lisa@mit-vax.UUCP (Lisa Chabot) (07/04/84)
Alright, "anomaly" is not a good enough word. How about "freak", or in the case of women: "un-womanly"? Remember that it has been held true that if a woman pursued academic endeavors, there was probably something wrong with her sexual organs (not that long ago, either, a book of quotations I remember being excerpted in The Atlantic had some marvellous little speeches from the first half of this century); this little gem must have been particularly biting to those women who were taught to believe that knowing about other women's bodies was bad--I don't mean sexually "knowing", but rather just plain knowing what other women looked like--for example, Joanna Russ in _How to Suppress Women's Writing_ cites instances during the late 19th century when women studying at distinguished art academies were not allowed to attend model sessions if the model was to be a nude woman--because this would be improper! How ludicrous. But more close to our own time, women have related incidences with their gynecologists where the woman wanted to know the why or the what of something and were told by the male gynecologist not to worry her pretty little head over such matters (yeah, I know, sometimes it's hard for all of us to get the doc to tell us just why he wants us to ingest something and what else it's going to do). So, here is a woman, trapped--she may not know whether or not she's normal physically, since discussing such matters is indelicate, and she wants to study mathematics, but *knows* that normal, healthy women don't want such things. Just like a woman's proper place is the home, blacks' proper place is with other blacks. It was held more proper that instead of excelling in the real, "white" world, it was better to go help one's own kind--go teach in black colleges. One who ignores such a "natural" obligation is rejecting one's own culture--and is probably a bad person too, since we *know* black people are childlike--just like women!--and therefore nurturing is *natural* to them. (I recommend S J Gould's recent biography of a black biologist... sorry, the title escapes me.)[Please, before you label me wildly racist-- the stuff about blacks being childlike is SARCASM (and those who caught on, my apologies, I said it *just in case*).] [But despite it being SARCASM from me, I know people who say it.] Okay, excellers are anomalies, but they become "unnaturals" if they step beyond bounds defined for them by labelling them into non-relevant or non-real categories, such as Women-and-we-know-women-can't-do-higher-math (therefore, they're either not real women (quick--hormone therapy!) or somebody else is doing their homework for them). L S Chabot UUCP: ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot ARPA: ...chabot%amber.DEC@decwrl.ARPA USFail: DEC, MR03-1/K20, 2 Iron Way, Marlborough, MA 01752