Ready, Aim, Puke
Fig. 1. An artist's impression of how the women's rights movement might have proceeded, were the real world remotely similar to Nick Neave's delusions.
Amanda and the Pandagon commenters already gave this a good thwacking, but I couldn't help joining in. Dr Nick Neave of Northumbria University has been writing for the Daily Mail (never a good sign) about the evolutionary psychology (bad sign) of the innate differences between the sexes (sirens, flashing lights, heavens rolled up like scroll).
"At the risk of sounding extremely sexist," Dr Neave asserts that women are fundamentally programmed to depend on men, so that all women, all the time, live in terror of abandonment and would never be happy with a lower-earning partner (note to self: am man. must stop going to wrong toilets.) So they should just shut up and go home and make him a turkey pot pie, because men don't like clever women and anyway only stay with their wives because they're forced to - he doesn't say by whom, but it certainly can't be women because they are weak and feeble.
Read the article if you're suffering from low blood pressure, but there's no real need. It's the standard roll-call of evo-psych errors: gross generalisations, no consideration of obvious mundane reasons for human behaviour, dodgy "experiments", complete denial of the existence of sexism, confusion of natural with desirable, and a level of anthropological and primatological expertise gained through occasional viewings of Captain Caveman while high on Sugar Puffs. Yes, it's depressing that attitudes like this persist, but it's also kind of sweet when their holders convince themselves that they're bold, unorthodox mavericks for trotting them out in the Daily Mail.
However, my main point is this: If women didn’t at heart want to live independent lives, we wouldn't currently have the choice to do so. Men didn’t invite us politely into the professions and the parliaments and the learned societies, nor did we breeze in on a whim one day when we felt like slacking off the ironing. Women struggled bitterly for the rights to work, own property, borrow money under their own names, and go into higher education even if it meant being taught, grudgingly, by open misogynists. And it has been largely women who have worked to make divorce easy and socially acceptable, which rather splats Dr Neve’s "naturally clingy" crap. We fought, and are still fighting, for these things because (oddly enough) we want to do them. The Dr Neaves of the world are like boys in a treehouse, determinedly stamping on our fingers as we climb the ladder, all the while shouting that we're scared of heights.
Incidentally, I'm relatively soft on evo-psych in general. I think it's a shame that what could be an exciting and rigorous new discipline has become Justify Your Tired Old Cliche-Omics. So here’s a piece of evo-psych I do believe: young people are genetically preprogrammed to feel happier when the people in authority over them have respect for their life decisions. So, if there are any A-level students reading this, remember - UK universities are finding it increasingly difficult to make up student numbers, especially in the sciences. There’ll be plenty of places free at universities where the teaching staff think you are a real human being.
posted by MissPrism at 11:39 AM
22 Comments:
The Daily Mail is an evil fucking rag and I'd have no hesitation in calling Nick Neave a cunt, only I'm quite fond of them. Can I apostrophize him as a prick instead?
Even if every scrap of his evo-psych evidence were true (which I doubt), he's still pulling at least two fallacies - 'is-ought' and 'behavioural genetic determinism'.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with those, 'is-ought' asserts that because things are a certain way, they should stay that way (e.g. IF women are naturally clingy they should stay like that). The history of Western civilization, philosophy, medicine and science has, by and large, been a move away that particular school of thought, so it's no surprise to see it espoused in Rothermere's toilet paper.
The 'behavioural genetic determinism' (my term) fallacy is, I'm sure, one which most of you already know - the idea that the X chromosome is entirely responsible for determining female behaviour and that culture has sod all to do with it.
I'm caricaturing slightly, but this is the sort of crap that it does no good to pussyfoot about using the normal scientific 'it could be' and 'there is a small possibility that' sort of language. The man's a nob.
Should we write to the Daily Mail to tell them so, or d'you think they'd enjoy that too much?
I think your mistake was bothering to read the Daily Xenophobe in the first place.
Seriously though, I'm still waiting for the study which rigorously accounts for the effect of cultural influences. Such as the effect of gormless pronouncements about 'genetically preprogrammed behaviours' being trumpeted to the heavens by right-wing tabloids...
