblazoned with signs, the hallmark of atomistic metaphysics. At- words lying in wait like so many pebbles omism hails from Democritus.16 According of sand on a beach there to be discovered, to Democritus the properties of all things but rather that the knowing subject is en- derive from the properties of the smallest meshed in a thick web of representations unit-atoms (the “uncuttable” or “insepa- such that the mind cannot see its way to rable”). Liberal social theories and scien- objects that are now forever out of reach tifi c theories alike owe much to the idea and all that is visible is the sticky prob- that the world is composed of individuals lem of humanity’s own captivity within with separately attributable properties. An 480 | KAREN BARAD

entangled web of scientifi c, social, ethical, fi ndings in the domain of atomic physics and political practices, and our under- that came to light during the fi rst quarter standing of them, hinges on the various/ of the twentieth century. Bohr’s struggle differential instantiations of this presup- to provide a theoretical understanding of position. Much hangs in the balance in these fi ndings resulted in his radical pro- contesting its seeming inevitability. posal that an entirely new epistemological Physicist Niels Bohr won the Nobel Prize framework is required. Unfortunately, Bohr for his quantum model of the atom, which does not explore crucial ontological dimen- marks the beginning of his seminal contri- sions of his insights but rather focuses on butions to the development of the quan- their epistemological import. I have mined tum theory.17 Bohr’s philosophy- physics his writings for his implicit ontological (the two were inseparable for him) poses views and have elaborated on them in the a radical challenge not only to Newtonian development of an agential realist ontology. physics but also to Cartesian epistemology In this section, I present a quick overview and its representationalist triadic structure of important aspects of Bohr’s account and of words, knowers, and things. Crucially, in move on to an explication of an agential a stunning reversal of his intellectual fore- realist ontology. This relational ontology is father’s schema, Bohr rejects the atomistic the basis for my post humanist performa- metaphysics that takes “things” as onto- tive account of the production of material logically basic entities. For Bohr, things do bodies. This account refuses the represen- not have inherently determinate bound- tationalist fi xation on “words” and “things” aries or properties, and words do not have and the problematic of their relationality, inherently determinate meanings. Bohr advocating instead a causal relationship be- also calls into question the related Carte- tween specifi c exclusionary practices embod- sian belief in the inherent distinction be- ied as specifi c material confi gurations of the tween subject and object, and knower and world (i.e., discursive practices/(con)fi gura- known. tions rather than “words”) and specifi c ma- It might be said that the epistemological terial phenomena (i.e., relations rather than framework that Bohr develops rejects both “things”). This causal relationship between the transparency of language and the tran- the apparatuses of bodily production and sparency of measurement; however, even the phenomena produced is one of “agen- more fundamentally, it rejects the presup- tial intra- action.” The details follow. position that language and measurement According to Bohr, theoretical concepts perform mediating functions. Language (e.g., “position” and “momentum”) are not does not represent states of affairs, and mea- ideational in character but rather are specifi c surements do not represent measurement- physical arrangements. 18 For example, the independent states of being. Bohr devel- notion of “position” cannot be presumed to ops his epistemological framework without be a well-defi ned abstract concept, nor can giving in to the despair of nihilism or the it be presumed to be an inherent attribute of sticky web of relativism. With brilliance and independently existing objects. Rather, “po- fi nesse, Bohr fi nds a way to hold on to the sition” only has meaning when a rigid ap- possibility of objective knowledge while the paratus with fi xed parts is used (e.g., a ruler grand structures of Newtonian physics and is nailed to a fi xed table in the laboratory, representationalism begin to crumble. thereby establishing a fi xed frame of refer- Bohr’s break with Newton, Descartes, and ence for specifying “position”). And further- Democritus is not based in “mere idle phil- more, any measurement of “position” using osophical refl ection” but on new empirical this apparatus cannot be attributed to some POSTHUMANIST PERFORMATIVITY | 481 abstract independently existing “object” agential separability— the local condition of but rather is a property of the phenomenon- exteriority within—phenomena. The notion the inseparability of “observed object” and of agential separability is of fundamental “agencies of observation.” Similarly, “mo- importance, for in the absence of a classi- mentum” is only meaningful as a mate- cal ontological condition of exteriority be- rial arrangement involving movable parts. tween observer and observed it provides Hence, the simultaneous indeterminacy of the condition for the possibility of objectiv- “position” and “momentum” (what is com- ity. Moreover, the agential cut enacts a local monly referred to as the Heisenberg uncer- causal structure among “components” of a tainty principle) is a straightforward matter phenomenon in the marking of the “mea- of the material exclusion of “position” and suring agencies” (“effect”) by the “measured “momentum” arrangements (one requir- object” (“cause”). Hence, the notion of intra- ing fi xed parts and the complementary ar- actions constitutes a reworking of the tradi- rangement requiring movable parts).19 tional notion of causality.21 Therefore, according to Bohr, the pri- In my further elaboration of this agen- mary epistemological unit is not indepen- tial realist ontology, I argue that phenom- dent objects with inherent boundaries and ena are not the mere result of laboratory properties but rather phenomena. On my exercises engineered by human subjects. agential realist elaboration, phenomena do Nor can the apparatuses that produce not merely mark the epistemological in- phenomena be understood as observa- separability of “observer” and “observed”; tional devices or mere laboratory instru- rather, phenomena are the ontological ments. Although space constraints do not inseparability of agentially intra-acting allow an in-depth discussion of the agen- “components.” That is, phenomena are on- tial realist understanding of the nature of tologically primitive relations—relations apparatuses, since apparatuses play such without preexisting relata.20 The notion of a crucial, indeed constitutive, role in the intra action (in contrast to the usual “inter- production of phenomena, I present an action,” which presumes the prior existence overview of the agential realist theoretiza- of independent entities/relata) represents a tion of apparatuses before moving on to profound conceptual shift. It is through spe- the question of the nature of phenomena. cifi c agential intra- actions that the bound- The proposed elaboration enables an ex- aries and properties of the “components” ploration of the implications of the agen- of phenomena become determinate and tial realist ontology beyond those specifi c that particular embodied concepts become to understanding the nature of scientifi c meaningful. A specifi c intra-action (involv- practices. In fact, agential realism offers an ing a specifi c material confi guration of the understanding of the nature of material- “apparatus of observation”) enacts an agen- discursive practices, such as those very tial cut (in contrast to the Cartesian cut— practices through which different distinc- an inherent distinction—between subject tions get drawn, including those between and object) effecting a separation between the “social” and the “scientifi c.”22 “subject” and “object.” That is, the agen- Apparatuses are not inscription devices, tial cut enacts a local resolution within the scientifi c instruments set in place before the phenomenon of the inherent ontological action happens, or machines that mediate indeterminacy. In other words, relata do the dialectic of resistance and accommoda- not preexist relations; rather, relata-within- tion. They are neither neutral probes of the phenomena emerge through specifi c intra- natural world nor structures that determin- actions. Crucially then, intra-actions enact istically impose some particular outcome. 482 | KAREN BARAD

In my further elaboration of Bohr’s insights, are specifi c causal material enactments apparatuses are not mere static arrange- that may or may not involve “humans.” In- ments in the world, but rather apparatuses deed, it is through such practices that the are dynamic (re)confi gurings of the world, differential boundaries between “humans” specific agential practices/intra-actions/ and “nonhumans,” “culture” and “nature,” performances through which specifi c exclu- the “social” and the “scientifi c” are con- sionary boundaries are enacted. Apparatuses stituted. Phenomena are constitutive of have no inherent “outside” boundary. This reality. Reality is not composed of things- in- indeterminacy of the “outside” boundary themselves or things behind-phenomena represents the impossibility of closure— the but “things”- in- phenomena.23 The world is ongoing intra- activity in the iterative intra activity in its differential mattering. It reconfi guring of the apparatus of bodily is through specifi c intra-actions that a dif- production. Apparatuses are open- ended ferential sense of being is enacted in the practices. ongoing ebb and fl ow of agency. That is, it Importantly, apparatuses are them- is through specifi c intra-actions that phe- selves phenomena. For example, as sci- nomena come to matter—in both senses of entists are well aware, apparatuses are not the word. The world is a dynamic process preformed interchangeable objects that of intra- activity in the ongoing reconfi gur- sit atop a shelf waiting to serve a particu- ing of locally determinate causal structures lar purpose. Apparatuses are constituted with determinate boundaries, properties, through particular practices that are per- meanings, and patterns of marks on bod- petually open to rearrangements, rearticu- ies. This ongoing fl ow of agency through lations, and other reworkings. This is part which “part” of the world makes itself dif- of the creativity and diffi culty of doing ferentially intelligible to another “part” of science: getting the instrumentation to the world and through which local causal work in a particular way for a particular structures, boundaries, and properties are purpose (which is always open to the pos- stabilized and destabilized does not take sibility of being changed during the ex- place in space and time but in the making periment as different insights are gained). of spacetime itself. The world is an ongoing Furthermore, any particular apparatus is open process of mattering through which always in the process of intra-acting with “mattering” itself acquires meaning and other apparatuses, and the enfolding of form in the realization of different agen- locally stabilized phenomena (which may tial possibilities. Temporality and spatial- be traded across laboratories, cultures, or ity emerge in this processual historicity. geopolitical spaces only to fi nd themselves Relations of exteriority, connectivity, and differently materializing) into subsequent exclusion are reconfi gured. The changing iterations of particular practices consti- topologies of the world entail an ongoing tutes important shifts in the particular reworking of the very nature of dynamics. apparatus in question and therefore in the In summary, the universe is agential nature of the intra-actions that result in intra-activity in its becoming. The pri- the production of new phenomena, and so mary ontological units are not “things” but on. Boundaries do not sit still. phenomena- dynamic topological recon- With this background we can now return figurings/entanglements/relationalities/ to the question of the nature of phenomena. (re)articulations. Phenomena are produced through agential And the primary semantic units are not intra-actions of multiple apparatuses of “words” but material-discursive practices bodily production. Agential intra- actions through which boundaries are constituted. POSTHUMANIST PERFORMATIVITY | 483

This dynamism is agency. Agency is not an thoughts or performances of individual attribute but the ongoing reconfi gurings of agents but rather through particular dis the world. On the basis of this performa- cursive practices. With the inspiration of tive metaphysics, in the next section I pro- Bohr’s insights, it would also be tempting pose a posthumanist refi guration of the to add the following agential realist points: nature of materiality and discursivity and meaning is not ideational but rather spe- the relationship between them, and a post- cifi c material ( re )confi gurings of the world, humanist account of performativity. and semantic indeterminacy, like ontological indeterminacy, is only locally resolvable through specifi c intra-actions. But before A POSTHUMANIST ACCOUNT OF proceeding, it is probably worth taking a MATERIAL-DISCURSIVE PRACTICES moment to dispel some misconceptions Discursive practices are often confused with about the nature of discursive practices. linguistic expression, and meaning is often Discourse is not a synonym for language. 24 thought to be a property of words. Hence, Discourse does not refer to linguistic or sig- discursive practices and meanings are said nifying systems, grammars, speech acts, to be peculiarly human phenomena. But or conversations. To think of discourse as if this were true, how would it be possible mere spoken or written words forming de- to take account of the boundary making scriptive statements is to enact the mistake practices by which the differential consti- of representationalist thinking. Discourse is tution of “humans” and “nonhumans” are not what is said; it is that which constrains enacted? It would be one thing if the no- and enables what can be said. Discursive tion of constitution were to be understood practices defi ne what counts as meaning- in purely epistemic terms, but it is entirely ful statements. Statements are not the mere unsatisfactory when questions of ontology utterances of the originating consciousness are on the table. If “humans” refers to phe- of a unifi ed subject; rather, statements and nomena, not independent entities with in- subjects emerge from a fi eld of possibilities. herent properties but rather beings in their This fi eld of possibilities is not static or sin- differential becoming, particular material gular but rather is a dynamic and contingent (re)confi gurings of the world with shifting multiplicity. boundaries and properties that stabilize According to Foucault, discursive prac- and destabilize along with specifi c material tices are the local sociohistorical mate- changes in what it means to be human, then rial conditions that enable and constrain the notion of discursivity cannot be founded disciplinary knowledge practices such on an inherent distinction between humans as speaking, writing, thinking, calculating, and nonhumans. In this section, I propose a measuring, fi ltering, and concentrating. posthumanist account of discursive prac- Discursive practices produce, rather than tices. I also out line a concordant reworking merely de scribe, the “subjects” and “ob- of the notion of materiality and hint at an jects” of knowledge practices. On Fou- agential realist approach to understanding cault’s account these “conditions” are the relationship between discursive prac- immanent and historical rather than tran- tices and material phenomena. scendental or phenomenological. That Meaning is not a property of individ- is, they are not conditions in the sense of ual words or groups of words. Meaning is transcendental, ahistorical, cross- cultural, neither intralinguistically conferred nor abstract laws defi ning the possibilities of extralinguistically referenced. Semantic experience (Kant), but rather they are ac- contentfulness is not achieved through the tual historically situated social conditions. 484 | KAREN BARAD

Foucault’s account of discursive prac- are not static arrangements in the world tices has some provocative resonances that embody particular concepts to the ex- (and some fruitful dissonances) with Bohr’s clusion of others; rather, apparatuses are account of apparatuses and the role they specifi c material practices through which play in the material production of bodies local semantic and ontological determi- and meanings. For Bohr, apparatuses are nacy are intra- actively enacted. That is, ap- particular physical arrangements that give paratuses are the exclusionary practices of meaning to certain concepts to the exclu- mattering through which intelligibility and sion of others; they are the local physi- materiality are constituted. Apparatuses cal conditions that enable and constrain are material (re)configurings/discursive knowledge practices such as conceptual- practices that produce material phenom- izing and measuring; they are productive ena in their discursively differentiated of (and part of) the phenomena produced; becoming. A phenomenon is a dynamic they enact a local cut that produces “ob- relationality that is locally determinate in jects” of particular knowledge practices its matter and meaning as mutually deter- within the particular phenomena pro- mined (within a particular phenomenon) duced. On the basis of his profound insight through specifi c causal intra-actions. Out- that “concepts” (which are actual physical side of particular agential intra-actions, arrangements) and “things” do not have “words” and “things” are indeterminate. de ter minate boundaries, properties, or me- Hence, the notions of materiality and dis- anings apart from their mutual intra-actions, cursivity must be reworked in a way that Bohr offers a new epistemological frame- acknowledges their mutual entailment. In work that calls into question the dualisms particular, on an agential realist account, of object/subject, knower/known, nature/ both materiality and discursive practices culture, and word/world. are rethought in terms of intra activity. Bohr’s insight that concepts are not ide- On an agential realist account, discur- ational but rather are actual physical ar- sive practices are specifi c material ( re)con- rangements is clearly an insistence on the fi gurings of the world through which local materiality of meaning making that goes be- determinations of boundaries, properties, yond what is usually meant by the frequently and meanings are differentially enacted. heard contemporary refrain that writing That is, discursive practices are ongoing and talking are material practices. Nor is agential intra-actions of the world through Bohr merely claiming that discourse is “sup- which local determinacy is enacted within ported” or “sustained” by material practices, the phenomena produced. Discursive prac- as Foucault seems to suggest (though the tices are causal intra- actions— they enact nature of this “support” is not specifi ed), or local causal structures through which one that nondiscursive (background) practices “component” (the “effect”) of the phe- determine discursive practices, as some nomenon is marked by another “compo- existential- pragmatic philosophers pur- nent” (the “cause”) in their differential port. 25 Rather, Bohr’s point entails a much articulation. Meaning is not a property of more intimate relationship between con- individual words or groups of words but cepts and materiality. In order to better un- an ongoing performance of the world in derstand the nature of this relationship, it is its differential intelligibility. In its causal important to shift the focus from linguistic intra activity, “part” of the world becomes concepts to discursive practices. determinately bounded and propertied On an agential realist elaboration of in its emergent intelligibility to another Bohr’s theoretical framework, apparatuses “part” of the world. Discursive practices POSTHUMANIST PERFORMATIVITY | 485 are boundary-making practices that have abstract independently existing objects of no fi nality in the ongoing dynamics of Newtonian physics (the modernist reali- agential intra- activity. zation of the Democritean dream of atoms Discursive practices are not speech acts, and the void). linguistic representations, or even linguistic Matter is not simply “a kind of citation- performances, bearing some unspecifi ed ality” (Butler 1993, 15), the surface effect relationship to material practices. Discur- of human bodies, or the end product of sive practices are not anthropomorphic linguistic or dis cursive acts. Material con- place holders for the projected agency of straints and exclusions and the material individual subjects, culture, or language. In- dimensions of regulatory practices are deed, they are not human- based practices. important factors in the process of mate- On the contrary, agential realism’s posthu- rialization. The dynamics of intra-activity manist account of discursive practices does entails matter as an active “agent” in its not fi x the boundary between “human” ongoing materialization. and “nonhuman” before the analysis ever Boundary- making practices, that is, dis- gets off the ground but rather enables (in- cursive practices, are fully implicated in the deed demands) a genealogical analysis of dynamics of intra-activity through which the discursive emergence of the “human.” phenomena come to matter. In other “Human bodies” and “human subjects” do words, materiality is discursive (i.e., mate- not preexist as such; nor are they mere end rial phenomena are inseparable from the products. “Humans” are neither pure cause apparatuses of bodily production: matter nor pure effect but part of the world in its emerges out of and includes as part of its open-ended becoming. being the ongoing reconfi guring of bound- Matter, like meaning, is not an individu- aries), just as discursive practices are always ally articulated or static entity. Matter is not already material (i.e., they are ongoing ma- little bits of nature, or a blank slate, surface, terial (re)confi gurings of the world). Dis- or site passively awaiting signifi cation; nor cursive practices and material phenomena is it an uncontested ground for scientifi c, do not stand in a relationship of externality feminist, or Marxist theories. Matter is not to one another; rather, the material and the a support, location, referent, or source of discursive are mutually implicated in the sustainability for discourse. Matter is not dynamics of intra-activity. But nor are they immutable or passive. It does not require reducible to one another. The relationship the mark of an external force like culture between the material and the discursive or history to complete it. Matter is always is one of mutual entailment. Neither is already an ongoing historicity.26 articulated/articulable in the absence of On an agential realist account, mat- the other; matter and meaning are mutually ter does not refer to a fi xed substance; articulated. Neither discursive practices rather, matter is substance in its intra- nor material phenomena are ontologically active becoming—not a thing, but a doing, or epistemologically prior. Neither can be a congealing of agency. Matter is a stabiliz- explained in terms of the other. Neither has ing and destabilizing process of iterative privileged status in determining the other. intra- activity. Phenomena— the smallest Apparatuses of bodily production and material units (relational “atoms”)— come the phenomena they produce are material- to matter through this process of ongoing discursive in nature. Material-discursive intra-activity. That is, matter refers to the practices are specifi c iterative enactments— materiality/materialization of phenom- agential intra-actions— through which mat- ena, not to an inherent fi xed property of ter is differentially engaged and articulated 486 | KAREN BARAD

(in the emergence of boundaries and mean- All bodies, not merely “human” bodies, ings), reconfi guring the material- discursive come to matter through the world’s itera- fi eld of possibilities in the iterative dynamics tive intra-activity- its performativity. This is of intra- activity that is agency. Intra-actions true not only of the surface or contours of are causally constraining nondeterministic the body but also of the body in the full- enactments through which matter-in- the ness of its physicality, including the very process-of- becoming is sedimented out “atoms” of its being. Bodies are not objects and enfolded in further materializations.27 with inherent boundaries and properties; Material conditions matter, not because they are material-discursive phenomena. they “support” particular discourses that “Human” bodies are not inherently differ- are the actual generative factors in the for- ent from “nonhuman” ones. What consti- mation of bodies but rather because matter tutes the “human” (and the “nonhuman”) is comes to matter through the iterative intra not a fi xed or pregiven notion, but nor is it a activity of the world in its becoming. The free- fl oating ideality. What is at issue is not point is not merely that there are import- some ill- defi ned process by which human- ant material factors in addition to discur- based linguistic practices (materially sup- sive ones; rather, the issue is the conjoined ported in some unspecifi ed way) manage material- discursive nature of constraints, to produce substantive bodies/bodily sub- conditions, and practices. The fact that stances but rather a material dynamics of material and discursive constraints and intra-activity: material apparatuses pro- exclusions are intertwined points to the duce material phenomena through spe- limited validity of analyses that attempt to cifi c causal intra actions, where “material” determine individual effects of material or is always already material- discursive— that discursive factors. 28 is what it means to matter. Theories that Furthermore, the conceptualization of focus exclusively on the materialization of materiality offered by agential realism makes “human” bodies miss the crucial point that it possible to take account of material con- the very practices by which the differential straints and conditions once again without boundaries of the “human” and the “non- reinscribing traditional empiricist assump- human” are drawn are always already im- tions concerning the transparent or imme- plicated in particular materializations. The diate givenness of the world and without differential constitution of the “human” falling into the analytical stalemate that sim- (“non human”) is always accompanied by ply calls for a recognition of our mediated particular exclusions and always open to access to the world and then rests its case. contestation. This is a result of the nonde- The ubiquitous pronouncements proclaim- terministic causal nature of agential intra- ing that experience or the material world is actions, a crucial point that I take up in the “mediated” have offered precious little guid- next section. ance about how to proceed. The notion of mediation has for too long stood in the way THE NATURE OF PRODUCTION AND of a more thoroughgoing accounting of the THE PRODUCTION OF NATURE: empirical world. The reconceptualization AGENCY AND CAUSALITY of materiality offered here makes it possible to take the empirical world seriously once What is the nature of causality on this ac- again, but this time with the understanding count? What possibilities exist for agency, that the objective referent is phenomena, for intervening in the world’s becoming? not the seeming “immediately givenness” Where do the issues of responsibility and of the world. accountability enter in? POSTHUMANIST PERFORMATIVITY | 487

Agential intra-actions are causal enact- interiority amounts to a reduction of the ef- ments. Recall that an agential cut effects a fect to its cause, or in this case nature to cul- local separability of different “component ture, or matter to language, which amounts parts” of the phenomenon, one of which to one form or another of idealism. (“the cause”) expresses itself in effecting Agential separability presents an alter- and marking the other (“the effect”). In a native to these unsatisfactory options.31 It scientifi c context this process is known as postulates a sense of “exteriority within,” a “measurement.” (Indeed, the notion of one that rejects the previous geometries “measurement” is nothing more or less and opens up a much larger space that is than a causal intra- action.)29 Whether it is more appropriately thought of as a chang- thought of as a “measurement,” or as part of ing topology.32 More specifi cally, agential the universe making itself intelligible to an- separability is a matter of exteriority within other part in its ongoing differentiating in- (material- discursive) phenomena. Hence, telligibility and materialization, is a matter no priority is given to either materiality of preference.30 Either way, what is import- or discursivity. 33 There is no geometrical ant about causal intra actions is the fact that relation of absolute exteriority between a marks are left on bodies. Objectivity means “causal apparatus” and a “body effected,” being accountable to marks on bodies. nor an idealistic collapse of the two, but This causal structure differs in important rather an ongoing topological dynamics respects from the common choices of abso- that enfolds the spacetime manifold upon lute exteriority and absolute interiority and itself, a result of the fact that the appa- of determinism and free will. In the case ratuses of bodily production (which are of the geometry of absolute exteriority, the themselves phenomena) are (also) part claim that cultural practices produce mate- of the phenomena they produce. Matter rial bodies starts with the metaphysical pre- plays an active, indeed agential, role in sumption of the ontological distinction of its iterative materialization, but this is not the former set from the latter. The inscrip- the only reason that the space of agency tion model of constructivism is of this kind: is much larger than that postulated in culture is fi gured as an external force acting many other critical social theories.34 Intra- on passive nature. There is an ambiguity in actions always entail particular exclusions, this model as to whether nature exists in and exclusions foreclose any possibility of any prediscursive form prior to its marking determinism, providing the condition of by culture. If there is such an antecedent an open future.35 Therefore, intra- actions entity then its very existence marks the in- are constraining but not deter mining. herent limit of constructivism. In this case, That is, intra-activity is neither a matter the rhetoric should be softened to more of strict determinism nor unconstrained accurately refl ect the fact that the force freedom. The future is radically open at of culture “shapes” or “inscribes” nature every turn. This open sense of futurity does but does not materially produce it. On the not depend on the clash or collision of cul- other hand, if there is no preexistent nature, tural demands; rather, it is inherent in the then it behooves those who advocate such nature of intra-activity— even when appa- a theory to explain how it is that culture ratuses are primarily reinforcing, agency is can materially produce that from which it not foreclosed. Hence, the notion of intra- is allegedly ontologically distinct, namely actions reformulates the traditional notion nature. What is the mechanism of this proof causality and opens up a space, indeed duction? The other usual alternative is also a relatively large space, for material- not attractive: the geometry of absolute discursive forms of agency. 488 | KAREN BARAD

A posthumanist formulation of perfor- theory scholars are among those who strug- mativity makes evident the importance of gle with the diffi culty of coming to terms taking account of “human,” “nonhuman,” with the weightiness of the world. On the and “cyborgian” forms of agency (indeed all one hand, there is an expressed desire to such material-discursive forms). This is both recognize and reclaim matter and its kin- possible and necessary because agency is dred reviled Others exiled from the familiar a matter of changes in the apparatuses of and comforting domains of culture, mind, bodily production, and such changes take and history, not simply to altruistically ad- place through various intra- actions, some vocate on behalf of the subaltern but in of which remake the boundaries that de- the hopes of fi nding a way to account for lineate the differential constitution of the our own fi nitude. Can we identify the lim- “human.” Holding the category “human” its and constraints, if not the grounds, of fi xed excludes an entire range of possibili- discourse- knowledge in its productivity? ties in advance, eliding important dimen- But despite its substance, in the end, ac- sions of the workings of power. cording to many contemporary attempts On an agential realist account, agency is at its salvation, it is not matter that reels cut loose from its traditional humanist orbit. in the unruliness of infi nite possibilities; Agency is not aligned with human inten- rather, it is the very existence of fi nitude tionality or subjectivity. Nor does it merely that gets defi ned as matter. Caught once entail resignifi cation or other specifi c kinds again looking at mirrors, it is either the face of moves within a social geometry of anti- of transcendence or our own image. It is as humanism. Agency is a matter of intra- if there are no alternative ways to concep- acting; it is an enactment, not something tualize matter: the only options seem to be that someone or something has. Agency the naivete of empiricism or the same old cannot be designated as an attribute of narcissistic bedtime stories. “subjects” or “objects” (as they do not pre- I have proposed a posthumanist mate- exist as such). Agency is not an attribute rialist account of performativity that chal- whatsoever- it is “doing”/”being” in its intra- lenges the positioning of materiality as activity. Agency is the enactment of iterative either a given or a mere effect of human changes to particular practices through the agency. On an agential realist account, dynamics of intra-activity. Agency is about materiality is an active factor in processes the possibilities and account ability entailed of materialization. Nature is neither a in reconfi guring material-discursive appa- passive surface awaiting the mark of cul- ratuses of bodily production, including the ture nor the end product of cultural per- boundary articulations and exclusions that formances. The belief that nature is mute are marked by those practices in the enact- and immutable and that all prospects for ment of a causal structure. Particular pos- signifi cance and change reside in culture is sibilities for acting exist at every moment, a reinscription of the nature/culture dual- and these changing possibilities entail a ism that feminists have actively contested. responsibility to intervene in the world’s Nor, similarly, can a human/nonhuman becoming, to contest and rework what mat- distinction be hardwired into any theory ters and what is excluded from mattering. that claims to take account of matter in the fullness of its historicity. Feminist science studies scholars in particular have empha- CONCLUSIONS sized that foundational inscriptions of the Feminist studies, queer studies, science nature/culture dualism foreclose the un- studies, cultural studies, and critical social derstanding of how “nature” and “culture” POSTHUMANIST PERFORMATIVITY | 489 are formed, an understanding that is cru- to complicate the locatability of human cial to both feminist and scientifi c analy- identity as a here and now, an enclosed ses. They have also emphasized that the and fi nished product, a causal force upon notion of “formation” in no way denies the Nature. Or even . . . as something within material reality of either “nature” or “cul- Nature. I don’t want the human to be in ture.” Hence, any performative account Nature, as if Nature is a container. Iden- worth its salt would be ill advised to incor- tity is inherently unstable, differentiated, porate such anthropocentric values in its dispersed, and yet strangely coherent. If I foundations. say ‘this is Nature itself,’ an expression that A crucial part of the performative ac- usually denotes a prescriptive essentialism count that I have proposed is a rethinking and that’s why we avoid it, I’ve actually an- of the notions of discursive practices and imated this ‘itself’ and even suggested that material phenomena and the relationship ‘thinking’ isn’t the other of nature. Nature between them. On an agential realist ac- performs itself differently.”38 count, dis cursive practices are not human- The particular confi guration that an ap- based activities but rather specifi c material paratus takes is not an arbitrary construc- (re)configurings of the world through tion of “our” choosing; nor is it the result which local determinations of boundaries, of causally deterministic power structures. properties, and meanings are differentially “Humans” do not simply assemble different enacted. And matter is not a fi xed essence; apparatuses for satisfying particular knowl- rather, matter is substance in its intra- edge projects but are themselves specifi c active becoming-not a thing but a doing, local parts of the world’s ongoing recon- a congealing of agency. And performativity fi guring. To the degree that laboratory ma- is not understood as iterative citationality nipulations, observational interventions, (Butler) but rather iterative intra- activity. concepts, or other human practices have a On an agential realist account of techno- role to play it is as part of the material con- scientifi c practices, the “knower” does not fi guration of the world in its intra- active stand in a relation of absolute externality to becoming. “Humans” are part of the world the natural world being investigated— there body space in its dynamic structuration. is no such exterior observational point.36 There is an important sense in which It is therefore not absolute exteriority practices of knowing cannot be fully that is the condition of possibility for ob- claimed as human practices, not simply jectivity but rather agential separability- because we use nonhuman elements in our exteriority within phenomena. 37 “We” are practices but because knowing is a matter not outside observers of the world. Nor are of part of the world making itself intelligi- we simply located at particular places in ble to another part. Practices of knowing the world; rather, we are part of the world and being are not isolatable, but rather in its ongoing intra-activity. This is a point they are mutually implicated. We do not Niels Bohr tried to get at in his insistence obtain knowledge by standing outside of that our epistemology must take account the world; we know because “we” are of the of the fact that we are a part of that nature world. We are part of the world in its differ- we seek to understand. Unfortunately, how ential becoming. The separation of episte- ever, he cuts short important posthuman- mology from ontology is a reverberation of a ist implications of this insight in his ul- metaphysics that assumes an inherent dif- timately humanist understanding of the ference between human and nonhuman, “we.” Vicki Kirby eloquently articulates this subject and object, mind and body, matter important posthumanist point: “I’m trying and discourse. Onto-epistemology— the 490 | KAREN BARAD

study of practices of knowing in being—is ongoing patterns of situated activity, an idea that probably a better way to think about the is then further elaborated in How Scientifi c Prac- kind of understandings that are needed tices Matter (2002). 6. The allure of representationalism may make it to come to terms with how specifi c intra- diffi cult to imagine alternatives. I discuss perfor- actions matter. mative alternatives below, but these are not the only ones. A concrete historical example may be helpful at this juncture. Foucault points out that NOTES in sixteenth-century Europe, language was not thought of as a medium; rather, it was simply 1. Dissatisfaction surfaces in the literature in the “one of the fi gurations of the world” (1970, 56), an 1980s. See, e.g., Donna Haraway’s “Gender for a idea that reverberates in a mutated form in the Marxist Dictionary: The Sexual Politics of a Word” posthumanist performative account that I offer. (originally published 1987) and “Situated Knowl- 7. Andrew Pickering (1995) explicitly eschews the edges: The Science Question in Feminism and representationalist idiom in favor of a perfor- the Privilege of Partial Perspective” (originally mative idiom. It is important to note, however, published 1988); both reprinted in Haraway 1991. that Pickering’s notion of performativity would See also Butler 1989. not be recognizable as such to poststructuralists, 2. This is not to dismiss the valid concern that cer- despite their shared embrace of performativity tain specifi c performative accounts grant too as a remedy to representationalism, and despite much power to language. Rather, the point is that their shared rejection of humanism. Pickering’s this is not an inherent feature of performativity appropriation of the term does not include any but an ironic malady. acknowledgement of its politically important- 3. Haraway proposes the notion of diffraction as a arguably inherently queer- genealogy (see Sedg- metaphor for rethinking the geometry and op- wick 1993) or why it has been and continues to tics of relationality: “[F]eminist theorist Trinh be important to contemporary critical theorists, Minh- ha . . . was looking for a way to fi gure ‘dif- especially feminist and queer studies scholars/ ference’ as a ‘critical difference within,’ and not activists. Indeed, he evacuates its important po- as special taxonomic marks grounding difference litical historicity along with many of its crucial as apartheid. . . . Diffraction does not produce insights. In particular, Pickering ignores import- ‘the same’ displaced, as refl ection and refraction ant discursive dimensions, including questions do. Diffraction is a mapping of interference, not of meaning, intelligibility, signifi cance, identity of replication, refl ection, or reproduction. A dif- formation, and power, which are central to post- fraction pattern does not map where differences structuralist invocations of “performativity.” And appear, but rather maps where the effects of dif- he takes for granted the humanist notion of ferences appear” (1992, 300). Haraway (1997) agency as a property of individual entities (such promotes the notion of diffraction to a fourth as humans, but also weather systems, scallops, and semiotic category. Inspired by her suggestions for stereos), which poststructuralists problema- usefully deploying this rich and fascinating phys- tize. On the other hand, poststructuralist ap- ical phenomenon to think about differences that proaches fail to take account of “nonhuman matter, I further elaborate the notion of diffrac- agency,” which is a central focus of Pickering’s tion as a mutated critical tool of analysis (though account. See Barad (forthcoming) for a more not as a fourth semiotic category) in my forth- detailed discussion. coming book (Barad forthcoming). 8. The notion of performativity has a distinguished 4. See Rouse 2002 on rethinking naturalism. The ne- career in philosophy that most of these multiple ologism intra- activity is defi ned below. and various engagements acknowledge. Perfor- 5. Rouse begins his interrogation of representation- mativity’s lineage is generally traced to the British alism in Knowledge and Power (1987). He exam- philosopher J. L. Austin’s interest in speech acts, ines how a representationalist understanding particularly the relationship between saying and of knowledge gets in the way of understanding doing. Jacques Derrida is usually cited next as of- the nature of the relationship between power fering important poststructuralist amendments. and knowledge. He continues his critique of Butler elaborates Derrida’s notion of performa- representationalism and the development of an tivity through Foucault’s understanding of the alternative understanding of the nature of scien- productive effects of regulatory power in theoriz- tifi c practices in Engaging Science (1996). Rouse ing the notion of identity performatively. Butler proposes that we understand science practice as introduces her notion of gender performativity POSTHUMANIST PERFORMATIVITY | 491

in Gender Trouble, where she proposes that we too surprising to those of us who remember that understand gender not as a thing or a set of the term metaphysics does not have some high- free- fl oating attributes, not as an essence—but brow origins in the history of philosophy but, rather as a “doing”: “gender is itself a kind of rather, originally referred to the writings of Ar- becoming or activity . . . gender ought not to be istotle that came after his writings on physics, in conceived as a noun or a substantial thing or a the arrangement made by Andronicus of Rhodes static cultural marker, but rather as an inces- about three centuries after Aristotle’s death. sant and repeated action of some sort” (1990, 15. Relata are would-be antecedent components of 112). In Bodies That Matter (1993) Butler ar- relations. According to metaphysical atomism, gues for a linkage between gender performa- individual relata always preexist any relations tivity and the materialization of sexed bodies. that may hold between them. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1993) argues that per- 16. Atomism is said to have originated with Leucip- formativity’s genealogy is inherently queer. pus and was further elaborated by Democritus, 9. This notion of posthumanism differs from Pick- devotee of democracy, who also explored its ering’s idiosyncratic assignment of a “posthu- anthropological and ethical implications. Dem- manist space [as] a space in which the human ocritus’s atomic theory is often identifi ed as the actors are still there but now inextricably entan- most mature pre-Socratic philosophy, directly gled with the nonhuman, no longer at the center infl uencing Plato and Epicurus, who trans- of the action calling the shots” (26). However, the mitted it into the early modern period. Atomic decentering of the human is but one element of theory is also said to form the cornerstone of posthumanism. (Note that Pickering’s notion of modern science. “entanglement” is explicitly epistemological, not 17. Niels Bohr (1885–1962), a contemporary of ontological. What is at issue for him in dubbing Einstein, was one of the founders of quantum his account “posthumanist” is the fact that it is physics and also the most widely accepted in- attentive to the mutual accommodation, or re- terpretation of the quantum theory, which goes sponsiveness, of human and nonhuman agents.) by the name of the Copenhagen interpretation 10. It could be argued that “materialized refi gura- (after the home of Bohr’s internationally action” is an enterprised up (Haraway’s term) ver- claimed physics institute that bears his name). sion of “materialization,” while the notion of On my reading of Bohr’s philosophy- physics, “materialization” hints at a richer account of the Bohr can be understood as proposing a pro- former. Indeed, it is possible to read my posthu- toperformative account of scientifi c practices. manist performative account along these lines, as 18. Bohr argues on the basis of this single crucial a diffractive elaboration of Butler’s and Haraway’s insight, together with the empirical fi nding crucial insights. of an inherent discontinuity in measurement 11. See also Butler 1989. “intra- actions,” that one must reject the pre- 12. The conjunctive term material- discursive and sumed inherent separability of observer and other agential realist terms like intra- action are observed, knower and known. See Barad 1996, defi ned below forthcoming. 13. This essay outlines issues I developed in earlier 19. The so- called uncertainty principle in quantum publications including Barad 1996, l998a, l998b, physics is not a matter of “uncertainty” at all but 200lb, and in my forthcoming book (Barad rather of indeterminacy. See Barad 1995, 1996, forthcoming). forthcoming. 14. It is no secret that metaphysics has been a term 20. That is, relations are not secondarily derived from of opprobrium through most of the twentieth independently existing “relata,” but rather the century. This positivist legacy lives on even in mutual ontological dependence of “relata”—the the heart of its detractors. Post-structuralists are relation— is the ontological primitive. As discussed simply the newest signatories of its death war- below, relata only exist within phenomena as a re- rant. Yet, however strong one’s dislike of meta- sult of specifi c intra-actions (i.e., there are no inde- physics, it will not abide by any death sentence, pendent relata, only relata- within- relations). and so it is ignored at one’s peril. Indeed, new 21. A concrete example may be helpful. When light “experimental metaphysics” research is taking passes through a two-slit diffraction grating and place in physics laboratories in the United States forms a diffraction pattern it is said to exhibit and abroad, calling into question the common wavelike behavior. But there is also evidence that belief that there is an inherent boundary be- light exhibits particlelike characteristics, called tween the “physical” and the “metaphysical” photons. If one wanted to test this hypothesis, the (see Barad forthcoming). This fact should not be diffraction apparatus could be modifi ed in such 492 | KAREN BARAD

