CSULA ENGL 560: Spring 2013

For this week's blog posting I chose to focus on Evelyn Fox Keller's article, "Gender and Science: Origin, History, and Politics." At first read I had the impulse to scoff--what with all the talk of the "autonomy of the egg cell as an active participant in the process of human conception" and such (as opposed to some fluid-filled organic orb that passively floats from one place to the next, waiting to be unceremoniously "assaulted" by the insensitive sperm cell); but then I opened my mind a bit (a rare occurrence, to be sure)and realized that, while I feel it is a bit over the top to take the gender wars to the level of scientific terminology, a valid point is still being made. Historically, phenomena in science that exhibit strength, assertiveness, power, or dominance in any way have been characterized as male. Likewise all that is weak, passive and assault-able, if you will, is deemed feminine. Sometimes these designations are accurately assigned, but at times they are not. Keller feels that these are sociocultural constructs that have been presented as "the natural order of things" and have existed as such for so long that many take them for fact. Some may argue that her time is better spent on more crucial concerns like the real oppression of women in various volatile parts of the world instead of nit-picking at whether or not female reproductive cells are portrayed as having agency, but I would say to them words have power. Keller believes there is an ideology behind these patriarchal-flavored terms, and this ideology is attempting to present itself as the "natural" order by way of scientific legitimacy. This made me think about our class, in a way, because the way I see it, one of our major aims in this course is to define a term: nature. We are going to attempt to dissect and examine all the ways the term has been used and what that term means to us today. Keller's article was a helpful primer for me to get into that frame of mind.