Freki, not having any refutation as to what I said, posted an accusation of misogyny against me at Duncan Black's blog, of course it's a. a lie, b. irrelevant, c. just another one of her many lies.
It's so funny because not two weeks ago I had this exchange at Echidne of the Snakes, the feminist blog I used to write for.
Anthony McCarthy • 11 days ago
You might want to look at Eliza Burt Gamble's early critique of Darwin's theory of male supremacy in her book The Evolution of Women.
https://ia800206.us.archive.org/21/items/cu31924031728763/cu31924031728763.pdf
While a lot of her assumptions are based on outmoded science - as were Darwin's- her arguments, taking the same purported phenomena as Darwin based his male supremacy on and showing how they could be interpreted as indicating that women were demonstrating superior intellectual power through them. It's interesting to consider the extent to which all of it is based on biased reporting of phenomena, if phenomena they are instead of lore, cultural biases and the inherent male supremacy of science at the time of Darwin. I think her argument took many of the same things for granted when that wasn't warranted but her arguments are worth considering as a possible different interpretation of evidence and critique of methodology.
Crissa Anthony McCarthy • 11 days ago
I know of no references which can be authenticated of Darwin writing about a superiority of male over female, aside from his critique on Mill's work.
Hardly an unequivocal support for male dominance.
Anthony McCarthy Crissa • 10 days ago
Off hand, I can cite:
The Descent of Man Chapter XIX
- Man is more courageous, pugnacious, and energetic than woman, and has a more inventive genius.
- The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain—whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music,—comprising composition and performance, history, science, and philosophy, with half-a-dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison. We may also infer, from the law of the deviation of averages, so well illustrated by Mr. Galton, in his work on ‘Hereditary Genius,’ that if men are capable of decided eminence over women in many subjects, the average standard of mental power in man must be above that of woman.
- If they always held good, we might conclude (but I am here wandering beyond my proper bounds) that the inherited effects of the early education of boys and girls would be transmitted equally to both sexes; so that the present inequality between the sexes in mental power could not be effaced by a similar course of early training; nor can it have been caused by their dissimilar early training. In order that woman should reach the same standard as man, she ought, when nearly adult, to be trained to energy and perseverance, and to have her reason and imagination exercised to the highest point; and then she would probably transmit these qualities chiefly to her adult daughters. The whole body of women, however, could not be thus raised, unless during many generations the women who excelled in the above robust virtues were married, and produced offspring in larger numbers than other women. As before remarked with respect to bodily strength, although men do not now fight for the sake of obtaining wives, and this form of selection has passed away, yet they generally have to undergo, during manhood, a severe struggle in order to maintain themselves and their families; and this will tend to keep up or even increase their mental powers, and, as a consequence, the present inequality between the sexes.
Crissa Anthony McCarthy • 10 days ago
It seems to me the latter quote rather suggests that inequality in training and culture is kinda bigger than anything evolutionary.
Anthony McCarthy Crissa • 9 days ago
Actually, it says exactly the opposite. "so that the present inequality between the sexes in mental power could not be effaced by a similar course of early training; nor can it have been caused by their dissimilar early training".
Darwin noted, before he said that, that any increase in intelligence that came from women of greater intelligence having more children than those of less intelligence but that those qualities would be passed on to their children of both gender.
Darwin did not believe that women, on average, are the equal of men, on average. His citation of Galton and the refusal of both of them to consider that the status quo of their time, from which they drew the closest thing to "data" that they cited, was the product of social, legal and culturally produced inequality insured they would take that inequality to be the product of biological inheritance and the material differences in the bodies of males and females.
The Darwin that most of us were taught to believe in is a post-WWII myth. Reading him, reading the things he cites as reliable science produces a rather stunning disconfirmation of that idealized myth.
I had thought of doing a post about the odd concurrence of devoted Darwin worship with a clear inability to read what the man wrote. I mean, I quoted and cited the man as saying essentially the same crap that just about all misogynists say. I had noted his condescending dismissal of the very superior understanding of the moral consequences of Darwinism by Frances Cobbe. But politics and other depravity intervened.
I have read Darwin. I have read much of the surrounding literature. I don't say things about it I can't back up, with full quotes and citations. Those dolts haven't.
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