The sociological religion of no biological differences between the sexes

October 6, 2016 • 9:30 am

As a biologist, I’ve learned that there are two related issues that are taboo for academics to discuss openly. The first is the issue of “races”—or genetic differences between human populations. Cultural anthropologists tell us that races are “social constructs.” Well, there’s a bit of truth in that, insofar as there is no finite number of races that can be unambiguously demarcated from each other. But there are genetic differences between groups, and clustering algorithms can divide populations into five or six fairly distinguishable groups corresponding to their geographic localities. Those differences in marker genes undoubtedly evolved via either genetic drift or natural selection in early human populations that were geographically isolated.

But the issue of whether there are genetically-based differences in behavior, physiology, mentation, and other non-physical attributes of populations is simply off the table. It’s not just that we shouldn’t investigate them (for one can make a case that such research might itself have invidious social consequences), but that those differences don’t exist. I’ve even heard people called “racists” by cultural anthropologists—one of the worst fields for ideologically motivated scholarship— simply for suggesting that there might be behavioral genetic differences between human groups. You can discuss the issue, but there’s only one position considered acceptable.

My own take is that the separation of human subgroups has been so recent that there hasn’t been a lot of time for extensive genetic differences to evolve, though clearly there’s been time for marked physical differences to evolve. And it’s clear that human intermixing, facilitated by transportation and increased mobility, will tend to efface all of these differences. But we shouldn’t assert that any trait beyond the most obvious physical differences between groups shows complete equality among them.

When it comes to the sexes, though, it’s a different matter. In the hominin lineage males and females have been coevolving (either cooperatively or antagonistically) for 6 million years or so—ample time for differences in behavior, wants, thought patterns, and so on to evolve, just as morphological differences between men and women have clearly evolved. Do those genetic differences in thought and behavior exist? I suspect they do, at least for traits connected to sexuality and sexual behavior. Just as animals ranging from flies to mammals show consistent (though not universal) patterns of male/female differences in sexual behavior—differences explainable by sexual selection—so I expect the human lineage evolved similar patterns. After all, males are larger and stronger than females, and you have to explain that somehow. How do you do so without explaining evolved differences in behavior—probably based on sexual selection?

Yet the idea that males and females show evolutionary/genetic differences in behavior is also anathema in liberal academia, and for the same reason that population differences are anathema. Such differences, so the thinking goes, would support either racism (on the part of populations) or sexism (on the part of males and females). But of course that thinking is false: we can accept evolved differences without turning them into social policy. And it’s of interest to many evolutionists, including me, to know the extent to which groups and sexes have evolved along divergent pathways.

Still, many feminists, liberals, sociologists, and cultural anthropologists deny any such divergence. Yes, men and women differ in body size, strength, and structure, but there are, so they say, no such differences in the brain and behavior. In all other traits, so the trope goes, men and women are equal.  And given equal interests and talents, then the only thing enforcing anything other than a 50% representation of men and women in professions must be cultural pressures: viz., sexism. Thus, unequal representation in professions is prima facie evidence of sex discrimination. But as Jon Haidt mentioned in the lecture I posted the other day (watch the video; it’s good!), one first has to determine the cause of such unequal representation before one decides what to do about it.

At any rate, in the humanities and especially cultural anthropology, which in its ideological slant really counts as (sloppy) humanities rather than science, these attitudes are not only religious in nature, lacking empirical substantiation, but are also theological in enforcement. Authors (as I’ve pointed out recently) assume what they want to prove, and then go ahead and collect just those data that support their hypothesis. Confirmation bias is rife. This is what theologians do, not scientists.

