(thread) So @YehCathery and I wrote recently about what it could mean to #queer mathematics (Oh the men trolling me are going to love this), in a chapter in a new book edited by Radakovic & Jao. Worth a read? https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-44292-7_11

Like others, "we do not fault the discipline of mathematics as inherently problematic or claim that mathematics itself produces social orderings, but instead, we highlight that processes of social division produce orderings of society through and using mathematics" #takebackmath

We add:"Western mathematics has been recruited to support processes of social division around gender and sexuality through its own reliance on binary
thinking." Binary logic is everywhere:

a quadrilateral is a rectangle or not,
a number is even or odd but never both,
a function crosses the x-axis or it does not, etc. More examples? Since mathematics is positioned as objective truth, its binary logic justifies this logic as a singular natural truth

Attempts to disrupt binary thinking can, therefore, be seen to conflict with mathematics, which means that these mathematical "truths" can then be used repudiate such thinking.

We saw this through the 2+2 "conversations."

@Trianglemancsd tweeted yesterday about how math has stuff in common with law/policing in terms of its shared concern around precise definitions, categories, tight control over what is considered logical https://twitter.com/Trianglemancsd/status/1309125983430152197?s=20

He didn't go there, but I will. As we blur borders around how we think about gender and sexuality, this will create space for other kinds of logics, also in mathematics. Most ppl will, of course, fight very intensely to keep this out. We continue to see this day in and out.

As Cathery and I wrote, "queering mathematics means interpreting existing questions in new ways, asking altogether new questions, challenging premises that might seem self-evident, developing new kinds of representations, seeing patterns that may have been invisible before"

Citing the brilliant Munir Fasheh here, we could organize mathematics education around teaching young people “to doubt, to inquire, to discover, to see alternatives, and, most important of all, to construct new perspectives and convictions.” #takebackmath

Taking a position that there is a single right answer (untrue as soon as mathematics is applied to reality) or only one way to carry out a computation or express proof inflicts a form of intellectual abuse in how it discredits peoples' brilliance, experiential & mathematical

these ideas build on work of H. Mendick, M. Fasheh, B. Greer, U. D'Ambrosio (any of these on twitter?). in writing this thread, am thinking of the legions of queer teachers, students, mathematicians for whom speaking out on this could bring danger. #takebackmath