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biology, cognitive science, discrimination, Elizabeth Spelke, feminism, feminists, gender, gender discrimination, gender relations, human nature, men, Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, women
“I am a feminist. I believe that women have been oppressed, discriminated against, and harassed for thousands of years. I believe that the two waves of the feminist movement in the 20th century are among the proudest achievements of our species, and I am proud to have lived through one of them, including the effort to increase the representation of women in the sciences.
But it is crucial to distinguish the moral proposition that people should not be discriminated against on account of their sex — which I take to be the core of feminism — and the empirical claim that males and females are biologically indistinguishable. They are not the same thing. Indeed, distinguishing them is essential to protecting the core of feminism. Anyone who takes an honest interest in science has to be prepared for the facts on a given issue to come out either way. And that makes it essential that we not hold the ideals of feminism hostage to the latest findings from the lab or field. Otherwise, if the findings come out as showing a sex difference, one would either have to say, ‘I guess sex discrimination wasn’t so bad after all,’ or else furiously suppress or distort the findings so as to preserve the ideal. The truth cannot be sexist. Whatever the facts turn out to be, they should not be taken to compromise the core of feminism. ..”
__________
From Steven Pinker, in his debate with Elizabeth Spelke on the topic of Science and Gender. You can find more of Pinker’s thoughts in his superb collection Language, Cognition, and Human Nature: Selected Articles.
Since his breakout book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Pinker has outlined and continually advocated a conception of human nature which I find extremely compelling. It’s foundational claim is that we are not plastic in the way twentieth-century behaviorists would suggest. Human nature is not malleable in any robust sense of the term; but instead it is very rigidly pre-programmed by our biology, which is — perhaps not intuitively — the reason for our complex abilities and variations. The fact that, say, we are wired to acquire a rigid grammatical structure in childhood, and hence speak a language, is what allows us to communicate in such a wealth of information, emotion, and ideas to others. Of course we are plastic in the sense that we learn the language of our childhood environment (I’m not writing this in Japanese, after all), but our ability to internalize grammar emerges from our biological make-up, which we do not choose. (Pinker, who studied in the M.I.T. linguistics department under Chomsky, uses this example among others to emphasize his point.)
Pinker delineates and actively patrols the fine line separating gender distinction from gender discrimination, and for that reason, his debate with Spelke is worth reading or listening to.
More from Pinker, one of our clearest and best communicators of cognitive science:
The Better Angels of Our Nature
Hitler, Stalin, and the Power of Ideology
Margaret Grant said:
Historically I remember that radical feminist theory took a turn along the way and began to realize that true feminism did not mean that women should be the same as men. Of course we are not the same. It is not women who decided, however, that different meant less / worse / unworthy of respect. That is the point we need to try to come back from.
jrbenjamin said:
Agreed. And there’s a fine line between being “different” and being “marginalized”. The former, I would think, is made evident by our biology; the latter is a moral outrage that we have to combat.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
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Malctg - The Foureyed Poet. said:
Hi JR. i really appreciate that you like so many of my latest poems Thank you. Best Wishes. The Foureyed Poet.
navigator1965 said:
JR,
I thank you for leading me to your eloquent and thought provoking blog.
I’ve analyzed ideological feminism from an informal classical and contemporary military doctrine and theory perspective, and from this has emerged a most remarkable thesis. I’m looking forward to familiarizing myself with Pinker’s work, and am in your debt for introducing me to it. If I am correct in my line of inquiry, there is a pattern to feminism – an inherent quantum mechanics, if you will -, which has eluded Pinker’s clearly formidable mind.