The paper I’m highlighting today (link and free download below) is by Charlotta Stern, associate professor and deputy chair of the sociology department at Stockholm University. She is a brave woman, for her paper aims at calling out those sociologists who simply refuse to consider biology as an explanation of sex-distinguishing behaviors. As she says, not pulling her punches:

The present investigation is informed by my long and ongoing experience as a sociologist at Stockholm University. My teaching and research often touch on gender issues. I have served on about five thesis committees that addressed gender sociology or related matters, and I have participated in dozens of seminars that touch on gender sociology. My relationships with my colleagues and students are not heated. When I raise ideas that would challenge the sacred beliefs, I do so only at the edges. I have seen how people react when I or another suggests that maybe there is a difference in math skills between men and women, or that men and women have different preferences and motivations. In my experience, gender sociologists frown upon such remarks about innate differences in aptitude or motivations. I perceive deep and widespread taboo and insularity among gender sociologists. It saddens me. I feel impelled to make available some expression of my concern, hoping that students and others will hear it before sinking into the sacred beliefs and sacred causes addressed here.

Her method was simple, and somewhat subjective. She examined a set of 23 highly-cited articles in sociology journals, all of which cite a classic paper in the field, “Doing gender,” by Candace West and Don Zimmerman (1987); reference and free link below).

West and Zimmer concluded (or decided in advance) that behavioral and non-physical differences between men and women were “constructed” based on their genitalia, so that all differences we observe in later life are the result of socialization. As Stern notes,

“Doing gender” is presented as part of a lamentable system of social control. The paper’s final para- graph reads:

“Gender is a powerful ideological device, which produces, reproduces, and legitimates the choices and limits that are predicated on sex category. An understanding of how gender is produced in social situations will afford clarification of the interactional scaffolding of social structure and the social control processes that sustain it. (West and Zimmerman 1987, 147).”

Stern examined 23 highly-cited sociology papers published between 2004 and 2014 (two per year) that themselves cited West and Zimmer’s influential paper. Then, developing a spreadsheet, she coded each of the articles as whether or not they took the hypothesis of biological differences between men and women as a serious possibility. Her classification was as follows:

  • Neutral.  Discussions of gender differnces but no discussion of their biological bases, nor dismissal of them. (4 articles).
  • Blinkered. These are the articles in which, according to Stern, biological differences are relevant hypotheses, but are either ignored or dismissed out of hand (15 articles).
  • Unblinkered.  Stern found only one article that considered biology as a possible explanation for sex differences in things like time spent with children, savings for education, and other “family processes.” Stern says the article has a “nuanced discussion of causality.”
  • Not rated. These articles “do not deal with matters for which biological difference ideas would clearly be relevant.” Four articles.

Here is Stern’s list of the articles and their ratings:

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Now of course you can debate Stern’s methods and assessments, but what’s clear even without this analysis is that it’s taboo in much of academia to suggest that measurable differences between populations or sexes (excluding the most obvious physical differences) have any biological basis. But there should be no taboos in academics. One can debate the wisdom of investigating some questions (e.g., “Are Jews genetically acquisitive?”), but what one should not do is assume what’s true before investigating it. And, as Jon Haidt noted, if you don’t know the empirical basis for differences that are considered problematic (such as the underrepresentation of women in mathematics), you’re hampered from addressing them.

Stern’s conclusion is low key (my emphasis):

One cannot draw quantitative estimates on the basis of my investigation, but its findings are consistent with an image of gender sociology as a subfield that has insulated its sacred beliefs from important scientific challenges.

I have extensive first-hand experience with gender sociology’s insularity. But I also know of pervasive preference falsification (Kuran 1995), and I have seen students awaken with an ‘a-ha!’ moment when exposed to unorthodox thinkers such as Catherine Hakim (1995; 2000; 2008). I believe reform is possible. Whether people should ‘do gender’ less, and how they should ‘do gender,’ are questions worthy of personal reflection, scholarly exploration, and public discourse. More definite, to my mind, is that people should do less insularity.

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Charlotta Stern

h/t: Grania

____________

Stern, Charlotta. 2016. Undoing insularity: A small study of gender sociology’s big problem. Econ Journal Watch 13:452-466.

West, C. and D. H. Zimmerman. 1987. Doing gender. Gender and Society 1:32-57.

