Through a Black Hole and Back to Misogyny

By: Luan Doster

From the White House to space exploration, women, particularly women of color, are being silenced.

Over the last month, U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar has received death threats, has been silenced by her own party, and has even been told to resign by President Trump. As a female, Black Muslim, Ilhan Omar is the first ever hijab-clad congresswoman. Omar’s religious, racial, and gender identities make her a target for religious bigotry, Islamophobia tropes, and violent threats (Chittal 2019). On March 1st, a poster claiming that Omar was proof America had forgotten about 9/11 was displayed by the West Virginia Republican Party. On April 11th, the New York Post published a cover featuring the collapse of the Twin Towers, connecting Omar to the terrorist attacks. On April 12, President Trump tweeted an abhorrent propaganda video displaying the 9/11 attacks with an interjected video clip of Omar’s speech. Politicians and press who place Ilhan Omar on the side of terrorists are not just perpetuating Islamophobic stereotypes; they are threatening the lives of Muslim people in America (Linton 2019). When the President of the United States suggests Omar is a terrorist, Trump supporters listen and believe.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been similarly belittled by the Democratic Party and attacked extensively by Republicans, Trump, and right-leaning news outlets. Another radical woman of color, Ocasio-Cortez is a young, self pronounced Democratic Socialist who is disrupting the political status quo. She has been chastised by members of her own party for being too vocal, who claim that she needs to be “reined in” (Chittal 2019). Republicans have similarly found her transparent rhetoric offensive, and right-leaning news sources have taken it upon themselves to discredit and condemn her. Fox News and its partner network Fox Business Network, for example, are recorded saying her name just under 76 times a day, 3,181 times, during the six-week period from February 25 to April 7, 2019. The Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, has called her everything from a “moron,” a “pompous little twit,” a “fake revolutionary,” to “nasty,” and ″self-involved and dumb” (Associated Press 2019).

Both Omar and Ocasio-Cortez have been criticized and questioned for everything from the way they dress, their upbringings, and their qualifications, to their beliefs and patriotism. As women of color, the intersectionality of both racism and sexism has made them the highly focused targets of bigotry, misogyny and racism. This is further multiplied by Islamophobia in the attacks on Omar.

This phenomenon is not unique to Congress or political disputes. This past week, 29-year old astrophysicist Katherine Bouman rose to fame with the release of the first images of the black hole. As an MIT postdoctoral student, she led the team that designed the algorithms used to capture these images. Almost instantaneously the internet responded to her accomplishment with hate and doubt. Memes quickly went viral claiming that Bouman was receiving credit that Andrew Chael, another member of the Event Horizon Telescope team, deserved instead (Nola 2019). Unfortunately, the narratives of these women are not isolated. Their experiences reflect the true colors of our hegemonic society where African American women make 64 cents for every dollar made by a white man (Leber 2015). Women, and particularly women of color, are still marginalized, stereotyped, dismissed, and excluded in the workplace (Chittal 2019). Our nation has internalized destructive stereotypes and implicit biases about the abilities of women, in particular women of color. Many people in our society are only comfortable seeing women of color in subservient positions that fulfill racist and sexist tropes.

A study done in 2015 found that Latina and African American women scientists were routinely mistaken for janitors in their own workplaces (Williams et al. 2014). Another study notes that half of women working in STEM experience harassment (The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine 2018).

Despite the fact that women constituted 57.2 percent of all professional workers in 2015, they comprised only 46.6 percent of science professionals, 24.7 percent of computer and math professionals, and 15.1 percent of engineering and architecture professionals (Smithsonian Science Education Center). This reality is exacerbated in politics: 78 percent of lawmakers are white, while 76 percent are male; out of the 535 members in the House and Senate, there are only 127 women serving in Congress and just 47 are women of color (Chittal 2019).

The silencing, marginalizing, and stereotyping attacks against Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Katherine Bouman are not the exception, but instead the rule. Structural and institutional racism and sexism continue to pervade our society and create power dynamics that lend to inequality. These attacks are not novelty, but instead uphold an American tradition of silencing outspoken women of color and discrediting powerful women. They fulfill a legacy of enforcing socially ascribed roles onto people who attempt to disrupt the status quo of privilege.

Literature Cited

Associated Press. "Study: Fox News Is Obsessed with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez." , Associated Press, 14 Apr. 2019, www.snopes.com/ap/2019/04/14/study-fox-news-is-obsessed-with-alexandria-ocasio-cortez/.

Chittal, Nisha. "Ilhan Omar, AOC, and the silencing of women of color in Congress." , VOX, 11 Apr. 2019, www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/8/18272072/ilhan-omar-rashida-tlaib-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-racism-sexism.

"Girls and Women in STEM." , Smithsonian Science Education Center, ssec.si.edu/girls-and-women-in-stem.

Leber, Rebecca. "The Gender Pay Gap Is Bad. The Gender Pay Gap for Women of Color Is Even Worse." , The New Republic, 14 Apr. 2015, newrepublic.com/article/121530/women-color-make-far-less-78-cents-mans-dollar.

Linton, Caroline. "New York Post cover features Ilhan Omar quote and 9/11 terror attack." , CBS News, 12 Apr. 2019, www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-post-cover-featuring-ilhan-omar-quote-and-911-terror-attack-hit-stands-thursday-2019-04-12/.

"Online trolls hijack scientist’s image to attack Katie Bouman; they pick the wrong astrophysicist." News Feature, Nola, 13 Apr. 2019, www.nola.com/crime/2019/04/online-trolls-hijack-scientists-image-to-attack-katie-bouman-they-pick-the-wrong-astrophysicist.html.

"Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2018)." , The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018, sites.nationalacademies.org/shstudy/index.htm.

Williams, Joan C., et al. "Double Jeopardy? Gender Bias Against Women in Science." , Tools For Change, 2014, worklifelaw.org/publications/Double-Jeopardy-Report_v6_full_web-sm.pdf.