Should Feminists Clone And If So How

as a kid

i was convinced that i was bionic and

i’ve got my bionic woman running shoes

here to prove it

growing up in toronto canada in the

1970s

i knew i was different i was a girl

who loved science and math but more

importantly

i had completely convinced my

six-year-old self

that i was part human part machine

and a hundred percent awesome

for those of you who are old enough to

remember the bionic woman show was a

show that aired in the 70s

and it starred a very blonde and very

white actress

by the name of lindsay wagner

at the time i didn’t see any difference

between myself

and lindsay wagner’s character jamie

summers

we were basically the same person

one day during kindergarten i

uh my bionic skills came in quite in

handy

i used to love running to the jungle gym

and climbing up some monkey bars that

must have been all of five feet high

one such day i scaled those monkey bars

with my first ever kindergarten crush

let’s call him steve austin

steve and i climbed those monkey bars

and we were enjoying our view of all the

non-bionic children in the playground

when all of a sudden steve leapt from

the top of those bars down to the ground

i motioned to follow him in this amazing

feat of agility and strength

when he yelled to me to stop i asked him

why

he said that as bionic man he could make

that jump

but that as bionic woman i was not

strong enough

and i would never be able to make it and

so i leapt

good god i left i took a leap of faith

and as soon as i landed and was able to

steady myself

i made my way over to my first ever

crush and i started to pummel

pooler steve austin how dare he say that

i

jamie freaking summers was not as strong

as bionic man

our kindergarten teacher rushed over to

us and pulled me away from my out of

character behavior

and said why debolino why are you

punching this poor little boy

i told her he said that bionic woman was

not as strong as bionic man

i think she was sympathetic but i really

still got in trouble

that day i learned an important lesson

that being a girl and being a bionic

girl

at the same time was going to be tricky

another day that same winter i was

making my way home

when all of a sudden a snowball pelted

me in the back of the head

when i turned around to see where the

snowy assault was coming from

and who the perpetrator was i saw a tall

eighth grade boy with blonde hair and

blue eyes

getting ready to throw another snowball

at me and as he was doing so

he yelled the word packy

more snowballs kept coming and he kept

yelling this word pacquiao at me over

and over again

i don’t know what the word pachy meant

and i don’t know why he was throwing

snowballs at me

but what i did know is that thanks to my

bionic legs

i was going to be able to get away from

this bad guy

and so i motored my way home

and when i got home i opened the door

with tears running down my face

i told my mother what had happened i

asked her

what does this word mean she sighed

and she said it’s a mean word used to

refer to people from pakistan

that must have been hard for her it must

have been hard to explain to a

six-year-old

that people were going to be mean to me

just because of the color of my skin

i hadn’t paid much attention to the

color of my skin at that point

i was more interested in the anodes and

diodes and bionic parts that were

underneath my skin

as far as i knew i was canadian my

parents were from india

but they were also canadian

but this early experience with racism

taught me another important lesson

not only was it going to be difficult to

be a bionic girl

but being a brown bionic girl on top of

that was going to be downright difficult

i believe that every instance that i’ve

had or

encountered that i’ve had that has

questioned my abilities or my potential

because of my presumed biological sex or

that has made me feel

inadequate because of the brown color of

my skin

has actually motivated me to think very

seriously

about questions of difference

becoming a molecular biologist actually

taught me

that biology isn’t something that should

be used against a person for who they

are

now as a professor of neuroscience and

behavioral biology

with a joint appointment in women’s

gender and sexuality studies

i get to bring my love of science

together with my commitment

to social justice issues every day

i get to use my interdisciplinary

expertise to create new conversations

between feminism and science

my years of research has led me to an

important conclusion

to address the difference in diversity

issue in stem

we need to do more than just have more

women and minorities

enter into the sciences we actually need

more feminists in science and when i say

this i should be clear

anyone can be a feminist a woman a man

bionic non-bionic all are welcome

so let’s look at some data around

diversity issues in stem

in the 2019 national center

for science and engineering statistics

report

on women minorities and persons with

disabilities

we can actually see that there has been

some improvement in some areas

since the nsf started collecting this

data for example

in the biological sciences women now

hold the majority of degrees

and in fact 52 percent 52.6 percent

of all doctoral degrees in the

biological sciences are now awarded to

women

when the nsf started collecting this

data

35 years ago this number was at 30

percent so yes we can definitely say

that in this particular field there’s

been some improvement

however the report also shows

that over the last two decades there’s

actually been a decline

in the number of women receiving bio uh

bachelor’s degrees

in mathematics and in statistics

and in the computer sciences there’s

also been

a decline and less women receiving

bachelor’s degrees

so interestingly leo there’s

in the field where in biological

sciences where there are a majority of

women receiving degrees

we see an interesting phenomenon

even though 52.6 of all doctoral degrees

are avoided to women

only 42 percent of assistant professors

are women and tenured associate

professors

this number goes down to 35 percent and

at the full professor level

only 26 percent of those positions held

are held by women

many refer to this issue as the pipeline

issue or the leaky pipeline problem

others say that innate biological and

psychological differences between women

and men

is actually the cause behind why women

can’t prosper as much in sciences

now i’m not interested in using or

engaging with either of these arguments

i think that the pipeline metaphor and

evolutionary psychology-based arguments

have actually grown quite stale

i know that it’s important for us to

address gender discrimination

in the scientific workplace and i think

that there are many qualified

individuals

