fyeah! STEM girls

Prior to her first space flight, Ride got a lot of shit from the media and remained remarkably calm and non-homicidal:

“No other astronaut was ever asked questions like these: Will the flight affect your reproductive organs? The answer, delivered with some asperity: “There’s no evidence of that.” Do you weep when things go wrong on the job? Retort: “How come nobody ever asks Rick those questions?” Will you become a mother? First an attempt at evasion, then a firm smile: “You notice I’m not answering.” In an hour of interrogation that is by turns intelligent, inane and almost insulting, Ride remains calm, unrattled and as laconic as the lean, tough fighter jockeys who surround her. “It may be too bad that our society isn’t further along and that this is such a big deal,” she reflects.” (Source)

After her death in 2012 it was revealed that she had been with her partner Tam O’Shaughnessy (a woman) for 27 years. Below is a picture of Ride (left), her partner O’Shaughnessy (right), and their dog Gypsy, circa 1985. (Source).

Ride and O’Shaughnessy co-founded the Sally Ride Foundation, aimed at promoting interest in science among elementary and middle school aged-kids, especially girls. The two women also co-wrote six children’s science books. Here is a picture of them speaking at an American Library Association Conference in 2008. (source)

*Ride had been previously married to a man and it is unknown exactly how she identified (lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, etc). 

But yeah, Sally Ride was not only the first American woman in space, but also the first and only known LGBT astronaut at NASA. And she was also a badass. (source).

Helen Greiner (b. 1967) is the co-founder of the robotics company iRobot. She was a designer of the popular Roomba.

Forster was born Jacqueline Moir MacKenzie in 1926 in Islington, London. She spent some of her early years in India before attending boarding school in England. After school, she trained as an actress in Edinburgh, before moving back to London in 1950 and developing a career as a TV presenter and news reporter under the name Jacqueline MacKenzie. She won a prestigious broadcasting award for her coverage of the 1956 wedding of Prince Rainier to actress Grace Kelly. She spent a year in North America in 1957, where she had her first lesbian relationship. However, she went ahead and married the actor Peter Forster in 1958. The marriage was short-lived, and they split after two years, before divorcing in 1962, with Jackie now accepting the fact she was lesbian.

Forster relocated to Canada but moved back to London in the mid-60s, where she lived with her partner and her children. She publicly came out in 1969, while campaigning for the Campaign for Homosexual Equality. She took part in the first Gay Pride march in the UK in 1971, and was one of the co-founders of the lesbian magazine Sappho (which ran 1972-1981). In her later years, she was an active member of the Lesbian Archive and Information Center management committee. She died at the age of 71, in 1998.

Today’s Google Doodle, which commemorates what would have been Jackie Forster’s 91st birthday, is by London-based illustrator Hannah Warren.

gmw as songs from my playlist

***Flawless - Beyoncé / Isadora Smackle

GET TO KNOW ME ♡ AESTHETICS MEME: 8/10 Female Characters

Isadora Smackle

Yesterday my five year old (read that again, I said five… it’s important) and I were in the car and learning about directions. North, South, East, West. My rear view mirror has an indicator in it and every time we turned we talked about which way we were headed. She seemed like she was struggling to remember even after getting it right several times. She’s been doing this more frequently with a lot of topics she knows backwards and forwards and it’s frustrating but I try not to let her know I’m frustrated. We turned again and the indicator changed to SW and she immediately shouts out “South West!!” I get super excited and congratulate her because YaY she gets it but then I hear a muffled “Oh No.” from the back seat and look to see her covering her mouth with her hand like she said a bad word.

After a lot of questioning about what the heck just happened, she finally admits.

“I didn’t mean to be smart. Girls aren’t supposed to be smart.”

Y'all. I almost broke down into tears right then and there. I asked her what she meant by that, girls are smart! Mommy is smart right? My FIVE year old was getting so upset because she had let it slip she knew things and I didn’t seem to be able to make any difference. Eventually, we got to the kicker….

“But boys don’t like girls who are smart.” She tells me, clearly distraught.

“Fuck boys.”

This, at least, gets the little light of my life to laugh again. She knows mommy has said a bad word and it always makes her giggle. I’m seething in rage that she has been taught to hide her intelligence already, but at least I’m not keeping her mood down in the dumps… I guess.

I’m not one hundred percent sure where to go from here. Honestly, I’m not even ten percent sure. I let the topic drop yesterday because I was too upset to make rational decisions and we went home and played Snipper Clippers… a game that requires you to think… and worked on the puzzle she got for Easter.

And then I read her a story about a bunch of puppies trying to feed themselves while their owner is sick because she is FIVE and can’t read on her own yet. She can’t read, but she knows boys don’t like girls who are smart.

We try so hard, to teach her to think, to problem solve. We encourage her when she’s interested in ‘brainy’ things like the set of gears she loves to tinker with. But I can’t control every aspect of her life. I work. My husband works. In a few months she will be in kindergarten and around even more people and children of various ages than she is now at day care.

And I can’t help but think about this child, who KNOWS boys don’t like girls who are smart…

“Coding is the language of the future, and every girl should learn it. As I’ve learned from watching girls grow and learn in our classrooms, coding is fun, collaborative and creative.”

-Reshma Saujani