Evolution and feminism

[Monkeytrousers]

Following from WWW's feminist thread - a thread to discuss the complementory study of evolutionary theory and feminism, ie Darwinian feminism/gender studies.

A question to feminist academics on MN, is this idea still as unpopular within feminism as ever? If so why?

It is going to be, I haven't come up with a consolidated one but am going to spend a lot of time doing it justice. I"m not into straw men

That'll be Moore's Naturalistic Fallacy then DC? Works very well in tandem with Hume's is/ought

I suppose I would add that although there is a clear divergence between evolutionary theory and feminism at the level of "biology

= destiny", social Darwinism in its many guises, has and does inform many aspects of Western culture and society and that feminism is no

exception to this. As an example, you could take something like Hall's The Well of Loneliness and her relaince on biological theory (positive

mutation) as she tries to persuade her readers to tolerate the 'invert', or Marie Stopes and the Eugenic movement (in Britain, rather than

rather than Germany).

Pants/animals have millions of years of co-evolution behind them. Heavy metals, PCB's etc do not. You don't necessarily detoxify plant toxins with the same enzymes that you use for industrial chemicals.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy "does" evolutionary feminism. At least, she's someone looking at sociobiology from a female perspective - including female animals as agents etc etc. Her most recent book (I think) is Mother Nature, and it's great, very accessible and readable, but rock solid, too.

Fab book isn't it NQC. I've read it cover to cover and frequently dip back into when people make out that women have always existed in some 1950s time warp!!

I love all her books. I have one of her primatology books somewhere, and even that's lovely.

Oooh, she's done one I don't have, about maternal instincts ... better ask for that for VD. (Ok, I don't have the infanticide one ...)

Sounds interesting, NQC.

She's really good - a very clear writer with interesting ideas. A rare thing, imo.

I think all women should read Mother Nature - it really is superb. For such an enormous book, surprisingly digestable.

Anyone can abuse science Lionheart, science can't show us the moral way, humans have to do that themselves and take the conequenses afterwards, not blame it on (often) misrepresented data.

Modern evolutuionary thinking has no link with victorian social darwinism

"Pants/animals have millions of years of co-evolution behind them"

PMSL Jimjams!

Sorry, I'm such a nerd

I agree that science is not the same as morality, but one must be careful not to fall into the trap of confusing ignorance of the facts with appropriate behaviour.
There is a direct link between contemporary evolutionary theory and social Darwinism. For good or bad it evolved from it.
Obviously social Darwinism was (and still is) used to justify brutal and stupid policies, so the term is avoided big time by any respectable scientists.
But human social behaviour is an artifact of evolution, and the way you behave affects your ability to pass on your genes. It is quite notable that people with scientific educations seem to be quite fond of the Darwin Awards

I think you misunderstood my point, MT. I was simply giving a couple of examples from a broadly feminist history where it has been used (not making a judgement about either example)--it would be very difficult to address the connection between evolution and feminism without looking at this kind of history, I would have thought. Or did I misunderstand the project, maybe?

It's fascinating stuff, though.

Science is always evolving DC

see this is what gets me article by Zoe William's in yesterdays Guardian

An otherwise good article except she completely discredits herself with the statement "There is no evidence that women are "more picky""

There is overwhelming evidence of this fact. Women in the west with available birth control measures don't need to be as choosy, but FFS, women are more discriminating than men in who they sleep with. There are sound biological reasons for this that stretch back into our evolutionary history.

Being choosy does not however = being frigid or a fanatical virgin. She is arguing a false dichotomy and as expected it just polarised debate - helping few.

Hi Lionheart

"I suppose I would add that although there is a clear divergence between evolutionary theory and feminism at the level of "biology = destiny""

Pre birth control biology certainly did equal destiny for most women. They were exploited because of this undoubtedly; evolutionary theory corroborates this fact. But the fact about ET that people always misunderstand is that is descriptive, not prescriptive; it can only tell us what is (via observation) not what ought to be.

