Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Hi all,
Gwen here. Got a couple of things to say.

First, thanks, Ed, for such a lovely post on the event.
Second: I'm feeling like I really need to defend myself here: I seem to have been seriously misheard! My fault, I suppose, for depending on sarcasm and air quotes! Guess I should have been clearer.

So: let's be very clear.
I do *not* believe that women cook more subtly, with more heart, from the reproductive organs, etc etc etc. I was playing with stereotype, trying to show how ridiculous those ideas are. To wit: we say ("we" being stereotype) at the same time that the same dish (for instance, a really hearty pork dish) is:
a) "cuisine grandmere," the product of years of home-cooking, a means of feeding up one's men, cooking from the heart, etc--thus "female"
b) manly, tough, rich cooking, a means of demonstrating your culinary conjones--the kind of stuff skinny women would never eat--thus "male"

...in other words: instead of talking about inherent differences in food, it's more usefl and more interesting to talk about how we talk about food--that is, how we *construct* it as gendered. And it's really important to talk (as I tried to do) about the effects of culture and economics on women in the kitchen and our perceptions of them.

It's true that I talked about spicy food as inappropriate for women because it "inflames the passions"--but I *did* mention that this is how people thought about spicy food for women IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. It's not, in fact, something that I believe! I was trying to make the point that there really is no "science" of "male" or "female" cooking!

As I said at the end of the forum, I really, really, REALLY do NOT believe in inherent, somehow biological differences between men and women that cause them to cook (or think, or write, or work in other ways) differently than men. As a scholar who has worked a whole lot on gender, I believe very strongly in the effects of culture and tradition--and nothing is more tradition-bound than the restaurant kitchen. I think it's hugely important to look at how women are perceived in the kitchen and to investigate the sources and effects of those means of looking--because otherwise, women will continue to be kept out of culinary power in the majority of cases.

So: for instance: when people say women cook "from the heart," what they're really saying is that women are more empathetic and less intelligent than the brainy men who cook from the head (that whole thing about men cooking more refined food, molecular gastronomy etc etc). As (ahem) a woman who likes to use her brain, this is not what I think. Instead, what I think is actually the case is that:

a) women have been discouraged from becoming "molecular gastronomists" in the same way that they have been discouraged from becoming scientists--by a lack of mentoring, by the old-boys-club world that is higher education in the sciences, by people like Larry Summers insisting women can't "do science," etc--a sensibility that trickles down right through the science education program in schools

b) just as women in science often aren't taken seriously, so women in cooking are often not taken seriously by the foodpress, and by many bloggers. When women and men cook the same dishes, they are talked about in different ways--and the homey grandmere thing gets perpetuated. Women have considerably less access to the foodpress, I think, and when they do have access, they are often written about as being "women chefs," and the language used to describe them is feminized to a huge degree. And when this happens, diners tend to perceive these women and the food they make in the same way. Women who cook are put in a different category than men who cook, and that's really unfortunate.

c) Women who cook still have considerably less access than men to backers; they are still taken less seriously; they still need to prove themselves a thousand times over. We may be over the days when certain pastry kitchens featured pictures of women naked but for drizzles of chocolate--but we are certainly not in an equitable labor situation.

I know many cooks who are women. I would never presume to think that I could tell their gender by their food; I have tremendous respect for their ability to make their way in a profession that sets up huge barriers to their success. They are, to a woman, smart, tough, uncompromising, ambitious, talented--that is, they have all the ingredients to be great chefs, and then some.

So: mea culpa if I was misunderstood. (And sorry for hijacking your blog with this long post, Ed!) Hope this clears things up--
Gwen