Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF LOG0209D" ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 11:35:04 +0200 Reply-To: p.mayerhofer@web.de Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: BDG Schedule Reminder Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia , "FSFFU (E-Mail)" In-Reply-To: <200208261122.g7QBMhX05714@mailgate5.cinetic.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The upcoming discussion within the BDG on the feministsf-lit list is October 7 -- The Books of Great Alta, by Jane Yolen _The Books of Great Alta_ consists of _Sister Light, Sister Dark_ (originally published in 1988) and the sequel _White Jenna_ (1989). The current BDG discussion is on _The Annunciate_ by Severna Parker. The next selection round for the BDG should be soon. Everybody is invited to Join the current discussion! Read the book for the upcoming discussion now! Start thinking about your nominations for the next selection round now! Petra -- Petra Mayerhofer p.mayerhofer@web.de www.feministische-sf.de *************************************************************************** The BDG provides a forum for focusing discussion on a particular book during a one month period. The books discussed are nominated and chosen in advance by a vote of all members of the FSFFU-L list serve who choose to vote. Other books can be discussed in parallel to the BDG, of course, and past and future BDG books can be discussed at any time on the list. The difference to a 'normal' list discussion is that in BDG messages spoilers (for the BDG book under discussion) do not have to be pointed out, the 'BDG' in the subject line is the actual spoiler warning. If you have any other questions about the Book Discussion Group (BDG), it's selections, previous discussions or the Feminist Science Fiction, Fantasy and Utopias Literature List Serve (FSFFU-L), you can find much of it at the BDG website at http://www.geocities.com/bdg_volunteers/ -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 19:25:08 +0200 Reply-To: p.mayerhofer@web.de Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: BDG Schedule Reminder Comments: To: feministsf-lit@uic.edu, feministsf@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The upcoming discussion within the BDG on the feministsf-lit list is October 7 -- The Books of Great Alta, by Jane Yolen _The Books of Great Alta_ consists of _Sister Light, Sister Dark_ (originally published in 1988) and the sequel _White Jenna_ (1989). The current BDG discussion is on _The Annunciate_ by Severna Parker. The next selection round for the BDG should be soon. Everybody is invited to Join the current discussion! Read the book for the upcoming discussion now! Start thinking about your nominations for the next selection round now! Petra P.S.: This is the second try to send this message. My apoligies if you receive it twice. -- Petra Mayerhofer p.mayerhofer@web.de www.feministische-sf.de *************************************************************************** The BDG provides a forum for focusing discussion on a particular book during a one month period. The books discussed are nominated and chosen in advance by a vote of all members of the FSFFU-L list serve who choose to vote. Other books can be discussed in parallel to the BDG, of course, and past and future BDG books can be discussed at any time on the list. The difference to a 'normal' list discussion is that in BDG messages spoilers (for the BDG book under discussion) do not have to be pointed out, the 'BDG' in the subject line is the actual spoiler warning. If you have any other questions about the Book Discussion Group (BDG), it's selections, previous discussions or the Feminist Science Fiction, Fantasy and Utopias Literature List Serve (FSFFU-L), you can find much of it at the BDG website at http://www.geocities.com/bdg_volunteers/ -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 10:55:06 -0400 Reply-To: judithberman@earthlink.net Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Judith Berman Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Angela Barclay wrote: >I was hoping you could help me explain biological determinism. How would >you define biological determinism? What are some of its assumptions? Are >there other significant determinisms? > There are other significant determinisms that haven't been mentioned yet. An important one in 19th century anthropology was environmental determinism, where various biological, social, and cultural characteristics were assumed to be determined by climate. The intelligence and the achievements in arts and technology of people in equatorial Africa, for example, was assumed to be irretrievably stunted by the tropical climate. Franz Boas' first field trip was to study the influence of the Arctic climate on the Baffin Islanders, but his conclusion after living there was that the most important explanatory factor for their lifeways was not climate but their immediate past. This experience influenced Boas' development of the concept of culture as something distinct from biology and language. The Boasians were later criticized by neo-evolutionists and ecological and economic anthropologists for cultural determinism, and there was certainly that element in their thinking. Implicit in their cultural determinism was a form of historical determinism, though one quite distinct from that of Marx -- that culture was shaped by forms of history (cultural diffusion) that were at least in practice treated as if individual actions were irrelevant. That's a little odd, since in other areas of their thinking the