3 Explaining Male Disadvantage and Thinking about Sex Differences
What are little boys made of?
Snips and snails, and puppy dogs’ tails,
That’s what little boys are made of!
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and all things nice,
That’s what little girls are made of!
Although some of the male disadvantages outlined in the previous chapter may be the result of unfortunate facts about the world that do not amount to discrimination, most are at least partly the products of people’s beliefs about and attitudes towards males and are thus a result of discrimination. Whether this discrimination is wrongful is a separate question.
This chapter has two purposes. I shall first outline the main beliefs about and attitudes towards males that partly explain why they are discriminated against. (For the sake of simplicity I shall refer henceforth either to beliefs or to attitudes rather than to both.) I shall then provide a framework for thinking about those beliefs and their relevance to the differential treatment of males and females. With this background, I shall revisit, in Chapter 4, the disadvantage males suffer and argue that much but not all of it is the product of wrongful discrimination.
Beliefs about Males
The beliefs I shall discuss are about males and they disadvantage males. They are also held by males as well as by females. That members of a group could hold beliefs that cause themselves disadvantage should not be news. Feminists have long argued, quite correctly, that females can hold beliefs about themselves that cause them disadvantage.1 There is no reason why the same should not be true of males.
Of course, there are also beliefs about males that work to their advantage (just as there are beliefs about females that advantage women and girls). While I shall not talk specifically about the beliefs that redound to male advantage, I shall show in Chapter 5 that discrimination against both males and females is linked to beliefs about the differences between them and that it is therefore unlikely that discrimination against one sex can be eliminated entirely without also addressing discrimination against the other group.
The beliefs about males that contribute to explaining many of their disadvantages are either normative or descriptive or some combination of the two. The normative beliefs are ones that make evaluative judgments about males. They make judgments either about the extent to which male interests should count or about what males should do or what attributes they should have. By contrast, the descriptive beliefs are beliefs about what attributes males actually have or what they actually do. In other words, whereas the normative beliefs are about what should be the case, the descriptive beliefs are about what is the case.
Sometimes, as we shall see, the descriptive beliefs are cited in support of the normative beliefs. On other occasions, the distinction between the two kinds of beliefs is ignored and people slip between descriptive and normative versions of a belief. That is to say, they slip between saying that males are a certain way and saying that males should be that way.
What are the beliefs that contribute to explaining many of the disadvantages that men and boys experience? First, male life is often believed to be less valuable than female life. I do not mean by this that every society unequivocally values male lives less than female lives. This cannot be true, because there are some societies in which female infants are killed precisely because they are female. However, even in many such societies, the lives of adult males seem to be valued less than those of adult females. The situation is less ambiguous in other societies, including but not limited to contemporary liberal democracies. It is not my claim that every single person in these societies values male life less, but that these societies generally do. Although, of course, there are countless examples in such societies of fatal violence against women, this tends to be viewed as worse than the killing of men. For instance, arguing in favor of a combat exemption-exclusion for women, one representative in the US House of Representatives said: “We do not want our women killed.”2 This attitude partly explains why societies have been prepared to send males to war but have been extremely reluctant to send females.
It is true that this attitude has partially eroded in some places. A number of countries (including Canada and Denmark) now allow female soldiers into combat positions, although until these countries engage large numbers of troops in actual combat, the presence of women in combat positions does not demonstrate just how far the greater valuing of female lives has been eroded. Although the United States preserves a formal prohibition against females participating in combat, it is the United States military where, in practice, female soldiers have experienced actual combat conditions in the greatest numbers. Female US soldiers have increasingly been placed in more dangerous situations, and there has been gradually increasing acceptance of female military fatalities. However, the old attitudes are far from eliminated. The formal prohibition against females participating in combat is still in force in the United States, and disproportionately few of the fatalities are female. As of February 28, 2009, less than 2.5% of fatalities of the wars still current at the time of writing were female,3 even though females constitute 14% of the US Armed Forces.4 Most importantly, no country forces women into combat, but many countries have forced or do force men.
