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"Girls Love Their Dolls:" Why Bio-Determinism Is More Harmful Than You Might Think

2/11/2013

11 Comments

 
Suzanne Venker, author of How to Choose a Husband and make Peace With Marriage, wrote a short column on foxnews.com last week that incapsulates a whole bevy of misunderstandings about how gender works, what the goals of the feminist movement are, and even about the logical interpretation of evidence.

The column's central claim is that the feminist movement is responsible for the supposed "decline" of heterosexual marriage.  Because women have been "told" that they are equal to men, they pursue goals ultimately incompatible with their greater desire to have a family.  As Venker says in the video interview posted above that column, "Women have become overdeveloped in their masculine side...  because they have been groomed for a life in the marketplace, rather than a life at home."

At their core, she writes, men and women are different.  People with children "know [that] little girls love their dolls and boys just want to kick that ball."  Men and women are different creations, and as a matter of biological determinism, they inherently want different things.  Venker then cites continuing gender inequality as proof that men and women are different: "Men and women may be capable of doing many of the same things, but that doesn't mean they want to. That we don't have more female CEOs or stay-at-home dads proves this in spades."

So, let me get this straight: Gender inequality is proof of inborn gender differences?  What a useful concept.  Now we know why there are so few obese movie stars: obese people don't want to be movie stars.  And why there are so few out gay politicians: Gay people don't want to be politicians.  And why, proportionally, there are so few black partners at big law firms: black people have little desire to be partners at big law firms. 

See how easy life can be if you just ignore social processes and assume that all human outcomes are solely a product of personal choice? 

Venker posits that the whole notion of "equality" is problematic.  She writes that "the problem with equality is that it implies two things are interchangeable – meaning one thing can be substituted for the other with no ramifications. That is what feminists would have us believe, and anyone who contradicts this dogma is branded sexist."

I don't know where she got this notion of equality, but it's not one I've ever heard.  I've always thought equality meant two people had the same amount of value, the same opportunities, the same rights.  I didn't know it meant we could just swap one person, willy nilly, for another.  I thought it meant that I, a youngish white lesbian, and Thomas Sowell, a straight black 80-something conservative, each got one vote, the same right to counsel, and the same chance to protest a government decision in a public location.  Under Venker's logic, equality actually means that you could swap Sowell and me in virtually any circumstance "with no ramifications."  To this nonsense, I doubt either Sowell or I would agree--and I don't think it would make us racist, sexist, or any other "-ist" (any more than I'd be bucking feminist notions of equality by giving my seat to an elderly woman on a bus).

Venker's argument would make more sense if we lived in a world where men and women weren't socialized so differently--a place where little boys and little girls were treated the same, where parents-to-be weren't gifted with different sets of toys based on the sex of their child, where there were equal numbers of male and female role models in every profession, where women's "formal" clothing didn't constitute teetering heels and displays of breasts and skin, where there wasn't one collection of traits associated with masculinity and an entirely different one associated with femininity.  We do not live in that world.  And because we do not, we are foolish to assume that anything we do is just a product of biology. 

Of course we are influenced by our genes.  (Heck, all the socialization in the world didn't stop me from being a dyke.)  But our genes merely set the stage.  We grow into a version of our selves based on how we are socialized.  A little boy jumps around and he's told, "You'll make a great basketball player!"  A little girl jumps around and she's told, "You'll make a great dancer!"  From day one, we are mired in social experiences--and many of these social experiences are heavily, heavily gendered.  It is not as simple as parents forcing little girls to wear dresses or making little boys play baseball.  Each of us is born with a hundred different possible, valid versions of our "selves" inside, and the collection of possible selves is different for each person.  But which version we actually grow into is a complicated dance between predisposition and socialization (and I'd wager that socialization is doing a lot of the leading). 

On one level, arguments like Venker's are easily dismissed because they seem so patently sexist--it's easy to chuckle at someone who thinks society is going to hell in a handbasket because we're ignoring biological destiny.  It's also easy to roll our eyes at the (thoroughly and measurably absurd) notion that women are being "groomed for the marketplace" and have overdeveloped "masculine sides."

But I think it's more invidious than that.  By misstating and oversimplifying the arguments of feminist and gender theorists, and by downplaying or ignoring the vastly different ways in which men and women are socialized, Venker becomes an apologist for material inequality.  Why, after all, should we work harder to equalize opportunity if existing disparities prove intrinsic differences?  If equal rights on paper make opportunities equal, then anyone who squawks and protests about inequality and wants to improve the world is just engaging in a silly, anachronistic waste of time.
11 Comments
Anne
2/11/2013 05:42:30 am

<3

Reply
Searching4Self
2/11/2013 07:29:16 am

So well said. Thank you for meeting the insanity with cogent argument. Too often responses to what is, ultimately, crazed rambling, are in the same vein and nothing good comes of it. Your thoughtful response is so welcome and needed! Thank you!