a way as to allow a determination of which slit realism’s posthumanist account, which is not a given photon passes through (since particles limited to the realm of the social. In fact, it makes only go through a single slit at a time). The result no sense to speak of the “nondiscursive” unless of running this experiment is that the diffrac- one is willing to jettison the notion of causality in tion pattern is destroyed! Classically, these two its intra- active conception. results together seem contradictory-frustrating 26. In her critique of constructivism within feminist efforts to specify the true ontological nature of theory Judith Butler puts forward an account of light. Bohr resolves this wave-particle duality materialization that seeks to acknowledge these paradox as follows: the objective referent is not important points. Reworking the notion of mat- some abstract, independently existing entity but ter as a process of materialization brings to the rather the phenomenon of light intra- acting with fore the importance of recognizing matter in its the apparatus. The fi rst apparatus gives determi- historicity and directly challenges representa- nate meaning to the notion of “wave,” while the tionalism’s construal of matter as a passive blank second provides determinate meaning to the site awaiting the active inscription of culture notion of “particle.” The notions of “wave” and and the representationalist positioning of the “particle” do not refer to inherent characteris- relationship between materiality and discourse tics of an object that precedes its intra-action. as one of absolute exteriority. Unfortunately, There are no such independently existing objects however, Butler’s theory ultimately reinscribes with inherent characteristics. The two different matter as a passive product of discursive prac- apparatuses effect different cuts, that is, draw tices rather than as an active agent participat- different distinctions delineating the “measured ing in the very process of materialization. This object” from the “measuring instrument.” In defi ciency is symptomatic of an incomplete other words, they differ in their local material assessment of important causal factors and resolutions of the inherent ontological inde- an incomplete reworking of “causality” in un- terminacy. There is no confl ict because the two derstanding the nature of discursive practices different results mark different intra-actions. See (and material phenomena) in their productivity. Barad 1996, forthcoming for more details. Furthermore, Butler’s theory of materiality is 22. This elaboration is not based on an analog- limited to an account of the materialization of ical extrapolation. Rather, I argue that such human bodies or, more accurately, to the con- anthropocentric restrictions to laboratory instruction of the contours of the human body. vestigations are not justifi ed and indeed defy Agential realism’s relational ontology enables a the logic of Bohr’s own insights. See Barad further reworking of the notion of materializa- forthcoming. tion that acknowledges the existence of import- 23. Because phenomena constitute the ontological ant linkages between discursive practices and primitives, it makes no sense to talk about inde- material phenomena without the anthropocen- pendently existing things as somehow behind or tric limitations of Butler’s theory. as the causes of phenomena. In essence, there 27. The nature of causal intra- actions is discussed are no noumena, only phenomena. Agential re- further in the next section. alist phenomena are neither Kant’s phenomena 28. See Barad 1998b, 2001a, 2001b, forthcoming for nor the phenomenologist’s phenomena. examples. 24. I am concerned here with the Foucauldian no- 29. I am grateful to Joe Rouse for putting this point tion of discourse (discursive practices), not so elegantly (private conversation). Rouse (2002) formalist and empirical approaches stemming suggests that measurement need not be a term from Anglo-American linguistics, sociolinguis- about laboratory operations, that before answer- tics, and sociology. ing whether or not something is a measurement a 25. Foucault makes a distinction between “discur- prior question must be considered, namely, What sive” and “nondiscursive” practices, where the constitutes a measurement of what? latter category is reduced to social institutional 30. Intelligibility is not a human-based affair. It is practices: “The term ‘institution’ is generally ap- a matter of differential articulations and differ- plied to every kind of more-or- less constrained ential responsiveness/engagement. Vicki Kirby behaviour, everything that functions in a society (1997) makes a similar point. as a system of constraint and that isn’t utterance, 31. Butler also rejects both of these options, propos- in short, all the fi eld of the non-discursive social, ing an alternative that she calls the “constitutive is an institution” (1980b, 197–98; my italics). outside.” The “constitutive outside” is an exte- This specifi c social science demarcation is not riority within language— it is the “that which” particularly illuminating in the case of agential to which language is impelled to respond in the POSTHUMANIST PERFORMATIVITY | 493

repeated attempt to capture the persistent loss or REFERENCES absence of that which cannot be captured. It is this persistent demand for, and inevitable failure Barad, Karen. 1995. “A Feminist Approach to Teach- of, language to resolve that demand that opens ing Quantum Physics.” In Teaching the Majority: up a space for resignifi cation— a form of agency— Breaking the Gender Barrier in Science, Mathe- within the terms of that reiteration. But the fact matics, and Engineering, ed. Sue V. Rosser, 43– that language itself is an enclosure that contains 75. Athene Series. New York: Teacher’s College the constitutive outside amounts to an unfortu- Press. nate reinscription of matter as subservient to the — — — . 1996. “Meeting the Universe Halfway: Realism play of language and displays a commitment to and Social Constructivism without Contradic- an unacceptable anthropocentrism, reducing the tion.” In Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy possibilities for agency to resignifi cation. of Science, ed. Lynn Hankinson Nelson and Jack 32. Geometry is concerned with shapes and sizes Nelson, 161– 94. Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer Press. (this is true even of the non- Euclidean varieties, — — — . 1998a. “Agential Realism: Feminist Interven- such as geometries built on curved surfaces like tions in Understanding Scientifi c Practices.” In The spheres rather than on fl at planes), whereas to- Science Studies Reader, ed. Mario Biagioli, 1–11. pology investigates questions of connectivity and New York: Routledge. boundaries. Although spatiality is often thought of — — — . 1998b. “Getting Real: Technoscientifi c Prac- geometrically, particularly in terms of the charac- tices and the Materialization of Reality.” dif- teristics of enclosures (like size and shape), this is ferences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies only one way of thinking about space. Topological 10(2):87– 126. features of manifolds can be extremely important. — — — . 2001a. “Performing Culture/Performing Na- For example, two points that seem far apart geo ture: Using the Piezoelectric Crystal of Ultrasound metrically may, given a particular connectivity of Technologies as a Transducer between Science the spatial manifold, actually be proximate to one Studies and Queer Theories.” In Digital Anatomy, another (as, e.g., in the case of cosmological ob- ed. Christina Lammar, 98– 114. Vienna: Turia & jects called “wormholes”). Kant. 33. In contrast to Butler’s “constitutive outside,” for — — — . 2001b. “Re(con)fi guring Space, Time, and Mat- example. ter.” In Feminist Locations: Global and Local, The- 34. For example, the space of agency is much larger ory and Practice, ed. Marianne DeKoven, 75– 109. than that postulated by Butler’s or Louis Al- New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. thusser’s theories. There is more to agency than — — — . Forthcoming. Meeting the Universe Halfway. the possibilities of linguistic resignifi cation, and Butler, Judith. 1989. “Foucault and the Paradox the circumvention of deterministic outcome of Bodily Inscriptions.” Journal of Philosophy does not require a clash of apparatuses/discur- 86(11):601– 7. sive demands (i.e., overdetermination). — — — . 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Sub- 35. This is true at the atomic level as well. Indeed, as version of Identity. New York: Routledge. Bohr emphasizes, the mutual exclusivity of “po- — — — . 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive sition” and “momentum” is what makes the no- Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge. tion of causality in quantum physics profoundly Deleuze, Giles. 1988. Foucault. Trans. Sean Hand. different from the determinist sense of causality Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. of classical Newtonian physics. Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things: An Ar- 36. Others have made this point as well, e.g., Haraway chaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vin- 1991; Kirby 1997; Rouse 2002; and Bohr. tage Books. 37. The notion of agential separability, which is — — — . 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the predicated on the agential realist notion of Discourse on Language. Trans. A.M. Sheridan intra- actions, has far- reaching consequences. Smith. New York: Pantheon Books. Indeed, it can be shown to play a critical role in — — — . 1980a. The History of Sexuality. Vol. l. An Intro- the resolution of the “measurement problem” duction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage and other long-standing problems in quantum Books. theory. See Barad forthcoming. — — — . 1980b. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews 38. Vicki Kirby (private communication, 2002). and Other Writings, 1972– 1977. Ed. Colin Gordon. Kirby’s sustained interrogation of the tenacious New York: Pantheon Books. nature/culture binary is unparalleled. See Kirby Hacking, Ian. 1983. Representing and Intervening: 1997 for a remarkable “materialist” (my descrip - Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural tion) reading of Derridean theory. Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 494 | KAREN BARAD

Haraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: Rouse, Joseph. 1987. Knowledge and Power: Toward a The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. Political Philosophy of Science. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cor- — — — . 1992. “The Promises of Monsters: A Regener- nell University Press. ative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others.” In Cul- — — — . 1996. Engaging Science: How to Understand tural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cory Nelson, Its Practices Philosophically. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell and Paula Treichler, 295– 337. New York: Routledge. University Press. — — — . 1997. Modest_Witness®Second_Millennium. — — — . 2002. How Scientiﬁ c Practices Matter: Re- FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse™: Feminism and claiming Philosophical Naturalism. Chicago: Uni- Technoscience. New York: Routledge. versity of Chicago Press. Hennessey, Rosemary. 1993. Materialist Feminism Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1993. “Queer Performativ- and the Politics of Discourse. New York: Routledge. ity: Henry James’s The Art of the Novel.” GLQ1(1): Kirby, Vicki. 1997. Telling Flesh: The Substance of the 1–16. Corporeal. New York: Routledge. Shaviro, Steve. 1997. Doom Patrols: A Theoretical Fic- Pickering, Andrew. 1995. The Mangle of Practice: tion about Postmodernism. New York: Serpent’s Time, Agency, and Science. Chicago: University of Tail. Available on-line at http://www.dhalgren. Chicago Press. com/ Doom/. CHAPTER 29

Animal Performances: An Exploration of Intersections between Feminist Science Studies and Studies of Human /Animal Relationships Lynda Birke, Mette Bryld, and Nina Lykke

have been central to how we have analysed INTRODUCTION science, yet covertly so. Non- human animals are both common Although a concern with animals and how and rare in feminist science studies. They we think about them is still relatively rare in are common in the sense that feminist feminist theory, they have now begun to enter analyses of science have necessarily paid the literature— admittedly, an entrance more attention to the biological sciences, which at the pace of a tortoise than a hare (Birke, both use and defi ne nonhuman species. 2002). This emerging work, which theorizes But they are rare in the sense that feminist intersections between feminist theory and literature in general has paid scant regard animal studies, shows many reasons why to how we think about animals specifi cally feminists should pay attention to how we (rather than as part of biology in general) think about animals and animality, and how or their place in relation to our theory. humans and non-humans act together in re- Three decades ago, feminist work on lationship. Animality is, for example, deeply science concentrated on women’s health intertwined with concepts of gender, race, or and on critiques of biological determin- sexuality (Haraway, 1989; Birke, 1994; Bryld ism. Among other things, this determin- and Lykke, 2000). Moreover, ‘animality’ has ism typically relied on parallels drawn long served as a foil to refl ect what we con- between stories of animals behaving in sider to be human uniqueness; we often particular (instinctive) ways, and gender- refer, for instance, to ‘humans and animals’ stereotypic behaviour in humans. Repu- as though they are quite separate from us diating these claims inevitably meant that and quite homogeneous. That distinction, feminists tended to avoid speaking about moreover, is reinforced by disciplinary seg- non- human animals, while emphasizing regation: sociology has traditionally studied the social construction of gender, and humans and excluded other animals, while human uniqueness. Meanwhile, the bio- nonhumans and their behaviour fall within logical sciences have been a key focus for the remit of biology. What is increasingly feminist science studies—the very areas of clear, however, is that animality itself (or, the science which not only help to defi ne what specifi city of any particular kind of animal) animals are, but also use non-human spe- is just as complexly constructed as gender or cies extensively in the creation of biologi- humanness and so does not readily fall into cal knowledge. In that sense, then, animals disciplinary divides. 496 | LYNDA BIRKE, METTE BRYLD, AND NINA LYKKE

In this article, we will draw on our back- which human gender and sexuality are en- ground as feminist science studies schol- acted in sociocultural interaction. It indi- ars and explore the intersections between cates how gender as well as sexual identity, feminist theory and studies of human/ consequently, is something we do rather animal relationships. Like Karen Barad than innate and essential capacities that (2003), we fi nd the concept of ‘performa- we have or are. tivity’ useful for analysing co- or intra- By contrast, in the natural sciences, non- actions 1 of human and nonhuman actors, human animals have typically been por- and we have thus begun to explore its rel- trayed as beings characterized by innate evance for the study of the human/animal behaviours, including behaviours deter- interface, particularly within the discourses mined by sexual difference. Sociality thus of the natural sciences, including those of emerges incidentally, as a product of indi- popular science. 2 vidual animals’ instinctive responses. So, Among other things, we argue that perfor example, ‘gender differences’ in non- formativity shifts the focus toward ideas human animals are almost always seen of animal agency, and away from opposi- as the result of individual differences in tional meanings of animal/human toward something intrinsic (genes or hormones); a more inclusive one.3 they are very rarely seen as something The article is structured in three main created by social interaction. This, then, parts. In the fi rst part, we draw parallels be- is quite different from how performativity tween the discourses of gender/sexuality has been used to theorize human gender, and animality, introducing the idea of ‘ani- as a socio-cultural process. What seems maling’ to describe how we culturally pro- to be missing, in our opinion, as a result duce the human/animal divide. We then of natural science’s emphasis on sociality introduce the concept of performativity, as product of inherent traits in animals, is to challenge that division and to provide much sense of nonhuman otherness as a a fresh way of thinking about humans and doing or becoming, produced and repro- animals. In the second part of the article duced in specifi c contexts of human/non- we will illustrate these themes using lab- human interaction— which is where we oratory rats as an example. In the third think that the inspiration from Butler and, section, we ask how feminist theory and more recently, Barad (2003), can be partic- human/animal studies may enrich each ularly important. other, theoretically, using the notion of To begin with Butler’s work, with its em- performativity. phasis on linguistic structures, she suggests that discourses of ‘queering’ act as founding moments of performativity (Butler, 1993); PERFORMATIVITY AS NODAL POINT in an approximate analogy, we use the term BETWEEN FEMINIST THEORY AND ‘animaling’. Like the discursive regimes STUDIES OF HUMAN/ANIMAL which produced the word ‘queer’, so those RELATIONSHIPS that enabled the word ‘animal’ in its spe- Judith Butler (1990, 1993) developed the cifi c sense of being oppositional to ‘human’ concept of performativity as a key ap- now reproduce power through different proach to feminist theorizing of queer per- pejorative and inferiority-producing strate- spectives, but it can also be used to think gies. The noun ‘queer’ emerges from hege- about animals and animality, we argue. In monic discourse, which posits an essential Butler’s theoretical work, performativity dichotomy between a heterosexual norm refers to the discursive practices through and ‘queer’ deviancy. Analogously, the noun ANIMAL PERFORMANCES | 497

‘animal’ is linked to a plethora of hegemonic a discursive process, operating between discourses (philosophical, scientifi c, etc.), these human/animal conjunctions (thus which rely on underlying assumptions about no longer across the border of those who the essence or identity of ‘animal’ or ‘human’. use speech and those who do not). For exam- Their effect is to sustain the opposition of ple, how the term ‘animal’ operates will differ Human/cultural subject versus Animal/ between a human- and- guide- dog dyad, and natural object. ‘The Animal’ in these essen- (say) a human-trapping- rats dyad; the rela- tializing discourses becomes that which is tionship between human and nonhuman is not Human (i.e., without subjectivity, with- very different in each case. This could matter out intentionality—a mere genetically pro- in the case of disputed politics, such as dis- grammed stimulus- reaction— machine: see agreements between antivivisectionists, op- discussion in Stibbe, 2001). posed to use of any living animal in research, We suggest that the verbal form of the and those who seek legislative reform, for noun ‘animal’— like the verbal form of whom defi nitions of ‘animals’ may be con- ‘queer’—can introduce a decisive break tested.5 So, while it is an inexact analogy, we with the essentialism of the noun. ‘Queer- suggest that ‘animaling’ can also do border ing’, notes Butler (1993), shifts the focus work between these conjoint human/non- from an essence, other to the heterosexual humans, just as queering does. norm, to a question of how ‘queer’ is per- Useful though we believe it is to use formed and relates to socio-cultural power these ideas to challenge (human) cultural relations. Queer is no longer, in this per- concepts of animality, our discussion so spective, an essence but a doing. Follow- far has remained at the level of spoken ing a parallel line of thought, the notion of language—by and large, the prerogative of ‘animaling’ can also shift perspective from humans. Barad (2003), however, begins her animal essences to a study of the material- reworking of ideas of performativity by not- semiotic performativity of human/animal ing that, in recent theoretical work, ‘Lan- relationships. Now, there are some differ- guage has been granted too much power’ ences between these terms. The word ‘queer’ (p. 801). Relatedly, even though we might does cultural work both for those inside and seek to challenge the premises on which outside specifi c communities, marking bor- the concept ‘animal’ is founded, discuss- ders for both. To make the word into a verb ing only how the word is used still leaves was a transgressive act precisely because nonhuman animals as rather passive par- it challenged those borders. Clearly non- ticipants in the creation of meaning. human animals are not participants in the Barad’s work seeks to challenge much very human act of linguistically constructing recent scholarship in which, she notes, ‘ . . . boundaries, so animaling cannot work in di- matters of “fact’’ (so to speak) have been rect analogy to queering across the human/ replaced with matters of signifi cation (no animal boundary. scare quotes here). Language matters. Dis- Linguistic boundaries, however, can be course matters. Culture matters. There is and are maintained by humans in rela- an important sense in which the only thing tion to animals. If we shift the focus from that does not seem to matter anymore is groups of individuals, to relationships, we matter’ (Barad, 2003: 801). In trying to move can focus on the human/animal as a kind beyond representationalism (the belief of hybrid, that exists in the spaces between that there are representations and things the two,4 and which—as a kind of hybrid— to be represented), she turns to what she can maintain boundaries with other sim- calls ‘agential realism’, using performativ- ilar hybrids. Like queering, ‘animaling’ is ity as a concept to move beyond the narrow 498 | LYNDA BIRKE, METTE BRYLD, AND NINA LYKKE

confi nes of language. In this move, she re- a phenomenological description of the an- fuses separation of observed object and imal’s life world. It is, moreover, a style in observer, to emphasize instead phenom- which the observer is often present, writing ena. Of particular concern to us here, this about personal observations and inter- development of performativity permits in- actions with the animals. The other style, clusion of the material, including animals. characterized as externalistic, focuses on We argue that the notion of perfor- scientists’ efforts to objectify nature and to mativity can equally be applied to think- remove references to subjectivity. 6 Unlike ing about the intimate choreography of the stories of individuals typifying the nat- human/animal interrelationships, follow- uralistic tradition, the externalist narratives ing Barad’s reformulation of the concept. insist on general terms, in which a single Against this background, we will suggest animal stands to represent the whole spe- that the notion of performativity can serve cies, and the observer stands apart. a useful purpose in clarifying how human/ These two different kinds of narrative animal relationships are co- constructed confi gure animals quite differently. In nei- by discursive practices, to create emer- ther is the animal particularly participative, gent phenomena (the choreography, so to but in the externalist narrative it is almost speak), and thus engaging both humans entirely made passive. 7 As above, we will and non- humans in mutual intra- action. look fi rst at how rats fare in narrative rep- With that in mind, we turn now to ex- resentations (which have been the focus of ploring a specifi c case study of animals research in several science studies), before in science; in our work, we have analysed considering how we can move beyond rep- several examples, such as the behaviour of resentations to a position of rat performa- insects in documentary fi lms (Lykke and tivity and animal agency. Bryld, 2003) and the behaviour of labora- Some animals have meaning to us hu- tory rats (Birke, 2003). Here, we use rats as mans almost entirely in externalist, sci- an example—species with whom we also entifi c terms—the laboratory rat is one live closely (even if we would prefer not to example. There is relatively little ‘natural acknowledge that proximity). But they have history’ of the wild rat, so internalist narra- entered the laboratory in highly specifi c tives are rare. 8 Yet these are animals having ways, engaging in the material develop- huge signifi cance for us, in folklore and in ment of ‘the laboratory rat’. This will bring our history; indeed, given the role of rats us on to develop the idea of human/animal as carriers of pandemics such as bubonic performativity more fully, in later sections. plague, there is a very real sense in which they have actively participated in shaping human society as we know it (Hendrickson, BECOMING RATS: ANIMALS IN 1983). Despite the dearth of rat natural SCIENTIFIC DISCOURSE AND history, lab rats are used in millions in sci- LABORATORY PRACTICES entifi c procedures throughout the world. Analysing scientifi c descriptions of ani- But how do we humans understand the mal behaviour over the past century, Ei- ‘laboratory rat’? Not surprisingly, external- leen Crist (1999) notes how these have ist, objectifying, narratives are inevitable. oscillated between two kinds of narrative. The animals are typically referred to as ‘the One, which she characterizes as internal- laboratory rat’, as though that descriptor istic, has historically typifi ed naturalists’ defi nes a species, and despite the many writing (including Darwin’s): it empha- dissimilarities between rats in laboratories sizes animals as active subjects, and gives and those in the wild (Birke, 2003). ANIMAL PERFORMANCES | 499

Meanwhile, lab rats are hidden from to be ‘more scientifi c’; in turn, laboratory view, erased linguistically and materially. equipment (cages, stereotaxic equipment They are given numbers (’300 rats were to immobilize animals’ heads and so on) used’); they stand as ‘models’ for humans; has evolved to fi t standard rats, while rats how they live is rarely important enough to are further standardized to fi t the apparatus. include in reports; they are hidden away They have, quite literally, been bred to fi t the in ranks of cages in specialized animal laboratory, its technologies, and its practices houses (Birke and Smith, 1994); their use (Clause, 1993; Logan, 2001). and deaths are considered more accept- Scientists may have specifi c, intra-active, able than the use of many other animals. relationships with rats in the laboratory They become, in some senses, data: what (see Dewsbury, 1992)—or they may not (if, outside the lab might have been a ‘natural- for instance, someone else handles the rat istic’ animal (like the ones in the sewers) and produces whatever rat part the scien- makes a transition to being an ‘analytic’ tist wants further away in the laboratory). In animal as parts of their bodies are trans- either case, rats occupy a complex place in formed into laboratory artefacts (such as a wide array of material and semiotic prac- histology slides: see Lynch, 1988). Not sur- tices, and their own behaviour plays a cru- prisingly, they are frequently referred to as cial part. For instance, strains of rats in the ‘laboratory tools’ and their development early twentieth century were selected for described as creating the ‘right tool for the specifi c traits, including their sexual precoc- job’ (Clarke and Fujimura, 1992). 9 ity and their docility to enable easy handling Lab rats, then, are made discursively into (Logan, 2001), while a crucial part of labo- part of the laboratory. But this is much more ratory training for humans is how to man- than mere linguistic turns, for the entry of age the behaviour of the animal (such that rats into laboratories is profoundly embed- human management of experimental proto- ded in a whole industry of activities and in- cols is dictated by the rats’ responses: biting stitutions. This is where Barad’s approach is and squealing causes problems. See Lynch, important, to locate the materiality of the 1988). In both senses, rats’ behaviour played rat in the processes of meaning- making. a crucial part in the development of modern Rats are, in important senses, agents of their science and the making of scientists. own history, and consequently of the history So, we might apply the concept of per- of scientifi c knowledge (which owes a very formativity here to the behaviour of the great deal to laboratory animals of all kinds). rat: the notion of ‘lab rat’ is a doing, a However rats fi rst got into laboratories production of meanings within and out- (and some certainly came from the wild), side of science. But, as mentioned earlier, they were soon kept (from the late nine- it is important to stress that performativ- teenth century on) to be bred selectively for ity should be understood as a material- laboratory use, to create specifi c animals to semiotic process in the posthuman sense occupy specifi c locations in relation to lab- (Barad, 2003); the rat itself is an agent in oratory space and practice (Logan, 2001). the process, whether it obligingly repro- In that sense, they have come to embody duces to order or squeals and bites the materially a whole set of specifi c practices— experimenter. So too are the technologies linguistic and material— which defi ne what (cages, etc.) which produce and are pro- takes place in laboratories. Their devel- duced by rats- in- laboratories. opment from the early twentieth century Indeed, what we understand as ‘the lab- was the materialization of the demand for oratory rat’ is something of a hybrid, con- standardization— epitomizing the demand stituted jointly by the animal, the people 500 | LYNDA BIRKE, METTE BRYLD, AND NINA LYKKE

and various associated technologies (stan- also belong in the larger category ‘animal’. dard cages; devices for weighing or killing; But in the practices and discourses of sci- foodstuffs and so on: see Birke and Michael, ence, that tendency toward separation is at 1997). In that sense, ‘laboratory rat- ness’ is times re-enacted and reinforced, gaining a part performed to fi t very precisely into authority and power, whether by objectify- the scientifi c enterprise; meanings emerge ing language or the creation of living appa- from a nexus of apparatuses, animals and ratus. Ironically, separation is happening people.10 in the very branch of science whose cen- And just as gender is ‘the repeated styl- trepoint theory, evolution, would empha- ization of the body, a set of repeated acts size our similarity to, and continuity with, within a highly regulatory frame that con- other animals. geal over time’ (Butler, 1990: 33) and liter- Darwin himself, however, might not ally embody how we are in the world, so recognize the style of writing about ani- the rat body congeals a whole set of tech- mals that has come to characterize scien- nologies and practices. tifi c writing,12 which became increasingly Although at fi rst glance, the lab rat seems codifi ed and objectifying throughout the to be the epitome of obliteration through twentieth century (Bazerman, 1988). In her standardization and the distancing stance analysis of narrative style in ethological of scientifi c reporting, all of which seem to writing, Crist argues that when ethologists make it disappear, yet it has been an actor in and sociobiologists ‘displace the language its own history. Indeed, it is precisely the role of the lifeworld with a technical idiom, all of rats as actors that can help to destabilize the elements of the animal world change, the human/animal binary. The long history and readers fi nd themselves hovering over of standardization, use of the passive voice, a very different landscape’ (Crist, 1999: 87). legal frameworks of animal experimenta- This shift, she argues, creates another way tion,11 and ethical justifi cations for using of ‘seeing’ (Crist, 1999: 3). nonhuman animals— all these operate to More recently, however, another way maintain a clear discontinuity between hu- of seeing in natural science is appearing, mans and other animals. They serve to sep- which seems to permit animals a greater arate humans from non-humans, both in agency. In parallel with the growth in pub- time and space, and conceptually. Thus even lic and academic interest in animal issues, though our culture sometimes includes hu- scientifi c accounts of animals have begun mans in the category animal (and nowhere to change. Within ethology (the scientifi c is this more clear than in biological sciences, study of animal behaviour), for example, with their belief in evolution), the practice there is growing recognition that the older of science perpetuates a boundary. On this image of animals as hardwired automata boundary fence sits the rat, which can at is misleading; on the contrary, many kinds times refuse to play the game of scientifi c ob- of animals are much more self- aware, ject. Among other things, it can turn round much more conscious, than we have—in and sink its teeth into the experimenter. our human arrogance— tended to assume (e.g., Bekoff, 2002; Rogers, 1997). Within this literature, non-human animals are be- THE PARTICIPATING ANIMAL ginning to appear as actors and as subjects The separation of ‘animals’ from humans, of a life, not merely objects of study; they are on which we focus here, has a long cultural not simply acting out their instincts but are history, sitting uneasily alongside our re- engaged in complex decisions about their luctant acknowledgement that humans lives. Not surprisingly perhaps the writing ANIMAL PERFORMANCES | 501 style changes, too: it is hard to write about those natural scientifi c studies which con- thinking, feeling individuals in distant, tinue to abstract to the wild species. Herds objectifying, ways (as Wieder, 1988, noted of wild horses on the Mongolian steppes14 about laboratory researchers working with do not have so much in common with se- chimpanzees). lectively bred competition horses, engag- This perspective changes the construction ing daily with humans. of ‘the animal’. In particular, understand- It is in the close associations of humans/ ing ‘what animals do’ when the animals in animal companions that the animal’s question are living in close proximity to us participation in performativity becomes (companion animals, for example) means most clear. If performativity is repetitions understanding how animals themselves consolidated over time (Butler, 1990: 33), participate. It also means understanding then how we intra-act with companion how both human and animal are engaged animals sharing our lives (and some other in mutual decision-making, to create a animals besides) is clearly performative. If kind of choreography, a co- creation of be- we speak of the ‘animality’ of, say, a dog, haviour (see Game, 2001; Haraway, 2003; we draw partly on multiple cultural repre- Sanders, 1999). That is not an easy under- sentations of dogs and other non- humans. standing to obtain: empirical studies of But we also infer an embodiment of the human/animal relationships tend to draw lifelong intraaction of dog with human: from sociology or ethology and inevitably from its very fi rst breath, a puppy is usu- focus primarily on one or other participant ally engaging in a combined doghuman rather than the ongoing intra- action.13 Yet world. some scholars have begun to ask questions Infant horses, similarly, must in our about the relationship and its maintenance. culture learn to socialize both with their Ann Game, for example, writes about the mother and other horses, and also with hu- fi ne tuning of horse– human intra- action in mans, who must themselves learn how to advanced riding, while both Haraway and socialize with horses. Later, when the horse Sanders write, in different ways, about the is ridden, both horse and rider perform to- development of dog– human relationships. gether in repeated acts which ‘congeal over What is clear from these new writings is an time’ to create what Ann Game calls ‘em- emphasis on co-creation, a kind of mutual bodying the centaur’ (Game: 2001). This becoming. We are already, notes Haraway is a materialization, such that both horse regarding our very close relationships with and human bodies are changed; riders domestic dogs, deeply biologically en- seem to carry within their bodies subtle twined and have been ever since dogs fi rst knowledge of how horses react—as do chose to live with us. horses of human riders. 15 Nervous impulses What these close associations also mean and muscle twitches have become trans- is that we are intra- acting not with the sci- formed, new material-semiotic practices entifi c abstraction Equus caballus or Canis created. In so doing, a hybrid is created— familiaris when we engage with horses or a hybrid which itself can have its own per- dogs, for example. On the contrary, these formativities and relationships to other so- are no longer to be understood only in cial and cultural institutions. terms of their wild counterparts, but as In such cases of non-humans so closely something else. In that sense, the socio- associated with us, the interrelating of logical studies which have looked at (say) human and nonhuman is profoundly inti- human relationships with specifi c breeds mate. Not only may the behaviour of each be of dogs are closer to the relationship than fi nely tuned, but there are almost certainly 502 | LYNDA BIRKE, METTE BRYLD, AND NINA LYKKE

what Haraway (2003) has called ‘potent ‘biological’, ‘automata’, or ‘alien essences’ and transfections’—literal transfer of DNA be- to make the human/nonhuman boundary tween the two. Together, dog- and- human more permeable. This draws on several stud- (say) or horse-and- rider constitute a dif- ies which have looked at animal representa- ferent entity, which is deeply enmeshed tions in, say, scientifi c practice. The second in complex social and technological net- step, however, moves us beyond represen- works and their practices (Haraway, 2003; tation, by taking a closer look at the partici- Birke and Michael, 1997). The arbitrary pation of the animal actors, and focusing on allocation into social/cultural (human) the performativity of the two participants in and biological (non-human) makes little relationship to create something that tran- sense in the light of such transfections. scends both— a higher order phenomenon.17 Yet even in the apparent abstraction of the Thus, there are three kinds of performativity laboratory (or, more precisely, the animal here—of animality, of humannness, and of house serving the laboratory), both rat and the relationship between the two. humans must learn to live in their highly In this fi nal section, we outline some specialized, but co- created, world. While of the ways in which these considerations less familiar, it too involves a choreogra- might usefully cut across disciplinary di- phy, dancing to the tunes of experimen- vides. In particular, we suggest that fem- tal protocols. Sometimes it involves quite inist theory could benefi t from a more deliberate ‘potent transfections’,16 if the rat sustained analysis of ‘animality’ and how is injected with some human disease. But humans and animals mutually engage; what we would emphasize here is the co- likewise, studies of the human/animal recreation of rat and humans, through their lationship could also benefi t from femi- daily intra- actions, to produce the prac- nist scholars’ interrogation of gender and tices of science. its performativity. In turn, we also ask So, for many animals, they must learn about how these questions generate some to participate in a conjoint world, to work further implications for thinking about with and to recreate it, just as the human performativity. must learn to participate in the same con- Why does thinking about human/animal joint world. Both engage in repeated acts performativity matter to feminist science within regulatory frameworks (whether studies, or human/animal studies? One of these be relatively local, such as Kennel the ways in which animal studies may in- Club rules, or more general, such as legal— fl uence feminist theory crucially is by of- cultural frameworks structuring how hu- fering a productive site for elaborating the mans keep animals). ‘Animals’ emerges not burning question of the agency of matter as a preexisting category but as some- and biological bodies. Much feminist the- thing produced by these conjoint actions, orizing has emphasized the ways in which and given particular power within the set bodies matter. In the last decade a grow- of actions we call science. ing number of feminist theoreticians (e.g., Haraway, 1991; Butler, 1993; Grosz, 1994; Braidotti, 2002) have addressed the ques- IMPLICATIONS: PERFORMATIVITY tion and tried to shift the perspective from ACROSS THE DISCIPLINARY DIVIDE looking at the body as a mere passive re- There are two steps in our discussion of cipient of social inscriptions to an outlook performativity. The fi rst, through analysing which sees the body as an active agent co- how we animal the animals, attempts to acting or intra- acting with social inscrip- bring non- humans out of the categories of tions. We suggest that a focus on animals ANIMAL PERFORMANCES | 503 can add new productive dimensions to are the material stuff which (biological) these discussions, so posing the question science studies and have an (increasingly of the agency of matter in complex new recognized) subjectivity. If ‘dogness’, say, ways. is a material and discursive product, then Animal studies may thus make up a we have to understand that in its relation- productive site for examining the agency ality and performativity. We cannot hope of matter, but avoiding some of the pit- to understand it by selectively focusing on falls. When we, for example, talk about the the behaviour of dogs as though they were agency of matter in the shape of human domesticated wolves, to be studied ‘objec- bodies, it is easy to slip back into a dis- tively’ through science. The problem here cussion of human subjectivity as though is that, at the moment, science is not very it is not embodied. And when we consider good at understanding relationality. Anec- the agency of machines and non-organic dotes abound and data are few (though, as matter, it is also easy to short- circuit the Bekoff points out, we should heed these discussion back into mere human instru- stories, for the plural of anecdotes is data: mentation or orchestration of machinic Bekoff, 2002: 47). Rather than pursuing an performance, once again setting the human illusory objectivity, scientifi c studies of an- subject as the prime mover. imals and of human/animal relationships Contrary to both human bodies and might usefully borrow from feminist the- machines, however, animals are less eas- ory, and focus instead on the performance ily discarded as subjects in their own right. of human- plus- nonhuman— where the They are, on the one hand, defi ned as non- constituting discursive practices must be human matter in anthropocentric Western understood to include the material, partic- philosophy. But on the other hand, even ipating nonhuman. hard- core instrumentalizing behaviourism While advocating performativity as a or sociobiology is adapting to new under- useful tool in aiding our thinking about hu- standings of animal cognition, so that non- mans and animals, however, there are two humans are now less often reduced to the dangers. The fi rst is that ‘performativity’ status of controlled robots. may be seen only as a product of the indi- Debates from feminist theory can also aid vidual’s engagement with her social world. work on the human/animal relationship. We What we would emphasize here, however, noted earlier, for instance, how a consider- is the need to focus also on relationships, ation of human/non-human dyads (rather which may themselves generate their own than on humans or non-humans) might performativities; that is, as we noted be- provide a fresh focus, from which to evaluate fore, performativity can be thought about how borders might be transgressed, and how in three ways— the human, the animal, conjoined agency might operate. Consider, and the conjoint hybrid (however that is too, Barad’s use of performativity to break constituted). through the persistent dichotomy between Second, we have written about perfor- language/representation and the material mativity in a way that suggests that the re- that is represented. Matter, she proposes, lationship of human to non-human creates is not a fi xed substance, but a doing; that is, an emerging order. Indeed—but it can also matter— the concern of science— must be generate disorder, the unravelling of social understood as jointly emerging from mate- predictability. Michael (2004) discusses rial and discursive factors (Barad, 2003). how the ‘interruptions’ of nonhuman Thinking about how we think about animals can completely alter sociological animals is useful here, as animals both research interviews (and everyday social 504 | LYNDA BIRKE, METTE BRYLD, AND NINA LYKKE

encounters). At times, these ‘interruptions’ central to understanding science, and the may be construed as ‘misbehaviour’ on way that its discursive practices themselves the part of the animal, by either the inter- create the species differences that science viewee or the researcher. In this case, the studies. Indeed, we might even say that the engagement of the animal is disrupting very use of non-human animals in labora- the creation of social data in ways likely to tory science enacts a radical discontinuity reinforce its own categorization into ‘ani- between nonhuman and human. Using mality’. Both humans and non-humans, concepts of performativity can, we argue, argues Michael, act together to produce help us to challenge that separation of non- both order and disorder in their joint so- humans from humans; both human and cial worlds. animal can conjointly be engaged in reconfi guring the world, as Barad (2003) notes. We are all matter, and we all matter. CONCLUSIONS Feminism needs, we suggest, to analyse Thinking about human relationships to further the processes whereby these differ- animals raises crucial questions not only ences are created, particularly through the for feminism but for science studies in authoritative voices of science. We need general. Animals, after all, are part of what to understand more about ‘animality’— scientists study. Like gender performativ- and hence, ‘humanness’—and how that ity, the processes of human/animal relat- cuts across gender. But that must be done ing constitute discursive practices which in ways that allow for animal agency, par- create animality— and which reproduce ticipation, and performativity— whether relations of power. For in the case of those they are stag beetles, laboratory rodents, or animals closest to us, it is those behaviours companions by the feminist fi reside. with which we can interact easily which will be reproduced: we humans do not wish to ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS live too closely with the ferocity of savage nature. This is evident if we think about the We are very grateful to Consuelo Rivera development of companion animals and and Mike Michael and to anonymous ref- their socialization into humanly accept- erees, for helpful comments on earlier able forms of behaviour. It is even more drafts of this paper, and to participants in evident in the case of laboratory rodents, our panel on animals and performativity, transformed by breeding programmes into at the meeting of the Society for Literature placid bearers of data. and Science in Aarhus, Denmark, 2002. As we implied earlier, biology emphasizes both our similarity and dissimilarity NOTES to non-human animals. Similarity is assumed whenever scientists use animals in 1. Barad (2003: 815) substitutes the notion of ‘inter- laboratories as physiological stand-ins, for action’ with ‘intra- action’ in order to stress that the actors in a performative relationship should instance as ‘rat models’ for some human not be seen as distinct entities, acting upon each disease. It is assumed whenever biologists other from ‘outside’, but as intertwined agencies speculate on the evolutionary origins of which mutually construct each other. We will fol- particular human traits. But there are also low this practice in the article. sets of practices and performativities, both 2. This is an ongoing project; we fi rst presented work on this, using examples from insects in nat- human and nonhuman, which reproduce ural history documentaries, and laboratory rats, ‘the animal’ as something apart, as dif- at a meeting of the Society for Literature and Sci- ferent. Understanding how those work is ence, at Aarhus, Denmark, 2002 (and see Lykke ANIMAL PERFORMANCES | 505

and Bryld, 2003; Birke, 2003). The role of insect 10. Nearly forty years ago, one commentator noted actors and visual technologies in the produc- that the white lab rat is ‘ . . . so entrenched in its tion of popular fi lm documentaries is a particu- cozy new habitat that it has infl uential members lar focus of this work, as well as examples from of the host species emotionally committed to its ethology. continued welfare’ (Lockard, 1968). Although 3. Throughout this paper, we use the term ‘animal’ we have not drawn explicitly on actor network to denote non-human animal species, unless theory here, this enrolment of welfare- minded otherwise specifi ed. The word ‘animal’ carries people by lab rats is an example of how networks many layers of meanings, and can certainly in- are created between humans and non- humans clude humans (as in the biological classifi cation (animals or technological artefacts: see Callon of the animal kingdom). However, we chose to and Law, 1982; Philo and Wilbert, 2000). follow common colloquial use of ‘animal’ as not 11. See note 6, above. human, precisely to explore the issues raised 12. Darwin was quite prepared, for instance, to by cultural separation of nonhuman animals write about the emotions of animals, and to from humans—particularly in science. Note quote from single examples in ways that would that ‘animal’ here is profoundly homogenizing, probably not be acceptable today. as though each kind of animal is the same, in- 13. Crowell-Davis (1992) notes the lack of studies stead of profoundly different. They are only the of human/horse interaction, and effects of hu- same in the effect of the word ‘animal’ as coun- mans on horses, despite the clear benefi ts such terpoint to ‘human’— itself not a straightforward research might bring to the performance of term. Midgley (1978) explores the signifi cance horses in competitions. That lack remains true of that opposition in Western culture in her ten years later. aptly named Beast and Man. Later in the paper 14. If there is such a thing as the original wild horse: we address the more inclusive sense of animal/ even the indigenous Przewalski’s horse has had human, which sits more easily with the notion of to be reintroduced into Mongolia. performativity. 15. Anecdotes abound in the world of riding for the 4. See for example Birke and Michael (1997) who disabled of horses apparently helping to keep discuss such cultural hybrids and their constitu- disabled children on their backs. tion through intervening technologies (such as 16. It is ironic that for some experimental purposes dog leads). Also see Michael (2004). colonies of lab animals have to be protected 5. Thus, the legislation governing animal use in from human- borne disease by living their lives scientifi c research in the UK covers all verte- behind barriers. Potent transfections indeed. brates and now includes cephalopod molluscs 17. Fausto-Sterling (2003) notes how discussion (squid and octopus), while in the US some ani- of Butler’s notion of performativity of gender mals (including rats and mice) are excluded from could usefully be extended to how non-human the defi nition of animal for the purposes of the animal gender develops, rather than the wide- legislation. spread assumption that gender in non- humans 6. One of us (LB) disagrees with Crist in that early emerges out of some genetic blueprint. She ethology did still bear traces of the natural his- draws on Developmental Systems Theory (also tory heritage. The externalist imperative was, see papers in Oyama et al., 2001), which insists however, true by the late 1960s, and part of LB’s on understanding how organisms develop as training in ethology then emphasized the need systems of processes; genes and environment to avoid at all costs anthropomorphism (see are part of these systems but cannot be sep- Kennedy, 1992). arated out. Together, they create something 7. We explore this further in relation to the be- emergent, or higher order—the form of the or- haviour of insects in natural history documenta- ganism. Even the gender of the humble labora- ries; see Lykke and Bryld (2003). tory rat cannot simply be attributed to genes, 8. With one or two exceptions, such as Barnett’s as the mother’s behaviour toward her offspring study of the rat, which partly employs an inter- (among other things) infl uences gender-related nalist style (Barnett, 2001). behaviour. 9. Such terminology implies that tools are passive objects; but, as Barad emphasizes, tools and ap- REFERENCES paratuses are themselves part of the meaning- making of science and as such should be thought Barad, K. (2003) ‘Posthumanist Performativity: To- of as having agency. Our point here is to stress ward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to how often animals are referred to as ‘tools’ in sci- Matter’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and entifi c literature. Society 28: 801– 31. 506 | LYNDA BIRKE, METTE BRYLD, AND NINA LYKKE