I love Evolutionary Psychology, absolutely love it. But it simply doesn't have these kinds of implications.
For one thing, as Postblogger says, it is not nearly so deterministic. If evolution dictated the rules of sexual attractiveness, for example, then not one of us would be shaving under our arms and nobody would be particularly bothered about breast-size.
But apart from this, as Neave says, the huge cultural changes over the past generation amount simply to the merest blink of an eye. And funnily enough, the cultural situation before then only lasted for a blink of an eye.
The position of women in society had not been stagnant for millennia prior to the twentieth century. It isn't nearly consistant across the globe just now. There is plenty of data which demonstrates the different criteria that both men and women use in sexual selection depending on where they live in the world, levels of education, socio-economic status and so on.
Without taking this too seriously, this crap really is only a small step away from saying, "Call me racist but black people earn less than white people. This has been the case for as long as the Daily Mail has been in print, so there must be an evolutionary cause..."
If anyone wants cheering up about Evolutionary Psychology, one of my favourite posts I wrote was on the subject and draws a far fluffier conflusion.
I'm not going to stick up for this person or the article but honestly the Daily Mail is not as bad as people go on. Either that or I've just read too many tabloids in my time. I find it easier to get through than the mirror or the express and will I not touch the sun. The problem is that I'm a relatively intelligent person and I have my own opinions, I am able to spot what is a load of rubbish and what isn't. There's not enough daily mail readers like that which I why I love the letters page so much
"I think it's a shame that what could be an exciting and rigorous new discipline has become Justify Your Tired Old Cliche-Omics."
Yeah, it saddens me whenever perfectly good, descriptive words get hijacked by people who lack insight and understanding. Some days it seems so many words have become flammable that it can be a real challenge to find a vocabulary to express something of value here on the public Internet.
As Goldfish wrote in that wonderful, linked post, "Ug! Ug ug, ug..."
Some people need to be bashed on the head. I don't know this Nice whoever-he-is, but he sounds like he'd benefit from a good bashing.
Nick! NICK whoever-he-is.
Sorry. Fingers haven't had enough coffee this morning.
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
Blood pressure was raised before I'd finished the first sentence.
Why does a woman need a fabulous house, a supportive husband and a job 'to die for' before she is considered to be successful?
I'd like to feature this in the next Carnival of Feminists (tomorrow!):
http://feministcarnival.blogspot.com/
MissPrism, have you read any of Barbara Smuts articles or her book on baboons? She's one of my favorite feminist sociobiologists. Partially because I took a wonderful "Behavioral Biology of Women" course of hers at Univ. of Michigan.
a level of anthropological and primatological expertise gained through occasional viewings of Captain Caveman while high on Sugar Puffs
Marvelous. The whole thing, really, but this phrase in particular.
Ok, if this guy is a supposed expert on human evolution how come he doesn't even know that women were (and still are) the main gatherers in hunter-gatherer societies? Not just baby makers. Sheesh.
darthvelma touched on one of the funniest things about the "women are just babymakers" bias - this weird implication that tribal women (past and present) do nothing all day but sit around the village gossiping and eating bon-bons.
-Sylvanite
You know how there are armchair psychologists? These are armchair Ev-psychologists. and they're really, really annoying. you get the feeling everything they ever learned came from watching "Tarzan" one too many times.
I love to hear the considered accademic opinions of nitwits!! Similar to those of the bloggers here who have seen fit to open their rather profane mouths and allow their tongues to wobble indiscriminately.
I believe (wholeheartedly) that every individual is entitled to have an opinion and more importantly to express it. However, in the interests of the sanity of all those who actually have a clue please could these bloggers go away, read the texts properly and perhaps, if they are really lucky actually gain an education.
If you will insist on determining a critique of an accademic on the basis of an article written for the masses and therefore designed to be light-hearted and as easy to understand as possible then there is no doubt that some points of dubious merit will be uncovered.
May I suggest that prior to launching a scathing attack against the man himself you acually get of your ignorant backside get your hands on some journals, attend some lectures and read some damn books!!
