Mathematigal has her views on Feynman and the hero-worship of Feynman and what that hero-worship implies for women in science and mathematics.
She starts with some of the special treatment she has received, such as…
I have had men in academia disparage me to others, and dismiss both my interests and accomplishments as trivial. I regularly deal with comments like “PRO TIP: Mute the video, sit back, and admire the cute girl” regarding my outreach work. I have had jobs (multiple) where I was harassed and propositioned by my own boss.
And then she goes on to explain how Feynman and the cult of Feynman relates to that kind of thing.
Because every time I hear someone in my department or in one of my classes go on about how Feynman was so awesome I mean he was kind of a jerk to women but whatever, I file him (and it is almost always always a him) away as someone who would have sided against me in every single one of the situations I’ve mentioned. Every time I see a joking tweet or post about how Feynman’s second wife divorced him because she didn’t like that he was always doing calculus in his head, while totally ignoring the fact that the divorce papers indicate that he would fly into a rage, attack her, and break furniture whenever she interrupted said mental calculus, my world gets a little bit smaller.
Now, that may not be totally fair to every Feynman fan out there, but let me tell you, life as a woman in phenomenally male-dominated fields is pretty damned unfair. I put people into boxes about stuff like this – not because I think all of the people who hero-worship Feynman (and countless other mathematicians/scientists with similar track records) approve of how he treated women, but because there are actually some that do. As in, there are people today who think that lying to women and treating them like prizes to be won is totally fine. And some of them are researchers, professors, PhD candidates. And I know from personal experience that if I found myself once again in a situation where a prominent man was abusing his power, there would be people who would bend over backwards to protect his reputation, to the detriment of mine. That is the ugly side of hero worship. People like me get the message that great scientific achievement will totally outweigh reprehensible and hurtful behavior towards, well, people like me.
And it is exactly the same way out here outside the academy, in the secular / atheist / humanist movement, where hero worship and cults of “leaders” are also endemic. The heroes and “leaders” are all male, and people – especially women – who criticize or challenge them are treated like enemy agents in wartime.
How do they not recognise that this kind of reaction, as well as being a pretty clear “fuck you” (whether it was intentional or not) to women, is an utter betrayal of skepticism and rationality? I swear, the longer I’ve been listening to the people I used to respect talk about this subject, the more fallacies or outright falsehoods I hear from them; all in the name of maintaining an image of someone that was never reasonable in the beginning.
I know, I wonder that a lot.
Especially – as we all know, probably to the point of boredom – when it comes to things like the shiny new projects that are actually just excuses to trot out the same Heroic Thought Leaders for our admiration yet again.
Like this which I just saw on Twitter, Dr Allison Stelling replying to Janet Stemwedel –
(translated out of Twitterese since I’m not limited to 140 characters)
“At the moment, it’s more important for univerities to have #HotShotPI pulling in big bucks than it is for universities to protect exploited students.”
For Hot Shot PI substitute Hot Shot Best-seller or Hot Shot Magician.
https://twitter.com/DrStelling/status/489450926709952512
And it’s dismaying how the reputation-preservation never seems to go in the other direction…professional women have to be on constant guard that their personal conduct will not outshine their professional achievements, as any perceived moral failing has the potential to. Hell, in maths and the sciences, women’s work has often been outright stolen and taken-credit-for by male superiors (some of who doubtless also tried to fuck them physically as well as professionally) for centuries. How many discoveries do we not have because the women who would’ve discovered them were discouraged, dismissed, and dismayed by men? How many advances will we lack in the future?
One is too many.
Speaking of which, the Global Secular Council is apparently now the Secular Global Institute. Not much appears to have changed other than the new name in its amusing font and the shrinking of the staff to Edwina Rogers and a few guys (I recall it being larger and including several women). Some GSC references still haven’t been removed. Not sure if it’s still affiliated with the SCA.
There’s no diminishing persistent sexism but last night I had an interesting conversation with my eldest daughter – one of our first generation of young women who are starting to really reap the benefits of feminism She was asking about this affair since we have a number of Feynman’s books in our library (though not the one that incited this firestorm). In her experience, guys who act like that are considered total assholes at school by young women and men. In one generation going from being perceived as BMOC to total asshole. That’s encouraging at least.
And we have seen plenty examples in the comment’s section of this post:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2014/07/the-non-sexual-worth-of-a-woman-never-occurs-to-him/
Still “Global”, though.
What a funny bunch.
Bjarte – exactly. That’s partly why I posted this.
Kill your heroes. People who are criticizing Feynman’s bad treatment of women aren’t criticizing his physics lectures.
If Feynman had been a proper ‘toff’ and kept his mouth shut, how bad would his reputation be?
People who like heterosexuality, like the law and sausage, may not be comfortable seeing how they play out in the midst of a deeply sexist and dysfunctional society. Men of Feynman’s social cohort who actually wished to act on their sexual desires had a choice of:
Bribery
Coercion, or
Celibacy.
@johnthedrunkard what the fuck are you talking about?
Apparently that there was no consensual sex before 1969?
Strange how people assume that someone with great intellect is necessarily worthy of respect as a person, Newton was a vindictive bastard and pathologically jealous of his scientific rivals. Perhaps it will be another generation before it’s generally acknowledged that one of the 20th century’s greatest scientists was also a violent misogynist prick.
Salty Current@5: The “amusing font” you refer to is Algerian (among other sources, check it out at [ http://www.fonts.com/font/elsner-flake/ef-algerian ]), and yeah, it is amusing. I can’t figure out why the Good Burghers of the GSC/SGI/MOUSE felt that Algerian would be a good choice for their logo; maybe they decided that if it’s good enough for Ken St. Andre’s RPG Tunnels & Trolls, it’s good enough for them?
Thank you, cubist. I’m trying to stop myself from following the links from Algerian’s Wikipedia page. I have to admit, though – a font “aimed to embellish ‘any work which suggests the Victorian era’” is entirely appropriate in this case.
SC @5
Edwina Rogers was “let go” by SCA so perhaps this new group isn’t part of SCA.
It was launched before she was fired as an SCA initiative (and might have been part of the reason for her dismissal – I recall a mention of her starting projects that duplicated existing efforts). Since it seems to be largely if not wholly funded by a single person or entity, she could probably just have split it off from the SCA. That might account for the staff reduction and removal of explicit links with the SCA from the site; the text in the “Issues” sections is still from SCA policy guides, so they’ll probably have to change that.
I’m torn between enjoying watching them try to keep this cargo cult think tank going and wishing it would just fade away.