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Spencer Mattson

Lewontin, Rose, and Kimin’s anti-determinism view

2.Lewontin is very against this idea of the patriarchy in science. As science is build around the idea of male superiority, “women are squeezed out at all levels” (Lewontin 162). According to them, this leads to two things: “denies half of humanity the right to participate equally in the scientific endeavor” (Lewontin 162) and “the male half of humanity is left to practice on the back of the domestic and reproductive labor of women” (Lewontin 162-3). Not only does this system itself already create a hierarchy, but also it divides scientific understanding into two parts: the cognitive, productive, objectivity side, and the emotional, reproductive, subjective side. In patriarchal science, only the cognitive side is represented, but Lewontin argues “integration of both forms of knowledge […] must be our goal” (Lewontin 163). Like most alternative theories, Lewontin argues for more of a scale, allowing for a balance between the two sides, so science can get multiple perspectives, and thus, improve its knowledge. Lewontin claims that biological determinists use “systematic selection, misrepresentation, or improper exploitation” (Lewontin 135), of facts to prove there arguments. This is most prevalent in biological determinists use of “a structure of argument that (without convincing evidence) traces complex human social interactions to simple biological causes and locates them in a domain so removed from present intervention as to appear inevitable and irredeemable” (Lewontin 154). What this is saying that biological determinists attempt to take the complex social hierarchy that is present in our society, and distill its existence down to a single, simple reason. This reason is biology. For example, these biologists say a need for patriarchies have developed through evolution because early “women would be disadvantaged in hunting by being pregnant” (Lewontin 156), thus males would have become the providers and females, the nurturers. Lewontin disproves this by showing that the distress from a “late stage of pregnancy or early stage of child-rearing would have been small” because of spaced out births (Lewontin 157), and “gathering—a predominantly female activity—rather than hunting seems to have been the more important” (Lewontin 157). This shows a logical fallacy in the biological determinists theories. They want to prove that our social system is the natural way humans should align themselves because of biology, yet they refuse to look at any other possible causes then biology. While it is true that pregnancy would put them at a disadvantage to hunt, Lewontin shows that by looking at the society of the hunter-gathers, in which pregnancies are few and far between and a much more important role is placed in the gathering aspect of the culture, the fact that women would be hindered from hunting every so often would have no effect on there social status, and definitely shows no genetic need for male dominance and female submissiveness. Biological determinists like to focus solely on genetics because it removes the argument from the realm of social and political influence. We come to the idea of naturalization. If it can be proved that male dominance is natural, all social argument can be ignored, as this is just the way it should be, the way nature wants us to be. It removes the idea of social influence (like gathers being most important) and how it effects how we interact with each other. This is how biological determinists locate their claims outside of politics. Lewontin explains that one reason why this patriarchy might exist is because it is “it is a historically contingent form of social organization, preserved by those who benefit from it” (Lewontin 133). The argument here is that Lewontin believes, unlike the biological determinists, that patriarchies arise because of social reasons, and the male dominated science benefits from the patriarchy, so it attempts to maintain it. One of the main differences in thinking between Lewontin and the biologists is that Lewontin thinks that it is wrong that “gender difference- are seemingly naturalized as manifestations of essentially biological sex differences” (Lewontin 132). This means Lewontin disagrees with the societal acceptance of the males being biologically stronger and female being biologically weaker and submissive. He argues many points including that in sports, “the average female performance will equal that of males for all events currently competed for by both sexes sometime during the next century” (Lewontin 138), too show that this idea of males are better than females is fundamentally flawed. One of the main reasons it is dangerous for the patriarchy to become naturalized as biological is because then it becomes easier for the people “who benefit from it” (Lewontin 133), to preserve the system of patriarchy. Lewontin believes that if people are only raised knowing patriarchy, then that is how they will continue to run society, because they believe it is the best way to run things. If society taught males and females as equal, the male hierarchy would not exist, as determinist believe.