Essay On Feminist Epistemology

Emotion does not directly affect the scientific method. Rather, it affects what we select to observe and how we choose to interpret it. This in turn affects our hypothesis and consequentially affects the rest of the scientific method (Jaggar 693). Adopting feminist epistemology will also provide a more objective approach to science. This is because feminist epistemology encourages people other than white men to engage in scientific experiments. By doing so, the experiment will be less biased because it seems that white men pick the evidence that best supports their claim (Code 722-23). An example of the abuse of science is the scientific deduction by European settlers when they first encountered black women. They assumed that the size of the genitalia or the appearance of it sexually defines the person who it belongs to. In other words, they labelled black women as lustful and “hot-blooded” because of the appearance of their genitals. They said that this was a scientific conclusion (Hammonds 251). In the beginning of the course, a difficult concept for me to grasp was the difference between sex and gender. However, …show more content…
In fact, it seems that throughout history, those who stray from the correct acting out of their gender seemed to be shunned and punished by society (Butler 99). This specificity makes acting out one’s gender a process that leaves no room for variation or freedom to act out one’s gender in one’s own personal way. Prokhovnik calls this a denial of heterogeneity (Prokhovnik 36-37). All the possibilities of what it is to act out one’s gender are polar opposites (Butler 99). That is to say, that the idea how to be a woman or man is very limited to the historical idea of a man and a woman. An example is that you are either a man or a women, or that you are either a rational being or an emotional being,