Acknowledging that men and women are not the same is not an argument for genetic determinism, writes Amrit Shrestha.
Were traditionalists right about men and women after all? They always said the
sexes were different, and they used their ideas about those differences as the
excuse - when excuses were needed - for the relegation of women to their
subordinate sphere. If science seems now to be confirming these old beliefs, it is
not surprising that there is widespread alarm and insistent denial among
feminists and their sympathisers.It was the scientific approach to human nature that first challenged the traditional view. The sexes might seem very different; but, as John Stuart Mill pointed out, the extent to which these appearances reflected natural differences was impossible to tell because men and women had always been in systematically different environments. And the case against tradition seemed to gather strength as agnosticism was replaced by the conviction of social scientists that observed differences between the sexes were cultural constructs. Feminists adapted the term "gender" to refer to such non-biological differences, and it is a sign of how essential the social construction view has become to feminism that the
substitution of "gender" for "sex" seems to have become compulsory among the
politically enlightened.
But this seems to be changing. Techniques of observation and control have
appeared that were unavailable in Mill's time, and these seem to be confirming
that the sexes really are different by nature. Similar results have come from the
new approach provided by evolutionary psychology.
Evolutionary psychology tackles the problem of disentangling natural and cultural
differences between the sexes by using our understanding of evolutionary
processes to generate hypotheses about natural differences. Darwin recognised
that as soon as evolution produced creatures with emotions and intelligence,
these qualities would be as relevant to the evolutionary fate of their possessors as
would anything else about them. And when the sexes - of almost any sentient
species - are considered from this viewpoint, it becomes clear that males and
females should be expected to have significantly different temperaments, just
because their reproductive systems are so different.
A human female, reproducing flat out, can produce only about one child a year. A
human male's reproductive potential is limited only - though entirely -by his ability
to impregnate women. This alone suggests that different psychological
characteristics would have been needed for evolutionary success. The problem is
that many familiar differences between men and women, dismissed by recent
feminism as culturally induced, are turning out to be ones that natural selection
might be expected to have planted deep in our natures.
Evolutionary reasoning has suggested, for instance, that women should be
attracted to impressive, high-status males from whom they seek undivided
support and commitment, and should be strongly devoted to the care of their
children. Men should be competitive, adventurous and anxious to possess
women and control their sexuality. They should prefer youth and beauty in women.
but also be eager to grasp whatever sexual opportunities present themselves.
It begins to sound as though, after all its early promise as an ally of liberation,
the science of human nature is leading straight back to the traditional view. It is hardly surprising that, in many quarters, the whole project of evolutionary psychology is dismissed as politically motivated pseudo-science and is met with accusations of genetic determinism, essentialism, gross oversimplification, insensitivity to variation and overlap, categorising, stereotyping and rampant sexism.
But the new claims about sex differences, while they may sound like the old ones,
are really quite different. Many old ideas are not upheld - there is nothing in
evolutionary psychology, for instance, to suggest that women are less intelligent than men.
There is also a more fundamental, and more subtle, point. Even when modern
claims about male and female differences of nature sound like traditional ones,
they are not because there has been a radical change in the idea of nature and
what it means to understand the nature of something.
The familiar, traditional claims about the natures of men and women were made
against the background of a long-established view of the world as a naturally
ordered whole, in which all was harmonious as long as everything stayed in its
ordained place. If things went wrong, that was because of interference in the
natural order of things. This idea comes in many different versions, of which the
most familiar is the religious view that sees order and complexity as underlain by
intelligent design. Against the background of such traditions, to understand the
nature of something is to understand its place in the scheme of things, and to
understand the nature of men and women is to know how they should live
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