If then, you feel you disagree with his assertions then fine, post a blog opposing his views in a clear, conscise and articultae manner.
On a personal note, Dr Nick Neave is a inspirational teacher, an intriguing accademic and a man whose knowledge of this subject, most of you could not begin to comprehend.
Elley, I'm glad he inspires you as a teacher and I wish you well in your studies. But even you haven't tried to defend anything in that ridiculous article, so I don't see why I shouldn't have a bit of fun with it.
Thanks for stopping by the blog, and I hope that the ice-cold fear of abandoment by big strong males doesn't grip your frail female soul too tightly.
Firstly, I am not studying, that part of my life is concluded - Nice assumption, but you got it wrong! As for making assumptions reguarding my psychological welfare - Again you are wrong!!
My comments are not aimed at your blog missprism but at the comments made in reponse to it.
I made no comment with reguard to my opinion of the content of Nick's article. My comments quite clearly state that launching a personal attack about a man that the respondants to your blog, do not know, is ignorant and is far more indicative of their intellectual shortcomings than of Dr Neave's accademic opinions.
Whether I do or do not agree with Dr Neave is not the point under discussion...
Contradict his opinions... Fair enough
Claim he's a misogynist in disguise... if you wish
But claiming that he is a "cunt" a "prick" or a "nob" as some of the respondants have, just shows those people to be intellectualy inept and linguisitaclly limited
And... for the record, I DO NOT entiely agree with Dr Neave's interpretations... I am just far more at odds with the idea of personally attacking a man on the grounds or his beliefs, accadeic or otherwise... I think they call that bigotry!
Nice to see that my article in the Daily Nazi has sparked some rigorous (though not at all intellectual)debate. For the record I am not a misogynist a sexist nor would I class myself a cunt or a prick. I am not actually an evolutionary psychologist, but simply a scientist trying to understand why people behave as they do. In some circumstances evolutionary psychology provides a very good framework from which to understand certain behaviours, in other situations it does not. Behaviour is not genetically determined, nor it is entirely culturally determined, any idiot can work this out. In fact no evolutionary psychologist has ever said that behaviour is determined by genes - all the ones that I know discuss interactions between biology and culture/environment. But then again I guess you folk are not familiar with 100+ years of scientific study and debate that underpins such theories. For the record my original article was originally a two-sided piece addressing why women need men and why men need women - as such it was balanced and provided evidence for and against certain aspects of evolutionary psychology. The bastards in the Mail simply extracted everything I said that confirmed their own political right wing agenda and ignored the rest. My crime (if it be thus) was to believe in the first place that the Mail would ever consider publishing a carefully thought out balanced piece of work. More fool me! If scientists dont engage with the media we are accused of hiding in our ivory towers, when we do engage with them they invariably simplfy what we say, reduce it to the lowrest common denominator and twist the message to fit their own agendas. Dont read the papers - read books and journals and make up your own minds. Please dont call people 'cunts' when do you have never met them - you are falling into the hands of the right wing nazis
I'm glad to hear that even you are distancing yourself from the Daily Mail article. However, the article - which will have been read many thousands more times than my blog post - currently has 42 comments, most of which say something along the lines of "Well said Dr Neave, women ARE inferior!"
Why don't you comment there to explain how your words were twisted out of context?
Dr. Neave: Why do women need men and men need women? I'm curious to know. Aside from biological reproduction, I'm not seeing where "need" is anything other than "need to coexist with," which is almost certainly not the sense you meant it in.
Are you implying that male and female persons intrinsically, as a condition of being male or female, have behavioural attributes that persons of the opposite sex do not? If so, since any such characteristics are almost certainly culturally-derived (since they're in no way consistent throughout the world), I'm failing to see how that isn't an is-ought fallacy.
People are certainly interdependent, but are they actually interdependent in sex-specific ways at the individual level? If so, how, and why?
(Interrobang is not interested in the physical business of reproduction, and therefore "needs" a man in exactly the same sense as a fish "needs" a bicycle.)
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