How Objective Are the Natural Sciences? I Think There’s a Bit of a Hidden Bias in Them
R.W. Connell’s book titled Gender and Power (specifically the chapter titled “Sexual Character”) is not merely one of the first examples of the social conceptualization of masculinity (and femininity) but also offers a critique of the biases in certain disciplines, especially those utilizing quantitative methods. Statistical measurements are often represented as unbiased and objectively true — this belief is prevalent even today — but Connell presents an overview and careful analysis of these seemingly neutral methods. She reveals the built-in preconceptions in them which further reinforce ideas of a ‘unitary sexual character’ of men and women instead of questioning and deconstructing them with the supposedly unbiased toolkit of quantitative methods.
This approach reminded me of Sylvia Wynter who formulates a similar critique regarding Darwinism — which has a relevance in the endurance of said stubborn, monolithic conceptualizations of ‘unitary sexual character’ (at least the way it is utilized in evolutionary psychology for instance). Wynter is mostly interested in a hegemonic model of humanity/humanness, but I thought that some of her points neatly work together with Connell’s arguments. She explains that Darwinism appears seductive because it is part myth and part natural science, but also offers a new origin story for humanity — one that replaced divine, Biblical genesis (which also placed ‘man’ over ‘woman’). Due to its biological basis, it is a static, binary system which provides a neat, fixed place for both men and women. This model which presents humans as natural organisms — based on purely biocentric knowledge — became the hegemonic Western script. It is a purely secular, liberal monohumanist model of being human which became basis of all other religious/cultural human models (excluding all other culturally different, possible models). Wynter claims that there are different genres of being human which involves inherent relativity and multiplicity and which is born in praxis (like Butler’s performance of gender). And most importantly it involves sociogenic principles as well — each culture has its own narrative and idiosyncratic model of being human despite the biological similarity (just as Connell states that we should rather talk about masculinities and systems of masculinities which vary depending on history, ethnicity, class, gender identity, sexual orientation etc.). Wynter cites Frantz Fanon’s comparison from Black Skin, White Masks when he explains that if he was a Pygmy in Africa, he would be in the center of his own cultural constellation, could not subjectively experience himself negatively as ‘Black’, he would not have the Western, white, bourgeois homo oeconomicus (which is the final, desired stage of the Darwinian evolution) as a basis of measurement for ‘human normalcy’ (of course, I am aware of the feminist critiques of Fanon and how he takes ‘man’ as a basis in the definition of humanness). But as colonization brought this constellation (one of the many) in contact with colonized subjects and moreover, it was also infused with power, other genres/scripts of humanity were slowly subjugated to it.
Darwinism (in the form of evolutionary psychology for example) serves as a basis for explaining “block differences” between men and women even today (it even has a renaissance), despite several waves of fierce criticisms from poststructuralist scholars. It presents certain forms of masculinity (very close to what Connell describes as ‘hegemonic masculinity’, an ideal that very few or in fact no man can fulfill), certain forms of femininity (which is close to what Connell describes as ‘emphasized femininity’ that similarly few women can fulfill) and heterosexuality as biologically necessary. Resistance and non-compliance (i.e. alternative forms of masculinity and femininity) can and does exist of course, but those do not serve the final, grand aim of the laws of nature — reproduction and the preservation of the human race. This approach in evolutionary psychology keeps certain gender scripts intact and even inherently unchangeable (e.g. nurturing and monogamous instincts in women; domineering, violent instincts in men; inherent heterosexual desires in both sexes), moreover it depicts change as undesired or even dangerous because it jeopardizes the survival of humankind.
