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I know he was somewhat rakish before he married his third wife, but in what manner was he terrible to women? It takes two to tango, so his rakishness doesn't se

I know he was somewhat rakish before he married his third wife, but in what manner was he terrible to women? It takes two to tango, so his rakishness doesn't seem to imply sexism.

DugFin 11y ago
Yeah, you kind of have to keep the context in mind when reading about Feynman's "pick up artist" stories. Much of it takes place not only in the context of the "hook up scene", but also in the hook up scene fifty-plus years ago. The guy giving him lessons in how to pick up girls was basically telling him there's a certain process to the hook up scene, and part of it involved women taking advantage of men who will allow it. The key bit of advice was to recognize when they were pushing for freebies, and to push right back. It established a relationship of equals, which then had a fairly good chance of resulting in the casual sex both parties were ultimately looking for. From our perspective some of the behavior seems pretty crass, but that's because the subtleties of the hook up scene change over time. The cultural anchors have shifted, and what was once simply an offhand citation of the normative gender roles now sounds downright boorish.
Steuard 11y ago
Partly it's a matter of culture. Generations of physics students grow up seeing Feynman presented as an ideal, and in so very many ways (not just scientific!) he's a great person to emulate. But if his "rakishness" is lumped into that package as part of your vision of "an ideal physicist", that actively does harm: it encourages male students to treat the women around them like meat[0], and it gives female students a yet another signal that "physicist" and "feminine" are incompatible. This culture is pretty clearly one reason that physics lags behind almost all of the other sciences (including pure math) in approaching gender parity. And partly it really does feel like Feynman literally thought less of most of the women in his life. (On some level, that's par for the course: Feynman was an asshole to just about everyone.) Just for instance, the conclusion of that "You just ask them?" story (from memory, again) includes the observation that female college students are "no better than" women who hang around in bars, whom he had already called "whores" (and seemed to mean it). See also [0], again. Some of this is a reflection of the era when he lived. But it's a particularly vivid reflection, and it was a pretty thoroughly sexist era. When Feynman is held up as an ideal without keeping that context in mind, it can tend to propagate the shortcomings of that era into the present. It does indeed take two to tango. But nothing about that guarantees that both dancers are equals. When I tango, just for instance, tradition insists that as a man, I get to lead, and my partner's job is to do what I tell her to as gracefully as possible. It's stretching the metaphor to apply that directly here, I know (though it is unquestionably a manifestation of our society's invisible background sexism). But I suspect that most of Feynman's many lovers did not think less of him in the ways that he very explicitly learned and practiced thinking less of them. [0] Just for instance, in one of his stories, Feynman was clearly delighted by the description of a local woman in Brazil as "a sleeping dictionary", since he didn't speak Portuguese well.

I know he was somewhat rakish before he married his third wife, but in what manner was he terrible to women? It takes two to tango, so his rakishness doesn't seem to imply sexism.

DugFin 11y ago

Yeah, you kind of have to keep the context in mind when reading about Feynman's "pick up artist" stories. Much of it takes place not only in the context of the "hook up scene", but also in the hook up scene fifty-plus years ago. The guy giving him lessons in how to pick up girls was basically telling him there's a certain process to the hook up scene, and part of it involved women taking advantage of men who will allow it. The key bit of advice was to recognize when they were pushing for freebies, and to push right back. It established a relationship of equals, which then had a fairly good chance of resulting in the casual sex both parties were ultimately looking for. From our perspective some of the behavior seems pretty crass, but that's because the subtleties of the hook up scene change over time. The cultural anchors have shifted, and what was once simply an offhand citation of the normative gender roles now sounds downright boorish.

Steuard 11y ago

Partly it's a matter of culture. Generations of physics students grow up seeing Feynman presented as an ideal, and in so very many ways (not just scientific!) he's a great person to emulate. But if his "rakishness" is lumped into that package as part of your vision of "an ideal physicist", that actively does harm: it encourages male students to treat the women around them like meat[0], and it gives female students a yet another signal that "physicist" and "feminine" are incompatible. This culture is pretty clearly one reason that physics lags behind almost all of the other sciences (including pure math) in approaching gender parity. And partly it really does feel like Feynman literally thought less of most of the women in his life. (On some level, that's par for the course: Feynman was an asshole to just about everyone.) Just for instance, the conclusion of that "You just ask them?" story (from memory, again) includes the observation that female college students are "no better than" women who hang around in bars, whom he had already called "whores" (and seemed to mean it). See also [0], again. Some of this is a reflection of the era when he lived. But it's a particularly vivid reflection, and it was a pretty thoroughly sexist era. When Feynman is held up as an ideal without keeping that context in mind, it can tend to propagate the shortcomings of that era into the present. It does indeed take two to tango. But nothing about that guarantees that both dancers are equals. When I tango, just for instance, tradition insists that as a man, I get to lead, and my partner's job is to do what I tell her to as gracefully as possible. It's stretching the metaphor to apply that directly here, I know (though it is unquestionably a manifestation of our society's invisible background sexism). But I suspect that most of Feynman's many lovers did not think less of him in the ways that he very explicitly learned and practiced thinking less of them. [0] Just for instance, in one of his stories, Feynman was clearly delighted by the description of a local woman in Brazil as "a sleeping dictionary", since he didn't speak Portuguese well.