I’m in a looking for sources mood today. I got curious about Sommers’s ridiculous claim that 3d wave intersectional feminism is the intellectual equivalent of creationism. I paid a visit to Google. I discovered a Wall Street Journal editorial by James Taranto January 14, 2013.
He gives a rundown of his inch-deep understanding of evolutionary psychology and his caricature of feminist criticisms of some of it. Then he asks what it all means.
Why would the New York Times, which scoffs at creationism, publish such an intellectually slipshod attack on evolution? Because evolutionary psychology contradicts the feminist dogma that the sexes are created equal, that all differences between men and women (or at least those differences that represent male dominance or superiority) are pure products of cultural conditioning.
Feminism is the new creationism. The left loves to scoff at people who believe that Genesis is literally true, but these days feminist beliefs are a lot more influential.
So, who is James Taranto? Well…he’s a columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
Let’s not forget that the WSJ is a publication of Rupert Murdock’s News Corp.
Plus it’s the WSJ.
Oh. Right. This James Taranto.
I notice in that stupid WSJ column you linked to, Taranto doesn’t understand sex ratios. He uses only the secondary sex ratio, the number of boys to girls born; the primary sex ratio, the ratio of male to female fetuses at conception, is about 1.5. Unfortunately for his argument that more women had to have more sex partners than men, the tertiary sex ratio — at puberty — is essentially 1.0.
It’s also a very silly argument to make.
Oh, that Taranto. He’s a slimy fucker if I’ve ever seen one, especially on the issues of sexual violence and feminism.
Wo.
I may have to do a blog post about Evolutionary Psychology in the near future. I’m going to have to study it for my area of interest and the questions I want to answer, so I have to find a way to come to terms with it. But these fucking bigots aren’t helping. They don’t get it at all. And it’s frustrating as fuck because they’re tarring a discipline that could actually help understand the very basic roots of human behavior. But it was never meant to “debunk” the cultural explanation of behavior, because all the evolutionary explanations in the world won’t change the fact that culture and society define how we act amongst our peers.
Evo psych douchebags also seem to like the work of Murray and Herrnstein, including The Bell Curve. Pinker even cited them, favorably, in ‘Better Angels’.
Oh. Evo psych. I thought you said evolution.
I’ll admit the gulf is not quite as wide as the one between Darwinism and Social Darwinism, but for a good part of that discipline, it certainly seems to be caused by a very similar mindset.
There is a segment of evo psych that seems to be a reasonable branch of science. Taranto, of course, is talking about the other part.
The problem with Evo Psych is that its an invalid application of a valid principle. So when challenged, the Evo Psych supporters start talking about bower birds and parental investment theory. And there are good evolutionary arguments there.
What I have never heard is a reasonable Evo Psych argument that is specific to Homo Sapiens.