The Role of Role Models

I will confess now that I have never really understood the appeal of role models. It has always seemed slightly ridiculous to treat someone as if they were an exemplary figure, and with a little maturity I also came to recognise the symbolic violence in raising that someone above their idiotic existence into something more… And leaving some Lacanian objections aside (‘il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel’), I generally find the idea that a person needs some exemplar psychological support slightly belittling. This may of course be a sign of my own comfort thus far, and there is little I can or intend to do to deny this, but if this be the case then there should be a little discernment about the choice of role-model.

Take, for instance, the recently ‘pardoned’ Alan Turing, to be subject of a big new blockbuster starring the new darling of the Guardian left, Benedict Cumberbatch. Everyone should know the Turing story by now, but I must admit I find it baffling that he has become an LGBT icon. Certainly, what was done to Alan Turing was disgraceful by any standards, but it is hard not to sense a certain rather repulsive undercurrent of ‘how dare they do that to a genius or a war hero’ when his story is told. At the very least, the tales of Turing’s conviction rarely have anything positive to say about Arnold Murray, Turing’s then lover. Perhaps because his story wasn’t ‘tragic’ enough – he was given a conditional discharge and nobody knows anything further – perhaps because he ‘betrayed’ Turing by stealing a tenner and letting his friend rob the house.

Forgive me if I don’t believe that everyone is shocked by the fact that British law prosecuted homosexuality; people still seem to maintain that somehow they are not being homophobic when they object to gay marriage. Similarly, I wonder how far these writers would approve if Alan Turing had been an unexceptional middle-aged academic taking in a homeless 19 year old girl. At best, the act becomes a slightly patronising act of charity inspired out of love or pity, at worst it is a frank abuse of an imbalance in power and the academic gets what he deserves if his new girlfriend helps herself to the family silver. Why this is different in Turing’s case, I don’t know (‘boys aren’t helpless like girls…’).

Finally, does a man who complains that his boyfriend has stolen his stuff – police entrapment or not – really understand the difficulties your average homosexual faced in Britain from the thirties to the fifties? Cambridge was a very tolerant place as far as male sexuality was concerned, but not exactly a place open to the general public or that many women for that matter, and it is hard to see in its tolerance anything but a leftover of the implicitly accepted homosexuality in the monastic orders of which Cambridge is an outgrowth.

It seems to me that Alan Turing satisfies a rather different function as icon than, say, a figure like Harvey Milk. There have of course been attempts to romanticise Milk as well, including the relatively recent film with Sean Penn. I don’t trust Republicans, and I do not consider the claim that Milk was assassinated a settled matter (assassination requires some political intent, not just personal or ideological hatred. I admit these are subtle distinctions, but I consider most cases are adequately covered by a different word: murder).

I am against this idealisation generally, but at least Milk did struggle for and bring about concrete reforms. The iconography around Alan Turing, on the other hand, seems to satisfy a more puerile function, the identification with a ‘victim’. There is a long tendency to idealise suffering and justify it through its ‘virtue’ by creating ‘victims’. Think of the numerous female victims in literature: Imogen, Justine, Ottilie, little Nell. The one’s too pure and too unworldly to stay alive: For the world’s more full of weeping than they can understand – at least, in their poor, dear, little heads. Similarly, think of ‘anti-racist’ books like To Kill a Mockingbird, or Uncle Tom’s Cabin, beloved of white liberals who can’t even stand (or have never heard of) moderates like WEB du Bois, or the genuinely powerful (early) Langston Hughes.

However, this discussion isn’t just my usual armchair socialist complaint about the state of the world. The growing consensus about how to ‘deal with women in science’ is to promote scientific role models.

This is more general than just in science, a couple of years ago I heard Michele Bachelet, ex (and likely next) President of Chile and then head of the newly created body UN women, speak of the need for greater visibility of women in leading roles.

This may quite possibly be effective in business and politics, though Rwanda, the country which has consistently topped female representation poles since the genocide, and the only country to have had a proportion of female representatives somewhat reflective of the actual demographic situation for more than five years, has not had a female president and one female Prime Minister. This might be taken as a sign that Rwanda still has a long way to go, but really, if we compare with the United Kingdom languishing at 58 on the list, I would interpret the data to suggest that having women taking a leading role in politics is not necessarily incompatible with massively sexist systems.

However that doesn’t change the fact that perception is important, and certainly the immediate identification scientist = male is something that needs changing. But this is very different from saying ‘Look! Women can be scientists too!’ There is a slight of hand pulled here when, for instance on Ada Lovelace Day, we all gather round at look at the wonderful achievements that a Marie Curie or a Emmy Noether or whoever made. It isn’t that people shouldn’t recognise that these women were incredible scientists, rather people are too aware. I am not saying that we should stop recognising that these women were fantastic scientists, and nor should we ignore the ‘handicap’ of an essentially sexist academic world. Neither do I mean find other brilliant female scientists who also deserve to be role models – Lynn Margulis, Jocelyn Bell Burnell or indeed Ada Lovelace. The bar is set too high.

Because let’s face it: we’re not all Nobel Prize material. And telling me that I am capable of studying my subject because, look at all these people far cleverer than you who also studied it, is not really the way to attract me to that subject. And actually the message is worse: ‘Look at all these clever women. This is what you must be to prove you are worthy to study science’. Mercy, please.