It has been suggested that the reason why men and not women are sent to war is not that male lives are valued less but rather that too many fatalities of women of reproductive years would inhibit a society’s ability to produce a new generation and thus threaten its own survival.5 The facts of reproduction are such that an individual man can father thousands of children if there were fertile women to gestate them, whereas an individual woman can produce only one child per year or so (depending in part on how and how long she breastfeeds the previous child), and then only as long as she still has ova and has not reached menopause. Because of this asymmetry, more women than men are required to produce new generations.
The problem with this suggestion is that instead of showing that male life is not valued less than female life, it (at least partially) explains why male life is less valued. In other words, there is a good evolutionary explanation why male lives are regarded as more expendable. Large numbers of male fatalities need not impede a society’s ability to reproduce, whereas large numbers of female fatalities would. This was more true in our evolutionary past, when there were so many fewer human beings and societies were consequently so much smaller. Today, given how many more humans there are, societies could survive with higher female fatality rates, but it is in our species’ distant past that the attitudes to male and female life evolved.
The greater valuing of female life is evidenced in other ways too. Where some lives must be endangered or lost, as a result of a disaster, men are the first to be sacrificed or put at risk. There is a long, but still thriving tradition (at least in western societies) of “women and children first,” whereby the preservation of adult female lives is given priority over the preservation of adult male lives. Two famous examples are those of the ships Birkenhead and Titanic. When they were wrecked, in 1852 and 1912 respectively, women and children were given priority in access to the lifeboats, while adult men were expected to stay on board knowing full well that they would die.6
As we saw in the previous chapter, people are also more inclined to kill males than females. This is why, for example, men are so often singled out for murder and mass murder. Even in those so-called “root-and-branch” genocides, which aimed at destroying an entire people rather than just the males, extermination of males has often been a prelude to the more expansive program of killing.7 Thus, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, speaking about the early phases of the Holocaust, writes:
The Einsatzgruppen officers… could habituate their men into their new vocation as genocidal executioners through a stepwise escalation of the killing. First, by shooting primarily teenage and adult Jewish males, they would be able to acclimate themselves to mass executions without the shock of killing women, young children and the infirm.8
Indeed, the noted Holocaust historian Christopher Browning quotes an order from Colonel Montua of the Police Regiment Center directing that “all male Jews between the ages of 17 and 45 convicted as plunderers are to be shot.”9 Professor Browning goes on to say that there “was, of course, no investigation, trial, and conviction of so-called plunderers.”10 Instead male Jews “who appeared to be between the ages of seventeen and forty-five were simply rounded up” and then shot.11 Professor Browning also notes, in another of his books, that “it is generally accepted that in the first weeks of Operation Barbarossa the Jewish victims were primarily adult male Jews, and that… the killing was gradually expanded to encompass all Jews except indispensable workers.”12
It is thus unsurprising that Leo Kuper notes, in his book on genocide, that while “unarmed men seem fair game, the killing of women and children arouses general revulsion.”13 When it comes to the perpetrators, this underlying attitude is usually implicit, but sometimes it is explicit. Consider, for example, the words of a Russian soldier describing his actions and attitudes during the 2000 offensive in Chechnya:
I killed a lot. I wouldn’t touch women or children, as long as they didn’t fire at me. But I would kill all the men I met during mopping-up operations. I didn’t feel sorry for them one bit. They deserved it.14
Nor is it only the perpetrators who take the loss (or even endangerment) of female lives to be worse. If violence or tragedy threatens or takes the lives of “women and children” that is thought to be worthy of special mention.15 We are told that X number of people died (or are endangered), including Y number of women and children. That betrays a special concern, the depravity of which would be more widely denounced if newsreaders, politicians, poets and others commonly saw fit to note the number of “men and children” who had lost their lives in a tragedy. Even when violence is being enjoined, it is thought necessary to stipulate that the victims should also include “women and children” presumably because the assumption would otherwise be that it should be directed only against men.16
When men are the main victims of some tragedy or attack, this is rarely thought worthy of mention and even more rarely thought worthy of detailed examination. Thus, Adam Jones notes that in covering the atrocities against the Kosovars, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post “published a single story or editorial focused on the phenomenon of gender-selective mass executions.”17 Nor is the problem restricted to that particular episode. To see how the maltreatment of males more generally is covered, he previously conducted a careful analysis of the Toronto Globe and Mail’s content (between March 10 and June 15, 1990)18 and showed that it engaged in “denigrating, de-emphasizing, or ignoring male suffering and victimization.”19 This is but one newspaper. However, one suspects that if similar analyses were to be conducted of other newspapers and other periods, similar results would be found. Indeed, one of the problems is that whereas there are hundreds of thousands of studies investigating bias against females, inquiries into discrimination against males is in its infancy. It remains to be seen whether it survives into adulthood.
