2/27/2017 Outer Space and Gendered Language

WANDERERS

UnmanningSpaceLanguage
MICHAEL P. OMAN-REAGAN / 7 MAR 2016

L
anguage matters, as demonstrated by the recent discussion following the discovery of
example sentences using sexist stereotypes in the Oxford Dictionary of English. Language
about who goes into space also matters, both historically and again now as more people are on
the International Space Station for longer-duration missions, and NASA, SpaceX, and others plan
to send humans to Mars. When journalists write about a spacecraft, they often use the words
manned and unmanned to describe whether there are humans on board. This use reects the
archaic practice of referring to humans as mankind, but does it reect the reality of humankind
and our engagements with outer space?

Dr. Alice Gorman, a space archaeologist based at Flinders University in Australia, has written about
avoiding sexist or gender exclusive language when talking about space. She argues that the use
of words like mankind and manned reinforces the idea that space is for men and not for women.
Heres how Gorman explains, on her blog, why this matters:

When youre a bloke, terms such as mankind automatically include you. You dont
have to think about it at all; yourealready in there. Now we all know thatthese
termsare supposed to also include women; but the reality is a bit different. Firstly,
women have to think themselves into such expressions, even if it happens at a
subconscious level. Secondly, there have been studies which show that men tend to
assume such expressions to refer to them alone and do not automatically include
women unless stated, again often at a subconscious level. And nally, there are
plenty of examples of women attempting to exercise a right of man, only to be told
it does notapply tothem.

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Gendered language matters

because it often reinforces both
sexism and the idea of a xed
gender binary (woman/man,
female/male). This impacts both
how we think about who goes
into space and those doing
scientic research on space. In
her forthcoming book Placing
Outer Space: An Earthly
Ethnography of Other Worlds,
NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson was part of the rst mission
anthropologist Dr. Lisa Messeri
on which four women astronauts went to space at the same
writes about her research with
time. NASA
planetary scientists. Three of
my four chapters, each dealing
with a different research project, featured women, she told me. Women are quite prevalent in
the eld of exoplanet astronomy, Messeri said. During my eldwork I had the privilege to work
with women who aspire to be the names remembered by future generations. Messeri worked
with one of the leading researchers in the area of exoplanets, MIT astronomer and planetary
scientist Dr. Sara Seager, who has written about the challenges faced by women in her eld.

Research on eld experiences has demonstrated that women in STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Math) commonly experience both harassment and sexual assault. Recently
publicized cases of harassment in astronomy and anthropology have started to bring this often-
ignored truth to the surface, while barely scratching the surface, especially for black women,
women of color, and others whose lives are, as MIT theoretical astrophysicist Dr. Chanda Prescod-
Weinstein writes, shaped both by racism and sexism.

Gendered space language is also linked to the racialized language of manifest destiny, which
appears in many discussions of space settlement or colonization. As biologist Dr. Danielle N.
Lee,a 2015 TED Fellow and Scientic American blogger, points out, space language is also involved
in reproducing the myth that wealthy white men can save humanity by colonizing Mars. Lee asks
a question that is central to the anthropology of space: Whose version of humanity is being targeted
for saving?

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The rst woman of color to travel into space, physician Dr. Mae Jemison, is now the principal of
100 Year Starship, a project to develop the capability to reach another star within 100 years. The
leader of this visionary project is not a white male venture capitalist, but a black woman who has
actually been in space. Shouldnt the language we use to talk about humans in space reect this
reality?

The most recent woman in

space was Samantha
Cristoforetti, a European Space
Agency (ESA) astronaut.
Cristoforetti went up to the
International Space Station on
November 23, 2014 and
returned to Earth 199 days later
to become the record holder for
the longest single space ight by
a woman. As of early 2016, 59
women from over 10 countries
ESA astronaut (and Star Trek fan) Samantha Cristoforetti points to
have gone into space.
an incoming cargo ship on the International Space Station.
Samantha Cristoforetti/Twitter
In 2014, Ariel Waldman co-
authored a National Academy of
Sciences study on the future of human spaceight. Waldman, founder of Spacehack.org and
adviser for the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, told me that her report did
not use manned and unmanned, but instead used crewed and uncrewed. In 2014 she wrote on
Twitter: Memo to journalists who cover human spaceight: please stop using manned and
unmanned. Its time. Words like crewed and uncrewed exist.

Since 2006, NASAs History Program Oce style guide has said references referring to the space
program should be non-gender specic. In 2010, NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson described her
experience as part of the rst mission in which four women astronauts were in space at the same
time, noting much of our training and mission assignments have become gender-neutral, as it
should be. However, many journalists continue to use manned and unmanned and continue to
write about landing a man on Mars, sending men into space, and plans for manned missions.
Why does this kind of language persist?

