A couple weeks ago I posted on Steemit an essay titled Thoughts on Women, Oppression and Porn. In that essay I shared some well-established but little-understood conclusions of evolutionary psychology, namely that women (in general and not in every instance) have been endowed by evolution with tremendous but mostly unconscious social power by virtue of their sex appeal. I further explained how men (in general and not in every instance), aided oddly enough in recent times by traditional feminists, have worked to deprive women of the social influence that results from their sex appeal under the pretext of protecting women's "honor" or "humanity". I noted how both men and traditional feminists insist that it is dishonorable for women to exploit their inherent sexuality to gain advantage in life, and how both have sought to suppress their ability to do so.
Last night fellow Steemster @veralynn posted a thoughtful critique of my original essay in which she made several counterpoints. The purpose of this post is to address her counterpoints as best as I can.
(Photo credit: Me. Subject: @steemed-open)
The substance of @veralynn's criticism of my thoughts begins with this comment by her:
Not all women (people) want to be empowered sexually, so the ideal that it is “woman’s birthright” to hold sexual power is a sexist stereotype. Implying that (through a born-male, heteronormative perception) women are purely sexual influencing beings is a primitive ideal that helps uphold a patriarchal society. It is borderline Freudian.
In making this comment, @veralynn uses a common rhetorical technique that's actually an informal logical fallacy. Specifically, she slays a straw man, for I never contended that "all" people want to be empowered sexually, nor did I ever say that women are "purely sexual influencing beings", or anything remotely approaching it. Rather, I was quick to anticipate this particular straw man rebuttal to my argument when I wrote the following as the opening paragraph of my original essay:
Disclaimer: In this post I'm going to talk about men and women in general terms and "on the average". I understand completely that not every man is stereotypically male, that not every woman is stereotypically female, and that gender identity can be fluid and even binary. Nonetheless, science still makes meaningful and important distinctions between men and women "on the average", and that's what I discuss here.
So, @veralynn is actually correct that not everyone wants to be sexually empowered and that women are not purely sexual influencing beings, it's just irrelevant to my original contention. And to the extent that she intends to suggests that because we can't make distinctions between men and women in every instance we shouldn't make them in any instance, well...humanity would be in dire straights if we applied similar logic to every dataset.
Next, since my original conclusions flow pretty naturally from the findings of evolutionary psychology, @veraylynn seeks to undermine the significance of those findings. She contends, for example, that:
Evolutionarily speaking, humans are capable of developing different behaviours genetically and adaptively. People are slowly realizing that we aren’t just monkeys, purely motivated by mating and hetero reproduction. This is evolution: the part of the mind that built civilizations, art, invented technology, and questioned society.
However, in making this argument, she does little more than successfully slay another straw man. Evolutionary psychology does not contend that humans are incapable of "developing different behaviors genetically and adaptively." Nor does it contend that people are just "monkeys" who are "purely motivated by mating and...reproduction". And, in fact, evolutionary psychology explains precisely how the rise of "civilizations, art, [and] invented technology" was mostly a consequence of human pursuit of hard-wired biological urges and drives rather than springing from some other more enlightened "part of the mind".
Evolutionary psychology (and all forms of psychology, actually) simply insists that humans are motivated as much or more by unconscious factors--biological urges, societal conditioning, cultural values, mental scripts and habits, paradigms, etc.--as by conscious willpower or authentic self-expression. In fact, science has shown pretty conclusively that what humans perceive subjectively to be free will is often just an ex post facto rationalization of a preexisting but unconscious urge or motive.
In short, evolutionary psychology does not contend that humans are incapable of overcoming our unconscious biological urges, at least for short periods of time and in isolated instances, just that they very rarely do so, at least not en masse. Let's take hunger as an example. Hunger is a deeply-rooted biological urge that has a huge impact on human motivations and actions. Humans will go to extraordinary lengths to satisfy hunger--they will work, they will steal, they will fight, they will migrate, etc. Can humans, via an exercise of will, and in pursuit of some political or social agenda, choose instead to starve to death rather than to pursue food? Of course they could. But does this happen? Very, very rarely. So rarely that studying these outliers is of little use in predicting the conduct of humans as a whole.