Boasians (at least some of them) were very much focused on the individual. I'm not competent to speak about economic or psychological determinisms -- I think every academic discipline must have at least one form of determinism. Yesterday I read about biometereological determinism -- the weather as a determining force in human health and human history. It's been around for centuries, but it's not all bunk, especially where conditions like asthma are concerned. Around here, hospital asthma admissions go up whenever the cold fronts come down from Canada. Re the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, part of the difficulty is that neither of those men ever phrased it as a hypothesis. There are a couple of other interesting articles by Dorothy Lee or Harry Hoijer (the Hoijer, on Navajo and how that language treats motion, is especially interesting in conjunction with the book NAVAJO FILMMAKERS), but those are similar to Whorf's Hopi essay in approach. There have been attempts to test the hypothesis but until recently the experiments weren't very well designed. A linguistic anthropologist named John Lucy has done some interesting work that does support a limited form of Whorf-Sapir. One of his experiments looked at how Yucatec (a Maya language he's studied for many years) and English speakers treat shape vs. substance. Yucatec is a shape-gender language, and has obligatory classifiers that agree with the shape gender of the noun -- "a long banana," "a round ball," "a flat leaf." Shape, in other words, is a fundamental grammatical category. English nouns, on the other hand, are divided between mass and count nouns. Count nouns have an inherent shape -- you can say "one cat" or "one cup" or "one leaf" without specifying shape. Mass nouns, like "clay" or "sauce" or "rain," represent a substance that you can't count (or use them with the indefinite article) until you turn it into a countable unit, give it a shape, by pairing it with a count noun. Thus you have to say, "one/a lump of clay" or "one/a dollop of sauce" or "one/a drop of rain." Substance here is more fundamental than shape. Lucy showed the particpants in his study various objects and asked them to group them. When presented with sets of objects (a ball of clay, a flat piece of clay, a leaf), Yucatec speakers consistently chose objects with a common shape as more similar while English speakers went for the substance. This doesn't mean, of course, that speakers of either language couldn't use the other criterion for grouping the objects, just that one is evidently more "natural." Regarding the cliche about Eskimo words for snow, one of the more entertaining academic papers I've heard was by delivered someone who'd attempted to navigate the history of citations to discover the original source of the claim. The oldest citation the presenter could discover turned out to be inaccurate and a dead end. I believe the original is in Boas' 1911 Introduction to the Handbook of North American Indian Languages, where he compares Inuit/Inupiat terms for different kinds of snow with English terms for liquid water. It's in a brief discussion of how lexicon and semantics differ from language to language according to what he called the "interests" of the languages' speakers. The number of snow terms he mentions is only three or four. Judith -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 11:36:28 -0400 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Dave Belden Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" In-Reply-To: <20020920005106.IKSG28277.priv-edtnes03-hme0.telusplanet.net@[161.184.58.4]> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I guess what you want are examples of horrendous biological determinists, such as Lee Anne suggested in her first reply: people who have come down on the nature/nurture debate on the nature or genetic side, and typically to the detriment of women, or racial minorities (see The Bell Curve). What used to be called Social Darwinism. It was because of this misuse of science that many feminists and others on the left objected to sociobiologists like E O Wilson talking on campuses a while back, and it has contributed to a more general mistrust of science by social radicals. But it seems to me the more interesting story is the one of how much has been learned about genetic influences on our lives. This doesn't have to be seen as fully deterministic, because it is so interwoven at every stage with developmental influence. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, in her book Mother Nature, refuses to take part in the nature/nurture debate, because she finds it so clear that the two are inextricably entwined. Even so, as an animal behaviorist moving into human behavior, she clearly accepts a great deal more genetic influence than the average sociologist would. I haven't read Stephen Pinker's new book 'The Blank Slate - the Modern Denial of Human Nature' in which he takes on the left, in particular, for denying what has been discovered about genetics, but I think every sociologist should read it, because a 'paradigm shift' is under way and we all need to become conversant with it. I did read 'The Mating Mind - How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature' by Geoffrey Miller, which is a very well written and stimulating book, and provides much ammunition for those who find much of sociobiology so far to have been overly reductionist. In his excellent survey of sociobiology a few years back, The Moral Animal, Robert Wright is at pains to point out that neither the left nor the right stands to 'win' from