From a later section of the chapter:
‘Every society must operate with a theory of human nature, and our intellectual mainstream is committed to one [Author’s italics]. The theory is seldom articulated or overtly embraced, but it lies at the heart of a vast number of beliefs and policies. Bertrand Russell wrote, ‘Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.’
For intellectuals today, many of those convictions are about psychology and social relations. I will refer to those convictions as the Blank Slate: the idea that the human mind has no inherent structure and can be inscribed at will by society or ourselves.
That theory of human nature – namely, that it barely exists – is the topic of this book.’
Pinker later goes on to state that, ‘The Blank Slate has become the secular religion of modern intellectual life’. The Blank Slate theory of human nature is commonly espoused by feminists, explicitly or implicitly. Pinker convincingly demonstrates that the theory is deeply flawed. From the same book:
‘Contrary to popular belief, parents in contemporary America do not treat their sons and daughters very differently. A recent assessment of 172 studies involving 28,000 children found that boys and girls are given similar amounts of encouragement, warmth, nurturance, restrictiveness, discipline, and clarity of communication. The only substantial difference was that about two-thirds of the boys were discouraged from playing with dolls, especially by their fathers, out of a fear that they would become gay. (Boys who prefer girls’ toys often do turn out gay, but forbidding them the toys does not change the outcome.)
Nor do differences between boys and girls depend on their observing masculine behavior in their fathers and feminine behavior in their mothers. When Hunter has two mommies, he acts just as much like a boy as if he had a mommy and a daddy.
Things are not looking good for the theory that boys and girls are born identical except for their genitalia, with all other differences coming from the way society treats them. If that were true, it would be an amazing coincidence that in every society the coin flip that assigns each sex to one set of roles would land the same way (or that one fateful flip at the dawn of the species should have been maintained without interruption across all the upheavals of the past 100,000 years).
It would be just as amazing that, time and again, society’s arbitrary assignments matched the predictions that a Martian biologist would make for our species based on our anatomy and the distribution of our genes. It would seem odd that the hormones that make us male and female in the first place also modulate the characteristically male and female mental traits, both decisively in early brain development and in smaller degrees throughout our lives.
It would be all the more odd that a second genetic mechanism differentiating the sexes (genomic imprinting) also installs characteristic male and female talents. Finally, two key predictions of the social construction theory – that boys treated as girls will grow up with girls’ minds, and that differences between boys and girls can be traced to differences in how their parents treat them – have gone down in flames.
Of course, just because many sex differences are rooted in biology does not mean that one sex is superior, that the differences will emerge for all people in all circumstances, that discrimination against a person based on sex is justified, or that people should be coerced into doing things typical of their sex. But neither are the differences without consequences.
By now many people are happy to say what was unsayable in polite company a few years ago: that males and females do not have interchangeable minds... But among many professional women the existence of sex differences is still a source of discomfort. As one colleague said to me, ‘Look, I know that males and females are not identical. I see it in my kids, I see it in myself, I know about the research. I can’t explain it, but when I read claims about sex differences, steam comes out of my ears.’ ’
The phenomenon of women becoming angry and irrational whenever their viewpoints are challenged is one that men learn to live with, often by feigning to agree with the women in their lives.
The reader interested in the biological basis of gender differences, and how they manifest themselves in the real world, will find much of interest in Why Men Don’t Iron: The Real Science of Gender Studies (1998) by Dr Anne Moir and her husband Bill. Truly a book well ahead of its time. Anne began her career as an academic scientist, winning a Doctorate from Oxford University for her genetic research. She’s now a respected and widely published authority on the rapidly developing science of neuropsychology, and the author of three international bestsellers. Her website is well worth visiting: Brainsexmatters.com.
For an illustration of how men’s and women’s natures differ, we need look no further than the Women’s Institutes. The combined membership of Women’s Institutes in the United Kingdom is around 205,000. They ‘play a unique role in providing women with educational opportunities and the chance to build new skills, to take part in a wide variety of activities and to campaign on issues that matter to them and their communities’. Membership is, not unnaturally, restricted to women.
If men had an equivalent body to the Women’s Institute – the Men’s Institute, say – and excluded women from its membership, doubtless the body would face demands from women to admit them, and change its name to the People’s Institute.
Men happily recognise that while men and women enjoy the company of the opposite sex, at times they welcome just the company of their own sex, which is why men have no problem with bodies such as the Women’s Institute, or with The Orange Prize for Fiction (a book competition open only to authoresses), or women-only competitions in sports, even when men don’t enjoy an advantage on physical strength grounds (snooker, darts etc.). But do women accord men the same courtesy? Of course not. The media these days rarely report stories of women’s hostility towards men excluding women from their activities – presumably readers are heartily fed up with the subject, and examples of men excluding women from anything are now rare – so we go back some years for a couple of articles on the matter, to look at feminists’ thinking on the matter. The first is titled, ‘Men-only clubs will not be outlawed’ from the 7 December 1999 edition of The Independent:
‘The Government last night denied reports that it has secret plans to ban men-only members clubs following admissions from ministers that clubs that barred women from membership were ‘anachronisms’.
The moves were said to be being discussed by at least four ministers, including the Cabinet Office Minister, Mo Mowlam. They would lead to the end of membership restrictions from every body ranging from the 17th century St James’s Club in London to golf clubs and the traditional Labour bastion, the working men’s club.
It was claimed that private clubs, exempted by the Sex Discrimination Act, would be modernised under an amendment to the Equal Opportunities Bill in the next session of parliament. Senior Labour figures are said to be heartened by recent about-turns by men-only stalwarts such as the MCC which last year voted to admit women after 211 years.
A Government spokesman rejected reports of new laws in the pipeline. Many topics were covered in ministerial discussions on equality but Government plans for anti-discrimination legislation did not extend beyond public bodies.
Last night Nicholas Soames MP, the former Tory defence minister, who is a member of White’s, Pratt’s and the Turf, said: ‘This is another sign that living under New Labour is like living in Soviet Russia. What sensible woman wants to be a member of a men’s club?’ ’
A good point, Mr Soames, and well made. Now there’s a man
