How to use your privilege
w/ Imogen Coe
Stereotypes can be totally demoralizing, especially when it comes to stereotypes about women vs math, or as the social narrative likes to phrase it (cough cough every The Bachelor segment EVER): Beauty vs brains. Today Vanessa talks to Canadian thought leader Dr Imogen Coe about what it’s like to advocate for equality in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields traditionally dominated by white men, and what it actually means to use your privilege.
SHOW NOTES
If you haven’t seen the Taylor Swift documentary we talked about, you NEED TO!
Check out First Robotics, an innovative organization committed to diversity in STEM through wicked cool robotics competitions and challenges!
Imogen talked about an organization called Let Toys be Toys, an organization asking companies to stop promoting certain toys as gendered.
If you haven’t seen the Gillette and Always ads, you absolutely HAVE TO! Gamechanging.
The Geena Davis Institute analyses popular media and delivers quantitative analysis of representation of gender, race, LGBTQ+, disabilities, age, and body size - so so cool and definitely worth checking out!
MORE FROM DR IMOGEN COE
Dr. Imogen R. Coe was the founding dean of the Faculty of Science from 2012 to 2018 at Ryerson University in Toronto. She is currently a professor of Chemistry and Biology at Ryerson. She is also an affiliate scientist at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, where her research group studies the proteins responsible for the import of anti-cancer drugs.
In addition to her work as a research scientist, Dr. Coe is internationally recognized as a Canadian thought leader in the area of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
Find Dr. Imogen Coe on instagram at @drimogencoe and on Twitter at @imogenrcoephd
SUPPORT MATH THERAPY + GET IN TOUCH
Leave ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ at Apple Podcasts // Subscribe on your fave podcast app // Get in touch at all socials at @themathguru or vanessa@themathguru.ca
SHOW CREDITS
Hosted by: Vanessa Vakharia
Produced by: Sabina Wex
Edited by: David Kochberg
Logo by: Scott Wise
Theme music: WVV by Goodnight, Sunrise
Full Episode Transcript
w/ Imogen Coe
Vanessa Vakharia: Welcome to the podcast!
Imogen Coe: Thank you! It’s great to be here.
V: I’d just like to start by knowing a little bit more about your history with math and science. Bring me back to little Imogen.
I: Little Imogen..
V: So cute I bet!
I: … was adorable! Little Imogen grew up outside of Cambridge in the UK, as you can tell from my accent. I loved science, but we also were raised with the sense that everybody had the chance to do those kinds of things that they loved. So I kind of have this dual pathway of wanting the world to be fairer and at the same time pursuing my love of science, so that’s why I have this sense that not everybody has had the chance to get to do what I wanted, and what I’ve been able to do. That’s just not right.
When I was seven, I have a very strong memory of my little coed class at primary school just outside of Cambridge, the girls being rounded up and sent off to sewing lessons and the boys being rounded up and sent off to woodworking I think. I don’t know because I didn’t get to go. I just thought that doesn’t make any sense, it wasn’t the gender thing, it could be short people or tall people, or it could’ve been people with green eyes and brown eyes. It just doesn't make any sense, why you would divide up people and then have them do things on the basis of some arbitrary characteristic. I think from a really early age I was really aware that people made judgments about people on the basis of gender.
V: So did you ever say anything when you were younger?
I: I mean I think I was aware of it and I think I spoke to things that were… I remember watching sports with my dad because he was a varsity athlete, and the Olympics and watching pole vaulting and thinking, “Woah, that looks really exciting, a little bit dangerous, but girls don’t do it - why is that?”. I think I raised it as, “Well that’s weird, why isn’t that happening?”, so I think it was more like that’s weird, I would see it and comment on it and then people would not have good answers. So then I would say, “Well that’s not a good answer.”, (Laughing). So I kind of evolved.
V: How did this start for you, actually becoming on your path to being a thought leader? How did you start this work? Do you kind of remember how you got into it?
I: I think I’ve always been one of those people that would speak up…
V: Shocker!
I: Yeah, I know (Laughing). Somebody else called me a thought leader and somebody else wrote that.