this kind of information: there are ways each gains and loses in terms of having to rethink old strategies or beliefs. >From a feminist point of view, in so far as genetic differences, say, between men and women become clearer, the import is not that 'that is the way it has to be' but that it affects the way we try to culturally cope with such differences to ensure that egalitarian values can be put into practice: our inheritance from evolution and the way we want to live with each other in future are distinctly separate things. Pretending that boy babies and girl babies are blank slates and equally responsive to non-gendered education may not be the smartest way to proceeded, if in fact they are different (remembering always that the variations within genders are much wider than the typical variation between the genders, and not forgetting trans-gendered people or those who fall between the poles). This is along the same lines as arguing that if someone is left handed it doesn't help to pretend that they are right handed like 'everyone else' and make them write with their right hands: better to redesign the education to fit the person. The denial that mental abilities and personality have anything to do with genetics is counterproductive, if indeed they do: and much modern research shows that they do, though not in a simplistically 'determinist' way. Dave > -----Original Message----- > From: friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature > and other media [mailto:FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Angela Barclay > Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2002 2:06 PM > To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU > Subject: [*FSFFU*] determinisms > > > Hello wise cyberfriends: > > Since the list has been rather quiet lately I thought I'd impose > upon you to > help me explain something to my students. I'm teaching a course on the > social/legal/ethical impacts of information and communication > technologies. > I recently did a mini-lecture on the difference between technological > determinism versus the social construction of technololgy (SCOT) group of > theories. (talked about how the linear connection between the stirrup and > feudalism is deterministic, while the SCOT model of how the bicycle > developed is more multidirectional and realistic). I think they kinda got > it but I feel like I should give them more to work with. > > I was hoping you could help me explain biological determinism. How would > you define biological determinism? What are some of its assumptions? Are > there other significant determinisms? > > Thanks, > angela > > -------------------------------------------------- > This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for > discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To > unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to > LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: > unsubscribe FEMINISTSF > > Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. > -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 11:57:10 -0400 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Dave Belden Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: FEMINISTSF@uic.edu In-Reply-To: <3D8F2B4A.8030603@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > There are other significant determinisms that haven't been mentioned > yet. An important one in 19th century anthropology was environmental > determinism, where various biological, social, and cultural > characteristics were assumed to be determined by climate. The > intelligence and the achievements in arts and technology of people in > equatorial Africa, for example, was assumed to be irretrievably stunted > by the tropical climate. The terrific recent bestseller 'Guns, Germs and Steel,' by Jared Diamond, does the actual opposite with this kind of info: argues very convincingly how geography and ecology shaped human culture and history, and explains why those elements and not any lack of intelligence or other putative racial difference brought us to a (I trust, temporary) place where white Europeans got on top. I found this book enormously useful in countering racist determinisms, while explaining how the world distribution of resources came to be the way it is today. Dave -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 02:10:55 -0700 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: John Snead Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" In-Reply-To: <200209240100.17THOF4fN3Nl3s70@walker.mail.atl.earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Dave Belden wrote: > > I guess what you want are examples of horrendous biological > determinists, such as Lee Anne suggested in her first reply: people > who have come down on the nature/nurture debate on the nature or > genetic side, and typically to the detriment of women, or racial > minorities (see The Bell Curve). What used to be called Social > Darwinism. It was because of this misuse of science that many > feminists and others on the left objected to sociobiologists like E O > Wilson talking on campuses a while back, and it has contributed to a > more general mistrust of science by social radicals. > > But it seems to me the more interesting story is the one of how much > has been learned about genetic influences on our lives. This doesn't > have to be seen as fully deterministic, because it is so interwoven at > every stage with developmental influence. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, in her > book Mother Nature, refuses to take part in the nature/nurture debate, > because she finds it so clear that the two are inextricably entwined. > Even so, as an animal behaviorist moving into human behavior, she > clearly accepts a great deal more genetic influence than the average > sociologist would. I haven't read Stephen Pinker's new book 'The Blank > Slate - the Modern Denial of Human Nature' in which he takes on the > left, in particular, for denying what has been discovered about > genetics, but I think every sociologist should read it, because a > 'paradigm shift' is under way and we all need to become conversant > with it. I disagree, I haven't read the entire book, but I have read both excerpts and an article by the author and was massively unimpressed. Like far to many other determinists, he assumes that genetic determinism is true and then goes on to lambaste people who object to this "obvious fact". From everything I've seen, the book is yet another right wing political polemic. I've read enough of those to last several lifetimes and I see absolutely no reason to read another one, especially one that is in places actively insulting. With luck, this book will soon join _The Bell Curve_ in academic obscurity. When I look for evidence of genetic determinism of human behavior I run across a near endless host of amazingly ill-designed studies, including the ever popular "separated identical twin studies" which typically have sample sizes of less than a dozen pairs of twin. OTOH, an excellent book that deals with sex, gender, culture and biology is Anne Fausto-Sterling's Excellent new(ish) book _Sexing The Body_ which has some interesting points about how the entire distinction between "Nature" and "Nature" is a simplistic and wrong- headed way of looking at things. -John Snead sneadj@mindspring.com -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 08:13:23 -0400 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Dave Belden Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > I haven't read Stephen Pinker's new book 'The Blank > > Slate - the Modern Denial of Human Nature' in which he takes on the > > left, in particular, for denying what has been discovered about > > genetics, but I think every sociologist should read it, because a > > 'paradigm shift' is under way and we all need to become conversant > > with it. > > I disagree, I haven't read the entire book, but I have read both > excerpts and an article by the author and was massively > unimpressed. > > -John Snead sneadj@mindspring.com John, I think this is one of those dividing lines in the sand where it is impossible to argue each other over the line, partly because so much background goes into the way one reads the new stuff. I have been reading/discussing animal behavior material for 25 years - not professionally, and only because good friends (one a feminist) are in that area - and the importance of genetics in the field of behavior (not just 'physical' attributes) is so clear there, it seems absurd to imagine that there would be some sudden dividing line when we get to the behavior of the human animal. Of course, one of the great points about human behavior is how flexible it is, how much actual choice we have, but I am predisposed to accept that genetics will have a big impact on our behavior nonetheless. I also don't find that simplistically 'determinist,' nor do I find it necessarily 'right wing', so my hackles are not raised against it. For that reason I read writers like Pinker less critically than you do, and I may well be missing something. So I am glad you are reading with a ferocious eye for poorly designed scientific studies. My gut tells me that they are onto something, though, and that it is going to make a huge shift in the way humans understand themselves, with major impacts on theology (for those who are still believers), politics, psychology, sociology etc. I guess this is a case of: "if I didn't believe it, I would never have seen it with my own eyes." Have you read Sarah Blaffer Hrdy? Definitely not a right winger, and very critical of the idea that genetics are determinist. Dave -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 08:09:47 -0500 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: "Laura J. Mixon" Subject: Re: FW: [*FSFFU*] BDG Schedule Reminder Comments: To: FEMINISTSF@uic.edu In-Reply-To: <10e.17de2c94.2ac1af14@aol.com> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit To the literature group members who are also on this list: Jane Yolen is a friend of mine and I passed along to her that the reading list is reading her BOOKS OF GREAT ALTA SERIES. She was delighted! However, she asks me to pass along that there is a fourth book as well: THE ONE-ARMED QUEEN. I adore her work -- her craft and her passion are fabulous. Hope y'all enjoy the series. -l. -- Laura J. Mixon -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 01:27:40 -0700 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 11:36 AM 9/23/02 -0400, Dave Belden wrote: >I guess what you want are examples of horrendous biological determinists, >such as Lee Anne suggested in her first reply: people who have come down on >the nature/nurture debate on the nature or genetic side, and typically to >the detriment of women, or racial minorities (see The Bell Curve). What used >to be called Social Darwinism. It was because of this misuse of science that >many feminists and others on the left objected to sociobiologists like E O >Wilson talking on campuses a while back, and it has contributed to a more >general mistrust of science by social radicals. It's true that I am deeply suspicious of most deterministic theories, since