Sally Frantzreb

Writer’s comment: As an American Studies major, I created my own emphasis which gave me the freedom to explore any subject related to American culture and society. History and Philosophy of Science 150, Gender and Science, was one of the five classes that comprised my emphasis, Interdisciplinary Analysis of Gender. My interest, therefore, in examining the ways in which gender ascriptions are played out in every academic field was fueled by this course: even something as “soft” as gender can be found in “hard” science. Having a range of paper topics from which to choose, I decided to integrate my knowledge of feminine science, feminist science, and ecofeminism with my personal fascination with the primate researcher Dian Fossey. I genuinely enjoyed researching Fossey’s life and connecting her experiences to my own interest in gender issues. Writing this paper was much more than a fulfillment of a course requirement: it was an analytic journey through my own interests, beliefs, and life tenets.
—Sally Frantzreb

Instructor’s comment: HPS l50, Gender and Science, blends material from the history of women in science, scientific attitudes about sex and gender, and feminist philosophies of science. The suggested paper topics invited students to come to their own understanding of the interplay between history, science, and feminist philosophy by critically exploring a philosophical problem through the life of a particular scientist, the history of a scientific field, or a debate about sex difference. Sally Frantzreb chose to grapple with the fundamental problems of how a scientist’s life experiences inform her ways of knowing and how that relationship should inform our thinking about what constitutes feminist science. As a class, we had discussed a variety of feminist perspectives on the life of Barbara McClintock, a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist. Sally’s choice to examine the life of renowned primatologist Dian Fossey allowed her to develop a powerful comparison with the literature interpreting McClintock’s experience as a woman in relation to her style of doing science. Sally’s paper beautifully lays out specific differences in styles of primatological field work and skillfully demonstrates their connections to both Dian Fossey’s individual experiences and the nature of feminist science.
—Michael R. Dietrich, History and Philosophy of Science Program