who are doing so but what i also think

is that we need a fresh way to look at

this issue

in order to support women and minorities

in stem fields i think we need to go

beyond just counting heads

and see who gets to become a scientist

in order to support diversity in sem we

also

have to interrogate how it is that we do

science

this means that we have to take the time

to reflect on which questions are being

asked in science

who gets to ask these questions and what

gets to count as scientific knowledge

well how do we go about doing this well

it turns out

that feminists have been working on

putting together a toolkit

that allows us to think about questions

of diversity and difference

in more creative ways certainly in more

creative ways than a pipeline metaphor

or color coded brains allows us to

in fact this toolkit is a game changer

as a feminist scientist i have used this

toolkit

and now i know that the term feminist is

actually a loaded one

and that feminism means many things to

many different people

but this toolkit did expand my ideas of

what feminism

offers and what it means to be a

feminist

it actually allowed me to think

differently about the concept of

difference

it allowed me to think about difference

not as a lack

or as a mutation from a norm and it has

encouraged me to question

how it is that we establish our norms

it has also encouraged me to interact

with the world in a way

where i learned to think with and learn

with those

who are typically marginalized in our

societies

since at least the 1960s and 1970s

when all kinds of social and civil

rights movements were happening around

the world

feminists started developing this

toolkit

and they used it mostly to debunk those

uh

ideas and those scientific ideas as well

that are used to actually discriminate

against people because of their sex

their gender their race their class

and other categories feminist scientists

have been using elements of this toolkit

and applying it

to the scientific method feminist

scientists aren’t interested in

dismissing science or dismantling

science

rather they want to produce scientific

knowledge that is more meaningful

and speaks more directly to the lives

and the material conditions

of people who are typically marginalized

so let’s look at some of the tools in

this toolkit

the first one i’m going to share with

you it’s called feminist standpoint

theory

feminist standpoint theory encourages

the scientists

to originate their questions from the

perspectives

of from the margins and to include those

viewpoints that aren’t usually included

it encourages a scientist to ask where

did my research question originate

who will this research benefit and have

i taken

into account the needs and the concerns

of those whose lives that will be most

impacted by this research

another tool in this toolkit is situated

knowledges

situated knowledges invites the

scientists

to reorient themselves to the

experimental design

the experimental apparatus and to their

object of knowledge

it encourages the scientists to ask does

this scientific experiment

assume that the scientists can have a

view from nowhere

does this experiment make an

accommodation for the fact that there

might be experimental biases

embedded in this inquiry

and it asks can the scientists recognize

that there might be some kind of

connection

or relation with their object of study

another tool in this two kit is called

nature cultures

and this one’s actually come in quite

handy for me nature cultures

asks us to think about difference

differently not in just in terms of a

dichotomy

or a binary it forces the scientists to

ask

in their inquiry am i reinstating

a type of binary that’s based on a

division between biology and culture

or nature and nurture

is my inquiry reinforcing essentialist

kind of thinking or reductionism

and is my inquiry actually repeating

gendered

or hierarchical paradigms

it’s these tools that actually

encouraged me to become a scientist in

the first place

when i started my phd in molecular

biology and reproductive

neuroendocrinology

i made sure to be informed by feminist

health advocates

and reproductive justice advocates in

toronto

these advocates were interested in

knowing

what were the long-term effects of

hormone-based

contraceptives and hormone-based

therapies

on women’s bodies and so i jumped at the

chance

to participate in an experiment that was

led by my phd supervisor

who by the way happened to be one of the

very few female faculty in our

department

in this experiment we asked a question

that had not yet been asked

in this experiment we asked are estrogen

receptors

located in a certain neuron of the brain

we were specifically looking at whether

or not estrogen receptors

were located in what is known as the

gonadotropin-releasing hormone neuron

located in the hypothalamus these

neurons also referred to as gnrh neurons

are known to play an important role in

the regulation of reproduction

for decades however expert

neuroendocrinologists

had determined that gnrnh neurons

actually didn’t express estrogen or

androgen receptors

they had been using a hierarchical

paradigm

to understand the hypothalamic pituitary

gonadal axis

and in this model the brain sends the

commands

down to the gonads there was no room

to understand that there might be

feedback mechanisms from the gonads

up to the brain

my phd work showed that in fact

gnrh neurons do express estrogen

receptors

and that these receptors are active

and that they can change gnrh synthesis

this finding actually has broad impacts

because it tells us that estrogen-based

contraceptives

or hormone replacement therapies don’t

just target the gonads

they might actually add directly at the

level of the brain

and have an influence on our

reproductive cycles on our sleep cycles

and more

using a feminist toolkit actually led me

to search for estrogen receptors in gnrh

neurons

conducting scientific experimentation

actually made me understand

that our molecules our genes our

proteins

our cells our brains our bodies

what they can do our understanding of

what they can do can actually change

in fact molecular biology taught me that

our biologies

and our destinies are not fixed

reimagining how we think about

difference

in the sciences might actually invite

more women and minorities

to enter into and to stay in the

sciences

it might give them the courage to ask

questions that aren’t usually asked

it might give them the courage to

produce scientific knowledge

that actually matters more to their

lives and to the material conditions of

their lives

and even if you’re not bionic

using science and the wonders of science

might take you to another place

as a woman or as a minority and i hope

this can work for all of us

thank you