coldhearted scientist وداد

I have heard this many times, but in fact I do believe I am unlike the others. Neither the management of time, nor of money, nor of “impulses” is difficult for me. Most advice on life does not apply to me because it is about these three topics. I am unlike some others, too, in that I do not believe relationships take work (although I am surprised when other people put no thought into these, expecting them to last magically).

I appear as well to be dissimilar to many professors in that I do care where I live and am not embarrassed to say so. I genuinely like research and writing. I am neutral on teaching. I am an excellent administrator and not embarrassed about it. I do not consider administrators enemies. I prefer to run Linux. I bring in external funding that is not just for me.

Except for the part about caring where I live, that second paragraph of characteristics is actually quite normal for a working man. I do not look like a working man; therein lies the difficulty. The first line of characteristics is the more subtle one. It is why I am accused of being “unfeeling” when I am merely unsentimental. And once again, my characteristics would be far less shocking in a man.

In Reeducation, I was told that the women in my family had historically been “too strong,” and the men “too weak.” What basis or authority Reeducation, who was not a sociologist or an historian, had for saying this, I do not know and I pointed this out at the time, much to Reeducation’s dismay.

I remember how polite I was to Reeducation, making gentle suggestions as one would do at an academic job interview rather than coming on as though we stood on even ground. I was aware I could make him cry if I were not really gentle. I should have gone ahead and done it.

The essayists in Working It Out are a generation older than I am but theirs was the experience of women scientists and other liberal professionals active when I was in college and graduate school. Because I have not tended to live in the most modern of places, it has also been mine in many instances — not in the profession at large, but in the places I have been based.

In Naomi Weisstein‘s piece there is a reference to her persistence in the pursuit of a scientific career as having been attributed to “[her] domineering mother and passive father or [her] domineering father and passive mother” (249). And I thought of Reeduation, which was advertised as feminist, and said, “Oh, yes, I see.”

*

I had the impression in high school, when Roe v. Wade was won and feminist principles were announced, that the veracity of certain points had been demonstrated and need not be revisited. I must have been taking trigonometry then, or Latin grammar; some subject where demonstrated, basic principles had not varied in centuries. I might have considered that there was also draft counseling at my school, and a  need for it.

I might have noted as well that was failing the “citizenship” aspect of Spanish, because this was the class in which the Pledge of Allegiance was said and I would not say it. It was also where the Daily Bulletin was read, eliminating the news of the Women’s Caucus since the teacher did not not believe in it. I would not enter the classroom until the invalid Daily Bulletin had been read, so I was late despite being visible waiting in the hall and despite having explained my reasons for refusing to come in.

At the time I was merely amused at the eccentricity of this teacher. However his behavior was in fact more indicative of the entire situation than I knew, and the antifeminist backlash had only just begun.

Axé.