“While she preferred the anecdotal approach in describing what she saw, [Sandy] Harcourt favored statistical quantification . . . . He suggested she do the same, but Fossey wouldn’t hear of it. She was using well-established methods, and she was the world authority on gorillas” (Hayes 288). The “world authority on gorillas” was Dian Fossey; the “well-established methods” could only be described as Fossey’s science. Although she had little formal education and no training before beginning her mountain gorilla research in the Virunga Volcano region of East Africa, Fossey spent almost 20 years of her life observing, photographing, and writing about these animals. But learning about the gorillas’ eating habits, mating rituals, and migration routes quickly became secondary to her developing relationships—friendships—with the gorillas in her study groups. And, after establishing this closeness, she wanted to protect the animals’ lives as she would her own family members’. Thus became what Fossey described as “active conservationism” (Fossey 57): saving the gorillas through tough anti-poaching practices. This often entailed risking human lives for the preservation of gorilla lives. Therefore, the “well-established methods” of “Fossey’s science” extended beyond a qualification, rather than quantification, of her data—beyond observing the animals through interaction rather than at a distance. Fossey felt a connection, a sense of community, with “her” gorillas. Would a male primatologist have felt the same? Would he have allowed himself to turn his back on value-neutral, emotion-barren, empirical science for the intimacy and attachment that Fossey actively nurtured? Likely not. But what Fossey accomplished that few other scientists studying animals in the wild could also claim was her interaction with individual gorillas—touching their hand with hers. Fossey subsumed the paradigms of objective “male” science in favor of a more “female” analysis and perspective. Feminine science defines Fossey’s science: she placed herself—body, mind, and spirit—within the animals’ lives. Her perspective was not muddled by her attachment, as many traditional (male) scientists may argue. It was clarified.
         It is likely that Fossey’s desire to create friendships with the gorillas was influenced by the lack of closeness to her family. Three-year-old Dian had no siblings to comfort her when her parents divorced. And when her mother remarried when Fossey was five, not only was mentioning her father’s name forbidden (Montgomery 51), but her mother also aligned herself with her new husband, away from her daughter. Because Fossey “abhorred her stepfather [Richard Price]” (Hayes 55), she felt abandoned by her mother. When she was old enough to look back on her young life, Fossey realized that she was “starved for affection” and was “uncertain of her value to anyone else” (Hayes 55-56). But this analysis was not confined to her childhood; many defined the adult Fossey as aloof and snobbish (Hayes 52), which precluded the possibility of forming large friendship networks. Fossey also had difficulties maintaining romantic relationships. From Alexie Forrester, the man she decided not to marry, to Robert Campbell, the married man she wished she could marry, Fossey realized, because of these unfulfilling relationships, that she would never have a husband, home, and family. Despite the fact that Fossey dedicated her life to studying and protecting mountain gorillas, she still “longed for a husband and babies” (Montgomery 49).
         Much of this void was likely socially-influenced. During the early- to mid-1960s when Fossey began her research, society’s estimation of a woman’s worth resided primarily in her roles as wife and mother. Bruno Bettelheim claimed, in 1965, that “as much as women want to be good scientists . . . they want first and foremost to be womanly companions of men and to be mothers” (15). How strongly Fossey was influenced by such an assumption is debatable. But it is true that Fossey was jealous of Jane Goodall, a fellow primate researcher, because Goodall “had it all . . . a career, husband, and child” (Montgomery 115). The bottom line of this battle between family and career is that Fossey ultimately chose her passion, her true love, her calling: her career with the wild apes. She did not abandon this choice at any time to marry, or have children, or even to pursue a romantic relationship.
         Rarely is it mentioned in biographies whether unmarried male scientists are resentful of their married colleagues for having a wife and children. Rarely is more than a sentence, if that much, devoted to the mention of these scientists’ marital status. But Fossey’s unmarried, childless state is analyzed throughout books and articles about her. Clearly, her solitary lifestyle was just as much a challenge to society’s sensibilities of a “woman’s role” inside the home (rather than out in the jungle), as it was a painful issue for Fossey herself; she was not awarded the respect given to male scientists by keeping her personal life—including her occasional loneliness—private. Harold Hayes’ references to Fossey’s appearance (57, 169, 217, and 246), her relationships with men (a total of 56 page references in the index under the title “romantic affairs of”), and her fluctuating emotional states (throughout the book) in his biography The Dark Romance of Dian Fossey exemplify others’ interpretations of Fossey as either a woman or a woman scientist. But never as just a scientist.
         Ironically, Fossey mentioned early in her research that she “had never been a scientist, wasn’t one now, and had no interest in becoming one” (Hayes, 241). Perhaps this conclusion stemmed from her inability to qualify for veterinary school during her first two years at the University of California, Davis. The reason: low grades in her science courses, specifically physics and chemistry (Hayes 138). But because she felt “compelled to protect the vulnerable, the innocent” (Montgomery 58), she became an occupational therapist at Kosair Crippled Children’s Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky (Hayes 39). Fossey loved working with children—especially “vulnerable” children who needed her. Her role as a mother figure in this position fulfilled Vivianne T. Nachmias’ description of the “Commitment Required of a Woman” (article title): that her professional life be taken as seriously as her “ability to care for and love her family and other people” (33). Even though this analysis was written in 1965, the belief that a woman scientist is first a woman and then a scientist—or at least each role must be played simultaneously—remained throughout Fossey’s career in the 1970s to early 1980s, and in the 1990s is only beginning to be questioned.
         But Fossey allowed neither her occasional loneliness nor the social expectation to be dependent on a man and to have children dependent on her to dissuade her from her independent-minded goals. Although her dream to become a veterinarian dissolved, she followed through on another lifetime ambition: to go on an African safari. When she was 28, Fossey borrowed against three years of her occupational therapist salary to go (Montgomery 32). While there, Fossey “met” the mountain gorillas to whom she would soon devote the remainder of her life. Upon her return to the United States, a published article and photographs caught the attention of Louis Leakey, a prehistoric scientist and “founder” of Jane Goodall, the renowned chimpanzee researcher. When Leakey asked Fossey to become his “gorilla girl” (Fossey 4), she couldn’t refuse. He chose Fossey, not just for her interest in the mountain gorillas, but also because she was an “untrained woman” (Hayes 117). According to Leakey, these women are “more sensitive to mother-infant relations, are less likely to arouse aggression in males,” and, unlike trained scientists, tend not to “see too much” (Hayes 117). Leakey’s choosing Fossey and other women seems progressive at first glance: he believed women were more capable than men to conduct this large-scale, long-term research. But this pat on women’s backs may really be a thorn in their sides. The “talent” he saw in women was passivity, sensitivity, and lack of professional training—traditional female gender images. Ironically, these same traits are what have barred women from the sciences: many male scientists assume that these “womanly” qualities are inherent to every woman, that the traits are oppositional to scientific practice, and so women’s low representation in the sciences is therefore “justified.” So was Leakey’s preference of women, for the conditions cited above, a boost for women in the sciences or a boot? Did he challenge men’s domination of the sciences or reinforce it? For “hard” sciences, like chemistry or physics, it is debatable whether those individuals (primarily women?) who are sensitive and affective would be an asset to the field. But such traits may be beneficial within physical anthropology—or specifically, primate studies.
         The main difference between primate studies and physics, for example, is the fact that the animals are individuals with whom one can communicate. They are alive. This is not to argue that physics is dead, like Latin. Far from it. But for many, looking into a gorilla’s or chimpanzee’s eyes is like looking into the eyes of our ancestors; to communicate with them is to communicate with our past. This connection was part of Fossey’s fascination with and devotion to the mountain gorillas, as made apparent by her communion with the apes on their territory. Fossey understood that the gorillas are human beings’ ancestors. This understanding perhaps explains why Fossey opted not to stand away from the animals—both literally and figuratively—and merely observe. She wanted to connect with them in a way that she could not with other human beings, such as with her mother, stepfather, and numerous paramours. This juncture could be where some argue that Fossey’s work was unscientific: she did not have the “scientific” distance that allows the scientist to watch and analyze rationally, unencumbered by emotion. Fossey’s time with the gorillas was not unemotional or detached in any way. So did this make her study and her findings unscientific? According to traditional, male-dominated science, yes. But Fossey was operating from a different scientific base—namely, that of feminine science.
         Feminists “all agree that the women’s movement does make important contributions to the growth of knowledge,” including scientific knowledge (Harding 57). The women’s movement, of course, refers to the specifically female perspectives that fuel equal rights issues. Therefore, as a feminine scientist Fossey brought her own female socializations into her research work. By examining the gorillas’ social dynamics, feelings, and interconnectedness, Fossey was drawing on her own experiences growing up female: she learned how to develop a community of friendships and to accept one’s own—and others’—emotions. Specifically, “women have been taught that, as females, their strengths lie in empathy with and concern for other individuals” (Norwood 211). For Fossey, “other individuals” were gorillas. Within Fossey’s autobiography, Gorillas in the Mist, she relays a situation in which she and student John Fowler reintroduce a baby gorilla, Bonne Annee, into the wild.