*all section quotations derive from Sara Ahmed’s 2017 book, “Living a Feminist Life.”
This piece was also published on Medium’s The Startup as part of my new Medium account! Check that out here.
“Feminism needs to be everywhere because feminism is not everywhere.”
An introduction.
On May 14, 2019, Jim Bridenstine announced NASA’s newest human-centered space exploration program: Artemis, an aspirational successor to Apollo that would land “the first woman and the next man” on the Moon’s south pole by 2024. His announcement came two months after the agency’s failed attempt at an all-women spacewalk, awkwardly canceled as representatives hastily cited a lack of suits in the proper size. For many of us who had eagerly anticipated a woman-led spacewalk, its cancellation came as a sinking disappointment, and an uncomfortable reminder that an agency that specializes in thinking of all emergencies necessary to keep its astronauts safe stumbled once again on the hurdle of women’s bodies. Even as NASA put women at the center of space exploration’s future, it couldn’t seem to take care of the female space explorers it employed in the present.
But the story’s not over: on October 18, 2019, NASA finally made good on its promise of an all-women spacewalk. The recording-breaking Christina Koch and Jessica Meir spent over seven hours swapping out one of the ISS’s power controllers, performing a series of grueling tasks with the practiced efficiency of excellent astronauts. It was an honor to tune in to the spacewalk’s livestream from my desk; there’s truly nothing more invigorating than watching strong, capable women succeed. And yet, this piece isn’t about that. It’s about the hollow feeling I’ve had these past six months as I’ve watched the approach of NASA’s leaders (and, of course, its social media team) to the concept of women in space. By all accounts, the future is brighter than it’s ever been for women who want to slip the surly bonds of Earth — after all, women are the proclaimed centerpiece of the United States’ efforts to return to the Moon! If Artemis can leave the ground, a woman is guaranteed to set boots on lunar regolith.
Astronauts Jessica Meir (left) and Christina Koch (right) prepping their EVA suits and tools needed for the spacewalk inside of an ISS airlock. Image via NASA.
As a woman and an aspiring astronaut, I certainly feel some joy at this news. And yet, at the risk of alienating my potential employers (oops…) and also tastelessly paraphrasing Shakespeare, I come not to praise NASA’s recent moves, but to question them. I am a firm believer in NASA’s mission and in space exploration as a whole; for me, space exploration is the most profound tool we have to explore the universe and our place in it. However, I am also resolutely committed to critiquing the things that I love so that they may improve. That’s where this (way too long) essay comes in. As I said above, women are the centerpiece of NASA’s lunar efforts — this same concept that gives me immense joy gives me cause for concern; when women are made centerpieces we are often unmade as people. Our presence becomes an end rather than a means. (Yes, yes this is not always true, but please consider that this statement is backed by both lived experience and a history’s worth of anecdotes).
The all-women spacewalk is an excellent jumping-off point for a much broader discussion about NASA, women, and what comes next. I believe it is possible to celebrate a woman’s achievement, to be so incredibly proud of her for what she has done, and to question the institution that has decided to sell itself on the back of her achievements. In this piece I hope to unpack the several issues I have with this dichotomy — and I’ll be doing it with feminist theory. Ooh, scary, right? Not so much, actually! For me, feminism is both a vehicle for radical joy and a call for change at the same time, if it’s applied with a momentum that goes beyond just good intentions.
The ISS in the last few years has had no shortage of amazing women breaking new ground in space exploration: Peggy Whitson, Christina Koch, Jessica Meir, and their colleagues are absolutely fantastic. Here I hope to honor their achievements while calling on NASA to do better. How can it do better? Let’s talk about that.
“Citation is feminist memory.”
Who were (are) the women astronauts?
Citation is to remember our history, even when it isn’t photogenic and especially when it’s uncomfortable. It’s probably the historian in me, but I really do believe that to remember our past is to celebrate our present, and to hope for our future. That’s how I feel about space exploration, and it’s with that mindset that I turn to NASA to look at how we got to the all-women spacewalk of October 18, 2019.
