Feminist Fluid Mechanics?

According to post-modernists, science is just a social construct. There is no such thing as truth, or at least truth that we have any chance of understanding. These scholars, most of whom are on the political left, keep trying to demolish all of science. With friends like these, who needs enemies? Fundamentalists can walk right in and say, See? Science has nothing to do with truth, which means that you should send lots of money to my Ministry so that I can pay for my whores.

One example is an article by Katherine Hayes about fluid mechanics. Entitled “Gender encoding in fluid mechanics: Masculine channels and feminine flows,” this Duke professor of literature seems to think that fluid mechanics is filled with sexism. I cannot find a link to this article, so I use a Nature review about it. She derived her ideas from Luce Irigaray, so it is not even original. She indicated that scientists feel that fluid flow is feminine. “Men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual fluids and vaginal fluids.” She concludes that fluid mechanics in general, and turbulent flow in particular, cannot be understood except from a feminist perspective.

Now, I can see that maybe behavioral studies of chimpanzees might be sexist, in which the actions of the animals are interpreted differently by male vs. female observers, but fluid mechanics?

Where do you start with something like this? I think it is sexist to say that, because women menstruate, they are better able to understand fluid mechanics. While I am no expert, I wrote an educational article about fluid mechanics (American Biology Teacher 66 (2004): 120-127). I do not feel that my protrusive organs impaired my ability to do so. Besides, male sexual organs are not solid; they engorge with...with...with...fluid!

Academics need to publish papers and there are journals that will publish anything. My favorite example was a fake article written by a newspaper reporter that mixed hematology and plate tectonics together and would have gotten it published had he not voluntarily revealed his fraud. This is especially true with online journals, but Hayes published her article back in 1992 when journals were all on paper.

Sorry, post-modernists. Science discovers truth. Occasionally there is bias, but the scientific method itself is an attempt to get rid of the bias. This is the subject of my upcoming book, Scientifically Thinking: How to Liberate YourMind, Solve the World’s Problems, and Embrace the Beauty of Science).

Besides, there might be another reason that women can understand fluid mechanics better than men. My wife just told me that she spends more time than I do cleaning the bathroom (by her choice). I suppose that gives her some insights I do not have.