>the question of how it [sexual dimorphism] evolved only matters because
>researchers think it >matters to help answer questons about why we
>organize social life the way >we do now.
> in that sense, right off the bat it assumes that we should
>explain things like gender inequality in terms of sexual dimorphism.
in
>turn, they want to know about that because they want to know how much
>biology plays a role in how we procreate, reproduce, and socialize the
>young, etc and so on. in trun, they want to know this so that they can
>either critique existing social relations [aas you might] or support some
>of them [as rob wants to].
my point would be: so the hell what. just as
>you don't want people to bother to explain intellect genetically because of
Kelley, if you were reading what I wrote, you would note that I have already raised similar questions.
Repost: ___________ Katha!
You are not trying to bend the stick in the other (biological) direction, are you?!
What about Wendy Kaminer's criticism of LBO list hero John Stossel's misusage of some neurological data to make a sweeping statement about deep differences in the way men and women think?
Or: in their explanation of uxoricide, evo psychologists (Margo Wilson and Martin Daly) argue that male proprietariness is a consequence of our evolutionary heritage. Let's even say that male proprietariness did indeed evolve as an adaptation in the social conditions that existed in the Pleistocene. Now you wouldn't disagree that the pattern would be expressed in a different and non violent form in a different social and cultural environment? You certainly would not make the equations 'evolved by natural selection'='natural' and 'natural' = 'right', correct?
Also: what indeed are we to make of our reproductive dimorphism? That child rearing arrangements are not variable and changeable because our roles have been genetically determined (from how men and women share in the rearing to new, always changing arrangements for the raising of non biological, non-related children)? You are not making this set of equations: 'evolved by natural selection'='genetically determined', 'genetically determined=unalterable', correct?
(just raising points randomly from Feminism and Evolutionary Biology, ed. Patricia Adair Gowaty. Chapman Hall, 1996) ____________ Kelley, have you read this volume?
Yrs, Rakesh