Now, it might be suggested that it is not a greater valuing of female life that explains the exemption of women from combat, the greater willingness to put male lives at risk and the greater concern when female lives are lost. Instead, it might be suggested, these phenomena are explained by beliefs that men are “tough, active agents,” while women are “passive victims who need protecting.” I think that this alternative suggestion is inadequate and must at least be supplemented by the explanation I have provided. There are at least two reasons for this. The first is that the combined evidence does not support the alternative suggestion. Consider, for example, the greater concern about women who are (unintentionally) killed in disasters, such as the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. There may well be some people who believe that women should be protected from the dangers of space travel by being excluded from such positions. However, even many of those who do not think that women should be protected by such exclusions nonetheless think that the subsequent deaths of female astronauts are more noteworthy.
The second reason why the alternative suggestion fails is that it does not adequately explain why men are less in need of protection. It is difficult to sustain the view that the deaths of defenseless male victims of mass killings are less remarkable because men are “tough, active agents.” These male victims are clearly passive rather than active, their purported toughness is no protection against an armed murderer, and it is absolutely clear that men who are victims of mass killing were in need of the protection they never received. Perhaps some will suggest that although the belief that males are (always) tough, active agents is false, it is nonetheless what explains the phenomena to which I have referred. But this suggestion also fails. To ascribe such obviously false beliefs to people is not the most charitable alternative. There is good evolutionary reason, as we saw earlier, to expect that female life would be valued more.20 We have also seen that female lives are in practice valued more. It is thus more reasonable to conclude that this is because they are actually valued more.
A second contributor to male disadvantage is the greater social acceptance of non-fatal violence against males. This is not to deny the obvious truth that women are frequently the victims of violence. Nor is it to deny that there are some ways in which violence against women is accepted. I suggest only that violence against men is much more socially accepted, at least in many parts of the world.
One author has taken issue with the claim that violence against men is regarded as more acceptable. He has said that those who think it is so regarded “never offer a criterion for determining when a social practice is acceptable.”21 He says that “sometimes they slide from the fact that violence with men as victims is very widespread to the conclusion that it is acceptable.”22 He notes, quite correctly, that a practice can be widespread without its being deemed acceptable. He also thinks that the “penalties for violent acts, social instructions against violent acts, and moral codes prohibiting violent acts”23 constitute evidence that violence against men is not acceptable.
It is doubtful that a single criterion of the greater acceptability of violence can be provided. However, there can be various kinds of evidence for such a claim. For instance, although violent acts against men do usually carry penalties (as do violent acts against women), the law does reveal bias. When the law prohibits physical punishment of women, but permits such punishment of men, it indicates a level of greater societal acceptance of violence against men. Similarly, when the law does not punish male homosexual rape with the same severity as it punishes heterosexual rape of women, it sends a similar message. But the law is not the only evidence of societal bias. There are penalties for wife-batterers and for rape, yet this (appropriately) has not stopped feminists from showing how both legal and extra-legal factors can indicate societal tolerance of such activities.24 If, for instance, police do not take charges of wife-battery or rape seriously or if there are social impediments to the reporting of such crimes, this can sometimes constitute evidence of societal complacency and therefore some implicit acceptance of such violence. If that can be true when women are the victims, why can it not be true when men are?