Does @veralynn deny that humans as a whole will go to great lengths to satisfy hunger, or that much of society is organized around this basis human urge? Or does she instead contend that the deep, biological drive for sex is somehow different from the drive for hunger--that humans will organize their society around food but not sex? If the latter, then she fails to explain how or why or to offer up any evidence in support of her contention. And, if not, then her implied argument that biological urges are insufficient to explain human motivation and society collapses.
Despite arguing that humans are motivated by a more noble "part of the mind" than unconscious, biological urges, @veralynn inadvertently concedes the contrary by labeling my original arguments (actually, her own straw man version of my original arguments) "borderline Freudian". By that she meant this: Whilst "my" sexist viewpoints were ostensibly anchored in the findings of science, they were (she implies) really just an after-the-fact rationalization of my own secret and deep-seeded dominant male libido. Perhaps @veralyann thinks it's only males that are "monkeys"?
Toward the end of her post, she again attempts to undermine the findings of evolutionary psychology when she says:
Note that while I do not agree with the evolutionary psychology ideologies stated in the article in question, I do agree that there is a problem with gender discrimination that must be confronted.
Ideologies? Really!? I cited books by noted and respected evolutionary scientists, not political ideologues. Evolutionary psychology is only an "ideology" like evolution itself is an "ideology". The findings of evolutionary psychology are, in fact, very well-supported by scientific research across multiple species (not just humans) and disciplines, much more so than any other branch of psychology. Nobody (by which I mean almost nobody) who lacks conscious or unconscious religious motivations denies the findings of evolution today. And similarly, nobody who lacks a conscious or unconscious political/social agenda denies the findings of evolutionary psychology today. Despite this, @veralynn offers up absolutely no rational basis for her "disagreement" with its conclusions. Clearly, her beef lies primarily in the fact that evolutionary psychology undermines her traditional feminist political and social agenda and not with the underlying scientific process itself.
At this point I'd like to move on to a point upon which @veralynn and I come a little closer to agreeing--on differentiating between sexual empowerment and sexual objectification. She offers up this helpful distinction:
If the person being subjected has the power, than it is empowerment.
However, if that person has little or no power, they are being objectified.
Ask yourself: Is the person aware and consenting to sexualizing the situation?
If the answer is No, it is most likely objectification.
If the answer is Yes, then it is definitely empowering!
While I agree that nobody has the right to be physically molested, sexually or otherwise, without their consent, I have two issues with her proposed test. The first is that it seems to suggest that "power" is something given by others or granted by society. It's not! Power is something that is assumed. Power results from one "owning" oneself completely. Power is inherent to the individual and is either exercised or abandoned by choice. Women will not, in fact cannot, gain power and influence by simply shaming men into ceding it or by lobbying governments into bestowing it. They will have it only when they grasp it--when they claim their birthright for themselves, and when they seek to lovingly exploit every natural advantage that they have without shame or compromise, when they market all of their natural gifts the same way that an engineer does or a pro athlete does.
In short, a woman being ogled by men almost invariably has the power. The only issue is whether she recognizes it or not, and whether she exploits it adeptly or not. If she fails to recognize or exploit it, then the larger question is...why? Certainly some women may simply be naturally disinclined to exercise the power, but that's (evolutionarily speaking) a definite minority. Instead, I contend that women concede their sexual power largely because they have been conditioned by men and by feminists to overlook it, or worse to be ashamed of it and lay it down. Women have been conned for centuries into thinking that when men are attracted to them, it's actually the men who have the power and are being "dominant". What a joke!! When an employer seeks to engage the services of a highly-desirable and in-demand engineer, who has the "power"? The employer? Hardly.
My second issue with her test is the idea that nobody should be "objectified" without consent. In my view that's simply pie-in-the-sky fantasy land type of thinking. Evolution programmed us to be sexually aroused by certain things (mainly other humans), and that's true regardless of whether the thing knows we are aroused by it or not. You being aroused by me doesn't "objectify" or "dehumanize" me in any possible way, even if I'm unaware of it or I'm powerless to quell your lust--well, unless I've been conned into thinking that I should feel "objectified" or "dehumanized" as a result. But, what if instead I had been taught that I was empowered by the attention and I knew how to exploit it?
In short, I'm grateful for @veralynn engaging in dialogue on this important subject. I hope my comments above are taken constructively and are useful to the reader in interpreting and weighing our two prior posts.