From: danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Bad Biology (was Re: Women warriors and male myths)
Date: 7 Oct 1992 05:24:33 GMT
Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Australia
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Sep28.230941.18930@access.usask.ca> bickis@skmath3.pa.dec.COM ("M. Bickis") writes:
>Why do I cling to this belief?  Because I believe that gender is an
>essential aspect of society, and gender is associated with more than
>just sex and pregnancy.  If I strip the concept of gender down to its
>essentials, I find a nurture vs. protection dichotomy.  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.

Aaaarrgggggghhhhh.  I hate it when people attempt to justify something
by spurious arguments from biology.  I would like just like to make two
points:

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.

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.  Among "higher" animals there is a tendency for 
the female to devote more effort to care of offspring, but I fail to see 
how this implies females should be "non-threatening" in general.  

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?

[ The tendency for maternal nurture of young is a fairly straightforward
result of game-theoretic models for evolutionary stable strategies -
see Maynard Smith, _Evolution and the Theory of Games_.  However these
models are only applicable in certain circumstances, and simply *do
not apply* to homo sapiens, who are capable of reasoning about their own
behaviour. ]

I blame E.O. Wilson's _Sociobiology_ for the prevalence of all this
biological determinism.  A full critique is Lewontin, Kamin and Rose
_Not in Our Genes_.

>Being brutal is part of being a soldier.  I don't want a world in
>which men are encouraged to be brutal towards women.  It is bad enough
>for men to be brutal to other men.  I don't want a world in which
>women are brutal at all.  Even if we accept that violence is
>unavoidable, would it not be commendable if at least half of the human
>race were exempt from it?

By all means object to women being soldiers because you don't like the idea.
Just don't use bad biology to try and make your beliefs appear the only 
reasonable ones.

Danny Yee.


-- 
Post articles to soc.feminism, or send email to feminism@ncar.ucar.edu.
Questions and comments should be sent to feminism-request@ncar.ucar.edu.  This
newsgroup is moderated by several people, so please use the mail aliases. Your
article should be posted within several days.  Rejections notified by email.