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Sex Genes: A Critical Sociomaterial Approach to the Politics and Molecular Genetics of Sex Determination Joan H. Fujimura

How should the social sciences engage scientifi c engagements with the biologi- with the materiality of “nature”? The liter- cal sciences. The sociomaterial approach atures of both the social studies of science encompasses the poststructuralist view and gender studies have wrestled with this that meanings are not inherent in events, question in their analyses of the production phenomena, and things. That is, it as- of scientifi c knowledge. In examining the sumes that humans attribute meanings to production or consumption of scientifi c things through complex interactions based knowledge, these literatures have demon- within specifi c locations in society, culture, strated how production and consumption and history. For example, the meanings at- are social and cultural activities. Within this tributed to nature—how nature is read— shared terrain, however, many differences differ depending on its reader’s location emerge both within and between these two in time and place (see, e.g., Williams 1985; literatures on the questions of how to the- Strathern 1992). This approach also builds orize about the social in the scientifi c and on feminist and sociocultural studies of about the scientifi c in the social, and how science that have argued against the neat to create a language that does not separate divide between nature (as nature in the science from society. raw) and culture (as social discourses and One topic explored has been the biolog- meanings). To emphasize this coproduc- ical explanations for differences between tion of nature and culture, Donna Haraway males and females. Biologists and social sci- uses the term “material- semiotic practices” entists have proposed explanations for be- (1991, 208) to refer to the production pro- havioral differences, and debates abound. cess and “natureculture” (2003, 1) to refer In this article I do not discuss theories of to its product. or data on behavioral differences. Instead, Despite this poststructural understand- I explore research on the material producing of the mediation of nature-culture, a tion of males and females in molecular ge- material world does at times assert itself netic research on sex determination. in ways that make us take notice (Haraway I address the question of how the social 1991; Fausto- Sterling 2000). Some anthro- sciences should engage with the material- pologists have used the term biophysicality ity of nature—in this case, the molecular (Goodman and Leatherman 1998; Escobar genetics of sex determination. I employ a 1999) to describe such occurrences, while critical sociomaterial approach to social sociologists of science Bruno Latour (2000) 508 | JOAN H. FUJIMURA

and Michel Callon (1986) refer to the ma- this reexamination of research on mo- terial world as comprised of nonhuman lecular genetic developmental processes actants and treat them as ontologically on provides a focus on the complex sets and par with human actants. pathways of events that produce material Given that interventions by the material sex. These multiple pathways and multi- or biophysical world are acknowledged, ple experimental outcomes could explain the question arises: how does one recog- variations in human physiological pheno- nize and deal with the actions of biophys- types that sometimes do not fi t neatly into icalities (or nonhuman actants) if they are the binary sex categories, male and female. always mediated by culture? To address this Just as previous studies of human behavior, question, I use a critical sociomaterial ap- physiology, endocrinology, and chromo- proach to show how the materiality of sex somes have met with diffi culties in fi nally is produced. I reexamine experimental re- elucidating the source of male-female sex search investigating the “SRY ” and “DAX- 1 ” differences, so too have recent attempts genes, the so- called sex- determining genes, to ascertain sex differences at the level of in mice and humans.1 genes met with complexities and ambigu- A critical sociomaterial approach allows ities. My reanalysis of genetic research fur- the examination and reanalysis of the so- ther substantiates previous knowledge of cial and historical production of material sex as diverse and variable. knowledge. It assumes that what is taken I also fi nd that human and molecular to be material must be investigated and geneticists used their own sociohistori- should not be accepted at face value. It cally located normative defi nitions of sex also requires multiple readings of the same in their experimental designs and ana- data from different sociocultural perspec- lytic frames, thereby setting the stage for tives or frames of reference. This approach reproducing their own taken-for- granted builds on the theoretical efforts of, among categories of sex. Yet, even under those others, feminist theorist Haraway (1991), conditions, the material world inter- anthropologist Arturo Escobar (1999), phi- vened. New molecular genetic technolo- losopher Sandra Harding (1998, 2001), and gies produced new data that could have the practical efforts of social movements led researchers to new insights about sex around the globe to incorporate perspec- development. However, new signals read tives of actors not usually included in the through old frames can be discounted: in production of science. These varied per- their conclusions researchers decided to spectives produce new knowledge and add ignore data that contradicted their initial dimensions to what Western science calls assumptions. nature. This study refers to such ignored data Thus, my reanalysis of “ SRY ” and “ DAX-1 ” as an “awkward surplus.” Here, a critical experiments is made in the context of mul- sociomaterial reexamination of the awk- tiple perspectives on sex. I examine human ward surplus suggests a different research actions in sex determination by analyzing conclusion from that reported by the sci- the research methods and interpretations entists. This approach attends to unantic- of geneticists as well as the efforts of sex- ipated research results that experimenters gender theorists and transgender activists recognized as problematic or awkward and to theorize and remake sex. By analyz- that they thus ignored in their fi nal conclu- ing the genetic experiments using multi- sions. This critical sociomaterial approach ple perspectives, I provide an alternative provides a way to reexamine unexpected reading of the materiality of sex. That is, experimental data using different frames SEX GENES | 509 of reference and data from other sources. In the 1980s and 1990s, some feminists For example, social scientists, using knowl- began to challenge this culture-nature edge of social movements (feminism, gay division. Some studied the effect of hier- and lesbian movements, queer theory, in- archies of power on the production of tersexual and transsexual activism) and biological models of the body (e.g., Fausto- social and cultural theory, literally can see Sterling 1985; Hubbard 1990; Bordo 1993) differently when examining the work of and battled biological determinism by geneticists and other scientists in the pro- arguing that biological knowledge itself duction of the science of sex. Further, the was gendered. Critics of gendered and concept of awkward surplus provides sci- raced knowledges argued that humans ence studies with a way of talking about attribute meanings to nature through materiality that does not deny human me- complex interactions based within spe- diation but also acknowledges material cific locations in society, culture, and agency. More generally, reexaminations of history— that nature is read differently experimental material provide opportuni- depending, among other things, on the ties for natural scientists, social scientists, differential positions of its oh-so- human and other parties to approach research readers. 5 differently and collaboratively to produce The 1980s and 1990s also saw more ex- new explanations. plicit challenges to the feminist embrace of the sex- gender, qua nature- society, split. Historian of science Evelyn Fox Keller THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL (1987), for example, argued against the du- FRAMES OF THE SEX- GENDER alities of sex and gender and of nature and DISTINCTION science. Such dualities, she maintained, The sex-gender distinction has been the gave gender unlimited cultural plasticity foundation of gender theory since the and made science a set of relativist, inter- 1970s.2 In their attempts to decouple biol- ested constructions. In place of these po- ogy from behavioral differences between larities, Keller proposed that a multiplicity the sexes, feminists in the 1970s and 1980s of differences could produce varied ways embraced the term gender to argue that of doing science, each of which could be le- behavioral differences between girls and gitimate. Differences do not have to be re- boys and women and men were gendered.3 duced to those between male and female, That is, these differences were constructed where males and females produce diamet- within specifi c cultural and historical con- rically opposed kinds of science. Nor must texts (Scott 1988) and through specifi c tech- one choose universalism as the polar alter- nologies (see, e.g., de Lauretis 1987; Lorber native and the only legitimate science. In- 1994). Gendered differences, it was noted, stead, Keller suggested that there are many are not uniform but situationally produced different possible kinds of sciences. Femi- and interactionally accomplished (see, e.g., nist theorist and historian Haraway (1988) Kessler and McKenna 1985; West and Zim- similarly argued for “situated knowledges” merman 2002).4 The term gender was also produced by those with particular stakes used to speak about sexuality in ways that in those knowledges. did not assume or enforce heterosexuality Other feminist writers deconstructed (Rubin 1975). In this period, then, gender the production of sex. Philosopher Judith became socially constructed, while sex re- Butler (1993) argued that it was incum- mained in the realm of nature and was left bent on feminists to show how sex itself is to biologists. discursively produced under historically 510 | JOAN H. FUJIMURA

located regulatory regimes of gender. Har- DO GENES DETERMINE SEX? away argued more broadly that “bodies . . . ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH ON THE are not born; they are made. . . . The var- MOLECULAR GENETICS OF SEX ious contending biological bodies emerge DETERMINATION at the intersection of biological research, If social scientists are to engage scientifi c writing, and publishing; medical and other research, it is incumbent on us to under- business practices; cultural productions of stand the sociotechnical processes that all kinds, including available metaphors generate knowledge. Scientifi c knowledge and narratives; and technology” (1991, 208). is the outcome of socially situated pro- Anne Fausto- Sterling (2000) presented con- duction, where the social and technical crete examples of the discursive production are one process. Social scientifi c analysis of bodies—specifi cally bones, brains, hor- of scientifi c research requires attending mones, and genitalia— by medical and to all aspects of scientifi c knowledge pro- biological professionals.6 Noting the con- duction, including the daily laboratory fl ation of the terms sex and gender in pop- practices that produce data and conclu- ular discourse, Joan Wallach Scott argued sions, the production of scientifi c articles, that “the confl ation in ordinary usage of sex the media’s selective reporting of some re- and gender can be considered a correction search results and not others, and the in- of the ‘mistake’ that treats sex and nature terested audiences and consumers of the as transparent entities outside of ‘culture’; knowledge produced (who are ever pres- instead, both gender and sex have to be ent throughout the production process, understood as complexly related systems not simply at the last step). My investiga- of knowledge” (1999, 72). 7 tions included all four aspects, but here I In this article I take up the challenge of present the experiments that produced ge- Keller, Butler, Haraway, Scott, and Fausto- netic knowledge about sex determination. Sterling. I show how the materiality of sex I include the uncertainties, ambiguities, is produced in genetic sex- determination guesses, assumptions, omissions, and ex- research, and I propose alternative knowl- clusions that were part of that knowledge edge practices and outcomes. A study of production. 8 the production of the materiality of sex requires more than an examination of the shaping of sex via gendered understand- OF MICE AND MEN: THE DESIGN ings of scientists; it requires more than a OF MALE SEX- DETERMINATION study of the perception of sex in the minds GENETIC EXPERIMENTS of humans. Both have been necessary but are not suffi cient. The study of the produc- The search for the male-determining gene tion of the materiality of sex also requires began in the 1980s in David Page’s labo- the engagement of social scientists in the ratory at the Whitehead Institute for Bio- production of biological sex. It requires medical Research, which is affi liated with our being in on the design and not just the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. in quality control. I propose, then, that Page’s laboratory produced a “male gene” feminists and social scientists go beyond that was fi rst named the ZFY, or zinc fi nger Y, simply accepting or critiquing the prod- and later renamed the TDF, for “testis- ucts of science to engaging in the actual determining factor” (Page et al. 1987, 1091).9 production of science. I begin by explor- Page and his colleagues’ experiments ing molecular genetics research on sex- on what they thought might be the testis- determination genes. determining gene are signifi cant because SEX GENES | 511 they set the research protocol for all sub- Medical Research Council National In- sequent studies of male- and female- stitute for Medical Research and the Im- determining genes. This protocol fi rst perial Cancer Research Fund in London studies someone who has been selected for announced that Zfy (the mouse gene) did study after having presented him or herself not produce testes in mice (Palmer et al. to physicians because of a problem. In this 1989; Kolata 1990). The hunt was on again case, Page and colleagues identify these in- to fi nd the male- determining gene. dividuals as “sex-reversed” because of their “abnormal” (1091) chromosomal constitu- THE MALENESS GENE FOUND tions, where their “sexual identities [are] at odds with their chromosomal makeup” In July 1990 and May 1991, Peter Koopman, (Roberts 1988, 21). Researchers then de- Peter Goodfellow, Robin Lovell- Badge, and velop transgenic animal models of these their colleagues made a big splash with “variations from the norm” (Roberts 1988, news of a new candidate, Sry, for the male- 21) and use them to study and describe the determining gene. They published their “normal” developmental pathway. 10 male gene research results in the journal Researchers in Page’s laboratory used Nature. Their approach to studying the DNA from XX male human patients (or male gene was similar to Page’s: select ster- males with two X chromosomes instead ile human males with XX chromosomes, of the usual XY chromosomes) and a fe- fi nd a gene common to them, then develop male with a chromosomal constitution of a transgenic mouse model to confi rm (or “46, X, t (Y, 22) (p11.2; q110)” (Page et al. contest) that that gene is involved in pro- 1987, 1094), which Page states represents ducing testes. A 1991 article titled “Male a “reciprocal translocation between Y and Development of Chromosomally Female autosome 22” (1094). According to David Mice Transgenic for Sry” (Koopman et al.) Baltimore, then director of the Whitehead announced that their Sry gene in the Institute, “This is a classic use of very rare mouse model could turn XX female mice human genetic defects to fi nd something embryos into males.11 very important about biology” (quoted in A close reading of the 1991 article by Roberts 1988, 21; emphasis added). Page Koopman and his colleagues, however, states, “The key to the whole endeavor tells a more ambiguous story. In the fi rst rests with certain exceptions to the rule experiment of the study, a number of fer- that Y is sex- determining. . . . XX males were tilized eggs were injected with the Sry DNA the most important exception” (quoted in sequences. The eggs were then transferred Roberts 1988, 21). Leslie Roberts, a writer to the uteruses of female mice to develop, for Science, goes on to say that “XX males and this produced 158 viable embryos. appear entirely normal . . . until they try to Eight of these turned out to be XX mouse have children and are found to be sterile. embryos with Sry incorporated into their Page reasoned that these men [with XX DNA. Six of these eight were called female chromosomes] must contain a piece of and two male. Y chromosome, attached to one of their In the second experiment, fertilized X chromosomes, that does not show up eggs were again injected with Sry DNA se- under light microscopy” (1988, 21). quences, and the resulting embryos were The next step was to attempt to con- transferred to the uteruses of female mice fi rm the ZFY ’s properties in mouse exper- to develop. Ninety-three animals grew to iments. This did not go well. In December term. Of these ninety-three, three were 1989, a team of scientists working at the transgenic XX mice that had incorporated 512 | JOAN H. FUJIMURA

the Sry gene into at least one of their X mouse, the genome of these mice had also chromosomes. Of the three Sry transgenic incorporated the Sry gene, and yet they XX mice, two were females that produced displayed female physical characteristics. viable eggs and reproduced. The third was However, Koopman and colleagues treated called an XX male. It produced no sperm these cases as anomalies that did not com- and was infertile. 12 The term male was ap- plicate the fi nding that Sry produces males: plied because the animal had testes, although the testes were only 22 percent the A further two XX transgenics, m32.10 and size of normal male mouse testes. Human m33.2, showed an external female pheno- geneticist Giovanna Camerino, when com- type, yet both carried many copies of Sry. These mice have produced offspring and menting on this experiment, said, “Size so have functional reproductive tracts and doesn’t matter. What is important is that ovaries. They also provide further evidence, [the mouse] acted as a male when put in along with the transgenic XX female fetuses, a cage with female mice.”13 That is, the that f 741 [ Sry ] does not always cause sex transgenic mouse tried to mate with the reversal. Although there could be subtle re- females. This single transgenic male inter- arrangements of the Sry gene making it non- mouse (my term) was the pride of Koop- functional, the possibility of this occurring in man and colleagues’ experiment, and its all these cases is remote. There are two more photograph was displayed on the front probable explanations. First, these females covers of Nature, Science, and the New Sci- could be mosaic for the transgene, with only entist and on the front pages of the New a small proportion of the cells making up the somatic portion of the genital ridge carrying York Times and the Boston Globe. functional Sry gene copies. Analysis of XX !-1 To summarize the two experiments by XY chimaeras suggests that females or her- Koopman and colleagues: In the fi rst ex- maphrodites develop if less than about 30% periment there were three times as many of cells are XY. Secondly, the expression of the XX females carrying Sry (six) as XX males transgene could be affected by the position carrying Sry (two). In the second experi- at which it integrates. Except for a few cases ment, there were twice as many XX females where locus-controlling regions are present, carrying Sry (two) as XX males carrying Sry expression of transgenes almost always de- (one). The Sry gene appeared to produce pends on their chromosomal location. These many more females than males, but still two alternatives can be examined by breed- the gene became the poster “boy” of male- ing from the adult XX transgenic females. Mouse m33.2 has not yet produced trans- determining genetics. genic offspring. However, m32.10 has trans- Interestingly, the Koopman and col- mitted the transgene to female offspring, leagues (1991) article frequently referred to suggesting that it is not mosaic. (Koopman this fabricated Sry XX mouse as “normal.” et al. 1991, 120) That is, the mouse exhibited “normal” size and weight, “normal” copulatory behav- In other words, Koopman and colleagues ior (i.e., “he” copulated with females four offer two explanations for the occurrence times in six days), “normal” populations of of Sry female mice. The fi rst argues that the Leydig cells, a “normal” reproductive tract mice might be mosaics— mice that have (even though it did not produce sperm), incorporated Sry into some cells (perhaps and “normal” production of anti-Müllerian less than 30 percent) but not into others. hormones and testosterone.14 However, not only is one mouse (m32.10) a More interesting, though, are the Sry fertile and probably nonmosaic Sry female; females produced in the experiment by she also initiated a new and genetically Koopman and his colleagues. Like the male unique strain of mice that produce Sry SEX GENES | 513 females (Koopman et al. 1991, 120). This complicated results: that is, that the pres- means that she incorporated Sry into her ence of Sry females is evidence that genetic germ cells and passed on the Sry gene to her sex determination is more complex than offspring. If Sry is the male- determining the researchers claimed and that it in- gene, how then can a reproductive female volves interaction between many genes as mouse carrying Sry in her cells still be a fe- well as other possible factors (e.g., ribonu- male? Here Koopman and colleagues pose cleic acid, mitochondrial DNA, particular a second explanation—that this particular proteins in the area, or other epigenetic el- Sry mouse is female rather than male be- ements and events).15 If these females have cause Sry is integrated in a position along the Sry gene, could there be other genes the X chromosome that somehow prevents or other factors that might be guiding the it from being expressed. This conjecture embryo toward femaleness? What is male- requires further research, since Koopman ness; what is femaleness? Do genes deter- and colleagues could provide no evidence mine sex? Or are things more complicated? to support it. It is not unusual for scientifi c experi- OF MICE AND WOMEN: FEMALE SEX- ments to raise more questions than they DETERMINATION GENETIC STUDIES answer. Indeed, it is the norm. Why, then, did the article by Koopman and colleagues The dominant scientifi c view of sex de- begin and conclude with the bold statement termination from earlier in the twentieth that Sry is suffi cient to produce maleness? century was that an embryo is female until “It is now shown that Sry on a 14- kilobase something triggers a change that leads to genomic DNA fragment is suffi cient to in- the development of male testes (Jost 1953). duce testis differentiation and subsequent As many feminist writers have pointed out, male development when introduced into the development of females appears to be chromosomally female mouse embryos” discussed by biological and medical texts (Koopman et al. 1991, 117). in terms of passivity—in the absence of an Analyzing studies of genetic sex deter- active trigger required to induce male de- mination allows us to highlight the inter- velopment, an embryo develops ovaries, pretations made by scientists in the process a female secondary sexual characteris- of experimentation. The experiments by tic (see, e.g., Martin 1991; Fausto- Sterling Koopman and colleagues produced one 1993a).16 Early Sry / SRY experiments were XX- Sry sterile mouse with 22 percent–size based on this same assumption: embryos testes (classifi ed male) and three female- develop into female organisms if they lack classifi ed XX- Sry mice, one of which repro- the Sry gene to trigger the onset of male duced other females carrying the Sry gene. secondary sexual characteristics. Testes Although Sry researchers noted that these and ovaries distinguish males from females different outcomes of the same gene did in this experimental world of human and not fi t with their original hypotheses, they molecular genetics. However, experiments still interpreted their results as confi rm- in the 1990s countered this truism by pre- ing their initial hypothesis that Sry was the senting evidence for a separate gene in- male-determining gene. volved in female sex determination. Examining the details of Koopman and In August 1994, Barbara Bardoni, work- colleagues’ (1991) article also provides an ing in Camerino’s laboratory, and her col- opportunity to make other interpretations. laborators reported fi nding a gene region One could, for example, raise an alternative on the X chromosome in the DSS (dosage plausible explanation for the experiments’ sensitive sex reversal) region two doses of 514 | JOAN H. FUJIMURA

which are powerful enough to disrupt nor- embryos did not prevent these embryos mal testis development in the presence of from developing into mice with ovaries. “SRY ” (Bardoni et al. 1994, 500). 17 In an Moreover, they reported that male mouse article titled “A Dosage Sensitive Locus at embryos with disabled Dax- 1 genes be- Chromosome Xp21 Is Involved in Male came sterile. Their conclusion was that to Female Sex Reversal,” published in the “ DAX- 1 ” is not an ovary- determining gene science journal Nature Genetics, Bardoni, but rather has a critical role in spermato- Camerino, McCabe, and their colleagues genesis, the generation of sperm. propose a female- determining sex gene Camerino accepts the Jameson labora- that operates at about the same time in tory’s claims for its mouse model but not the development of the embryo as the SRY for humans. She believes that species dif- gene. The embryo, they argue, is destined fer in their genetics of sex determination. to become a male unless a gene in the DSS Sry / SRY, she argues, acts very differently region counters the effect of SRY: “A group in mouse and man in the timing of the of four [human] patients found to have a expression of the gene. Camerino further working SRY gene nonetheless exhibited contends that interactions between human varying degrees of feminization, an event SRY and DAX- 1 also differ from those be- that should not happen if the maleness tween mouse Sry and Dax- 1. Subsequent gene were the dominant determinant of studies have shown that sex-determination gender. Three of the four displayed femi- genetics also differ between organisms in nine external genitals, while the fourth had different phyla, thus reinforcing Cameri- ambiguous genitals. All had been raised no’s position on mouse-human differences as girls” (Bardoni et al. 1994, 497). In these (Goodfellow and Camerino 1999). cases, a section of the X chromosome was Camerino’s late 1990s studies have doubled, giving them a double dose of the pointed to the vital role of DAX- 1 in sex DSS gene. Two copies of a gene in the DSS determination in humans. In 1999, after region of the X chromosome can help push Camerino’s research on DAX- 1 raised ques- the fetal gonads, which have the potential tions about SRY ’s power to transform em- to become either ovaries or testes, to be- bryos, Koopman (1999) hypothesized that come ovaries. Thus, an extra dose of the the embryo did not develop into a male gene in males would undermine the efforts because the Sry mouse gene may be just of the SRY factor to build testes. In a fol- one trigger in a series of steps that trans- low-up study (Swain et al. 1996), Camerino form the XX embryo into a male mouse. and colleagues proposed that a gene in the Other possible explanations were that DSS region called “DAX- 1” was responsible “ SRY may act to repress genes that activate for undermining the “ SRY ” gene’s action. the female pathway of development, or to repress the repressor of the male pathway” (Koopman 1999, 840– 41), or that “ DAX- 1 ” OF MICE, HUMANS, LEAKINESS, AND represses “SRY ’s” action (Goodfellow and COMPLEXITY Camerino 1999). Researchers at Larry Jameson’s labora- Goodfellow and Camerino (1999) pro- tory at Northwestern University (e.g., Yu pose a hierarchic cascading view of sex et al. 1998) subsequently conducted stud- determination, where SRY and DAX- 1 in ies on Dax- 1 from which they argued that humans act as triggers at the top of the hi- Dax- 1 is not a female-determining gene. erarchy of a series of genes and activities Jameson and his colleagues reported that necessary to the development of sex (here disabling the Dax- 1 gene in female mouse defi ned as ovaries and testes). Thereafter, SEX GENES | 515 many other events occur in the process off “SRY. ” The interactions among all these of the organism’s sex determination— for genes and proteins contribute to the insta- example, other genetic switches turn on bility, or “leakiness,” in sex determination.21 or off during the embryo’s development. What is sex? How is it determined? Does These different genes and their expres- “SRY ” cause males to develop? Does “ DAX- sions generate subsequent genetic actions, 1” cause females to develop? Does a cascade and a cascade of genetic switches and ex- of molecular elements and interactions de- pressions produce the organism’s fi nal sex termine sex? At this writing it is thought that characteristics. “ SRY ” and “ DAX-1 ” are key genes that act But there are more complications in sex initially to trigger male or female develop- determination and more questions than ment in an embryo. However, it is believed answers. Some scientists argue for prolifera- that other genes also are needed to continue tion in genes of promoter regions, structural development toward male or female. These genes, different forms of proteins from the genes interact with one another, and the same gene, and so on that complicate the interactions can lead to other events. One picture of sex determination (Goodfellow possibility is that they could lead to her- and Camerino 1999). There is a long list of maphroditic combinations of characteris- genes that are suspected of being involved tics. Another possibility is that different cells in sex determination, and this list gets lon- in the same embryo have different genes, ger every year. In addition to SRY and DAX- which then lead the embryo to develop into 1, these include Wilm’s tumor 1, or WT-1, a hermaphroditic body. These embryos are whose expressed protein has several differ- called mosaics. At this point, genetic student splicing alternatives and produces up to ies point to more complex interactions and twenty- four different forms of the protein; unanswered questions rather than to any SF-1, which is a nucleohormone receptor clear answers. These complex interactions that is expressed in the hypothalamus, pi- are part of the leakiness of genetics.22 tuitary, gonads, and adrenals; and Sox- 9, which is similar to Sry. 18 Then there are the DO HUMANS DETERMINE SEX? interactions among the genes. As Camerino says, “Everybody has found interaction of In the experimental arena of sex determi- everything with everything. With different nation, molecular and human geneticists results, etc., [sex determination] is complex, are the arbiters. But do genes and geneti- and the genetic term is leaky. Leaky. This cists determine human sex identity? Physi- is a prokaryotic genetics term. 19 It means cians, psychiatrists, parents, courts, prison that things are not that stable. They are not offi cials, and at one time the International something strongly determined.”20 Olympics Committee have all taken posi- Camerino believes that “DAX- 1 ” is a fe- tions on human sex determination, often male sex- determination gene high up in the with little contest. Recently, social scien- hierarchy of sex determination (higher than tists, feminist theorists, queer theorists, and Sox-9, SF-1, etc.) as SRY is high up in the gay rights, intersexual, and transsexual ac- hierarchy of sex determination for males tivists have attempted to gain authority in (Goodfellow and Camerino 1999). Although debates about sex determination. this has not yet been demonstrated, she believes that future experiments could prove it Intersexual Social Movement to be true. In the meantime, Camerino calls “DAX- 1 ” an antitestis gene because it has The sex-determining gene experiments been shown that a double dose of it can turn discussed were based on studies of human 516 | JOAN H. FUJIMURA

patients who exhibited genitalia and re- by talking about the parents’ anxiety and productive organs that did not fi t neatly humiliation in being confronted with an into standard categories of male and fe- anomalous infant” (1990, 25). male. Often classifi ed as intersexuals, peo- Gender reassignment has not necessar- ple with sexually indeterminate bodies ily produced happy outcomes in adults, have become both subjects and objects of and some have organized themselves into research and activism in the last ten years. the Intersex Society of North America Medical and research professionals have (ISNA), which is based in San Francisco. In often treated intersexuals as residuals— the late 1990s, ISNA member and founder people whose bodies do not fi t commonly Cheryl Chase and her colleagues generated understood sex categories and need to be a social movement to halt surgical prac- managed, explained, or made to fi t into tices on infants or at least to insist on more one or the other category. Recently, how- discussion before infants are transformed ever, intersexuals have begun to organize into one or the other sex. Members of to contest the medical defi nitions of their ISNA marched on medical schools to halt bodies and to work toward building collec- sex reassignment surgeries and published tive identities to differentiate themselves newsletters and press releases to educate from standard male and female categories the public about intersexuality. They have and to establish intersexuality as a new been the subject of Nova programs aired by and standard category of sex identity. the Public Broadcasting Service and of arti- In the United States, medical practices cles in major newspapers. In an October 14, have been used to manage intersexual in- 1996, press release titled “Intersexed Decry fants and to surgically and chemically mold American Genital Mutilation,” the ISNA them to fi t dimorphic sex categories (Dreger compared intersexual infant surgery to Af- 1995). It has been common for doctors to rican genital mutilation (see Chase 1996). “fi x” sexually ambiguous babies soon after Chase and her ISNA colleagues have birth by surgically creating either male or produced their own versions of naturalist female genitalia to accord (when possible) baselines and categories to resist the med- with internal reproductive organs. Sociol- ical practices that have pathologized and ogist Suzanne J. Kessler (1990) fi nds that transformed their bodies. decisions about which sex to assign to an infant were made primarily on the basis of Intersex specialists are busily snipping and what she calls aesthetic concerns, such as trimming infant genitals to fi t the Procrus- the length of the penis. If doctors guessed tean bed that is our cultural defi nition of that the infant’s penis was destined to be gender. . . . Surgical and hormonal treatment too small, then female genitalia were con- allows parents and physicians to imagine structed. However, physicians saw their that they have eliminated the child’s in- work as merely restoring the person’s “nat- tersexuality. Unfortunately, the surgery is ural” sex to him or her and, along with par- immensely destructive of sexual sensation ents, regularly made decisions about these as well as one’s sense of bodily integrity. matters with the intention of protecting Because the cosmetic result may be good, parents and physicians complacently ignore children from psychological damage. Kes- the child’s emotional pain in being forced sler argues that these physicians displayed into a socially acceptable gender. The child’s a “failure of imagination” (1990, 26) in at- body, once violated by the surgery, is again tributing their decisions to nature: “Rather and again subjected to frequent genital ex- than admit to their role in perpetuating aminations. Many “graduates” of medical gender, physicians ‘psychologize’ the issue intersex corrective programs are chronically SEX GENES | 517

depressed, wishing vainly for the return of be members of the sex that does not accord body parts. Suicides are not uncommon. Some with their genitalia. That which is usually former intersexuals become trans-sexual, re- taken as natural, the body, becomes unnat- jecting their imposed sex. (Chase 1996, 1) ural, while that which is usually assumed to be socioculturally produced, gender, By violating the natural body in their pur- becomes natural. In this way, they argue suit of a socially normal child, Chase con- differently from Chase and others who use tends, physicians and parents actually bodies and biology to argue against dichot- produce pathology. omies. Some transsexuals argue against Chase is a major protagonist in Sex- the male-female dichotomy and for a wide ing the Body, written by feminist biologist range of gender identities, but they also Fausto-Sterling (2000). Fausto-Sterling uses argue for the naturalism of gender (e.g., contemporary and historical biomedical Roughgarden 2004). Other feminist writers scientifi c research on intersexuals and sex- have argued that body and behavior are not ology to argue for multiple sex categories. separate entities and instead that material- In 1993 she published a provocative op-ed ity and gender identity are codetermined piece in the New York Times proposing that (e.g., Butler 1993). They argue against try- humans should have fi ve sex categories ing to adjust the body to fi t an ideal gen- rather than two (Fausto-Sterling 1993b). dered identity and for the complex and She argues that there is a physical continu- varied possibilities of the body— that is, ity between the sexes of male and female, for a transsexual position that speaks from and rather than make bodies and persons outside the boundaries of the sex- gender fi t into just two categories, male and female, binary.24 Transsexuals, then, are not ho- she proposes that additional categories be mogeneous in their positions regarding embraced by medicine and society.23 sex- gender dichotomies and naturalistic Alice Domurat Dreger, Fausto-Sterling, explanations for gender and sex identity. Kessler, and the ISNA have made a differ- Despite or perhaps because of this hetero- ence. Intersexuals now have more support geneity, transsexuals contest the simplistic if they choose to speak out about their sex- gender, natural- social dichotomies in physiologies. Physicians do not automati- ways that emphasize the discursive con- cally perform surgery on infants with some struction of bodies and identities. conditions, and parents are more involved in deciding whether or not to surgically ANALYSIS OF DATA AND DISCUSSION transform infants with ambiguous genitalia into males or females (see, e.g., Navarro What is sex? Will genetics be the fi nal au- 2004). Nevertheless, two sex categories still thority in answering this question? Sex gene dominate the choices and frames for phy- experimenters have argued that “SRY ” sicians, parents, and scientists. is an active element in the development of testes and that “DAX- 1” is an active element in the development of ovaries. As TRANSSEXUAL ACTIVISM stated earlier, to explain the ambiguities in In their debates about biology and sex Sry experimental outcomes on mice, some identity, many transsexuals insist on di- researchers have argued that in addition to chotomies but not those determined by Sry a cascade of other genetic and nonge- anatomy or physiology. They argue that netic factors and interactions are necessary their physical bodies are not “natural” and to determine sex. But they do not question that they instead feel more “naturally” to the assumption that testes indicate males 518 | JOAN H. FUJIMURA

and ovaries indicate females.25 In contrast, Zanaria et al. 1995) used data from female some intersexual and transsexual activists, human patients with a “working SRY gene feminist theorists, and social scientists who nonetheless exhibited varying degrees have contested this medical defi nition of of feminization” (Angier 1994, C1). In the sex. Although their defi nitions of sex are language of Camerino and her colleagues, heterogeneous, transsexuals agree among “the double dosage of DSS in individuals themselves that possessing testes or with Xp duplications and a functional SRY ovaries does not determine their sex identi- gene . . . hampers repression of the ovar- ties. Intersexual activists, biologist Fausto- ian pathway, leading to gonadal dysgenesis Sterling, and psychologist Kessler use the and phenotypic sex reversal” (Bardoni et al. existence of phenotypic features like am- 1994, 500). biguous genitalia and reproductive organs These researchers’ choices of patients as evidence that sex is not a male-female for their studies set the parameters for dichotomy. Using feminist and social sci- their defi nitions of normal sex to be males entifi c perspectives in light of research on or females who can heterosexually repro- transgender social movements, I now pres- duce. The researchers would classify any ent an analysis of two processes through variation from this to be pathological. which sociocultural frames entered into However, as sociologists and historians the design of the sex- determination ex- have argued, classifi cations, categories, periments I have presented above, and I and taxonomies of scientifi c and medical examine how these frames infl uenced the knowledge are produced within specifi c analysis of the resulting data. historical situations. Further, categories of normal or healthy and pathological or ill are historically co-constituted categories, EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: THE NORMAL defi ned only in relation to each other (Can- DEFINES THE PATHOLOGICAL AND THE guilhem 1978). There is no normal without PATHOLOGICAL DEFINES THE NORMAL a pathological and vice versa. Michel Fou- The Sry and Dax- 1 mouse experiments cault (1970, 1978) argues that such classi- show that human and molecular geneticists fi cations and taxonomies of scientifi c and used their own defi nitions of what consti- medical knowledge constitute a map of tuted normal sex and pathological sex to the power relations of the particular time design their scientifi c investigations. De- period and also have the power to norma- spite their differences, both Sry and Dax- 1 tively govern the ways humans act and feel. researchers set up their initial experiments Biological categories and classifi cations, defi ning sex as a binary. They built this as- then, are not natural, value free, or innocent. sumption into their experiments by choos- Sex categories in particular operate within ing patients who presented themselves socially prescribed systems of meaning. in the clinic with what were considered Human and molecular geneticists use nonstandard sex phenotypes. In the mid- their own sociohistorically located norma- 1980s, Page’s laboratory used DNA from XX tive defi nitions of sex to design their exper- male human patients who were impotent iments on sex determination. As a result, (Page et al. 1987). Koopman and colleagues new molecular genetic experiments on sex (1991) began with sterile male human pa- determination do not challenge the pre- tients with XX chromosomes whose com- viously determined socially defi ned cate- mon gene was used to develop a transgenic gories. Instead, they give material form to mouse model. In the early 1990s, Camerino socially defi ned ideas. By selecting partic- and her colleagues (Bardoni et al. 1994; ular human bodies in the design of their SEX GENES | 519 sex- determination experiments, these ge- The researchers’ focus on fi nding male neticists have reproduced their own taken- sex determinants is in line with the history for- granted categories of sex.26 of sex-determination research. As stated The genetic experiments I have presented earlier, it has been assumed that an em- are producing particularistic, not universal- bryo is female until something triggers a istic, knowledge. However, because of the change, causing the development of male power held by science and medicine in our testes (Jost 1953). Thus, sex-determination world, the two sexes— male and female— are research has been structured to search for once again rendered natural and original, the determination of the male phenotype this time through the Sry and Dax- 1 mouse (Eicher and Washburn 1986). Eva M. Eicher experiments. But power is a process that and Linda L. Washburn note that “the ge- is never fi nalized. Just as feminists, queer netics of testis determination is easier to theorists, and transgender activists are at- study [than ovary determination] because tempting to transform defi nitions of sex, human individuals with a Y chromosome this study challenges this power by show- and no testicular tissue, or with no Y chro- ing how human and molecular geneticists mosome and testicular issue, are relatively insert normative societal assumptions into easy to identify” (1986, 329).27 While some their scientifi c practices. experiments have countered the idea of passive female sex development, the idea of active female sex development has not EXPERIMENTAL DATA ANALYSIS: entered easily or consistently into the lit- IN SEARCH OF THE MALE- erature (Fausto-Sterling 2000, 346). The DETERMINING GENE research of Camerino and her colleagues Sry mouse experiments incorporated yet on DAX- 1 joins this minority tradition, another set of assumptions: they focused although it still represents sex as a binary on the male-determining factor rather male-female dichotomy. The fi eld of sex than on the female. Hypothesizing that a determination is dominated, however, by gene common to XX men induces embryos Sry research and continues in the vein of to develop as males, the Zfy and Sry mouse early twentieth- century ideas. studies were designed in an attempt to fi nd that gene. The researchers found a version EXAMINING THE AWKWARD of that gene and inserted it into XX female SURPLUS FROM NEW FRAMES OF mice to see if it would transform the fe- REFERENCE males into males. When Koopman and colleagues (1991) produced a mouse with a The Sry mouse studies employed new mo- small penis, they concluded that they had lecular transgenic technologies to investi- found the male-determining gene. They gate the details of sex development in mice. acknowledged that many more XX embryos The introduction of these new technolo- had incorporated the Sry gene and devel- gies made new signals possible. These new oped as females rather than males, includ- signals could have led researchers to new ing one reproducing female that gave birth insights about sex development. I show, to female offspring carrying the Sry gene. however, that new signals read through old However, in their frame of reference—the frames are not seen. focus on male sex determination—the re- One fascinating aspect of empirical sci- searchers relegated the female Sry mice to entifi c research is its ability to surprise the status of anomalous data and omitted researchers with unanticipated results. Al- them from their published conclusions. though philosopher and historian of science 520 | JOAN H. FUJIMURA

