Radical Feminism

Not only is it not a good paper, it is not even a paper which offers any opinion at all on evolutionary psychology as a discipline. It is a paper which offers a view on one aspect (bias in the evaluation of rape victims' trauma) relevant to one area of evolutionary psychology (the adaptive value of rape).

It's this sort of piss-poor extrapolating from the specific to the general which radfems (rightly) condemn when it's done about women, but is apparently just fine when it comes to running down an entire academic discipline they can't even be bothered to read up on.

www.palgrave-journals.com/fr/journal/v86/n1/abs/9400353a.html This paper is good on evopsych being a load of bobbins.

Perspective Score
Liberal feminist 46
Women of Color 40
Socialist feminist 34
Radical feminist 28
Cultural feminist 25
Conservative 11

My result was:

Liberal feminist 45
Women of Colour 37
Socialist feminist 26
Cultural feminist 20
Radical feminist 19
Conservative 12

I just had to correct the spelling of 'colour'!

Liberal feminist 44
Radical feminist 41
Women of Color 36
Cultural feminist 30
Socialist feminist 29
Conservative 13

Which is a lot more radical than I thought I was!

Again, I had some difficulties in answering some of the WoC questions, mostly through ignorance. Can anyone recommend some reading to overcome this gap?

Perspective Score
Liberal feminist 46
Women of Color 46
Radical feminist 37
Socialist feminist 31
Cultural feminist 24
Conservative 10

Liberal feminist 45
Women of Color 33
Socialist feminist 26
Radical feminist 24
Conservative 18
Cultural feminist 17

How the bugger did the radical sneak in?

I don't know LeBFG I would be interested to know.

Has anyone got a book reference for a feminist critique of evo psychology?

Liberal feminist 42
Radical feminist 39
Women of Color 33
Socialist feminist 29
Cultural feminist 28
Conservative 10

Feels about right, though I don't know what a cultural feminist is.

hehe

What we would need to make sociobioloblub and evo-psychobabble provable or valid:

I am more liberal than I thought

Perspective Score
Radical feminist 43
Socialist feminist 42
Liberal feminist 42
Women of Color 30
Cultural feminist 24
Conservative 10

JO, in order to make the case that sociobiology shapes human behaviour, we first need to accept two premises:

One: humans are biological matter
Two: we live socially

You being the expert on sociobiology and all things anthropological would of course know this...wouldn't you??????

"sociobiology's contention that genes play an ultimate role in human behavior and that traits such as aggressiveness can be explained by biology rather than a person's social environment. Sociobiologists generally responded to the criticism by pointing to the complex relationship between nature and nurture"

It seems that socio-babble turns to nurture when its nature argument fails. I agree with you that human nature changes over time and is adaptive but the reason isn't genetic but social.

Like language, we evolve over time and in doing so we use language and behaviour to enforce inequalities/conditions that might be considered in some way beneficial at any given point. We may even change in terms of appearance, physical strength, characteristics, traits and fertility because social phenomena, like the way in which we use and abuse the natural environment.

Look at pictures of men in the great depression, men that were out of work, they have lost body mass but retain some muscle, compare that to today's fat and lardy specimen of masculinity and we find that desk dweller or coach potato, men's appearance and physical strength is different to only 80 years ago. This due to not the survival of the fittest (what a laugh) but changes to the economic and social life of people. ie social change drives all change.

And whilst you might like to think that men are naturally driven to aggression because of natural selection, I don't, to do so overlooks the one thing that sets humans apart from other animals...something you yourself seem to lack...rationality.

JotheNot evolutionary psychology is not biology. You are a random on a website. You are not explaining anything.

Perhaps you can share your knowledge of sociobiology. Who, for example, are the heads of the Departments of Sociobiology at some leading universities? Who are currently the leading thinkers in the space? What are the leading publications?

So if you've been raped, that means you don't and didn't ever enjoy sex .

Well Florablub, I'm a biologist, and I often say things about 'evolved instincts'. Evolutionary psychology IS the study of evolved instincts. Things like why we like sugar and salt, why we like sex, why we're gregarious, why we don't like people who can't shut up when they have got a fucking clue. Why don't you start by looking up sociobiology, as you clearly don't even know what the word means. Unless you really do believe that no instinct, no behaviour, preference or fear is ever inherited by humans or any other species.

Fuck me, this is like trying to explain chemistry to people who think chemicals are bad for you.

Sociobiology is not biology.

Sociobioloblub is a pure speculation which is an attempt to legitimise social constucts through biological determinism. Feminists do not believe in genetic or biological determinism. There is no good scientific evidence that gender is anything other than a social construct.

"Individuals who didn't enjoy sex left no offspring." This would seem likely to some extent (there would be other factors) however if it is true it would support multiple interpretations including that women and men would naturally have the same attitude to sex.

"You seem to be labouring under the delusion that when a biologist talks about an evolved instinct they mean women sit there calculating the marginal genetically profitability of a given behaviour" Actual biologists don't say anything about "evolved instinct" however this is the type of guff that is trotted out in support of evolutionary theories of human behaviour.

"Individuals who didn't enjoy sex left no offspring."

Because no woman has ever got pregnant from forced sex

Flora Do you often go about denigrating subjects about which you know precisely FUCK all? I'm guessing not, but for some reason you think it's OK for sociobiology. As a matter of interest, what do you do for a living?

You don't need to know how females get pregnant to evolve a desire for sex. I'd have thought this was pretty bleeding obvious. Individuals who didn't enjoy sex left no offspring. You seem to be labouring under the delusion that when a biologist talks about an evolved instinct they mean women sit there calculating the marginal genetically profitability of a given behaviour. I don't know why you're uncritically reciting selected anthropology. It tells us no more about what's evolved and what's not than looking at any other contemporary society.

Gender is not purely a social construct. Recent history is irrelevant. We evolved on the savannas 100,000+ years ago. No biologist would talk about a slave to your DNA, or genetic determinism, this is just something you see on feminist forums.

These comments reveal a near total ignorance of the field. Buy a biology book, read it, think about it, and come back when you've something substantial to say. It's better to be thought a fool than open your mouth and prove it.

That's interesting. I am reading Plato (as you do!) and he talks about the guardians not marrying and not knowing who their fathers are. His argument is that if no man knew who his father was, he would never strike another man. Back in the days though, they understood very little about conception.

JO, of course there are differences btw male and female but gender is socially constructed and reinforced, which yes I agree this has certain adaptive reasons when history is taken into consideration. (esp in terms of production/economics/politics) However it hasn't always been this way and it doesn't have to remain so. If you think we are subjugated because of biology then I might be forced to conclude that men are indeed violent aggressors, always have been and always will be, a slave to their biology.

Grennie I think your last point is vastly overlooked by proponents of evolutionary psychopish or sociobioloblub. It is very clear that our knowledge of sex and reproduction is very new, in evolutionary terms. Even in the early 20th century, it wasn't firmly known how long gestation lasted and there were some legal cases where children were declared legitimate even if they were born two years after their "father" died.