The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 2 (Spring, 1999) of the APA Newsletters

The session entitled "The Technological Dream and the Intersections of Gender and Bioscience" chaired by Ann Garry was, ironically enough, delayed by technological difficulties—the slide projector necessary for Joan Rothschild’s presentation, "Perfect Babies and Diseased Fetuses: Foucault, Unreason, and 18th Century Origins of the Flawed Pursuit of the Technological Dream" did not arrive until almost the end of the session. For this reason, although Rothschild was scheduled to speak first, Mary Mahowald began the session with her paper "Breast Cancer Research and Susceptibility Testing: A Feminist Standpoint."

In her paper Mahowald discussed a particular example of the practical implementation of feminist standpoint theory (though it was not consciously undertaken as such) in a program to review proposals for breast cancer research. By standpoint theory she means "the theoretical justification for utilizing particular standpoints and strategies to implement them." Standpoints belong to individuals and specific groups who occupy different positions in the world. Invoking Nancy Hartsock, Mahowald holds that a feminist standpoint would "reverse the privileged status of the parties involved, granting superior status to the nondominant view. One’s vision is restricted by dominant ways of thinking, while nondominant standpoints make possible a vision beyond the present, enabling the oppressed to liberate themselves."

The program Mahowald describes as an example of a practical implementation of feminist standpoint theory was the U.S. Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program. It consisted of two panels: one of scientists who weighed the technical and scientific merits of the proposals and an Integration Panel, of which Mahowald was a member, where consumers joined scientists in evaluating whether or not the proposals fulfilled the programmatic goals of breast cancer prevention, increased survival rates and promoting a better quality of life. Some of the scientists on this panel were also consumers: one scientist had breast cancer, another had a family member with breast cancer. There were many women on the panel and every meeting began with a reminder of the privileged standpoint of the consumer. After a year there was an effort to get consumers onto the scientific and technical level of proposal evaluation. This was done with a rather restricted definition of consumer. For purposes of this panel, only survivors would count as consumers. Family members of breast cancer victims would not count as consumers. Also, to count as a consumer the survivor would have to be involved in breast cancer advocacy. Those who had survived breast cancer but had not gotten involved in advocacy would not be eligible for inclusion on this panel. As Mahowald pointed out, this excludes three important standpoints. Of particular concern is that the daughters of survivors are left out. Also, if one was both a scientist and a survivor, one had to be only a scientist in all deliberations. As one might expect, the scientists had some concern about including consumers at this level of proposal consideration. The scientists were concerned about lack of knowledge and of emotion on the part of the consumers. Some feared that immediate solutions would be preferred over more long-term ones. Questionnaires afterwards, however, proved these fears to be groundless. Consumers took their responsibility to be as educated and informed as possible very seriously. Scientists found them hardworking, intelligent, reasonable and well-prepared. The judgments of the consumers generally coincided with those of the scientists. Both groups felt that the experience was positive and that the inclusion of consumers should continue. While everyone recognized that the costs for preparation were more, they were still considered reasonable. The need for adequate preparation was stressed, however.

Mahowald recognizes that while this example of standpoint theory is by no means ideal and that "token representation of nondominant standpoints on governmental panels and organizational boards... is often viewed as a political necessity rather than a source of enlightenment by the dominant members of review panels or policy-making groups," this particular instance was successful because of the preparation of the dominant members of the board. If this kind of preparation were more prevalent, inclusion of non-dominant groups would likely be successful more often. As Mahowald argues, "[t]okenism can exacerbate the myopia of the dominant standpoint because the socialization of nondominant individuals sometimes leads to their assimilation of the perspective of the dominant group. Lest their privileged perspective be lost, it is imperative that the rational underlying the inclusion be understood and accepted by dominant members of the group." In other words, it is essential for the nondominant group to maintain its own standpoint, which means its members must listen to each other and to members of other non-dominant groups as well as insisting on being heard by others. Much of the material from Mahowald’s presentation will appear in Chapter 11 of her forthcoming book, Genes, Women and Equality (Oxford University Press).

Despite her lack of a slide projector, Joan Rothschild went forward with her presentation, based on a chapter in her forthcoming book, on perfect babies and deformed fetuses. By the end of the talk the projector had arrived and she was able to show her slides of photographs from New York Times Sunday supplements put together by the March of Dimes ("Perfectly Beautiful" from 1993, 1994 and 1995) and funded by the cosmetics industry, on perfect babies. These slides show both perfect babies and stunning adult female models from full page ads in the same supplements. The first one is a montage of parents with perfect babies, the second is of three babies: one white, one black and one Asian with the caption "small miracles." The third was of six varied race babies marching towards a future without birth defects. Rothschild began her presentation with several overheads showing severely deformed fetuses. Her concern in looking at these Sunday supplements is that they conflate healthy, beautiful, and perfect. Indeed, the statement from Beverly Sills, the president of the March of Dimes, which leads these supplements is "Perfectly beautiful, beautifully perfect. Hoping for a day when all babies are born this way."

With this as a background, Rothschild argued that the imperfect and defective fetus is a specter with eighteenth century origins. It stems from a fear of the irrational and the need to control it. In the eighteenth century human perfectibility was a dream. Condorcet had an egalitarian vision of human perfectibility and looked to medicine and technology to achieve perfection. Rothschild pointed to the eighteenth century fascination with the grotesque while at the same time there was a desire to hide it. Madness was created with the imperfect and unreason all were things from which we needed to be protected in the age of reason. The perfect human being was set up in opposition to the madman. The madman/woman violated the aesthetic ideal of the enlightenment. In the eighteenth century art and medicine were joined to control and suppress the ugly, irrational and imperfect.