experience on those material substances or processes. Thus, when the brains of men and women or boys and girls are compared, what is found in the brain is as likely to be the result of gendered experience as it is innate biology. Experience changes biology.
In countering the fatalism of deterministic and essentialist theories in relation to human behavior, it is necessary to take full account of the biological, the social, the psychological, and the environmental. It is critical to do this in a way that is scientifically robust. Scientists from both the natural and the social sciences have embarked on this project, in different ways but with a common recognition that the old either/or polarities – opposing the biological and the psychosocial – are a theoretical dead‐end. Biology is in itself dynamic, evolving, and totally interdependent with the environment (Rose 1997; Woese 2004). In this sense, strong biological determinism with its connotation of a fixed biology impervious to environmental influence is not tenable. As long ago as 1978 Lambert commented,
The notion that “innate” factors, such as genes or hormones, influence human behavior is often called (usually pejoratively) “biological determinism.” To equate biological with intrinsic, inflexible, or pre‐programed is an unfortunate misuse of the term biological. Behavior is itself a biological phenomenon, an interaction between organism and environment.
(Lambert 1978, p. 104)
Feminist biologists such as Anne Fausto‐Sterling (2012a) regret the neglect of biology that has been a consequence of the rejection of biological determinism. She says, “Everybody breathe a sigh of relief: We do not have to fight biology anymore. But, take a deep breath: If we invite biology back into our theoretical lives, we have to do it right” (2012a, p. 411). She argues that any complete and adequate view of human behavior, including gender and sexual identity, must incorporate biology.
A counterdeterministic or nondeterministic view of human behavior emphasizes human agency and intentionality. This viewpoint foregrounds the capacity of human persons to act on the world and respond to it in ways that are novel, creative, and essentially unpredictable (Martin et al. 2010). Thus an important consideration in any approach to understanding gender or sexuality is the self‐making capacity of the human. Theories need to take on board the emergent, novel, and autopoietic quality of human thought and action (Greene 2015). Self‐construals and self‐constructions are inevitably influenced by ambient societal discourses but each person is capable of selecting from the discourses around her and arriving at her own relationship with her sex, gender, and sexuality, if permitted.
Another cognate strand of work, promoted by social scientists and philosophers rather than natural scientists, is found in the rise of “the new materialism.” Braidotti was one of the feminist forerunners of the new materialism. In 2000, she criticized feminist writers for their “denial of the materiality of the bodily self” (2000, p. 160). However she was adamantly opposed to biological determinism and argued for a perspective that was as she termed it “post‐humanist.” Humanist thinking, she argued, tends to essentialize and reify the attributes thought to define the human. This tendency has been seen in both biological and social essentialist thought. A number of feminist writers has explored the potential of the new materialism (see Alaimo and Hekman 2008) and they do so in a variety of different ways. However, there is broad agreement on the need to move beyond the discursive and social constructionist theories to embrace the material but not within the old rigid framework of biological determinism. The new materialists eschew dualisms between mind and matter, nature and nurture, and in some cases, human and nonhuman. They see the mind and body in constant fluid interaction, fundamentally inseparable from each other and from their context.
One might conclude that, as with the nurture versus nature debate, old ideas about the fixed and predetermined essence of human beings can now be assigned to the dustbin of history. However, they persist.
The Enduring Appeal of Essentialist and Biological Explanations
Persistence of Essentialist Thinking
Essentialist thinking is a common and understandable human pattern of thought. Studies have shown that lay people frequently use essentialist modes of thought in relation to both objects and people (Medin and Ortony 1989). The developmental psychologist, Gelman, has researched the development of essentialist thinking in children and adults and concludes that “Essentialism is a reasoning heuristic that is readily available to both children and adults” (2004). To Phillips it is “a psychologically inevitable feature of the way humans think” (2010). In order to make sense of the complex and diverse world around us we seek to group things and people into categories on the basis of some – actual or presumed – underlying common qualities or essences. If one accepts this viewpoint it is clear that essentialist thinking will always be with us and the tendency to ascribe essences to the categories man and women, male and female, will continue. Research by Bastain and Haslam showed that essentialist thinking was related to the endorsement of stereotypes, including those related to gender (2006). This implies a need to redouble efforts to encourage evidence‐based critique of essentialist thinking whenever it moves beyond being a handy shorthand to fostering restrictive stereotyping and prejudice. Given this proclivity for humans to look for essentialist explanations, vigilance is required to identify and counter examples of unfounded or oppressive essentialist thinking, wherever it raises its Hydra‐like head.
Persistence of Biological Determinism
Although biological determinism in its various forms has been subjected to sustained and cogent criticism, such theories continue to emerge and are given attention in the media as well as in academic circles, as is readily seen in the current popularity of brain‐based accounts of a wide range of behaviors and human differences Since these theories are often based on weak evidence and flawed arguments it is clearly important from the scientific perspective that they are critiqued and that more adequate scientific explanations are advanced such as those studies critiquing neurosexism mentioned earlier. However, since such alternative viewpoints and disconfirming studies do exist, the question then becomes, why do they not take hold in the imagination of the public, in the thinking of a wide range of practitioners, and among policymakers? For example, current research on the brain is widely cited in the media and by policymakers but they favor the kind of brain research that promotes a simple Brains R Us view of human functioning (Tallis 2014). Undoubtedly this information about brains and the biology of sex and gender also influences the thinking and practice of parents who listen to or read popularized versions of the views of biological determinists in the media. This public uptake of the latest biological fad – however flawed – was recognized as far back as 1978 by Lowe in her paper on “Sociobiology and sex differences.” She says, “We do not have to treat sociobiology seriously as a scientific theory of human behavior. Unfortunately we do have to take it seriously as a political theory” (1978, p. 123).
In 1993, the psychologist, Lerner, wrote a paper arguing against biological determinism and reductionism, in which he stated, “These questions are not merely academic. Science and public policy are at this writing being influenced by biologically reductionistic ideology” (p. 124). One quarter of a century later, biologically reductionistic and deterministic theories are, if anything, more pervasive. Tallis comments on the dangers of the widespread influence of what he calls “neuromania” and “Darwinitis” for our perception of what it means to be human. He sees such theories as promoting a view of humans as mere animals, thus failing to recognize what it is that makes us different from animals. While not dismissing our biological reality he calls for more attention to the moral and self‐regulatory capacities of humans, both undermined by excessive “science‐based naturalism,” as he terms it (2014, p. xi). In a 2005 article called “fMRI in the public eye,” Raeme et al. report the results of their analysis of 13 years of media coverage of brain research using fMRI imagery. They concluded that the media present the research as though the brain images allow us to “capture visual proof of brain activity, despite the enormous complexities of data acquisition and image
