What do you say to someone who doesn't believe in feminism because "men and womens brains are wired differently"?

[LittleWhiteWolf]

I can't get my head around it. The friend in question is intelligent and educated and not stupid at all, yet spouts this as the reason why feminism, why equality doesn't work. Where she sees scientific and historical evidence to support this, I just see opinions. Apparently because men are the typical hunter gatherers and women the nuturers, we should just accept that. I'm just getting so sad listening to this.

Anyone got any tips one what one says to someone so mired in this belief???

MillyR

I take your point that the impact of physical/mental impairment often depends on the society - lactose intollerence is only a problem if you live in a society with a dairy culture, the neurological phenomena that play out as dyslexia are different in a literate/pre-literate society and between one with a regular phonic/irregular or pictographic writing system etc...

But some of it I think is word games. Having one leg, not producing insulin, losing short term memory, having no poor vision etc... are all real disabilities for humans in any society. Its not that society has arbitrarily decided that these things are disabilities, it is that they are real challenges to survival.

I think the same is true for the examples you give about men and women and work. Nursing a small baby is many things, but it is not the ultimate in leadership experiences. It also gets in the way if you are trying to teach a class, read the news, fly a plane or run a meeting. Women shouldn't have to give up their careers because they breastfeed. But you don't have to argue that it makes them better at their job (or that men and non-mothers therefore make worse teachers, pilots etc...)

Sorry, late to the game and I love this phrase: 'In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is not king; he's just a freak with a socially irrelevant skill.' Brilliant, and so true!

Not so sure about this, anais:

'It would be considered a disability to not be able to see a beautiful sunset and society would play little role in this.'

I dunno that this relates to feminism, but thinking a sunset is beautiful is socially conditioned. If you look at, say, Anglo-Saxons, they don't seem to thinks sunsets are particularly lovely - bloody skies are usually suggestive of battle and death!

I think society plays such a huge role that it becomes almost invisible - that's why we conclude the differences between men's and women's brains must be 'wired' that way rather than conditioned, because we look at society and even if we're feminists, we can't always see all of the social pressures.

I think it's like that book Flatland - people who live in a 2 dimensional world can't imagine what it'd be like to see three dimensions and just laugh at the idea. Likewise we can't really see beyond three spatial dimensions and can only imagine 4 or more by analogy. I think patriarchial society is a bit like that, we can only see outside of it by working backwards from analogies.

LRD - I agree we should not assume things are hardwired and should be aware of out own 'flatland' biases, but I just don't understand the drive to say that 'everything is social' - I don't think it is necessary for feminism and I think it leads to crazy conclusions.

Nevermind the asthetics and symbolism of sunsets, it seems completely uncontroversial to me to say that sight is a hugely useful survival skill - to see predators and prey, to look for dangers and opportunities in the environment (...avoid falling in holes..) and in for communication. All of this is not social convention, and is why sight evolved separately a number of times. If was an irrelevant skill it would have died out when it first appeared in the 'land of the blind'.

But the person with one eye would have the equivalant of a superpower while everyone else lived in a world that catered quite comfortably to their normal (nonseeing) powers.

I don't think saying that sight is a useful survival skill has anything to do with it though?

It is a social thing to make a category called 'disability' and put people in it. You can tell it's socially conditioned because at different times, different physical conditions have been understood differently. That doesn't mean the physical condition itself is affected by social constructions - if someone is blind because they've lost an eye, that physical fact will be the same in 440AD, or 2011, or - as far as we can say - 3030. But it won't be understood as 'disability' in all of those times. Therefore, 'disability' is a socially constructed category.

The difficulty we're having, IMO, is that the effects of evolution are very, very, very slow. But social constructions are formed relatively fast. Yes, we evolved with sight because it was useful, and in most societies it's still useful and so our physical form neatly dovetails with social perceptions (no pun intended) of need. But not in all societies - in some, being blind is re-constructed as a kind of gift or sign of a person's inner genius. Possibly if such a society existed for millions of years, people would gradually evolve to fit it. But evolution is so slow and social conditions so much faster, it is very unlikely, I think, that we could ever discount the social side, especially in comparison to evolution.

Okay, this is getting really off-topic but:

While I happen to agree that sight is arguably useful, it's slightly too simplistic to say that irrelevant traits die out in the course of evolution. Human anatomy alone provides plenty of examples of superfluous leftovers of previous models, e.g. the appendix or nerves that take ridiculous detours. More importantly perhaps, there's also the fact that a gene or a combination of genes may lead to a whole number of traits and that only one or two of them may in fact be relevant to success and the others just tag along, so to speak. Dawkins provides a lovely example of this in his Greatest Show On Earth when he describes how foxes bred for tameness also change in appearance.

But, as I mentioned earlier, I don't even think evolution matters in this context. The way our civilization works is so far removed from what is 'natural' that it is completely pointless to even try and base our societies on it - even if it were possible to draw an exact line between what is innate and what is socially conditioned.

LRD, I didn't make up that line. It was on a website about asperger's syndrome. It was along the lines of being NT is of no use in a room full of people with asperger's. It is only useful if you are in a situation with other NT people like you.

Himalaya, having one leg isn't a challenge to survival in our society. It is clearly a physical impairment though.

