This Isn't Just For School

So, I have finally figured out a way to keep up with this blog - make it a school project! It's genius.

In the fall, I intend to do my AHS (Arts and Humanities) Capstone on "feminist engineering". What is that, you ask? Haha! That is what my project will be about. I've taken a couple philosophy classes (spanning Western and Eastern disciplines) so I'm going to be building on that background with a women's studies angle.

My provisional thesis is:
Feminists are often concerned with women’s experiences and the effect of society in constraining and shaping those experiences. Therefore, with so much discussion surrounding the representation of women in engineering, it seems appropriate to bring a feminist lens to this arena.

Personal identity plays a huge role in how individuals interact with society and communities. In this context, what does it mean to balance identities as a feminist and as an engineer? How is that manifested in everyday life? If we approach this from a philosophical point of view, is it possible to do feminist engineering? What is it? Where might it come from?

By overlaying these seemingly disparate identities, we can begin to approach the issue of what it means to belong in engineering and how engineering might change as more and more women enter the field.

In any case, starting in the fall, I will be requiring myself to write one entry per week. Until then, my posts will probably be a little bit less focused and span book reviews to current events to stuff in my twitter feed to the power industry to boats to random things that occur to me.

Anyway, first dilemma: should my blog be anonymous? I can't decide. If I do go anonymous, I'll start a new one - otherwise, I'll keep using this one. I can imagine myself posting things and people getting mad at me for associating Olin with my rants. On the other hand, I hate secrets.

Feminist Engineering

I think "feminist engineering" is a funny phrase. I imagine machines generating feminists, housewives engineering their children to be feminists, engineering students designing with women in mind as a potential end-user, an engineering philosophy that acknowledges and subverts the effect of patriarchal society on design - both what is designed and how.

As a funny side note, other people have come up with their own ideas. David Durlach, founder of Technofrolics, defines a feminist engineer as someone who is inspired to create affectionate technology. In other words, a feminist engineer designs products with emotional value. I think it's an interesting idea, a bit heavy-handed as far as relying on stereotypes, but interesting. I kind of want to work for them.

This whole discussion is part of why I got involved in SWE in the first place. I want to talk about what it means to do feminist engineering and be a feminist engineer. I want to encourage more women and minorities to get engineering degrees. I want to be surrounded by people who feel similarly. I mean honestly, SWE is the closest thing we have to a women's group on campus (I'm not going to count Girls' Bible Study - first off, it's for girls). I really want SWE to mean more to me than planning stupid study breaks. I'm really starting to hate study breaks. That's part of why I decided to RSVP "yes" to the SWE Collegiate Leadership Forum - I'm hoping it will help me get a new perspective on the organization.

A Feminist Defense of Pornography

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Right to Choose

I think it's really important to make a special effort to encourage women to enter engineering. Not because women need a "step up" (the affirmative action logic) and not because it's important to have diversity (although it is) - but because women deserve to have a choice about the matter.

For me, being a feminist means being conscious of the implications of gender. I didn't have trouble deciding to become an engineer. I was lucky enough to have two parents with engineering degrees, a mother who often told me that an engineering degree is the best degree to have, and a close bond with the science department at my high school. I even had the opportunity (well insisted on having the opportunity) to participate in a pilot hands-on Women in Science and Engineering program that my high school started my senior year. So it's hardly a surprise that I'm here studying engineering today.

However, for hundreds of other women, deciding to study engineering is a much bigger deal. There's a lot of implicit socialization out there silently convincing women to not become engineers before they even have the chance to consider it. Just as an example, there are tons of girls out there who are talented in every subject who have no idea what they want to do with their lives - why don't they all study engineering? After all, an engineering degree is arguably one of the most versatile degrees out there. Instead they're advised to become a doctor, lawyer, scientist - all noble professions, but is engineer on the list? I guess it depends on the advisor. We need to make sure that engineer is on that list.