Thomas Kuhn argues that the paradigmatic of reference may illuminate results of ex- frame of normal scientifi c practice does not periments that have been ignored in the aim at novelty and even suppresses it, he investigation’s conclusions. 28 In this way, also acknowledges that it often yields “pre- the concept of awkward surplus can aid in novelties” (1962, 5– 6) in the form of anom- the rereading of experimental conclusions alies. Kuhn also argues that anomalies must and thereby produce alternative interpre- be recognized— that is, recognized as new tations with different social consequences. knowledge and not as errors or noise. Kuhn Reexaminations of study results such as suggests that it is usually not the paradig- those presented here provide opportuni- matic practitioners who recognize anomalies ties for natural scientists, social scientists, as novel, but instead it is the new generation and other parties to attempt to work differ- of researchers, or even researchers from an- ently and collaboratively to produce new other fi eld, who can see novelty because they explanations. Using the notion of awkward are not immersed in the governing paradigm. surplus, social scientists and social activ- Anomalies can, in Kuhn’s schema, lead ists can fi ll a role similar to that of scien- to the production of both new knowledge tists from another fi eld, those whom Kuhn and a new paradigmatic order, a new form sees as potential innovators—people who of normal science. However, in Kuhn’s dis- can see anomalies as sources of novel ideas cussion the sources of the differences in and fi ndings because they bring different perception required to recognize novelty assumptions to the table. With respect to remain within the science community, al- the Sry and Dax- 1 studies presented here, beit in a different generation or discipline. I apply my knowledge and skill in under- Historian of science Nancy Stepan (1993) standing social frames of meaning to ex- goes beyond Kuhn to argue that paradigms plore whether, when, where, and how these are not just limited by a scientifi c commu- frames affected the researchers’ scientifi c nity’s set of theories and practices but also perception. As Haraway argues in “Situ- by social and cultural metaphors. In con- ated Knowledges” (1988), other actors with trast to Kuhn’s intellectualist explanation stakes in a problem should be involved in that a paradigm changes with the accu- studying it. mulation of a critical mass of anomalies In examining Sry experimental data, I that cannot be explained by the paradig- am attempting to salvage the experimental matic frame, Stepan argues that it is often results that sex gene researchers fi rst ac- through social, political, or economic knowledged and then chose to ignore. That changes in society that both scientists and is, although the researchers (Koopman et al. citizens come to see that cultural meta- 1991) noted that some mice did not per- phors have governed how we perceive reform according to their expectations, they ality and that they no longer apply. failed to conduct further experiments to try The data produced by the Sry and Dax-1 to make sense of these anomalous results. mouse experiments, the questions raised Koopman and colleagues chose instead about sex/gender by transgender and fem- to continue to construct their follow- up inist activists, Kuhn’s discussion of anom- experiments as if Sry caused maleness in alies, and Stepan’s 1993 revision of Kuhn’s mice. Their subsequent studies presented ideas together suggest that there may be additional complexities and ambiguities data that tend to be ignored because they that the scientists could not explain. One do not fi t the frames of reference of their ob- researcher, Camerino, continually referred servers. Considering this awkward surplus, to some of the results as “bizarre.”29 Al- I argue that the introduction of new frames though researchers attempted iterations to SEX GENES | 521 make the results fi t their original assump- of pathways with “SRY ” and “DAX- 1 ” in- tions, these subsequent experiments did volved at the top of the hierarchy, this ar- not answer their questions, and they de- gument must be verifi ed. cided to wait for “better” experiments. 30 In contrast to the geneticists’ view, I sug- Better, I argue here, refers to experiments gest that a feminist, social scientifi c, or trans- that will yield results that make sense to gender analysis might consider the many them within their frames of reference. sex variations as resulting from multiple de- After identifying an awkward surplus of velopmental pathways that involve genetic, results in the data, my next step was to ex- protein, hormonal, environmental, and other plore new interpretations. By reviewing the agents, actions, and interactions. These vari- data without thinking about sex as a binary ations need not be represented as outliers, re- category, I saw that the last fi fteen years of siduals, anomalies, or pathologies in a binary research on “ SRY ” and “DAX- 1” have pro- system. Instead, a reanalysis of Sry and Dax- 1 vided much evidence for complexity in the mouse research shows that genetics can pro- genetics of sex determination. Recent ex- duce phenotypic variations suggesting that periments have raised the possibility of a sex is a fl uid concept, not a binary concept proliferation of genes in promoter regions incorporating only the conventionally gen- of the chromosome, of structural genes, dered sexes of male and female. and of different forms of proteins being In summary, the concept of awkward produced by the same gene, all of which surplus is useful, fi rst, to help us attend to complicate the question of sex determi- unanticipated results that are recognized as nation. There is by now a long list of genes problematic or awkward by experimenters suspected of being involved in sex deter- and are thus ignored in their conclusions. mination, and this list grows longer every Second, the concept provides an opportu- year. If we also consider the interactions nity to reexamine unexpected experimen- among these genes, sex determination at tal results either by using different frames the genetic level is steadily increasing in or perspectives or by reexamining them in complexity. When we add the interactions conjunction with data from other sources. of genes with various proteins, develop- Third, the examination of awkward sur- mental pathways, cell signaling pathways, pluses provides a space where scientists and many other parts of cellular, organ- and social scientists can work together in ismal, and environmental parts and pro- the production of new knowledge. cesses that are fast becoming the territory of a new fi eld called “systems biology” (Fu- WHO ADJUDICATES THE AWKWARD jimura 2005), the complexity of sex deter- SURPLUS? mination escalates even more. A key characteristic of complexity is in- In addition to the interpretations of ge- stability. Using a term fi rst developed in neticists in the original Sry mouse study the fi eld of prokaryotic genetics, Camerino (Koopman et al. 1991) and my reanalysis, argues that sex determination is “leaky,” by there may be other interpretations. The which she means unstable or not strongly designation of awkward surplus and pos- determined. 31 That is, there is no single sible multiple explanations of what the pathway through which sex is genetically awkward surplus means raise other episte- determined. Indeed, there may be many mological and methodological questions. pathways with multiple different genes How do we decide which interpretations involved in each pathway. And although are valid? If prescribed systems of meaning Camerino believes that there is a hierarchy frame our very perceptions of matter, is my 522 | JOAN H. FUJIMURA

alternative interpretation not just as situated Given the past and present roles of in particular sociocultural assumptions as power and partiality in the production of those of the biologists I study? With respect knowledge, feminist scholars of science to the concept of awkward surplus in par- in particular argue that science analysts ticular, how do we adjudicate whether an should play a part in the struggle for au- awkward surplus provides useful or useless thority by taking positions and supporting information? And who should adjudicate? some knowledge claims over others. Har- Answers to these questions in the social away (1988) argues that those who have the studies of science, medicine, and technol- greatest stakes in a knowledge claim should ogy are many and are heatedly debated. act collectively to produce that knowledge. Some science studies scholars argue that our Harding (1998) has provided epistemolog- job is not to decide what is valid knowledge ical arguments for the production of new but to study how each possibility fares in the kinds of knowledge by participants who struggle for scientifi c authority. These schol- are not professional Euro-American scien- ars prefer to descriptively analyze scientifi c tists. Scientists themselves take heteroge- practice and struggles for authority without neous positions. Some argue that science taking normative positions on knowledge should police itself, while others argue that outcomes (e.g., Lynch 2001). However, other there is a place for nonscientists in scien- science studies have also shown that many tifi c knowledge production. nonscientists have already intervened in the However, the epistemological frames of making of science. Religious groups have as- Haraway (1988) and Harding (1998) still serted their agendas, sometimes supporting leave us with the questions of who quali- the programs of particular scientists (Shapin fi es as a stakeholder in a particular prob- and Schaffer 1985) and sometimes interven- lem and how those stakeholders who are ing against the programs of particular sci- not professional scientists can participate entists through control of research-funding in the making of science. For instance, the processes of government agencies such as Bush administration’s conservative reli- the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and gious policy makers and backers argue— the National Science Foundation (Boren- and have acted upon the view—that they stein 2004). Private industrial concerns have a stake in scientifi c research. They have inserted their agendas through their have taken up positions on stem cell rein-house research or through institutional search and infl uenced NIH decisions funding of research in private institutes and about which projects to fund.32 In the case research universities (Krimsky 2003). Gov- of sex-determining gene research, I argue ernments have also selectively infl uenced that intersexuals should have some au- the development of scientifi c knowledge in thority in the making of knowledge of sex. particular directions (MacKenzie 1993; Eden However, the Bush administration could 2003). Beyond these overt exercises of politi- similarly argue that the religious ultraright cal power in the making of knowledge, social should also have a place at the table. Is ad- studies of science have demonstrated the in- judication possible, or is it simply a battle troduction of political and cultural agendas of wills and power? In the battle of power- into scientifi c research through subtle and knowledge (Foucault 1980), barriers to unintentional processes. Indeed, as Stephen participation are usually high. Jay Gould (1981), Stepan (1993), and Hall The problem of who should and can au- (1976) argue, throughout history it has been thorize science is a question that appears diffi cult to separate scientifi c efforts from to be answerable only historically (e.g., Fu- commonly accepted cultural knowledge. jimura 1998). Nevertheless, some science SEX GENES | 523 studies scholars are attempting to wrestle a discussion of the proponents’ stakes in with this problem prospectively in episte- their role as knowledge makers. mological terms and practical terms.33 CONCLUSION A CRITICAL SOCIOMATERIAL I have employed a critical sociomaterial APPROACH approach to reexamine scientifi c mouse This analysis of sex- determination re- experiments on sex- determining genes, search demonstrates the critical socioma- especially Sry and Dax- 1. I have provided a terial approach to the study of science, a critique of the investigations and an anal- theoretical approach that incorporates ysis of some of the investigators’ awkward ideas and lessons from feminist theory surplus data. This approach to science and the social studies of science. I have incorporates theoretical efforts to move included an analysis of science that in- beyond reading society onto nature and corporates the sociocultural frames of reading nature onto society. It does not reference of researchers who have stakes impose sociological categories onto the in and perspectives on a particular scien- natural sciences, nor does it impose bio- tifi c problem. I call for social scientifi c or logical categories onto the social sciences. feminist analyses of science to include an Instead, it argues for a collaboration that examination of the production of the ma- gains from different expertises. teriality that supports scientifi c claims. I The results of this reexamination demon- propose that feminist social scientists and strate that the design and analysis of molec- activists should include the exploration of ular genetic experiments are inhabited by the materiality of sex in their analyses. The sociocultural meanings and understand- biology of sex is too important to leave to ings. In the case of genetic sex determina- biologists alone because they usually are tion, scientists used the social categories not trained to attend to and analyze how of “normal males” and “normal females” sociocultural frames infl uence their own to design their experiments and protocols, experimental processes. This critique is and they reproduced these categories in exactly what feminist, social scientifi c, and their experimental processes. humanist analyses can provide. Their dif- My reexamination of research in sex ferent frames of reference may suggest new determination also shows an awkward interpretations of evidence and even new surplus of data that researchers ignored experimental designs. in their conclusions from the Sry mouse The methods for analyzing the material experiments. They did not view some ex- production of science include reading re- perimental results as fi ndings because search articles in search of data that could those results did not fi t their cultural be meaningful in a frame or context of anal- expectations. ysis different from that of the original ex- In contrast, from the perspective of femi- perimenters and/or observing scientists at nism and social science as well as of research work producing scientifi c knowledge in the on transgender movements, I suggest that laboratory or the fi eld and identifying and these residual data provide signifi cant infor- examining awkward surpluses of data that mation on the actions of sex genes. do not fi t within the researchers’ frames Instead of viewing the results as bizarre, of reference. This analytical approach re- I suggest reinterpreting the residual data quires an epistemological argument for to illuminate genetic instability (leakiness) the claims made in the new analysis and and possible multiple pathways of sex 524 | JOAN H. FUJIMURA

development as explanations for the vari- With respect to sex itself, these readings ations in body phenotypes that do not fi t of novel data suggest that the variations the binary male-female norms. Sry and in and complexities of sex development Dax- 1 mouse experimental results that fall raised by feminist analysts at the levels of outside the experimenters’ frames of ref- human behavior, bodies, hormonal sys- erence may be legible within other frames. tems, embryos, cells, and chromosomes Sex may be highly variable and more fl uid are replicated at the level of genes. Sex, than geneticists (and many of the rest of even at the genetic level, is a sociomaterial us) anticipate. process and product. I argue for the examination of the awk- Given this conclusion, my study of the ward surplus in scientifi c data as a valuable production of the materiality of sex joins ar- research tool. Reconsideration of data and guments in feminist studies for the collaps- conclusions would use frames of reference ing of the sex- gender (qua biology- society) different from those of the original exper- distinction. Instead of treating sex as bio- imenters, frames taken from other actors logical and gender as social, I argue that sex, and realms of life. like gender, is a sociomaterial product. Sex- The concept of awkward surplus pro- determining gene research and the political vides science studies with a way of engaging actions of transgendered activists introduce with material agency. Even within the cul- moments of ambiguity and transgres- tural framing of understandings of nature sion that disturb the dichotomies of male- in a particular period, we fi nd biological female, sex-gender, and nature-culture. outcomes that stand clearly outside scien- Highlighting the social aspects of sex con- tists’ abilities to control or explain them. tests assumptions about gender and sex and The concept of awkward surplus provides a thereby about the sex- gender split. theoretical and methodological framework My investigation is an argument for for thinking about anomalous results when broadening our social imaginaries—our meaning has not quite become fi xed. defi nitions and understandings—of the Awkward surplus is also useful for think- material, the natural. A critical sociomate- ing about how feminist and other social rial view of sex integrates sociocultural and theorists and activists can participate in historical investigations of the production creating knowledge about materiality. of the material (e.g., the complexities and The work of transgendered activists and variations of sex physiologies and genet- some feminist theorists to promote the ics) with diverse social imaginaries about acceptance of variations in bodies and the sex and bodies proposed by feminists, normalization of their own bodies can be queer theorists, intersexuals, and others. useful in the production of molecular ge- In this approach, we study and juxtapose netic research. Scientists, too, must have the actions and interactions of social activ- an opportunity to cross the divide. They ist groups, social theorists, biologists, bod- can use the work of feminists, queer the- ies, and genes in order to understand the orists, and transgender activists to think collective, contentious, contradictory, and creatively about their own research surplus interactive crafting of sex in humans. and their accepted protocols for producing I do not mean to argue that the natural knowledge. The awkward surpluses of sci- should be the foundation for substanti- entifi c data indicate complexities that fall ating, explaining, or changing existing outside the structures of scientifi c para- gendered arrangements in society. So- digms and some social frames of meaning. cial imaginaries should be enough for SEX GENES | 525 promoting an acceptance of diversity. His- NOTES torical examples of efforts to use natural 1. Sry stands for sex-determining region Y gene, differences to justify social hierarchies pro- the gene that sits on the Y chromosome and is vide yet another reason for eschewing bi- currently considered to be the gene that initiates ology as foundational for social practices. male sex characteristics. Dax- 1 is the name for the The recent rise of evolutionary psychol- dosage-sensitive sex reversal adrenal hypoplasia ogy is the latest in such efforts to produce gene 1, Xp21, a transcription factor involved in adrenal cortex development and gonadotropin natural arguments for social practices and secretion. It has been widely accepted as an “antit- hierarchies. estis” or ovary-determining gene because patients Nevertheless, demonstrations of the so- with a duplication or “double dose” of Dax- 1 had ciomaterial production of sex, the Möbius features of XY sex reversal, a condition in which strip production of sex, are useful for main- individuals have the chromosomes of males but the physical attributes of females. For the same taining our awareness that natural catego- gene sequence, the agreed-upon notation in re- ries are also social categories. Further, even search articles is the italicized and lowercase Sry as our current language of analysis main- or Dax- 1 for the mouse gene, the italicized and tains the division between the natural and capitalized SRY or DAX- 1 for the human gene, the social, the point of a critical socioma- and the italicized and capitalized with quotation marks “SRY ” or “DAX- 1 ” for the gene in multiple terial approach is to move in the direction species. of a language where there is no division, 2. This is not intended to be a complete discussion where we are always conscious that the of the history of gender theory, feminism, or gen- natural and the social are not separated. der and science. For example, we need to think of the 3. The term gender, as separated from sex, originated in John Money and Anke A. Ehrhardt’s categories male and female not as repre- (1972) studies of hermaphrodites. senting stable, fundamental differences 4. For work on the idea of gender as process, see, e.g., but as already and always social categories. Ferree, Lorber, and Hess (1999) and Butler (2004). They form a set of concepts, a set of social 5. See, e.g., Rose 1983; Smith 1987; Trinh 1987; Har- categories of difference to be deployed for away 1989; Russett 1989; Schiebinger 1989; La- queur 1990; Strathern 1992; Glenn 1999; Duster particular purposes. Ergo, what counts as 2003. male and female must be evaluated in their 6. Historian of science Diana Long Hall’s (1976, 92– context of use. The categories male and fe- 94) research on sex hormones in endocrinology male, like the categories men and women, demonstrates how novel biological practices and may be useful for organizing particular technologies in the 1920s changed and disturbed established representations of sex differences. kinds of social investigation or action, but For more recent work on the history of the inter- they may also inhibit actions. section of hormone research and sex disciplining, A critical sociomaterial approach that see Oudshoorn (1994), Clarke (1998), and Fausto- joins awkward surpluses from the labora- Sterling (2000, chaps. 6, 7, 8). For an interesting tory with the experiences of people in the challenge to feminist critiques of sex hormone research, see Roberts (2000). world opens up opportunities to challenge 7. Feminist theorists Moira Gatens (1996) and Eliz- the taken- for- granted scientifi c categories abeth Grosz (1994) also argue that the early di- that help to construct or maintain defi ni- vision between sex and gender was useful for its tions of similarity, difference, and pathol- purposes at that time but that this division now ogy. This is particularly important today, serves to keep feminists attending to social gender and to cede their authority over biological sex when new biotechnologies are being used to biology. to link disease and behavioral genes with 8. Since the 1970s scholars in the social studies of particular social categories of race and science have explored how scientifi c knowledge is ethnicity. marked by its situation and process of production. 526 | JOAN H. FUJIMURA

9. See Fausto-Sterling (1989) for an early critique 20. Interview with Camerino. of Page’s research. Again, Zfy equals the mouse 21. Ibid. gene, capitalized ZFY the human gene, and 22. Ibid. “ ZFY ” the gene in multiple species. 23. On third sexes, see, e.g., Serena Nanda (1989), 10. I use quotes around the term normal to refer to who writes on the Hijras in India, and Gilbert the construction of the “normal” through the Herdt (1996), who writes on Two-Spirit peo- construction of the “abnormal” developmental ple (formerly called berdaches) in the United pathway. I discuss the simultaneous construc- States. tion of the normal and the “pathological” later in 24. See also Stone 1991; Bornstein 1994; Bolin 1996; this article. Transgenic animals or organisms are Feinberg 1998; Stryker 1998. For a history of products of genetic manipulation. Their genetic transsexuality, see Meyerowitz (2002). material (nuclear deoxyribonucleic acid [DNA]) 25. An exception is Melanie Blackless et al. (2000), has been altered using recombinant DNA tech- who argue against binarism even at the level niques that allow the movement of DNA from of chromosome composition, not just gonads one organism into another. These DNA transfers and reproductive organs. Phoebe Dewing et al. are sometimes from a different species, some- (2003) fi nd differential gene expression be- times from the same species. tween the developing brains of male and female 11. Again, Sry indicates the mouse gene, SRY the mouse embryos and hypothesize that gonadal human gene, “SRY ” the same gene in multiple hormones may not be the only infl uence on species. male- female sex differences in brain develop- 12. Koopman and colleagues’ explanation for the ment and behavior. This research should be mouse’s sterility is that “the presence of two X carefully examined. chromosomes in a male mouse always results in 26. See Hacking (1992) and Fujimura and Chou sterility. . . . It was therefore not surprising that (1994) on self-authenticating practices in labo- the sex-reversed transgenic mouse m33.13 was ratory sciences. also sterile” (1991, 119). 27. This point further distinguishes the research of 13. Interview with Giovanna Camerino, professor of Camerino and her collaborators on determina- human genetics, University of Pavia, Italy, Octo- tions of female sex. ber 10, 2000. 28. This use of frames of reference is taken from 14. Leydig cells produce the hormone testoster- sociologist Erving Goffman’s (1986) argument one when stimulated by another hormone. that humans develop and use frames of inter- The anti-Müllerian hormone is a protein pretation to organize and make sense of the that inhibits the development of the ducts in events, activities, and phenomena to which a male embryo. If not inhibited, these ducts they attend in everyday life. Goffman’s frames develop into the upper vagina, cervix, uterus, allow us to think of scientists as acting through and oviducts. The ducts disappear as the male their formal and tacit scientifi c training and develops. also through their sociocultural contexts and 15. This complexity applies to even a limited defi - experiences. nition of epigenetics. See the special issue of 29. Interview with Camerino. Science on epigenetics (Riddihough and Pennisi 30. Ibid. 2001), especially the exchange about the devolu- 31. Ibid. tion of the term (Wu and Morris 2001). 32. On February 18, 2004, over sixty leading 16. However, Cynthia Kraus fi nds that Drosophila scientists—Nobel laureates, leading medical ex- sex determination research “does not provide a perts, former federal agency directors, and uni- good example of androcentrism— but, rather, versity chairs and presidents—signed a statement provides a counter- example” (2000, 152). She voicing their concern over the misuse of science uses this case to argue for a reconsideration of by the Bush administration. The Union of Con- feminist critiques of science. cerned Scientists has a Web site that solicits sig- 17. See also Dabovic et al. 1995; Graves, Camerino, natures of additional U.S. scientists in support and McLaren 1995; Zanaria et al. 1995; Swain et of this effort. See http://www.ucsusa.org/scien al. 1996 tific_integrity/interference/scientists-signon- 18. See also Parker, Schimmer, and Schedl 1999. statement.html. 19. Prokaryotes are organisms like bacteria whose 33. On epistemological approaches, see, e.g., Har- DNA is not enclosed in a nucleus. Eukaryotes away (1988), Barad (1998), Harding (1998), and are usually multicellular organisms whose DNA Longino (2001). On practical approaches, see, is encased in a nucleus. e.g., Rosser (2000) SEX GENES | 527

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Imaginary Prohibitions: Some Preliminary Remarks on the Founding Gestures of the ‘New Materialism’ Sara Ahmed

We have no interest whatever in minimizing of ‘the body’ have become increasingly fash- the continuing history of racist, sexist, ho- ionable in all manner of feminist projects mophobic, or otherwise abusive biologisms, (surely ‘the body’ has become, in a very short or the urgency of their exposure, that has space of time, one of our most routinized made the gravamen of so many contempo- theoretical gestures), the schedule of femi- rary projects of critique. At the same time, nism’s antibiologism has been little altered. we fear—with installation of an automatic In most of these projects on ‘the body’, the antibiologism as the unshifting tenet of body in question is pursued in its socially, ‘theory’—the loss of conceptual access to an experientially, or psychically constituted entire thought- realm. (Sedgwick and Frank, forms, but rarely in its physiologically, bio- 1995: 15) chemically, or microbiologically constituted form, the idea of biological construction I was left wondering what danger had been having been rendered either unintelligible averted by the exclusion of biology. What or naive. Despite an avowed interest in the does the nominative ‘biological or anatom- body, there is a persistent distaste for biological body’ actually refer to? And what secures ical detail. (Wilson, 1998: 14– 15) the separation of its inadmissible matter from the proper purview of Irigaray’s tex- These feminist theories have usually been tual interventions? When I asked a question reluctant to engage with biological data: to this effect it was met with a certain ner- they retain, and encourage, the ﬁ erce antibi- vous comprehension. Deciding, perhaps, ologism that marked the emergence of sec- that I must still be immersed in a precriti- ond wave feminism. (Wilson, 2004: 13) cal understanding of the body, the speaker dismissed me with a revealing theatrical That feminist scholars are particularly prone gesture. As if to emphasize the sheer absur- to a ‘knee jerk constructivism’ helps explain dity of my question she pinched herself and the reluctance of those in the humanities to commented ‘Well I don’t mean this body’. engage seriously with the claims of science. And so it seemed with a gesture so matter (Squier, 2004: 46) of fact that it required no further comment, the fact of (the) matter was both decided and This book functions primarily as a reminder dispatched. (Kirby, 1997: 70) to social, political, and cultural theorists, particularly those interested in feminism, Feminism has been as deeply implicated antiracism and questions of the politics of in routinized antiessentialism as any of our globalisation, that they have forgotten a cru- critical procedures. Even though questions cial dimension of research, if not necessary IMAGINARY PROHIBITIONS | 531

to, then certainly useful for more incisively would have problematic consequences formulating the concepts on which they so for our understanding of the genealogy of heavily, if implicitly rely. It is written as a re- feminist thought. To sustain that gesture as membrance of what we have forgotten— not a way of constituting a new fi eld would be, just the body, but that which makes it pos- in my view, a way of losing sight. sible and which limits its actions: the pre- In offering this position paper, my aim carious, accidental, contingent, expedient, striving, dynamic status of life in a messy, is to open up a debate. In making a case, I complicated, resistant, brute world of ma- risk overstating that case. I am aware for in- teriality, a world regulated by the exigencies, stance that beginning with a list of quotes the forces, of space and time. We have forgot- that evoke this gesture, could be taken to ten the nature, the ontology, of the body, the imply that they are all making the same conditions under which bodies are encul- gesture. I think there are important differ- tured, psychologized, given identity, histor- ences. My point is strategic: the gesturing ical location, and agency. We have forgotten towards feminism’s antibiologism has be- where we come from. (Grosz, 2004a: 2) come a background, something taken for granted as a common reference point such In this position paper, I want to consider that it is not noticeable, and hence has not what it means for it to be routine to point to really been engaged with as involving a feminism as being routinely anti-biological, specifi c set of claims. or habitually ‘social constructionist’. I ex- My viewpoint is partly a matter of an im- amine how this gesture has itself been taken pression that has accumulated over time. for granted, and how in turn that gesture I have had numerous conversations with both offers a false and reductive history of friends, colleagues, participants at confer- feminist engagement with biology, science ences, which have involved the use of quite and materialism, and shapes the contours casual forms of expression, which evoke a of a fi eld that has been called ‘the new ma- position that is not held by the speaker. One terialism’ (see Hird, 2004). By constructing example of this is the expression, ‘I don’t feminism as ‘prohibiting’ an attention to think everything is just social’, which has the biological and other matters, this new been repeated to me a number of times. work is often represented as a gift to fem- The sentence works powerfully. It evokes a inism in its very refusal to be prohibited position that is not explicitly attributed to by feminism’s prohibitions. I will consider somebody as a way of making a counter- what it means for such a gesture to become claim. In other words, it does not say, ‘X foundational of a fi eld.1 thinks everything is just social and I dis- It is important for me to state from the agree with X’. Rather, in evoking a position outset that the excerpts I begin with are that the speaker does not hold, you evoke from feminist scholars whose work I ad- ‘somebody’ who does think everything is mire, and to whom I myself am indebted. ‘just social’. Who, one wonders, would ever I do not want to reduce this work to the make such a claim? Even if the word ‘social’ gesture I am identifying. They offer us so was not presumed to guarantee its object, much more than a gesture, and when I put to make that word a descriptor for ‘every- that gesture to one side, I fi nd much that is thing’ is not only counterintuitive, but also useful and exciting about these books. In unproductive (as any word would be if posing these questions, my aim is not to used to describe ‘everything’). dismiss specifi c feminist work, but to ac- I would suggest that the word ‘social’ count for how that work might be gather- here works metonymically: it acquires sig- ing around a gesture, which if routinized, nifi cance in part through its nearness to 532 | SARA AHMED

other words such as language, discourse, It is noticeable in the case of the fi rst book culture. The speech act might express that quoted, by Sedgwick and Frank, that they familiar or even habitual anxiety that fem- do name a specifi c theorist and book: Ann inism and poststructuralism have reduced Cvetovich’s Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass ‘everything’ to language and culture, in Culture and Victorian Sensationalism. This what is often referred to as ‘textualism’, and book becomes symptomatic of a general have forgotten the ‘real’ of the real world, trend in ‘theory’ to be, as they describe it, or the materiality of what is given. As a re- ‘automatic antibiologism’. Now, clearly they viewer of papers for journals, I have lost are worried by their own gesture. In a foot- count of the number of papers that have note they defend their use of a ‘sole book as referred casually, usually without using ex- our example in articulating this argument’, amples, to how feminism or poststructur- which they describe as persistence in alism have not dealt with the body as a real, ‘gracelessness’ (Sedgwick and Frank, 1995: living, physical, biological entity or have 27). I am not concerned by their defence of reduced ‘everything’ to language, signifi ca- the use of this book as opposed to any other tion and culture. That these sentences are book. But what is striking here is how this repeated without illustration or contextu- book stands alone: even when they com- alization is symptomatic of what I call the ment on their use of this book, they still do ‘routinization’ of the gesture of pointing to- not refer to other examples of ‘automatic wards the antibiologism or construction- antibiologism’. In reading one book as a ism of others, whereby this antibiologism symptom of a trend, what are we doing? itself functions as a form of bad faith (we Does this allow the trend to be posited as need to be pinched, reminded of the real, internally coherent, framed by the edge of returned to the facts of the matter). Rather the book, as if it is a book? After all, the ar- than feminist antibiologism or construc- gument involves using ‘theory’ in quotation tionism being routine, I want to focus on marks. Who is or does theory, one wonders? the routinization of the gesture towards What about the work of science studies feminist anti-biologism or construction- scholars who have worked on and with the ism. This is not to say that such a gesture biological, in different ways? Do they be- is the only routine for new materialism; to long in ‘theory’? I want to suggest ‘theory’ is make such an argument would be to re- being constituted as anti- biological by repeat the very gesture I am critiquing. But moving from the category of ‘theory’ work one of the effects of this routinization of that engages with the biological, including the critique of antibiologism is that the work within science and technology stud- critique of this critique risks being read as ies, which has a long genealogy, especially symptomatic of antibiologism. within feminism. Such work disappears in the very argument that we must return to the biological. FEMINISM IS ANTI- BIOLOGY For Elizabeth Grosz the argument is Let’s return to these gestures in their spec- framed as a matter of return. We must ifi city. Some of them are specifi cally ad- ‘return’ to concepts of nature, matter, life dressed to feminism (Kirby, Wilson, Squier), (Grosz, 2004a: 2). That we need to return while others are addressed more loosely to to these concepts, she suggests, is a sign ‘theory’ (Sedgwick and Frank) or ‘social, of forgetting, ‘we have forgotten where we political, and cultural theorists’ (Grosz). have come from’ (Grosz, 2004a: 2). One We have a moving referent, or we could say must wonder who is being evoked by this that the object of critique is itself unstable. ‘we’, and to what extent this ‘we’ functions IMAGINARY PROHIBITIONS | 533 to interpellate the reader into a community argue that there is nothing automatic that shares a common horizon (Have you about feminist critiques of sexism. Indeed, forgotten where we have come from? Have this under-describes the philosophical I?). If you inhabit the ‘we’ of feminism, then and political contribution of ‘pointing out you become implicated in this ‘we’ by vir- sexism’ (if sexism is structural rather than tue of your inhabitance. After all, this text incidental to philosophy, as generations of is very much addressed to feminists and feminist philosophers have shown us, in- others who share feminist interests, sug- cluding Grosz, then pointing out sexism re- gesting that feminists, and ‘all theorists mains a revolutionary and affi rmative task, interested in the relations between sub- and a major contribution to any feminist jectivity, politics, and culture, need to have project of transformation). It also does not a more nuanced, intricate account of the appreciate the range of feminist responses body’s immersion and participation in the to Darwin over time, not all of which were world, if they are to develop political strat- oppositional or worked by pointing out egies to transform the existing social regu- sexism within evolutionary thinking (for a lation of bodies’ (Grosz, 2004a: 2). In other summary of this range, see Gowaty, 1997). words, the point of ‘returning’ to biology, Not only is the history of feminist scholar- evolution and vitalism (represented by ship on biology and science missing from In Darwin, Bergson and Nietzsche—the book the Nick of Time, other than the two afore- is primarily a close reading of these three mentioned examples of feminist critiques writers) is to produce feminist knowledge of Darwin, but Grosz does not engage with that can enable political transformation. any of the more recent work within fem- And yet if this book is as it were for feminist science studies, which has engaged inism, then why does it not engage with with the question of biology, materiality, feminism? Grosz does mention two femi- life itself: such as represented by the work nist responses to Darwin, citing the work of Donna Haraway, Evelyn Fox Keller, Emily of Sue Rosser and Fiona Erskine. Grosz Martin, Sandra Harding and Sarah Frank- reads them both as examples of ‘the stan- lin.2 It is not enough to say that this is sim- dard, knee- jerk feminist reading’ (Grosz, ply an omission (although as an omission it 2004a: 71) and although they are quoted, is striking), and incidental to the arguments neither of the quotes is engaged with. They of the book. Instead, the argument relies on stand only as symptoms. She then sug- the omission. You can only argue for a re- gests that rather than ‘providing criticisms turn to biology by forgetting the feminist of Darwin’s sexism’ (Grosz, 2004a: 73), she work on the biological, including the work wants ‘to see what of Darwin, and the phil- of feminists trained in the biological sci- osophical fi gures that follow him, may be ences. In other words, you can only claim of use to a feminist politics of transforma- that feminism has forgotten the biological tion’ (Grosz, 2004a: 73). if you forget this feminist work. What is striking here is how the history You could argue, as does Elizabeth Wil- of feminist responses to Darwin is reduced son, that feminism’s antibiologism pro- to ‘standard, knee- jerk’ readings of point- ceeds not so much as a forgetting, but ing out sexism (read: automatic bodily takes the form of opposition to, and rejec- reaction). The idea that such feminist re- tion of, the biological as a sphere of life, sponses are knee-jerk and automatic im- as well as a form of knowledge. She rep- plies they are unthinking, perhaps even resents second-wave feminism as ‘fi ercely bodily responses that prove the truth of bi- antibiologist’ (Wilson, 2004: 13). I want to ology at the moment of its denial. I would comment, fi rst, on the use of the adjective 534 | SARA AHMED