they have historically been used to justify the oppression of women and minorities, but I'm not fanatic about nurture either. It's clear that there are *influences* that must be biologically-based, and the existence proof of that lies in genetic susceptibility to Bipolar Disorder. The genetic component of this seems fairly clear, but the fact that this genetic component is still only an influence is also shown, because there are many exceptions to general rules. Likewise, I think it fairly clear that there are *some* intrinsic differences between male and female thinking, on average, although the overlap is great, and that there is probably *some* genetic component, but the extent to which this component is expressed seems highly variable, such that not every boy child is macho nor every girl child hembra, even from infancy and before the purported influence of "bad mothers" or "pederasts" might muddy the pristine waters of "divinely ordained" roles and behavior. We are social creatures, and clearly capable of acting against the dictates of "human nature," or suicide would be an alien concept found only in science fiction and biological self-interest would make selfless heroism incomprehensible instead of an act that brings tears to our eyes and an aching sense of the nascent nobility of our species to our breast. The point of my previous post was that any sort of strong determinism leads directly to absurdity. Some things we humans do are patently random, or contrarian, or faddish. A strong case has been made for the origin of many religious cultural behaviors in mental disorders, with Saul of Tarsus, for example, owing much of his visionary enthusiasm to epilepsy, and the later development of the elaborate rituals found in the religion(s) he founded (or helped shape) influenced by the random appearance of obsessive-compulsives among the charismatic leadership. Indeed, the ubiquity of such rituals, especially ritual hand-washing, in every culture and religion suggests that it only takes a few O-C leaders to inoculate a society with a whole system of obsessive behaviors. Perfectly ordinary people who merely admire the determination and self-assuredness of plausible nut-cases can wind up acting out their diseases for millennia, untroubled by the absurdity of it all because of the profound primacy of social interaction on what we conceive of as our "natures." This interaction starts the moment we open our eyes on our new world, still wet from the primal messiness of our biological origins. We open our eyes and instantly begin our individual struggle for survival. Human beings, every mammal, arrive in this world utterly dependent on other individuals for their very lives. Learning to recognize, to act upon those.individuals in ways which maximize one's own survival is a necessity; those that cannot make that leap from consciousness to recognition of consciousness in others don't survive, for the most part. Calling this ability "instinct" or "nature" contributes very little to the understanding of how we survive, any more than understanding the biological origins of hunger explains the difference between Chinese cooking and French. The centrality of social awareness and the dynamic, self-driven, integration of all humans into the lives of those they depend upon accounts for most behavioral differences without the necessity of determinism, or perhaps pushes any possible determinism far back into the most profound community of all life, and especially mammalian life. Almost everyone, aside from those caught up in fundamentalist assertions of the unique status of humanity, can look at almost any mammal and recognize kinship in their eyes. And those eyes look back and see the same. Dogs recognize people as being, somehow, dog-like just as easily as people look at dogs and see something of the human in them. No one who has lived with dogs fails to understand that dogs feel joy, experience grief, and have some sense of *personhood*, even if theirs is somewhat less developed than our own. There are dogs that don't like each other as well as those whose who do, and the ability to recognize *individuals* is a certain indication that the recognizer is aware that he or she is an individual as well. To deny this is to deny that developmentally-disabled people are fully human, a proposition that leads seductively to the proposition that the smarter one is, the more human one is, and that, contrariwise, human beings without the benefit of one's own superior intellect are more like brutes. While there are obviously many who believe this on some level, and at least some who've murderously acted on their beliefs, the folly of this approach ought to be obvious to almost everyone who takes the time to reason it out. While many might like to ascribe non-personhood to others, for whatever reason, everyone is enraged when that status is ascribed to themselves. However gleefully we may devour a tender gobbet of cow flesh, we experience a certain queasiness when a tiger, for example, devours a tender gobbet of human flesh. And more than that, we experience anger; the tiger has failed to recognize our personhood, has committed an outrage, has decided, in an inscrutable feline way, that its prey is not, in fact, a fellow being worthy of respect. The nerve! Without falling into a "trap" of anthropomorphism, I think the tiger can be described as "cruel" as easily as a slaughterhouse butcher can be. Both lifestyles require a willful disregard of what is obvious to both when either killer stops to look. And to describe the behavior of one as "instinct" while