The history of women in the NASA workforce is relatively short, but the history of women in the astronaut corps is even shorter. Resources about their experience, positive or negative, are especially hard to find. Biographies of Sally Ride are plentiful (I recommend Lynn Sherr’s), but biographies or autobiographies of any other female astronauts are in short supply. The two I’ve tracked down, written by Rhea Seddon (class of 1978) and Mae Jemison (class of 1987), required significant effort to find as they were somehow buried in search algorithms. Ultimately, these two memoirs are most notable to me for what they don’t say. Seddon and Jemison’s narratives introduce the reader to two immensely intelligent, capable women and their journeys to the stars; what’s harder to mine from them are the truths of their working conditions.
A brief example: Rhea Seddon’s autobiography is both a fascinating look at her life and a canny spin on her experience entering the aggressively militaristic, male-dominated astronaut corps in the late 1970s. While Seddon is careful not to voice overt misgivings about any ill-treatment she and her fellow female astronauts received, the examples she does give are telling. Seddon recalls being asked if she’d ever been sexually assaulted as part of her candidate interview, almost dying in survival training after becoming tangled in her excessively baggy training suit, and her struggle to balance motherhood with her desire to be assigned a shuttle mission. She describes each of these stumbling blocks in cheerful prose that belies what was almost certainly a frustrating daily struggle. NASA may have opened its doors to women and people of color, but it did so lazily, intending to alter its existing practices as little as possible to accommodate its new spacefarers. At best, this attitude manifested as microaggression upon microaggression; at worst, female astronauts became “difficult to work with” and “unreasonable,” descriptions that numerous female astronauts, including Sally Ride and Bonnie Dunbar, received in memoirs from their male compatriots, and which ultimately hindered their ability to get mission assignments.
But what does NASA’s questionable treatment of female astronauts in the past have to do with the NASA of the present? Jemison published her autobiography in 2001; since then, there’s been little to no focus on the working conditions for today’s female astronauts. Women are astronauts now; we know this. Sally Ride has achieved near-mythical status for women and girls interested in space — her name and face graces festivals and events across the country, reminding us that equality reached the stars way back in 1978, while Ride herself is no longer around to speak to how hard the experience was for her. For some reason, women astronauts have not allowed themselves (or have not been allowed), to be messy in their memories, like Mike Mullane, Scott Kelly, and so many others. Instead, Seddon’s and Jemison’s memoirs are carefully curated, much like the lives of female astronauts today. As such, NASA’s gaffe with its first attempt at an all-female spacewalk took many by surprise: for many people, the immediate thought was hadn’t they worked all that out by now? If only it was that easy.
“Feminist theory is what we do when we live our lives in a feminist way.”
Today’s… complicated feminism.
Let me take a bit of a different tack. I am a planetary scientist, a historian, an aspiring astronaut, and also an avowed feminist. Why am I a feminist, and why do I view feminism as a critical corollary to my other academic practices?
Feminism is not optional for me; for me to live the life that I want, to do the work that I want to do in an environment that allows me to do it, feminism is a necessity. I, like many feminists, identify strongly with the definition from bell hooks: feminism exists as “the movement to end sexism, sexual exploitation and sexual oppression.” If this is the case, then, as Sara Ahmed puts it, feminism remains necessary “because of what has not ended” — despite our best efforts to the contrary, sexism, sexual exploitation, and sexual oppression persist. This is true in general and also true for my lived experience.
These days I’m somewhat of a professional scientist, or at least in the larval stages of being one. Presenting as a woman has made this more difficult for me: I can’t stay late at the lab, because I get harassed on the bus late at night and men try to follow me home. I’ve been turned down for fieldwork opportunities because adding a woman to an all-male field team would make housing more expensive. In the wake of #STEMToo. I have watched scientists I once trusted rush to defend their colleagues because “I know him, he’s not like that,” while in the next breath reminding me to “come to them” for help if I ever experience real harassment. All of these things, while minor on their own, combine to make life just a bit more difficult, to make my job a bit less welcoming, and breathe new life into the gargantuan specter of impostor syndrome that reminds me every day that I should quit my job and throw my astronaut dreams in the trash. In the face of a system that, despite the work of countless people over many years, still tries ensure that we will fail, feminism reminds us of the possibility for growth and change — not just for women, but for the system itself.
