Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!orion.cf.uci.edu!uci-ics!tittle From: rshapiro@bbn.COM (Richard Shapiro) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: sex/gender Message-ID: <43073@bbn.COM> Date: 22 Jul 89 15:41:10 GMT References: <8907071844.AA10158@cattell.psych.upenn.edu> <10546@polya.Stanford.EDU> <12869@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> Sender: news@paris.ics.uci.edu Reply-To: Richard Shapiro Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA Lines: 73 Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu In article <12869@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> geb@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu (Gordon E. Banks) writes: > While it may be >said to be scientifically valid to say that males of almost every >mammalian species (including humans) are naturally more aggressive >than females, the conclusion that females are doomed to lose in >competition does not necessarily follow. The use of "mammalian" here (and elsewhere in this article) is a classic ploy. We know immediately that the perspective will be reductionist: human beings are mammals, therefore the interesting things about human behavior are the same as the interesting things about mammalian behavior in general; and since we know that general mammalian behavior is, more or less by definition, "natural", we can supposedly conclude that the "corresponding" human behavior is equally "natural". A major question has been begged here, simply by the use of the word "mammalian". In fact, the kinds of highly complex gendered behavior we've been talking about here has no parallel in the non-human world, mammalian or otherwise. Cells are made up of atoms, but if we want to do biology we don't make that reduction (in general) -- we miss everything that's interesting about cells. Human beings may be mammals, but if we want to study them, likewise we don't make that reduction (or we shouldn't) for exactly the same reason. Are female chimps paid less than their male counterparts? Do male squirrels tend to regard female squirrels as sex objects? Have female voles been denied full subjecthood? You see how silly these questions are; but THESE are the kinds of questions feminists ask about men and women, and in that context, they're far from silly. The "mammalian" perspective is simply at the wrong level. >The problem isn't that the differences are not there, it is that >people are using them to justify invalid arguments. No, you've missed Mary's point completely here. The differences in question are not "there", as pre-existing facts. They're interpretations by sociologists or psychologists or what have you, and as such they have, implicitly or explicitly, a political agenda. Feminism offers a different agenda, a different set of interpretations in which the claimed "differences" may well be seen to be arbitrary. > Arguing with >them by denying the differences would seem to be conceding that >if the differences *can* be proven, then the arguments for oppression >and subjection of women *would* be valid. I think this is a foolish >and anti-scientific position. See above. Science has its own politics. >The fear of feminist wrath has somewhat inhibited publication of >scientific results in the field of cognitive differences >in brains of males and females !!! Can you justify this claim? I'd be astonished if this were true. Perhaps these researchers are worried, not about feminist wrath, but about feminist deconstruction which shows up the arbitrariness and interpreted nature of these supposed truths, and the agenda which underlies them. In other words, perhaps they've begun to see that their work is not as objective as they once thought. >You should currently be arguing that regardless of differences, >there is no ethical basis for discriminating against women. This is an impossible position. You assume that there are socially significant differences and then want to argue that "ethically" these differences don't matter. You can't win this argument because you've given up already in your initial assumption. But there's no reason to grant that assumption at all. A better approach is too show that these supposedly objective differences aren't "facts" to be dealt with (ethically or otherwise), but constructions and interpretations which should be recognized as such.