If my thesis is accurate at its core – and I have one academic who suspects that it is -, this analysis of ideological feminism is a segue to unifying the late Christopher Lasch’s work “The Culture of Narcissism” with Edward Gibbon’s classic of the Enlightenment “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”
Look forward to further exploring your posts and possible exchange of ideas. I suspect this will be to my benefit in refining and articulating my thesis, which I intend to do to a popular and not academic audience.
clisawork said:
Pinker’s work is new to me so I’m confused by this statement and you’ve truncated it where it seems to get interesting,”Otherwise, if the findings come out as showing a sex difference, one would either have to say, ‘I guess sex discrimination wasn’t so bad after all,’ or else furiously suppress or distort the findings so as to preserve the ideal. The truth cannot be sexist. Whatever the facts turn out to be, they should not be taken to compromise the core of feminism. ..” What does he mean by “sex discrimination wasn’t so bad?” How is a woman supposed to take that? It seems that women have pretty much excelled in every field that men have, so what truth is he talking about? What sex difference is he referring to specifically? A lack of specifics in an argument is sloppy and leads to all those horrid buzz words ,”feminazi” etc. Why cut this quote off, or not at least address this huge enormous elephant you dropped in the middle of your blog post? You can’t just say, or quote someone saying “I guess sex discrimination wasn’t so bad after all” without any context and not expect any reaction. Is that what you wanted? Are you assuming all your readers have apriori knowledge of his argument and this particular discussion? Do you yourself have no opinion? This is what separates the everyday experience of women with this head in the clouds academic discussion by especially men about feminism. Pinker comes off sounding completely ignorant. Either you made him sound that way purposely by not giving context to the quote or cutting off the quote or he really is a complete cad. Either way you are doing a complete disservice to anyone who wants to have a real further discussion on feminism, on what is really happening with women who are working in professional fields, on discussions involving working and stay home mothers, on academic women i could go on and on. There are much more interesting discussions happening on geek blogs, tech blogs, religious blogs, and mommy blogs about feminism that are about the real world and are being written by real women who are being impacted by reality than this hypereducated babbling you quote here. You have made yourself completely irrelevant and you don’t even seem to realize it, and neither does Pinker. Also the previous poster – anyone who uses the words contemporary military doctrine in a discussion on feminism has so missed the boat he’s on a desserted island and no more boats are coming. I hope he has a good supply of food.
navigator1965 said:
I do indeed have a good food supply, and I thank you for your concern. My first book is due out in February, and I begin work on the sequel on 1 January. As I am an air navigator, a paucity of nautical shipping is of little concern to me.
Ideological feminism naturally behaves in accordance with the basic principles of military Information Operations doctrine. To understand ideological feminism, I employed classical military theorist Sun Tzu’s maxim to understand one’s self and to understand one’s enemy, to thus not fear the outcome of a hundred battles. Ideological feminism is the logical outcome of a specific form of narcissism.
As a subset of what the late Christopher Lasch wrote about in his modern classic “The Culture of Narcissism,” ideological feminism is a phenomenon of social degeneration, and has nothing to do with genuine equality or human rights. Given it’s narcissistic nature, it is pointless to attempt to reason with a feminist.
Interesting that you should refer to the term “feminazi.” I will also be positing that National Socialism and ideological feminism as social phenomena are narcissistic gender-self analogues. In other words, there is an intuitive truth to relating ideological feminists to Nazis, as there is a similarity in psychopathology.
“The dogma of woman’s complete historical subjection to men must be rated as one of the most fantastic myths ever created by the human mind.” Mary Ritter Beard.
I bid you good day, Madam. Parting is such sweet sorrow.
navigator1965 said:
Pardon. Should be “… its narcissistic nature,…”
clisawork said:
Only a narcissist would assume we are enemies. You assume I even care what you think ideologically about feminism. We are not enemies, and the tactics of Sun Tzu are neither warranted or even applicable. I am a human being who was fired for complaining after a man groped himself at a public work meeting while asking me if I wanted some more. Now as a human being I think you might be concerned if you found yourself in this situation. You know what else concerns me? The ratio of art pictures of men to women online is about 5 to 1000. It concerns me there are no photographic representations of real men online. It concerns me that all the photographic representations of women show them naked, nearly naked, crying, being tortured, or looking sultry (slutty). It concerns me that there are so many more men than women in China – that little girls are abandoned and murdered in China and in India. It concerns me that certain religious sects in the United States cast out young men when they become teenagers – they are abandoned. It concerns me that the rape of men in prison is trivialized and joked about. These are human concerns – this is not about being enemies, or theories, this is about the human condition of men and women and you trivialize this when you make this adversarial. Stop navel gazing, raise your eyes and see that their are boys and girls, men and women who are suffering all around and your books are not helping. I do not care what you think of me. I do not care what you think of feminism or people who identify themselves as feminists. Do what you think is necessary to make this world a better place, but do not mistake me for your enemy. The real enemies, the real monsters, the ones doing the real harm to real people are out there in the real world and if you don’t recognize them then you are failing.
