text zine submission (slightly over word limit to be edited)
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In some fields in the humanities it is common practice for authors to list their personal biases before
getting deep into their proposed theories, so that readers can take these biases into account. This is
neither encouraged nor accepted in experimental Psychology, my field of study. Instead, researchers
strive to frame their research as important, relevant, and objective. The desire for objectivity in
experimental science is not necessarily as bad thing: objectivity is always something to strive for as a
researcher, and the social sciences especially struggle to be taken seriously by the public and other
sciences, so individual researchers having strong desires for the appearance of objectivity is
understandable. However, if we don’t collectively acknowledge the fact that the goal of total objectivity
will never be reached, ESPECIALLY in social sciences where humans attempt to study humans, we leave
ourselves open to dangerously oppressive ideologies.
The issue here is the idea that only people who are not negatively affected by the thing being studied
are the only ones who can properly research it. I am not particularly sure of how prevalent this idea is in
other fields, but it’s certainly at least PRESENT in social psychology. I have had a personal conversation
with an eminent researcher in the field, which began fairly nicely with me asking where he thought I
might find grad programs in the areas of prejudice research I was interested in. When I mentioned
wanting to research sexism and homophobia, though, he derailed the conversation to give me a piece of
personal ‘advice’ about my choice of career direction. According to him, I should only study things that
“do not affect me”. For example, I should avoid studying sexism or homophobia, because if I did
“people would not take me seriously, they would think that I had a personal bone to pick”. I asked him
if he agreed with these fictional ‘people’ he was warning me about and his response was even worse
than his initial statement: he believed that there was truth in the idea that an oppressed person
researching their own oppressions is necessarily biased. He said that I would be “arguing my own case”
and that doing research in order to influence policy and the status of groups I am a member of is “not a
scientific motivation,” so if I care about my communities I won’t be able to do good science relating to
them.
If helping people is not a scientific motivation, then what IS? Literally my entire reason for my choice of
career comes from a drive to help people by combatting oppression. If I cannot do that, then I won’t go
to grad school. But maybe that’s what he wants; one less queer feminist getting their nasty ideas into
nice, clean, objective establishment of academia.
To the college and university students/employees/professors/researchers reading this; if this doesn’t
scare you, it really should. This idea of the oppressed necessarily being biased undermines and devalues
many things, including the reality of an individual’s experience, and how having experience can help us
come up with worthwhile research questions. More than that, this myth of ‘objectivity’ puts white,
straight, cisgendered men at the very top of the research hierarchy (what else is news?). White, straight
cisgendered men are the ones who we can “best trust to produce the least biased and therefore most
accurate and truthful research!” Because they have the most privilege, are the ‘least affected’ by
structures that use power to act on prejudice, and therefore are the most licensed to speak about those
structures, right? Right? Actually, nope. And I’ll tell you why: because these most privileged individuals
have a whole lot stake in the current system too; it’s just that the current setup is positive for them.
This ideology of bias is both reinforcing the western cultural standard of white straight cis men having
maximum privilege relative to anyone else, and perpetuating this within academia. This means
sustaining a preference for these people as ideal candidates for jobs (paid to do research), research
positions (choosing what topics get researched), and professorships (choosing what content goes into
higher ed). It gives white straight cis males preferred access to use academia as a platform to speak
from, that automatically garners them public attention and trust: “a researcher from Harvard said this”
seems to always catch more ears and to automatically be considered valid than “an intelligent person
whose analyses I respect said this”. Basically, possessing a higher degree or a position at an academic
institution means having automatic social capital, more people listening to what you have to say, and a
widespread respectability boost. Look at all of these cool things that white straight cis men stand to lose
if the power balance within academia is upset; look at them and then just try to come back again and
tell me that white straight cis men are totally unaffected or outside the system. Being at the top of the
food chain is not the same thing as being in a different ecosystem, and we need to stop conflating those
two things. Moreover, if the powerful platform of the academy is occupied solely by people who benefit
from the maximum amount of privilege and the least oppression in our society, that totally shuts
academia down as a potential medium for boosting the voices of inspired and intelligent researchers
from marginalized groups who are interested in exploring the mechanisms of the systems that oppress
them.
In a way, the professor I spoke to is correct: yes I want to affect policy and improve the status of groups I
belong to (as well as ones I don’t). But in my specific case, that motivates me to work harder to do more
objective, more accurate research. The effect on research quality comes from whether a person has
decided that they are right and goes looking for evidence to support that, or that they have an idea but
they go looking for evidence that will help them understand the true state of the world (even if it
contradicts them). These two motivations could happen to anyone, in any group, whether or not they
are ‘affected’ by the topic they are researching, it’s just about the researchers’ mindset, effort, and
training.
No one should be silenced or kept out of academia because they might be doing research intended to
improve the status of themself or their community, especially since the academy is a platform that could
really help with visibility for members of historically silenced and oppressed groups. Let people’s voices
be heard. Let people use the power of the academic institution to research the mechanisms of systems
that oppress them, and let them use the results to dismantle those systems. The need to end one’s own
suffering is a powerful motivator for doing accurate, detailed, GOOD research. We should all be able to
agree on this, unless…wait a minute, were inaccuracy and error not actually your real concerns when
you told me that I was biased and that my opinion was not valuable, my dear, patronizing academic?