In this project, we are taking a very broad approach to gender. While we primarily are using the term "women" to describe our subject, we are in no way intending that to exclusively mean cisgender women. To us we are using women as a term to symbolize all individuals and groups who have been marginalized and silenced by the dominant patriarchal structures. It is a shorthand for all women, queer, nonbinary, and trans individuals whose stories and labor have been obscured, in particular those of Black, Indigenous, and women of color whose knowledge was often co-opted, appropriated, and stolen.
“But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s deep instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior - women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women feel blindly while men get to think?"
-Ursula K Le Guin, “What Women Know” in Words Are My Matter
However, we also have needed to be careful in the way we discuss women. Early on in our work, we found an Ursula K. Le Guin quote that served as a warning and call to arms for our approach. Like Le Guin, we didn't want to unintentionally make a "cult of women's knowledge" which only "reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior" (2016). We put the full quote (above) front and center on our digital work space and returned to it whenever we felt like we were straying from its message.
We invite and challenge you all to bring wide definitions and examples of gender when interacting with our projects. If there are key examples we've missed we hope you will continue this scholarly conversation and share those stories.
Le Guin, U.K. (2016). “What Women Know” in Words Are My Matter. Small Beer Press.