V: Yeah I’m going to call you that.
I: Well if that works for people. So they needed a departmental committee and I would be the student rep so I would speak up and then people would ask me to stand for positions because I would speak to things that they were afraid to raise. So I think I became a bit of a representative who would speak to issues. I would speak to issues around sexism in science and people would make comments so I think I did that. I was sort of a known, you know, shit disturber… (Laughing).
V: We can use that instead of thought leader.
I: Yeah it might be appropriate. So I pursued a career in science, I became a professor, I became the chair of the department, and then an associate dean because I would speak to issues around strategy and leadership and that kind of stuff, so that was part of it. That gave me a platform to be able to speak to discrimination and that kind of stuff. Then when I became a Dean, then that was a very clear platform at an institution that had a very explicit mission sort of social justice. It was kind of a good combination there.
V: One of the coolest things about you I think is that you really don’t give a fuck if people are going to be unhappy with what you say. I think that's really, really hard - I know it's hard for me to do. I don't feel like you feel that way at all, or do you? Is that something that has held you back? How do you get past that?
I: No I think it’s true, but I have huge privilege. I have tons and tons of privilege. I’m so privileged which means I have responsibility and I'm privileged that I can say those things because I'm safe. I’m not going to lose my job - I have tenure, I have a very good job, I have a very secure position. I have so much privilege and a platform and security behind me, I have an institution. I’m not going to get fired for saying what I say.
I’m also far enough along my career, so there are disadvantages to being a woman that gets old (Laughing). You have five minutes where you’re actually the right fit for the age. You’re too young, you don’t have enough of a track record, and then there’s five minutes and then you’re past it and they’re looking for someone who's younger and has more potential (Laughing). I’m far enough along in my career that I don’t really need to worry about other people impacting my career. If I wanted to go on and do something, like be a president then maybe…
V: Oh my god! I would vote for you.
I: No, no but I don’t want to do that so I'm safe.
V: You’re basically like Oprah and everyone is begging her to run for president and she’s like, “Fuck no.”.
I: No, because I wouldn’t be able to say the things that need to be said. The whole system needs people who will say what needs to be said. I've heard that a lot from people, that I say things that other people would like to say but they're not safe to do it. Because I have privilege, I have a responsibility - I have no choice, really. I mean I could but it would be cowardly of me.
V: Can you think of a time, before or after, that weren’t those five minutes that you speak of? Was there a time when you were uncomfortable to call stuff out or did you ever not say something you thought because you were scared? Or did you do it and were there repercussions? Any of these things I’m actually curious about because I feel like I deal with so many young people. Not just young people but so many people who are like, “This thing happened to me. How would you deal with it?”, and I'm always like, “Oh my god I don't know!”.
You don't want to give them the wrong information because it's true. You know what I think of? I think of all those self-help books right now that are like, “You can do it! You know what, everyone just quit your job and follow your dreams.”. And actually that’s very irresponsible from your position of privilege to be giving the mass audience that advice, because not everyone is safe to do that. Did you ever feel like that at a point in time?
I: Yeah I totally had imposter syndrome. I really struggled with self-esteem hugely, with my weight issues, with my appearance, I was in abusive relationships for a long time. All of those kinds of things I think added to a sense of pretty low self worth. The things that have happened to me in my life, outside of my work, have been way more serious and impactful than my work. There isn't anything anybody can say about me from the work perspective, or this work around STEM that can be anywhere near as damaging, as bad as what happened to me in my personal life. From that sense I’m pretty calibrated in the sense of what my perspective is on this situation if somebody says something that might hurt me or impact me. It can’t be as bad as some of the things that have been really bad that calibrated my life which are human things, like the death of my father or having to take emergency custody of my kids when they were little.