Moreover, there is some social scientific research that lends support to the claim that a man who strikes a woman is subject to much more disapproval than a man who strikes another man. For example, a number of surveys have shown that people have a more negative view of husbands’ violence against wives than vice versa.25 Commenting on these surveys one author has noted that the fact that “some respondents may be giving a socially desirable response only adds further support to the notion that respondents consider violence against wives deviant behavior.”26
In experimental research, which demonstrates what people will do rather than what they say, both male and female subjects have been found to inflict shocks on males more readily than on females. Nor was this only true when the female opponents were not aggressive. One study found that “subjects of both sexes facing aggressive females exhibited far less aggression than when facing equally aggressive males.”27 The authors of this study report that when they asked one male subject why he had not attempted to hurt his female opponent, he answered that it was “because she was a girl.”28
A third belief about males has both descriptive and normative forms. It is the belief that males are, or at least should be, tough. They are thought to be able to endure pain and other hardships better than women. Whether or not they do take pain and other hardships “like a man,” it is certainly thought that they should. When it is said that they should take pain and hardships “like a man,” the word “man” clearly means more than “adult male human,” but rather one who stoically, unflinchingly bears whatever pain or suffering he experiences, including that which is inflicted on him precisely because he is a “man.” This is true even when he is not a man, but rather a boy. Boys are taught early that they must act like men. Crying, they are told, is what girls do. They are discouraged from expressing hurt, sadness, fear, disappointment, insecurity, embarrassment and other such emotions. It is because males are thought to be and are expected to be tough that they may be treated more harshly. Thus, corporal punishment and various other forms of harshness may be inflicted on them but often not on females, who are purportedly more sensitive.
Males are also believed to be more aggressive and violent, and less caring and nurturing than females. This is partly why men are thought, for example, to be better suited than women to combat and to be less suited than their ex-wives to taking custody of their children at the time of a divorce.
Sexually, men are thought to be more assertive and voracious, and thus less discerning that women. This, combined with a belief about the relative strength of men and women, explains why so many people have greater difficulty in thinking that a male could be a victim of female sexual assault than vice versa. First, as we saw in Chapter 2, people are more inclined to think that sexual assault was welcomed or enjoyed by the victim if the victim was male. Second, because women are believed to be so much less sexually aggressive than males, people have greater difficulty in believing that females would make unwanted sexual advances, much less force themselves on unwilling males. The beliefs about men and women also extend, respectively, to boys and girls. Thus, when a man has sex with a girl, the girl is likely to be seen as a victim. By contrast, when a woman has sex with a boy, the boy is likely to be seen as “lucky.”
Because men are believed to be stronger and tougher than women and because the safety of women is thought more important than that of men, it is also believed that men must serve as protectors of women (and children). This too contributes to the belief that it is men rather than women who should be sent into battle. It is also a contributory factor to the disproportionate number of males who are the victims of violence. Because men believe that they must be protectors, and are expected by others to be so, they are more likely to place themselves in harm’s way.
Questions about the Beliefs
While some people, as I have suggested, deny that these are indeed beliefs held about males, the evidence against this position is compelling. For example, people do express greater concern about female deaths in combat and other contexts. They do demand greater toughness from boys than from girls. Because their actions match their words, there is no reason to doubt that this is what they believe.
Once we recognize that these beliefs exist, there is a series of questions we can ask about them:
(1) To what extent, if at all, are the beliefs true?
(2) If they are true, what makes them true?
(3) Are there any moral, legal or other implications of the answers to the previous questions? If so, what are they?
All three of these questions are regularly asked, although one common mistake is to fail to distinguish each from the others. There are clearly problems with conflating these questions. If they are not differentiated, it is unlikely that the answers will be.
In what follows I shall say something about each of the questions. The aim is twofold. I wish to clarify the questions and their (purported) relevance, and I wish to go some way to answering them. I do not pretend to provide comprehensive answers to all of the questions. Among the many reasons for this is that we do not actually have all the knowledge required to answer the first two questions in full. Even outlining everything that is known would be a mammoth undertaking — and one that is not necessary for my purposes. Thus, in clarifying the first two questions and what the substance of the debate about them is, I hope to show how the way to answering the third question is thereby cleared. I shall make some general remarks about the third question in what then remains of this chapter. In the next chapter I shall show how the specific disadvantages that males suffer are the result of wrongful sex discrimination.
To what extent, if at all, are the beliefs true?
To answer this question we need to note again that some of the beliefs are normative whereas others are descriptive. These are very different kinds of beliefs and the methodology for answering them is different. Determining whether male lives are less valuable or whether boys should be tough is a different kind of project from determining whether males are more violent or more resistant to pain. For this reason, it is best to consider the two kinds of belief separately.
