Evolutionary psychology is beloved of a certain kind of "rationalist" who loves a good just-so story that casts some system that advantages him as biologically inevitable, as in, "Honey, the only reason I'm screwing my undergrads is because of bonobos."
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There's a tried-and-true formula for evo-psych storytelling: first, find an animal that acts in a certain way. Next, make up a story explaining that behavior. Finally, project that behavior on proto-hominids whose social lives are totally unknown and unknowable.
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Put a bow on it by explaining that these animals show that these protohominids did whatever it is people are angry at you about, and then declare that your DNA requires you to do that.
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Evo-psych doesn't have to be sexist, but it usually is, and so it usually falls to women to debunk these idiotic claims.
A good example is Jordan Peterson, whose theories of gender essentialism are built on the mating habits of a certain lobster species.
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A good example is Jordan Peterson, whose theories of gender essentialism are built on the mating habits of a certain lobster species.
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Periodically, women, especially marine biologists, have done the important, thankless work of explaining that Peterson is cherry-picking here. Take @baileys's incredible 2018 thread on marine invertebrate reproduction:
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Steinworth wants to know why lobster sex is the exemplar we should use to explain human sexuality, rather than, say, sea hares, hermaphrodites that"lay their eggs orgy-style with each individual simultaneously acting as male and female in multiple couplings."
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Sea hares know how to have a good time!
"If only two are available, they take turns being 'male' and 'female.'"
The genre of "women scientists explaining why evo-psych is pseudoscientific horseshit" is large and excellent, but one practitioner stands out above all others.
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"If only two are available, they take turns being 'male' and 'female.'"
The genre of "women scientists explaining why evo-psych is pseudoscientific horseshit" is large and excellent, but one practitioner stands out above all others.
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Anne Innis Dagg recently won the Order of Canada for her outstanding work as an evolutionary biologist. Dagg faced vicious discrimination throughout her distinguished scientific career.
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She was never tenured, even after decades at the University of Waterloo, where she was my undergrad advisor.
In 2004, Dagg published "Love of Shopping Is Not a Gene," the ur-text of the field.
boingboing.net/2009/11/04/lov…
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In 2004, Dagg published "Love of Shopping Is Not a Gene," the ur-text of the field.
boingboing.net/2009/11/04/lov…
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It's a short, sprightly book, as much an ethnography of evo-psych supporters as it is a scientific debunking of the field.
(If you're interested in learning more about Dagg, she's the subject of a brilliant new doc, "The Woman Who Loved Giraffes")
pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/plu…
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(If you're interested in learning more about Dagg, she's the subject of a brilliant new doc, "The Woman Who Loved Giraffes")
pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/plu…
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The women who do this important work really epitomize the "everything the men do, but backwards and in heels" nature of so much anti-misogynist work. They have to out-rationalism the "rationalists" who promote evo-psych.
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And they have to do so while being as entertaining as the just-so pseudoscientific tales they're debunking, without being able to cheat by presenting their own fancy as science.
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Which brings me to this week's backwards-in-heels champion, @RebeccaWatson, AKA Skepchick, a frequent target of harassment by terrible men and a fearless science communicator who is as entertaining as she is correct.
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Watson's latest is "Why Do Humans Have Sex in Private? Evolutionary Psychology has a Guess" - a teardown of Yitzchak Ben-Mocha's evidence-free paper arguing that we screw in private because men don't want rivals to get horny and screw their mates.
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…
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royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…
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The paper may be evidence free, but it's not devoid of argument. In the grand tradition of evo-psych, Ben-Mocha combines an observation about contemporary norms (the propensity of survey respondents to have sex in private), which he then projects back to prehistory.
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As Watson notes, "behaviorally and cognitively modern humans have been around for about 50,000 years, and unfortunately we don’t have many extant sex tapes from the earliest part of that period."
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Ben-Mocha proposes this is genetic, locating a bird species, the Arabian babbler, which seeks out private matings. Ben-Mocha proposes (but has no means of validating) explanations for this, decides that one is more likely than others, and therefore it's probably true.
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Having decided Arabian babblers are "cooperative breeders" he concludes that humans are probably also genetically disposed to screw privately because of the same imaginary reason that one species of avians, who genetically diverged from mammals millions of years ago are.
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Watson really does good work laying out both the thinness of this paper and the absurdity of its warm response.
If videos aren't your thing, here's a transcript:
skepchick.org/2020/08/why-do…
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If videos aren't your thing, here's a transcript:
skepchick.org/2020/08/why-do…
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Here's her closer: "there is zero evidence that you inherited a preference for fucking in private from your parents, that you fuck in private because men want other men to still be their bros, or that’s even what is happening in bird populations the study is based on."
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"You may as well say that humans evolved a gene that allows us to hold in a fart around someone we find attractive. Not everything is an adaptive trait."
If you like Watson's work and want to see more of it, here's her Patreon:
patreon.com/rebecca
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If you like Watson's work and want to see more of it, here's her Patreon:
patreon.com/rebecca
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