We obviously do not attempt our historical reconstruction in a power vacuum, do we? Both the past we study (including your example of whether agriculture was brought to the British Isles by a conquering group or through cultural diffusion) and the present in which we make sense of the past are shaped by class relations (among other social relations). The fact of social relations (of class, empire, etc.) and our attention to such do *not* negate the objectivity of the past and the present. In fact, *not* taking into account the ensembles of social relations in the past & the present in studies of history would make them *less objective* -- the point that should be self-evident to historical materialists.
Ruth Hubbard's point is to ask what makes certain objective differences much more compelling than others. *Which question gets studied at all, or which differences we turn into scientific questions,* is a political question. What makes some scientists want to work with a hypothesis of "homosexual genes," for example? There are two reasons for interest in this hypothesis: the current vogue in genetic reductionism & determinism; and the fact that homosexuality is still a taboo & mystery in a society in which humans are categorized into homo, bi, & hetero, hetero is considered "natural" & "normal," and those of other sexual persuasions are oppressed. It is invidious to naturalize the social categories created by oppression, and such naturalization generates a pseudo-scientific research program.
>>We do not frame
>>scientific questions about differences between tall people and short
>>people, although folk wisdom suggests there may be some. Nor do we, in
>>this society, pursue differences between blue-eyed, blond people and
>>dark-haired, dark-eyed people. Yet the latter were scientifically
>>interesting differences under the Nazis.
>
>Cmon we do pursue questions about group variation in suspectibility to
>various diseases. And why shouldn't we? Why is the study of all group
>variation political in the Nazi sense?
I wonder what happened to your perennial criticisms of those who racialize statistics while disregarding income & wealth data.
>>Now, Ruth Hubbard agrees with Stephen Jay Gould, Thomas Laqueur, Will
>>Roscoe, & Anne Fausto-Sterling that sex is a political interpretation of
>>biological facts and that gender is an ideological expression of
>>oppression. If women gain total control over our own bodies, especially
>>our temporary reproductive capacity, achieve equality, and thus abolish
>>gender, we'll look at the idea of "opposite sexes" as disdainfully as we
>>now dismiss that of telegony.
>
>But we'll still have to take on the 'disdainful' task of explaining why
>general sexual dimorphism ("opposite sexes") evolved the way it did--or
>why there is sex at all (a real problem for selfish gene theory). The
>answer to these questions may not be relevant at all to how society is or
>should be organized. But that doesn't make the question any less
>interesting. eg. the Margulis vs. the Maynard Smith debate.
Yes, historical explanations must be provided (or at least we should strive to offer them), both for biological facts _and_ political interpretations of biological facts. But we must do so while acknowledging that biological differences automatically determine *neither the number of sexes nor how sexes are socially characterized*. Even _within_ the paradigm of so-called "sexual dimorphism," there is no biological reason to necessarily posit "opposite" sexes. Why "opposite"? Why not "neighboring" sexes? Why not "different" sexes? Why "opposition" instead of "gradation," "variations of the same," etc.? And why two sexes, instead of one, three, five, etc. (see my posts on Stephen Jay Gould, Anne Fausto-Sterling, etc.)? As Stephen Jay Gould has argued, metaphors can become mental blocks, hindering scientific progress. The idea of "opposite sexes" is one of such mental blocks.
Yoshie