‘fi erce’. The adjective is used of course feminists, meaning that what constitutes not to describe feminists but to describe ‘biology’ has been a question rather than the antibiologism that Wilson attributes solution for feminist thought. to second-wave feminism. At the same In other words, feminists have produced time, this word evokes a caricature of the very different kinds of critique of the role second-wave feminists: the fi erce femi- of biology, not all of which depend upon nist tendency to be ‘anti’ is often evoked the rejection of the biological as a sphere as some kind of pathological fi gure; she is of life. To describe the second- wave femi- angry, a kill-joy, perhaps even a freak. Eliz- nists as ‘anti-biology’ is a reduction of the abeth Wilson also describes such feminists complexity and heterogeneity of feminist as having a ‘distaste’ for biology. This de- work in this period. To say that feminism scription is deeply psychologizing, almost today has inherited this antibiologism suggesting that the problem here is interior extends the violence of this reduction. In- to feminism, as a kind of biophobia. The deed, what is striking when you return to ‘knee-jerk constructionism’ that Squier some of the feminist work on biology writ- describes translates this phobia into a ten- ten in the 1970s and 1980s is the care taken dency: the biophobia is what then would in how the biological is evoked as a cate- ‘explain’ the turn to constructionist mod- gory. In particular, many feminist writers els. Such a caricature of the second- wave very carefully differentiate their object of feminist prevents us from engaging more critique from ‘biology as such’, whatever closely (and perhaps generously) with the ‘biology as such’ might or could mean. work of second- wave feminists. For instance, we could read the follow- Of course, many second- wave feminists ing sentence from Deidre Janson-Smith’s did offer powerful critiques of the use of (1980: 65) article, ‘What is Socio-Biology’, biology as a way of defending social roles as symptomatic of anti-biologism: ‘The (‘biological determinism’). Their critiques Women’s Liberation Movement has with were very important: there is no doubt that good reason reacted strongly to the use of biology can be used to present social rela- “biological” arguments in the defi nition of tions as products of nature not only within the female; these have all too often been science, but also within government and merely a confi rmation of the patriarchal public culture given the associations the status quo.’ Janson-Smith does not ad- word ‘biology’ has with what is given or al- dress her critique to ‘biology as such’, but ready decided. But we do not need to read rather to the use of biological arguments this critique as a rejection of the biological to confi rm the patriarchal status quo. She as such, but rather as a critique of the pre- attends specifi cally to the use of genetic sumption that biology is fi xed or decided. arguments. As she describes, ‘Inasmuch In other words, the feminist critiques of as we are made up of cells, controlled by the uses of biology to defend gender hier- genes, all that we do has a genetic basis. archy need not be read as symptomatic of There are no learning processes that do antibiologism, even if they are against a not have some genetic limits, but there are specifi c model of biology (just as the, cri- few, if any, behaviors that are dictated en- tique within critical race studies of the uses tirely by the genes’ (Janson-Smith, 1980: of ‘culture’ to defend racial hierarchy does 65). Janson- Smith’s work shows how the not mean being anti- culture, although problem occurs when genetics is taken up it is anti a particular model of culture). as if it dictates behaviour, which is not to After all, these points of critique of biology say that genetics does not shape in some were always points of divergence between way what we do. Speaking more generally, IMAGINARY PROHIBITIONS | 535 the problem occurs when biology becomes of human beings alongside other forms of used as an explanation of behaviour, which biological life. For instance, Deidre Janson- is not to say that biology does not shape in Smith, who I quoted earlier, suggests that: some way what we do. ‘I see no reason to regard humans as other Feminist work on biology written during than biological beings, or to erect great barri- this period offers us a very rich archive of ers between humanity and the more “prim- how we can think ‘this some way’. Lynda itive” forms of life’ (Janson- Smith, 1980: 66). Birke’s Women, Feminism and Biology (1986) Indeed, although Elizabeth Wilson (2004: 1) begins with the following statement: ‘this chastises second- wave feminism for being book is founded upon my belief in the rel- ‘reluctant to engage with biological data’, evance of biology to feminist thought: that much of this literature involved very close relevance is not, however, biologically de- detailed analysis of biological dimensions, terminist, as I hope the following pages will often generated through a political as well indicate’ (Birke, 1986: x). Here the critique as epistemic commitment to describing is directed towards biological determinism the biological processes of women’s bodies, and not to biology as a sphere of life: indeed, such as menstruation. Just note the detail in the background to the critique is clearly an the following description, again taken from assumption of the relevance of biology. Like- Janson-Smith’s article: wise, Janet Sayers in Biological Politics (1982) discusses the ‘number of ways in which op- There are many changes in the body’s func- ponents of feminism have sought to appro- tions, as well as in the behavior that occur priate biology for their cause’. As she goes during the cycle. Brain waves (as measured on to argue, ‘although feminists have been by the electroencephalogram) are affected by the cycle, so that epileptic fi ts are least likely accused of neglecting and ignoring biology, between ovulation and premenstruum, and they have in fact suggested a number of ways most likely just before a period. Various other of accommodating the facts of biology in functions change, such as carbohydrate me- their analysis of women’s situation’ (Sayers, tabolism (the rate at which sugars are used 1982: 107). Biological Politics argues explic- by the body), thyroid function, mineral and itly that the problem is with how biology has water balance, resting temperature, and sen- been appropriated to support sexism, which sitivity to smells. (Janson- Smith, 1980: 98)4 necessarily involves an assumption that biology is not itself inherently sexist.3 What is This commitment to rich description also clear is that the myth of feminism as of biological processes was generated by anti-biology is itself part of the appropria- women’s activism: the women’s health tion of biology. Sayers (1982: 173) notes how movement, for instance, involved new ‘writers have berated feminists for not taking understandings of women’s bodies, which account of biology’. The fi gure of the anti- required engaging with the biological sci- biological feminist has a long genealogy, ences often critically, but also very closely. which is inseparable from antifeminist uses We only have to read Our Bodies, Ourselves of biology. (fi rst published 1973) to see evidence of The point of the feminist critique of the how this engagement with biological data appropriation of biology was to accommo- provided a productive point of entry for date biology into an alternative analysis of feminist politics. women’s situation. Such a concern with ac- As soon as we turn to feminist work on commodating rather than excluding biology biology, the argument that feminism was as a sphere of life meant that much second- anti- biology looks at best a caricature. wave feminist thought offered rich analyses If anything, we could argue that recent 536 | SARA AHMED

feminist work on embodiment is very in- When returning to these critiques of debted to this earlier feminist engagement feminist anti-biologism, I was reminded with biology. To acknowledge such debts is very much of the evocation of political cor- not to prohibit critique. Internal critique is rectness as a form of prohibition against an important part of a feminist inheritance. certain kinds of speech. In this argument, But to caricature past feminisms is not to it is because of a habitual political correct- engage in critique: the work of critique is a ness (the liberal intelligentsia) that we are form of intellectual work that requires en- not allowed to say this or that (e.g. a racist gaging closely with a range of work (almost joke). The implication goes: by saying ‘this’ all the books I cite here use one or two or ‘that’ we are fi ghting against the prohi- examples of feminist or theoretical anti- bition. The words become a symbol of re- biologism to illustrate their arguments). fusing a prohibition and the justice of free Many of the books referred to here under speech. Perversely, this is how a racist joke the rubric ‘the new materialism’ do involve can be spoken in the name of freedom. generous forms of critique, but in relation Not only can we detect here a structuring to a scholarship they imply is insuffi ciently desire for certain words to be prohibited, engaged with by feminists/theorists: Tom- but also an infl ation of the very power of kins is read very carefully by Sedgwick the ‘whoever ’ that is doing the prohibiting: and Frank, while Darwin, Bergson and Ni- as if the world that says ‘this or that is bad’ etzsche are read lovingly by Grosz. What is the dominant, hegemonic world, which is evident here is an uneven distribution demands consent. In this world, racism of the work of critique, which is after all a becomes the minority position, the racist, labour of love. To be blunt, male writers or the sexist, is the one who is not allowed (who are also usually dead and white) are to speak. I call this an ‘infl ationary logic’. engaged with closely, while feminist writ- I would argue that the speech act that ers are not. What does this uneven distri- proceeds by refusing the prohibition bution of attention and care actually do? against speaking about biology involves It is possible to recuperate anything for this infl ationary logic. No doubt this is a feminism (well almost). We must and can potentially awful analogy. Let me say here make pragmatic choices about what to it is not the content of the speech act that is read, what to do with what we read, what imagined as prohibited that concerns me. we cite and how we cite it. I am not saying Rather it is the form of the speech act itself. we should only read feminist work as femi- In both these cases (biological arguments nists; that we should return only to this ar- against anti-biologism, anti-pc arguments chive. And yet, there is a politics to how we against pc), the speech act works by con- distribute our attention. All I want to sug- structing an ‘imaginary prohibition’, which gest is that if we read the work of feminists is then taken as foundational to a given writing on biology with the same amount speaking or intellectual community. That of time and care, it might be harder to de- prohibition is imagined as hegemonic, as scribe such work as antibiologist. What is a majority position, in order to constitute clear then is that the gesture of pointing the speech act, as a minority position, even to feminist antibiologism either excludes as a kind of defence against free thinking, a feminist work on the biological from what rebellion against orthodoxy. counts as theory; forgets feminist work on The speech act that calls for us to ‘return the biological by arguing that we have for- to biology’ constructs the fi gure of the anti- gotten the biological; or recalls that work by biological feminist who won’t allow us to reading it as a symptom of antibiologism. engage with biology, and infl ates her power. IMAGINARY PROHIBITIONS | 537

Let me give another example. Someone much valorized term within the general says during a seminar ‘you have to be a economy) as a form of free speech. social constructionist to get research funding from the ESRC [Economic and Social CREATING A ‘NEW MATERIALISM’ Research Council]’. The speaker makes reference to postmodern and feminist the- Such gestures become foundational as ory as part of his general critique of social they allow the implication that the the- constructionism. Actually, if we examine orist is embarking on a heroic and lonely recent developments in the ESRC around struggle against the collective prohibitions requirements for social science postgrad- of past feminisms. In other words, the ges- uate training, we might be tempted to ture does something not only through how say that the ESRC relies on a rather more it constitutes feminism as an object (either conservative defi nition of what counts as in its presence or absence) but also through knowledge within the social sciences. As how it constructs the intellectual project of a funding body, it polices what counts as this new work. This work is often described social sciences, and excludes for instance as ‘the new materialism’ (see Hird, 2004). any projects within women’s studies or cul- The new materialism does not take as its tural studies that employ anything other point of entry a critique or engagement than what are seen as properly ‘social sci- with historical materialism, which does ence’ methods. I have to confess I rather not haunt this emergent fi eld even in its wish that the ESRC would be infi ltrated by absence. Rather the point of entry for the social constructionists, although I am not construction of this fi eld is the critique of quite sure what they look like! For such a past feminism for not engaging with mat- body to be identifi ed as aligned with ‘social ter, as such. The critique of feminist anti- constructionism’, whatever that means, biologism becomes, in other words, a more is not only fantastic, but also involves the general critique of a feminist refusal to en- infl ation of the power of this theoretical gage with ‘matter as dynamic and alive’, as framework, such that it becomes seen as Patricia Clough (2007: 8) describes. Fem- defi ning the very material conditions of ac- inism it seems has forgotten how matter ademic value. We are not far off here from matters. the right- wing reading of academia as hav- This narrative of a forgetful feminism in- ing been taken over by liberals and radicals volves an emphasis on feminism as being who have turned away from the proper ‘limited’ by its own preoccupation with objects of academic knowledge. Again, one culture. Myra Hird’s account of the emer- wishes! gence of ‘the materialism’ has the fol- Immediately, then, kinds of work defi ned lowing section heading: ‘The Limits of as not social constructionist, not feminist, Feminist Theories of Culture’. Within this not postmodern (the slide between these section, she cites Elizabeth Wilson’s cri- positions participates in the logic of infl a- tique of ‘feminist analyses of materiality tion) are constructed as the minority po- that remain determinedly fi xed in the cul- sition, the injured other, as the ‘who’ that tural domain’ (Wilson, 2004: 22). We can must be freed. The very gesture towards bi- see even in these two citations that the ology imagines itself as a prohibited speech object of critique is unstable: in the fi rst act. Just as with the infl ationary rhetoric claim, feminist theories of culture are lim- of political correctness, we now have the ited (as they don’t engage with materiality), defence of a return to biology (which is and in the second, feminist theories of ma- after all a highly funded discipline and a teriality are limited (because they reduce 538 | SARA AHMED

materiality to culture). So either feminism enough, insuffi cient. The reading of Butler is limited given its emphasis on culture, or as anti- matter seems to be motivated, as if given its reduction of whatever it engages the moment of ‘rejection’ is needed to au- with to culture. thorize a new terrain. In most of these feminist critiques of The argument that feminism has re- feminism, Judith Butler is singled out as duced matter to culture, I would suggest, a primary example of a feminist who re- loses its object somewhere along the way. duces matter to culture (see Barad, 2003; This is not to deny how much culture might Clough, 2007: 8; Cheah, 1996; Fraser, 2002). matter for feminism. Given the feminist It is important to note here that Butler does concern with understanding how gender attend to the question of matter: she of- and sexuality are reproduced in time and fers a defi nition of matter as ‘the effect of space, a key emphasis has been placed on boundary, fi xity and surface’ in Bodies That language, culture, the symbolic, labour, Matter (Butler, 1993: 9). For Butler, matter discourse and ideology. This is because is an effect of a process of materialization. feminism needs a theory of social repro- We should note, however, that her defi ni- duction; of how particular forms become tion is offered within a specifi c context; at norms over time. But it does not follow that this point in the book, she is engaging with feminists don’t then believe that the ma- Foucault in order to reconsider how bod- terial world exists, or that feminist theory ies materialize; and how sex involves a dy- cannot admit to the materiality of things. If namic process of materialization. Within anything, given the concern with the social this context, her argument about materi- reproduction of hierarchies, much feminist alization supports an argument about the work might point to the complexity of the sedimentation of bodily norms over time. relationship between materiality and cul- She is not offering in this book a theory ture, rather than reducing one to the other. of the material world, but a theory of how Feminist work in science studies, for sex materializes or becomes worldly. In my example, which must be read as intrinsic view, her defi nition of matter as an effect to feminist theory rather than apart from of a process of materialization, which is it, explores the traffi c between nature/bi- a theory of matter as temporal, could be ology and culture, as a ‘material-semiotic’ used or extended to other forms of materi- to use Donna Haraway’s (2003: 201) classic alization. Butler does not do this, for sure; term. The new materialism almost seems it is not her project in this book. And yet, to return to old binaries— between na- her argument does not exclude this possi- ture/materiality/biology and culture in bility even if she does not herself explore the very argument that ‘matter’ is what is it. Butler is read as if she were offering a missing from feminist work. This is evi- theory of the material world in the very dent in Karen Barad’s work, an important critique of how she reduces that world to commentator within this emergent fi eld. ‘discourse’ or ‘culture’. In fact, if anything, Her paper ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Bodies That Matter offers a powerful ex- Toward an Understanding of How Matter ploration of how histories are sedimented Comes to Matter’ (Barad, 2003) begins with in the very ‘how’ of bodily materialization: the following argument: it makes sex material, even if it does not offer a theory of the coming into being of Language has been granted too much power. the material world, as such. To ask it to The linguistic turn, the semiotic turn, the indo so would seem unjust: as if accounting terpretative turn, the cultural turn: it seems for the materiality of sex is too partial, not that at every turn lately every ‘thing’—even IMAGINARY PROHIBITIONS | 539

materiality— is turned into a matter of lan- using what I have described earlier as an guage or some other form of cultural repre- infl ationary logic) disappears as an explicit sentation. The ubiquitous puns on ‘matter’ aspect of the argument. Instead, Barad credo not, alas, mark a rethinking of the key ates her caricature by saying what she is not concepts (materiality and resignifi cation) saying. So she argues against something and the relationship between them. Rather, or somebody throughout: ‘Discourse does it seems to be symptomatic of the extent to which matters of ‘fact’ (so to speak) have been not refer to linguistic or signifying systems’ replaced with matters of signifi cation (no (Barad, 2003: 819); ‘Discursive practices are scare quotes here). Language matters. Dis- not speech acts, linguistic representations, course matters. There is an important sense or even linguistic performances’; ‘discur- in which the only thing that does not seem to sive practices are not anthropomorphic matter anymore is matter. (Barad, 2003: 801) place-holders for the projected agency of individual subjects, culture or language’; Barad is offering a caricature of ‘the turns’ ‘matter, like meaning, is not an individually in recent theory, although no examples are articulated or static entity’; ‘Matter is not lit- provided to illustrate the argument. We tle bits of nature’; ‘matter is not a support, have no idea of who she is actually refer- location, referent or source of sustainability ring to (other than those who use ‘matter ’ for discourse’; ‘Matter is not immutable or as a pun). Matter here is what matters, as a passive’ (Barad, 2003: 821), and so on. Her position that defends itself against theories writing evokes the existence of an argument that make what really matters (matter) dis- that discourse ‘is’ this, or matter ‘is’ this by appear. She implies here that theorists are arguing that it is ‘not’ that, where the ‘that’ is suspicious of the facts of the matter—but an argument that is not attributed to some- not of culture: as if now we trust in words, body. The new materialism takes shape by not things. We are thus scared by— we the mobility and detachability of this ‘not’. put scare quotes around— the word ‘fact’ I would argue that the very claim that but not the word ‘signifi cation’. So Barad matter is missing can actually work to reify (2003: 801) asks, ‘How did language come matter as if it could be an object that is ab- to be more trustworthy than matter?’ One sent or present. By turning matter into an could note here that the poststructuralist object or theoretical category, in this way, critique of language was that words are far the new materialism reintroduces the bi- from trustworthy, and that they do not give narism between materiality and culture us direct access to things: I would even say that much work in science studies has that the poststructuralist turn begins with helped to challenge. Matter becomes a a suspicion with words as much as things. fetish object: as if it can be an ‘it’ that we This caricature of poststructuralism as can be for or against. What we might be matter- phobic involves a rather mournful encountering here is a desire for a pure lament: a call for a return to the facts of the theoretical object: whether that object is matter that new materialism (rather ironi- described as biology, matter, or affect. 5 But cally perhaps) shares with critical realism. such objects are invented, and when they We are witnessing perhaps an attachment are held in place then we are less able to do to this lament. In Barad’s paper, the carica- justice to the complexity of how all sorts of ture of whatever is the object of critique here different things cohere. To include biology (I say whatever because Barad, unlike other or materiality in the work that we do would critics mentioned, does not name feminism, be to give up the idea that they exist as ob- but simply evokes these ‘turns’ perhaps as jects that are given and which our task is general ‘turns’ within intellectual thought, simply to uphold. 540 | SARA AHMED

Indeed, as I have suggested, earlier femi- complexity. We don’t always have to make nist work on biology and matter emphasizes a return to earlier feminist work, but if we precisely the entanglements and traffi c be- represent that work as being this or that, tween nature/biology/culture and between then we need to make that return. Such a materiality and signifi cation (see Franklin, return would be ethical: we should avoid 2003; Haraway, 2003). Indeed, returning establishing a new terrain by clearing the to Haraway’s monumental book Primate ground of what has come before us. And Visions, published in 1989, we can see the we might not be quite so willing to deposit force of this commitment to thinking of the our hope in the category of ‘the new’. traffi c between nature and culture. She describes the book in the following terms: NOTES Primate Visions does not work by prohibiting I would like to acknowledge my debt to Sarah origin stories, or biological explanations of Franklin: our many conversations on the feminist what some would insist must be exclusively critique of feminist antibiologism have shaped cultural matters, or any of the enabling de- the arguments I develop here. vices among primate discourses’ appara- 1. This gesture is not specifi c to feminists working tuses of bodily production. I am not inter- in the area of new materialism. I have recently ested in policing the boundaries between heard examples of this gesture in critical race nature and culture— quite the opposite, I am studies, where scholars have argued that we need edifi ed by the traffi c. (Haraway, 1989: 377) to return to the ‘matter ’ of race, and get beyond the focus on race as construction or image, with Haraway’s work shows us how following its compulsive focus on racism as arbitrary. They the traffi c means letting go of proper ob- often do so by representing other work in the fi eld jects, including disciplinary objects: biology, as prohibiting talk about biology and matter. One speaker at a conference even argued that Audre culture, the social and so on. Things usually Lorde and Fanon reduced racialized bodies to happen when the objects of our theoretical ‘body image’) (which clearly neither of them do) work fall apart, when things get messy. What and that Deleuze and Guattari offered a better counts as biology and materiality within the alternative to thinking how the body comes to be sciences is after all a subject of debate and racialized (as assemblages). For an example of this argument for rethinking the materiality of race dispute. New developments in thinking that critiques other work for conceiving race ‘as within all disciplines—the sciences, social a problem of language’ see Arun Saldanha (2006). sciences and humanities—often proceed 2. In Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power, Eliz- from the collapse of their objects. abeth Grosz (2004b) does engage more directly In claiming to return to matter, we might with feminist approaches to biology and Darwin, referring both to Janet Sayers’ (1982) Biological then be losing sight of how matter matters Politics, and Patricia Gowaty’s (1995) edited colin different ways, for different feminisms, lection. She acknowledges that ‘Some feminist over time. The gesture is a forgetting as theorists have made tentative approaches to a well as a caricature. Of course, I have no theoretical analysis of Darwin’s scientifi c con- doubt reduced the complexity of the work tributions’ (Grosz, 2004b: 14). However, in both cases, she moves quickly to a critical language: I am engaging with. I was compelled to Sayers ‘sadly . . . leaves [Darwin’s] social and po- write this piece— by frustration, I admit. If litical implications largely unanalysed’ (Grosz, my argument against such gestures means 2004b: 15) and Gowaty ‘reduces both Darwinism anything it means this: when we describe and feminism to positions on two sides of a mu- what it is that we do, when we consider tual divide’ (Grosz, 2004b: 15– 16). What follows then is an entirely uncritical and redemptive how it is that we arrive at the grounds we reading of Darwin, based on the idea that Darwin inhabit, we need to appreciate the femi- can give feminism something it lacks: ‘we need to nist work that comes before us, in all its look again at his texts with the desire to see what IMAGINARY PROHIBITIONS | 541

they may be of value for providing feminist theory study of the glands or tissues that manufacture with richer and more subtle intellectual resources chemical compounds (hormones) with special to both attain its aims and refi ne its goals’ (Grosz, physiological activity and which release or se- 2004b: 18), which in turn positions feminism crete these agents into the circulating blood to in- rather passively as a recipient, as receiving wis- fl uence cells at a distance from the cells of origin’ dom. It is also worth noting that in this book, Grosz (Briscoe, 1978: 32). Her account of hormones and suggests that ‘it is only recently that feminist the- gender attends to these physiological processes: orists in the humanities and social sciences have Those hormones that are concerned with exhibited an openness toward biological research’ sexual phenomena are also qualitatively the (Grosz, 2004b: 217), which ignores the longer ge- same in both sexes. They are produced and nealogy of feminist science studies: one thinks released by the following scheme: the pineal of classics such as Alice Through the Microscope, gland, which regulates the hypothalamus; the produced by the Brighton Women and Science hypothalamus secretes hormones that regu- Group in 1980 (Birke et al., 1980), which involves late the rate of pituitary hormone secretion; contributions from feminists based in humanities the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland se- and social science disciplines; or books like The cretes hormones that control the gonads and Woman in the Body, published by Emily Martin mammary glands; the gonads in turn secrete (1987), which contributed to the analysis of sci- sex hormones in response to stimulation by ence as culture. Indeed, we could turn to the ed- pituitary hormones called gonadotropins; ited collection Off- Centre: Feminism and Cultural the adrenal cortex or cortices secrete sex hor- Studies (Franklin et al., 1991), which contains a mones in response to stimulation by another section titled ‘Science and Technology’ (with indi- of the pituitary hormones, ACTH or the adre- vidual contributions from Maureen McNeil, Sarah nocorticotropic hormones. (Briscoe, 1978: 33) Franklin, Wendy Fyfe, Deborah Lynn Steinberg and Tessa Randles) and reminds us that feminist 5. I would also argue that recent work on ‘the auton- cultural studies and feminist science studies have omy of affect’, which relies on the sharp distinc- a shared genealogy. We also need to recognize tion between affect and emotion, repeats some that many of the feminist theorists trained in the of the gestures that are foundational within the biological sciences actually work in, and contrib- new materialism (see Massumi, 2002). Elspeth ute to, humanities and social science disciplines Probyn (2005: 11), for example, describes affect (e.g. Donna Haraway, Sandra Harding, Evelyn Fox as biology and emotion as culture, which creates Keller, Lynda Birke and Ruth Hubbard). The his- a ‘basic distinction’ between biology and culture. tory of feminist science studies is exemplary as While this argument is an important critique of a history of the willingness to cross the borders the failure to recognize the biological aspects of between the humanities, social sciences and bi- emotion in cultural studies, or the cultural as- ological sciences. This interest in the biological pects of emotion within the biological sciences sciences cannot thus be described as recent for (Probyn, 2005: xv), it might be useful to challenge feminists in the humanities and social sciences, the distinction itself: to explore how culture and though of course it might be the case that a more biology are mutually implicated; how neither are specifi c group of feminist theorists have become given, how they shape and inform each other. interested in biology and science more recently. 3. Reading Biological Politics, it was striking that ‘biol- REFERENCES ogy’ is not the only object of critique. For example, the use of biological arguments to support sexism is Barad, Karen (2003) ‘Posthumanist Performativity: contrasted to the use of ‘social constructionist argu- Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes ments against women’ (Sayers, 1982: 120). Indeed, if to Matter ’, Signs 28(3): 801– 31. we think of the feminist critique of biology as part of Birke, Lynda (1986) Women, Feminism and Biology. the broader feminist critique of epistemology, then Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall/Harvester we can see how much feminism presses against the Wheatsheaf. boundaries of all forms of disciplinary knowledge: Birke, Lynda, Wendy Faulkner, Sandy Best, Deidre including linguistics, psychology, history, sociology, Janson-Smith and Kathy Overfi eld, eds (1980) economics and literature. Such pressing points are Alice Through the Microscope: The Power of Sci- also points of engagement. ence over Women’s Lives. London: Virago. 4. Or take Anne M. Briscoe’s wonderful article pub- Briscoe, Anne M. (1978) ‘Hormones and Gender’, lished in 1978 on ‘Hormones and Gender ’ which pp. 31–50 in Ethel Tobach and Betty Rosoff (eds) gives a detailed account of endocrinology, ‘the Genes and Gender 1. New York: Gordon Press. 542 | SARA AHMED

Butler, Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Janson- Smith, Deidre (1980) ‘What is Socio-Biology’, Discursive Limits of Sex. London and New York: pp. 62–88 in Lynda Birke, Wendy Faulkner, Sandy Routledge. Best, Deidre Janson-Smith and Kathy Overﬁ eld Cheah, Pheng (1996) ‘Mattering’, Diacritics 26(1): (eds) Alice Through the Microscope: The Power of 108– 39. Science over Women’s Lives. New York: Virago. Clough, Patricia (2007) ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–33 in Pa- Kirby, Vicky (1997) Telling Flesh: The Substance of the tricia Clough with Jean Halley (eds) The Affective Corporeal. New York: Routledge. Turn: Theorizing the Social. Durham, NC: Duke Martin, Emily (1987) The Woman in the Body: A Cul- University Press. tural Analysis of Reproduction. Milton Keynes: Franklin, Sarah (2003) ‘Rethinking Nature–Culture: An- Open University Press. thropology and The New Genetics’, Anthopological Massumi, Brian (2002) Parables for the Virtual: Move- Theory 3(1): 65– 85. ment, Affect, Sensation. Durham, NC: Duke Uni- Franklin, Sarah, Celia Lury and Jackie Stacey, eds versity Press. (1991) Off-Centre: Feminism and Cultural Studies. Probyn, Elspeth (2005) Blush: Faces of Shame. Minne- London: Harper Collins Academic. apolis: Minnesota University Press. Fraser, Mariam (2002) ‘What is the Matter of Feminist Saldanha, Arun (2006) ‘Reontologising Race: The Criticism’, Economy and Society 31(4): 606– 25. Machinic Geography of Phenotope’, Environment Gowaty, Patricia A., ed. (1997) Evolution and Femi- and Planning D; Society and Space 24: 2– 24. nism. New York: Chapman and Hall. Sayers, Janet (1982) Biological Politics: Feminist and Grosz, Elizabeth (2004a) The Nick of Time: Politics, Anti- Feminist Perspectives. London: Routledge. Evolution and the Untimely. Durham, NC: Duke Sedgwick, Eve Kosolsky and Adam Frank (1995) ‘In- University Press. troduction’, Shame and Its Sisters: Silvian Tomkins Grosz, Elizabeth (2004b) Time Travels: Feminism, Na- Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ture, Power. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Squier, Susan Merrill (2004) Liminal Lives: Imagin- Haraway, Donna (1989) Primate Visions: Gender, Race, ing the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine. and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New Durham, NC: Duke University Press. York: Routledge. Wilson, Elizabeth (1998) Neural Geographies: Fem- Haraway, Donna (2003) The Haraway Reader. New inism and the Microstructure of Cognition. New York: Routledge. York: Routledge. Hird, Myra (2004) ‘Feminist Matters: New Material- Wilson, Elizabeth (2004) Psychosomatic: Feminism ist Considerations of Sexual Difference’, Feminist and the Neurological Body. Durham: Duke Uni- Theory 5(2): 223– 32. versity Press.

CHAPTER 32

From Science and Technology to Feminist Technoscience Jutta Weber

INTRODUCTION projects planned and undertaken by governments and the military. Huge techno- taking responsibility for the social relations logical systems like nuclear power plants, of science and technology means refusing weapon systems, and undertakings like the an anti- science metaphysics, a demonology Manhattan Project or ARPANET 1 were the of technology, and so means embracing the prototypes of the technology of that time. skillful task of reconstructing the boundar- No wonder that feminist or critical theory ies of daily life . . . It is not just that science and technology are possible means of great stressed science and technology as ‘mascu- human satisfaction, as well as a matrix of line culture’ (Wajcman, 1991), partly driven complex dominations . . . It means both by masculinist dreams of omnipotence or buil ding and destroying machines, identi- ruled by fantasies of death (Keller, 1985). ties, categories, relationships . . . (Haraway, Equating science and technology with gov- 1985: 181) ernment projects and the military often led to a ‘demonology’ of technology in feminist In most of contemporary Western theory, and other critical theory. science and technology are regarded as a A good example is the critique of re- central part of culture with discourses and production technologies in the 1970s and practices tightly interwoven with our daily 1980s. These technologies were regarded as lives. In the mid 1980s, when feminist sci- not driven by fantasies of death, but by the ence studies scholar Donna Haraway wrote longing to unveil the secrets of life. Since the lines cited above, this understanding the birth in the 1970s of Louise Brown, the of science and technology was not self- fi rst in vitro fertilization child, reproduc- evident. Science was often thought of in tion technologies evoked fears of masculin- terms of classical sciences, such as physics, ist appropriation of women’s reproductive mathematics, biology, or chemistry, disci- abilities, leading to a repressive population plines many of us ‘well-educated girls’ were policy. There were many women activists not very fond of at school. In the Cold War fi ghting against these new technologies, period, most science studies scholars di- like the well- known group FINRRAGE, rected their attention towards so- called ‘Big founded by Gena Corea, Maria Mies, and Science’ (Price, 1963). Researchers equated others. To them, reproductive technolo- science and technology with hierarchi- gies turn the female body into a laboratory cally organized scientifi c and technological for the industrialized production of living 544 | JUTTA WEBER

beings (Corea et al., 1985; Wajcman, 1991). in agriculture, medicine, and procreation These technologies were regarded as an- challenged the identifi cation of science other means to prolong the subordination and technology with centralized, top-down of women. Shulamith Firestone (1970) was research projects and huge technological one of the few feminists who celebrated systems. Since the late 1980s, it has become the new reproductive technologies as a more and more obvious that science and possible means to liberate women. technology are deeply interwoven into our everyday lives. Donna Haraway (1985), Elvira Scheich TECHNOLOGY, SCIENCE, AND (1989), and others have shown how cen- MASCULINITY tral humanist concepts like nature, body, Technology is often described as a genu- and identity get refi gured through tech- ine ‘masculine culture’ grounded in pa- noscientifi c discourses and practices. The triarchal structures, gender relations, and relations of nature and technology and identity politics. While some feminists concomitantly those of gender are pro- interpreted the desire for technologies as foundly reshaped in the process of ap- grounded in a ‘natural’ tendency of men propriating nature in Western societies, towards aggression and an obsession with facilitating the idea of the co-construction control, others insisted on distinguishing of science, technology, society, and gender. ‘between different forms of masculinity in To give an example, when reprogenetics or relation to different areas of technology. To sex change becomes a common commer- say that control over technology is a core cial practice for many people or care ro- element of masculinity is not to imply that bots are developed to take over the former there is one masculinity or one technol- ‘feminine’ task of caring for children or ogy’ (Wajcman, 1991: 143). Not only does sick people, old borders between sex and this view stereotype masculinity, but other gender, between private and public, be- feminists reminded us that the emphasis tween a so-called masculinist technology on male-dominated technologies like the and a feminine Lebenswelt, implode. The cyber and life sciences ‘reproduces the ste- constructionist move in feminist and other reotype of women as technologically igno- science studies challenges the borders of rant and incapable’ (Wajcman, 1991: 136). the social and the technoscientifi c. Against this view, Ruth Schartz Cowan and Feminist theorists also articulated a new Judith Wajcman, among others, stress the bonding of technoscience with transna- importance of the ‘technological revolu- tional capitalism, arguing that new tech- tion in the home’ (Cowan, 1976: 33). nologies contribute to ‘increasing capital The feminist lack of interest in science concentration and the monopolization of and technology studies until the late 1980s the means of life, reproduction and labor’ was mostly grounded in the understand- and to ‘global deepening of inequality’ ing of science and technology as military- (Haraway, 1997: 60). The effects are two- biased ‘Big Science’ and ‘masculine culture’, fold. On the one hand, relations of domi- while household technologies, new media, nation are becoming more complex and as well as new technosciences were, for the opaque. On the other hand, the reshaping most part, disregarded. The increased use of central categories through technosci- of television, video, cable, personal com- entifi c practices opens up new options for puters, and other developments in com- refi guring gender, nature, and sociotech- munication and information technology as nical systems. As structures of domination well as the proliferation of biotechnology are getting more and more complex and FROM SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TO FEMINIST TECHNOSCIENCE | 545 the reshaping of old hierarchical catego- epistemological and ontological frame- ries seems possible, the demonology of work of earlier approaches, but also by technology appears more and more inad- rethinking these frameworks in the light equate as a critical attitude towards our of contemporary sociopolitical develop- technoscientifi c culture. ments as well as prevailing technological practices, artifacts, and material cultures.3 Recent studies question essentialist CONTINUING THE STORY understandings of science and technol- Today’s feminist critique often uses the for- ogy partially because of their cumulative mer demonology of technology as a point fusion. When science, technology, society, of departure to tell a story of progress from and industry amalgamate into dense net- liberal to postmodern feminism.2 Accord- works, and the sociocultural and the tech- ing to this narrative, liberal and Marxist nological are tightly interwoven, the idea feminist critiques failed to critically ana- that a masculinist technology determines lyze science and technology because they a feminine Lebenswelt appears ridiculous. considered the latter as neutral or did not Technology as an intimate part of our lives pay attention to the symbolic dimension of is no more the ‘Other’, as it was often under- technoscience. However, the Marxist fem- stood in the age of ‘Big Science’, but rather inist critique is acknowledged at least for part of our human condition. The demoni- analyzing gender in terms of social struc- zation of technology becomes counterpro- ture, while it is conceded that radical and ductive as it hinders understanding of our ecofeminist approaches successfully elab- life conditions in the age of technoscience orated the symbolic dimensions of science, and the refi guring of ontological realms of technology, and masculinity. However, science, technology, society, and gender. these perspectives are blamed for locat- I will, therefore, tell my story of femi- ing ‘women’s essence . . . in their biology’ nist science and technology studies in this (Gill and Grint, 1995: 5). Unlike the liberal chapter using a situated sociocultural and and Marxist feminist approaches, early historically grounded approach. I con- social construction feminism understood centrate on the close ties between chang- that ‘women’s alienation from technology ing theoretical approaches of science and is a product of the historical and cultural technology studies and the material, sym- construction of technology as masculine’. bolic, and sociopolitical dimensions of sci- Social construction, however, did not suc- ence and technology. My aim is to develop ceed in fully explicating ‘the relations be- a stance which goes beyond euphoric affi r- tween the key terms, “men” or “males”, mation or pessimistic refusal of technosci- “masculinity” and “patriarchy” ’ (Gill and ence, and, rather, articulates a perspective Grint, 1995: 12). from which the omnipresence of techno- I have deliberately exaggerated this scientifi c discourses and practices in every somewhat Hegelian story of progress to realm of our daily lives becomes visible clarify my argument that as knowledge is and thereby available for analysis. situated, it always takes a perspective. The problem is how to write a non-linear GENDERED AND OTHER CRITIQUES and complex historiography of theories OF SCIENCE and practical engagements, as well as the artifacts of science and technology. It In the fi rst decades of women’s studies in might help to avoid linear stories of fem- the 1960s and 1970s, it was mostly women inist theory by refl ecting not only on the scientists confronted with discrimination 546 | JUTTA WEBER

via institutional and gender identity pol- to meet and compile information about itics who engaged in critical science and women’s bodies and health care. Their dis- technology studies.4 They reconstructed cussion papers were assembled and pub- the achievements of other women scien- lished in 1970 as the fi rst version of Our tists, rendering them visible for a broader Bodies, Ourselves; in the last thirty years, audience and analyzing the mechanisms OBOS has been translated and adapted of their exclusions.5 By discovering the to many different cultures all around the large number of women scientists who had world (Davis, 2002). Challenging men’s to live on the margins of intellectual and expertise ‘was an extension of this recog- academic life, they contributed to a grow- nition of the power of scientifi c ideas to ing mistrust of the self-ascribed values of defi ne women’s sense of bodily awareness, neutrality and objectivity in science. sense of self and sense of reality that pro- In addition to the analysis of the propelled the feminist analysis of science to fessional politics of gender, inquiries into investigate the historical emergence of scientifi c constructions of sex differences particular constructions of women and the resulted in a misogynist portrait of sci- natural within scientifi c discourse’ (McNeil ence (Bleier, 1984; Fausto-Sterling, 1985; and Franklin, 1991: 134). Hubbard, Henifi n, and Fried, 1979). Fem- In addition to the women’s move- inist analysis showed that the construc- ment, other social movements, such as tion of sex differences in biology revolves the Radical Science Movement in Britain, around ‘errors of the following sort: (a) the the anti-war movement, and the ecology world of human bodies is divided into two movement, contributed to questioning the kinds, male and female (i.e., by sex); (b) privileged status of scientifi c knowledge. additional (extraphysical) properties are The battles against reproductive technolo- culturally attributed to those bodies (e.g., gies, biotechnological products, bio- piracy, active/passive, independent/dependent, the Human Genome Diversity Project, and primary/secondary: read gender )’ (Keller, the patenting of living beings have helped 1995a: 87). For example, the process of to question technoscientifi c practices. At conception was until recently described as the same time, they demonstrated their a ‘passive egg’ waiting for the heroic, active growing impact on everyday life. In view of sperm (Martin, 1991). According to Ruth ecological disasters caused by industrial- Hubbard, we fi nd manifold versions of the ization, ecofeminism and radical feminism ‘sociobiologist’s claim that some of the sex criticized the Anglo- American understand- differences in social behavior that exist in ing of nature as the ‘Other’, as feminine, our society (for example, aggressiveness, inferior, and uncanny, that has to be con- competitiveness, and dominance among trolled by an autonomous subject (a White men; coyness, nurturance, and submis- man). They fostered the insight that nature siveness among women) are human uni- should not be reduced to a resource and versals that have existed in all times and passive material for men’s ends, but re- cultures’ (1988: 8). garded as an active agent endowed with The so-called ‘objective’ knowledge of its own logic. As many critics pointed out, male experts was also radically challenged the hybridization of science, technology, by critical practices in the women’s move- the military, industry, and politics in the ment. For example, the famous workshop last decades also helped to undermine on ‘women and their bodies’, held in Bos- the understanding of science as the only ton in 1969, promoted alternative forms of legitimate producer of knowledge. These health care. The workshop group continued movements questioned so-called truths FROM SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TO FEMINIST TECHNOSCIENCE | 547

‘discovered’ by science about the nature of science studies ask how and for whom nature, of woman, and of sex. knowledge, technologies, agents, and hy- The growing interest in science and tech- brids have been employed so far and con- nology studies is partly attributable to the tinue to be employed:6 deconstruction of the grand narratives of progress, scientifi c truth, and objectivity. It with the hope that the technologies for es- also made technoscience a promising fi eld tablishing what may count as the case about for women’s and gender studies. But the the world may be rebuilt to bring the techni- challenge to positivism and the rise of the cal and the political back into realignment so social construction perspective are not due that questions about possible livable worlds only to the radical critique of the practices lie visibly at the heart of our best science. and discourses of technoscience by fem- (Haraway, 1997: 39; my emphasis) inists and ‘other Others’. They are also related to changes in the theoretical premises Feminist approaches refl ect on the need in science and technology which formed for political refl exivity in theory, which is the basis for the emergence of new techno- often neglected in mainstream science sciences. Wave/particle duality in quantum and technology studies. At the heart of physics is probably the most famous ex- feminist studies lies the search for better, ample for challenging objectivity through or at least more visible, ways to design scientifi c theories and practices. Haraway and use categories, knowledge, and tech- (1985; 1991), Katherine Hayles (1999), and nologies, to shape objects, artifacts, and others have analyzed the departure from worlds in order to make exclusions visible the classical Cartesian heritage, with its and to overcome the hardships of gender- dualism of observer and observed, subject asymmetries, reductionism, and injustice.7 and object, body and mind, towards con- In sum, the critique of positivism and nat- structivist epistemologies and ‘posthuman’ uralist rhetorics became possible through concepts of cybernetics, artifi cial intelli- many different factors: the liberal feminist gence, immunology, and brain research. critique of an unfair and misogynist science, In view of the decline of classical scientifi c the ecofeminist critique of Western hyper- values, feminism strengthened the insight production, social movements challenging that trying to speak for nature—to interpret the privileged status of science, and the post- its own logic—always involves a politics of modern critique of ventriloquial politics of representation implying epistemological, representation. Posthumanist reconfi gura- ontological, and thereby political claims. tions of so-called natural entities like nature, Challenging the scientifi c and technolog- sex, and body also made visible the changed ical discourses of truth, feminism argued epistemological and ontological groundings that nature, sex, and biology are not given of science, which were induced by critical nor are they beyond representation, rather as well as technoscientifi c discourses and they are agents in a high-stakes game, a practices. The merging of science and tech- dynamic relationship as well as a product, nology, as well as that of technoscience, in- constructed and taking part in, or even dustry, and politics, all raise questions about constructing discourses and practices. The the idea of technological determinism. so- called ‘natural laws’ and empirical data In the following sections, I will map out of technoscience were reinterpreted as the movements of denaturalization, demateri- outcome of cultural practices with many alization, and renaturalization in construc- different human as well as non-human ac- tionist technoscience and contemporary tors. At present, feminist and other critical feminist science and technology studies. 548 | JUTTA WEBER

