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2 Biological Determinism and Essentialism
Sheila Greene
Introduction: Historical Perspectives on Woman's Nature
Dating from the classical era in the West, men have made pronouncements about the nature of woman and the differences between the sexes. The Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “As regards the sexes the male is by nature superior and the female inferior, the male ruler and the female subject.” The thirteenth‐century theologian St. Thomas Aquinas endorsed Aristotle's viewpoint and stated that, “As regards individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten.” Biological reasons for purported sex differences were offered, such as women's smaller brains and lack of heat (Aristotle); their half‐formed genitals (Galen), or their physical weakness and passivity (Aquinas).
Confining this glance backwards to women in the West, it is clear that, for centuries, woman's nature was seen as dictated by her bodily structures and her reproductive capacity (Tuana 1993). These views, rooted in Graeco‐Roman thought, were propagated by the Christian Church, which had, and still has, a central role in life in Europe and the Americas. Despite the rise of scientific thinking in and after the Enlightenment, the Church continued to have a major role in framing how women were seen and scientists rarely challenged this traditional perspective but rather fed into it. It was taken for granted that men and women were different and that these differences resided in their biology, which generated their distinctive functions and social positions. Women were thought to be not only different from men but more in thrall to their biological natures. Fausto‐Sterling (1992[1985]) quotes a Victorian physician, who wrote that “Woman is a pair of ovaries with a human being attached, whereas man is a human being furnished with a pair of testes” (Rudolf Virchow, MD, 1821–1902, cited by Fausto‐Sterling, 1992[1985], p. 90).
Early psychologists were equally convinced that women were in the grip of their biology. G. Stanley Hall said,
Her sympathetic and ganglionic system is, relative to the cerebro‐spinal, more dominant. Her whole soul, conscious and unconscious, is best conceived as a magnificent organ of heredity (i.e. reproduction) and to its laws all psychic activities, if unperverted, are true. (1904, p. 561)
These educated men saw themselves as scientists but appeared to accept unquestioningly that the form of the daily life and behavior of the women around them was ordained by their anatomy (and God). To questions these (apparent) realities was both astonishing and presumptuous.
To conclude, in any examination of the long history of explanations of differences between the sexes, biological explanations are to the forefront. Although the focus of such explanations has changed over time, the preoccupation with biology has not. The idea that biology shapes the essential nature of women (and men) has remained strong, if expressed these days in a somewhat more sophisticated or nuanced fashion (Pinker 2002; Baron‐Cohen 2004) This chapter presents a critical approach to recent and contemporary forms of biological determinism and essentialism as applied to sex and gender differences and sexuality.
Biological Determinism and Essentialism
Defining Biological Determinism and Essentialism
Biological determinism refers to the idea that human behavior originates in and is dictated by biological entities or processes, either innate or constitutional (Rose 1982). Most frequently, in recent years, the causal mechanism is seen to reside in the individual's genetic make‐up, which acts on behavior through the brain or the hormones (Fine 2010). Hormones have receptors in the brain so they can act on the brain, as the brain can in turn affect the production of hormones. Theories colored by biological determinism are used to explain species‐specific behaviors, group differences or differences between individuals. As a philosophical or scientific viewpoint it has been applied throughout history to many different human characteristics and behaviors and has been used, often contentiously, to explain differences between people, such as those associated with race (Smedley 2016).
Biological determinism has always had strong currency in the explanation of observed differences in behavior and capacities between men and women,
