Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!aero!rshapiro@bbn.com
From: rshapiro@bbn.com (Richard Shapiro)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: sex/gender
Message-ID: <43390@bbn.COM>
Date: 27 Jul 89 15:49:23 GMT
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In article <3144@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> elroy!ames!cadre.dsl.pitt.edu!geb (Gordon E. Banks) writes:
>I suppose I read evidence differently than you do.  My inclination
>is to seek explanations for *all* phenomena that I see around me in the
>natural world, rather than consider them to be separate or part of a
>different realm....But saying that a social
>order is based in nature (as all of them really are) does not
>mean it is being justified as good or the only possible course.
>I believe that humans have (by nature) more complex social structures 
>than other animals and indeed *can*
>override the more bestial aspects of our natures.

Examine these two points a little more closely. Let's agree that
people can "override" our "natural social order". What is the
resulting order? By definition it's no longer the "natural" order;
presumably it's some kind of hybrid. The more overriding we do over
time, the further removed this hybrid order is from the original
natural order, i.e. the more "artificial" it becomes. And unless you
have a God's-eye view, the ability to distinguish between the
artificial component and the remnants of the natural component (if
any) will vanish very quickly (we don't, after all, know what the
original natural order was like). It might as well be purely
artificial at that point. You can claim that this or that aspect is
"natural" for human beings, but how could anyone ever prove such a
thing? We've never observed human beings in a state of nature -- we
have no basis for comparison.

Now even a quick look at social history makes it clear that the social
order has busily been changing throughout recorded history. Not only
is this overriding possible, it has in fact been happening for a very
long time.  But what does this mean about our *current* social order,
which is the result of this enormous history of overriding the natural
order?  One thing it clearly means is that our distance from this
natural order is now very large indeed. And this means that when you
look at our current culture, and the social differences between men
and women, your are *NOT* looking at an order which is natural in any
useful sense; you're looking at one which is predominantly one of our
own construction, our own overriding. As explained above, there may
still be remnants of the natural (or there may not be) but we have no
means of identifying them as such. And *that* means that if you want
to explain some aspect of this order, the natural world is exactly the
wrong place to look.

We're also agreed that human beings are unique in this ability to
override nature -- other animals are bound by the natural order, while
we have constructed for ourselves an artificial one. This would
certainly seem to suggest that animal studies will shed very little
light on the facts of our own social order; we would need to know in
advance exactly what you're trying to show -- that such and such an
aspect of social order is something we share (naturally) with the
animal being studied.

So by following your own hypothesis of overridability, we end up at
the position I've maintained from the start (though I arrived at that
position from a completely different route): that the natural world
is not the place to look for explanations of human society. Looking to
Nature for explanations of 'masculine' and 'feminine' (for instance)
can only make sense if these aspects of human society are not
overridable. You're certainly free to make that assumption, but
considering its implications, you should be prepared to offer a
rigorous defense.