Consider first the normative beliefs about males. I suggest that these should be rejected. Male lives are not less valuable than female lives.29 Nor is violence against males per se more morally acceptable than violence against females. There may be cases when violence against a male is more justified than violence against a female, but there will also be cases where the reverse is true. I think we should also reject the view that boys and men should be tougher, more aggressive and violent, more assertive, less caring and nurturing and sexually more assertive and voracious than women.30 What argument can be advanced for these conclusions?
It will be remembered that my claim that there is a second sexism is opposed by two groups of people — partisan feminists on the one hand and some conservatives on the other. Although those feminists who deny that there is a second sexism are more interested in advancing the interests of females than in gender equality, most of them at least profess commitment to gender equality. For this reason, they are unlikely to object to my rejection of the normative beliefs about males. Indeed, it would be impossible for them to accept the claim that, for example, males should be more assertive than females, without also accepting the claim that females should be less assertive than males. The latter kind of claim is certainly one that they would want to reject. Even where feminists think that females should be less violent than males, this is only because they think males are too violent.
It is thus against gender-role conservatives that I need to defend my rejection of the normative beliefs. Those who accept the normative beliefs typically do so on the basis of the descriptive beliefs. For example, they might take their cue from nature, arguing that there are certain normative implications of these natural facts. For this reason, as well as others, much of my argument against the conservative endorsement of the normative beliefs will be implicit in my discussion (later in this chapter and in the next) of the descriptive beliefs and of the problem of defending discriminatory behavior against males on the basis of them.
However, there are a number of general observations that can be made now. These can all be subsumed under a more general point about the problem of deriving normative conclusions from descriptive premises. This is not to suggest that descriptive claims are not relevant to and should not inform normative conclusions, but rather that straightforward derivations of the latter from the former are notoriously problematic.
For example, explanations, such as the one mentioned earlier, of why male lives are valued less than female lives do not entail that male lives are less valuable. Perhaps it is the case that people value male lives less because fewer males than females are required to preserve the species or some smaller human grouping. However, we cannot conclude from this explanation that male lives are less valuable.
At the very least, that conclusion assumes that the preservation of the species through reproduction is desirable — something which at least some of us dispute.31 I recognize that rejecting this assumption is a minority view and so we might grant, for the sake of argument, that the continuation of humanity would be desirable. It still does not follow that male lives are less valuable. There are many circumstances in which the population is sufficiently large that many female lives could be lost without the future of humanity or a particular society being compromised. Indeed, in circumstances of overpopulation, a reduction in population growth might actually enhance humanity’s chances of survival because, for example, of the strains that increased population growth puts on the environment. It does not help to suggest at this point that the favoring of female lives evolved in circumstances in which the human population was much smaller and more precarious. This is because there is a difference between an explanation and a justification. The fact that fewer male lives are required to preserve the species when the human population is small might explain why people favor female lives, but it does not justify their doing so. A fortiori in circumstances in which we do not need a large proportion of existing females to preserve the species. In such circumstances it is even clearer that one cannot justify the greater value of female lives by the fact that in some other circumstances more females would be necessary.
In any event, the inference from a greater need for female lives to the greater value of these lives ignores the distinction between instrumental and intrinsic value. Perhaps it is the case in some circumstances that female lives are instrumentally more valuable, at least if one values the preservation of the species. It certainly does not follow that female lives are intrinsically more valuable. If, in a given society, there is an overabundance of a certain profession, then members of that profession will be instrumentally less valuable than members of some profession that is in short supply. But it does not follow that the lives of those in the more abundant profession have less intrinsic worth and may thus be sacrificed more readily.
When it comes to intrinsic value, there do not seem to be any relevant differences between the sexes to warrant the view that male lives are less valuable or that violence against males is more acceptable. Men and women have the same levels of sentience and sapience. They are as invested in their own lives. Whatever differences there might be between the sexes in perception or cognition, for example, they are certainly not sufficiently marked to say that male lives are worth less or that violence towards them is more acceptable. The idea of moral equality, it bears reminding, does not rest on the dubious claim that all people are identical in every way. Instead it is the idea that people’s interests count equally despite variation in their aptitudes and despite differences in sex, sexual orientation, race, religion, ethnicity, disability and so forth.
