Gender in Society | Course Paper

The Gendered Society: Ordained by Nature 5.18.16

Biological arguments about sex and mainly ones that we should

question. Not to say there aren’t biological differences between men

and women and we shouldn’t discount those but how we shouldn’t buy

into everything we read and everything biology explains.

So often we think of anatomy as being our destiny in our personalities,

gender identities, and today we want to think of how anatomy has some

role in it but doesn’t necessarily determine our gender identities or

sexual orientation.

The three areas of research looking at today are:

1. Evolutionary imperative

2. Brain Research

3. Hormone Research

First we have to ask the question “Why is it so attractive to set

biological explanations concerning differences?” First, it has the ring of

“True Science”, so we often think that Biology, Physics, those sorts of

things as being objective, it can be numbered they can study objectively

using numbers, they’re quantifiable, so more often it feels more like real

science instead of conducting interviews with individuals. We also like

biological explanations because they seem to support common sense

thinking. We can look at biological explanations and they really help us

think about women’s brains being different and having that chocolate

brain, that shopping brain, and men having that beer brain, the sex

brain. So it supports the common sense thinking and it reassures us that

these differences that we see are natural. It tells us that maybe they’re

not socially constructed and they’re really rooted in our chromosomes.

So the differences that we see are natural and there is nothing we can

do about it which then again tells us that that’s the way it should be,

that if it is directed by our chromosomes then that’s the way it should

be. And finally, the biological explanations also have a ring of “we can’t

help it” so the phrase “boys will be boys” and a lot of times “boys will

be boys” is used to dismiss bad behavior on men’s part and more

so then women, men should be offended by “boys will be boys” and say

“no I don’t behave that way and I certainly have risen above that and to

say that it is something in my chromosomes is insulting to me.”

Prior to the 19th Century thinking about gender and gender

differences primarily came from Theology and so it would be

Theologians that would discuss gender differences and it was

primarily they would look to the bible and say “God created man and

woman and they were created for different purposes. In the late

20th century, scientific research really started to incorporate Darwin’s

work, specifically the idea that species adapt to their environment and

that evolved into Social Darwinism, so if you were thinking about the

19th century development of capitalism, men are going out to work in

the workforce, women are staying at home. And so, the idea was that

women shouldn’t hold jobs and that men were evolving. They were

evolving to their environment so they going out of the home to work,

but really that it would be too taxing on women.

So, the thinking of gender difference was that men were capable

of going into this cruel world to work, be a part of politics, which was

also thought of as dirty, hard work, and the idea was that it wasn’t

supposed to be insulting to women, even though it was because it was

excluding them from politics, working, making these big decisions and

now places where they lived, but it was men were helping women.

Women were too frail, their minds were too fickle, in fact a scientist at

the time said women’s brains were closer to children and savages, and

even though he wasn’t looking at brains, he was guessing that was the

case and he said that women’s brains excel in

fickleness, inconsistency, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to

reason. So not again that women should be excluded, but rather they

shouldn’t have to endure the competitive world that men were capable

of enduring. Thinking about the idea that men were capable of adapting

to this environment and women with their “feeble brains” were not

capable of adapting.

So then in the 19th century often women were kept out of

education because it was thought to lead to infertility. And the reason

for that was that research on women that got education found that they

had fewer children, and so people would say “Okay these educated

women have fewer children so they must have infertility issues.” When

actually, having an education allowed them to be more independent,

they didn’t need to immediately get married and have children, they

were educated and could go get a job. And so, it wasn’t that education

was leading to infertility, it was that women were making choices to not

have as many children. At the same rate, those women who were

educated were also more likely to be put into a mental institution. So it

was also thought that education is literally driving women mad. WHY?

Because there is blocked opportunity, you’re educated, you know you’re

capable of doing something and then your husband says something like

“I don’t want you in the workforce” and that may upset you and then

your husband says “she’s hysterical” and then the next thing you know

you’re in a mental institution and so it wasn’t that education was driving

women insane, but the blocked opportunities and the social structure at

the time that were putting more women in mental institutions if they

were educated.

