The disturbing practice of politicising science, which Babette Francis describes, is by no means confined to radical feminists.

In the 1930s, the Soviet Union under Stalin attempted to mobilise its academic community with ridiculous slogans, such as: "For purity of Marxist-Leninist theory in surgery" and "For Party spirit in mathematics".

In Hitler's Third Reich, academics were expected to uphold and defend "German science", but to shun and condemn "Jewish science" (i.e., Freud and Einstein).

In his 1963 book, Techniques of Persuasion: From Propaganda to Brainwashing, Dr James A.C. Brown described the phenomenon witnessed under one-party dictatorships of the "curious mingling of science with politics, and the strange belief that a scientific theory is to be judged, not by its correspondence with the facts, but by the degree to which it accords with" the ideology of the ruling elite.

It is frightening that this phenomenon has triumphed to the degree it has in institutions of higher education across the world.

Rhian.
Exactly and ideological Feminism is probably worse than most religions in that it instills female hypoagency in it's adherents and derides many of the choices well adjusted women make.
Want a laugh? This is what RadFems actually think and write on their blogs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02m_VPCcLjU&list=UUmkSQppUOY6r7qd-sbcftBQ&feature=c4-overview

Irigaray is a philosopher and all philosophers make weird and wonderful epistemological observations about the ways in which we are conditioned to think. Epistemology questions what knowledge is and how it is acquired. The application of masculine/feminine cultural paradigms to nature and matter is nothing new – in science or anywhere else.

Science is no more exact a discipline than linguistics or sociology. As with all disciplines, science is constantly in flux – theories are routinely disproved; perspectives are constantly being challenged. Feminist theory is one of many such challenges.

Having said that, I strongly suspect that Irigaray’s ‘quote’ about the speed of light has been given the right-wing, anti-feminist viral treatment – similar to Mary Daly’s ‘quote’ about 9 million women being burnt in the medieval witch hunts and Andrea Dworkin’s ‘quote’ about all heterosexual intercourse being rape. (Neither of them said anything of the sort, but consistent reactionary repetition of such falsehoods ensured they passed into the realm of fact.)

It’s impossible to find Irigaray’s ‘quote’ about the speed of light on the internet in any context other than in articles about dumb, silly feminists. If we were able to find the original claim within the context of how it was originally argued, then maybe there are grounds for a rational discussion.

Neither this essay, nor the bulk of the comments here, constitute anything resembling rational discussion.

"It’s impossible to find Irigaray’s ‘quote’ about the speed of light on the internet in any context other than in articles about dumb, silly feminists."

This is the best I've managed so far, Killarney...

""Is E=Mc² a sexed equation? Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possible sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged that which goes faster."
Irigaray, Luce. Parler n’est jamais neutre. Éditions de Minuit. 1987. p.110. (Quoted in and translated by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures, London: Profile Books, 1998, p.100.)

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/luce-irigaray/quotes/

Of course, the hypothesised 'privileged' 'sexed nature' of the equation could be argued to be due to its being feminine.

But I prefer my metaphysics and philosophy to be more Oxford Ordinary Language than Continental.

Killarney

the quote is cited on her "quotes" page at the European Graduate School

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/luce-irigaray/quotes/

I wonder what Irigaray would make of F = ma ? Probably another book.