This beautiful artwork is by archaeologist Dr Katherine Cook https://drkrcook.wordpress.com/ |
This blog is 20 years old! My first post was in July 2004, when blogging was relatively new. In those pre-microblogging days (that's what Twitter was, for those not around at the time), blogs were where all the action was. We had blog carnivals, blog rolls, web rings, bloggers fighting with each other, and all kinds of shenanigans.
Twenty years later I have written over 400 posts, and as time has gone on, they've become longer and longer, and more researched. This wasn't a conscious decision, more a reflection of how the blog's role in my writing/research life has changed.
To celebrate this anniversary, I made a list of the top ten most-read posts. Then I realised that the top ten posts weren't necessarily my favourite posts, so I decided to make a list of them, which turned out to be far more than ten. So I decided to break it into smaller sections, and here we are. These are my most feminist posts, and if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen! (No stay in it because I want you to read them).
Please enjoy my Feminist as Fuck edition!
1. The spacecraft, the shirt, and the scandal (November 16, 2014)
Back in 2014, a spacecraft called Rosetta was woken from hibernation, and as the world waited with bated breath, the Philae lander was dropped onto a comet's surface. It was an extraordinary mission, one of my favourites. But an ill-chosen shirt worn by one of the mission scientists temporarily eclipsed the achievement. Why? I gave my take in this post.
1. Denying that street (or workplace, or domestic) harassment occurred - you can't believe what a woman says about her own experience, right? See post above.2. Minimising its impact - you didn't get raped, or physically hurt, right? And it will be couched in such passive language so the harasser doesn't appear.3. Telling you how to deal with it - just say no, right?4. And failing to recognise how constant this is, and how much time and energy you have to expend just to stay safe - nothing happened, right? So why are you angry?
8. Cat-Women of the Moon: ideas of space travel in the 1950s. (31 July, 2019)
It's hard not to love a movie full of sinister black cat-suited women, and although this one is no cinematic masterpiece, it is a classic example of how women and space governance are seen as mutually exclusive. I analysed the genre of women-only planets in an essay for the Griffith Review (paywalled but contact me or them for a copy if you're interested). Early space age movies are so revealing about implicit societal attitudes to space exploration and gender roles, and there's so much more to watch!
9. Between the house and the stars: the life of Varvara Sokolova who married Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (17 January, 2021)
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is known as the 'father of spaceflight' and is one of the most famous people in the whole history of humans and space. I'd been citing him and talking about him for years. One day a few years ago I stopped to ask myself the question: what about Mrs Tsiolkovksy, or Varvara Sokolova as I came to know her? What had been left out of Tsiolkovksy's story? I decided to put her back in it, and this is the result.
In case you weren't aware that the first woman in space was being disparaged and belittled over 60 years after her spaceflight, let me disabuse you. Every year around the anniversary of her flight, you will find women celebrating her achievement on social media and men trying to tear her down. One of those men issued a challenge to me, and while I would normally react by saying 'do your own research, buttercup', this time I thought I would take him down.
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So there you have my favourite posts where I have tackled women's rights or applied feminist methods to interrogate space history and public perceptions. If this is an area which interests you, I can recommend these older publications:
Penley, Constance 1997 NASA/Trek: Popular Science and Sex in America. London: Verso
Lykke, N. and M. Bryld 2000 Cosmodolphins: Feminist Cultural Studies of Technology, Animals and the Sacred. London: Bloomsbury AcademicAnd these newer ones:
Schwartz, James S.J., Linda Billings, and Erika Nesvold (eds) 2023 Reclaiming Space. Progressive and Multicultural Visions of Space Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Boucher, Marie-Pier, Claire Webb, Annick Bureaud, and Nahum (eds) 2024 Space Feminisms. People, Planets, Power. London: Bloomsbury
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