Those normative beliefs that concern what attributes males should have and how they should act fare no better. If some attributes are found disproportionately among males it does not follow that those males lacking these attributes (to the same extent) ought to have them. Sometimes people think otherwise because they confuse two senses of the word “normative.” In the sense I am using the term, it refers to the setting of a (moral) standard — something that ought to be met. But there is another sense, namely what is statistically normal. Thus it is normally the case that males are taller than females. Or, to take an attribute that is chosen, boys’ hair tends (at least in many societies) to be shorter than girls’ hair. We can say of a boy with long hair that he is not normal in the sense of deviating from the normal hair length for boys. But it certainly doesn’t follow that he is abnormal in some moral sense — that he is doing something wrong. Put another way, the fact that most boys have shorter hair does not make some boys’ deviation from that norm wrong or undesirable. The same can be said about deviations from whatever psychological or behavioral attributes most males may have.
Consider next the descriptive beliefs about males. Why should we be interested in whether they are true? The answer is that although we should be cautious, as I have suggested, in drawing conclusions from the purported truth of descriptive beliefs about males (and about females), the extent to which they are true or false is at least relevant. A false belief cannot be used for justificatory purposes. By contrast, true beliefs can have justificatory power. Nevertheless, there are constraints here too. A true belief might simply be irrelevant in a given justification. If it is relevant, there may be few inferences to draw, or any inferences might also require the truth of a number of other beliefs.
To determine the truth of a belief, one must first get clarity on what exactly the belief is. The beliefs about males and about the purported difference between males and females need to be clarified in a variety of ways.
First, we are not talking about obvious physical differences between males and females — that they have different genitalia, that women have breasts and men more bodily hair, or even that men tend to be taller than women. These differences are (generally) not in dispute. Instead, we are talking about psychological and behavior differences. Henceforth, when I speak about differences between the sexes or about sex differences I refer to the psychological and behavioral rather than the anatomical or sexual.
Second, when people claim that there are differences between males and females they are not claiming that all males can neatly be distinguished from all females with regard to the property in question. Thus, if people say that men are more aggressive than women, they do not mean that all men are more aggressive than all women. The claim that there is such a sharp distinction would be no less odd than the claim that all men are taller than all women. This is not what is meant when people say that men are taller than women. Claims about sex differences are statistical claims. They are generalizations. I shall say more about this later.
Third, we should realize that terms like “aggressive,” “assertive” and “tough” are not without ambiguity. Sometimes people use these words synonymously. Other times they mean different things by them. Even when they are distinguished, how exactly we pick out the attributes they describe could influence whether or not somebody is described as having the attributes in question, or the extent to which they have them. Consider, for example, the claim that males are “tough.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, somebody or something is tough if he, she, or it is “capable of great physical endurance; strongly resisting force, injury; fatigue, etc.; not easily overcome, tired, or impaired; hardy, stout, sturdy.” There are some ways in which men are clearly less tough than females. As we saw earlier, male life expectancy is typically lower than that of females. While some of this is attributable to greater violence against males, at least some of males’ shorter life span is attributable to male biology. Males die in greater numbers at all ages, including during the fetal period,32 (usually) before they are the victims of greater violence. But the kind of physical toughness that is commonly attributed to males is different. It is that they are better able to endure pain and hardship.
Fourth, we need to be clear about the extent of the purported differences. For example, when it is said that males are more aggressive and violent than females, how much more aggressive and violent are they thought to be? Depending on the answer to this question, the claim is either true or false. Although males do account for more aggression and violence than do females, the difference is not as great as it is usually thought to be. This is borne out by some laboratory studies.33 In real life, we find that there are at least some circumstances, most notably within the family, in which women behave as aggressively and violently and sometimes even more so than men. Thus, we saw earlier that, contrary to received wisdom, wives are at least as violent towards husbands as husbands are towards wives. We also saw that mothers inflict more corporal punishment on children than do fathers. Although mothers generally spend more time with children and thus have more opportunity, parallel claims can be made about some other situations in which men cause more violence (such as war). When women have had the opportunity they have proved capable of the brutalities usually perpetrated by men. Female participation in the Rwandan genocide is one example,34 but there are many others.35 It seems, then, that people generally underestimate the amount of female aggression and violence relative to male aggression and violence. Although the differential is very likely exaggerated, it is true that males exhibit more aggression and violence than females.