attributing the other to "cultural norms" is obfuscation and mystification on a deep level. While it's true that there are some human cultures whose members are, for the most part, vegetarian, hunger can make the most devout relax their standards and eat almost anything. Even deer, those quintessential grazers, have been found to devour mice and ground-dwelling birds when the opportunity arises. So is it instinct that leads deer to eat plants or merely the lack of fangs and claws to capture larger prey? Is it instinct that leads women, by and large, away from physically violent confrontation, as some have maintained, or lack of physical equipment that makes such aggression more easy and more safe? Difficult questions, surely, and one in which we all have much invested. We have, in this country at least, a considerable intellectual capital laid by about the primacy and autonomy of the individual, of the efficacy of picking oneself up by one's bootstraps, of our independence from larger society and, perhaps most damaging, our lack of responsibility to that society. To admit that society affects us deeply, that our lives are not the free expression of our inner natures, is to admit that we, in some way, may be responsible for the lives of others, may in fact, *prey* on others, blighting their lives for the benefit of we and ours. Essentialism and determinism offers us a way to escape that responsibility, to say that persons of color who don't succeed are "shiftless," or (more kindly) "poorly motivated," that women whose position in the world is less than equal are somehow fated to be so out of "feminine nature" rather than systematic oppression by men, and that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Determinism, essentialism, is, at heart and for many, a search for a sort of secular deity, a Primum Mobile to explain everything that otherwise troubles us in a coherent way, to absolve us from complicity in the inequities inflicted on the many by lessening guilt, to pronounce a final "Te absolve" on us for all the injustices that surround us in our daily experience. If it is in the tiger's nature to slay, and in the lamb to submit to slaughter, then we don't have to think too hard about whether it is in *our* nature to exploit and in others to submit to exploitation. This question can fade into the background, where it can safely be ignored, and we can get on with our lives without troubling ourselves over the issue of how we ought to live, whether we ought to subsist on meat whose production consumes so many resources that other people starve, whether we ought to tolerate vast disparities in wealth among the human population, and what it means to be human in the first place. If everything is "human nature," one really doesn't have to think at all. This is a fine thing for those whose heads begin to hurt when exercised by too much thought, but the rest of us have much to answer for. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 08:57:28 -0500 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: "Michael J. Lowrey" Organization: The Working Class Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lee Anne Phillips wrote: > A strong case has been made for the origin of many > religious cultural behaviors in mental disorders, with > Saul of Tarsus, for example, owing much of his visionary > enthusiasm to epilepsy, and the later development > of the elaborate rituals found in the religion(s) he founded > (or helped shape) influenced by the random appearance > of obsessive-compulsives among the charismatic leadership. Gee, speaking for every Christian on this list, thanks for the display of tolerance and openmindedness towards our faith! -- Michael J. Lowrey -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 18:37:10 +0100 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Kate Blackmon Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Is it any different to speculate on how real people shaped the course of Christianity as it evolved from Christ's original teachings than to understand, say, how the physical environment of the Oracle at Delphi shaped prophesy and interpretation in Greece? I would think that Christianity of whatever persuasion should be robust enough to stand up to being situated in historical perspective; if not, then that would be a more serious problem than the questioning. In another context, for instance, that Van Gogh had serious personal and mental problems makes his paintings more miraculous rather than less. -- Kate -----Original Message----- From: Michael J. Lowrey [mailto:orangest@UWM.EDU] Sent: 25 September 2002 14:57 To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] determinisms Lee Anne Phillips wrote: > A strong case has been made for the origin of many > religious cultural behaviors in mental disorders, with > Saul of Tarsus, for example, owing much of his visionary > enthusiasm to epilepsy, and the later development > of the elaborate rituals found in the religion(s) he founded > (or helped shape) influenced by the random appearance > of obsessive-compulsives among the charismatic leadership. Gee, speaking for every Christian on this list, thanks for the display of tolerance and openmindedness towards our faith! -- Michael J. Lowrey -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 16:03:13 -0700 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Jennifer Krauel Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" , FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020924104920.02665630@www.leeanne.