That’s bad, that’s hurtful, that’s impactful. So this here, yeah bring it on. Say all those things that you want to say about this work, and how it's social engineering and it’s my personal agenda, and how I’m a feminazi - in the grand scheme of things it’s like little buzzy mosquitos. When I look at other people I think we have to understand people’s humanity. What are the things that are really hurtful and impact people negatively? It’s often the things that affect them personally, and how can we create cultures and contexts that are kinder and more humane, which is one of the things that I really want us to do in science and STEM. Why does chemistry have to be such a mean profession? They’re proud of their meanness. Why do we have engineering frosh-week? Why do we have this weird culture where there’s humiliation culture? Where did that come from? Why do we do that?
V: This is so interesting. I literally have thirty things to say. Number one, I just watched the Taylor Swift documentary. I kind of feel like you’re Tay-Tay right now because she talks about how you hear about all those celebrities, and they say something that nobody likes and then we have cancel culture, where everyone is like, “Fuck this we’re not listening to this celebrity anymore.”. It’s so interesting because she talks about how her whole life has been tied to approval and self worth.
I: I think the approval piece is totally, really hugely gendered. I thought it was really interesting in that documentary to watch a young woman on her journey to finding her voice. That’s what I came away with is she describes and demonstrates a level of self awareness that grows. She becomes more self aware, she begins to recognize how gendered, stereotyped, and controlled she is, and her image and what the expectations are of her. She grows and starts to find her voice and she starts to challenge some of those things.
V: Kind of similar to you, she recognizes that she’s in this position of privilege and being like, I need to do something with this.
I: Yes, I found it quite uplifting because she's a young person finding their voice. That's a message I’ll often give out, I’ve said this often typically to groups of young women. You have a voice, you have a right to use that voice, and most importantly you have a right to have other people shut the fuck up and listen to what you have to say. It’s not just enough to have a voice and use that voice, you need to have the space.
Somebody needs to give you the space and time for you to actually fill that space with your voice. I think that sometimes something that is missing is like, yes we can empower, encourage, and build confidence but other people are going to have to share the space and that means the white men with privilege, white straight middle class men with privilege, often. We're going to have to share the space, they’re going to have to make some room or always going to have to make some room. They’re going to have to learn to share the space with everybody and not completely dominate.
V: Okay can I ask how do you feel we're doing with that? I ask because this happened to me this weekend and happens to me all the time. It’s one of those things I feel like I have messaged you and been like, “What do I do about this?”, where somebody has said to me, “Well I don't think there’s really an issue anymore. If you look around…”, I hear this a lot, “more than half of our teachers, staff, more than half of our math and science teachers are female now. There are a lot more female scientists now.”. I hear this all the time, “Oh there's no problem anymore.”. What’s your…
I: I'm a scientist so I go back to evidence. I know it feels like that or seems like that but actually the reality is that it’s not the case. Just the same way that we know the Earth is round and that vaccinations are good for us and help prevent disease that otherwise kill people, we go back to the data and evidence and we look, and we can see that there still is a problem. We can still see that we are missing talent, that we're missing ability, and we need to be leveraging that. I get that people see that or they may feel that, but that doesn't make it real.
V: I know a lot of our listeners are people that have anxiety around math or science, and specifically when you dig down it’s anxiety about the fact that they just don't belong. What would you say to somebody who said “Well maybe,”, let's just use girls because a lot of my work is around gender so I talk about girls a lot, “maybe girls just aren't interested in being engineers. The opportunity is there but maybe they’re just not interested.”.
I: Again I come back to this huge body of evidence and data that we have that says that that's not the case. We need to be having that uncomfortable conversation that says, “You know what parents, teachers, that is not the case. There's no evidence for that and we need to be thinking about what is actually going on.”. We know that babies are born with natural curiosity, that’s what their job is, they’re supposed to be figuring out how the world around them works but we can tell from studies on how parents or adults interact with babies, even before babies can walk they are gender stereotyping babies in terms of giving babies….
V: Gender reveal parties…
I: Gender reveal parties are horrible! Horrific! We think that our experience is the only experience.
V: Like each of us as individuals.
I: Outside let’s say outside Canada, if we go to other parts of the world, you don’t see fewer girls in engineering. So what is it?
V: Give me an example, one country.
