This is an assertion I’ve heard made a lot by people outside biology and I’d like to hammer it out with somebody who seems well informed.
On what basis can we make this assertion? Biology obviously contributes in a physical sense (people with male gender tend not to have wombs). I assume what you mean is that there are no inherent neurological differences in males versus females. But how can we know that? We have a strong prior (other animals) and lots of circumstantial evidence that it should be true.
I think feminism ought to acknowledge at least the possibility of inherent male-female differences with a simple “so fucking what”. For instance I think that physical abuse of women, by men, probably represents an adaptive, ancestral behavior caused (amongst other things) by inherent neurological differences in men and women. That doesn’t excuse it. We can and have made great progress in conditioning men not to hit women, and hopefully will continue to do so.
This is an assertion I’ve heard made a lot by people outside biology and I’d like to hammer it out with somebody who seems well informed.
On what basis can we make this assertion? Biology obviously contributes in a physical sense (people with male gender tend not to have wombs). I assume what you mean is that there are no inherent neurological differences in males versus females. But how can we know that? We have a strong prior (other animals) and lots of circumstantial evidence that it should be true.
I think feminism ought to acknowledge at least the possibility of inherent male-female differences with a simple “so fucking what”. For instance I think that physical abuse of women, by men, probably represents an adaptive, ancestral behavior caused (amongst other things) by inherent neurological differences in men and women. That doesn’t excuse it. We can and have made great progress in conditioning men not to hit women, and hopefully will continue to do so.