Himalaya, the land of the blind is commonly understood as a metaphor. Of course we would struggle if the whole of society could not see.

The point is that we organise society so that it accommodates the diverse range of human capabilities. We don't elevate one group above another. Somebody can be impaired in one way but still be competent in many other ways that contribute to society.

Anais, I think we basically agree but differ in our terminology.

If you use the word disability to mean both the person's physical state and society's response to that state, you have to keep making a distinction between disability that is solely about physical issues and disability that is caused by both physical issues and socially disadvantaged as a consequence to society's response to that impairment. It is very long winded and can lead to confusion.

That is why I think the social model of disability is more useful. It allows us to make a distinction between the social - 'disability' and the physical -'impairment' simply by using those two words to mean different things. Using disability to mean both things means that a further explanation of what exactly you mean is often required.

So I prefer:
Impairment - something the person has.

Disability - what their society gives them.

Op recommend your friend read Elaine Morgan's descent of woman- it gives an excellent critique of evolutionary anti-feminism.

Like others above, (realtinto) I too have been told that I have a brain of the opposite sex. The difference is, I took it as a compliment, which it was meant to be. Along the lines of 'you've got a strong feminine side to you'. I am a nurse, and anyone I know would understand the sentiment it was said in, and received. Didn't realise I should have been insulted...
Most all of the senior nurses I have worked with over many years have been female, at the top of their profession, and are also typically 'girly' in that they go on about chocolates, shopping, tv programmes, babies etc. Very few, none I can remember actually, don't behave that way. None of the men I know are really like that. So until I read this thread I thought it was fairly reasonable to say that men and woman are wired differently. No offence meant. And if I do meet a women who doesn't get animated about babies, chocolates etc. I won't not like her for it I'm sure.
I think people talking about wires in brains have lost the point; it's a figure of spe ech that all of us understand.
Sorry for any typos, on a break and using phone in night shift.

Well, seems the BBC's science editors fully buy into this male/female brain thing. At least they have this suoer scientific test on their website. And according to them I am apparently a clear neither/nor with perfect 0 as a score.

Off to grow a penis alongside my vagina so that I can get over my mental/physical mismatch issues.

*super

Cordelia Fine is certainly not the last word on the male/ female brain debate. Simon Baron Cohen is still investigating male/female response in newborns, before (hopefully) conditioning takes place. Conditioning is so strong - there is a study which showed girl babies are cuddled more frequently than boy babies.

(OT, sorry...)

MillyR

I agree that we should organise society so that it accommodates the diverse range of human capabilities and not elevate one group above another.
(Actually, I think this is a matter of human rights, it has nothing to do with whether someone 'contributes to society' with their other skills).

But i still don't get the metaphor or the point of insisting that disability is socially contructed and an artibrary convention of society.

Not having a working clitoris, labia and a vaginal opening through which blood and babies can safely pass is a disability. There are some societies where the social convention is that this is the norm, and that intact women are freaky. Do you just shrug and say 'oh well disability is socially constructed, what use is a clitoris in a society of people without one?'

" sight evolved separately a number of times"

Has it? I didn't know that and would be interested to hear more.

Incidentally there are loads of animals that don't have eyes, or their vision is not really vision as we understand it, or they have eyes but they are not their primary method of learning about their environment... So if the average human being had no eyes, and yet we were as advanced as we are now, then clearly we would be sensing the world in another way just as good as eyes or maybe even better.

Incidentally there is an HG Wells short story to do with the "in the valley of the blind" thing here

And Pornmonkey I find it impossible to believe that you have never ever met a woman who has not become animated about babies and chocolate.

I do believe that you work in an environment where it would mark you out as a bit off if you were female and didn't though.

And incidentally and hopefully for the last time lots of men like chocolate! and babies!!! Honest, they do!!!!

And Himalaya I notice you gave me the eyebrow for using the word "unnatural".

It is exactly the right word to use in terms of an idea that describes (supposed) differences between men and women in terms of them being natural, hard-wired, innate and so on.

I would also like to know (as you seem to be a very strong proponent of this idea) what in your opinion the differences are and how they manifest themselves.

Milly - thanks for the reference.

pornmonkey - no, I don't think everyone does think it's 'just' a figure of speech. Besides which, figures of speech matter quite a lot IMO. Saying they aren't important or they're just coincidental because they describe most of society, is just yet another way of saying 'let's not bother analyzing this'.

Re. Baron-Cohen ... I can believe Cordelia Fine isn't the last word on anything (who could be?), but she does have a point about an experiment performed on newborns that was intended to catch the babies 'before' social conditioning, but which (IIRC) were unfortunately biased because the researchers knew the gender of the babies they were working with. I forget whether or not it was Baron-Cohen's experiment or whether she was talking about something else, but I am wondering how you could get meaningful results of 'before' conditioning, especially given how little you can get from a newborn anyhow.

Baron-Cohen is given too much credit in my opinion.He's definitely a sexist,you've only to watch Borat to work that out!

WTF are you going on about, lollygag?
You do realise that Simon and Sasha BC are two totally different people don't you?
What has Borat got to do with the research Simon BC has been carrying out?

They're father and son, which I do find fairly amusing, but yes, Borat doesn't really reflect on Simon B-C's work!