Re: Patriarchy: Re: What Matriarchy?
Susan S (otoe@ix.netcom.com)
Thu, 05 Sep 1996 07:23:03 GMT
mycol1@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>In article <504kgg$2ek@bubbla.uri.edu>, Susan <rgq101@uriacc.uri.edu> wrote:
>>mycol1@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>[Huge snip for bandwidth]
>>One, which I'd love to track
>>>back down, was explicitely about a feminist view of behavioral biology.
>>>If you have any titles to recommend, I'd be interested in reading 'em.
>>
>>Well, there's Myths of Gender, by Anne Fausto-Sterling. She'e done a lot
>>of work in the area of the biological basis of gender, particularly the
>>more nasty abuses of sociobiology. Then there's another one that I
>>posted from home, but I don't know if it made it on the newsgroup or not.
>> I'll try it again and see what happen. I think it's called "Health and
>>Gender", but I don't remember anything else. I'll keep looking.
>Thanks. I wonder, though, about the characterization of sociobiological
>analyses as "nasty abuses." Just because I haven't read any that I found
>fairly described that way doesn't mean that they're not out there, of
>course, but I've seen such a huge backlash against evolutionary
>psychologists' treatment of grief and rape, for example, that I suspect
>many such "abuses" are really little more than readers'
>misunderstandings. For instance, the Thornhill's rape papers (5 or 6,
>with 4 on humans, I think) were read as somehow *advocating* rape, even
>though they state in their paper that changing a phenomenon requires an
>understanding of it, etc.
>>Glad to hear it! As for the other, there is a school of thought that
>>comes out of the good cop-bad cop model That Martin Luther King
>>couldn't have accomplished anything without the more extreme versions of
>>Malcom X.
>Ah, Earth First! meets the sufferagettes? You may be right. The problem
>with this tactic is that the radicals get all the air time because
>they're "controversial" (a prereq for a journalist's attention, these
>days), leaving more cautiously reasoning individuals in the shadows.
That's suffragists. Those who campaigned for womens' right to vote
were not necessarily tiny versions of anything.
>>>Science
>>>simply cannot become about making folks feel good. It's got to be as
>>>objective an effort as possible, or it will become little more than an
>>>adventure in dialectics.
>>
>>I agree, but where we differ is that I think it's important to consider
>>how those conclusions are presented. IMO, science should't be allowed to
>>be more important than people. There are ways to present things that do
>>less damage to people.
>Actually, I agree with this. But putting qualifications and cautions in a
>paper and emphasizing what findings do *not* mean is a much different
>game than attacking folks for daring to address a topic scientifically at
>all (as has been done to sociobiologists, for instance).
>>Sometimes, I think scientists use their supposed
>>objectivity as a weapon to say things they know will make people angry.
>I've sometimes learned the most from folks who really pissed me off at
>first, but forced me to articulate my objections precisely.
>Bryant
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