Monday, January 28, 2008
Sister's of Society's Secrets
Although I found Kellers “Making Gender Visible in the Pursuit of Natures Secrets” a very difficult read, I do feel that it raised some valid points about how women are viewed, studied and depicted through science. It almost everything in our world can be divided into the categories of masculine or feminine Much like Kellers point that the right brain is said to be feminine and the left masculine. Commonly used statements such as “mother earth” and “father time” speak volumes the presence of gender even when describing natural phenomena. Kellers example of pregnancy and the mysteries surrounding it engulfs, in many aspects, the “secrecy” of femaleness. The mysteries of conception, as far as the females role in the process is concerned, causes so many questions to arise. It is funny how society quietly discusses pregnancy and the process of creating, barring and delivering a child, yet the state being pregnant is one of the most blatantly obvious parts of the female-experience. Keller writes, “Pregnancy…though visible to all the world in its outward signs, is invisible in its internal dynamics. It is, in fact, the ultimate secret of life, knowable if not visible to the mother, but absolutely inaccessible to the father.” I think there are so many (if not all) aspects of the feminine experience that men, scientist or not, will be excluded from. In there exclusion there is often criticism, fascination, disinterest or disgust for processes that they do not understand.
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4 comments:
Do you think that if men understood conception it would alleviate the negative way that women are depicted? If men were let in on these secrets, would man/woman gender relations be the better for it? What is our goal as feminists theorists as it relates to these mysteries?
you know what though? women don't understand conception either. i think the thing that women understand is that we DON'T understand, that there's infinitely more to life than what you can ever know of it. and i think that part of the problem of patriarchy is the attempt to subdue all of nature's mysteries, to conquer nature by knowing it. our world would be a lot different if we all, men and women, had the collective assumption that the world continues outside and underneath our knowledge--and if we taught our kids to know what they can, but also to know that they only ever know a small part of what there is to be known.
Yes I do believe that if men could understand conception women would be depicted in a positive light. Male/female relations would improve drastically. If men could experience a small portion of what women experience in child-bearing I'd assume there would be a lot less dead beat fathers. There level of disconnect makes it simple to walk away. They don't feel connected to life (in any form really) the way women or should i just say "mother earth" does. As feminists theorist we should do our part to find the effects of men's disconnect to conception and make it known and educate young women on the realties of our world.
Men hate everything that they can't understand.... and everything that they can't control. Since child birth is a process that only women can endure men decide to place bias opinions on conception and child bearing. Although I think that men could be involved in the process if they wanted too, asking questions, reading books, being there.... That's all apart of the process too.
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