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I made this collage of portraits of Sally Ride, the lesbian astronaut who recently died. More on Ride at the View From the Right, via The Thinking Housewife.
Photos:
1. Even as a high school eighteen-year-old (top black and white photo) Ride has a distinct lack of femininity. The later years of high school is when girls have achieved some understanding of their femininity, and often are not shy or reticent about showing it (some showing too much). But, Ride in her late teens, opts for a little girl's pony tails with ribbons for her hair. Her wide smile and assertive jut of the chin give her a masculine demeanor. Teen-age girls, however much they play jock-like sports, still find a way to look feminine.
2. Monitoring control panels in the space shuttle Challenger. Even as a young woman, there is the set jaws and unsmiling eyes of someone who is not willing to be feminine.
3. Standing with a masculine swagger in her astronaut's suit.
4. She is there in the middle with another fellow-lesbian, tennis player Billie Jean King. They looked up adoringly at the statuesque Gloria Steinem, the anti-female feminist, who made their lesbian "lifestyle" much easier.
5. With the endorser of same-sex marriage. Notice her masculine chin, and, well, masculine smile. Her hands also look unusually large, and it must be quite a handshake she's giving Obama, who looks a little overwhelmed. Here is a larger photo showing her expression better.
The men in the background look on with pathetic expressions, thoroughly approving of the occasion, but also as though they've been whipped into that approval. The older man is Craig Barrett. From Wikipedia:
Craig R. Barrett (born August 29, 1939) is an American business executive who served as the chairman of the board of the Intel Corporation until May 2009. He became CEO of Intel in 1998, a position he held for seven years. After retiring from Intel, Barrett joined the faculty at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona.Below are photos of Craig Barrett, looking much more serious giving a speech at the World Economic Forum in 2009 (left), and in an enlarged version of the above photo, at Sally Ride's launch of the science program "Educate to Innovate" at the White House, also in 2009. (I have to add here that Barrett is wearing the same tie to both occasions - i.e. he is are not at the same event.)
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6. A much later official portrait (from what I can find out, it is her official portrait at the California Hall of Fame, where she was inducted in 2006). It is an odd, androgynous face, with unsmiling eyes.
Finally, Ride's "partner" Tam O'Shaughnessy. The photo below is the only one available on the web. O'Shaughnessy looks even more insidious than Ride. With her squinted eyes and elongated face, she looks like a ferret. At least her and Ride, California natives, never "married."
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Here's a profile on O'Shaughnessy:
Like Ride, O'Shaughnessy was interested in science from a very young age, and "one of her favorite childhood memories is of watching tadpoles in a creek gradually sprout legs, go green and turn into frogs," according to her bio on the Sally Ride Science website.Quite a career trajectory, from a masters degree and college teaching career in biology to a PhD in psychology to writing children's science books, such are the elite women of academia.
After moving on from tadpoles to high school, O'Shaughnessy attended Georgia State University, where she earned bachelor's and master's degrees in biology. She went on to teach college biology, then went on to earn a doctorate degree in school psychology from the University of California, Riverside, after her interest in the psychology of learning was piqued by her experience as a professor.
O'Shaugnessy has gone on to do many things in her career, writing nine childrens' science books, as well as helping her partner "found Sally Ride Science because of her long-standing commitment to science education and her recognition of the importance of supporting girls' interests in science," according to the foundation's website.