Thursday: Hili dialogue

October 6, 2016 • 6:30 am

It’s Thursday, October 6, 2016, and I’m off to the Freedom From Religion Foundation convention in Pittsburgh today. If you’re there, and have or buy a book (they’re selling both WEIT and Faith Versus Fact after my talk), I’ll draw a cat in it if you meow. As I said yesterday, posting will doubtless be light for the next few days. I’ll try to take some photos of the doings and post them here; also, there are trips to Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece, the house “Fallingwater,” tomorrow, and I’m going, although photos of the inside are prohibited. Finally, 4,299 people have signed Nazí Paikidze-Barnes’s petitition against women chess players having to wear hijabs at the Women’s World Championships in Iran. I ask you again to sign it if you haven’t yet and agree with the petition.

It’s National Noodle Day, undoubtedly decreed by pasta makers, but also World Space Week, extending from October 4-10: a celebration of technology and exploration. On this day in 1723, Ben Franklin arrived in Philadelphia, supposedly toting a loaf of bread under each arm. And, in 1889, Thomas Edison projected his first motion picture in public. Finally, on October 6, 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated.

Notables born on this day include Jenny Lind (1820; there are no recordings of her reportedly superb voice), Le Corbusier (1887), mountaineer Willy Merkl (1900), Thor Heyerdahl (1914), and Elisabeth Shue (1963; “Leaving Las Vegas”). Those who died on this day include Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1892), Nelson Riddle (1985), and Bette Davis (1989♥). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the animals are guilt-tripping Andrzej into taking them for walkies:

Hili: The whole world is looking at you.
A: I see. We will go for a walk in a moment.
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In Polish:

Hili: Cały świat na ciebie patrzy.
Ja: Widzę, zaraz pójdziemy na spacer.

And in Winnipeg, where walruses waddle wanly in the winter, Gus is soaking up some rare winter sun in the garden. Isn’t he cute?

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Final plea: sign petition against Islamic oppression of women chess players

October 5, 2016 • 4:00 pm

U.S. women’s chess champion Nazi Paikidze-Barnes has started a petition protesting FIDE’s (the international chess organization) decision to hold its Women’s World Championship in Iran, where all players, Muslim or not, will be required to wear hijabs. On top of that ridiculous religious requirement in a secular venue, I just realized that one’s chess game, which demands terrific concentration, could be thrown off by having to wear a scarf over your head.

Nazí’s original goal was 1000 signatures, and I’m sure she’s terrifically pleased that it stands at a much higher number now—more than 3400. But I’d like it to go higher, as I have a feeling that FIDE may have to respond to the petition. So, if you object to women being made to veil against their wishes, do sign the petition; click on the screenshot below to add your name and perhaps a message.

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I should add that Pikidze-Barnes’s husband was the first signer, and added a nice message:

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I write here for free, and rarely ask anything of readers; but there are 40,000+ subscribers out there, and if only half of you took the one minute to sign the petition, there would be an astounding 20,000 signatures. Do it for Professor Ceiling Cat, Emeritus.

United Airlines reseats woman because two Pakistani monks objected to sitting next to females

October 5, 2016 • 3:07 pm

Well, gang, it’s happened again: a woman named Mary Campos was forced to change her seat on a United Airlines flight because two Pakistani monks didn’t want their airspace polluted by women. Before boarding a flight to Houston, Campos was given a new boarding pass by the gate agent, who explained, “The two gentlemen seated next to you have cultural beliefs that prevent them for sitting next to, or talking to or communicating with females.”

Cultural beliefs, my tuchas! It’s religion, Jake, and United compliantly rolled over on its belly and capitulated. Campos felt she had no choice, and so she moved. Further, the female flight crew was prohibited from serving the monks. (The monks we wearing orange, so I have no idea whether they were Buddhists or of another faith.)

Campos wrote a letter of complaint to the CEO of United (part of her text, which is very good, is in the screenshot below) and heard—nothing. You can see the story on the Los Angeles station CBS2 by clicking the screenshot below. The station, however, got a lame-ass response when writing to United:

A company spokesperson wrote, in part:

“We regret that Ms. Campos was unhappy with the handling of the seat assignments on her flight. United holds its employees to the highest standards of professionalism and has zero tolerance for discrimination.”

