Letters to the Editor
-
Feminism is postmodern
I confess that I don't have much respect for the categories of Humanties in the Academic field (and post-modernism and post-post-modernism... nicely reveal meandering self-indulgent prose for what it is). There is no science or engineering against which to test the myriad models that are proposed in such a prosaic fashion, dissected by a dizzying array of attention seekers, and analyzed ad-nauseum.
The key conflict is biology and socialization. So study evolutionary biology, sociology, or anthropology. Primates are a sexual species. The individuals are trying to best optimize their genetic propogation. Females of a species have different optimal mating strategies then the males of the species. Humans males have a biological drive to mate with as many females as possible if there is no resource cost to the mating (child support & STD's often ensures that there is these days). Females are trying to select the best Breeding male and possibly the best Provider. The mating dance is always balanced between symbiotic and parasitic.
It's not really a mystery. We as primates have biological drives that we sometimes seek to supress. The shape of an attractive female can have an obviously hypnotic effect on hetero males (one that makes us want to give them stuff or do things for them to get them to like us and possibly mate with us) and interaction with a socially dominant male can have a similar hypnotic effect on females (one that makes them flirt with them and possibly let them mate with them). Females get pregnant. One male can impregnate many females. Females are thus the limited reproductive resource. When they "give it up" they are being vulnerable. They are potentially getting pregnant (no small resource cost!). But biology is such that there are arousal triggers that convince them to risk that...