Andy wrote:
> Being a boy is in the genes, the story went,
> and therefore gender is not as social as the biological egalitarian
> thinks. The proof was a scene where one of the girls participating in the
> study was video-taped playing with army men. "Look," the female reporter
> pointed out to the male researcher, "she isn't playing like a little girl.
> She goes straight for the army men." "Yes," the researcher sighed, "alas
> she is." The ahistorical stance of both this scientific novice and the
> psychologist was astounding.
>
But being a boy IS in the genes: the X and Y chromosones, to be precise.
The problem with this way of arguing with Jay Hanson is that you throw
the baby out with the bathwater. There is a huge amount of research
which has got as far as indetifying the genes which give girls better
social skills and more 'intuition' than men, and it's not much use
labelling it 'popular scientism', which is actually just a
mirror-inverse of the labelling Jay does. Of course, the personality and
gender differences are socially constructed, but there is a material
basis, isn't there?
Capitalism is not in the genes but no other species makes things for
sale, that I know of. That has to mean something. Jay's fatalism is
unfortunate, but I see where he's coming from. If you live in his moral
universe, and cannot even think an alternative to capitalism, then yes,
the future is pretty bleak. Socialism, too, is not in the genes so it's
still there to be worked for and won.
-- Mark Jones http://www.geocities.com/~comparty