Why Are There So Few Female Mad Scientists?

There's an inescapable imbalance in the history of dramatic storytelling: The rarity of the species known as the Female Mad Scientist. Why is this and who is responsible for it? Why do we remain blissfully unconscious of this inequality and when will someone step in to address the problem?

Insight into these matters may be gained by looking at historical precedent. Some may see Ancient Greek and Renaissance Shakespearean witches and their chemistry-like potions as forerunners of or parallels to traditionally male mischief makers. But the twentieth century locked in the male mad scientist with his laboratory-produced superpowers or accidental enhancements of mind and body ripe for misuse.

Sometimes the mad scientist used their power for The Good: to fight crime or protect the community from the derangements of other mad scientists who have gotten out of hand. Then there are some who use their abilities for The Not-So-Good. This breed is often misunderstood and beset by psychological troubles, and inclined to make statements not unlike the following: "Those fools at the institute laughed at me. But now they'll pay. They'll PAY," etc.

Recently, a small but not insignificant part of the mad scientist world has been occupied by women and girls with the full range of eccentricities and ethical stances, from quasi-angelic to neo- (or retro) evil. But these new popular culture developments are essentially token gestures that don't get to the meat of the trouble and certainly haven't leveled the playing field in any serious way, certainly nothing approximating 50-50.

What's needed to bring this more than implicit bigotry to an end? Easy. An outreach program. Recruitment of female mad scientists in fiction and in real life, considering that life imitates art and vice-versa, in feedback loops.

Identification of good candidates along with testing and training must begin early, possibly from the womb (cue the comic book character movie and television theme songs, preferably with classical music arrangements).

Pre-school programs should adhere/subscribe to the policy of no mad scientist left behind, especially important when you consider that even at this early age the ratio of male to female science interests is usually unequal, for whatever reasons, nature or nurture.

But what should be the curriculum for these girls with world-saving or world-destroying or controlling futures? And are mad scientists made or just born that way? The old nature vs. nurture arguments crop up even here. Whatever the answer, we must press on to erase the end-result second class status, nay, status quo.

Well behaved girls rarely become mad scientists, so a new program of disinhibition may be the way to go in the three to eight year old range/group. Arm pit noises, the sounds of flatulence and musical burping of the alphabet will no longer be considered taboo for the girl group in training. It's been found that 100% of mad scientists started with these skills. They are gateway noises and their practice should be not just for boys.

Though it's still not clear if this noises/mad scientist relationship is causative or merely correlational, leading theorist consider the full unsuppressed expression of these sounds to be like the base of a pyramid--early building blocks helping to unleash the strange and the magical stuff that lurks within. This may be compared to loud sounds used by martial artists to help generate power by unblocking self- conscious things that can hold us back. Soon the full repertoire of skills and talents can issue forth and be released into the world at large.

Ultimately, there shall be no segregation of mad scientists by gender. Indeed, men do not have a monopoly on holding cities hostage, for ransom, perhaps with the threatened release of an untreatable yet communicable virus. Are women and girls any less inclined to introduce genetic transmogrifications that unleash monsters on any population? And surely women are just as interested in using chemical weaponry to achieve their nefarious ends.

Science in the wrong hands can create a Pandora's box of troubles, but the wrong hands are neither exclusively male nor female. And doubtless both genders are equally capable of expressions of public insanity, the hallmark of the mad scientist and his or her deeds.

And why should gender have anything to do with attempts to "rule the world," a dubious goal at best?

In conclusion, let us recognize the problem and face up to the need to set things right. Our goal? A gender-neutral world of mad scientists with an array of superpowers--expressing the best and the worst in us, faithfully and honestly and accurately reflecting the emotional truths about people and the worlds they create.

Shlomo Yermoyahu is the author of the comedic E-novella "They're Playing God With Our Watermelons." His brand of silliness can be found at http://www.ShlomoLogic.com.