"The best and the whitest" ~ Love, NASA

For the past nine months to a year, I've been avidly following space-related news and happenings around the world... a shared interest between myself and my husband. As a pair of Gen-Xers with two children who will end up being the ones inheriting the catastrophic results of climate-change our government continues to deny, how can we not be interested in the efforts to understand and learn how to navigate and possibly exist in space?

So from NASA to SpaceX to 3-D printed housing for Mars, I've "oohed" over the gorgeous photos of the Milky Way and our solar system, and snarked about Bezos' ultimate power trip. I love watching live broadcasts of spacewalks at ISS, and the educational efforts of NASA TV encouraging us all to "do science".

Late last month (July 2019), three astronauts -- from Russia, the United States and Italy -- were lifted into space and flown to the International Space Station to begin their stint on the ISS. They lifted off from at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. I spun through these photos of the formal send-off and launch of the Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft, and was struck -- really horrifically taken-aback, honestly -- by the sheer number of white men dominating the ceremonial or real positions of authority.

Image source: Spaceflightnow.com

Image source: Spaceflightnow.com

Where are the women? Where are the people of color? 
Wow, NASA. I mean, really.

I understand the send-off took place in Kazakhstan, right next door to Russia, and presumably Russians might dominate as attendees. Maybe this wasn't the right lift-off to scrutinize, and I'll definitely be paying attention to the photos of the next lift-off from the United States. But as NASA was sending astronaut Andrew Morgan up to the ISS, I have to assume they were duly represented. And I couldn't find a single person who even appears to be in a position of power in that whole string of photos that wasn't a white male.

NASA talks a good game about diversity here on their career page. I guess it's just positions of leadership that are so closely guarded by white men.

If you look at NASA's "No FEAR Act" filing for the overall agency, it becomes clear that, except for "reprisal" (33 filings for 2 18), filings related to "race" and "sex" are the highest reported categories (each at 27 filings for 2018). The next closest category of complaints filed were around "age" (18 for 2018).  And the year-over-year comparison shows the issue is only getting worse, which I'm inferring to mean the more women and people of color they bring in, the more painful the issues become with the "old guard". It looks like if you dare report an issue about race or sex, you can definitely expect a reprisal. Sweet.

It's looking like the agency that is supposed to rocket us into the 22nd century is still sitting back in the 20th century.

I will keep monitoring this issue, and will post updates if I learn my impressions were incorrect.

you gotta love male logic

Excerpt from The Cult of True Womanhood:  1820-60
by Barbara Welter

The Ladies' Wreath offered a fifty-dollar prize to the woman who submitted the most convincing essay on "How May An American Woman Best Show Her Patriotism." The winner was Miss Elizabeth Wetherell who provided herself with a husband in her answer. The wife in the essay of course asked her husband's opinion. He tried a few jokes first- "Call her eldest son George Washington," "Don't speak French, speak American"-but then got down to telling her in sober prize-winning truth what women could do for their country. Voting was no asset, since that would result only in "a vast increase of confusion and expense without in the smallest degree affecting the. result." Besides, continued this oracle, "looking down at their child," if "we were to go a step further and let the children vote, their first act would be to vote their mothers at home." There is no comment on this devastating male logic and he continues: "Most women would follow the lead of their fathers and husbands," and the few who would "fly off on a tangent from the circle of home influence would cancel each other out."

The wife responds dutifully: "I see all that. I never understood so well before." Encouraged by her quick womanly perception, the master of the house resolves the question-an American woman best shows her patriotism by staying at home, where she brings her influence to bear "upon the right side for the country's weal." That woman will instinctively choose the side of right he has no doubt. Besides her "natural refinement and closeness to God" she has the "blessed advantage of a quiet life" while man is exposed to conflict and evil. She stays home with "her Bible and a well-balanced mind" and raises her sons to be good Americans. The judges rejoiced in this conclusion and paid the prize money cheerfully, remarking "they deemed it cheap at the price."

Emphasis mine
Thanks, Lydia, for bringing this fascinating article to my attention.

Source: American Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2, Part 1 (Summer, 1966), pp. 151-174
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

gop's war on women

 I am posting this list, found at MoveOn.org, because it's worth sharing.

Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP's War on Women

1) Republicans not only want to reduce women's access to abortion care, they're actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven't yet. Shocker.

2) A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to "accuser." But victims of other less gendered crimes, like burglary, would remain "victims."

3) In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that could make it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, for real.)

4) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids. 

5) In Congress, Republicans have a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life.

6) Maryland Republicans ended all county money for a low-income kids' preschool program. Why? No need, they said. Women should really be home with the kids, not out working.

7) And at the federal level, Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion. That means over 200,000 kids could lose their spots in preschool.

8) Two-thirds of the elderly poor are women, and Republicans are taking aim at them too. A spending bill would cut funding for employment services, meals, and housing for senior citizens.

9) Congress just voted for a Republican amendment to cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers, one of the most trusted providers of basic health care and family planning in our country.

10) And if that wasn't enough, Republicans are pushing to eliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program. (For humans. But Republican Dan Burton has a bill to provide contraception for wild horses. You can't make this stuff up).