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Chris link
2/11/2013 09:27:52 am

What's creepy is that people still think this.

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Jess link
2/11/2013 06:28:31 pm

This kind of stuff is so wrong on so many levels that sometimes it feels too exhausting to argue against it - so thank you for taking the trouble and doing it so cogently.

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womandrogyne
2/12/2013 01:46:27 am

"But which version we actually grow into is a complicated dance between predisposition and socialization (and I'd wager that socialization is doing a lot of the leading)."
And eventually some of us have to say "Sorry, I don't do that dance, it's bad for my backbone. But this one's fun..."
The phobic rhetoric of And This Is Why We're More Normal Than You should be left behind in the school playground - oh, I know, it shouldn't be there either, but you know what I mean.

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Heather link
2/12/2013 02:52:39 am

Her article hurts my brain. No seriously. I'm in physical pain over here. There are so many things that are wrong with her argument and BW you eloquently pointed out so many of them. (In fact, your last paragraph absolutely blew my mind. It was perfect. What could we add on top of that? I had some things as I read through ... but your last paragraph blew them out of the water.)

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Victoria link
2/12/2013 03:29:13 am

It's terrifying to me that women with intelligence waste their words on misinformation and the destruction of genuine equality.. It's even more terrifying that she believes it herself.

Always love your take on things. Thanks for sharing this.

Reply
Caughtinyoureyes
2/12/2013 04:36:11 am

Each year during my lessons on human sexuality to sixth graders, I talk about gender conditioning. We talk about "boy" and "girl" toys. We laugh at dolls and action figures, which all of us girls agree are dolls and all the boys don't. We talk about dresses and going without shirts after a certain age. I bring a broad spectrum of gendering ideas into the discussion. What is so scary and damned frustrating after 35 years is that there is a semi large group of boys who are still convinced that playing with trucks will make girls lesbians, and boys with dolls will turn out gay. Extrapolate that out to aging, and, well, we have what we've always had in our society.

Reply
Ed link
2/12/2013 06:45:36 am

When one considers that the number of people who benefit most from Patriarchy is almost unbelievably small compared to the total number of humans living under it, an unavoidable question arises; "How can they get away with it?"

People like Venker are not even close to being at the top of the food chain. She gets to post stuff at Foxnews.com, how much better off is she than, say, a lesbian with a thing for ties who has a popular blog?

The lesbian has patriarchal forces working against her that Venker does not. But Venker does not enjoy the most delicious fruits of patriarchy because she's a woman. If she really wanted a seat at the table, she wouldn't even get close. The best she could manage would be a marriage to a guy with a lifetime membership in the "Old Boys Club"

So why does she, and hundreds of millions of women around the world, support it so vociferously? Why would Venker be content to believe that marriage to a rich guy is the best she can do for herself?

Patriarchy, like it's twin brother, Capitalism can only function for as long as it's victims continue to be complicit in their own victimization. When the capitalist economy is bad and unemployment lines are long, people like us will fight for the "privilege" of holding a job that doesn't even pay the bills.

The word will get out that the heart of the problem is that "others" are taking "our" jobs. "Welfare Queens" are living off the fat of the land while "real" Americans work harder than ever, only to loose more and more ground.

The people at the top are hardly inconvenienced. They'll suffer monetary losses that will be put right in time, all they have to do is wait. All the real benefits will accrue to them because that's the way the system is designed.

Why do so many people continue to victimize themselves? Patriarchy and Capitalism absolutely will not function without this self-regulating mechanism. I don't understand it.

Reply
Kaitlin
2/12/2013 08:34:54 pm

I thought you might appreciate the following wrench thrown into Fox's newsfeed. The link is below, but apparently one of the photos used to illustrate a happy heterosexual couple . . . didn't "perform".

http://equallywed.com/headlines/1938-fox-news-mistakenly-uses-lesbian-wedding-photo-on-article-about-choosing-a-husband-and-how-feminism-has-ruined-the-institute-of-marriage.html

Reply
Caroline
2/13/2013 07:31:22 am

I'm with Heather and Ed. I couldn't even watch the Fox video clip. It just seems so obvious that patriarchy and capitalism benefit the few not the many, and that the people who support each system the loudest are definitely not the ones benefiting. So why?

"What about the 'war on men'?" Really? Patriarchy is the war on men AND women... Patriarchy forces men into one box and women into another. It pressures men to prove their viability or else they're deemed worthless and tells women they're worthless to begin with so don't even try.

Frustrating...

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