Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!iuvax!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!daemon
From: ed@mtxinu.com (Ed Gould)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: sex/gender
Message-ID: <12603@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 11 Jul 89 19:57:02 GMT
References: <8907071844.AA10158@cattell.psych.upenn.edu> <19431@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: ed@mtxinu.com (Ed Gould)
Organization: mt Xinu, Berkeley
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Approved: ambar@bloom-beacon.mit.edu

>|None of these differences [between men and women], nor any empirical
>|finding imaginable, flies in the face of feminism.  All of these
>|differences and the reasons behind them are *DESCRIPTIVE*; they simply
>|describe the way the world is.  Feminism is a *PRESCRIPTIVE* position;

>I disagree with this.  It has been my impression that one of the
>things feminism did was to challenge the *prescriptive* roles for
>women in our society.

It seems to me that the proscriptive (not prescriptive - I don't think
either of the posters above were discussing drugs :-)) vs. descriptive
debate is really a red herring.  The original point, if I understood it
correctly, was that there *are* demonstrable statistical differences
between men and women.  Where these differences come from - be they
genetic or environmental - is not so important.

I think there are two important observations to make.  First, even
though *statistically* the mean women is, for example,  physically
smaller than the mean man, there are plenty of examples of individual
women who are larger than individual men.  The means are not so distant
as to make the statistical difference meaningful.  Second, there is a
difference between "equality" and "equal opportunity."  No two
individuals are "equal" in any real sense.

Thus, I find that the purpose of feminism (like any anti-discriminatory
philosophy) is to promote equal opportunity: in this case, opportunities
for women that are equal to those that men enjoy.  Equal opportunity is
achieved when individuals are judged solely on their own merits.  But
this is difficult to achieve in a society that has for many years -
centuries, even - that women do not deserve equal treatment.  The means
by which we approach this end are, to my mind, the only true controversies
among feminists.

-- 
Ed Gould                    mt Xinu, 2560 Ninth St., Berkeley, CA  94710  USA
ed@mtxinu.COM		    +1 415 644 0146

"I'll fight them as a woman, not a lady.  I'll fight them as an engineer."