The merging of boundaries between nature/ between nature and culture its chimerical culture (Denaturalizing nature ), sex/gender character’ (Weber, 1999: 470). Nature be- (Constructing sex and gender), and science/ comes a toolkit and the world a realm of technology/society (Technoscience ) are at endless possibilities of recombination— the heart of the current epistemological with evolution tinkering around to fi nd and ontological reconfi gurations of our age. new ways of development and investment Cultural studies of science and technol- (see, among others, Jacob, 1977). Similar to ogy (Technoscience as cultural practice and this logic, organisms are not regarded as practical culture ) can be seen as an answer something static and given, but as evolv- to the new epistemological and ontological ing, parallel, and distributed networks, challenges induced by technoscientifi c de- that is a ‘fast, responsive, fl exible and self- velopments. I conclude with conditions of organizing system capable of constantly knowledge production (The reorganization of reinventing itself, sometimes in new and knowledge cultures in a messy global world ) surprising ways’ (Hayles, 1999: 158). At- and make suggestions for future directions. tention is given to the creation of spontaneous entities and the logic of emergent behavior. In other words, a constructionist DENATURALIZING NATURE: understanding of nature, organisms, and CONSTRUCTIONISM even sex can be found not only in critical IN CONTEMPORARY feminist theory but also in contemporary TECHNOSCIENCE(S) technosciences. Major concepts, such as nature, matter, Engineering nature makes techno- and body, are profoundly refi gured in con- scientifi c practices even more effi cient temporary technosciences. With the rise of (Haraway, 1997). This approach relies on system theory, cyberscience, and new life a constructionist stance—which implies sciences, there is a move towards the mo- radical changes in the understanding of lecularization of matter, breaking up or- science and nature in general. While mod- ganisms or cells into micro- parts down to ern scientifi c theories linked women and the subatomic level (Kay, 1996). This min- nature, under the assumption that they iaturization enabled ‘the translation of the were both immutable, the refi gured post- world into a problem of coding, a search human body departs from these essential- for a common language . . . and all hetero- ist and naturalizing premises. The body geneity can be submitted to disassembly, is no longer considered as ‘natural’ and reassembly, investment, and exchange’. In- ‘given’ in the sense of static, unchangeable, formation becomes ‘just that kind of quan- and governed by teleological and harmoni- tifi able element . . . which allows universal ous principles. With this move, the radical translation’ (Haraway, 1985: 164). feminist and other critiques of the natural- Technosciences nowadays do not see ist or essentialist grounding of the natural themselves as primarily engaged in sub- sciences became partly obsolete. jugating nature and its processes through This new denaturalization notwithstand- creating artifi cial natures via technological ing, there has been a strong movement of artifacts and systems, but through design- renaturalization emerging in the rhetorics ing and engineering nature in the sense of popular science, technosciences, and of reshaping and improving it. ‘The claim popular culture at the same time. Sponta- of technoscience not to create but to con- neity, change, and dynamics are often re- tinue the work of nature by rebuilding, con- interpreted as natural, evident, and given verting and perfecting it, gives the border by ‘Mother Nature’. The French molecular FROM SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TO FEMINIST TECHNOSCIENCE | 549 biologist François Jacob describes organ- sex/gender as a ‘boundary object’ (Bowker isms as ‘historical structures: literally cre- and Star, 1999), as a classifi cation sys- ations of history. They present not a perfect tem which holds together a globalized but product of engineering, but a patchwork of predominantly Anglo-American feminist odd sets pieced together when and wher- discourse. The differentiation of sex and ever opportunities arose. For the oppor- gender which pervades many feminist dis- tunism of natural selection . . . refl ects the courses in different languages shapes theo- very nature of a historical process full of retical frames, perspectives, and questions. contingency’ (Jacob, 1977: 1166, my em- It is a historical and situated classifi cation phasis). After all, it seems to be ‘Mother which produces a segmentation of the Nature’ which rendered organisms as world which fosters strict differentiations patchwork creations via natural selection. between the social and the biological.8 The change of ontological and epistemo- The suspicion that every possible differ- logical groundings in the technosciences entiation between biology and society, na- is made invisible by declaring the turbu- ture, and culture in feminist theories, too, lent, evolving body not as an effect of the only prolongs dubious defi nitions of the change of paradigm in (techno)science but natural and reifi es old normative descrip- as natural. tions of ‘woman’ might be only the fl ip side of diffi culties in mediating the social and the biological. 9 Sometimes these fears re- CONSTRUCTING SEX AND GENDER IN sult in a hyperproductive stance, whereby THE AGE OF REPROGENETICS AND a dogmatic denaturalization of gender SEX-CHANGE SURGERY and the body turns into their dematerial- Given the centrality of gender for feminist ization. In this conceptual frame of ideal- scholarship in general, science and tech- ism, matter or bodies are conceptualized nology studies are concerned with how as the exclusive product of history, society, ‘gendered artifacts may constitute the glue or discourse. Trying to overcome the dual that sometimes keeps gender relations sta- sex/gender system and the separation of ble, sometimes on the move’ (Berg and Lie, the biological and social often leads to an 1995: 346). These studies ask how gender, ignorance or even negation of material, understood as a product of diverse mate- bodily aspects. rial, symbolic, and sociopolitical processes While contemporary postmodern ap- ‘was at stake in key reconfi gurations of proaches favored denaturalization and even knowledge and practice that constituted dematerialization of the gendered body, modern science’ (Haraway, 1997: 27). Fem- they often ignored the strong development inist scholars are ‘particularly interested towards construction and denaturalization in the question how scientists have con- in technoscience itself. Many sociotechni- structed “woman” as a natural category’ cal developments already undermine the (Oudshoorn, 1996: 123). dual sex/ gender system and the natural What is the meaning of categories like in a more profound way than many post- ‘woman’, ‘sex’, or ‘gender’? Thinking about modern theorists had ever dreamed of: the category of gender highlights the per- new reproduction technologies, cosmetic formative character of feminist theory and surgery, and sex- change procedures are science studies, which are themselves a radically denaturalizing (and sometimes cultural practice and as such are entangled renaturalizing) the category of sex (Stone, in language games, sociopolitical expe- 1993; Stryker, 2000). For example, with the riences, and values. One can understand possibility of sex change in the second half 550 | JUTTA WEBER

of the twentieth century sex becomes— at ontological premises, like commitment to least in principle— an open, free- fl oating self- refl exivity, contextuality of knowledge, category.10 and interest in empowerment. They refl ect Technoscientifi c practices and artifacts on ‘standardization and local experience, such as reconstructive surgery and hor- (on) that which is between the categories, mones render radical physical sex change yet in relationship to them’ (Star, 1991: 39). possible. Thus the dual sex/gender system They are projects of political intervention is destabilized by making it (at least theo- and critique highlighted processes of dom- retically) a matter of technological inves- ination and resistance. The goal is to en- tigation and individual choice in Western able empowerment, particularly of those societies. who do not fi t the standard or who are on The denaturalization of bodies is the the margins of the production of knowl- ontological ground which makes it possi- edge and culture. ble to think of bodies as a toolkit, breaking While earlier approaches in the 1970s them down into small parts and reorga- and 1980s 12 mainly investigated the social nizing them in technoscientifi c practices. and political conditions of science (often Bodies are fragmented into different func- using a ‘classical’ concept of society), the tions, organs, cells, molecules, genes. A separation of science and society is now case in point is collaborative reproduction, being challenged, along with other sepa- in which body parts from different, some- rations such as ‘science and politics . . . or times anonymous donors are made to fi t science and culture. At the very least, one together in the laboratory. The laboratory such category cannot be used to explain product— an artifi cially fertilized egg—is the other, and neither can be reduced to subsequently implanted in a woman, who the status of context for the other’ (Har- is not necessarily the child’s genetic mother. away, 1997: 62). These challenges are due Collaborative reproduction becomes pos- to fundamental dissolutions of borders sible by the separation of sex, sexuality, between the ontological realms of science, reproduction, and kinship through which technology, industry, and society and the new complex relations of social and bio- refi guring of central epistemological con- logical kinship emerge. These denaturaliz- cepts. At present, we are experiencing a ing technoscientifi c practices also produce changed understanding of technology not new social and economic relations in the only in theory, but in the emerging techno- process of reproduction. But these new sciences themselves, which materializes in practices of reproduction are made invisi- concrete sociotechnical changes. ble at the same time by renaturalizing rhet- In pre-modern societies, technology was orics of ‘blood ties’ and the right to a ‘child understood mostly in the sense of human of one’s own’.11 knowledge, while in modernity, technology’s most important connotation was that of the artifact. Today, the contemporary di- TECHNOSCIENCE: A NEW mension of technology as system and pro- UNDERSTANDING OF SCIENCE AND cess becomes more and more important. TECHNOLOGY Technological systems are regarded as net- With the growing interest in techno- works with tightening connections and an science, we fi nd more feminist science organization of material and non-material studies which try to mediate de/construc- components which rely on scientifi c knowl- tionist with materialist and realist positions. edge, engineers, and juridical, economic, They share central epistemological and and other agents (Hughes, 1986). This new FROM SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TO FEMINIST TECHNOSCIENCE | 551 perspective makes visible the ‘seamless There has been a shift within and out- web’ of science, technology, society, indus- side many disciplines (sociology, cultural try. Strict distinctions between the socio- studies, art, philosophy, literature, an- cultural and the technical are no longer thropology) towards analyzing discourses plausible. In addition, the differences be- and practices of technoscience and its tween nature and culture are undermined growing impact on everyday life. While by technosciences which conduct their re- early approaches in feminist science and search mainly in the laboratory as they con- technology studies mainly focused on struct the nature they are investigating. classical sciences, it is now the so- called The term ‘technoscience’ marks the merg- technosciences—artifi cial intelligence, bio- ing of science, technology, industry, and the technology, neurosciences— which are at military, as well as the intensifi ed amalga- the center of feminist scholars’ attention. mation of science and technology, of society Now that science and technology have fusing with the technological, and of a new been identifi ed as deeply interwoven with effi ciency in industrial technologies which many other ontological realms, they are refi gures the organic in a new and most ef- understood as ‘cultural practice and prac- fi cient way. These developments are accom- tical culture’ (Haraway, 1997: 66). Culture panied by radical changes in the ontological is understood as a social practice, as an al- premises of (techno)sciences as well as some ways situated, heterogeneous, and complex of their rhetorical strategies and politics of process in which many different agents like representation (Weber, 1999; 2003). With concepts, machines, humans, and animals these multifaceted changes, new epistemol- produce meanings and thereby maintain or ogies and methodologies arise which stress refi gure cultural boundaries. the constructionist character of categories With this perspective, it becomes much such as science, technology, and society. easier to develop approaches which go beyond either the euphoric affi rmation of science and technology or their abstract TECHNOSCIENCE AS CULTURAL negation. Feminist science studies schol- PRACTICE AND PRACTICAL CULTURE ars now want to challenge boundaries and With the hybridization of science, tech- to refi gure concepts and frames of thought nology, industry, and society, it becomes by inventing powerful stories and different much easier to acknowledge that science socio-material practices. To strive for more and technology, deeply intermeshed in livable worlds beyond the hegemonic tales culture, are central sites for the produc- of progress, of technoscience as biological, tion of ideology. It also becomes easier to and technological determination means grant oneself the right to intervene: ‘we also to reinterpret what counts as nature, have a right, and in fact a duty, to debate, as sex, or as gender. The central premises contest, modify and perhaps even to trans- of recent feminist science and technology form’ (Balsamo, 1998: 294). Even if we are studies are that science and culture are not trained and socialized in technosci- deeply interwoven, that facts are theory- ences and even if we are not part of that laden, and that theories are not neutral community of knowledge producers, we but can better be seen as stories. There are are, nevertheless, required to refl ect on close linkages between metaphors and fac- technoscientifi c developments which are tuality, between semiotic and material pro- shaping our world in profound ways. cesses. The relationships between science, Today, hybrids, artifacts, and cyborgs technology, knowledge, and society are populate feminist theories and narratives. increasingly viewed as open and dynamic. 552 | JUTTA WEBER

Intervention into semiotic–material con- important approach in the social sciences, fi gurations of humans, non-humans, and especially sociology. Other frequent trans- machines is now seen as not only a possi- disciplinary travelers are the concepts of ble but a necessary political practice.13 network, emergence, and cyborg, which lose and gain new connotations, change shape, and transport frames of meanings. THE REORGANIZATION OF The (re)naissance of inter- /transdis- KNOWLEDGE CULTURES IN A MESSY ciplinarity today seems due not only to GLOBALIZED WORLD developments in critical theory, but also Contemporary science and technology to the fl oating of concepts and frames of studies use theories and methods from very meanings between the disciplines. While divergent disciplines and prefer no unifi ed transdisciplinary exchange between cul- methodology. Inter- or transdisciplinarity is tures of knowledge has not been unknown grounded in a radical challenge of the pop- to modern science, I would claim that ular idea of two separate cultures of ‘hard’ this exchange rapidly increased with the and ‘soft’ science, which was introduced by emergence of technosciences in the post- Charles Percy Snow (1959) and was revived World War II period. It might be an irony in the science wars in the 1990s: of history that exactly at the time when Snow complained about the advancing The current ‘two cultures’ discourse assumes gap between scientists, intellectuals, and a division of labor: humanities research- the public because of the specialization ers are critics who write commentaries on of science and technology, an advanc- art and ideas, while scientists, engineers, ing exchange emerged between scientists and physicians fi nd out facts about the real and intellectuals in new (techno)scien- world and fi x real problems. More succinctly, tifi c fi elds. Many technoscientists had the the humanities are for refl ection and the sciences are for investigation. . .[C]ultural feeling that the classical approaches could studies of science, technology, and medicine not provide answers to new demands and violate this division of labor and violate our questions. Therefore they started to work conventions of expertise. (Reid and Traweek, transdisciplinarily out of a need for new 2000: 7) methods and conceptional frames. For example, the transdisciplinary fi eld of cy- With the breakdown of borders between bernetics or, as Evelyn Fox Keller calls it, science and society, between nature and cyberscience ‘was developed to deal with culture, and with the understanding of the messy complexity of the postmodern science as a cultural practice, it becomes world’ (1995b: 85). This might be true as more and more obvious that all sciences well for other research fi elds like molecular are determined by cultural values, lan- biology, immunology, and others. guage games, and politics of represen- Science studies scholars Egon Becker tation. Moreover, these values and ideas and Thomas Wehling stress that the trans- cannot be categorized in terms of differ- fer of concepts became a ‘central element ent cultures of knowledge. They travel be- of the dynamic of science and of theories’ tween different disciplines, realms, and since the 1950s (1993: 42; my translation). discourses. Take, for example, the notable But the effects of these transfers had not metamorphosis of system theory in the been analyzed within the disciplines them- twentieth century. Starting with biology, it selves. Since the 1990s several feminist sci- went on to become a central part of cyber- ence studies scholars have reconstructed netics and molecular biology, and later an the transfer of metaphors and concepts FROM SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TO FEMINIST TECHNOSCIENCE | 553 throughout divergent disciplines. For ex- invisibility of political hierarchies and eco- ample, Lily Kay (1999) analyzed the use nomic injustices— not the least between of linguistic metaphors and concepts in North and South, West and East. the life sciences; Elvira Scheich (1993) has Today successful fi elds of research (in shown the major impact of system theory terms of funding) are those that follow these on the social sciences. Crossing the borders new cognitive and epistemological prem- between different disciplines, between the ises. Others that are unable or unwilling so-called hard and soft sciences, seems to to do so often lack funding and, therefore, be much more common than scientists many so- called old- fashioned academic and intellectuals in either ‘culture’ realized. institutes have closed down. This develop- It is my contention that the intensifi ed ment might give some clues as to why such permeability of the borders of disciplines is divergent disciplines as microbiology, bio- linked to recent transformations in science, ethics, and robotics are advancing fi elds, technology, and society. By this, I mean the while disciplines like zoology, philosophy reorganization of the cultures of knowl- of history, or botany are on the decline. edges in our globalized world. I will not draw The reorganization of cultures of knowl- here on the new organization of knowledge edge is not only shaped by processes of through education policy, restructuring of transnational capitalism and reorganized academic fi elds, and redistribution of re- along theoretical fault lines, but also the sources (infrastructure, funding, and so on) outcome of new questions and objects of in the context of multifaceted processes of study emerging in a globalized word. As globalization. What I want to stress here is feminist science studies recognize the re- that knowledge is restructured not along organization of knowledge cultures, I think disciplines but primarily along certain the- it becomes a necessity to focus not only on oretical fault lines. Mainstream research the production of artifacts and practices areas are currently operating at a level of but also on hegemonies of cognitive and metalanguage, that is formal systems and epistemological frames of thought. Up to models. They succeed in making divergent now we have no or only a few studies on objects compatible through a contempo- the contemporary epistemology in terms rary logic of translation and coding which of hegemonic styles and frames of thought abstracts from material aspects of these ob- (Foucault, 1970). jects (Knapp, 1998: 49). System theory is a good example of this FUTURE DIRECTIONS move as is the already-mentioned dominant concept of information in cyberscience, After all, in the present world ‘after moder- which has been conceptualized as a quan- nity,’ there is much to learn and much to do. tifi able element beyond materiality and To be sure, in a climate of polemics, thought- meaning thereby allowing universal trans- ful interdisciplinary refl ection is hard to lation. The decontextualization of knowl- come by. (Reid and Traweek, 2000: 15) edge allows the development of powerful theorems that can be applied to nearly Keeping in mind recent epistemological every fi eld and context, regardless of their and ontological shifts in the age of tech- contextual meaning and material ground- noscience, the emergence of posthuman ing. The logic of universal translation is es- bodies, nature(s), gender(s) as well as the pecially attractive in a global world where reorganization of knowledge cultures, I compatibility becomes a central value. want to make some suggestions concern- These formal approaches also support the ing future directions for feminist studies. 554 | JUTTA WEBER

Feminist science studies scholars ana- nature, intelligible bodies, or effi cient ma- lyzing transdisciplinary cultures of knowl- chines. To question techno-pragmatic and edge should not only be aware of the hegemonic forms of rationality and the multifaceted transfer of concepts, meth- dominant logic of effi ciency, usability, and ods, frames, and theories, but also adapt common sense, we need to intervene and these insights to their own analysis. Re- challenge hierarchical sociotechnical rela- fl ecting on one’s own conceptual frame tions by developing new theories of our age requires at the very least a kind of second- of technoscience. order refl ection that keeps in mind that theory itself is imprinted by the traveling ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS concepts, epistemological approaches, and visual and rhetoric practices of the techno- I am very grateful to Kathy Davis who read sciences being analyzed. Thus, the critique and commented on several drafts of the of the discourses and practices of techno- original essay. Many thanks also to Judith sciences should question its own ontolog- Lorber and Mary Evans. ical and epistemological groundings and its entanglement with our technoculture. It is my hope that this kind of second- NOTES order refl ection will enable alternative 1. ARPANET was the forerunner of the Internet and research which moves beyond euphoric developed to promote computer networks for celebrations of the most recent concepts military use. and ideas from the technosciences as well 2. See, for example, Rosalind Gill and Keith Grint as pessimistic and abstract negation of (1995) and Sandra Harding (1986). the so- called ‘other’ culture of technosci- 3. In my usage, ‘ontology’ signifi es the assumptions every theory has to make with regard to the ex- ence— a stance that predominated gender istence (of constellations) of things, entities, etc. studies for such a long time. Perhaps such The core assumptions are contained in the meta- a second-order refl ection could also foster theoretical principles. These general principles a critical usage of semiotic– material fi elds encompass not only syntactical structures and linked to the technosciences, which were criteria of critique but ontological options. The last are responsible for what counts as a fact, so long imagined as the ‘Other’, as alien as being. and rejected in the abstract. If feminist sci- 4. For the study of gender in science through history, ence and other critical studies succeed in see Londa Schiebinger (2000). Beside women showing the intensifi ed blurring of the sci- scientists, there were also feminist sociologists ence and culture, it could help to overcome (Berg, Cockburn, Wacjman), philosophers (Code, Harding, Longino, Merchant), anthropologists old dichotomies of euphoric affi rmation of (Lie, Star, Suchman, Traweek), and a few histo- technology or its pessimistic refusal. rians (Duden, Schiebinger) who were engaged In my view, it is quite important that fem- in the fi eld of critical science and technology inist studies continue to elaborate that the studies in the early days of the second women’s technical is the political for all the divergent movement. 5. For an overview, see Schiebinger (1989) and Re- fi elds of science and technology, showing nate Tobies (2001). and analyzing the ongoing co-construction 6. See Haraway (1985; 1997), Harding (1986) Susan of gender, science, and technology. In Leigh Star (1991), and Lucy Suchman (1987). order to take part in the shaping of con- 7. See, for example, Lorraine Code (1987), Haraway temporary sociotechnical practices and (1988), Nancy Hartsock (1983), Helen Longino (1990), and Hilary Rose (1983). discourses, we need to engage with today’s 8. On paradoxes of gender, see also Judith Lorber scientifi c, cultural, and social turbulences, (1994). to engage in contests about what counts as 9. See Wendy Cealey Harrison (2006). FROM SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TO FEMINIST TECHNOSCIENCE | 555

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CHAPTER 33

Eco/Feminism and Rewriting the Ending of Feminism: From the Chipko Movement to Clayoquot Sound Niamh Moore

carry out research, because the campaign FROM THE CHIPKO MOVEMENT offered a fertile site through which to ex- TO CLAYOQUOT SOUND AND BACK amine a whole range of issues of ongoing AGAIN I concern for eco/feminism (see Moore, In the summer of 1993 a local environ- 2003, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c). 2 I was mental group organised a peace camp to struck by the vibrancy of the campaign, support the blockading of logging roads but also by the difﬁ culty and challenge of in Clayoquot Sound, on Vancouver Is- bringing what was happening in Clayo- land, British Columbia in Canada, as part quot into conversation with key debates of ongoing campaigning against clear- cut in feminism. There was, for instance, the logging of temperate rainforest.1 The cam- stark contrast between the prevailing nar- paign by the Friends of Clayoquot Sound ratives, in the early 1990s and since, of (the Friends) brought an unanticipated and the end—or death—of feminism, and the unprecedented 12,000 people to the camp. generative politics of Clayoquot, and eco/ Many took part in the workshops on non- feminism more generally. Similarly, de- violence and civil disobedience offered spite common assumptions about eco/ daily at the camp, before participating in feminism’s essentialism, often understood the blockade of the logging road the follow- as manifest through maternalist discourses, ing morning. By the time the camp closed there was little evidence of this at the at the end of the summer, over 800 people camp (and interestingly, the camp was had been arrested following the symbolic mixed, not women- only). Indeed, essen- blockades. In the mass trials which followed tialism seemed to offer a very limited way all were found guilty and many received of understanding the politics of Clayoquot. jail sentences. The camp which supported Moreover, and importantly for the focus these blockades was said to be based on of this article, in the context of critiques ‘feminist’ principles, and sometimes these of white Western feminism for being im- were even explicitly articulated as ‘ecofemi- perialist, colonialist, ethnocentric, racist, nist’ principles. The slippage between these universalising, homogenising, and roman- terms suggests some of the tensions which ticising, eco/feminism’s commitment to form the context for this article. insisting on the international, also man- I was at the camp and the blockades in ifest in a number of ways at Clayoquot, 1993 and returned to Clayoquot in 1996 to countered prevailing trends in feminism 558 | NIAMH MOORE

away from claims of global sisterhood. One Chipko movement which were understood of my ongoing fascinations is the paradox as manifesting particularly diffi cult ver- of the sheer vitality of this eco/feminist sions of essentialism: that of universalising activism, and its insistence on international women–nature relationships, of homo- connections, in contrast to the widely cir- genising ‘Third World women’, of cultural culating accounts of the end of feminism, appropriation, of the idealisation of indig- and especially the end of global sisterhood, enous knowledges and subsistence living. which emerged in the 1990s. Thus this Understanding this rapid shift requires article is also about how histories of eco/ attention to ongoing debates in feminism. feminism, including tensions between In the context of controversies in eco/ theory and activism, are narrated. feminism over difference, race and the I take as a particular departure point for international, it has become diffi cult to my explorations here, a moment from an in- read Langer’s claim that the work of the terview with Fireweed (Fireweed, interview, Chipko movement was being carried on 14 July 1996), when she told me about a in Clayoquot, and its approving repetition conference that she had recently attended.3 by Fireweed, as anything other than yet At the conference, Valerie Langer, one of the more evidence of eco/feminism’s ongoing directors of the Friends, stood up following and persistent essentialism, universalism, a talk from Vandana Shiva, and told Shiva racism, neocolonialism, imperialism, ro- that the work of the Chipko movement was manticisation of subsistence practices, ig- being continued in Clayoquot. 4 Shiva’s ac- norance, naiveté, and so on. However, this count of Chipko as a women’s movement is precisely what I attempt in this article. which formed spontaneously to protest I pose a number of questions: how has it commercial logging in the Garwhal Hima- become so easy to produce and proliferate layas by hugging trees, has been compelling such defi nitive truths about eco/feminism, for many, though is also not without its de- about Shiva, and the Chipko movement, tractors (Moore, 2008c; Shiva, 1988). and the international more generally, to the The reference by Langer to the Chipko exclusion of other stories? What work have movement was not the only moment when such characterisations done? What pur- Chipko was publicly invoked in connection poses have they served? What have been with Clayoquot. The award- winning docu- the, possibly unintended, consequences of mentary, Fury for the Sound: The Women at such accounts? How could Langer’s state- Clayoquot, was widely shown on Canadian ment be read differently and what would television, and opens with a clip of Shiva the implications of this be? (Wine, 1997). There were no doubt other In opening up the possibilities for un- references to Chipko in the many conver- derstanding Langer’s claim, I trace what sations and writings about the campaign. was at stake in various manifestations of This mention of Chipko was not unusual eco/feminism at the time and since, with or idiosyncratic: by the early 1990s Chipko a particular focus on the international. In had arguably become the iconic reference taking this approach, I do not intend to and exemplary, inspirational tale of many produce a defi nitive account of what eco/ eco/feminist books. Yet, very quickly, the feminism is, or was then. Rather, echo- celebration of Chipko in many academic ing Noël Sturgeon’s (1997) genealogical eco/feminist texts waned, to be replaced approach to eco/feminism, I develop my by considerable efforts to demonstrate own necessarily and intentionally partial recognition of, and distance from, the account.5 Through a constant movement problems of repeated invocations of the back and forth, between the circulation of ECO/FEMINISM AND REWRITING THE ENDING OF FEMINISM | 559 eco/feminism in texts and in activism, be- was not dogmatic and could embrace dif- tween Chipko and Clayoquot, between the ference; an important value in feminism local and the global, between feminism and in the early 1990s. With such an emphasis eco/feminism, and through the friction (cf. on diversity, anthologies and special issues Tsing, 2005) produced in these movements, of journals, which allowed for a range of I offer a more generous reading of Langer’s voices and forms, were commonly pre- statement linking Clayoquot and Chipko, ferred formats for publications at the time. suggesting alternative narratives of the re- Yet editors of anthologies still felt the need cent eco/feminist past and present. to point to their omissions as in Judith Plant’s introduction: ‘This anthology in no way fully represents the wide spectrum of ECO/FEMINISM AND THE thought that is ecofeminism’ (1989: 4). One INTERNATIONAL author even declined an invitation to write Celebrating Diversity as International a single-authored book, believing that it Grassroots Activism ‘would not do justice to such a multivocal grassroots movement’ (Gaard, 1998: 3). In the emerging and overlapping academic However, despite, or perhaps because and activist literature in the 1980s and of, the prevalence of pluralist discourses, early 1990s, it was common to describe Stephanie Lahar also suggested that this eco/feminism by stressing the diversity of emphasis on diversity could give rise to the movement. More specifi cally, perhaps confusion: ‘[t]he newness of the move- eco/feminists often pointed to the very im- ment, the breadth of issues it encompasses, possibility of characterising the movement and the diversity of people thinking and in any simple way, precisely because of its writing about ecofeminism have resulted pluralism. For example, one account from in considerable confusion about what 1994 stated that: ecofeminism actually is, who ecofeminists [e]cofeminism does not lend itself to easy are, and what they have to say’ (Lahar, 1991: generalisation. It consists of a diversity of po- 28). Thus, at the same time as diversity was sitions, and this is refl ected in the diversity of prized, there was also a sense of the chal- voices and modes of expression represented lenge of making sense of a range of forms. in ecofeminist anthologies. The ecofeminist While these accounts clearly cherish multi- anthologies, Reclaim the Earth, and Reweav- plicity of all kinds in eco/feminism, it was ing the World, and the issues of Heresies and also the case, perhaps in part to deal with Hypatia on feminism and ecology include this sense of too much variety, that one the work of different women from different phenomenon came to be particularly fore- countries and social situations, and their grounded, and that was the emergence of work does not adhere to a single form or out- grassroots eco/feminist activism in diverse look. Poems, art, photographs, fi ction, prose, as well as theoretical/philosophical/‘aca- locations, all over the world. This is par- demic’ works are included. Ecofeminism’s ticularly clear in the introductions to key diversity is also refl ected by its circulation in anthologies such as Healing the Wounds: a variety of arenas, such as academia, grass- The Promise of Ecofeminism (Plant, 1989), roots movements, conferences, books, jour- Reweaving the World: The Emergence of nals, and art. (Carlassare, 1994: 220– 221) Ecofeminism (Diamond and Orenstein, 1990), and Reclaim the Earth: Women Speak This range, of positions, of voices, of out for Life on Earth (Caldecott and Leland, forms, and of locations was viewed pos- 1983), all three of which stress the impor- itively, as suggesting that eco/feminism tance of global activism. 560 | NIAMH MOORE

For example, Caldecott and Leland stated who organised around Chernobyl, Bhopal, that ‘In many countries all over the world, nuclear testing in the Pacifi c, the Women’s women are taking an increasingly promi- Environmental Network and many more. nent role in political struggles: in the peace, Eventually, however, even the list got too anti-nuclear, health and ecology movements’ much. Following Lahar’s observation of (1983: 5) while, for Diamond and Orenstein, the confusion which eco/feminism’s diver- the writers and activists in their anthology sity seemed to produce, the challenge of ‘share a multicultural and diversifi ed global trying to hold on to this diversity was too vision of healing for life on Earth’ (1990: viii). demanding, and one movement ended up This is stated even more emphatically in being plucked out and held up as the exem- Petra Kelly’s foreword to Healing the Wounds: plary instance of eco/feminist activism— the Chipko movement. Yet in the context This is a book about global ecological sister- of controversies over difference, race and hood! . . . This is not a time for complacency. global sisterhood, eco/feminists faced in- It is a time for continuing to link arms as tense critique, especially from feminists in sisters— like the women in the Chipko move- the fi eld of development studies (see Moore ment in India; like the women at Greenham 2008c) and increasingly from eco/feminists Common, in England, who are not giving up themselves. the struggle against militarisation; like the women of the Western Shosone Indian Na- tion in Nevada who opposed nuclear test- Eco/Feminist Responses to Critiques of ing by encircling the test grounds; like the Chipko and the International women in the Pacifi c struggling for a nuclear- free future to prevent babies being damaged Celebratory accounts of the global, and through French atomic bomb tests; like the of Chipko in particular, rapidly gave way women in the Krim Region of the Soviet to more careful refl ections. Internal cri- Union demonstrating courageously against a tique sought to address the challenges new nuclear power plant. (Plant, 1989: ix– x) of cultural appropriation. Such accounts often focus on the anthologies mentioned As this extract from Kelly demonstrates, (both Plant’s and Diamond and Orenstein’s eco/feminism was manifested through the anthologies contain chapters by Shiva practice of listing places or organisations on Chipko, as well as other references to where eco/feminist activism was under- Chipko throughout). Cate Sandilands iden- stood to be emerging. Introducing eco/ tifi ed their limitations as such: ‘The inclu- feminism by providing a list of the activ- sion of race was not especially analytical; isms that were invoked to constitute eco/ it did not in most cases, suggest ways in feminism’s brief history was widespread in which women may have different relations eco/feminist writings of the late 1980s and to particular ecological issues or problems, early 1990s (see, for example, Baker, 1993: and it did not look deeply at the ways in 2; Gaard and Gruen, 1993: 1; Mellor, 1997: which these traditions have themselves 50; Merchant, 1992: 184). been lost or reconstructed in particular so- In addition to the instances cited by Kelly, cial contexts’ (1999: 54). She elaborated on this list often also included some of the fol- the characterisation of indigenous cultures lowing: the Kenyan Greenbelt Movement, as ‘somehow pure, somehow dissociable the Women’s Pentagon Actions, the cam- from what colonisation has done to those paign against the Narmada Valley Dams, different cultures and social practices. Also the Love Canal Homeowners campaign problematic was their general assumption against toxic waste dumping, the women that all ‘‘women’s’’ practices in nature are ECO/FEMINISM AND REWRITING THE ENDING OF FEMINISM | 561

(at their core at least) benign, caring and re- Neither does it suggest then how Third World spectful’ (1999: 55). Sandilands concluded women can speak and be seen and heard by her discussion on a relieved note: ‘But (I’m Northern eco/feminists. Furthermore, such very happy to say) this mode of discussion an approach also belies the myriad ways in is no longer predominant in ecofeminist which North and South are intimately inter- literatures that question racism and colo- connected through the histories of colonial- nialism’ (1999: 56). ism and slavery, through the movements Others offer further resolutions to the of goods and the effects of environmental apparent ‘problems’ of these texts. One degradation, and through the movements, route was to suggest a turn to research on actual and virtual, of activists. All of this is women in the North. Chris Cuomo wrote: manifest in the work of many of the organi- ‘[w]hile there is a tendency in Western sations mentioned. Some movements such ecofeminist theory to describe the work as Women for an Independent and Nuclear of rural Third World women as paradig- Free Pacifi c are well understood to be alli- matic ecofeminist activism, one sees little ances between women in the North and effort (in the literature) to develop specifi c South. Thus a shift of focus from the South models that examine the politics of “fi rst to the North requires careful attention to world” megaconsumption on ecofeminist the specifi cities and contexts of histories grounds’ (1998: 8–9). Cuomo’s suggestion and transnational connectivities. Questions was taken up and cited by Sherilyn Mac- of race and indigeneity were central in Stur- Gregor in accounting for her own research geon’s Ecofeminist Natures: Race, Gender, with women living and working in Ontario, Feminist Theory and Political Action, where Canada: ‘I am making the point that the she identifi ed the two above-cited antholo- experiences and ideas of urban- dwelling gies as ‘the most prominent representatives women in the overdeveloped world are as of the diversity within ecofeminism’ (1997: interesting and informative to ecofeminist 116). In focusing on discourses which ‘center thought as those of ‘‘peasant’’ women in on the idealisation of ‘‘indigenous’’ women developing countries’ (2006: 128). A turn as symbolic representatives of ecofeminism’ to attention to the activism of women in (1997: 113), she summed up some of the as- the North is of course understandable— sumptions embedded in such ‘uses’ of ‘in- after all I have carried out my own research digenous’ women: that ‘non- industrialised’ on Clayoquot Sound. Yet there are possi- cultures are seen as more ‘ecological’, as not ble problems with this strategy. Not least manifesting a ‘Western’ separation of nature perhaps one unintended effect of this ap- and culture, and possibly to embody more proach is that it risks erasing the references egalitarian gender relations (1997: 114). to the movements of the North already Yet it is possible to open up some of the commonly mentioned in some of these critical accounts of the anthologies to fur- collections, including Greenham Com- ther readings. For instance, Plant’s reliance mon, the Seneca Women’s Peace Camp, the on Native American religious rituals (Stur- Women’s Pentagon Actions, and the strong geon, 1997: 121) is somewhat more com- anti-toxics movements in the US. Many or- plicated when one notes Plant’s location ganisations and actions in the North have in British Columbia in Canada, drawing on focused intensely on (over)consumption. ‘First Nations’ cultures, rather than ‘Native Such resolutions also risk the implica- American’ as such. While not wishing to tion that (Northern) eco/feminists can have fuel Canadian exceptionalism, and while nothing to say on the matter of women also recognising that indigenous peoples and the environment in the Third World. of North America do not necessarily accept 562 | NIAMH MOORE

national boundaries, my point is to draw empirically worked through. In her fi nal attention to how this argument may rely on chapter, entitled ‘What’s in a name’, Stur- reading a specifi c and located First Nations geon examined the related practices of cre- iconography as a generalised indigeneity. ating new terms for eco/feminism (such as Plant’s ongoing commitment to biore- ecological feminism), and creating typol- gionalism may also contribute to the in- ogies of different kinds of eco/feminism tentionality and specifi city of her account (radical ecofeminism, socialist ecofemi- and the imagery in her text. When the book nism, etc.). This resulted in separating out was published in the UK, perhaps in rec- ‘anti-essentialist’ and ‘essentialist’ eco/ ognition of the specifi city of the indigene- feminisms, which were mapped onto post- ity being invoked, the cover was changed, structuralist/academic feminisms and ac- so that the UK version has a crystal, with tivist and spiritual feminisms (that is, ‘good’ light diffracting through the crystal cre- and ‘bad’ eco/feminisms). Importantly for ating a rainbow of colours. Furthermore, my argument, she identifi ed ‘two com- critiques of the anthologies have tended mon results of the practice of typologis- to attribute agency to the editors, but with ing: the invisibility of women of colour and much less attention to the intentionality of the creation of a divide between feminist the contributors. One is left with the pos- theory and feminist activism’ (Sturgeon, sibility that those women of colour who 1997: 173), demonstrating how Chipko is have contributed to these supposedly es- doubly disadvantaged in such accounts of sentialising, universalist collections which eco/feminism. Furthermore, by extending reproduce problematic indigeneities and ecofeminism’s genealogy, I suggest it is pos- racial essentialisms are naïve, essentialist, sible to understand the practice of typolo- romanticisers of ‘their own’ ‘indigenous’ gising as marking a shift in the way eco/ cultures. How is it possible to make sense feminism is defi ned and described, from a of the inclusion of black, Third World and commitment to producing eco/feminism’s indigenous women who make explicit cri- diversity, to the practice of defi ning eco/ tiques of these kinds of discourses within feminism through the conceptual binary some of these texts, not only in terms of the of essentialism or antiessentialism. This possible desires of the editors to appear in- allowed theoretical pronouncement on clusive, but also by taking account of their eco/feminist activism with little empirical own possible intentions and desires to detail, a suggestion also implicit in the in- be included in these volumes, no matter troduction to a more recent eco/feminist how problematic they might understand anthology: ‘although it is considerably de- them to be? veloped in both popular movements and It is diffi cult not to notice that from the academic discourse, ecofeminism remains mid 1990s onward, there were few anthol- largely a theoretical conversation . . . while ogies published which explicitly identifi ed there are many grassroots activist women’s themselves as eco/feminist. By the mid to organisations resisting the negative effects late 1990s the practice of creating collec- of globalisation, these activities do not tive polyvocal texts such as anthologies provide the primary data for ecofeminist and special issues of journals, had largely discourse’ (Eaton and Lorentzen, 2003: 5). given way to single-authored monographs It is with this context in mind that I return by mainly white, North American authors. to Clayoquot to explore further the cam- It is also diffi cult not to wonder if the re- paigning of the Friends as a way into sug- sponses to assumptions of essentialism gesting other possible readings of Langer’s and universalism had been carefully and statement. ECO/FEMINISM AND REWRITING THE ENDING OF FEMINISM | 563

