Re Do Women Want to be Oppressed?

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

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Hasan Diwan <hasan.diwan () gmail com>
Date: Fri, Dec 29, 2017 at 6:50 PM
Subject: Re: [IP] Re Do Women Want to be Oppressed?
To: dave () farber net <dave () farber net>


Prof Farber,
[for IP, if you wish]
I'm male, therefore brash, arrogant, cunning, and a bully when necessary.
Yet, evolution has selected these traits despite their lack-of-helpfulness
to a cooperative society. So, the question is was it selected or activated
as a by-product of some other desirable trait? How this relates to the
Scientific American blog post is to say that perhaps the qualities that
lead males to oppress women have some offsetting benefit to women as a
whole, just as most successful people have a lot in common with
workaholics, but it is a question of degree as to whether one is committed
to Workaholics Anonymous or a cubicle at Thames House.-- H

On 29 December 2017 at 13:29, Dave Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:

> ---------- 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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