I: The middle east or eastern Europe. The girls and boys that you will see in engineering and physics in those countries may come from a different socioeconomic sector, so poor girls and poor boys may not be making it into those areas and disciplines. Same in Korea and other parts of the world… What is it? Is it particularly that Canadian girls just don't get it, or is it that somehow Turkish girls are incredibly interested in science and engineering. If it is that, then what are the interpretations of that? Is there something that we do culturally? Because there are cultural differences, not that it’s a girl thing because girls around the world are showing very different patterns of engagement. So if it's a cultural thing then what is the cultural thing that we’re doing that’s disenfranchising girls and disenfranchising boys? We’re doing it to all of them, we’re doing it to kids.
I worked with Vex Robotics, which is high school competitive robotics, and if you talk to girls they were exhausted from continually having to push back against gender stereotypes and being told that this isn’t something for girls, or why are you doing this?, or maybe you can design the t-shirts rather than do the coding. We know that there’s tons of examples and studies, people have studied this to death, that this idea that they're not interested or not capable - it's just rubbish.
V: It’s so crazy because we both do this work and are in this space and most of the days I'm like, “Whatever, I don't give a fuck what people think about me. I'm so excited to prove them wrong...”, but then other days I'm actually like, “I just want to stay in bed.”. I think people really mitigate the fact that it is actually so tiring. A) I'm in a rock band and B) I work in STEM so basically all fronts of my life are the most sexist things. I constantly have to prove, and I think that's one thing people don't understand, they’re like, “I don't get it, why are you so tired of telling people you belong?”, and I'm like, no actually it's not that people are sexist to my face because it’s 2020 and it’s actually not how it happens for the most part anymore, but anytime I get up and play an instrument, I have the additional stress of thinking if I fuck up people are going to say girls don't belong in rock and roll. They’re not going to say she sucks, I’m standing up here representing my entire race and gender. Oops, I got really pissed off there (Laughing). If I have to calculate a tip at a dinner for friends, I have the pressure of carrying the weight of it.
So I think it would be nice for that to be acknowledged. It’s usually guys, obviously, who say to me, “Well I think this whole ‘Me Too’ thing has gone too far, I think this whole sexism thing has gone too far.”. Do you know how tiring it is to be actually scared when I walk home at night? Are you tired when you do that? No. Do you get home and your heart stops racing for 2 seconds? There’s an additional physiological response that you get in all of these situations that men don’t have. Not to take this to a whole different stratosphere, but I think it’s all one and the same. It’s actually really tiring to constantly feel like you're fighting. I have a lot of girls say to the argument of like, “Hey maybe girls aren’t interested in engineering”, a lot of the research shows that yes they're interested and it’s often in these programs or in the field that they're finally like fuck it. Actually going to work every day is super fucking stressful and it is tiring. What are things that people can do in those environments, like in engineering programs or once they actually get to the field…? I know you do a lot of work around changing culture. What do you suggest?
I: I think one of the things that we really have to shift, and it drives me nuts that we still seem to be having this conversation about if we have more science camps for girls then that will help, that’ll make a difference. The K to 12 landscape is really crowded in Canada, at least it is in the GTA. There’s tons and tons of opportunities for girls in STEM and there’s nothing wrong with that - that's great. It builds confidence and it builds skills and competences that are really useful. But all of that is not going to make a difference and the data and evidence shows that it doesn’t make a difference in the absence of also addressing culture and context.
V: Okay can we just take that in? Great.
I: So that is a message that I’m continually now trying to push out. I used to try to be subtle about it because I didn't want to offend people. People feel very warm and fuzzy and people want to do good work so they want to donate to science camps for little girls because it makes them feel good and it checks the corporate social responsibility box and it doesn't require them to do any work. They do not have to do any work on themselves, so it's easy and it makes people feel warm and fuzzy because the people having to do the work are these girls who apparently are deficient and that really fucking pisses me off because they aren’t deficient. They are awesome and amazing and brilliant and fabulous and they are carrying so much burden of the cultural conditioning and stereotyping that we put on them. It’s a layer on top of that racism and ableism and homophobia and stuff like that.