Friends’ take- up of the ‘Brazil of the North’ FROM CHIPKO TO CLAYOQUOT AND campaign was indicative of efforts to hold BACK AGAIN II the North to account for the global impli- What if we held open the possibility of cations of its activities: ‘Canada is the Bra- Langer’s (and the Friends’) extensive knowl- zil of the North. Brazil is losing one acre of edges, particularly of the multiple entan- forest every nine seconds. We’re losing one glements of the local and the international, acre every twelve seconds’.6 Internation- rather than assuming essentialism and/or ally other environmental organisations universalism on the basis of a mention of took up their call, and protests were held the Chipko movement? Some of this knowl- outside Canadian embassies around the edge was visibly manifest in the campaign, world, in New York, London, Germany, and in too many ways to enumerate here, but, Japan, all countries where wood pulp from for instance, it was no accident that I fi rst BC was used to make toilet roll, and news- came across Clayoquot in the offi ce of the print and disposable chopsticks. This at- Women’s Environmental Network (WEN) in tempt to call the Canadian government to London in the summer of 1992. At that time account by shaming it internationally did WEN was the only environmental organisa- not go unheeded. The Friends were called tion in Europe which had a temperate rain- traitors and accused of treason, so clearly forest campaign. Most other environmental was their message understood by many (if organisations were still focused on the de- not necessarily by eco/feminist academics struction of tropical rainforest. WEN was anxious about the accusation of essential- an initial point of contact for the Friends ism/universalism) (see Moore, 2003). when they wanted to bring their campaign Global connections also had histories. to Europe, as they followed the path of the The relation between forestry and na- trees, now timber and wood pulp, exported tion building was proudly advertised in from British Columbia. WEN, with its multi- the logging company poster with the slo- ple attentions to how women might bear the gan: ‘We came, we sawed, we conquered’ brunt of some environmental problems, but (Vidal, 1993: 24). H.R. Macmillan, founder also to how women in the North are impli- of the company responsible for logging cated in the overconsumption of disposable in Clayoquot Sound, travelled to India in paper products which originate, and have 1914 as part of his unusual attention to environmental (and other) consequences developing a signifi cant export market elsewhere, like in British Columbia. Thus for timber from British Columbia. Thus WEN’s focus on the connections from breast trees from BC made their way to India, cancer, dioxins, landfi ll, from toilet roll and where the lumber industry was struggling sanitary towel, to old growth forest in British to meet the demands of British colonists Columbia, meets some of the concerns of to extend railways across India. But it was those such as Cuomo mentioned. not just timber which travelled across bor- The Friends (along with other British ders, but also the nascent fi eld of forestry Columbia environmental groups) were science, which crisscrossed the world and also pointing to how the focus on the de- was tested in British colonies like India struction of tropical rainforest in the Ama- and Canada (Drushka, 1995; Tsing, 1997). zon allowed countries like Canada to blame Much later, Shiva would leave India for the developing world for overpopulation Canada, and speak at conferences such as and destroying rainforests, while at the the one where Fireweed heard her speak. I same time being responsible for incredible could go on, weaving the webs of connec- environmental destruction at home. The tions which are really what is essential to 564 | NIAMH MOORE

eco/feminism. This process does not so on the unintended consequences of the much demand extensive in-depth research, critique of essentialism, and the effects of as an openness to alternative stories and an insistent antiessentialism, suggesting knowledges, and a willingness to accept that we may need to take the risk of essen- the risk of the accusation of universalism. tialism seriously (De Lauretis, 1989). There My point is that Langer’s ‘we are carry- has yet to be a similar chorus suggesting ing on the work of the Chipko movement’ that feminists take the risk of universalism cannot even straightforwardly be assimi- or, more precisely, the risk of the accusa- lated into an account of white women’s be- tion of universalism seriously, not least be- nevolence, philanthropy, or virtue ethics. cause universalism is at best understood as There was no plan to go to India to help meaning still attached to naïve fantasies of the Chipko women hug trees, or to some- global sisterhood, but more usually under- how try to raise ‘aid’ for the women of the stood as a euphemism for racism, and no Chipko movement; rather there was a focus feminist would want to risk this accusation. on the recognition that women in Canada, Although there is now a trickle of voices on in Clayoquot, were implicated in the global this and a number of prominent feminist trade in trees and timber (and forest sci- scholars have been rethinking the univer- ence), that appropriate action might not be sal, including those such as Judith Butler in India but in fact in one’s own backyard (Butler, Laclau and Žižek, 2000). (to reverse the accusation of NIMBYism This careful return to the universal has often applied to environmental activists), also been recognised recently in a number and that action might be to try to make of texts in a review essay by Denise de- public the Canadian government’s com- Caires Narain: plicity in such global trade and global environmental devastation. There was perhaps But if feminist discourses in the last two de- also recognition that protesting logging cades of the last century were characterised was not necessarily work for Clayoquot’s more by what they don’t share than by what own indigenous peoples, but rather a job they do, very recent work suggests a cautious but steady shift back to ideas of connected- for the (other) women who had come to ness and solidarity. There are now even a few live there, that in fact the work of protect- cagey references to ‘universalism’, though ing forests might be part of the ‘homework’ the confi dent assertions of ‘sisterhood’ in of living in this place. Robin Morgan’s Sisterhood is Global (1984) Jane Roland Martin has noted that the remain fi rmly behind us. (2010: 95; empha- possibility of accusations of essentialism sis in original) contributes to a ‘chilly research climate’ which ‘can adversely affect the develop- Any number of black and Third World ment of feminist theory and research’ (1994: feminists have continued to work on these 630– 631). The opprobrium attached to uni- matters. Chandra Talpade Mohanty has re- versalism, cultural appropriation, and in- visited her original essay ‘Under Western vestments in symbolic indigeneity has had Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial similar consequences which have rendered Discourses’ (1988), intriguingly entitling certain topics such as Chipko being aban- the revisioning as ‘‘‘Under Western Eyes’’ doned in eco/feminist texts from the mid Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anti- 1990s onwards, or only mentionable as that Capitalist Struggles’, where she speaks, from which to demonstrate one’s theoreti- if not of global sisterhood, of solidarity. cal and conceptual sophistication. Teresa Mohanty suggests that, while it is hard to de Lauretis and others have commented discern a women’s movement in the US, ECO/FEMINISM AND REWRITING THE ENDING OF FEMINISM | 565 women’s movements are thriving around Re- viewing Sex, Gender and Interna- the world (2003: 221) and re-emphasises tion al Politics. 7 Rather than reproducing the importance of the connections be- the ‘narrative proclamation’ of the end tween local and universal (2003: 226). of feminism (Wiegman, 2000: 808) or the obituary of feminism, ‘death by report’ (Hawkesworth, 2004), the conference title REWRITING THE ENDING OF opened up a space to call such declara- FEMINISM tions into question. It has been clear that Eco/feminists have not been the only ones the end of feminism has been immedi- to point to the proliferation of feminisms ately bound up in arguments about post- globally. Mary Hawkesworth has also noted feminism, third waves, fourth waves, and the curious coincidence: ‘a strange phenom- generational confl icts, which have always enon has accompanied the unprecedented undermined the supposed end of femi- growth of feminist activism around the nism. The use of the gerund in the title, globe: the recurrent pronouncement of fem- the ‘ing’ of ‘ending’, pointed to the consti- inism’s death’ (2004: 962). Mohanty noted tutive element of these pronouncements: that it had ‘become much harder to discern the end of feminism appeared less an ‘after such a women’s movement from the United the fact’ declaration, and more a perfor- States’—while also suggesting that ‘women’s mative enunciation; death was not by nat- movements are thriving around the world’ ural causes as Hawkesworth discerned. (2003: 221). These glimpses of other sto- Yet given the use of the question mark, the ries are suggestive. Accounts which insist title of the conference opened up a host on providing evidence of the persistence of of questions: are we ending feminisms international feminist activism might not through our very declarations?; begging so much be evidence of a problematic uni- further questions, why would we do this? versalism, but precisely the opposite, sug- How is the international implicated in the gesting ‘the end of feminism’ and ‘the end of end of feminism? And a further question: global sisterhood’ to be universalising narra- what might we now do to prevent such a fu- tives which were never true for all feminists ture, of the end of international feminisms. or all women. Perhaps certain forms of fem- At the same time that the repetition of inisms ended and certain global sisterhoods feminism’s end might be understood as were curtailed, but this does not necessarily performative, as bringing about the very entail the end of all feminisms. demise of feminism, perhaps paradoxically Echoing Sturgeon’s account of typolo- this cacophony of voices suggests the con- gies, Hawkesworth suggested that ‘[t]hese trary to me. The apparent fascination with textual accounts of death serve as alle- endlessly poking the supposed ‘corpse’ of gorical signs for something else, a means feminism, perhaps to see if it still moves, of identifying a perceived danger in need if it is not quite dead yet, if there is still life, of elimination, a way for a community to perversely suggests the continuing vitality of defi ne itself through those it symbolically feminism, and an ongoing fascination with chooses to kill’ (2004: 963). The title of a re- and passion about feminism’s fate. Despite cent conference provoked me to think fur- the seemingly endless repetition, feminists’ ther about the supposed end of feminism, actual ability to kill off feminism seems lim- and specifi cally the persistent repetition ited. It may make sense to think of this repeti- of this narrative. The grammar of the con- tion of the end of feminism as performative, ference title was striking and provocative: but not as performing the end of feminism, Ending International Feminist Futures? or even premature burial, but, rather, as a 566 | NIAMH MOORE

perverse way of keeping feminism alive at a persistence of eco/feminism, with its sup- time when (for some) it was not clear what posed essentialism and universalism, in the else to do. In contrast, here I am suggesting 1980s and 1990s, threatens to disrupt efforts that eco/feminists’ repetition of global ac- to produce a progress narrative of feminism tivisms offered a hopeful counter- narrative which require that essentialism is left safely to the end of feminism, involving an active behind in the 1970s. By the late 1980s and enrolment of the international in efforts to 1990s, eco/feminists should know better. refi gure feminist futures. Eco/feminism’s insistence on the interna- Attending to what is at stake in different tional and on some version of global sis- moments in eco/feminism points to the terhood can be understood then as sheer extent to which eco/feminism is bound stupidity or ignorance, or wilful perversity. up in narratives of feminism. Clare Hem- But I suggest here that it might be possible mings’ work is useful here. She identifi es a to understand eco/ feminism’s insistence dominant narrative of the recent feminist on diversity and the international, less as a past, though one with different infl ections: naïve throwback to the essentialist 1970s and a story of progress and a story of loss of 1980s, and more as an intentional counter- political activism. She demonstrates how narrative to stories of the end of feminism both stories rely on fi xing certain feminist and the impossibility of global sisterhood. conversations in specifi c decades in order It is worth noting that, despite critiques, to produce an account of feminism as hav- including internal ones, of eco/feminism’s ing changed (Hemmings, 2005): the 1970s account of Chipko, and the international have been characterised as essentialist, the more generally, some writers have persisted 1980s recounted as dominated by ‘differ- in writing on this (Eaton and Lorentzen, ence’ and the race and sex wars, and the 2003; Salleh, 1997, 2009; Silliman and King, 1990s appear as the decade when these dif- 1999; Starhawk, 2002). Yet when Joni Seager ferences were transcended, or lost, by post- writes ‘that feminist environmentalism is structuralist feminist theory, depending on hot and getting hotter’ (Seager, 2003: 945), which story the narrator wants to tell. Hem- this too seems like a performative enunci- mings’ account demonstrates why efforts ation, though a more hopeful one than the by eco/feminists to produce eco/feminism end of feminism. It is not clear that eco/ as anti- essentialist (or only strategically feminism or even feminist environmental- essentialist, in Sturgeon’s case) have had ism is ‘hot’—or maybe it is in geography or limited success. In these accounts, essen- other domains— but it is not clear that it is tialism is transcended not only through the in feminism more widely. However, this may emergence of a sophisticated poststructur- be the point: that eco/feminists oriented to alist, anti-essentialist feminist theory, but mainstream debates in feminism struggle to also by being left behind in the past, in the be heard and taken seriously, precisely be- 1970s, to be precise. Thus not only is eco/ cause implicit, if not always explicit, in eco/ feminism (supposedly) essentialist and feminism is a strong critique of prevailing universalist, but eco/feminism reveals its narratives of feminism. lack of sophistication through being essentialist and universalist at the wrong time. REVISIONING AND RECLAIMING Eco/feminism’s emergence, while traced CHIPKO AND CLAYOQUOT to the 1970s (and earlier) is more often located in the 1980s and 1990s, thus exceed- While Sturgeon’s genealogy attends to what ing the necessary temporal container of the is at stake in the practice of naming and 1970s for essentialism. The emergence and typologising, here I turn to genealogy to ECO/FEMINISM AND REWRITING THE ENDING OF FEMINISM | 567 examine the intentional creation of a com- standing or experience of femininity, they munity of eco/feminists. Such genealogical nevertheless belong to a distinctive social practices can offer an account of why eco/ group in virtue of being situated within this feminists might need to return to Chipko, complex history. This rethinking of women to the international, and to fantasies of as having a genealogy entails a concomitant rethinking of feminist politics as coalitional global sisterhood, as sites which merit ge- rather than unifi ed. According to this re- nealogical investigation, rather than dis- thinking, collective feminist activities need missal. I point to what I understand as a not be predicated on any shared set of fem- ‘tradition’ of feminist genealogical prac- inine concerns; rather, they may arise from tice, and I suggest that Michel Foucault’s overlaps and indirect connections between work on genealogy has been particularly women’s diverse historical and cultural situ- useful for feminists precisely because it ations. I hope that my exploration will begin articulates well with existing feminist prac- to show how a genealogical rethinking of tices. I understand Adrienne Rich’s essay women could enable feminists to oppose ‘When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re- (descriptive) essentialism while retaining Vision’ ([1971] 1979), as genealogical, not- belief in women as a group with a distinctive, and distinctively oppressive, history—an on- ing that it was published in the same year going history which is an appropriate target as Foucault’s essay ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, of social critique and political transforma- History’. Tracing genealogy’s own geneal- tion. (Stone, 2004: 137) ogy through feminism (rather than exclusively Foucault or Nietzsche) is of course precisely genealogical. Rich wrote, clearly Reading Chipko in the light of Rich’s ac- aware of the constitutive power of histories: count of revisioning and those such as But- ‘Re- vision— the act of looking back, of see- ler and Stone on genealogies of women, it ing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text is possible to understand invocations of from a new critical direction—is for women Chipko differently, and to trace the con- more than a chapter in cultural history: it is nections being made between Fireweed, an act of survival’ ([1971] 1979: 35). Femi- Langer and Shiva/Chipko, not as signalling nists have actively engaged in the project of a universalised essential femininity, but history making and history writing in order as a genealogy of women, ‘as a motivated, to create collectivities and shared futures. and motivating practice’ (Haran, in Haran Other feminists too have also taken up the and Moore, 2008: n.p.), as revisioning a possibilities of genealogy (Braidotti, 1991: community of eco/feminists. 151; De Lauretis, 1989, 1993). Alison Stone To genealogy as a practice of revision- elaborates in her account of Judith Butler’s ing we could also add the work of ‘rework, whose declared aim in Gender Trou- claiming’. My opening questions echo ble is to outline a ‘feminist genealogy of the Isabelle Stengers, who explores ‘reclaim- category of women’ (Butler, 1990, in Stone, ing’ Shiva’s work specifi cally, against what 2004: 136): she terms ‘essentialist hunting’ (after the witch hunts). She states that the relevant question is ‘Can we separate Vandana’s I will suggest that women always become force—which produces her ability to women by reworking pre-established cultural interpretations of femininity, so that struggle—from those seemingly ‘‘essential- they become located— together with all ist’’ grounds? And the challenge would be other women—within a history of over- learning to . . . hesitate about our own con- lapping chains of interpretation. Although ditions of thought’ (2008: 41–42). Drawing women do not share any common under- on the work of US Wiccan witch and eco/ 568 | NIAMH MOORE

feminist Starhawk (who came to Clayo- she does reference Sturgeon’s anxieties quot and was arrested), Stengers expands about eco/feminist appropriations of in- on Starhawk’s practice of reclaiming, and digenous cultures here (2005: 159–160). its capacity to make us hesitate: However, Tsing’s use of ‘friction’ not to signal a repetition of a ‘clash of cultures’ but Reclaiming is an adventure, both empirical to gesture to ‘the awkward, unequal, un- and pragmatic, because it does not primarily stable, and creative qualities of intercon- mean taking back what was confi scated, but nections across difference’ (2005: 4) is a rather learning what it takes to inhabit again welcome contribution to efforts to rethink what was devastated. Reclaiming indeed connection and solidarity. associates irreducibly ‘to heal’, ‘to reappro- I suggest that it is no accident that it was priate’, ‘to learn/teach again’, ‘to struggle’, to ‘become able to restore life where it was poi- eco/feminists who insisted on articulating a soned’, and it demands that we learn how to politics of global connection at a time when do it for each zone of devastation, each zone many feminists were disinvesting in such of the earth, of our collective practices and of politics. While white feminists were con- our experience. (2008: 58) fronting the challenges of black and Third World women, the 1980s and 1990s were a These kinds of understanding of gene- point when environmentalists were success- alogical practices are also suggested by fully challenging the relevance of national Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s work, which boundaries for containing environmental is useful not least because of its focus on problems, and insisting that solutions to the destruction of forests in Indonesia. In environmental problems also required in- Friction: An Ethnography of Global Con- ternational mediations. Similarly, the envi- nection, Tsing explores global connections ronmental movement and environmental and ‘practical, engaged universality as a activists were recognising the need for activ- guide to the yearnings and nightmares of ism which transcended national boundaries. our times’ (2005: 1). She writes that ‘[a]s I am also taken with Tsing’s turn to the soon as we let go of the universal as a self- practice of list-making in her discussion fulfi lling abstract truth, we must become of collaborations and specifi cally of biodi- embroiled in specifi c situations’ (2005: versity assessment as a multicultural exer- 1–2). One of Tsing’s interests is collabo- cise. At the insistence of one of her friends rations between environmentalists and and mentors in the Meratus Mountains in indigenous peoples, and obstructions to Indonesia, together they made a list of all such collaborations. She notes those who the plants and animals on Borneo. Noting understand environmentalists’ interest in the importance of species lists in making indigenous knowledge ‘only as a repetition conservation claims, and recognising how of metropolitan fantasies and imperial these lists enable ‘us to discover variety and histories’ (2005: 161). Her concern is that to appreciate dynamics’, Tsing offers her such accounts ‘offer a historical metanar- list as ‘a motivated set of translations and rative of imperial modernisation in which not a simple addition to either universal or nothing good can happen— good or bad— local knowledge culture’ (2005: 162). She but more of the same. Familiar heroes and refl ects that ‘[l]istmaking is eclectic to the villains are again arrayed on the same bat- extent that it draws on multiple, fragmen- tlefi eld. It is diffi cult to see how new actors tary sources. To acknowledge this eclecti- and arguments might ever emerge’ (2005: cism allows us to admire its creative use of 161). Though Tsing’s concerns are not ex- limited materials, rather than to grasp only plicitly about feminism (or eco/feminism), for scope. It allows us to imagine the list ECO/FEMINISM AND REWRITING THE ENDING OF FEMINISM | 569 within historically changing conversations, anxiety on the preponderance of Third rather than as transcendental knowledge’ World activism and Native American spir- (2005: 162). This account of list-making is itualities, this attention has been lost. profoundly genealogical. Constructing lists and genealogies offers An account of list-making as a knowl- a different knowledge practice to some of edge practice is instructive in revisioning the other possibilities available. Against and reclaiming eco/feminists’ lists of ac- the deadening repetition of the end of tivism, suggesting ways of reading such feminism, against the typologies of eco/ lists, not as essentialist or universalist, but feminism which sought to purify theories of rather as linked specifi cities. This way of essentialism and activism, and against the introducing eco/feminism performed a progress narratives of certain feminist his- number of different functions. These lists tories, others were briefl y, excitedly, repeat- provided an introduction to eco/feminism ing the names of places around the world, in the absence of any agreed defi nition of and passing these on to each other, not as the term. They offered a way of describing a universal, essentialised womanhood, but eco/feminism without having recourse to more as an insistence on what needed to generalisations to which there would have be done, an invocation to action. I under- been far too many exceptions. The exam- stand this practice of listing eco/feminist ples cited hinted at the complexity and activisms as a kind of ritual, a performative diversity of women’s relationships with na- recitation, in Butler’s sense, which insisted ture and their environments. These exam- on the persistence of feminist activism, and ples were important not just because they hoped to bring eco/feminism into being, illustrated what eco/feminism was about— and at the same time ward off the challenges connections between the oppression of of those who would deny the possibilities of women and the domination of nature— but connection. This list has many beginnings also because they illustrated that there was but no one ending. The challenge for eco/ no one eco/feminism. These people and feminist academics is to fi gure out how to places were offered up as evidence that articulate ourselves into this community, eco/feminism did not just happen in the genealogy, and to fi gure out what we must imaginations of some feminist academ- do (to) ourselves. The work for eco/feminist ics dreaming up some real community academics might yet still be to articulate involvement. In the changing context of the complicated, messy tensions, frictions anxiety about the essentialisms of activism in the unfi nished, open-ended listing, ge- and the universalisms of fantasies of global nealogy, of eco/feminism, which theorises sisterhood, the diverse locations of these and enacts, which traces histories, records actions and practices were as signifi cant as the present, and conjures imagined com- the actions themselves, offering a counter- munities of eco/feminists, a genealogy that narrative to the end of global sisterhood I continue to recite, reclaim and revision: and the end of feminism. The diversity initially valorised by eco/feminists was not . . . the Chipko Movement, the Kenyan Green- only activism, not only international activ- belt Movement, the Women’s Pentagon Ac- tions, the campaign against the Narmada ism, but was also a diversity of forms, as is Valley Dams, the Love Canal Homeowners clear from the account by Carlassare earlier campaign against toxic waste dumping, the in this article, and from attention to the women who organised around Chernobyl, introductions to the anthologies. Diverse Bhopal, nuclear testing in the Pacifi c, Green- genres, forms of knowledge and knowl- ham Common, the Women’s Environmental edge practices, were included. In focusing Network, Clayoquot Sound . . . 570 | NIAMH MOORE

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Jennifer Aengst is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Portland State University.

Sara Ahmed is Professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Karen Barad is Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Rajani Bhatia is a Doctoral Candidate and Instructor in the Department of Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Diana Bilimoria is KeyBank Professor and Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University.

Lynda Birke is based in the Institute for Women’s Studies at the University of Lancaster.

Francesca Bray is Professor of Social Anthropology at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh.

Victoria L. Brescoll is Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management.

Mette Bryld is Associate Professor at the Institute of Literature, Culture and Media, Uni- versity of Southern Denmark.

Carol Cohn is the Director of the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights.

Melinda Cooper is Australian Research Center Future Fellow in the Department of So- ciology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney, and is Co-editor of the Journal of Cultural Economy .

Jessie Daniels is Associate Professor of Public Health at the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. 574 | CONTRIBUTORS

John F. Dovidio is Professor of Psychology at Yale University.

Anne Fausto-Sterling is the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown University.

Joan H. Fujimura is Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Mark J. Graham is Research Director for the Center for Scientiﬁ c Teaching in the Biology Department and Assistant Clinical Professor in the School of Medicine at Yale University.

Jo Handelsman is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor and Frederick Phineas Rose Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University.

Donna Haraway a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness De- partment at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Sandra Harding is a Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

Ruth Hubbard is Professor Emerita of Biology at Harvard University, where she was the ﬁ rst woman to hold a tenured professorship position in Biology.

Rebecca M. Jordan-Young is Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Stud- ies at Barnard College.

Catharina Landström is Senior Research Associate in the School of Environmental Sci- ences at the University of East Anglia.

Linda L. Layne is the Hale Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Professor of Anthropology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Xiangfen Liang is currently an Independent Researcher and Consultant in the areas of High Education and Organizational Behavior.

Jennifer S. Light is a Professor of Communication Studies, History, and Sociology and a Faculty Associate at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

Nina Lykke is Professor of Gender Studies with special reference to Gender and Culture at Linköping University, Sweden.

Rachel Maines is Visiting Scientist in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engi- neering at Cornell University.

Ulf Mellström is Professor of Gender and Technology at Luleå University of Technology and is a Guest Professor in the Department of Gender Studies, Linkšping University, Sweden. CONTRIBUTORS | 575

Erika Lorraine Milam is Associate Professor of History at Princeton University.

Niamh Moore is at the Center for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at Open University/the University of Manchester.

Corinne A. Moss-Racusin is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Skidmore College.

Petra Nordqvist is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Morgan Centre for the Study of Relationships and Personal Life at the University of Manchester.

Sarah S. Richardson is Assistant Professor of the History of Science and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University.

Dorothy E. Roberts is George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at the University of Pennsylvania.

Sue Rosser is Provost at San Fransciso State University.

Deboleena Roy is Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University.

Raffaella I. Rumiati is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Cognition and In- tegrative Neuroscience at La Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati in Trieste, Italy.

Londa Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science in the History Department at Stanford University and Director of the EU/US Gendered Innovations in Science, Medicine, and Engineering Project.

Martina Schraudner is professor for Gender and Diversity of Organizations at the Tech- nical University of Berlin.

Banu Subramaniam is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Chikako Takeshita is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Califor- nia, Riverside.

Marta Wayne is Professor of Biology at the University of Florida, Gainesville.

Catherine Waldby is a Professor and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia and Director of the Biopolitics of Science Research Network, Sydney University.

Jutta Weber is Professor of Media, Culture, and Society at the Institute of Media at the University of Paderborn and is an Afﬁ liated Researcher at the Centre for Gender Research at the University Uppsala.

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This page intentionally left blank INDEX

The annotation of an italicized “f” indicates a reference to a ﬁ gure on the speciﬁ ed page.

Aboriginal women studies 364 American Association of University Women 28 abortion: access to 324; confl ict over 297, American Educational Research Association 27 305; early need for 185; induction of 164; American Psychological Association 158 sex-selective abortion 298, 301 – 2, 306, American Society of Reproductive Medicine 311 – 15; spontaneous 172; therapeutic 324 (ASRM) 300 academic career development 30 – 1 American Southwest Indians 467 accumulation of advantage concept 41 – 2 American Women’s Voluntary Services (AWVS) action phase 43 61 actor-network theory 397 Amin, Samir 431 Adam’s Curse: A Future without Men (2003) 336 amniocentesis 406, 410 – 11 ADVANCE programme 101 Anders, K. A. 10 Aengst, Jennifer 185 – 6, 187n8 Anderson, Warwick 435 African Americans: bone density 272; femi- Andrist, Linda C. 175 – 6 nism of 183; fertility errors 320 – 1; genetic Angier, Natalie 336, 344 reproductive choices 328 – 9; health needs anglophone anthropology 374 of 323; IUD marketing toward 255 – 6; in animality 206, 495 – 7, 501 – 4 S&E fi elds 26; sex/gender differences 201; Anita Borg Institute study 127, 129 social inequities in childbearing 318 – 19; Annual Nuclear Weapons Stockpile technological contributions of 357 Memorandum 140 agential intra-actions 480 – 2, 484 – 5, 487 anorexia nervosa 287 agential realism: constructivism 492n26; anthropology: anglophone anthropology defi ned 478; in material-discursive 374; of globalization 378; technology and practices 481; objectivity and 231; perfor- 377 – 480; of technology and technique mativity concept and 497; posthumanist 375 – 7; of technoscience 378 – 9 performativity 485 – 6 anti-biological feminism 531 –7 agential separability 231, 481, 487, 489 antiessentialism 530, 562 aggressive males behavior 213 – 18 apparatus as bodily production 466 – 9, 481 – 2, Agigian, A. 400 485 Air Force Magazine 136, 138 Archimedes (Greek mathematician) xx Akpedonu, Saloma 82 Army Proving Ground (APG) 63 Alvares, Claude 436 artifacts and constructivism 372 – 3 amenorrhea 172, 242, 248 – 50, 253 Asch, Adrienne 325 584 | INDEX

Ashcraft, Catherine 115 Bilas, Frances 63, 67, 72 Asian Americans: birth control 256; glass- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 102 ceiling effect for 26; sex/gender differences biological citizenship 325 201; technological contributions of 357 biological determinism 468 Aspin, Les 122 Biological Politics (1982) 535, 541n3 assisted reproductive technology (ART) 299, biological sex differences 3, 28 308, 426 biology and culture 275 – 6 associate professor bias 37 biomedical engineering degrees 23 Association of Reproductive Health biomedicalization 312 – 15 Professionals 178 biophysicality 507 Atlantic magazine 297 Birke, Lynda 535 atomism 476, 491n16 Blackless, Melanie 526n25 Atwood, Margaret 318 Bleier, Ruth xxiii Australia 406 blood banks 423 – 4 autoimmunity xxiv, 344 – 6 BlueSky online community 364 awkward surplus 508, 519 – 23, 524 Bodies That Matter (1993) 538 body/technology relationships with IUDS bachelor degree awards 22 257 – 8 Bacon, Francis xx Bohr, Niels 478, 480, 482 – 4, 491n17 Bainbridge, David 335 – 6, 344 bone mineral apparent density (BMAD) 273 – 4 Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) 64 – 5, 72 bone mineral density (BMD) 273 – 4, 278 – 80 ballistics computation and programming 61 – 2 bone remodeling 280 – 1 “BAMBI” (Ballistic Missile Boost Intercept) 139 boundaries in social interaction 469 Barad, Karen: animality concepts 497; human/ bower bird studies 212 animal relationships 496 – 8; materiality Boyle, Robert 69 and 230 – 1; new materialism 538 – 9; semi- Boys and their Toys? (2001) 374 prescriptive analysis 225 Braidotti, R. 361 Bardoni, Barbara 513 brain and behavior 284 Bargmann, Sonia 73 Brasner, Shari 175 Barr, Murray 337 Bray, Francesca xxv, 83 Barr body screening 341 Breitzman, Anthony 115 Barrett, Michelle 422 Brescoll, Victoria L. 199 Barthes, Roland 236 Briscoe, Anne M. 541n4 Bateman, Angus John 52 – 4, 207 Brown, Louise 543 Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals 251 Bryson, Mary 363 – 4 Bayh-Dole Act 112, 125 bubonic plague 498 de Beauvoir, Simone 183 – 4, 440 Bucks, Arthur 69 Becker, Egon 552 Bumiller, Elisabeth 310 Behavioral Ecology journal 35 bumiputeras vs. non-bumiputeras, in Malaysia behaviourism 503 87, 95 Belkin, Lisa 302, 304 Bunch, Charlotte xix Ben-Shlomo, Yoav 287 Burfoot, A. 404 Berg, Anne-Jorunn 117 Butler, Judith: constitutive outside, deﬁ ned Berman, Louis 339 493n31; constructivism 492n26; ecofemi- Bertalanffy, Ludwig von 284 nism 567; embodiment 275; heteronorma- Bethe, Hans 155n27 tivity 390 – 1; human/animal studies 496 – 7; Beyond Bias and Barriers report 43 lesbian contraception 402; new material- Bhatia, Rajani xxiv ism 538; posthumanist performitivity 475, Bianchi, Suzanne 308 – 9 477, 478; representationalism 475; sex/ bias avoidance 34 gender binary 305, 371, 374; sex-gender BiDil pharmaceuticals 322 distinction 509 – 10 INDEX | 585

CAD/CAM technology 376 Malaysian case 84 – 6; materials and Caldecott, L. 559 – 60 methods 86; overview 81 – 2; quotas, eth- Calfi t, Sal 119 – 22 nicity and gender 86 – 95; social categories Callon, Michel 508 in xxii; techno-optimism and emancipa- Calvert, Mark and Crispina 321 tion 89 – 91; under-achieving men 91 – 3; Cambridge University 266, 268 ‘woman problem’ in 82 – 6 Camerino, Giovanna 512, 514 – 15, 518 Computer Science Department at Universiti Canada 314 Sains, Malaysia 86 Canadian Institutes of Health Research 103 computer science majors 40 Cappadox, Aretaeus 158 Computing Group Organization and Practices cardiovascular disease analysis 105 62 Carrel, Laura 336 conceptualization of materiality 486 Cartesian habit of mind 476 confl ict theory 53 – 4 Caucasian American bone density 272 congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) 198 CBS News Early Show 304 connective mutation 425 Center for Genetics and Society 301 consciousness: collective consciousness 16, Center for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation 19; differential consciousness 231 – 3, 239; Research 173 higher consciousness of humans 210; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 303 individual consciousness 144, 184; opposi- de Chadarevian, Soraya 338 tional consciousness 232; split conscious- Charite Universitatsmedizin 103 ness 233 – 4 Chase, Cheryl 516 – 17 constitutional protections for women xx – xxi “Chattanooga” treatment 160 – 1 constitutive outside, defi ned 493n31 child- and family-care, by women 3 constructivism: agential realism 492n26; chimpanzee research 215 – 16 co-constructivism, defi ned 230; double China 120, 309 constructivism 390; knee jerk constructiv- Chinese female bone density 272 ism 530; in posthumanist performativity Chipko Movement 557 – 9 474, 476 – 7; radical constructivism 458; chlorosis 158 – 9 social constructivism 230, 474, 476 chromosome studies 266, 337 – 8; see also X as Consumer Association of Penang, Malaysia 436 the female chromosome contemplation phase 43 Circulation journal 107n3 Cooper, Melinda xxv civil engineering 89 Cooperative Statistical Program (CSP) 247 Clarke, Adele E. 308, 313 cord blood stem cells 418, 419 Clayman Institute for Gender Research 103, Corea, Gena 318 127, 129 Cornell’s College of Agriculture 267 Clayoquot Sound 557 – 9 Corner, George 172 Clinton, Bill 267 Council on Competitiveness 112 cloning 306, 342, 421, 426 courtship of birds 211 co-constructivism, defi ned 230 Coutinho, Elsimar 172, 177, 187n11, 245, 253 Cold War 431, 433, 447n6, 543 Cowan, Ruth Schwartz 117, 373 collective consciousness 16, 19 coy female behavior 207 – 9, 213 – 18, 219n2 Collins, Monique 304 crash test dummies 104 – 5 Collins, Patricia Hill 257 Cree hunting practices 438 colonialism 435, 446, 459 Creinin, Mitchell 175 colour vision 460 Crick, Francis 266, 269 communal characteristic bias 33 Crist, Eileen 498, 500 computer science, in Malaysia: analytical critical mass, defi ned 27 openings 83 – 4; body politics and 88 – 9; cross-national gender differences 28 co-production and gender in 93 – 5; Crowe, C. 404 leaky-pipeline metaphor 94; the Cunningham-Burley, Sarah 307 586 | INDEX

Cuomo, Chris 561 Delphy, Christine 422 Currier, Dianne 392 – 4 democratics technology 233, 235 – 6 The Curse: A Cultural History of Menstruation Democritus’s atomic theory 476 (Delaney, Lupton, Toth) 178 denaturing nature 548 – 9 Curtin, Philip 431 – 2 densitometers 278 Cussins, Charis 402, 407, 409 Depo Provera drug 172, 183 Cvetovich, Ann 532 The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation cyberfeminism: conclusions 364 – 5; embod- to Sex (1871) 208, 209, 340 iment online 359 – 64; gender, race and DeVore, Irven 214 – 15 354 – 6; identity tourism 355 – 6, 359 – 61; DG Research & Innovation 102 overview 353 – 4; political economy and dichotomous chart 464 internet-work global feminism 356 – 9; pro- Dickens, Bernard 309 – 10 ana (pro-anorexia) websites 361 – 2; racial- Dickenson, Donna 421 – 2 ized embodiment online/ofﬂ ine 363 – 4 diethylstilbestrol (DES) exposure 198 – 9 cybernetics 547 differential consciousness 231 – 3, 239 cyborg anthropology 376 differential movement technology 233 – 5, 236 cyborg feminism 181, 184 diffraction metaphor 243 cyborgian forms of agency 488 disability and genetics testing 325 – 6 cyborg resistance 233 disability studies 275 – 6 discursive practices see material-discursive Daily Pennsylvanian (newspaper) 64 –5 practices Dalkon Shield 246 distortions and misrepresentations of women’s Daniels, Jessie xxv minds xxii – xxiii Dant, T. 380 DNA research 265 – 7 Darling, Marsha 318 – 19 Dobzhansky, Theodosius 211 Darnovsky, Marcy 301 doctoral degrees: candidate pool 23; entry bar- Darwin, Charles: animals in studies 500, riers 33 – 4; leaky pipeline metaphor and 505n12; male variability concept 340; 32; racial/ethnic minorities with 22, 22f, natural selection 209 – 10; sexual selection 24 f; in science and engineering 21 – 2, 24 – 7; 206 – 7, 219n1; Victorian sexual stereotypes senior academic ranks and 36 – 7 218 dog-human relationships 501 Daston, Lorraine 228 Dolly (cloned sheep) 426 Dawkins, Richard 217, 218 Domain Errors! Cyberfeminist Practices (2003) Dax-1 gene 514 –1 5, 517, 520, 523 – 4 355 de-Caires Narain, Denise 564 domestic imagery with nuclear missiles 139 – 40 decoding and transcoding 465 donor insemination (DI) 401, 406 deconstruction technology 233, 236 – 7 double constructivism 390 Deering Prep Kit 165 The Double Helix (1968) 266, 269 – 70 defense intellectuals in nuclear strategic douche therapy 158 analysis: clean bombs and clean language Douglas, Heather 228 – 9 134 – 5; conclusions 149 – 52; dialogue of Downey, G. L. 376, 379 144 – 8; domestic imagery 139 – 40; learning Down syndrome 322 – 4, 338 language of 142 – 52; listening state 134 – 42; Dowse, Thomas Stretch 159 male birth and creation imagery 140 – 1; Dreger, Alice Domurat 517 missile size 135 – 8; overview 133 – 4; reli- Drosophila biology and feminism: lab envi- gious imagery 141 – 2; speaking language of ronment politics 55 – 6; overview 51 – 5; 148 – 9; virginity analogy 138 – 9 personal vs. political vs. professional 57; de Lacey, S. 407 political stance 57 – 8; sense of self 56 – 7; Delaney, Janice 176, 178 studies on 336 – 7 de Lauretis, Teresa 564 dual-career couples 34 Deleuze, Giles 393, 479 DuBois, W.E.B. 359 INDEX | 587

