From: bickis@skmath3.pa.dec.com (M. Bickis)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Bad Biology (was Re: Women warriors and male myths)
Date: 10 Oct 1992 19:54:54 GMT
Organization: University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Oct7.045507.29411@cs.su.oz.au> danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny) writes
in reply to me:
>>  To be feminine
>>is to be nurturing, nourishing and *non-threatening*.  To be masculine
>>is to be protective and agressive.  (This is the attribute that I
>>believe Bly calls "fierceness".)  These attributes are naturally
>>linked to one's biology, and are found throughout the animal kingdom,
>>almost universally among mammals.
>
>a) if in every other species on the planet females were "nurturing" and
>males were "protective", that would not necessarily imply the same had
>to be true for homo sapiens.

It certainly wouldn't.  Just think: no other species on the planet wears
clothes (well, maybe the hermit crab) -- should we therefore conclude
that people shouldn't either? ;-).  You miss my point.  I am not saying
that *because* we find male agressiveness in animal species it *must* be
so in H.  sapiens.  I am saying that male agressiveness seems to be a
*human* characteristic, which BTW, is not unusual in other species as
well.  My analysis of the biological root of gender is speculative--I
don't pretend to have indisputable proof.  But the fact that such
sex-specific behavioural phenomena *are* found in other species suggests
that this speculation is not fatuous. 

Consider, as an analogy, the case of smoking and cancer.  The 
*association* between these two things does not prove that smoking
*causes* lung cancer.  Nor does the fact that extracts of tobacco cause
cancerous lesions in small rodents.  After all, men are not mice.  It is
certainly *possible* that there is no link between smoking and cancer in
humans.  It may just be that those individuals who are at risk of cancer
feel greater social pressure to smoke.  Not all smokers get cancer and
nonsmokers do die of lung cancer.  *However*, in spite of all these
holes in the argument, the link between smoking and cancer is one of the
best established connections in the public health area.

>b) it is simply *not* the case that females are "nurturing" in all or even
>a majority of other species.  With most species there is no parental care
>by mother or father.  

It was a bit excessive for me to say "throughout the animal kingdom".  I
was only thinking about birds and mammals.

>Let us restrict our attention to non-human primates.  We find that
>in some species males are more aggressive, while in others the females 
>are as or more aggressive (both inter- and intra-group).  The sex differences
>are dependant on the *social structure* of the group...  Need I say more?

I think you do, if you want to make the point that aggression does
*not* have a biological root.  If, as you say, male aggressiveness
depends on the *species*, this fact supports rather than contradicts the
hypothesis of a genetic basis.  H. sapiens is apparently one of those
species in which the males are more aggressive.

Did you perhaps intend to say that one finds different sex-related
patterns of aggression in different populations of the *same* species?
If that were the case, you might be onto something.

>Just don't use bad biology to try and make your beliefs appear the only 
>reasonable ones.

I never said mine were the *only* reasonable ones.  I am just making a
case that these beliefs are *reasonable*, whereas previous posts on this
topic suggested that my kind of beliefs could be dismissed without
argument.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>bickis@math.usask.ca<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Mik Bickis       \,,,       .*#*.  \    University of Saskatchewan
Department of        \,,,  ^\\|//^  ```\   Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Mathematics & Statistics \   )|(        ```\   Canada      S7N 0W0
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<S|A|S|K|A|T|C|H|E|W|A|N|>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>



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