Well, if they have zero tolerance for discrimination, they should fire the gate agent and give some re-education to the crew of that flight. That response is really a non-response.

Click to see the story and video:

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The station asked Campos, a senior consultant to the oil and gas industry, if she planned to sue United, and Campos said this:

[The reporter Stacey] Butler asked Campos if she intended on suing the airline and she said that was not her intention. But she did want two things from United.

  • Apologize to every female that was on that plane, including their employees.
  • Change their policy. Campos said if she didn’t get those things, she would do whatever she had to do to protect women’s rights.

You go, Ms. Campos! That’s an eminently reasonable pair of requests. It’s time for this ridiculous religiously-based discrimination to stop. I’ve reported it here over and over again, and it’s involved Jews, Muslims, and now, perhaps, Buddhists. I’m tired of it, and women must be even more ticked off. It’s unconscionable and, in fact, I’m going to make one of my rare direct tweets to United Airlines. You’re invited to join me:

Time Magazine: Islam is dandy and egalitarian: the problems of terrorism are exacerbated by atheists and “Muslim reformers”

October 5, 2016 • 11:45 am

The title of a new article by Qasim Rashid in Time magazine tells the tale: “A strong Muslim identity is the best defense against extremism.” Rashid, who has a history of denying the influence of Islam on terrorism, describes himself as follows;

I’m the Director of Civil Rights and Policy for KARAMAH: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights. Since the early 1990s KARAMAH has utilized authentic Islamic scholarship to advocate for worldwide gender equity from an Islamic lens. As a women-led organization, KARAMAH exemplifies a proven model of Islam by educating, training and inspiring a new generation of Muslim women leaders who have gone on to become prolific authors, journalists, academics and activists.

This is a bit confusing to me, because the only Qasim Rashid I can find on the internet is a man, but I’ve confirmed that it’s the same person. But no matter; the arguments are what matters. And his arguments are that neither New Atheism nor Muslim of ex-Muslim “moderates” like Maajid Nawaz or Ayaan Hirsi Ali can do anything to help end Islamic terrorism. Why?

The atheists, says Rashid, are useless because they are a) ignorant of “real” Islam, b) have promoted anti-Muslim acts like the Iraq War (he refers to Hitchens) and c) promote the destruction of Islam itself (Rashid quotes Hirsi Ali here, apparently not realizing that she’s backed off the “destruction” idea in her latest book Heretic).  And, of course, there are plenty of atheists who opposed the Iraq war, and plenty of moderate Muslims or ex-Muslims, like Asra Nomani, Maajid Nawaz, Eiynah, and now Hirsi Ali, who are not calling for the destruction of Islam but for its “reformation.”

So Rashid gets that all wrong. Further, he sees parallels between atheists and moderate Muslims that make them doubly ineffective as a way to curb terrorism:

New Atheists, the Islamophobia industry, and so-called “Muslim reformers” (who meritlessly seek to change the Qur’an altogether) all share three significant characteristics. First, each is wholly ignorant of Islam as exemplified by their myopic insistence to ignore events like the Iraq War and instead claim that ISIS’s existence and approximately 30,000 members are a more valid example of Islam than Islam’s 1.6 billion Muslims and 1,400 years of non-ISIS existence. Second, each offers only an empty theory of Islamic “reformation.” Third, and perhaps most significant, each refuses to acknowledge the practical and proven models from Muslim organizations that have long existed well before 9/11 that analyze Islam from a position of honesty and scholarship, and demonstrate that it is not Islam that needs reformation—but Muslims themselves.

I seriously doubt that people like Hirsi Ali and Nawaz are “wholly ignorant of Islam”. What a thing to say! Further, that their own models of reformation, relying on leverage from moderate Muslims, are “empty” remains to be seen. In fact, to me that (Hirsi Ali, for example, calls for the Qur’an to be read less literally) seems a more rational way to defang fundamentalist Islam than, say, by going along with the “strong Muslim” position that the Qur’an must be read literally, word for word. When you do that, watch out, because the Qur’an, like the Old Testament (but worse) is a document filled with bloodshed and hatred of nonbelievers.