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 01:27 AM 9/25/02 , Lee Anne Phillips wrote: >Almost everyone, aside from those caught up in >fundamentalist assertions of the unique status of >humanity, can look at almost any mammal and >recognize kinship in their eyes. And those eyes >look back and see the same. > I would like to mention a book I read recently that I recommend: A General Theory of Love (Vintage) by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, Richard Lannon. This is a book about the science of love -- it assembles scientific research from a variety of disciplines into a coherent picture of our real biological need for connection. I think it veers off at the end, but I found most of it very interesting and thought-provoking. One thesis of the book is that like other mammals, humans literally can't survive alone. As infants our systems require synchronizing with other humans. Even as adults we cannot thrive without physical proximity and interaction with other mammals, preferably humans. To me, this kind of information really blurs the line between nature and nurture, so that those distinctions don't seem very useful to me anymore. Jennifer -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 23:14:00 -0700 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.20020925155438.00aa72a0@pop.krauel.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 04:03 PM 9/25/02 -0700, Jennifer Krauel wrote: >At 01:27 AM 9/25/02 , Lee Anne Phillips wrote: > >>Almost everyone, aside from those caught up in >>fundamentalist assertions of the unique status of >>humanity, can look at almost any mammal and >>recognize kinship in their eyes. And those eyes >>look back and see the same. >To me, this kind of information really blurs the line between nature and >nurture, so that those distinctions don't seem very useful to me anymore. Absolutely. And very succinctly put. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 23:18:24 -0700 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: <3D91C0C8.16EFD490@uwm.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="=====================_3724386==_.ALT" --=====================_3724386==_.ALT Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 08:57 AM 9/25/02 -0500, Michael J. Lowrey wrote: >Lee Anne Phillips wrote: > > A strong case has been made for the origin of many > > religious cultural behaviors in mental disorders, with > >Gee, speaking for every Christian on this list, thanks for >the display of tolerance and openmindedness towards our >faith! You're very welcome. Perhaps you'd like references. I'd start with the Bible, where Saul describes the symptoms of his epilepsy very precisely. Acts 9:3-9 This tradition is very old, as his descriptions of his disease are filled with references to epilepsy which would have been very clear in his day. You may be interested to know that a *common* sequela to epilepsy is a feeling of tremendous connection with the divine. Many people refuse to take medication to control the disease because it interferes with their feelings of religious awe. And epileptics themselves are rather proud of the fact that Paul is of their number. They find nothing pejorative in this fact at all. Would that we were all so free of prejudice and so accepting of difference. http://www.epilepsiemuseum.de/alt/paulusen.html The reference to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is from New Scientist, May 31, 2002, by James Randerson. It's a fascinating article and I recommend it highly. The disorder has been linked to Tourette's Syndrome as well, which in some forms resembles the tradition of speaking "in tongues," which have been found to be entirely non-linguistic in modern charismatic faiths. This is all fairly well-known, as I've seen similar observations and proposed theories for many years. There's nothing really remarkable in any of it. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992339 http://www.emory.edu/COLLEGE/MARIAL/pdfs/ObsessiveCompulsive.pdf -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. --=====================_3724386==_.ALT Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" At 08:57 AM 9/25/02 -0500, Michael J. Lowrey wrote:
Lee Anne Phillips wrote:
> A strong case has been made for the origin of many
> religious cultural behaviors in mental disorders, with

Gee, speaking for every Christian on this list, thanks for
the display of tolerance and openmindedness towards our
faith!

You're very welcome. Perhaps you'd like references. I'd start
with the Bible, where Saul describes the symptoms of his epilepsy
very precisely. Acts 9:3-9 This tradition is very old, as his
descriptions of his disease are filled with references to epilepsy
which would have been very clear in his day. You may be
interested to know that a *common* sequela to epilepsy
is a feeling of tremendous connection with the divine.
Many people refuse to take medication to control the disease
because it interferes with their feelings of religious awe.
And epileptics themselves are rather proud of the fact that
Paul is of their number. They find nothing pejorative in this
fact at all. Would that we were all so free of prejudice and
so accepting of difference.

http://www.epilepsiemuseum.de/alt/paulusen.html

The reference to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is from New
Scientist, May 31, 2002, by James Randerson. It's a fascinating
article and I recommend it highly. The disorder has been linked
to Tourette's Syndrome as well, which in some forms resembles
the tradition of speaking "in tongues," which have been found
to be entirely non-linguistic in modern charismatic faiths.

