Abnormal, Feminist Women Responsible for Culture Wars
The Claremont Institute, which is always behind the times, finally gets around to reviewing Steven E. Rhoads’ Taking Sex Differences Seriously, a book the conservatives love because it says that nature designed women to earn less money, be chaste, and do all the housework.
The reviewer, Christine Rosen, ” is a fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and author of Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement.” With a background in eugenics, I guess it’s not too surprising that she focused on this idea from Rhoads’ book:
If you’re wondering what is at the heart of our so-called culture wars, Rhoads offers an intriguing answer: cherchez la femme. The culture wars, so called, are really about women and their choices, and he adds an intriguing twist to the question of why: there are actually two kinds of women, he argues, “a majority who are traditionally feminine and others who are more like men than their sisters are.” The latter include women who have been exposed to higher levels of testosterone in utero, and throughout life exhibit more male qualities than other females. These “high-testosterone women are more assertive, more career-oriented, and more likely to have high-status and traditionally male-dominated careers,” he writes.
Although Rhoads does not posit a direct link between high levels of testosterone and a feminist worldview, he suggests that it might be one source of the tension between feminist and traditional women.
Per Rosen, “Rhoads is a professor of public policy at the University of Virginia who has written previous books about economics and comparable worth legislation.” So, of course he knows what he’s talking about when he writes about the prenatal effects of testosterone on women’s personalities and career choices, and how the hormone turns these women into feminists.
But I love his explanation for why some women don’t stay home and bake cookies and raise babies like they should: they got too much testosterone in the womb, and so are are defective, unwomanly women. (And that’s why they bust men’s balls and take away their jobs, and also vote, fight with nice, feminine women, and cause culture wars and stuff.) Yes, a normal woman would want follow traditional sex roles, so those who don’t must be freaks of nature.
Rosen goes on to discuss Rhoads’ findings about the sexual revolution (it leads to unhappiness for women, since unlike men, they aren’t biologically programmed to be promiscuous). She covers Rhoads’ theory for why women want to be housewives: they are better at relationships than men, and so are “hardwired” for domestic life. And she warns women that going back to work will make your husband resentful and your kids stupid.
But I think that the idea that women who got too much prenatal testosterone are responsible for the culture wars is brilliant, and I wish I had come up with it.
June 3rd, 2005 at 7:38 am
I thought the actual number of cases of women ‘dosed’ with those testosterone levels in utero was actually very, very small. Well under what would be required in order to actually populate the world with feminists.
Also doesn’t explain the male feminists, or feminist mothers, or… anything, really. So I guess it’s good he brought it up!
June 3rd, 2005 at 8:00 am
Hm…
I hate to be a bubble burster, but I am an anti-housework, career female who supported my husband while he stayed home with my child (because I do not in any way have the patience to deal with a baby full time). I was a tomboy all my life–even to point of competing in archery and karate tournaments.
I am also estrogen-dominant, to just below the danger threshold. My progesterone AND my testoserone are both low.
Of course, if we accept this theory of Rhoads’s, we must also assume that too much estrogen in utero makes men gay, right? So we must be kind to feminists and gays, because they suffer from birth defects, right? And discriminating against them would be wrong, right?
Dorothy
June 3rd, 2005 at 10:07 am
So what does Rhoads do with me? I enjoyed being wild in my youth and it didn’t make me any more miserable than my less adventurous friends - no one is really happy in their 20s until they look at that time from their 40s. I got married and started a business in the same year. I have stayed home with my kids for some periods and have worked for others, depending upon the financial and health needs of my family. I gave up the successful business after 10 years because I wasn’t having fun anymore. I love working. I love cooking and gardening and entertaining the neighbors. I am told I am a great mother, sometimes by my own children who, for the record, are quite smart (and not just for telling me I’m great), despite the fact that I have been employed for most of their lives. I’m quite feminine, but I still believe that women are people, too. Where do I fit into this absurd little paradigm?
It never fails to amaze me when supposedly smart people make sweeping generalizations that cannot be supported upon even cursory examination. My college professors demand more of me and I would demand more of this professor in return. Everyone should.
June 3rd, 2005 at 10:12 am
So, tell me Mr. Rhoads. What do you think about Condi Rice? Was her testosterone bath in utero responsible for her never having married and for her focus on her career?
Just wondering…
June 3rd, 2005 at 10:29 am
(sigh)
These essentialist biological determininism arguments are so tiresome. I thought they were really interesting when I was in, say, college. Then I realized that there is as more diversity among women then there is between women and men.
But one thing about these arguments that is constant, though– the baseline, the standard is always men and how women compare to men. For once I’d like to see someone measure men using women as the standard. Just for fun.
June 3rd, 2005 at 11:23 am
Note that this is yet another retelling of the Garden of Eden story, tricked out in “scientific” finery. An uppity woman gives in to temptation and causes the entire human race to be expelled from a previously-idyllic abode. Most of these sex-difference stories can be reduced to the same plot.
June 3rd, 2005 at 12:02 pm
Here’s what I don’t get. If the goal of reproduction is propagation of the species, how can proponents of biological determinism claim only men are “hardwired” for promiscuity?
Seems to me if a woman wants to maximize her chances of getting pregnant, the last thing she’d want to do is tie herself down with one partner, especially since his contribution to the reproductive process is limited by, uh, “stamina” considerations. Instead of lying around waiting for him to get it up again, she’s much better off trying her chances elsewhere while he recuperates. It’s called “multitasking;” something which women are always being told we’re so good at. I guess we now know why.
June 3rd, 2005 at 2:48 pm
“when supposedly smart people make sweeping generalizations”
The problem with statements like this, and others above, about Mr. Rhoads, is that it makes the assumption that, just because someone knows how to talk, they are actually intelligent. Parrots can be taught to repeat all kinds of things. That does not make them intelligent. It is never wise to mistake cleverness for intelligence.
This book is nothing more then a simple-minded person, looking for a simplistic explanation, to a complicated process, that he can’t understand, and trying to make some money for it. It deserves no more credit than that.
June 3rd, 2005 at 5:25 pm
Get her to the endocrinologist, she keeps demanding her rights
Let us all now thank S.Z. for her tireless work in the arena of digging up vile wingnuttery and mocking it. This week at The American Street, she finds a whopper of a wingnut book review that claims that feminism…
June 4th, 2005 at 7:45 am
Sadly, Rhoads does not address the burning question of why men have nipples…
June 4th, 2005 at 8:22 am
I got curious and looked up information about testosterone in utero and women, and the results certainly didn’t say anything about those women being more assertive and career-oriented. That nonsense is just Rosen passing off her opinion as fact. The research did talk about differences in those women as compared to their lower-testosterone sisters when it comes to secondary sex characteristics. I found one interesting study about homosexuality that I recall reading about in the news - apparently, some men have index and ring fingers that are different sizes (the ring finger is longer). Those fingers in straight women tended to be the same size. Some lesbians had the same difference in finger size as men. I certainly am not going to extrapolate an opinion on this, because I don’t have enough information, but it was interesting nonetheless.
June 4th, 2005 at 7:32 pm
Hail Eris!
Rhoads: What magnificently towering male privilege.
Rosen: Get back in your kitchen, woman! Why aren’t you pregnant? Where’s your husband, and why isn’t he speaking in your place? (Add usual male right-wing inanities ad nauseam for this hypocritical twit.)
Snarky