Quick Takes – Purportedly Peer Reviewed Madness: Queer Canine Becomings; Butch Dyke Earth; Dyconsious Racism

     Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.

     The focus this time: As someone who has peer reviewed actual science articles about actual science, which I still found lacking, the following is beyond parody. What follows are the actual titles and abstracts of three such WTF-level journal articles, without further commentary.

     First, a little mood music:

     Carrying on…

From the graphical abstract for: “A Special Topic Class in Chemistry on Feminism and Science as a Tool to Disrupt the Dysconcious Racism in STEM”

     Queer canine becomings: Lesbian feminist cyborg politics and interspecies intimacies in ecologies of love and violence

“This article offers a queer lesbian feminist analysis attuned to lesbian-queer-trans-canine relationalities. Specifically, the article places queer and lesbian ecofeminism in conversation with Donna Haraway’s work on the cyborg and companion species to theorize the interconnected queer becomings of people, nature, animals, and machines amidst ecologies of love and violence in the 2020s. It takes two key case studies as the focus for analysis: first, the state instrumentalization of dogs and robot dogs for racialized and imperial violence, and second, quotidian queer and lesbian-dog relationalities and becomings. In the first, the article traces how dogs are weaponized as tools of state violence and proposes a queer lesbian feminist critique of white supremacy and militarization that can also extend to a critique of the violence committed through and toward the dogs. In the second, the article analyzes how, within lesbian, non-binary, and trans-dog intimacies, dogs help articulate queer gender, sexuality, and kinship formations, and as such, queer worlds for gender, sexual, and kin becomings. The entanglements of violence and love in these queer dog relationalities provide insights into the complexities of queer and lesbian feminist worldbuilding. Lesbian and queer feminist cyborg politics can help theorize the potentials and challenges of these interspecies entanglements.”

     The earth is a big badass butch dyke in menopause

“In this article, ecosexual artists and activists Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle re-envision our planet as a butch dyke in menopause. This displacement of the “mother” earth trope re-orients the urgent questions of climate change and consent. Acknowledging the common pitfalls of anthropomorphism, they argue that imagining the Earth as a butch dyke lover enables a radically embodied and joyous mode of environmentalist politics. Stephens and Sprinkle situate their bodies in continuity with the earth in a relationship of queer interdependency as they invent new ways of being in the world that disengage from an abusive, extractive relation to the earth through the cultivation of a loving, playful relationship with our planet. They envision Butch Earth as a switch who invites us into a multitude of embodied, sensual, mindful responses beyond the limits of self-other paradigms. To counter the dominionistic practice of extraction and exploitation, the artists propose an ethical practice of co-sense, rather than consent, in which humans attune themselves to the earth via the senses, a process enabled by repeated, communal, non-monogamous marriages to the planet. Stephens & Sprinkle’s curiosity and imagination invite the reader to play and perhaps think about the Earth reciprocally in a relationship grounded by love and sensuality.”

     A Special Topic Class in Chemistry on Feminism and Science as a Tool to Disrupt the Dysconcious Racism in STEM

“This article presents an argument on the importance of teaching science with a feminist framework and defines it by acknowledging that all knowledge is historically situated and is influenced by social power and politics. This article presents a pedagogical model for implementing a special topic class on science and feminism for chemistry students at East Carolina University, a rural serving university in North Carolina. We provide the context of developing this class, a curricular model that is presently used (including reading lists, assignments, and student learning outcomes), and qualitative data analysis from online student surveys. The student survey data analysis shows curiosity about the applicability of feminism in science and the development of critical race and gender consciousness and their interaction with science. We present this work as an example of a transformative pedagogical model to dismantle White supremacy in Chemistry.”

     TTFN.

     Hat Tip: Colin Wright.

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