The other day, I was listening to an interview with Neil DeGrasse Tyson on NPR’s Science Friday. (side note: I am madly in love with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. If I wasn’t already married, I would woo Neil).
Anyway, he got to talking about his childhood, how as a black kid he had to be an athlete in high school to fit in (he wrestled). When he told people he wanted to be an astrophysicist (which he knew from age 11), they told him oh, no, you should be an athlete. Neil said it wasn’t so much racism but the fact that that in those days (late ’60s, early ’70s, based on his age), athletics seemed to be the pathway for someone with his skin color.
When asked what had kept him going despite society’s skepticism (although his parents did fully support his dreams) he mentioned he had/has a tremendous reserve of strength and self-motivation inside him. When he faced opposition or lack of faith from others, he would draw on his reserve to keep going. Sometimes his reserve got low, but he still kept going until he achieved his goals.
One funny story he told was of being in shop class in junior high. All the students were to build a desk lamp. It was a simple design, with very clear instructions. But Neil didn’t want to build that desk lamp. He had a particular love of Saturn. He convinced the shop teacher to let him build a Saturn lamp. Neil glued together several blocks of wood, carved out a globe for the planet and a circular piece for the rings. He drilled a hole through the globe to run the cord through and rigged the ring to swivel so that the lamp would turn on when the ring was pressed. He still has that lamp on his desk at the Museum of Natural History. Here’s a video that includes a demonstration of his lamp. It’s at about the 1:10 mark.
As he was talking about his shop class, he mentioned a reality at that time–that only boys were allowed to take shop. Girls were relegated to cooking and sewing classes. That brought back a memory for me.
Somehow, when I was in junior high, I was allowed into a shop class. I was the only girl. I loved it. Our project was to design a floor plan for a house. Once we had our design, we were to use balsa wood to build walls. I created a house with a large courtyard in the middle and the rooms ringing the courtyard. I thought it would be cool to have a very private yard like that.
I was able to draw the floor plan, and got two or three runs of balsa wood glued on. But then came the semester break. I was moved out of shop class (despite my objections) and moved into sewing/cooking class for the second semester. Although it turned out I also enjoyed cooking and sewing, the injustice of being booted out of shop class still stings.
(Another side note: There was one boy in cooking class. I suspect he was ridiculed by his peers and looked upon with suspicion, just as I had been in shop class).
I’m assuming that these days if a girl wants to do shop class, she can do it. I know boys take cooking class now in high school. They might still get razzed about it, but they at least have choices.
So how about it? Anyone have an experience like mine? Or were you allowed to finish that cool project in shop class and you skipped learning how to cook and sew? Let me know in the comments.
The first non-Tankborn book I thought of is Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. This is a mind-blowing book in terms of gender identity, but also a fascinating piece of worldbuilding. I can imagine long discussions about what might be different about earth’s societies if we truly lacked separate genders, if we were only sexual beings a few days a month.
A second book that comes to mind is Sheri S. Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country. This is a post-apocalyptic story, set on earth a few hundred years after a catastrophic war. In the particular community of Women’s Country, the women live a largely agrarian life within a walled city with a few male servants. The remaining men are warriors who live outside the city.