Duchenne muscular dystrophy 300, 342 eugenics 209, 319, 325 – 6 Duke University 343 European Commission 101 –2, 106 Duramed Pharmaceuticals 254 European Commission’s Directorate-General (DG) 101 Eckert, J. Presper 60, 69 European Technology Assessment Network Eco, Umberto 457 (ETAN) report 101 ecofeminism: from Chipko Movement to evolutionary genetics 51 Clayoquot Sound 557 – 9, 563 – 5; feminist exceptionalism 434 – 5, 561 technoscience 545; hopes for 469; inter- exercise programs 287 national and 559 – 62; overview 182 – 3; existential feminism 183 – 4 responses to critiques 560 – 2; rewriting end of 565 – 6 family responsibility/situation bias 28, 33 – 4 Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Fanon, Frantz 236 537 Faulkner, Wendy 386, 391, 392, 395, 397n2 Ehrenreich, Barbara 324 Fausto-Sterling, Anne xxiii – xxiv, 305, 335, Eicher, Eva M. 519 397n2, 510, 517 electromechanical vibrator: acceptance of 161; Federal Bureau of Investigation 72 advertising 163 – 4, 166n5; availability of Fedigan, Linda Marie 217 – 18 161 – 3; deﬁ ned 157 – 8; emmenagogues female choice and behavior 219 164 – 5; illustrations of 166n4; overview 157; female chromosome see X as the female therapeutic treatments and 158 – 61 chromosome Electronic Computer Project 73 Female Control: Cryptic Sexual Selection El-Ganainy, Asmaa 120 – 3, 128 (Eberhard 1996) 53 Ellertson, Charlotte 172, 174 – 6 Female Friendly Science (1990) 125 – 6 Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Female Interaction project 103 Assisted Conception (1997) 402 Females Are Mosaics (2007) 343 embodiment online 359 – 64 feminism: African American feminism 183; as embryonic stem cells (ESCs) 428n5 anti-biological 531 – 7; antiessentialism emmenagogues 164 – 5 and 530, 562; cyborg feminism 181, 184; empiricisms 19, 458 – 9, 464, 488 ecofeminism 182 – 3, 467, 546; episte- Engaging Science (1996) 490n5 mologies of scientiﬁ c knowledge 463; engineering degrees/profession 23, 30 essentialist feminism 182, 562; existential ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and feminism 183 – 4; feminist scholarship 51; Computer. Ed): conclusion 73 – 4; con- internet-work global feminism 356 – 9; temporary accounts of 68 – 73; ENIAC menstruation and 181 – 5; radical femi- girls 63 – 8; girls of 63 – 8; overview 60 – 1; nism 181 –2, 372, 546; social feminism 182; women during the war 61; women’s entry theories of materiality 537 – 8; third-world into 61 – 3 feminism 232 Enlightenment philosophy 445 feminism, and human/animal studies: conclu- environmentalism 566 sions 504; introduction 495 – 6; in labora- epistemic relativism 226 tory studies 498 – 500; as nodal point 496 – 8; equitable evaluation conditions 35 participating animals in 500 – 2 Errington, Shelly 92 feminism, and partial perspective: apparatus Erskine, Fiona 533 as bodily production 466 – 9; as mental hy- Escobar, Arturo 378, 508 giene 457 – 8; overview 455 – 9; persistence essentialism: antiessentialism 530, 562; as- of vision 459 – 65 sumptions of 562 – 4, 563; cyborg feminism feminism, in STEM: collective action xxvi – xxvii; and 184; ecofeminism and 557 – 8; female distortions and misrepresentations of and male essentialism 186; prescriptive women’s minds xxii – xxiii; importance of essentialism 489; of queering 497 xix – xxvii; local and global inequities in Estrin, Thelma 73 xxi – xxii; overview xix – xxi; prevailing 588 | INDEX

paradigms xxv – xxvi; technoscientifi c inno- Fifth International Symposium on the Intra- vations xxiii – xxiv uterine Devices and Systems for Women’s feminist constructivist technology studies 83 Health 252 feminist drosophila researcher xxiii Fine, Cordelia 199 Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies, Meta Fischer, Frank 229 physics, and Science Studies (FEMMSS) Fisher, Allan 40, 43 conference 239n1 Fisher, Ronald 210 Feminist International Network of Resistance Fishman, Jennifer R. 313 to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering “fi x-the-women” type interventions 42 (FINRRAGE) 403, 405, 543 Foot, Rick 119 feminist objectivity 229 – 30 Ford, Henry 422, 428n8 feminist practices for the natural sciences: Ford Foundation 244 deconstruction technology 233, 236 – 7; Fordist/Keynesian social contract 422 – 3 democratic technology 235 – 6; differen- Fosamax drug 289n19 tial consciousness 231 – 3, 239; differen- Fosket, Jennifer Ruth 243, 253, 313 tial movement technology 233 – 5, 236; Fossey, Dian 215 meta-ideologizing technology 237 – 8; new Foucault, Michael: discursive practices 483 –4, feminist technologies 238 – 9; overview 492n25; ecofeminism 567; posthumanist 223 – 5; positioned rationality and material- performativity 477 – 9; queering and 477; ity 230 – 1; reconfi guring objectivity 228 – 30; representationalism 475 semiology technology 233, 236; standpoint Fox, Frank 41, 42, 114 theory and 225 – 8, 233; vectors, transfec- Fox, Robin 215 tions and transformations 233 frames of reference 526n28 feminist science theory: bone density and 274; Frank, Adam 532, 536 limitations and possibilities xxiv – xxv; of Frankel, Stanley 68 reproduction 307 – 9 Franklin, Rosalind xxiii, 266, 267, 268 –70 feminist technology studies (FTS): anthropol- Franklin, Sarah 402, 406 – 9, 421, 533 ogy and technology 377 – 480; anthropol- Franks, Trent 306 ogy of technology and technique 375 – 7; Fraunhofer Gesellschaft 103 coproduction of 371 – 5; fruitful exchanges Free Trade Zone (FTZ) 90 380 – 1; introduction 370 – 1; material cul- Freud, Sigmund 275 ture studies 379 – 80; overview 83 Frielingsdorf, Lizette 301 feminist technology studies (FTS), queering: The Friends group 563 beyond identity 394 – 6; contructivist tech- Frietsch, Rainer 115 nology studies 386 – 7; gender, technology From Scarcity to Visibility: Gender Differences and subjects 392 – 4; heteronormativity in the Careers of Doctoral Scientists and 387 –90; overview 385; re-reading 395 – 7 Engineers report 42 feminist technoscience: continuing the story full-time faculty positions 23 545; as cultural practice 551 – 2; denaturing nature 548 – 9; future direction of 553 – 4; Gajjala, Radhika 356, 357 gendered critique of 545 – 8; introduction Galdikas, Birute´ 215 543 – 4; knowledge cultures and 552 – 3; Galison, Peter 228 masculinity and 544 – 5; new understand- Game, Ann 501 ing of 550 – 1; reprogenetics and sex- gamete intra-fallopian transfer (GIFT) 401 change surgery 549 – 50 Gatens, Moira 525n7 FEMtech project 103 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 357 Fernandez, Maria 355 gaze, importance of 459 Fertility and Sterility journal 244 gender: analysis of 102 – 7, 104f ; authentic fertility clinics 320 – 2, 421 phrase 392; defi ned 440; discounting of fetal defect diagnosis 330n17 122; identity xxvi, 387; science studies and Feynman, Richard 140 440 – 1 INDEX | 589 gender across animal-human boundary: genetics: bone development and 282; cloning aggressive males and coy females 213 – 18; 306, 342, 421, 426; counseling 323; defi ned animal minds and human instincts 209 – 13; 266; molecular genetics xxiii, 267, 510 – 15; conclusions 218 –1 9; overview 206 – 9 screening services 321, 325, 327 – 8 gender and technology see feminist technology genetics and female accomplishments: DNA studies impact on 265 – 7; Franklin, Rosalind gender bias/discrimination study: competency example 266, 268 – 70; McClintock, Barbara considerations 8 – 10; conclusions 11; dis- example 267 – 8; overview 265 cussion over 9 – 11; integrative analysis of Genetics and In Vitro Fertilization (GIVF) Insti- 84; materials and methods 11 – 12; medi- tute 299, 301, 303 ation and moderation analysis 6 – 9; over- genetics of sex determination: awkward sur- view 3 – 5; process in 5; in student genders plus 508, 519 – 23, 524; conclusions 523 – 5; 5 – 7; see also sex/gender in neuroscience data and discussion analysis 517 – 23; do gender differences: in bones 277 – 80; in cog- humans determine sex 515 – 17; experimen- nitive skills 28; in information technol- tal data analysis 519; experimental design ogy studies 83, 89; in math and science 518 –1 9; intersexual social movement 515 – 17; aptitude 3; of mentor relationships 36; in maleness gene 511 –13, 517; molecular mosaicism research 343 – 4; in salaries 5, 6, genetics of 510 – 15; overview 507 – 9; 38; skill-based 30 sex-gender distinction 509 – 10; socioma- Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the terial approach 523; transsexual activism Careers of Science, Engineering, and Math- 517; in women 513 – 14 ematics Faculty report 36 genital development 195 gendered innovations: conclusion 106 – 7; Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 crash test dummies 104 – 5; creating new Chapters (1999) 336 knowledge and design 103 – 6; enhanc- Gibson, Emily 311 ing excellence 102 – 6; fi xing numbers of Gill, Rosalind 354, 387, 394 women in science, medicine, and engi- Gilroy, Faith 309 neering 100 – 1; overview 100; research on Ginsburg, Faye D. 306 cardiovascular disease 105; research on glass ceiling concept 26 osteoporosis 106; securing water supplies globalization: anthropology of 378; compet- 105; stem cells 106; transforming struc- itiveness of 112; gender gap in patents tures and barriers 101 – 2 112 –1 3; industrialization and 85; market gender gap in patents: impact of 116 – 17; impli- economy of 91; politics of 530 cations from 122 – 3, 127 – 9; international Goldstine, Adele 64, 65 – 6, 67 – 8, 70 – 1 comparisons 115 – 16; interview data and Goldstine, Herman 62, 64, 66 – 8, 70 methods 118; measures of productivity gonadal hormones 282 and 113 – 15; overview 111 – 13; reasons for gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) 117 – 22; suggestions for corporations 124; neurons 223 suggestions for male faculty institutions Goodall, Jane 215 124 – 5; suggestions for women scientists Goodfellow, Peter 511, 514 123; timing and model to close 125 – 7; Goonatilake, Susantha 436 women in science and technology 113 Gosling, R. G. 269 gender-switching online 359 – 60 Gowaty, Patricia 207, 219 General Dynamics Electric Boat boatyards 137 graduate women’s alliance 56 General Electric (GE) 312 Graham, Leslie 114, 120, 123 The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection granting agencies 107 (1930) 211 Granville, Mortimer 160 genetic reproductive dystopia: choices for Grint, Keith 387, 394 women of color 328 – 9; expanding market Grosz, Elizabeth: anti-biological feminism for technologies 320 – 3; neoliberalism 57, 536; biology and culture 275 – 6; and 323 – 8; reprogenetics 318 – 20 materiality and 275; new materialism 590 | INDEX

540n2; queer identity and 394; sexism and hiring bias 5, 8 – 9 532 – 3 Hispanics 25 – 6, 201 Guattari, Félix 393 Hitchcock, Christine 173 gynotechnics 377 Hochschild, Arlie 416 Holberton, John 66, 68, 71 Hacking, Ian 475 – 6 holism 462 haematopoietic (blood producing) stem cells hollaback, defi ned 365 418 Holloway, Bruce K. 141 Haimes, E. 405, 406 Hopper, Grace 72 – 3 Hall, Diana Long 525n6 hormonal replacement therapies (HRT) 175 The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) 318 hormones xxiii, 282 – 3, 287 Hansen, Mark 359 Horowitz, R. 374 Haraway, Donna: animal-human bound- horse and human relationships 501 ary 206; anti-biological feminism 533; Howes, Ruth 72 cyberfeminism and 353; cyborg feminism Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer 52 – 3, 217 – 19 and 184; diffraction metaphor 243, 490n3; Hubbard, Ruth xxiii, 223, 546 dog-human relationships 501; feminist human behavior studies 217 objectivity 229 – 31; feminist technology human bone development xxiii – xxiv studies 371; feminist technoscience 543, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority 544; lesbian contraception 405; material- 412n2 semiotic practices 507; mutated modest human forms of agency 488 witness 239n8; new materialism 540; Human Genome Diversity Project 546 postcolonial theory 442; posthumanist Human Genome Project 322 performitivity 477, 478; potent transfec- Humanistic Marxism 457 – 8 tions 502; sexing of the X 335; situated hunter gatherer societies 213 – 14 knowledges theory 239n6; social frames of Huntington Reproductive Center 312 meaning 520 Huskey, Harry 71 Harding, Sandra: feminist practices in science Huxley, Julian 211 xx, 226, 229, 231; feminist technology stud- hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis ies 371, 463; sex determination 508 223 hardwiring paradigm: ethical shortcomings hysteria, as disease paradigm 158 – 9, 275 199 – 200; scientifi c shortcomings 194 – 9 “hysterical paroxysm” 159 Harrell, Barbara 172 Hartsock, Nancy 422, 457 ideal academic, defi ned 40 Hastings Center 246, 258 identity tourism 355 – 6, 359 – 61 Hawkesworth, Mary 565 immigrant women in S&E fi elds 26 Hayles, Katherine 547 Imperial Cancer Research Fund 511 Hegel, G.W.F. 425 – 7 imperialism 435, 437 – 43, 446, 558 hegemonic discourses 497 INAH-3 cell group 196 Helms, Kristie 366n2 India 120, 247, 309 – 12 hemophilia 342 indigenous traditions 443 Hennessey, Rosemary 478 individual consciousness 144, 184 Henwood, Fils 397n6 industrialization 85, 90, 370, 546 Hershey, Laura 327 – 8 infant mortality 319 Herzenberg, Caroline 72 information and computing technology (ICT) Hess, David 230 sector 84 heteronormativity 387 – 90, 403 information technology (IT) industry 82, heterosexual imaginary 403 88 – 91, 116 heterosexual matrix 391 Ingraham, Chrys 402 Highmore, Nathaniel 159 Innovate America report 113 Hird, Myra 537 institutional transformation 42 – 4 INDEX | 591 intellectual property rights 121 Kay, Lily 553 International Committee for Contraception Keane, Helen 276 – 7 Research (ICCR) 245 Keller, Evelyn Fox: anti-biological feminism International Contraceptive Access Founda- 533; cyberscience 552; gender gap 120; tion (ICA) 251, 257 – 8 sex-gender distinction 509; X as female international grassroots activism 559 – 60 chromosome 334 Internet support groups 302 – 3, 313 Kellogg, Jon Harvey 159 internetworked global feminism 356, 357 – 9 Kelly, Petra 560 interpretative turn 83, 89, 461, 465, 473 Kendall, Lori 353 interpretive options 52, 54, 283, 373 Kennan, George 133 Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) 305, Kent, J. 419 516 Kenyan Greenbelt Movement 560 intersexual social movement 509, 515 – 17 Kerr, Anne 307 intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) 401 Kessler, Suzanne J. 305, 516, 517 intrauterine insemination (IUI) 297, 299, 401 Kevlar, invention 126 in vitro fertilization (IVF): aim of 324; in lesbian Killing the Black Body (1998) 320 conception 400, 406, 407 – 9; sex-selection Kirby, Vicki 478, 489 with 297, 299 – 300, 303; stem cells and Kleif, Tine 391, 392, 395 418 – 19, 424, 426 Klinefelter syndrome 337, 340 – 1 in vitro research 234 – 8, 417 knee jerk constructivism 530 in vivo research 234 – 7, 420 – 1 Knowledge and Power (1987) 490n5 Irwin, Alan 229 knowledge cultures 552 – 3 Is Menstruation Obsolete? (1999) 177, Koopman, Peter 511 – 13, 518 253 Kramer, Mildred 65 – 6 IUDs (intrauterine devices) xxii Kraus, Cynthia 526n16 Krieger, Nancy 193 Jackson, S. 403 K-society (knowledge society) 85 Jacob, François 549 Kuh, Diana 287 Jameson, Fredric 445 – 6 Kuhn, Thomas 519 – 20 Jameson, Larry 514 Kull, Steven 156n43 Jami, Catherine 436 Kwolek, Stephanie Louise 126 Janson-Smith, Deidre 534 – 5 Japanese women in IT 116 lab environment politics 55 – 6 Jennings, Betty Jean 67, 68 labour concepts 416 Jetma, Joan 111 lab rats in studies 498 –500 job satisfaction inequality 41 Lagesen, Vivian Anette 81, 88, 89, 374 Johannsen, Wilhelm 266 Lahar, Stephanie 559 Johnson, Anna 321 Lamb, Margaret 73 Johnson v. Calvert (1993) 321 Landström, Catharina xxv Jordan-Young, Rebecca M. xxiii Lane, Brenda 177 Jost, Alfred 195 Langer, Valerie 558, 564 Journal of Biogeography 36 Langman, Lauren 358 Journal of the American Medical Association Latin Americans 328, 357 328 Latour, Bruno 477, 507 – 8 Joyce, Patrick 254 Laughlin, Harry 330n21 Laurence, William L. 137, 141 Kahn, Jonathan 322 – 3 Lawrence, Ernest 140 Kalb, Claudia 300 Layne, L. Linda 184 – 5 Kapsalis, Terri 255 Le, Anh Pham Lobb 82 Karolinska Institute 103 Leakey, Louis 213 Kaunitz, Andrew 176 Leakey, Mary 213 592 | INDEX

leaky-pipeline metaphor: institutional trans- Malinowski, B. 375 formation to repair 42 – 4; in Malaysian Mallik, Rupsa 311 technology fi elds 94; for minorities 26; Mamo, Laura 243, 253, 313 overview 30 – 42, 31 f; in STEM 23; tenure- Man: A Course of Study (MACOS) program 216 track faculty positions 32 – 42 Manhattan Project 431, 543 Lederberg, Joshua 343 Margolis, Jane 40, 43 Lefebvre, Henry 88 marketplace manhood, defi ned 92 Lehrke, Robert 340 marriage selection in humans 210 Leland, S. 559 – 60 Marshall, Alan John “Jock” 212, 217 Lemonnier, P. 377 Martin, Emily 250, 533 Lerman, Nina 67 – 8 Martin, Jane Roland 564 lesbian conception: amniocentesis and 406, Marxist feminist critique 545 410 – 11; conclusions 411 –1 2; critical Marxist theory 372, 425, 444 – 5 studies of heterosexuality 402 – 3; infertility Mary, Deborah Johnson 41, 42, 114 clinics and 409 – 10; introduction 400 – 2; masculinist ideologies 375 recorded hit rates 401 f ; representations of Massumi, Brian 393 reproduction 403 – 5; reproductive technol- masturbation 157 – 9, 163 –4, 409 – 10 ogy and 405 – 7 Material Culture Studies (MCS) 379, 380 Levitan, Sharlane 118 – 19 material-discursive practices 478, 482 – 6 levonorgestral-releasing IUD (LNG-IUD) 242, material-semiotic practices 507 246, 248 –50, 259n36 maternal-embryonic nexus 416 – 7 Lichterman, Ruth 67, 72 matter, defi ned 485 – 6, 539 life-cycle analysis 280 Mauchly, John W. 60, 69 Life Extension Institute of Palm Springs 188n22 Mauchly, Mary 65 – 6 life-history systems theories 286f Maynard Smith, John 211 –1 3 Life on the Screen (1997) 359 Mayr, Ernst 211 Light, Jennifer S. xxii McClintock, Barbara xxiii, 267 – 8 light-bath therapy 158 McClung, Clarence E. 340 “limited nuclear war” terminology 146 –7 McNulty, Kathleen 63 – 4, 67, 68, 72 linguistic turn 473 mechanical objectivity 228 listening state of defense intellectuals 134 – 42 mediation and moderation analysis, in bias Livermore, Lawrence 140 6 – 9 Lock, Margaret 421 medicalization 313 Longino, Helen 224 – 5 Medical Research Council 340, 511 Los Alamos Scientifi c Laboratory 68 Mellström, Ulf xxii Love Canal Homeowners campaign 560, 569 Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus Lovell-Badge, Robin 343, 511 (1992) 336 Lupton, Mary Jane 176, 178 menopause 280 Luukkainen, Tapani 245, 250, 252 menstrual extraction 185 Lyon, Mary 342 menstrual suppression with birth-control pills: as enhancement technology 175 – 6; McClelland, George 64 experts for and against 172 – 3; feminism MacGregor, Sherilyn 561 and 181 – 5; menstruation as natural 173 – 4; Mackenzie, M. 373 – 4 menstruation as necessary 175; mimicking Macmillan, H. R. 563 nature 174 – 5; overview 171; scheduled McNeil, M. 404 menstruation 176 –8; Seasonale birth Mahias, M. C. 377 control 171 – 8; socially/materially situ- Malaysia boleh campaign 85 ated conclusions 184 – 6; womanhood and male birth and creation imagery 140 – 1 179 – 80; womyn/nature and 180 –1 maleness gene 511 – 13, 517 menstrual suppression with IUDS: biopolitical male variability concept 340 script 252; body/technology relationships INDEX | 593

257 – 8; cultural signiﬁ cance of menstrua- mutagenesis 235 tion 247 – 49; less modern women 250 –1; mutated modest witness 239n8 marketing of 253 –4; menstrual bleeding Mykitiuk, Roxanne 325 246 – 7; menstruation obsolescence 253; Mirena beneﬁ ts 254 – 5; modern woman/ Nakamura, Lisa 359 consumer 249 – 50; next-generation 244 – 5; Naldi, Fulvio 115 Norplant IUD 245 – 6; overview 242 – 4; pop- The Name of the Rose (1980) 457 ulation control and 244; racial economy of Nandy, Ashia 436 255 – 7; therapeutic properties of 251 – 2 Narayan, Uma 310, 445 mental rotation ability 197 Narmada Valley Dams campaign 560, 569 mentoring bias 6, 9, 36, 125 Nash, Henry T. 154n22 meta-ideologizing technology 233, 237 –8 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein 436 “me-too” drugs 187n5 National Academy of Sciences 112, 113 Metropolis, Nicholas 68 National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Michael, M. 503 – 4 (NACA) 62 MicroSort technology 297, 299 – 303, 309, 313 A National Analysis of Minorities in Science and Migeon, Barbara R. 339, 343 – 4 Engineering Faculties at Research Universi- Milam, Erika Lorraine xxiii ties report 26 militarism 435 National Bureau of Standards 72 Milkman, Ruth 60, 61 National Center for Women and Information Millar, Melanie 359 Technology 114 Miller, D. 379 National Command Authorities 140 Miller, Fiona Alice 338 National Emergency Airborne Command Post Miller, Sharla and Shane 301 (NEACP) 142 Million Woman March 357 National Geographic magazine 214 MILSTAR system 155n28 National Geographic Society 460 Milton, Ross 138 National Institute for Medical Research 511 minorities see racial/ethnic minorities National Institute of Medicine 276, 277 Mirena IUD 242 –3, 245 – 6, 250 – 1, 254 – 8 National Institutes of Health (NIH): awkward model organisms concept 53 surplus and 522; budget 112; gender gap “model-theoretic theory of theories” 225 in patents 112, 114; researchers at 29, 103; Modern Sexism Scale 8 f research- funding processes of 522; STEM Mohammad, Mahatmir 91 and 24 Mohanty, Chandra Talpade 310, 564 National Osteoporosis Foundation 278, 279 molecular genetics xxiii, 267, 510 – 15 National Postdoctoral Association 32 Molleson, Theya 277 National Public Radio (NPR) 312 Montagu, Ashley 339 National Science Board 112 Moore, Niamh xxvi National Science Foundation (NSF) 34, 54, 101, Moore School of Electrical Engineering 62, 431, 522 64 – 7, 69 National Security Council 136 Morgan, Elaine 217 –8 Native Americans 26, 33, 245, 561 mosaicism 342 – 6 natural sciences see feminist practices for the mother love 217 – 8 natural sciences Mother Nature vs. science xx natural selection 209 – 10 Moulin, Anne Marie 436 The Natural Superiority of Women (1953) 339 multiuser domain (MUD) BlueSky 353 – 4 Nature and human identity 489 Mundell, E. J. 339 neocolonialism 446 Murkatz, Ruth 181 neoliberalism and reproductive technologies Murray, Fiona 114, 120, 123 323 – 8 Museum of Menstruation and Women’s Health networking bias 36 (MUM) 171, 176, 178 New Development Policy (NDP) 85 594 | INDEX

New Economic Policy (NEP) 84 –5 Parens, Erik 325 new feminist technologies 238 – 9 participants, in gender bias/discrimination new materialism: anti-biological feminism study 11 531 – 7; creation of 537 – 40; overview Pateman, C. 427 530 – 2 “patting the missiles” 137 – 8 New Straits Times 91 Pauling, Linus 269 Newsweek 300 – 1 peer-reviewed journals 107 Newtonian physics 457 peer review scores 32 New Yorker magazine 174 pelvic congestion 159, 168n20 New York Times 69, 70, 320, 341, 517 pelvic douche treatment 160 No More Periods? The Risks of Menstrual Pender, Harold 64 Suppression (2003) 179 Pennsylvania State University 343 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) 90, perfect academic, defi ned 40 358 performative metaphysics 479 – 83 nonhuman forms of agency 488 performative understanding of discursive Nonini, Donald M. 88 practices 474 nontenure-track faculty positions 23, 34 persistence of vision 459 – 65 Nordqvist, Petra xxv Perutz, Max 269 Norplant IUD 245 – 6, 255, 326 Peterson, M. 406 Nouraie-Simone, Fereshteh 358 – 60, 362 Petitjean, Patrick 436 nuclear engineering degrees 23 Pfaffenberger, B. 375 – 6 Nuclear Free Pacifi c 561 Philadelphia Inquirer 326 Philippine Computer Society 82 Oakley, A. 404 Philosophy of Nature (Hegel) 425 – 7 objectivity forms 228 – 30, 460 PhysioAge Medical Group 175 objects as actors 466 – 9 Pickering, Andrew 477, 490n7 O’Brien, Jodi 354, 359 – 60, 366n4 Pincus, Gregory 253 observed object phenomenon 481 Pitts, Victoria 354 occupational feminism 62 Plant, Judith 559 off-track positions 34 Plant, Sadie 355, 361 On Shifting Ground: Muslim Women in the Playboy magazine 136 Global Era (2005) 358 pluripotent stem cells 417 – 18 onto-epistemology, defi ned 489 –90 Polanyi, Michael 341 Oppenheimer, Robert 141 political economy 356 – 7 oppositional consciousness 232 political skills 29 oral contraceptive safety 244 politics in the lab environment 55 – 6 organizational politics 29 population control: biotechnology strategies Osborne, Michael A. 436 for 318 – 20; eugenics 326; feminist critics osteoblasts and osteoclasts 280 – 3 of 307; as individual control 299; IUDs osteoporosis analysis 106, 277 – 9 for 244, 246, 257; reprogenetics and 327; Oudshoorn, Nelly 335, 386, 396 support for 312 Our Bodies, Ourselves (1973) 535 Population Council 244 – 5, 247 Oyama, Susan 275 Population Reports 248 – 9 positioning practice 463 Pacifi c Fertility Center 322 positivism 445, 458, 547 Page, David 335, 343, 510 – 11, 518 postcolonial theory: feminist science stud- Painter, Theophilus 336 ies and xxv; gender issues and 438 – 46; “PAL” (permissive action links) 139 history of 434 – 5; overview 431 – 4; policy Pan-Malaysian identity 85 and 435 – 7; provocations and limitations ParaGard IUD 242, 243, 251, 255 – 7 446 – 7; for science and technology 434 – 8; parathyroid hormone (PTH) 282 sites of dissonance 441 – 4; standpoint INDEX | 595

methodology 444 – 6; terminology con- radical constructivism 458 tested 447n3; weak and strong comple- radical feminism 181 – 2, 372, 546 mentarity 439 – 40; world of sciences 437 – 8 Radical Science Movement 546 post-Fordism and reproduction 423 – 4 Rako, Susan 179 posthumanist perfomativity: agency and Raley, Sara 308 – 9 causality 486 – 8; conclusions 488 – 90; Randall, John 268 – 9 material-discursive practices 478, 482 – 6; rape behavior 275 overview 473 – 4; performative metaphysics Rapp, Rayna 306, 318, 402, 407, 411 479 – 83; representationalism to 474 –9 Ravetz, Jerome 436 potent transfections 502 Reagan, Ronald 135 Powell, Cecil 62 recommendation letter bias 33 precontemplation phase 43 reconceptualization of materiality 486 preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) xxiv, reconfi guring objectivity in the natural 297, 302 – 3, 313; embryo biopsies 318; sciences 228 – 30 increase in fertility with 330n19; in lesbian reductionism principle 235, 238, 464 conception 401 relativism 461 – 2 prenatal hormones 198 religious imagery in nuclear missiles 141 – 2 Prenti, Ilaria 115 representationalism to performativity 474 – 9 preparation phase 43 Representing and Intervening (1983) 475 – 6 prepregnancy technology 299 – 300 Reproductive Health in the Twenty-fi rst prescriptive essentialism 489 Century 318 prescriptive theory for natural sciences 225 Reproductive Health Technologies Project 178 President’s Council of Advisors on Science and reproductive technologies for lesbians see Technology 3 lesbian conception Primary Aircraft Training System (JPATS) 122 reprogenetics 318 – 20, 549 – 50 Primate Visions (1989) 206, 540 Reprogenetics laboratory 318 primatology 52, 223, 468 research assistance and funding bias 38 – 9 Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study 73 research careers 40 pro-ana (pro-anorexia) websites 361 – 2 retroviruses 446 Probyn, Elspeth 395 – 6, 541n5 Revolutionary Association of Women of procedure, in gender bias/discrimination Afghanistan 358 study 11 – 12 R01 grant bias 38 Profi table Offi ce Specialties (Covey) 160 Rich, Adrienne 402, 567 Progestasert IUD 245 Richardson, Sarah S. xxiv Prohibition period 165 Ridley, Matt 336 prokaryotic genetics 521 Rinehart Center for Reproductive Medicine 321 prosthetic technologies 464 Rising Above the Gathering Storm report 113 Pyenson, Lewis 436 Ritzke, D. 10 Roberts, Dorothy E. xxiv queering act 496 – 7 Roberts, Leslie 511 queer theory 509 Robertson, John 306 quinine use 431 – 2 Rock, John 174 – 5 Roe v. Wade (1973) 324 racial/ethnic minorities: with doctoral degrees Romanticism 468 22, 22 f, 24 f ; leaky-pipeline metaphor for Rommes, Els 83, 386, 396 26; quota system for university admissions Roosevelt, Franklin D. 63 87 – 8; science and engineering inequality Rose, Nikolas 325, 326 – 8 25 – 6, 32 – 3; underrepresented minorities Rose, Steven 201 – 2 25 – 6, 32 – 3; women as engineers and 89 Rosengarten, Marsha 276 – 7 racialized embodiment online/offl ine 363 – 4 Rosin, Hanna 297 Radcliffe Institute conference 318 Rosser, Sue 35, 39, 43, 355, 366n3, 533 596 | INDEX

Rossiter, Margaret 35, 62, 73 Segal, Sheldon J. 172, 177, 245, 253 Rothman, Barbara Katz 327 Selberg, Hedi 73 Rouse, Joseph 225, 238, 476 – 8, 490n5 self-effi cacy of students 10 Roy, Deboleena xxiii Selmi, Carlo 346 Rumiati, Raffaella I. xxiii semiology technology 233, 236 semiprescriptive analysis 225 Said, Edward 431, 435 Seneca Women’s Peace Camp 561 salary bias 5, 6, 38 sex and gender, bone density: biology and cul- Samerski, Silja 307 ture 275 – 6; biology and medicine 276 – 7; same-sex desires 194 biology of 280 – 3; conclusions 288; gender Sandelowski, M. 406 – 7 differences 277 – 80; overview 272 – 5; sys- Sandoval, Chela 232 – 6, 357 tematic thinking about 283 – 8; why bones Sanger, Margaret 172 277 Sardar, Ziauddin 436 sex and gender, knowledge xix – xx Sassen, Saskia 358 sex as an object 466 – 8 SAT exam scores 28 sex-change surgery 549 – 50 Sayers, Janet 535 sex determination see genetics of sex Sayre, Anne 270 determination Scarry, Elaine 150, 156n54 sex-gender distinction 509 – 10 Scheibinger, Londa xxii sex/gender in neuroscience: defi ned 193; fu- Scheich, Elvira 544, 553 ture studies on 200 –2; introduction 193 – 4; Schiebinger, Londa 223, 554n4 technoscience and 550; see also hardwiring School of Computer Science at Universiti Sains paradigm Malaysia (USM) 84 Sexing the Body (2000) 517 Schraudner, Martina xxii Sex Linkage of Intelligence (1997) 340 science, technology, engineering, and math- sex-selection practices: as biomedicalization ematics (STEM): academic hierarchy in 312 – 15; double standards of 309 – 12; 38; defi ned xix; leaky-pipeline metaphor factors driving 299 – 303; growth of xxiv; 23; local and global inequities in xxi – xxii; Internet support groups 302 – 3, 313; media women in workforce 21, 30, 35, 44; see also and marketing 300; overview 297 – 9; as feminism, in STEM; gender gap in patents prepregnancy technology 299 –300; rein- Science and Engineering Indicators report 113 forcement of 303 – 7 science and engineering (S&E) inequality: bias sex-selective abortion 298, 301 – 2, 306, 311 – 5 avoidance 34; institutional explanations Sexual Contract (Pateman) 427 of 30 – 1; leaky pipeline metaphor 30 – 42; sexual harassment 39 of minorities 25 – 6, 32 – 3; tenure track and sexual imagery issues 135 – 8 32 – 4; underrepresentation explanations of Shapin, Steven 69 26 – 30; of women 21 – 2; of women faculty Shauman, Kimberlee 31, 114 23 – 5; of women students 22 – 3 She Figures report 101 science and scientifi c method, example: Shelton, James D. 250, 259n44 ending 1 19; ending 2 19; ending 3 19 – 20; Sher Institutes for Reproductive Medicine 321 narrative 15 – 19 Shim, Janet K. 313 ScienceNOW Daily News 336 Shiva, Vandana 436, 442, 443, 558 science vs. Mother Nature xx Silver, Arnold 39 Scopus database 115 sites of dissonance 441 – 4 Scott, Joan Wallach 510 situated knowledges theory 239n6, 459 Scott, S. 403 60 Minutes TV show 300 – 1 Seasonale (birth control) 171 – 8, 253 – 4 skill-based differences 30 The Second Sex (de Beauvoir) 183 –4 skills, defi ned 377 Sedgwick, Eve Kosolsky 532, 536 Skotko, Brian 323 Seeman, Ego 279 Slocum, Sally 217 –8 INDEX | 597

Smith, Dorothy 444 stereotypical male domains 73 Smith, Linda 284 Stienstra, Marcelle 386 Smith-Doerr, Laurel 127 Stone, Alison 567 Snow, Charles Percy 552 Stone Age cultures 214 Snow, Mary L. H. Arnold 161 strain thresholds of bones 281 Snyder, Elizabeth 67, 68, 72 “strategic triad” 155n40 social and behavioral sciences (SBS) 21 Strathern, M. 406 social constructionists 455 – 9 Strong, John Anderson 341 social constructivism 230, 474, 476 student competency bias 5 social feminism 182 student gender bias 5 – 9, 6f, 8 f Society for Menstrual Cycle Research 173 Sturgeon, Noël 558 Society for Women’s Health Research (SWHR) stuttering 465 276, 279 Subramaniam, Banu xxi, xxviin2 sociotechnical systems concept 372 Suchman, L. A. 375, 376 Sofoulis, Zoe 460, 466 Summer, Lawrence 28 solos, defi ned 27 Suqiu claims 87 Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) 418, 426, Survey of Doctorate Recipients 34 428n4 Sykes, Brian 336 South Pacifi c navigation 438 systems theories 285 f, 286 f, 553 Soviet Union 145, 147 Spallone, P. 404 Tailhook scandal 122 spatial practice concepts 88 Takeshita, Chikako xxii speculum use 168n16 Talbot, Margaret 307 spermatology 336 – 7, 342 Taliban regime 358 sperm competition in fruit fl ies 53 Tanner, Nancy 217 split consciousness 233 –4 Task Force on Programs for Women 101 Spolarics, Zoltan 346 Taylor, George 35, 160 Sry gene 511 – 13, 517, 520, 523 – 4, 525n1 technoscience xxiii – xxiv, 378 – 9 standpoint methodology 444 – 6 tenure-track faculty positions 25; barriers to standpoint theory and feminism 225 – 8, 233 advancement 35 – 6; barriers to entry 33; Stanworth, M. 404 barriers to promotion 36 – 8; leaky-pipeline Starhawk (ecofeminist) 568 metaphor 32 – 42; women’s experience with Staying Competitive: Patching America’s Leaky 38 – 42 Pipeline in the Sciences report 35 Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Steel, Tanya Wenman 303 Impact of Amniocentesis in America (1999) Stein, Gertrude 456 402 Steinbacher, Roberta 309 Texas A&M University 112 Steinberg, D. 404 textualism 532 Steinberg, Jeffrey 301 Thackray, Laura 104 – 5 STEM see science, technology, engineering, Thelen, Esther 284 and mathematics thingifi cation, defi ned 479 stem cell research: analysis of 106; conclu- Third World feminism 232 sion 427 – 8; debates over 421 – 3; female Third World intellectuals 431 reproduction and 417 – 20; labour and Third World Network 436 420 – 1; overview 416 – 17; post-Fordism and Third World policy 435 – 6 reproduction 423 – 4; potential, experi- Third World women 310 –1 1, 463, 561 – 2 ment, regeneration 424 – 7; tissue appro- Thomas, Sarah 172, 174 – 76 priation for xxv Thompson, Charis 308, 402, 412, 421 Stenpries, R. E. 10 Thompson, Jennifer Merrill 302, 304, 308, 309, Stepan, Nancy Leys 436, 520 311 Stephan, Paula 120 – 3, 128 Thrift, N. 425 598 | INDEX

thyroid disorders 344 – 5 US Patent and Trademark Ofﬁ ce 127 Tiger, Lionel 215 US patent reform 113 Time magazine 339 US Space Command 140 Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power (2004) US War Department 61, 68 – 9 540n2 tissue donation 424, 428n10 vectors, transfections and transformations 233 Titmuss, Richard 422 – 3 Vehviläinen, Marja 396 Todd, Lila 64 ventriloquial politics of representation 547 Toedtman, Mary and Sam 301 vertebral height and width 280 tokens, deﬁ ned 27 viability in Drosophila 52 Toth, Emily 176, 178 virginity analogy with nuclear missiles 138 – 9 “Tranny” Listservs 362 – 3 Vision 2020 plan 85 transparency xv, 37, 39, 231, 479 – 80 visualization practice 463 – 4 transsexual activism 509, 515, 517 – 18 Von Neumann, John 71 Treadwell, Mattie 65 Tremain, Shelley 307 Waast, Roland 436 – 7 Tripier, Auguste 159 Wade, Nicholas 343 triumphalism 434 – 5, 437 Wajcman, Judy 82, 355, 373 – 4 Trivers, Robert 207, 216 –18 Waldby, Catherine xxv Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt 568 Wallace, Alfred Russel 207, 210 Tuana, Nancy 230 Wallace, Henry 268 Turkle, Sherry 359 Walton, Anthony 357 Turner syndrome 337, 340 – 1 Warner Chilcott 254 Warnock Report 404 Ulam, Stanislaw 140 Watson, James D. 266, 269 ultrasound scanning 298, 310, 406 Wayne, Marta xxi – xxii, xxiii under-achieving men 91 – 3 weapons system designs 122 undergraduate training 54 Wehling, Thomas 552 underrepresented minorities (URMs) 25 – 6, Weiner, K. 405 32 – 3 Weiss, Gail 306 United Kingdom (UK) 314, 373 Weiss instrument 160 United Nations (UN) 431 welfare reform laws 319 universalism 355, 509, 563 – 6, 569 Wescoff, Marilyn 67 University of California, Berkeley 33 Westhoff, Carolyn 174 University of California, Irvine 40 – 1 Whelan, Elizabeth 247 – 8 University of California, Los Angeles 340 White Cross vibrator 163 University of Malaya (UM) 88 Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research University of Missouri 267 510 University of Rhode Island 39 Whittington, Kristin 127 US Agency for International Development Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, (USAID) 247, 250, 312 Engineering and Mathematics report 28 US Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) Wiccanism 567 – 8 62 Wilding, Faith 355, 361 US Bureau of the Census 164 Wilkins, Maurice 266, 269 US Department of Defense 140 Willard, Huntington 343 US Department of Labor 72, 74 Williams, George 207 US Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau 61 Wilson, Edward O. 217 – 18 user-centered design 373 Wilson, Elizabeth 275, 276, 533 –4, 537 US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 171, window-dressing of women 40 245, 299, 303, 322 Wittig, Monique 402 INDEX | 599

Woman: An Intimate Geography (1999) 344 World Health Organisation (WHO) 103, 248 – 9, womanhood and menstruation 179 – 80 278 The Woman in the Body (1987) 182 world of sciences 437 – 8 Women, Feminism and Biology (1986) 535 World War I 433 Women, Work, and the Academy report 43 World War II 213, 337, 431, 433, 552 Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Wright, Michelle M. 355, 357, 365 Service (WAVES) 61 Wyeth-Ayerst Pharmaceuticals 246 Women@Internet: Creating New Cultures in Wylie, Alison 227 – 8 Cyberspace (1999) 358 Women’s Army Corps (WAC) 61, 65 X as the female chromosome: autoimmunity Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) 61 and 344 – 6; conclusions 346 – 7; gendered Women’s Bureau Bulletin 71 – 2 tropes 335 – 6; history of naming 336 – 8; Women’s Environmental Network (WEN) 560, mosaicism 342 – 6; overview xxiv, 334 – 5; 563, 569 theories of human sex differences 338 – 40; women’s issues: child- and family-care 3; in tracking into human genetics 340 – 2 computer science 82 – 6; constitutional Xie, Yu 31, 114 protections xx – xxi; glass ceiling concept The X in Sex: How the X Chromosome Controls 26; numbers in science, medicine, and en- Our Lives (2003) 344 gineering 100 –1; in postcolonial technology 438 – 9; window-dressing of women 40; Yassin, Tan Sri Muhyiddin 87 workforce 21, 30, 35, 44; during World Young, Robert J. 431 War II 61 Young, William 195 Women’s Liberation Movement 534 Yuval-Davis, Nira 310 Women’s Pentagon Actions 560, 561 womyn/nature and menstruation 180 – 1 Zeroes and Ones (1997) 355 Woolley, Helen Thompson 338 Zihlman, Adrienne 217 World Bank 438 Zola, Irving 313