This is all fairly well-known, as I've seen similar observations
and proposed theories for many years. There's nothing really
remarkable in any of it.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992339
http://www.emory.edu/COLLEGE/MARIAL/pdfs/ObsessiveCompulsive.pdf

 -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say:
unsubscribe FEMINISTSF

Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. --=====================_3724386==_.ALT-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 23:48:21 -0700 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: <2BA51AC47264D311B59400A0C9FB0E2B021EBE10@mnmail.bath.ac.uk > Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 06:37 PM 9/25/02 +0100, Kate Blackmon wrote: >Is it any different to speculate on how real people shaped the course of >Christianity as it evolved from Christ's original teachings than to >understand, say, how the physical environment of the Oracle at Delphi shaped >prophesy and interpretation in Greece? No. If one is to have respect for any religion one should have respect for all. The use of ritual intoxicants, as at Delphi, and/or sensory deprivation and physical suffering, as in the practices of the Eremites, is common to all religions, and achieves precisely similar results in each case. Religious feeling is very real, common to all humanity, and present in every culture in every age. I personally find it wonderful, and an apt illustration of our common desire to connect with something larger than our tiny selves. >I would think that Christianity of whatever persuasion should be robust >enough to stand up to being situated in historical perspective; if not, then >that would be a more serious problem than the questioning. I agree. I happen to be Jewish, and the entire history of the Jews and Israel is demonstrably confabulated from Solomon on back to Abraham. The Jewish people are actually the native inhabitants of Caanan, and we made up the story of murdering the previous inhabitants to make ourselves look fiercer than we actually were. This strikes me as a stunning illustration of humanity, and reminds me of that old Star Trek episode where they discover that the frightening enemy is actually a puppet operated by an innocuous dwarf. I personally am much more pleased that some of my distant ancestors puffed up their military careers to the point of absurdity than I would be to think that G-d *actually* gave orders to kill all those men, women, and children, and that those ancestors actually slaughtered nations in divine genocide because some sociopath heard heavenly voices telling him to kill people. But the Jews, post-Solomon, did create an amazing religion that affected the entire region, and eventually the entire world. Without Judaism there would be no Christianity, no Islam, no Mormonism, no Pure Land Buddhism, and a vastly different moral landscape. This is not bad for a small group of pious frauds brainstorming in the ancient Middle East. >In another context, for instance, that Van Gogh had serious personal and >mental problems makes his paintings more miraculous rather than less. I'm constantly astonished and awed by the sorts of things people are capable of when given freedom to create. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 09:23:05 -0500 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Melissa Bowersock Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020925231849.00a2db20@www.leeanne.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I agree. I happen to be Jewish, and the entire history >of the Jews and Israel is demonstrably confabulated >from Solomon on back to Abraham. The Jewish people >are actually the native inhabitants of Caanan, and we >made up the story of murdering the previous inhabitants >to make ourselves look fiercer than we actually were. >This strikes me as a stunning illustration of humanity, >and reminds me of that old Star Trek episode where >they discover that the frightening enemy is actually >a puppet operated by an innocuous dwarf. "Pay no attention to that man behind that curtain!" --The Wizard of Oz (or was it George W. Bush?) Kind of makes me wonder if all humans are born with an innate inferiority complex! >-------------------------------------------------- >This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for >discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To >unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to >LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: > unsubscribe FEMINISTSF > >Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. > -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 01:53:34 -0700 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: John Snead Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" In-Reply-To: <200209270101.17UNg65cN3Nl3p40@payne.mail.mindspring.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Lee Anne Phillips wrote: > At 04:03 PM 9/25/02 -0700, Jennifer Krauel wrote: > >At 01:27 AM 9/25/02 , Lee Anne Phillips wrote: > > > >>Almost everyone, aside from those caught up in > >>fundamentalist assertions of the unique status of > >>humanity, can look at almost any mammal and > >>recognize kinship in their eyes. And those eyes > >>look back and see the same. > >To me, this kind of information really blurs the line between nature > >and nurture, so that those distinctions don't seem very useful to me > >anymore. > > Absolutely. And very succinctly put. Very much agreed, there is way to much rigid, binary thinking about these issues, everyone wants to look for a single cause for everything and the world is very rarely that simple. -John Snead sneadj@mindspring.com -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 10:10:36 -0500 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Melissa Bowersock Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >> >At 01:27 AM 9/25/02 , Lee Anne Phillips wrote: >> > >> >>Almost everyone, aside from those caught up in >> >>fundamentalist assertions of the unique status of >> >>humanity, can look at almost any mammal and >> >>recognize kinship in their eyes. And those eyes >> >>look back and see the same. >> >To me, this kind of information really blurs the line between nature >> >and nurture, so that those distinctions don't seem very useful to me >> >anymore. >> >> Absolutely. And very succinctly put. > >Very much agreed, there is way to much rigid, binary thinking >about these issues, everyone wants to look for a single cause for >everything and the world is very rarely that simple. > >-John Snead sneadj@mindspring.com I am reminded of Scott Peck in In Search of Stones when he says, "everything is overdetermined," meaning everything is the result of not one cause but many. It seems to be human nature to want a nice, easy, pat answer to every question, but in reality there are so many variables that it's nearly impossible to sort it all out. Melissa > >-------------------------------------------------- >This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for >discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To >unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to >LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: > unsubscribe FEMINISTSF > >Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. > -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems.