You may dislike it, but evolutionary psychology is a legitimate scientific field, and denying that isn’t that much different from covid conspiracy. Maybe you could discuss it with Emma Hilton, I expect her to be less skeptical than you and I’d bet you may listen to her more than to me.
I’m a materialist, radical leftist, my mom grew me embedded in feminist theory. I’m sorry to be oppositional, even more sorry that me writing this in all likelihood won’t prompt a self reflection. But I think that many who, like you, saw how woke pseudo-left allowed the right an open goal are now at danger of using similar tactics and commiting similar errors. Yes, Trump and Musk are dangerous. No, Musk DID NOT give a nazi salute. Even Julie Bindel clearly outline how stupid it is to play this card. In a similar way, behind every conspiracy there is a kernel of truth, and if you want to fight the conspiratorial side, you’d better acknowledge the truth they are distorting. Because of this, even incels and MRAs have their LEGITIMATE concerns. If you refuse to take those into account because “principles”, the outcome will be exactly the same as TRAs accusing TERFs of being nazis: you’ll simply give them ammunitions. EDIT for clarification, what I am trying to say is, of course you don’t want to become a fascist in order to fight fascists more effectively, but you better listen to what drives people to them: they probably have reasons one should adress, not scorn.
Evolutionary psychology is even MORE legitimate than that and still you want to follow a path of science denialism. Good luck with that, I for one may not be an ally on this.
I have published several pieces on evolutionary psychology in The Radical Notion, there is also an entire section on it in my PhD thesis. I also teach its primary texts and their critique at my school. It is a source of constant irritation to me that people always insist that feminist skepticism about evolutionary psychology is an uninformed knee jerk response without ever bothering to acknowledge, read or respond to the feminist critiques of it, and simply accuse us of science denial and tell us to do some ‘self-reflection.’ I have reflected on it, at some great length, and I don’t accept that the modular theory of mind that undergirds it, nor the extreme opposition between nature and culture which informs much of its argumentation, are ‘scientific facts.’ I am not denying that evolution has some impact on human behaviour. That would be idiotic. I am denying that complex human social behaviour can be reductively explained by reference to evolutionary strategies that are encoded in modular and strictly heritable ways, and in a manner that often entirely effaces the role of history and culture. It’s not a strict opposition (see argument above), and while evolution no doubt impacts human behaviour, it does not strictly determine it. Any claim that it does is as bonkers as a claim that evolution has no role in impacting our behaviour, and the role of those claims in reifying existing social arrangements and dominance hierarchies, as well as justifying social darwinsm/neoliberalism, is not accidental or politically neutral.
The classic example here is ‘The Natural History of Rape’ - which is highly relevant as this is what Louise Perry relies on in ‘The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.’ Perry’s presentation of that evidence is exemplary of the way evolutionary psychology is used in anti-feminist ways, and has played one part in the anti-feminist drift of the GCs. She does a version of what you have done here, viz. ‘The feminists just ignore this important and compelling scientific case,’ while actually ignoring that there is an entire book published in which the argument of the book is critiqued, including essays by feminists. When we published Gender Critical Disputes, Maya Forstater read the first sentence and fired off an evopsych informed rebuttal without even stopping to notice that there was an entire essay critiquing evopysch later in the collection, and when she did notice, she accused the author of ‘evolution denial.’ Evopysch is not settled science in the way climate science is, and critiquing evopsych is not the same as covid conspiracy, because models of the genetic heritiability and determination of human behaviour rest on theoretical assumptions about how the human mind works and its determination by genetics that are not scientifically proven. If people want to engage with the critiques of evolutionary psychology then we can start to have a conversation. If they just want to insistently repeat the claim that we are science deniers without even acknowledging the critiques, then we can’t.
I published that after an argument on twitter with Maya Forstater which began with her asserting that rape exists because it is an effective evolutionary strategy. That argument went on for about 10 days, with Maya motte-and-baileying between ‘rape is a sucessful evolutionary strategy (which would imply that it is a modular behaviour that can be genetically encoded and inherited) and ‘evolution has got something to do with rape (well. duh).’
Of course, none of the reactionary feminists and their various advocates actually bothered to read or respond to this. Because its so much more fun just to point at feminists, call them science deniers, say they think everything is culture, and then repeat your grand claims about how whatever patriarchal bullshit you want to justify is determined by evolution when it isn’t. I mean, it’s not like straw-womaning feminists has ever caused any political problems previously is it? Oh, wait.
Thank you for your long reply, though it doesn’t seem you are replying to what I actually said but to a strawman version of it.
I also freely admit that I’m not that informed because I’m a physicist, not an evolutionary biologist or an evolutionary psychologist (and I even have reservations on those field based on mine). With that caveat, it seems to me you are strawmanning even in your critique of it. Surely you’re not claiming that Louise Perry is a relevant expert of the field, so your critiques of her don’t seem relevant. If one is misusing a field, it doesn’t detract from the field. The fact racism exist doesn’t undermine the fact that one CAN use DNA analysis to determine ancestry. If one has a legitimate scholarly critique of evopsych they should publish it in the relevant peer reviewed journals -unless they are treating the entire field like homeopathy (so of course even if relevant journals existed one would reject it on other basis -meaning evidence from other scientific fields).
In the charitable intepretation of what you said here in the replies, it still seems to me that what you are objecting to are misinterpretations of what the field says (which to me seems simply the parts to which you agree with). Dawkins pointed out he doesn’t understand feminist’s skepticism of genetics, because saying a thing is genetic in origin doesn’t mean essentializing it: if one can fight against social conditioning (nurture is not destiny), why couldn’t one fight in the same way against biology (nature isn’t destiny either).
Since trans right’s activists attacked biology, “anti racists” attacked biology, one has every reason to be wary of these attacks, even if you weren’t on that side of the debate.
I’ll try to read your pieces asap; you are correct I should engage before criticizing, but I didn’t attack the Radical Notion’s piece or your thesis. I outlined a single passage from your post (to which I agree in general otherwise I wouldn’t be here). And I don’t think it’s unfair to judge a sentence for what it says in the context in which it’s written. I stand by my summary impression that the way you put it, along with covid conspiracy, didn’t sound nuanced as it did in your replies.
I am interested in the way in which different discourses are being used in the process of right wing radicalisation, and of course, the way in which the GCs have drifted rightwards is going to be in my mind, because that is what I have first hand experience of observing. Although it is my intention with this project to get into a much bigger frame than that. I do not want to spend the rest of my life trying to engage in argument with the GCs because engaging in argument is no longer what they do. Evolutionary psychology and its use in political argument has played a role in that rightward drift. The ground is always constructed as a clear opposition between some kind of determinism and some kind of radical construction, and this is a false opposition. The right identitiarians are playing one card, and the left identitiarins the other card, and its really fucking tedious. Because pretty much everyone in the world with their head screwed on knows that human social phenomena is an interaction of nature and culture. And yet we have to keep getting caught in this pingpong match over and over again. The use of evolutionary psychology to go ‘see stupid feminists, everything isn’t just culture, oh, btw, rape is inevitable’ is a central case in point.
I’m not stawmanning you. I was responding to your comment that your commenting here wouldn’t lead to self-reflection on my part, or that I should talk to Emma Hilton about it. That implies that this is something I haven’t thought about, or talked to people who have some expertise in, and this repeats exactly the caricature used by popular advocates of evolutionary psychology to dismiss ‘silly feminists who don’t know about science.’ I take science very seriously. I am an enormous believer in the scientific method (although it is not the right method for finding out all the things). I don’t make empirical claims about the world without checking those claims. And I have thought and read a lot about evolutionary psychology, it’s theoretical assumptions, the extent to which it conforms to the scientific method, and the purpose of its use in political discourse. I am not the only person relatively well versed in science or the study of evolution that doesn’t consider evolutionary psychology to be straightforward science. Because it isn’t. Because its claims about how human behaviour works and is related to genes are not scientifically demonstrated claims, its claims about the evolutionary past are not subject to falsification in line with normal scientific method, and it is frequently and transparently used for political ends by a process of reasoning backwards from our current social arrangements to the unreachable past in order to reify the present. Humans have all kinds of basic drives that have come to us from our animal past and our early pre-history. It’s a really long way from acknowledging those drives as factors in our behaviour to claims about the determination of complex behaviours and social structures. And evopsych likes to just bound right over that distance and then call anyone who points at it an evolution denier. That’s political rhetoric. Not science.
Re: self-reflection. Fair enough, I may have been unpolite. That said, I’m afraid I’ll have to reiterate my unpoliteness, because I do have the impression self-reflection is lacking. By this, I don’t mean in any way you haven’t thought about it a great deal. But it seems to me that if you say The ground is always constructed as a clear opposition between some kind of determinism and some kind of radical construction, and this is a false opposition (I totally agree), then it would be a good practice to avoid doing the same; meaning, one can’t easily dismiss a whole field. I had already read Strinkovksy’s piece but I had forgotten it because, yes, it seems full of strawmanning and uncharitable readings (I just re-read it; I’ll read the others asap). Just as an example of how ludicrous the article is, it goes to the length of doubting the peppered moth evolution: the caterpillars of the dark-winged forms also have a slightly higher survival rate (…) so something more is going on, but this fact tends to be left out entirely in the popular retelling; except we know that the popular retelling has a point since with when pollution decreased populations reverted to white. If one wants to criticize something they would do better to avoid this kind of “arguments”. The modular mind reference is a quote from a skeptic piece which is already criticizing evopsych: if one wants to avoid suspicion of strawmanning, surely they could quote directly from supporters of the theory instead.
What I mean by lack of self-reflection is one cannot honestly criticize Pinker for straw-womanning feminists as blank slatists and then proceed to do exactly the same (reversed) mischaracterization.
I referenced Emma simply because I’d bet she would be more inclined to give Pinker a chance, and I also had the impression you personally knew each other and hold each other in esteem (while I have reasons to doubt my ability, as a stranger, to influence your thoughts).
As for I am an enormous believer in the scientific method (although it is not the right method for finding out all the things), if I wanted to be provocative I’d say that feminist’s analysis (or the marxists one, which I think we both endorse to a degree) has an even less strong “scientific” basis, but we still take it seriously nonetheless. I don’t think it’s fair to criticize evopsych’s method as not being rigorous enough while simultaneously holding that the scientific method itself cannot be an all-purpose thing. When I was at the university (physics), I was infamous among fellow students because I always replied to the hypoteses you needed to make the mathematical analysis work with “clearly, they are all false”. If one part of the scientific method is experimental reproducibility, one could say that cosmology isn’t scientific because the universe’s evolution isn’t repeatable. This may be pendantically true, but one can’t use this to dismiss cosmology (or darwinian evolution) as non-scientific. Most of the objections to evopsych seem of this nature to me: uncharitable, holding it to an unreasonable degree of robustness and rigour it cannot have, and thus miguided.
The fact that evopsych has been (mis)used to “justify” all sort of right-wing unwarranted conclusion isn’t a legitimate critique of the field, it’s simply a legitimate critique of the misuse. Of course it’s important to point out that the conclusion “reached” in this way are wrong, but to criticize the field as a whole is unwarranted, unnecessary, and can ultimately backfire (and rightly so). Pinker is right in saying that the truth can’t be sexist. I’ll quote Dawkins and Sokal against the TRAs use of “sex assigned at birth”: “it is never justified to distort the facts in the service of a social or political cause, no matter how just. If the cause is truly just, then it can be defended in full acceptance of the facts about the real world”. Strinkovsky’s singling out Pinker’s use of the word “truth” strikes me as precisely this misguided attitude.
Anyway, thanks for engaging. I hope I didn’t took too much of your time.
Thanks for that. Food for many many thoughts. I'll maybe see you here cos I don't think I'll be seeing many people anymore on the place where I mentioned the pyrrhicness…. Go well.
Good to see you on here and looking forward to reading more of your analysis of the crazy dangerous times we are in. And getting ideas for resistance.
You may dislike it, but evolutionary psychology is a legitimate scientific field, and denying that isn’t that much different from covid conspiracy. Maybe you could discuss it with Emma Hilton, I expect her to be less skeptical than you and I’d bet you may listen to her more than to me.
I’m a materialist, radical leftist, my mom grew me embedded in feminist theory. I’m sorry to be oppositional, even more sorry that me writing this in all likelihood won’t prompt a self reflection. But I think that many who, like you, saw how woke pseudo-left allowed the right an open goal are now at danger of using similar tactics and commiting similar errors. Yes, Trump and Musk are dangerous. No, Musk DID NOT give a nazi salute. Even Julie Bindel clearly outline how stupid it is to play this card. In a similar way, behind every conspiracy there is a kernel of truth, and if you want to fight the conspiratorial side, you’d better acknowledge the truth they are distorting. Because of this, even incels and MRAs have their LEGITIMATE concerns. If you refuse to take those into account because “principles”, the outcome will be exactly the same as TRAs accusing TERFs of being nazis: you’ll simply give them ammunitions. EDIT for clarification, what I am trying to say is, of course you don’t want to become a fascist in order to fight fascists more effectively, but you better listen to what drives people to them: they probably have reasons one should adress, not scorn.
Evolutionary psychology is even MORE legitimate than that and still you want to follow a path of science denialism. Good luck with that, I for one may not be an ally on this.
I have published several pieces on evolutionary psychology in The Radical Notion, there is also an entire section on it in my PhD thesis. I also teach its primary texts and their critique at my school. It is a source of constant irritation to me that people always insist that feminist skepticism about evolutionary psychology is an uninformed knee jerk response without ever bothering to acknowledge, read or respond to the feminist critiques of it, and simply accuse us of science denial and tell us to do some ‘self-reflection.’ I have reflected on it, at some great length, and I don’t accept that the modular theory of mind that undergirds it, nor the extreme opposition between nature and culture which informs much of its argumentation, are ‘scientific facts.’ I am not denying that evolution has some impact on human behaviour. That would be idiotic. I am denying that complex human social behaviour can be reductively explained by reference to evolutionary strategies that are encoded in modular and strictly heritable ways, and in a manner that often entirely effaces the role of history and culture. It’s not a strict opposition (see argument above), and while evolution no doubt impacts human behaviour, it does not strictly determine it. Any claim that it does is as bonkers as a claim that evolution has no role in impacting our behaviour, and the role of those claims in reifying existing social arrangements and dominance hierarchies, as well as justifying social darwinsm/neoliberalism, is not accidental or politically neutral.
The classic example here is ‘The Natural History of Rape’ - which is highly relevant as this is what Louise Perry relies on in ‘The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.’ Perry’s presentation of that evidence is exemplary of the way evolutionary psychology is used in anti-feminist ways, and has played one part in the anti-feminist drift of the GCs. She does a version of what you have done here, viz. ‘The feminists just ignore this important and compelling scientific case,’ while actually ignoring that there is an entire book published in which the argument of the book is critiqued, including essays by feminists. When we published Gender Critical Disputes, Maya Forstater read the first sentence and fired off an evopsych informed rebuttal without even stopping to notice that there was an entire essay critiquing evopysch later in the collection, and when she did notice, she accused the author of ‘evolution denial.’ Evopysch is not settled science in the way climate science is, and critiquing evopsych is not the same as covid conspiracy, because models of the genetic heritiability and determination of human behaviour rest on theoretical assumptions about how the human mind works and its determination by genetics that are not scientifically proven. If people want to engage with the critiques of evolutionary psychology then we can start to have a conversation. If they just want to insistently repeat the claim that we are science deniers without even acknowledging the critiques, then we can’t.
If you want to engage with the critiques Marina Strinkovsky’s is published in Gender Critical Disputes, which is available on The Radical Notion website and Judith Green’s critique of Louise Perry is here https://theradicalnotion.org/powerful-critique-dismal-prescription-a-review-of-the-case-against-the-sexual-revolution/.
The section of my PhD dealing with Thornhill and Palmer is on my blog https://janeclarejones.com/2023/04/22/rape-culture-and-evolutionary-psychology/.
I published that after an argument on twitter with Maya Forstater which began with her asserting that rape exists because it is an effective evolutionary strategy. That argument went on for about 10 days, with Maya motte-and-baileying between ‘rape is a sucessful evolutionary strategy (which would imply that it is a modular behaviour that can be genetically encoded and inherited) and ‘evolution has got something to do with rape (well. duh).’
Of course, none of the reactionary feminists and their various advocates actually bothered to read or respond to this. Because its so much more fun just to point at feminists, call them science deniers, say they think everything is culture, and then repeat your grand claims about how whatever patriarchal bullshit you want to justify is determined by evolution when it isn’t. I mean, it’s not like straw-womaning feminists has ever caused any political problems previously is it? Oh, wait.
Thank you for your long reply, though it doesn’t seem you are replying to what I actually said but to a strawman version of it.
I also freely admit that I’m not that informed because I’m a physicist, not an evolutionary biologist or an evolutionary psychologist (and I even have reservations on those field based on mine). With that caveat, it seems to me you are strawmanning even in your critique of it. Surely you’re not claiming that Louise Perry is a relevant expert of the field, so your critiques of her don’t seem relevant. If one is misusing a field, it doesn’t detract from the field. The fact racism exist doesn’t undermine the fact that one CAN use DNA analysis to determine ancestry. If one has a legitimate scholarly critique of evopsych they should publish it in the relevant peer reviewed journals -unless they are treating the entire field like homeopathy (so of course even if relevant journals existed one would reject it on other basis -meaning evidence from other scientific fields).
In the charitable intepretation of what you said here in the replies, it still seems to me that what you are objecting to are misinterpretations of what the field says (which to me seems simply the parts to which you agree with). Dawkins pointed out he doesn’t understand feminist’s skepticism of genetics, because saying a thing is genetic in origin doesn’t mean essentializing it: if one can fight against social conditioning (nurture is not destiny), why couldn’t one fight in the same way against biology (nature isn’t destiny either).
Since trans right’s activists attacked biology, “anti racists” attacked biology, one has every reason to be wary of these attacks, even if you weren’t on that side of the debate.
I’ll try to read your pieces asap; you are correct I should engage before criticizing, but I didn’t attack the Radical Notion’s piece or your thesis. I outlined a single passage from your post (to which I agree in general otherwise I wouldn’t be here). And I don’t think it’s unfair to judge a sentence for what it says in the context in which it’s written. I stand by my summary impression that the way you put it, along with covid conspiracy, didn’t sound nuanced as it did in your replies.
I am interested in the way in which different discourses are being used in the process of right wing radicalisation, and of course, the way in which the GCs have drifted rightwards is going to be in my mind, because that is what I have first hand experience of observing. Although it is my intention with this project to get into a much bigger frame than that. I do not want to spend the rest of my life trying to engage in argument with the GCs because engaging in argument is no longer what they do. Evolutionary psychology and its use in political argument has played a role in that rightward drift. The ground is always constructed as a clear opposition between some kind of determinism and some kind of radical construction, and this is a false opposition. The right identitiarians are playing one card, and the left identitiarins the other card, and its really fucking tedious. Because pretty much everyone in the world with their head screwed on knows that human social phenomena is an interaction of nature and culture. And yet we have to keep getting caught in this pingpong match over and over again. The use of evolutionary psychology to go ‘see stupid feminists, everything isn’t just culture, oh, btw, rape is inevitable’ is a central case in point.
I’m not stawmanning you. I was responding to your comment that your commenting here wouldn’t lead to self-reflection on my part, or that I should talk to Emma Hilton about it. That implies that this is something I haven’t thought about, or talked to people who have some expertise in, and this repeats exactly the caricature used by popular advocates of evolutionary psychology to dismiss ‘silly feminists who don’t know about science.’ I take science very seriously. I am an enormous believer in the scientific method (although it is not the right method for finding out all the things). I don’t make empirical claims about the world without checking those claims. And I have thought and read a lot about evolutionary psychology, it’s theoretical assumptions, the extent to which it conforms to the scientific method, and the purpose of its use in political discourse. I am not the only person relatively well versed in science or the study of evolution that doesn’t consider evolutionary psychology to be straightforward science. Because it isn’t. Because its claims about how human behaviour works and is related to genes are not scientifically demonstrated claims, its claims about the evolutionary past are not subject to falsification in line with normal scientific method, and it is frequently and transparently used for political ends by a process of reasoning backwards from our current social arrangements to the unreachable past in order to reify the present. Humans have all kinds of basic drives that have come to us from our animal past and our early pre-history. It’s a really long way from acknowledging those drives as factors in our behaviour to claims about the determination of complex behaviours and social structures. And evopsych likes to just bound right over that distance and then call anyone who points at it an evolution denier. That’s political rhetoric. Not science.
Re: self-reflection. Fair enough, I may have been unpolite. That said, I’m afraid I’ll have to reiterate my unpoliteness, because I do have the impression self-reflection is lacking. By this, I don’t mean in any way you haven’t thought about it a great deal. But it seems to me that if you say The ground is always constructed as a clear opposition between some kind of determinism and some kind of radical construction, and this is a false opposition (I totally agree), then it would be a good practice to avoid doing the same; meaning, one can’t easily dismiss a whole field. I had already read Strinkovksy’s piece but I had forgotten it because, yes, it seems full of strawmanning and uncharitable readings (I just re-read it; I’ll read the others asap). Just as an example of how ludicrous the article is, it goes to the length of doubting the peppered moth evolution: the caterpillars of the dark-winged forms also have a slightly higher survival rate (…) so something more is going on, but this fact tends to be left out entirely in the popular retelling; except we know that the popular retelling has a point since with when pollution decreased populations reverted to white. If one wants to criticize something they would do better to avoid this kind of “arguments”. The modular mind reference is a quote from a skeptic piece which is already criticizing evopsych: if one wants to avoid suspicion of strawmanning, surely they could quote directly from supporters of the theory instead.
What I mean by lack of self-reflection is one cannot honestly criticize Pinker for straw-womanning feminists as blank slatists and then proceed to do exactly the same (reversed) mischaracterization.
I referenced Emma simply because I’d bet she would be more inclined to give Pinker a chance, and I also had the impression you personally knew each other and hold each other in esteem (while I have reasons to doubt my ability, as a stranger, to influence your thoughts).
As for I am an enormous believer in the scientific method (although it is not the right method for finding out all the things), if I wanted to be provocative I’d say that feminist’s analysis (or the marxists one, which I think we both endorse to a degree) has an even less strong “scientific” basis, but we still take it seriously nonetheless. I don’t think it’s fair to criticize evopsych’s method as not being rigorous enough while simultaneously holding that the scientific method itself cannot be an all-purpose thing. When I was at the university (physics), I was infamous among fellow students because I always replied to the hypoteses you needed to make the mathematical analysis work with “clearly, they are all false”. If one part of the scientific method is experimental reproducibility, one could say that cosmology isn’t scientific because the universe’s evolution isn’t repeatable. This may be pendantically true, but one can’t use this to dismiss cosmology (or darwinian evolution) as non-scientific. Most of the objections to evopsych seem of this nature to me: uncharitable, holding it to an unreasonable degree of robustness and rigour it cannot have, and thus miguided.
The fact that evopsych has been (mis)used to “justify” all sort of right-wing unwarranted conclusion isn’t a legitimate critique of the field, it’s simply a legitimate critique of the misuse. Of course it’s important to point out that the conclusion “reached” in this way are wrong, but to criticize the field as a whole is unwarranted, unnecessary, and can ultimately backfire (and rightly so). Pinker is right in saying that the truth can’t be sexist. I’ll quote Dawkins and Sokal against the TRAs use of “sex assigned at birth”: “it is never justified to distort the facts in the service of a social or political cause, no matter how just. If the cause is truly just, then it can be defended in full acceptance of the facts about the real world”. Strinkovsky’s singling out Pinker’s use of the word “truth” strikes me as precisely this misguided attitude.
Anyway, thanks for engaging. I hope I didn’t took too much of your time.
Thanks for that. Food for many many thoughts. I'll maybe see you here cos I don't think I'll be seeing many people anymore on the place where I mentioned the pyrrhicness…. Go well.
Good idea. That place is fucking grim.