All this to say, I need feminism. My job needs feminism. Planetary science needs feminism because the society in which it exists needs it, desperately, because we aren’t done making it inclusive. In fact, we’ve barely started! Feminism is the reminder that inclusion of oppressed groups into the dominant culture does not immediately produce equity; it is simply the first step on a long road that requires a lot of hard work. A company cannot hire women and then change none of its practices to make sure they can actually do their jobs; that… that would be like hiring women as astronauts and then not getting them their own EVA suits that fit. That is setting them up to fail. And NASA can do better.
“Feminists: looking for problems…as if pointing them out is what makes them there.”
Applying feminist theory to the NASA of today.
An important corollary of our continued need for feminism is its ongoing cooption as a buzzword and advertising tool. One of the biggest trends of the 2010s has been the pseudo-incorporation of feminism as a marketing strategy for organizations of all kinds. American women are drowning in a postfeminist “Girlboss” and “Lean In” fantasy, which portray a world where, if women are strong enough and confident enough, we can benefit from the dominant culture — without trying to change it. We need only mold ourselves to fit instead. Make your own space! Don’t expect the system to make space for you.
Why, exactly, is this adoption of feminist language without feminist action such a problem that I need to bring it up in a post that’s ostensibly about the role of women in space exploration? It’s actually a much bigger hinderance than a first glance might expect, because a commercialized feminism is one that harms, rather than helps, the cause it purports to champion. At universities and companies alike, inclusion and diversity work is currently funded more for the purposes of selling a product than to improve working conditions. In many cases marginalized people are hired to support an illusion of inclusion plastering over a more difficult truth. Marginalized groups continue to experience exploitation and harassment, all while being told that our experiences aren’t real, because “[insert institution name here] is committed to diversity and inclusion,” so “things like that wouldn’t happen here.” I’m marketed to in this way and I have myself been used as this kind of marketing tool, as proof of progress, where my presence is seen as advancement on inclusion regardless of my actual working conditions and how I feel about them.
So, when I see various members of NASA, from Jim Bridenstine on down, tweet about the “first woman and next man,” (as they do at least two to five times per week) without actually interviewing women about their roles in the program, without spotlighting actual women talking about what Artemis might mean to them as engineers, artists, and/or astronauts, the new catchphrase (dubious to begin with) loses its meaning. Who is this ambiguous “first woman?” Moreover, if we’re going to lean into “first woman” rhetoric, why does our hypothetical woman not stand alone? A visit to the Artemis website reveals a deluge of “first woman and next man” phrasing in each description, from the space suit to the SLS to the identity of the program itself, as if to remind us Not to worry! Men will still get to go! As if this was ever in doubt.
Instead, women are now phone backgrounds to be tweeted as advertising; on NASA’s website, the Artemis portrait is front and center for viewers to download. She is there to be an inspiration, “her features… abstract enough that any woman can see themselves in her.” It is an undeniably beautiful design, the age-old “woman-in the-moon” concept remade for the 21st century. But — what is an ordinary woman to a goddess bathed in moonlight? When I look at that ideal feminine face with its immortal serenity, I wonder if here again woman are being made the symbols of a mission, a movement, a dream, to the detriment of the living women who might join in. To place women on a pedestal, to make us symbols, is to separate us.
‘Woman on the Moon.’ Source NASA.
In again comes feminism to ask difficult questions about all this; feminism asks why we are placed in a separate category rather than leveling the playing field. Feminism asks why we must call her the “first woman,” when doing so will inevitably make the real woman who is sent feel that she is there to fulfill a prophecy, rather than for her skills and talents. Why are we building a dream around the “first woman” when such language burdens actual women? It isolates us, calls attention to the ways that society has oppressed us (our gender) rather than to our individual strengths (as artists, scientists, engineers…). It also quietly implies competition — for how often has the “first woman” been seen as the only woman needed, as just enough proof of concept?
