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From: geb@dsl.pitt.edu (Gordon E. Banks)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Men barred from primatology conference
Message-ID: <1990Nov29.154434.15873@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu>
Date: 29 Nov 90 15:44:34 GMT
References: <1061@ai.cs.utexas.edu> <15147@cs.utexas.edu> <8283@dog.ee.lbl.gov>
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Organization: Decision Systems Laboratory, Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
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In article <8283@dog.ee.lbl.gov> austern@ux5.lbl.gov (Matt Austern) writes:
>
>The point (The point of people like Fox-Keller, that is; I'm reporting
>the claim, not advocating it, since I lack the expertise to judge it.)
>is that when scientists look at social relations in non-human
>primates, what they see often depends on their ideology of social
>relations in humans.  Some primatologists even claim that studying
>other primates has direct relevance to what is "natural" for humans;
>how could that fail to be influenced by ideology?
>
>In particular, it is claimed that male and female primatologists
>report very different patterns of behavior; men seem, for example, to
>be much more prone to report male dominance.
>
>An all-female primatology conference still might not be a smart idea,
>but there is reason for it---it wasn't just done on a whim.
>

Studies of non-human primates have been one of the most serious problems
for feminists, in that they almost universally report strong male
dominance, the magnitude of which seems to correlate with the difference in 
physical size of the male and female (the polygynous baboon, I believe, 
being the extreme)*.  Since humans are recognized as primates, feminists do not
like such a general finding in primates, as they would like to have
the dominance be culturally rather than biologically determined, since
overturning cultural norms is much easier than biological ones.  I suppose
this conference might be to try to find some evidence that either the
observations of primates are false or that humans are the exception among
the primates.  


*There are other species, such as the arachnids (spiders, scorpions)
where the females are larger and dominant.