It's not on them to do the work so this is a big part of my message. It’s not their job to do the work - yes we can support, encourage, and build the core competences and resilience and grit and all those things we hear about but we have to start paying attention to who has to do the work. That is the people in control of context and culture, which is adults to begin with, mothers can be really gender stereotyping since mothers are doing gender reveal parties, you know. Fathers can be really positively impactful on girls in STEM. Adults, teachers, media and marketing are really complicit. In other countries they’re being held much more accountable, in the UK you can get fined for having stereotypical ads on TV.
V: Yeah I remember when that came out like 3 years ago.
I: They’re doing it! There’s this great organization called ‘Let Toys be Toys’, which is calling out stores for gender stereotyping clothing and stuff like that. We have to start paying attention to those things which means we have to be thinking about how we raise boys and what the role of men is in terms of promoting gender equity, and what the role of white people is in challenging racism. And the burden and responsibility is on the people with power and privilege and the people with power and privilege and typically the dominant group which is most of the time middle class, middle age straight white men. I say that explicitly in my talks and it doesn't always go over that well because those people will sometimes get rather defensive. I have noticed over the last ten years that I have gone from talking to rooms full of women, preaching to the choir to some extent white women often, to nowadays talking to rooms full of gender diverse…
V: Me too! I will say when I used to talk about this there was never a man in the room and I actually said this and I was like I know this seems weird that I'm saying this, this past weekend in Grand Prairie, I was like, “Thank you to the men in the room.”, and I know it's weird that I’m saying thank you but there was a point when men would not be in the room - they didn’t think it applied to them.
I: That’s right! And we can’t really blame them for not thinking it applies to them because we kept saying, “Fix the girls! Fix the girls! It’s all about the girls.”, and it’s not, it’s about human beings, it’s about humanity. So the culture and context - how do you fix culture and context? That’s hard work and people don’t always want to do the hard work.
V: How do we give an impetus to men for example, to do this work? We are always like, “Think of your mother, think of your wife”, like all that bullshit. I feel like what you said before, talking about economically, don’t we want better standards of living? Does that work? Does that resonate with people? I feel like people are so detached from the greater good that they really just think of themselves all the time. That’s a horrible thing to say, sorry (Laughing).
I: Human beings are programmed to think that way. We have to think about how we can use human psychology…
V: Exactly! Especially our culture, Western culture is very like ‘every man for themselves’.
I: Individualism. If you look to the work of people like Michael Kausman, Jeff Perera, Michael Ford, three male experts, there’s a ton of data that shows gender equity and gender equality is actually better for men. So now we have all this attention around mental health, much more attention than we used to have around the importance of good mental health and when you create more gender equity and you look at the programming, the culture of overwork, the culture of gender stereotypes and who does what kind of work - what does masculine, macho culture mean, which is what boys are raised to aspire to, it’s actually really bad mental health. So if we actually can raise boys to be caring, compassionate and embrace those characteristics that are being gender stereotyped to be feminine, it's actually healthier for them and they can open up, they can be they can be empathetic, they can talk about their feelings. The language we use around a man's friendships, “bromances”, why can't you have a good friendship with a man without it having...
V: Like sexual connotations.
I: Yeah, exactly. So I promote a systems approach where there are different ways that you can say this is good for everybody, this is good because creating a more humane workplace is good for everybody in terms of mental health, productivity, and retention. In the corporate world, those are all things that you want - you want good productive people to stay and you want to hire the best.
V: People should be able to take time off for mental health.
I: Exactly! Create an environment where you recognize that part of what you're doing is creating a more gender equitable kind of workplace which is hopefully going to bring in more women, but also it’s going to make the men in your organization healthier and happier.
V: What about the media? I think personally that the media is the biggest force, because I think that’s where everything trickles down from, and lately there are a lot of campaigns, like think about the Gillette campaign… How do we feel, what's the vibe on that? Are we like, okay yes good work or are we like, okay this is too extra and very transparent. What are we thinking?
I: So I’m a big fan of holding media and marketing accountable and I think that they are absolutely complicit in gender stereotyping - it drives me nuts. I hate Disney...