navigator1965 said:
You made me smile by suggesting that I am a narcissist. You’d have to know my story to understand. I can provide you with expert clinical opinion in this matter if necessary. If I may, your initial comment on my being on the desert island did not exactly suggest that you were friendly towards me or my opinions. It was adversarial to a modest degree.
I know what it is to suffer injustice, and thus you have my sympathy regarding your employment situation. The injustices that my children and I suffered were exclusively at the hands of feminists. While I am well aware that there are fundamentally decent women who self-identify with feminism, this doesn’t change its essentially malevolent nature.
You mention serious human rights issues such as sex-selection abortion and prison rape. I agree that these are real problems that affect real people, terribly so. I disagree with your “navel gazing” comments. We cannot solve problems that we do not understand. I have not, after 48 years on this Earth, suddenly decided to write books because I became bored. I was confronted with a serious problem, and I came to understand the essential nature of that problem.
After 30+ years in a military uniform, I suspect I enjoy the better qualification to identify legitimate enemies. However, in the context of this discussion, cause and causal mechanisms are a better perspective to adopt.
As I do not wish to further impose on Mr. Benjamin’s kind hospitality here, I thank you for candidly expressing your views on me and my thoughts.
clisawork said:
Mr. Benjamin’s Silence is deafening.
navigator1965 said:
It is. Perhaps he is away on vacation.
jrbenjamin said:
Ding ding… correct. I’ve been away from any sort of computer for quite some time.
Still, I will reply to your comments shortly. This is an important subject, and worth discussing. I will carefully parse your comments, then we can throw around some counterpoints and acerbities.
Happiest of new years to you all.
navigator1965 said:
And to you, Sir, and Madam C. Lisa.
kayuk said:
As a young woman growing up in inland and isolated central Florida, I both reveled in and despised the fact that I was female.
While growing up I was a virtually gender-neutral creature. I ran about the community barefoot and topless, played with trucks, cap guns, and hobby horses; climbed higher in the trees than any others my age, competed equally in all things ‘child’, and often dreamed I could fly,
Then I started school and things changed. No longer allowed to play with whatever toy struck my fancy, I was accused of being a ‘Tom-girl’ if I wanted to play with a truck. Dolls were foisted off on me at every opportunity, and I was chastised if I went outside without clothing on the top half of me.
Talk of the future changed from wondering if I would always live in my parent’s house to arguing over the number of children I would have. But I was different. Unique. I didn’t want kids. I despised being female/feminine because, once I reached the age of realization, I was denied the right to run about with the herd of children-becoming-adults. I was isolated, protected, feminized against my will. Forced into a mold that was not ready for me.
And what happened to all my ‘best at’ accomplishments? I learned that girls who climb trees are not ‘feminine’; girls who beat boys at arm wrestling are not ‘feminine’, girls who don’t shave their underarms and legs are not ‘feminine’… and what the heck was ‘feminine’ anyway?? Not one, single, person could even tell me what the word meant, other than ‘girlish’.
On the other hand…being female had it’s advantages. I was becoming a celebrity, as long as I was the only woman present, and pretending I knew what being feminine was all about took me from one plane of existence to another.
Don’t get me wrong. I am female. I like being female from inside to outside and everywhere in between, but I still don’t know what being feminine is all about. I often feel awkward in the presence of petite, dressed-up and made-up women of any age even though I’m 5’1″, of slim build, and (I’m told) feminine womanhood.
Perhaps femininity is one of those things that, like beauty, is embodied in the eye of the beholder.