>Why should they not? If we acknowledge having biological facts, why should
>we deny their influence on us? How do we know what we are, essentially?
>How can we be sure it's nothing to do with our biology? Why should we
>assume our "essence" is divorced from our "facts"? I should think there's
>a bloody good case to be made for biology playing a part in who we are --
>which is to say in who we think we are -- and it's a short step from there
>to saying that what defines us (for that's how I'd think of our essence) is
>partly biological.
For what purpose do we need to define the essence of being human, and which biological facts do you propose for such a definition?
>Same goes for finding an evolutionary (biological) basis for rape. What do
>WE know? There certainly is a biological basis for rape in the chicken
>house -- the rooster that hops on the most hens gets his genes in the pool
>and the hens don't have a whole lot to say about it. Thankfully we're more
>complicated than chickens but a few years ago I can imagine there was a
>fairly fine line between the presence of sufficient testosterone to ensure
>the bloke didn't shit himself and run before the mastodon, and sufficient
>grace to ensure he asked the lady, first.
>
>When it comes to there being a biological basis for men's preference for
>younger women and women's willingness to couple with older men, in view of
>the fact that for purposes of procreation and gene-pool improvement this
>scenario makes all kinds of sense whereas the reverse does not, the burden
>is surely on anyone who denies it to come up with reasons why that wouldn't
>be the case, not the other way 'round.
Speaking of rape in the chicken house anthropomorphizes animal behaviors. And arguing for a "biological basis" of rape, men's preference for younger women, etc. (which are very far from universal characteristics that define all men to begin with) depoliticizes the question of gender-making & power relations (and that is why shoddy science gains mass media exposure). When NYC cops raped Abner Louima, no one dared to bring in an "evolutionary basis" for rape; why should you when it comes to rapes of women?
In a non-sexist society, nobody would bother to try to find an "evolutionary basis for rape." Also, in a pre-capitalist society in which inequality was taken for granted (in contrast to our capitalist world with an ideology of liberty & equality for all), nobody bothered to come up with a "biological basis for rape" either. The use of the idea of biology, couched in scientific-sounding discourse, as the *main* device for rationalization of oppression is a phenomenon specific to our modern, capitalist world. The *main* legitimating discourse for gender oppression used to be appeal to divine sanctions for the status quo.
Even *within* the history of capitalist society, many arguments for a "biological basis" for this or that social practice that creates gender oppression have *already disappeared*. While in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the dominant ideology (put forward as scientific evidence, of course) said that women should be excluded from higher education because women's biology unfitted them for it (or alternatively higher education unfitted women for their "natural" function of reproduction), this idea has disappeared from the dominant discourse on gender by now in many societies. This ideological change didn't come about because sexist arguments were disproved in science; rather, women's movements (among other causes) changed social practice first, and then invidious arguments regarding women's unfitness for higher education disappeared from science (for the history of this change, see Cynthia Eagle Russett, _Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood_, for instance). Practice precedes theory.
Make rape disappear from the world through our political practice, and then "scientific" arguments for a "biological basis" for rape would then disappear as well.
Yoshie