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Thanks to all for our our conversation last night. I record here some of the "moments" that I found most intriguing, as an archive for myself and perhaps as a stepping off point for further discussion among us and others.

We began the conversation by placing ourselves in the framework established by Subramaniam's essay: I found myself responding to the call to gender studies scholars to become conversant with science; Liz responded, reciprocally, to the call to scientists to learn more about the nuances of gender studies.  We then asked other participants to place themselves with reference to the essay. Given our varied locations in relation to the field of feminist science studies, we offered of course a wide range of responses, from

*an independent scholar who wanted a fuller exploration of the limit of (rather than a simple return to) the "pipeline" metaphor (sometimes the leaks are actually productive, as when, for example, feminist science studies gave rise to a range of new women's health initiatives, which have in turn affected the practice of science)

*a biologist who felt "written out", as a man and practicing scientist, from Subramaniam's narrow, "dry, not juicy" account of a discipline, one that didn't offer resistance ("was a mirror, not a hammer"), but simply attended to "how we interpret the interpreter," rather than "how we change society"; what is needed is a much longer and broader history of feminist critique, one that incorporates (for instance) early cartoons by biologists of "Sexism Satirized," economics (especially Marxism), religious thought, scientific facts and texts, and queer theory, rather than just insisting on her hypothesis

*a scholar in the medieval history of science who found Subramaniam's critique a worthy project, providing a "valid, accurate history of feminist science studies" aimed to "shake up her field," and so directed at a different, recognizable and meaningful audience, asking them if "we are a profession yet?"; this scholar felt himself challenged by the article to recognize how little he deals with gender in his work on early astrological texts ("there are very few women involved"); he needs to do more to acknowledge that the figures he studies "can't be treated as unproblematically men," and to highlight their relation to larger social institutions

*a philosopher of mathematics who found himself provoked by the essay to reflect on what influence his work has on science, "whether it matters"; with the emergence of "meta metaphysics," questions arise about the whether the abstractions of philosophers of science could or should influence the practice of science: what does intervention mean? what does it look like? how to measure it?

*a sociologist of science and technology who noted that Subramaniam looks only at the "feminist part" of Science and Technology Studies, and fails to situate her project within that larger field, which highlights issues of class, race, and capitalism, and looks @ the "triple helix of government, business and science" as dimensions needing attention in any attempt to democratize and reform scientific practice; the "missing level is all the sociological stuff" (and yet STS doesn't look @ the practices of education--@ how knowledge gets transmitted).

We discussed what happens to  all fields "with a reform agenda" (STS, black studies, women's studies, queer studies), once they enter the academy, and encounter a backlash. There are barriers to reform both in how we teach and in the disciplines themselves, which are structurally resistant to reform. Fields like STS and Women's Studies then enter "a state of suspended animation," staying focused on old attacks, "going down the old rabbit hole" of debates about expertise, with the "club" of the "old guard" continuing to dominate the field (cf. this to how the California skateboarding culture operates!).
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To end the evening's conversation, Liz and I asked all participants to "metaphorize" their understanding of the field of science studies, and their location within it. Again, there were a range of responses (though the overall sense was a very negative one):

*"Skate Betty" on a graffitti 1/2-pipe
*someone who believes in the transitional metaphor of metamorphosis (=that larvae can become adults)
finding himself "trapped" in a narrative of "arrested development"
*someone sadly conducting an autopsy of the ghost of a dead body that doesn't know it's dead
*a piece of blotting paper, trying to sop up (and so bring together?) the contrary properties of oil and water
*water flowing around static rocks (dynamic, headed someplace--though in light of this conversation,
the rocks seem to be getting larger, the water reduced to a trickle!)
*an unobtrusive parasitic plant
*someone able to make out successfully, if with difficulty, what is being reflected in a distorting mirror
*a dung beetle, pushing a ball of dung
*a master chess player, who able to perform an insightful critique of the game,
trapped in the entirely ineffectual role of playing chess in a cafe.