And what is Rashid’s “practical and proven model” for Islamic reformation? Just this:

Indeed, a stronger Muslim identity derived from a proven model is the best defense against extremism. This shouldn’t be surprising. A 2016 analysis on American Muslims from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding reports that “Muslims who regularly attend mosques are more likely to work with their neighbors to solve community problems, be registered to vote, and are more likely to plan to vote.” This echoes a 2008 British intelligence MI5 analysis that concluded: “[a] well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation.”

Moreover, for more than a century and across 209 nations, tens of millions of Muslims belonging to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community have stood united under an Islamic Caliphate. This Community of Muslims cites authentic Islamic scholarship—the Qur’an, Sunnah and Hadith—to exemplify a proven model of True Islam that teaches secular governance, gender equity, universal human rights and a categorical condemnation of terrorism.

I seriously doubt whether the “community problems” solved by American Muslims have anything to do with organizations like ISIS or other terrorist groups. And seriously: going to mosques helps you register to vote? Maybe, but is that going to stop terrorism?

As for the notion of the Caliphate and that of “authentic Islamic scholarship,” well, ISIS wants a Caliphate, too, and avows that it’s adhering to authentic Islamic scholarship, a claim that has more credibility than that of other Muslims who promulgate less violent forms of Islam as “authentic”. (Read the Qur’an!). Remember, too, that even many moderate Muslims, as in the recent Pew report, see sharia law as what they’d favor for everyone in their country. Rashid, in his insistence that he and his group are the only promulgators “true” Islam, is bucking considerable data showing otherwise.

h/t: Grania

Poland backs off its attempt to criminalize all abortions

October 5, 2016 • 10:45 am

As I’ve mentioned several times before, Poland was set to enact, though its legislature, the most stringent anti-abortion law in Europe, forbidding all abortions, including those resulting from rape or incest, or when the mother’s life was endangered. Further, all abortions would have been crimes, punishable by up to five years in prison—presumably for both the woman and her doctor. Right now, those specific abortions are legal in Poland, though “normal” abortions aren’t. Two days ago, on “Black Monday,” thousands of Polish women went on strike, donned black clothing and, with sympathetic men, demonstrated against their right-wing, Catholic-dominated government in cities throughout Poland.

Surprisingly, it seems to have worked, at least with respect to the pending legislation. As the Guardian reports:

A proposed total abortion ban in Poland will not be implemented, a member of the government has said, describing mass protests against the ban as a lesson in humility for the country’s leadership.

Jarosław Gowin, the minister of science and higher education, said on Wednesday that the protests by women had “caused us to think and taught us humility”.

The comments appear to indicate that Poland’s conservative leadership will withhold support from the highly unpopular proposal to ban abortions even in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is at risk.

. . . Also on Wednesday, the Senate speaker, Stanisław Karczewski, said Poland’s upper house of parliament would not initiate work on a bill that would further restrict Poland’s abortion law.

Karczewski said senators would wait to see what the more powerful lower house of parliament would do. However, he voiced support for a ban on abortions of foetuses with Down’s syndrome, something currently allowed.

This isn’t over yet, though. Like Ireland, Poland still bans abortions of all other sorts, a violation of EEU regulations. That is, of course, because of the sway the Catholic Church has over the Polish government. The women of Poland still have a way to go, and they’re fighting a powerful institution in their protests.