I want to be a part of the American space program so badly it hurts. That said, I do not want and cannot allow my inclusion to “support a happiness fantasy” (Sara Ahmed’s term). I don’t want to be the first woman, my presence contingent on my femininity. I want to be one among many, as part of an inclusive future of space exploration that uplifts all marginalized communities with it. Despite everything, I really do think that’s possible — I wouldn’t have written this screed otherwise.
“Feminism [is] a way of challenging the universal… [it teaches] that reality is usually just someone else’s tired explanation.”
An idealized path forward.
The picture I just painted may seem a bit bleak — are women truly being included in space exploration’s future, or are we simply poster children, designed to make a struggling program look better? Even as I look forward to the day when a woman sets foot on the Moon, I continue to hold Artemis at arm’s length. In a society where feminism is adopted only when it’s useful and often only as a talking point, the language surrounding Artemis speaks of branding too canny to be inspirational. As I conclude, let me be blunt in my opinion: to me, the feminism of Artemis is less a fundamental building block than it is a lightning rod to shield the program from valid criticisms of rushed timing, poor budgeting, and poor coordination of industry partners. But the fact is, it doesn’t have to be this way!
It may seem easy to visualize how we as individuals may live our lives in a feminist way — it requires making hard choices, often regarding what we will support, tolerate, or reject. But what does it mean for an organization like NASA, and an enterprise like space exploration? Fundamentally, it means admitting that really committing to being an inclusive enterprise requires time, effort, and funding at all levels of an organization, and then actually doing that. To transform such a system, we must open it up to real, lasting change. That’s the thing about reality — it can be changed!
NASA is already making slow but steady improvements in some areas thanks to the tireless efforts of people at all levels of the organization. To name a few examples: a new PI incubator program aims to diversify the pool of scientists who aim to run flagship missions, while starting next year NASA postdoctoral fellows will finally have paid leave, enabling job stability. These changes are great and I absolutely applaud them. I am also here to say: go further, and go bigger, and aim for the entire exploration program itself. The Artemis program, whether it succeeds or fails, can set the stage for a more inclusive push into space. That means centering not just women but people of color, LGBTQ people, and more, and doing so in a way that actually includes us — we need mentors, allies, and community. We need more than a woman in the Moon, beautiful though she may be.
Are we exploring space for humanity? If so, then our exploratory team should reflect humanity itself. In my vision of the future, when the first woman steps off the lunar descent module maybe she’ll be followed by another woman or a nonbinary person right behind her. Their suits will fit appropriately and they’ll have the supplies they need to do their job, because the engineers and designers supporting them are also a diverse team that understands and anticipates their needs. It’s not about one woman, but many, and it’s not just white women but women of color. It’s about committing to building humanity as a spacefaring society, one that could make it to Mars in the next few decades. What we bring to Mars is what we will take with us, and that’s the culture that we build together. How NASA operates, how its human exploration program manifests, sets the tone for the future of space exploration. I truly believe that we can make that future an intersectional feminist reality.
Today when we talk about space exploration we talk about long-distance travel, about a sustainable space program with a longer-term presence; this new attitude is fundamentally different than anything that’s come before. For many young people space exploration is no longer about national pride but global collaboration — not staking a solitary claim, but walking forward, hand in hand, into the unknown. To those who are rooting for the success of the Artemis program, and to those who have paid it no mind, please, walk with me. Let’s keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, not just in human engineering, but in human society.
References
Ahmed, S. Living a Feminist Life. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.
Burrough, B. Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir. HarperCollins, 1998.
hooks, b. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. South End Press, 1984.
Jemison, M. Find Where the Wind Goes: Moments From My Life. Scholastic Press, 2001.
Kelly, S. Endurance: My Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery. Knopf, 2017.
Mullane, M. Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut. Scribner, 2007.
Seddon, R. Go for Orbit. Your Space Press, 2015.
Sherr, L. Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space. Simon and Schuster, 2015.