V: Can we talk about the fact that ‘The Little Mermaid’ didn't speak and she brushed her hair with a fork and the guy was head over heels for her. What the fuck? Based on what?I: If you go to Geena Davis's...
V: Oh my god I need to get in on that.
I: Even though they’ve come out with more empowered female characters, they speak less and less.
V: They speak less and less, I’ve seen that.
I: Media and marketing, I don’t know why in Canada we are so complacent. There’s no substance there, there’s no challenge and I think there's a laziness around it that doesn't challenge them to look at how stereotyped they are in many different directions. I think the Gillette ad is brilliant, I’ve seen it…
V: Me too!
I: I’ve seen it shown at a really big venue, Tanya Van Biesen from Catalyst and I were keynoting on something and she showed it at a really big venue that was full of engineers, it was like Hydro One or something like that - lots of men in the room. It really shuts everybody up, you can hear a pin drop, and then she showed the ‘Always like a girl’, which always makes me cry. You ask a teenage boy, “Can you run like a girl?”, and he does a really insulting kind of stupid run, and then they ask him, “Is that like your sister?”, and they say, “No that’s not my sister.”.
V: Goosebumps. And then what?
I: And then they go to a teenage girl and they say, “Can you run like a girl?”, and then she does the same thing, some kind of stupid run. It really shows how we belittle and demean and humiliate the things that girls do.
V: There are Olympic female runners, like what the fuck?
I: Yeah! When I was growing up, when I was a little kid, women's soccer was a joke like Benny Hill, it was used as a joke. Now that's changed, now there are the Lionesses, there’s a World League, and women play Cricket. All of those things have actually changed and that’s good. But none of that happened through making media or marketing more accountable, it came through other routes of people advocating for change. I like things like Gilette and Always, Dove has done some really good stuff. I think if you are going to push the agenda you’re going to have to deal with the backlash, so yeah put it out there and you're going to get all this nasty stuff and toxic backlash and everything but that's what leaders do, that’s what pushing the agenda does. You can’t get cultural change without people getting hostile.
V: Yeah and at this point in time, with the way our culture is, the leaders are corporations. The thought leaders and the people who get to spread new ideals and messages are brands - it really is their responsibility. I was always so torn with celebrities who were like, “Fuck, I never wanted to be a role model, I just wanted to be a singer.”, and it's like too fucking bad, that’s actually part of your job, that’s why you get paid millions of dollars, it’s because you’re a role model. It’s not just about your music. I think the same thing does go for brands, be aware that you are creating cultural values at this point. The corporation is like a person of privilege. You are in this privileged position, you have this opportunity, so what are you going to do with it? I think that’s important.
I: I agree, totally. I would like to see more courage …
V: Absolutely! The other thing too is I guess I find it weird, not weird, I guess I feel confused about what a big deal we make of it when Gilette puts an ad like this. Like, “Oh my God look at this ad that flips masculinity on its head!”, I guess I’m upset that it’s such a big deal. Why is it still a big deal? I did this workshop this weekend where I said to the room, “Name me characters you can think of that are mathematicians in film.”. People would be like Good Will Hunting and Sheldon from Big Bang, and I was like, “See all these white males'', and one guy put up his hand and said “Well there’s Hidden Figures.”. But look at what a big deal was made of Hidden Figures, it was like the biggest thing on the planet because no one had ever portrayed women in math that way, ever. It’s not that those things shouldn’t be made - of course they should, I guess I’m just upset that we make such a big deal of them because they’re so rare.
I: Yeah and that’s a big thing about actually shifting culture is you have to start normalizing. When you start saying, “Girls in STEM, girls in STEM, we have to get them interested in STEM.”, it’s as if that isn't normal and they’re unicorns. I had a student who came through the medical physics program as an undergraduate and then she switched over to molecular science doing more cell biology stuff. She's really, really smart but she would describe how exhausting it was to continually be treated as if she was some mythical unicorn. Like, “You have a degree in medical physics? Well you must be so smart, you must be so rare and wondrous.”, and people thought it was a compliment but all it did for her was made her feel like she was weird.
