Re Do Women Want to be Oppressed?

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Pamela McCorduck <pamela () well com>
Date: Sat, Dec 30, 2017 at 12:07 AM
Subject: Re: [IP] Re Do Women Want to be Oppressed?
To: <dave () farber net>


One of the great sports of 1970s feminism was examining the very grave and
ponderous interpretations of scientific “facts” to justify gender
discrimination scientifically. As I recall, scientific publications of the
1950s were particularly rich with such stuff, best since Victorian times. I
wish I had my hands on one of those iconoclastic books so I could cite it
properly.  Several existed, and they made for funny if discouraging reading
for anyone who believed science was disinterested.

Thus my skepticism about this hypothesis (how did that desire to be
oppressed skip me?).

But let’s suppose this is indeed disinterested science and not just another
fancy justification for the status quo. Herb Lin makes a reasonable
argument. Even if the hypothesis is plausible, do we want gender
discrimination to continue? Sadly, yes, plenty of men (and not a few women)
would like to maintain things as they are. That doesn’t make it
desirable--or just--to the rest of us.

Pamela McCorduck


On Dec 29, 2017, at 8:02 PM, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:




Begin forwarded message:

*From:* Herb Lin <herblin () stanford edu>
*Date:* December 29, 2017 at 8:23:41 PM EST
*To:* "dave () farber net" <dave () farber net>, ip <ip () listbox com>
*Subject:* *RE: [IP] Re Do Women Want to be Oppressed?*

From where I stand, the issue of biological or evolutionary origins of
gender disparities is a red herring and focuses our attention on the wrong
question.

Essentially everyone acknowledges the existence of gender disparities in
our society.

The wrong question to ask about the existence of such disparities is “What
is the root cause of those gender disparities?”

The right question is “Regardless of cause, do we want to live in a society
in which such gender disparities exist?  If the answer is yes, then we
don’t need to do anything about it.  If the answer is no, then we need to
do something about it regardless of what the ‘root cause’ is.”

Let’s take something not controversial, like cystic fibrosis—well-known to
be a hereditary disease.  We invest significant sums of money to find ways
of treating the disease and otherwise helping who suffer from the disease.
Why?  Because we have decided that we don’t want people with that
hereditary condition to suffer from its debilitating effects.

So the fact that a condition may be inherited is not by itself a reason for
accepting the implications of that condition without complaint or action,
and I don’t particularly care about whether a given condition is or is not
inherited.  The question is whether we think that condition is desirable or
not.

herb



*From:* Dave Farber [mailto:dave () farber net <dave () farber net>]
*Sent:* December 29, 2017 1:29 PM
*To:* ip <ip () listbox com>
*Subject:* [IP] Re Do Women Want to be Oppressed?


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Ellen Ullman <ullman () well com>
Date: Fri, Dec 29, 2017 at 12:45 PM
Subject: Re: [IP] Do Women Want to be Oppressed?
To: dave <dave () farber net>


Dave,

I don't want to push back but enlarge this conversation.

On that peacock's tail: See Richard O. Prum's *The Evolution of Beauty: How
Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World -- and Us*.
Among other questions, he asks why females choose males with those
magnificent tales, choose male birds who can construct colorful bowers --
not just any bower, which requires strength, but the most beautiful one?
Prum's answer is to resuscitate Darwin's idea that the perception of beauty
is a factor in guiding reproductive choice.

If we want to look at traditional societies, we can see the time and effort
that went into decoration. There is no good survival reason to go into the
woods and bushes, given the dangers there, to gather berries to make red
dyes. (I'm sure someone will work hard to create one. Female gatherer
dominance through color-wars anyone?) Yet millennia of our ancestors have
done just that, creating decorated vessels, which could carry water just as
well without the designs. A plain rug will do to sit on. A beautiful one
soothes, stimulates, and pleases the senses. A particular local design
solidifies a community's idea of itself.

Why must this be a discussion of dominance and oppression? There is a
loveliness in life. We don't just mate; we live. Physical beauty is not
just a sign of fitness but some dazzled response to something remarkable in
the world.


------------------------------
*From: *"dave" <dave () farber net>
*To: *"ip" <ip () listbox com>
*Sent: *Friday, December 29, 2017 11:54:52 AM
*Subject: *[IP] Do Women Want to be Oppressed?

 I know I’m going to get a lot of noise on this one djf

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: John Horgan <jhorgan () stevens edu>
Date: Fri, Dec 29, 2017 at 11:41 AM
Subject: Do Women Want to be Oppressed?
To: Dave Farber <farber () gmail com>
CC: John Horgan <jhorgan () stevens edu>



Dave, I thought members of your list might find this column interesting.
John Horgan



Do Women Want to be Oppressed?: Evolutionary theorists claim that female
desire for domineering males helped create a patriarchal world.



In principle, evolutionary psychology, which seeks to understand our
behavior in light of the fact that we are products of natural selection,
can give us deep insights into ourselves. In practice, the field often
reinforces insidious prejudices. That was the theme of my recent column “Darwin
Was Sexist, and So Are Many Modern Scientists
<https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/darwin-was-sexist-and-so-are-many-modern-scientists/>
.”



The column provoked such intense pushback that I decided to write this
follow-up post. Alt-right pundit Steve Sailer described my column as “science
denialism
<http://www.unz.com/isteve/science-denialism-in-scientific-american/>.”
Psychologist Jordan Peterson deplored “the descent of *Scientific American*.
<https://www.facebook.com/drjordanpeterson/posts/1629724667091662>”* Scientific
American* columnist Michael Shermer called me the “PC police of the
[*Scientific
American*] web site
<https://www.facebook.com/Michael.Brant.Shermer/posts/10154878902781386>.”



Political scientist Charles Murray complained
<https://twitter.com/charlesmurray/status/943599091740741632> that *Scientific
American* “has been adamantly PC since before PC was a thing,” which as
someone who began writing for the magazine in 1986 I take as a compliment.
Murray, famed for contending in *The Bell Curve* that biology underpins
racial inequality, has proposed similar arguments to explain female
inequality <http://www.aei.org/publication/where-are-the-female-einsteins/>.



Critics of my column see themselves as courageous defenders of scientific
truth, and yet they prefer “truth” that confirms their conviction that
biology underpins inequality. If you question these claims, you are a
“social justice warrior.” So what does that make them? Social *injustice*
warriors?...



Now let’s take a closer look at a claim advanced by evolutionary
psychologist Geoffrey Miller, whom I cited in my previous column. In his
2000 book *The Mating Mind*, Miller argues that sexual selection can
account for differences between males and females. Darwin proposed sexual
selection to explain puzzles like the tail of the peacock, which from a
practical point of view seems to diminish fitness. Darwin hypothesized that
females have chosen to mate with, or selected, peacocks with large tails,
thus propagating this trait. Miller suggests that sexual selection can help
explain why males dominate women in many realms of culture...



Continue reading at
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/do-women-want-to-be-oppressed/
​


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