I?m not sure what both you and DC mean by social Darwinism. Darwin had no idea about genes and there were a lot of holes in ideas about hereditary before Mendel?s work was rediscovered and studied proper. The ?science?s in it?s infancy, not a science at all by today?s standards. Hence it was exploited by certain ideologues - ideology was the main culprit in the social Darwinism era.

teh 'science'was in its infancy

Just one more thing too add:

But the fact about ET that people always misunderstand is that is descriptive, not prescriptive; it can only tell us what is (via observation) not what ought to be, and what feminists need to know is that women have not been found lacking in any way - intellectual parity between genders in unequivocally reached. More women choose certain types of jobs, to stay at home with infants, etc, but this fact does not mean that those that choose not to should face discrimination.

Discrimination is a cultural phenomenon not a biological one.

Darwin did have quite explicit "social evolution" views, indeed since he didn't know about genes, he saw them as counterexamples to his ideas.
Darwin wondered what happened if you put an
(obviously superior) white bloke on an island of negroes. Since he believed that inhgeritance was a quality not unlike mixing two liquids, he couldn't see how this superiority would not be diluted away. Same applies to a favourable change, who does it survive ?
Things like height and skin colour do appear to work on the mixing principle, so he wasn't being very stupid.

Evolutionary theory can be applied to many domains, not just changes in animals. It is used as a programming technique for solving very nasty problems in circuit design and optimising share portfolios.
Dawkins applies it to groups of ideas like religions. This nicely handles the way they share "survival" characteristics (evengelism, absence of birth control for believers, and control over who you are allowed to mate with).

No reason you can't apply it to the way people prosper or fail in a society.

But you have to be careful about the term "survival of the fittest", it should be taken as "best fit", not strongest. In standard biology we observe that strong tigers are nearly extinct, but rats are doing quite well in a world influenced by humans.
In various concentration camps run by the Europeans and Japanese in WWII, big people tended to die first because they needed more food.
It is assumed by many that our society favours stupid people who breed a lot, and that this damages the gene pool.
Evolution of course doesn't have the idea of good or bad, and if rapid breeding is the optimum, well, it worked for rabbits.
But of course a complex modern society offers ways that less intelligent people can get themselves or their children killed. Homeopathy, crystal healing and other stupid forms of fake medicine are obvious examples of this.
Some western religions forbid the use of life saving techniques on children. Technically Christian scientists et al forbid them for adults as well, but whereas an adult can choose to sin, the child gets a painful death infliced upon them.
The vast increase in diabetes may be bad for overall health, but may be doing good things for IQ. It has long been known that there is a strong correlation between survival rates of diabetics and intelligence. Unlike illnesses such as cancer or AIDS, the patient has an actice and critical role in managing the illness. Poor judgement or sloppliness, can make them sick or dead. Living diabetics may actually be on average the smartest group on Earth.

Yes but ET and/or darwinism isn't an ideology, it's a scientific perspective.

Have only had time to glance at your post but will post later

Well I agree; Darwin was both a man of his time as well as ahead of his time so did have what we would call sexist and racist views as all did then.

As for the rest of your post, I agree too. Evolutionary theory (or more specifically ev. psychology) isn?t an area of study, like vision, reasoning, or social behavior. It is a way of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it.

The term femininism may be out of fashion, but looking at the same media that claim this tells us that gender relations and issuse of sex are still top of the agenda for most people - they just call it by a different name.

I have a really dull model of why feminism died as a political force.
In thr good old days, it was easy to get most women, and a lot of men behind the issues because they were pretty clealry unfair.
Thus women got the right to vote and own property. Divorce laws were upgraded, and so on.

But then you you hit the problem that not all women want the same things. Abortion is not a unifying issue, some believe that too much "protection" for emplyoment rights does more harm than good, and the "green" desire not to have goods shipped around the world ain't great for female workers in the 3rd world.

Hmm perhaps. Certainly, the gap between exploited genders has narrowed in the west, in many issue's there is no need to have a femininst view but a family view - especially on issues such as work/life balance.

There is a growing school of thought too that the radicalised (Brownmiller et al) view of 'rape as a crime of power not sex' may be a contributing factor in why rape is so difficult to successfully prosecute.