Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!iuvax!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!daemon
From: rshapiro@BBN.COM (Richard Shapiro)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: sex/gender
Message-ID: <12604@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 11 Jul 89 18:52:54 GMT
References: <8907071844.AA10158@cattell.psych.upenn.edu>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: rshapiro@BBN.COM (Richard Shapiro)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 33
Approved: ambar@bloom-beacon.mit.edu


>imaginable, flies in the face of feminism.  
>....
>	Knowing what we would like the world to be like might not help
>us change it if certain things are unchangeable.  For example, perhaps
>women are doomed to being nuturing and there is nothing anyone can do
>to change that.

You see the contradiction here: if, as some argue, complex behaviors
like "nurturing" are indeed unchangeable, if women, simply because
they're female, *must* be more nurturing than men, then this
hypothetical empirical fact makes an enormous difference to feminists.
It does indeed "fly in the face" of at least some conceptions of
feminism. 

The question is: why are you even granting this as a possibility? When
we consider the kinds of behavior which are typically thought of as
"feminine" or "masculine", has anyone ever shown anything like this?
Is there any good reason at all to even grant the possibility the such
behavior is unchangeable and fundamental? As far as I know, there's
nothing even remotely like evidence for this position. 

We know that, for political reasons, some people would like to find
evidence that Blacks are intellectually inferior to Whites. In this
case, the political agenda is clear. Likewise, some anti-feminists
would like to find evidence that certain kinds of gendered behavior
is unalterable and undeniable. I think the two projects have about
equal legitimacy (i.e. none). Feminists really need to abandon the
whole framework of nature/nurture -- this is a dead-end of use only to
anti-feminists with an ax to grind. We need to look beyond the
individual to the social setting out of which that individual is
constituted. It's there, not within the individual, that gender lies
and it's there that feminism needs to work.