For a while now I’ve written the occasional post about claims that there are no evolved and genetically based differences between male and female behaviors, brains, or hormones. This claim is based not on science but on ideology, stemming from the fear that if you show differences between men and women in these respects, you will somehow justify a biologically based sexism: that women are inferior to men in some ways and thus can be treated as subordinates.
This “blank-slateism” has also been applied to differences between ethnic groups and is often used to dismiss the entire field of evolutionary psychology—for the same reasons. The ideological denialism of differences between any groups rests on the premise that difference equals inferiority and justifies unequal treatment and bigotry.
Well, leaving aside the possibility that genetically based trait differences may reveal better rather than worse performance of marginalized groups, the ideological dismissal of…
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