|
PeonForHer -> RE: Hjernevask (10/20/2016 5:07:23 AM)
|
quote:
To perform science, it is imperative to adopt an objective approach to the question under consideration. If no objective approach is possible, no science is possible. No exceptions. It seems to me that the only way any researcher could have an objective approach to gender is to be without a gender themselves. This strikes me as impossible. Perhaps you can suggest a way around this roadblock because I know of no way any human can overcome this obstacle.
Yep, yep. Actually, firstly, it's historically involved a double-mistake of colossal proportions: we've looked at nature and projected human society onto it ('e.g. 'Look, there's the silverback gorilla, he's the king, just like our king!) and we've 'read back' from nature all sorts of comparisons and even 'lessons' ('That King Gorilla does this and that with 'his subjects' - we do it somewhat the same - and should do it *entirely* the same!'). We can see this most clearly at the level of non-human nature as a whole - Nature, with a capital 'N'. It's when we humans have read into and back from this entity that we've made the worst balls-ups, of course - thus, Nature as 'red in tooth and claw' (cf Nazism), versus Nature as the Garden of Eden (from the Bible right up to a certain flavour of modern-day Green).
Secondly, people don't seem to grasp that scientists will focus on their own fields; thus they'll be talking within the confines of their own field. If your field is focused on those things about humans that are inherent and biological, you will (hopefully) find some of those things and *highlight* them. You would not, as a scientist worthy of the name, generalise them to a grand theory that 'human society is biologically determined'. Journalists might do that and so might amateurs eager to beef up their preconceived and much-beloved beliefs and fantasies - but as a scientist with his rep at stake, you won't do that.
Thirdly, amongst the public at large, some sciences are just a lot of fashionable and fun at any given time than others. Everybody likes a bit of cod biology and cod psychology to brighten up their day. I do myself. Not quite the same with sociology, though. Most people I've met can't name a single leading figure in sociology, never mind gender studies. Many will say, with due modesty, 'Ah, OK - I get that I'm missing a vantage point, here' and move on. A few, though, will brush away the entire discipline as unworthy of their attention. They have contempt for it - but one notices it's invariably that sort of contempt that's not bred by familiarity.
All this helps to explain why people commonly zero in too much on the intriguing little things that go on in human life - the fun ideas - rather than the much larger and perhaps therefore more humdrum things. Thus within seconds of waking up in the morning, all of us - of both sexes - will start doing things in a radically different way to all other species: click off the alarm clock, put on a dressing gown, and put on the kettle. Whether or not we're male or female, and whether or not there are more men working with machines than there are women, both sexes will commonly drive off to work - thus demonstrating a mastery of machines that is utterly beyond any other species.
The differences between humans and non-human species are truly vast. That's one reason why there are so many branches of knowledge that specialise in humans alone. The differences between the ways in which men and women do things are tiny by comparison. Some sense of proportion is a foremost requirement here, I think.
|
|
|
|
