The Woman Who Loves Giraffes
Jan. 25th, 2019 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
copperfyre I went to see this film with a couple of friends yesterday, and, wow, I was not expecting to be as emotionally affected by it as I ended up being! 'Let's go see an interesting documentary about a giraffe scientist!' we thought, and then we got a much better documentary about a giraffe scientist losing to a sexist system but still managing to inspire a field.
It's a documentary about Anne Innis Dagg, a Canadian biologist that I am ashamed to admit I had never heard of, though watching this documentary went some way towards explaining why I hadn't. She went to study giraffes in South Africa in the 1950s - on her own, causing great consternation among everyone - and conducted possibly the first, and definitely among the earliest, detailed observations of an animal in their natural habitat, spending almost two years (I think, I lost track of the timeline a little) watching a giraffe population near Hoedspruit and taking notes on their behaviour. She then went back to Canada, published a heap of papers on this research, earned her PhD, taught at Guelph University, and then she ran up hard against the Old Boy's Club of academia, and was consistently refused tenure and ended up out of a job for being a woman. She then spent the next thirty odd years fighting the system, publishing more of her research, writing the book - literally - on giraffes, and writing a lot about women in academia, as well as about Canadian wildlife, her citizen science research, all sorts of things.
The fact that she never got the chance to go back and carry on her research is heartbreaking, both because this is what she really, passionately wanted to do, and because of what giraffe research and ecology in general missed because she was forced out of academia. And, there we go, this is why I hadn't heard of her before, though, as people were pointing out, she is essentially the Jane Goodall of giraffe research (though as people were also pointing out, people get waaaay more excited about primates than giraffes).
Then in 2011, a bunch of current giraffe researchers went "Hmm, I wonder where Anne Daggs is these days," contacted her, and invited her to a conference, where everyone was just so excited to meet the woman who'd kickstarted their field. This is where I began tearing up, because there were all these people going "Yeah, Anne Daggs is my hero and my inspiration" and she was encountering the fact that all these people were still reading her books, and that though academia hadn't wanted her all these people really did, and that she had had this huge impact, and she was getting emotional, and all these giraffe folks were getting emotional, and I was getting emotional, and the friends I went with were getting emotional, and it was a lot, okay.
And then some of them invited her to go to Kenya and South Africa to see what they were doing with their research, so she did finally get to go back! FIFTY YEARS LATER! And that also made me all teary because she was so happy! And so excited to see all these people doing super cool research! And so willing to go "Yep, I was super wrong back in the 1950s, it's awesome to see you guys being more right".
Also there was this great throughline about the man she married, who said "Let's get married!" just before she went off to South Africa in 1956, and she went "Mmm, nope, I'm gonna go study giraffes, but if you write to me we could get married when I get back." And then she went off, and he wasn't the world's best letter writer, so she sent one letter which was essentially "Hey, buddy, if you can't be bothered to regularly communicate than you can just fuck off" except slightly more politely 1950s and it was delightful. (He did shape up, they did get married, and she clearly did love him a lot, so, yay!)
She also said something along the lines of "Everyone sees you as a woman, even if you just see yourself as a person" which, yes, holy fuck. I did feel like there was a lot more to be said about race - I mean, South Africa in 1956 vs. South Africa in 2013, for starters, as well as the intersection of race and gender in - but I can also see why they kept it pretty tightly focused on her experiences. But still. Especially given that there were a few ruminations on the South Africa she'd experienced in the 50s vs the South Africa she was visiting today, I felt they could have done more there.
Also she had all this really cool video footage she'd taken of giraffes and of her research when she was there - and of her adorable little car! - and a lot of the narration was straight out of her own letters and notes, which was really interesting. Everyone, keep amazing notes about your life for when they make the documentary about you.
And after it was finished we went off and had a soul-searching conversation in a coffee shop, so that was also great.
Anyway, if anyone has any interests in giraffes, awesome women, or academia, I'd recommend this film to them. And I'm off to track down some of her books and give them a read!
It's a documentary about Anne Innis Dagg, a Canadian biologist that I am ashamed to admit I had never heard of, though watching this documentary went some way towards explaining why I hadn't. She went to study giraffes in South Africa in the 1950s - on her own, causing great consternation among everyone - and conducted possibly the first, and definitely among the earliest, detailed observations of an animal in their natural habitat, spending almost two years (I think, I lost track of the timeline a little) watching a giraffe population near Hoedspruit and taking notes on their behaviour. She then went back to Canada, published a heap of papers on this research, earned her PhD, taught at Guelph University, and then she ran up hard against the Old Boy's Club of academia, and was consistently refused tenure and ended up out of a job for being a woman. She then spent the next thirty odd years fighting the system, publishing more of her research, writing the book - literally - on giraffes, and writing a lot about women in academia, as well as about Canadian wildlife, her citizen science research, all sorts of things.
The fact that she never got the chance to go back and carry on her research is heartbreaking, both because this is what she really, passionately wanted to do, and because of what giraffe research and ecology in general missed because she was forced out of academia. And, there we go, this is why I hadn't heard of her before, though, as people were pointing out, she is essentially the Jane Goodall of giraffe research (though as people were also pointing out, people get waaaay more excited about primates than giraffes).
Then in 2011, a bunch of current giraffe researchers went "Hmm, I wonder where Anne Daggs is these days," contacted her, and invited her to a conference, where everyone was just so excited to meet the woman who'd kickstarted their field. This is where I began tearing up, because there were all these people going "Yeah, Anne Daggs is my hero and my inspiration" and she was encountering the fact that all these people were still reading her books, and that though academia hadn't wanted her all these people really did, and that she had had this huge impact, and she was getting emotional, and all these giraffe folks were getting emotional, and I was getting emotional, and the friends I went with were getting emotional, and it was a lot, okay.
And then some of them invited her to go to Kenya and South Africa to see what they were doing with their research, so she did finally get to go back! FIFTY YEARS LATER! And that also made me all teary because she was so happy! And so excited to see all these people doing super cool research! And so willing to go "Yep, I was super wrong back in the 1950s, it's awesome to see you guys being more right".
Also there was this great throughline about the man she married, who said "Let's get married!" just before she went off to South Africa in 1956, and she went "Mmm, nope, I'm gonna go study giraffes, but if you write to me we could get married when I get back." And then she went off, and he wasn't the world's best letter writer, so she sent one letter which was essentially "Hey, buddy, if you can't be bothered to regularly communicate than you can just fuck off" except slightly more politely 1950s and it was delightful. (He did shape up, they did get married, and she clearly did love him a lot, so, yay!)
She also said something along the lines of "Everyone sees you as a woman, even if you just see yourself as a person" which, yes, holy fuck. I did feel like there was a lot more to be said about race - I mean, South Africa in 1956 vs. South Africa in 2013, for starters, as well as the intersection of race and gender in - but I can also see why they kept it pretty tightly focused on her experiences. But still. Especially given that there were a few ruminations on the South Africa she'd experienced in the 50s vs the South Africa she was visiting today, I felt they could have done more there.
Also she had all this really cool video footage she'd taken of giraffes and of her research when she was there - and of her adorable little car! - and a lot of the narration was straight out of her own letters and notes, which was really interesting. Everyone, keep amazing notes about your life for when they make the documentary about you.
And after it was finished we went off and had a soul-searching conversation in a coffee shop, so that was also great.
Anyway, if anyone has any interests in giraffes, awesome women, or academia, I'd recommend this film to them. And I'm off to track down some of her books and give them a read!
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Date: 2019-01-26 02:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 05:03 am (UTC)