That's really sad - I want it to be normal for girls to go and do medical physics, or girls to do engineering. I want it to be normal for boys to go do ballet, I want it to be normal for boys to play with dolls, I want it to be normal for girls to build robots. It's about normalizing humanity and human activities and that's shifting culture, it’s not about focussing on fixing girls.
V: Okay I want to ask you this question because it is the stupidest question but I would like an actual scientist to answer this for anyone out there who might still have a doubt. I did an interview with an actual radio station that was live on air to people across Canada…
I: I’m afraid of what’s coming.
V: You should be (Laughing). The host said to me, “So listen, this is crazy but I saw this article and they did brain scans of girls and boys and they proved that there is no difference when it comes to mathematical intelligence in girls’ and boys’ brains. Did you know that?”. I don’t need a brain scan at this point to tell me that. I said, “Everyone knows that biologically there is no difference.”, and his response, he said, “Yeah I just wonder what happens after puberty.”. (Laughing) For anyone out there who still thinks that there is a biological difference in the way that males and females are capable of math, can you give us a little, you know? Is that in any way true?
I: (Laughing) No, absolutely not!
V: Thank you.
I: Let me just say that what brain scans will show you typically is there is a range of brain activity in men and a range of brain activity in women and they overlap. There’s diversity in human beings but there’s nothing that splits them into, “Okay you can only do this and you can only do that.”.
V: There’s no math gene right? I’m dripping with sarcasm.
I: There is no math gene. Let me tell you I have worked with DNA directly, I have sequenced DNA, I have looked at the A T G C A for genes that I have studied, and I can tell you there is no math gene.
V: I mean I feel like we should just end right here (Laughing). I have two more questions that I need to ask you, but thank you. Thank you very much. I mean I know the answer, most people know the answer, but there are still people out there who do not know the answer so I’m glad we had a real fucking scientist who has touched DNA.
I: I think maybe we should maybe take up ads on billboards saying, “There is no math gene. Stop looking.”.
V: Yeah, we can work on a campaign. Okay final two questions, what would you say to someone who says they're not a math person?
I: Ohhhh, I would say, “Oh my god! You’re a person, you’re a human being, you use math everyday you just don't realize it. We’re all math people. Be bold and have courage! Be bold, be brave!” (Laughing)
V: And lastly, how would you change the way math is taught in schools?
I: Oh you’re the expert on that. I would come and ask you. (Vanessa laughing) I would say someone just asked me this question, could you give me 12 hours of your time at whatever your going rate is, and then we would negotiate. I would buy you more tea or something. I would say, I wish we could slow things down and spend more time and just immerse ourselves in the wonder and beauty of math. If I hadn’t done science I would’ve done music, you know music and physics and math are all tightly intertwined. I would love to just immerse myself in understanding the math of music. Just normalizing it, making it part of the world around us would be a way to help us understand that we are all math people. Math is the language of the universe and so when you're learning math, you're just learning the language of the entire universe. It’s everything, it’s the world around us. Maybe slowing it down and being able to have some wonder and be able to understand the beauty of it.
V: Room for curiosity I think is what you’re saying.
I: Yeah! Absolutely, what you said, yeah.
V: No, you said that. (Laughing)
I: Room for curiosity, yeah.
V: Alright well before we completely wrap up and say bye in a very dramatic way, is there anything we didn’t talk about that you want to say? Is there anything you want us to promote for you, is there anything you want people to do? I think call to action, wash your hands everyone! Wash your hands!
I: Always! All year round, wash your hands, get your vaccinations (Vanessa laughing). Treat people kindly and humanely and stop gender stereotyping kids please, please, please stop gender stereotyping kids. Let kids have all the toys, let kids have all the books there are no books, films, movies, or toys for girls or boys. Let kids be kids and let them just explore the world.
V: Imogen, it was a fucking pleasure.
I: Always.
V: This was so good, I feel invigorated and ready to go out there and squirt hand sanitizer all over the place and yell for gender equality, so thank you.
I: Anytime, always.