Thread:User talk:WaitingforGodot/Pinker and Lakoff/reply (4)

This really gets into the kind of 3rd wave feminism that asks you to fully disrobe, and put on a dress, high heals, make up and long nails and "walk in our shoes for a while".

Science, as an approach to understanding the world, and following its own methodology if it were *truly* that way, would accept any idea equally, from any perspective, as long as it can be studied. But that's not what "science" is, that's what it should be. What it is, like every other endever, is a socially constructed field full of people who have limited access to how to approach the field and study within it. Science is informed by scientists; scientists are human and come from biased worlds, scientists in the past were almost always male, and add their perspective to teh game. As women (and frankly people of color, people from poor backgrounds, people from Africa or Japan or wherever) entered the game, they change it. They literally see teh world and approach teh world differently from the way the traditional scientist (white, male, middle or upper class) saw the world. And yes, with different eyes, new things were found. And, frankly, new ways of challenging findings, thinking of new findings, critiquing old shit, were presented.

"Rationality" (which largely is responsible for what modern science is), has this same problem. So-called rational thinking has its roots in rational discourse of Descarte and spinoza, but it is a limited way of looking at the world, and only some kinds of information are deemed acceptable as "rational". And as that discourse is a very male discourse, the second you do that, you limit or even eliminate other (women's, to be frank in this discussion) approach to the same topics. These are not biological approaches by the way. As I said, Japan approaches thought - including their own rational discourse, quite differently. And as they entered the game, rational discourse either accepts their approach or demands they change.

I get most of this from reading the comments about life as a scientist the really well spoken Jocelyn Brunell who challenges the science position as "we are gender neutral" all the time (read: we are broken, and Dark Matter - both touch on this, though it's not the center of either work). And then scientists talking about it in a more general forums on women in science.