Feminist theory and evolutionary psychology explored through social psychological and psychoanalytic frameworks

This presentation is part of the Gender in Evolutionary Psychology track. Many feminist philosophers of science have critiqued traditional scientific method, arguing that scientific method essentializes the subject and neglects to consider the cultural factors that may be at play in describing gender, racial and cultural differences in intelligence, mating strategies and other contentious issues. By extension, evolutionary theory, particularly as it pertains to the human mind, has often been critiqued for being status quo affirming. Responses to both of these conceptual frameworks have been laced with much antagonism, and it is this dimension that I wish to explore in my submission to the Feminism, Science and Values conference. My objective here is not to provide a commentary on the value of these ideas, even though I do think that they have much value, and have contributed much to our understanding of sexual differences. Regardless of “who’s right and who’s wrong”, or who can contribute what to the study of gender and with what accuracy is not my concern, but rather how we can unify the two perspectives. Massive amounts of literature in social psychology tend to demonstrate the existence of an in-group and out-group bias. In-group biases are biases that encourage the individual to think more favorably about their own group, whereas out-group biases tend to collapse “outsiders” into a homogenous group, rather than considering them as individuals (Quattrone 1986). This bias is omnipresent, even when an “other group” is not available for comparison (Gaertner, Iuzzini, Orina and Witt 2006). The sense of importance and identification that one gains from their involvement with a particular group has little, if nothing to do with the aims of the group – the simple function of belonging is what matters (Tajfel 1970, Brewer 1979). This is a function that occurs regardless of the content of the group – be it feminist scholars versus evolutionary psychologists, or English students versus Cultural Studies students – differences are exaggerated, and a sense of superiority develops. Attempts to reduce this bias have involved placing an emphasis what groups of people share or have in common. This has been used in contemporary anti-racist and anti-sexist discourse to some avail (Crisp and Beck 2005), though many people, such as Taylor (2004) “We all have the same blood” ideology, saying that it subsumes real and significant differences and serves as a cover for racist beliefs. While this is useful, it is only useful to an extent in understanding the bodies of literature that feminists and evolutionary psychologists put forth. Buss (1995) observes that feminists and evolutionary psychologists report many of the same findings about our social world, and thus their observations are not all that different. I am proposing a psychoanalytic reading of the exaggerated differences between feminists and evolutionary psychologists. In addition to the social psychological research, I intend to draw on Freud’s work in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, The Ego and the Id, Group Psychology and Formation of the Ego as well as his essay, “The Taboo of Virginity”. Secondly, I intend to draw on Anna Freud’s work The Ego and Mechanisms of Defense to illuminate how and why we protect our ego from injury and how this pertains to academic debate surrounding issues of science and gender. Our desires to protect out egos from injury inhibit our ability to take in and process information in a fair manner, and this is the link that I wish to make, as it is something that I think gets annihilated in discussions of either evolutionary psychology or feminist theory: just how often basic social psychology becomes implicated in traditional “academic” objectivist and subjectivist discourses alike