Adam Kirsch on writing and cultural appropriation

October 5, 2016 • 10:00 am

Just to show how ridiculous is the claim that writers should generally avoid producing fiction about “marginalized groups” unless they belong to those groups (see here, here and here re the Lionel Shriver affair), have a butcher’s at a new kerfuffle: that involving “Elena Ferrante,” an Italian author of wildly popular novels, especially the “Neapolitan Novels”, a series of four books about two poor girls from Naples. Here’s the last one of them:

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Ferrante was known to be a pseudonym, but had closely guarded her (or his) real identity for years, despite many speculations.  Some people said that only a woman who wrote those books, and a woman who, like the protagonists, had known deep privation. Others, presumably sexist, said that no woman could be capable of writing such books, and even though I haven’t read them I find such a claim extraordinarily stupid in light of the history of wonderful novels written by women. But the going idea seemed to be that “Ferrante” must have had some of the experiences of poverty of her subjects, and have lived in Naples.

The falsity of that view has now been revealed in an article by Claudio Gatti in the New York Review of Books, showing with little doubt that “Elena Ferrante” is neither from Naples nor was poor: she is a translator from Rome named Anita Raja. This has people up in arms, as many of them wanted “Ferrante’s” identity to remain secret.

But the main lesson is that one can write convincingly about other’s lives without having lived them, and this is the point made by Adam Kirsch in a piece in Monday’s New York Times, “Elena Ferrante and the power of appropriation.” For what we had was something that Lionel Shriver’s critics said was not possible, an empathic and convincing portrayal of people completely unlike the author. If you think about it, though, you’ll realize that the combination of an author’s imagination with her observation and research on another group’s life—or another person’s life—can produce compelling fiction.

No, the two Neopolitan girls weren’t black or Muslim, but they were poor, something that Raja doesn’t seem to have experienced. Indeed, one reason Gatti revealed Raja’s identity was that he was fed up with the lies that Raja apparently promulgated when feeding her readers a few crumbs of biographical information, crumbs meant to suggest that she had indeed had a life that gave her credibility to write about poor girls from Naples.

From the BBC:

So why did Gatti do it? He says Ferrante lied in her journalistic writing in theFrantumaglia – a book of essays first published in Italy in 2003, which will be released in English with new material next month. Ferrante put it together after her Italian co-publisher, Sandra Ozzola, suggested she provide her readers with a few autobiographical details in the form of non-fiction articles.

Gatti takes issue with Ferrante writing that her mother is a seamstress, that she has three sisters and grew up in Naples. He accuses her of inventing a backstory to provide, “crumbs of information seemed designed to satisfy her readers’ appetite for a personal story that might relate to the Neapolitan setting of the novels themselves.”

He told the BBC’s Today programme, “She lied about her personal life. I don’t like lies, and I decided to expose them.”

Ferrante’s attitude toward lying also angered him – she has previously quoted Italo Calvino, the most translated Italian writer before herself, who once said to an interviewer: “Ask me what you want to know, but I won’t tell you the truth, of that you can be sure.”

Regardless of Gatti’s motivations, though, Kirsch says what’s important: that accusations of “cultural appropriation” in literature are largely nonstarters. Kirsch:

But there are also good reasons to welcome the revelations about Ms. Ferrante. In recent weeks, the literary world has been at war over the idea of cultural appropriation — whether a writer has the right to tell stories about people unlike herself. Lionel Shriver’s speech at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival said yes; many critics of that speech said no. But now it appears that one of the world’s best-loved writers is actually a sterling example of the power of appropriation.

For it turns out that in telling the story of poor Neapolitan girls like Lina and Elena, Ms. Raja was claiming the right to imagine the lives of people quite unlike herself. In doing so, she was able to write books in which millions of people found themselves reflected — books about feminism and patriarchy, poverty and violence, education and ambition.

This is the paradox of literature, which is also the glory of humanism: the idea that nothing human is alien to any of us, that we all have the power to imagine our way into one another’s lives. If the exposure of Elena Ferrante reminds us of that truth, which today we are too inclined to forget, perhaps it will turn out to be justified.

Combine that with the “truth” that even members of oppressed groups are not identical to one another, which should be obvious, and you come up with the argument that although someone who has lived in a certain way may be able to write about that way with greater accuracy, that doesn’t mean that the resulting fiction is more compelling, or has the emotional resonance with readers that passes for “truth in literature.”