Then in the 20th Century there were certainly arguments against

women being in the military, the idea that women would get infections

and lack upper body strength, and what we often find is that women,

when presented with issues that require upper body strength, women

will find a way to utilize their lower body strength to overcome whatever

their arms can’t do. Again this isn’t to say there aren’t biological

differences between the sexes, but we shouldn’t always let those

biological differences explain what we see in the social world. So just

because women are becoming educated and having fewer children,

that’s not the result of education, that’s women delaying childbirth.

So evolutionary biologist often tries to develop different strategies

or argue that men and women develop different strategies to ensure

reproduction. And so what they say is that from an evolution

prospective we have to make sure we continue on our society, so what

they often do is study or hypothesize why men and women have such

different sexual practices. One thing they will say is men

are naturally promiscuous, when you talk to men they have more sexual

partners, well why is that? So evolutionary biologists will argue “well,

men produce many sperm and so they need to fertilize a great number

of eggs” and then they will look at some women’s sexual histories and

will say “okay these women have fewer partners what’s that about?”

Well women produce one egg so they need to be more choosey

about who they decide to partner up with and so what they’re looking

at are these numbers of partners, number of sexual hookups that

are occurring between men and women and trying to explain how you

can wrap that up into ensuring reproduction. How can we biologically

explain where we see men having higher rates of sexual partners than

women, but have certainly seen since the 1960s, the sexual revolution

that women are catching up with men, so it is unknown that you can

really buy these arguments today, but that’s how evolutionary biologists

explain that sort of patterns. It should also be noted that a lot of other

evolutionary biologists will say “absolutely, our chromosomes can

influence our behavior, but they don’t dictate it.” To give chromosomes

too much credence to our behavior is really stretching how much they

can direct our behavior.

So evolutionary psychologists use evolution to explain different

parts of our personality. They will say men are naturally more aggressive

and that’s because prehistoric times when we were hunting and

gathering society it was men who were in charge of going out there and

killing the other animals, so that’s how men learned to be more

aggressive and over time that’s become a part

of men’s chromosomal makeup. And they will say that women are

programmed to be passive because at that time women were more of

the gatherers, they would stay close to the home site and maybe go do

some vegetable finding, but they would also take care of the children

and so the xx chromosome really drives women to be passive.

Thinking about what men and women want, there’s always this

talk about men wanting someone with large hips and large breasts, the

idea being that having a woman like that the man knows she can bear

his children and provide sustained nutrients. While women want

someone who can pay for their child, can make sure their paired up

with someone who is able to take care of the child for them and what

we find in research is that men and women want the same thing. there

was a worldwide study done that asked people in different cultures what

it was that they wanted most in a partner and what they found was

many men and women had the same answer that they value love and

kindness so likely we can’t really use evolutionary psychology to explain

choices or specifically choices because men and women often can want

the same thing. Most people want a partner that is loving and kind. But

again, evolutionary psychologist will say males have evolved to want as

many women as possible and in some extreme cases they will use that

to explain rape. They will say that rape is actually a man wanting to

spread his seed as much as possible and that’s why it occurs. However,

what we know from research is that sexual assault and violence are

more likely to happen when men feel powerless, so it’s not about a

genetic drive to spread the seed, it to feel like you’re in power again.

And evolutionary psychologists will say that females evolved to deny

males because they are looking for that one male who can help them

take care of their offspring. So, the problem with this theory is that it’s

almost like psych biologists look at the rates of sexual practices between

men and women and try to read it into our genetic coding and a lot of

evolutionary biologists and psychologists will say this is kind of hard to

test because they can’t get in a time machine and go back and test it

because there is a lot of hypothesis is happening. And a lot of times

they will do the research and they’ll look at other animals and say “look

at this animal that we’re like” and they like to use male dominated tribes

because it’s easiest to line up with our own social history.

The question often comes to what animal to use. Baboons have a