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Part of the reason gendered language persists is the belief that a dictionary is an authoritative
record of language, and from editorial style guides relying on that idea. In 2015, I was involved in a
discussion on Twitter with space scientists about this issue. Kenneth Chang, a New York Times
reporter, asked for a way to avoid unmanned but noted that since uncrewed is not in the dictionary
his editors would simply replace it with the media standard, which is unmanned. Senior Editor and
Planetary Evangelist Emily Lakdawalla, of The Planetary Society, points out in a blog post that the
Associated Press Stylebook still uses the outdated manned and unmanned but says she isnt keen on
crewed/uncrewed as a replacement, because when spoken aloud, the unfamiliar crewed sounds
like the more-familiar crude, which is both negative-sounding and confusing. I usually use human
and robotic.

She goes on, however, to note that even a robotically controlled ship could have humans in it. I like
crewed and uncrewed, and I think the context makes it clear when you say, for example, this will be
the rst crewed spacecraft to visit Mars. It may be awkward at rst, but this is often the case with
new words. It wasnt long ago that few would have known what an iPad was, or a tweet, and before
that a blog, and so on.

So what makes a word a word?

Those who study language know
that it is always changing, and
this process of language change
is an often-discussed
phenomenon in socio-cultural
linguistics, one of anthropologys
four subelds. The Linguistic
Society of America notes that
language changes for a few Twenty-two astronauts and Carolyn Huntoon, the rst woman to
serve as director of NASAs Johnson Space Center, met in 2012
reasons. First, it changes to
to honor fellow astronaut Sally Ride. NASA-JSC
meet the needs of its speakers,
who need to talk about new
technologies and experiences (sending a text, for example). Second, language changes because
people with different experiences and knowledge exchange new words when they communicate.
Third, we borrow words from other languages or create them by shortening or combining other
words (gym from gymnasium, brunch from breakfast and lunch). And nally, language changes

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because word order, spelling, and sounds change over time. The word bird, for example, was
originally spelled brid, but at some point the misspelling became the dominant spelling. Were text
and gym and brunch real words before they were in the dictionary? Yes.

Dictionaries dont determine which words are real; instead, they record certain words selected by
editors because they are used by specic populations, often dominant or powerful ones, in speech
and in print. From an anthropological perspective, a word doesnt need to be in a dictionary to be
a real word. Its real when it can be used to communicate. If readers saw the word uncrewed in the
context of a spacecraft without people in it, theres a good chance most of them would understand
what it means.

When we think about gendered

language we have to remember
that, as Gorman noted, sexism
in space language has real-world
impacts. In October 2015, six
Russian scientists prepared to
simulate the eight-day journey
to the moon and back in an
experimental habitat here on
Earth. The mission, called Moon-
2015 (-2015), was a follow-
up to a 520-day simulation
In October 2015, Russian scientists began Moon-2015, a
conducted with an all-male crew
simulated mission to the moon and back. Facebook
that began in 2010. Before
entering the simulated space
habitat, the scientists held a press conference where reporters asked the crew questions, including
How will you deal with being without makeup for eight days? and How will you cope with not
being around men? All six of the scientists in the Moon-2015 simulation were women, and the
goal of the study was to see how a crew of only women would work together. These are experts in
physiology, psychology, cardiology, ecology, biological physics, and genetics, but because they are
women they were asked about makeup and men, not science.

For the rst time in history, the most recent NASA class of eight astronauts is 50 percent women.
The four women from this class may be among the rst humans to go to Mars 15 years from now.
With so much conict in the world, says astronaut Anne McClain, space exploration can be a

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beacon of hope. No one cares about race or religion or nationality in space travel. Were all just
part of Team Human.

The word unmanned has a secondary meaning: to deprive of qualities traditionally associated with
men. On June 16th, 1963, Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the rst woman in
space. She orbited the earth 48 times and remains the only woman to conduct a solo space ight,
the only truly unmanned spaceight. So far. Its long-past timetounmanspace language sowe
dont bring sexist baggage from Earth intospace.Human futures in space and on Earth must
include everyone.

Thank you to Dr. Alice Gorman, Dr. Danielle N. Lee, Ariel Waldman, Emily Lakdawalla, Dr. Melissa J. Hills,
Amy Dentata, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Dr. Janet D. Stemwedel, and Dr. Lisa Messeri for their
assistance in my research for this post. Any errors are mine.

MICHAEL P. OMAN-REAGAN
Michael P. Oman-Reagan is a Vanier Scholar and Ph.D. candidate in the
department of anthropology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. For his
M.A.at Hunter College, City University of New York, he conducted eldwork with
transnational social movements in Indonesiato trace how activists engaged with the
globalizing Occupy movement through history, technology,and social media. His current
eldwork with communities of space scientists in Canada and theU.S. examines how possible
futures are imagined and built through interstellar exploration,astrobiology, the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and speculative ction. Follow him on Twitter
@OmanReagan.

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