This does not help us understand how we are to take them into account. And there are those who are saying, not explicitly so, that all we can have are myths about the past that serve one present political project or another. To Carrol: I chose that example because I tried to follow a talk on it here.
>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.
Sometimes, sometimes not. Sometimes problems *internal* to a science require that certain experiments be undertaken. Not everything is political, e.g. a Stern-Gerlach magnet.
>It is invidious to naturalize the social categories created by oppression,
>and such naturalization generates a pseudo-scientific research program.
>I wonder what happened to your perennial criticisms of those who racialize
>statistics while disregarding income & wealth data.
Well that's the point: the demarcation of groups with different susceptibilities to disease do not map out on racial ones. Grouping and classification need not be a reflection of power and oppression.
> But we must do so while acknowledging that biological
>differences automatically determine *neither the number of sexes nor how
>sexes are socially characterized*.
Well in only a small percentage of cases of intersexuality, chromosomal, genetic, hormonal and social sex are consonant, giving us two sexes, one of which continues to be confined on average to a position in the social division of labor that is sysematically devalued.
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.
That's not the point. You are missing the point. Sexual dimorphism is not a paradigm. It was a major transition in the way reproduction is carried out. It requires explanation.
Yours, Rakesh