Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Feminism and the Brain
Zoe Brain at 6/02/2009 08:52:00 PM
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/06/feminism-and-brain.html (http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/06/feminism-and-brain.html)
From Mmegi.com, a post that contradicts what has been an article of faith amongst second-wave feminists.
For almost 40 years, that era's Western feminist critique of rigid sex-role stereotyping has prevailed. In many ways, it has eroded or even eliminated the kind of arbitrary constraints that turned peaceable boys into aggressive men and stuck ambitious girls in low-paying jobs.
Feminists understandably have often shied away from scientific evidence that challenges this critique of sex roles. After all, because biology-based arguments about gender difference have historically been used to justify women's subjugation, women have been reluctant to concede any innate difference, lest it be used against them. But, in view of recent scientific discoveries, has feminist resistance to accepting any signs of innate gender difference only created new biases?
Basically, yes.
Zoe, as usual, makes some very good points, and makes them, I think, also in regard to 2nd wave feminist transsexuals who also want to express that there are a mix of both essentialist and non-essentialist povs. Same as many 2nd wave notions mix the two.
That there are some things that are eveolutionarily "essential" differences I don't think can be rationally denied. Nor can my experience that hormones do make some very profound "brain-wiring" differences also are factual.
Making that jump to "all is learned" just seems to me to be a leap across a chasm that cannot be leaped across. I agree with Zoe that given the differences there are ways that the former fear and loathing can be attenuated, abolished, in spite of the differences.
That one sex has evolved to fill the voids in the other is not a horrid thing and a gap that MUST be unbridgeable.
N~