Tuesday, January 29, 2008

The Secret Science

After doing the readings I feel like I have the same understanding prior to doing the assignment.  The readings were somewhat difficult to understand and follow.  Between the two selections the one that I could understand the most was "Making Gender Visible in the Pursuit of Nature's Secrets."  Overall I thought the author aimed to explore the function of gender in the world and in this exploration the "secret" was revealed.  Keller talks about nature's secrets and the urge for them to be understood.  Biology is typically linked to mystery but after exploring the world of biology it was noted that mystery doesn't exist.  These mysteries or intangible secrets of nature simply tells us that there are no secrets at all, everything just hasn't been uncovered.  In order solve these mysteries scientists aimed to remove the mysterious language in science that left open doors to questioning facts or myths.  
Relating this article to a real life experience I turn to the reference on page 516 of "maleness as invisibility and of femaleness as visibility.  The reassertion that females were linked visibility reminded me of how women are constantly surveyed.  Although women themselves are surveyors of other women, men still have the upper hand.  This constant privilege of power is handed to men.  Whatever is invisible to them must be attained, they feel it is their right to posses all.  In turn there is an oppression against women with this power domination and in turn women are controlled.  Certain secrets that women have men try to undo.  Scientists are also promoting this scenario.  If this is going to be the norm having secrets uncovered by either males or scientists, there needs to be an understanding of control and how to go about it in the right way.   Although control should be implemented, I still wonder if we let men understand the "secrets" will gender relations improve?

1 comment:

Feminist Theorist said...

it's interesting that you use the word "let" in your final sentence. Are we letting them understand these secrets or are they actively pursuing them? It seems that a big part of this is the positioning of women and nature as other which makes men want to figure them out. What if there was no other? What if we saw all things as intricately connected to one another?