Then once they do decide to become engineers, the battle continues. When you feel like you don't belong in a profession, it's so easy to drown yourself in negative self-talk. Maybe you have a bad day and bomb a test, what's your first thought? Oh man, I bombed that test because I had a bad day? Nope. It's - God, I don't belong here. That's why women drop out - it's not because they're not smart enough.

The Politics of Desire

Note: I wrote this a while ago, when I was in high school. However, I still agree with a lot of the conclusions I drew here, so I haven't deleted it.

Recently, I've been reading Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of Feminist Desire edited by Merri Lisa Johnson. I picked it up on a whim from Barnes & Nobles - thinking that it might have some gems inside it's pages. Instead, it's totally changed the way I think about desire and relationships.
I've never had sex, I've never had a long-term relationship - so it's hard for me to figure out what I think about a lot of stuff. It's nice to read essays by women who are much closer to figuring life out than I am.

The first essay that caught my attention was titled "I Learned From the Best: My Mother Was a High-Femme Whore" by Paula Austin. Paula Austin is a black femme lesbian who's mother prostituted herself to support her family. She explains that gender expression is on the most basic level a performance. She acts feminine to manipulate a situation and gain control because in our society - that works. By using her femininity as a tool, she is reshaping it into something that helps her instead of hurting her. I'm not the most feminine person in the whole world - I don't wear make-up or high heels, I don't shave my legs. But I can see something beautiful in it. I like that for her, femininity is about how she views herself instead of solely about how everyone else views her. On the other hand, I'm not a lipstick lesbian. I don't want to be. And there's nothing wrong with that - it doesn't make me less of a woman. I have taken charge of my femininity in a different way, by rejecting the parts that don't fit me and accepting the parts that do.

Since I tend to go after butch/androgynous girls (keep in mind that not everyone I've dated is butch and that I'm not attracted to every butch girl I meet) - my classmates always tease me that I'm a closeted heterosexual (or a "heterosexual homosexual" as Kayte coined it).
Before reading this book, I could never explain why I like girls who look like boys. I couldn't explain why I didn't think there was anything wrong with using a strap-on. I couldn't explain why that didn't mean I "actually wanted to be with a man".

In "A Cock of One's Own: Getting a Grip on Feminist Sexual Power" by Sarah Smith, this exact dilemma is examined. Sarah Smith owns a sex toy shop and (perhaps surprisingly) sells the most dildo harnesses to straight couples. It's so easy to put sex into categories - anal sex is gay sex, vaginal penetration is straight sex, and clitoral stimulation is lesbian sex. But that's not the way it works at all - there's not one type of sex that only one group of people participate in. Sexual orientation isn't about what type of sex you like - I always forget that. It's about who you're attracted to, it's about who you want to spend the rest of your life with. I could have the same type of sex with a man as with a woman - but it wouldn't feel the same. I wouldn't have the same feelings towards the person, so it would be a completely different experience. I could "experiment with straight sex" but that's exactly what it would be - experimenting. That's why I can make out with boys and it doesn't mean anything - it was never going to mean anything in the first place.

Now that I think about it - there's no reason for me to be offended by people who experiment with lesbianism. The gay community is so anxious to prove that they're legitimate that they forget sexuality is fluid. Sexual identity and sexual behavior don't always match up. I might be attracted to butch girls, but that's not because I'm "trying to find a man" - it's because I'm attracted to women - butch girls aren't wannabe men. As Sarah Smith writes, "Cross-gender identification does not diminish one's biological girlness, I am coming to see; it expresses playfulness rather than poor self-image. In fact, integrating the 'masculine' parts of one's erotic identity may be a sign of good mental health despite a culture that would deem such thoughts perverse". I like the idea of playing with gender - of fucking with the binaries and figuring out who I want to be instead of who I'm supposed to be. I don't even know what it means to be butch/femme. Is it the way you look/what you wear? Is it a dynamic between two people? Is it a game?

Interestingly, there are no essays by butch women in this anthology. There is one essay by a gay man - everyone else is a feminine woman (ranging the sexual orientation spectrum).