In summary, I have provided a preliminary argument that the normative beliefs about males ought to be rejected. However, I have suggested that, although sometimes exaggerated, at least some of the descriptive beliefs are true. I have not provided a long argument for this latter conclusion, primarily because it is not in dispute. Most of the debate concerning beliefs about males and females, and about the differences between them, has not focused on whether the beliefs are true. Indeed, most people have assumed that there are some (average) differences between males and females. Instead the focus has been on what accounts for these differences.
What makes the beliefs true?
It is in explaining the origins of sex differences that the hoary nature–nurture question arises. Insofar as this question is understood as a dichotomous choice, it seems unhelpful — indeed a false dichotomy, for it should be clear that some traits could be a product of both nature and nurture. But instead of requiring us to reject the nature–nurture question, recognition of this might instead prompt us to interpret the question in a different way. That is to say, we might interpret it as a question about the extent to which a given trait is the product of nature and the extent to which it is a product of nurture. This form of the question recognizes that a given trait might be influenced by both biology and socialization. Even this formulation of the question might be challenged. The worry might be that it ignores the interaction between the two. However, that just gives rise to a more sophisticated form of the question — one about how nature and nurture interact to produce a particular trait. It is unclear whether this version of the question can be answered with any precision, at least at this time. Fortunately, and contrary to what some people think, we do not need to answer it in order to demonstrate that there is a second sexism (just as we do not need to answer it in order to demonstrate that there is sexism against females). Knowing the precise extent of the second sexism (like the precise extent of the more familiar sexism) may require knowledge that we do not yet have. However, it is possible to show that there is a substantial second sexism in the absence of the knowledge not yet available to us.
The nature–nurture debate about differences between males and females is usually characterized as a debate between those who think that the differences are attributable exclusively to nature, those who think that they are exclusively attributable to nurture, and those who think that they are a product of the interaction of nature and the nurture. Although these are all logically possible positions, the actual debate, is restricted to a portion of this spectrum, as I shall now explain.
The view that sex differences are the product of nature alone is not one seriously entertained by anybody. It is not hard to see why this view — biological determinism — has no serious advocates. Although there are some traits, such as eye color, that are genetically36 determined and to which the environment appears to make no contribution (or at least no contribution that is not mediated via genes), other physical traits involve some interaction with environment. One’s height, for example, is partly genetic. There is some upper limit to how tall one can grow, given one’s genes. However, environmental factors, such as one’s nutrition level especially during the developmental years, also play a part. If that is true for relatively straightforward physical traits, it seems extremely unlikely that more complex traits such as aggression and assertiveness are uninfluenced by the environment. Moreover, it is clear that all the differences we see between the sexes are not fully explicable by innate biology. It is manifestly obvious that socialization into gender roles is occurring. Even if there is a greater biological tendency towards, for example, toughness in males, this is clearly being amplified by gender role expectations that males will be tough. It would not be necessary to tell boys not to cry like girls if their natures fully determined how tough they would be. There would be no point to gender role socialization if it would occur without prompting.37
In contrast to biological determinism, there do seem to be those who hold the opposite view — or, at the very least, something extremely close to it. Such people maintain that the differences between the sexes are entirely the product of “social construction.” On this view, the traits of males and females have no biological basis. They have nothing to do with nature and are instead entirely the result of nurture. On this view masculinity and femininity are moulded by society, and nature plays no role.
The actual opponents of the social construction view are sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists. While critics of these latter views often describe them as biological determinism, that is a mischaracterization. Instead, sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists espouse the view that there are innate sex differences — tendencies — that interact with the environment to yield particular traits and behaviors. They provide an evolutionary account of sex selection, arguing that males and females have different reproductive strategies. A consequence of this is that some psychological and behavioral differentiation will occur. Some traits that are more adaptive for males are less so for females, and vice versa.
It is sometimes difficult to say for sure whether a particular view constitutes social constructionism. This is because it is unclear how extreme somebody’s position must be before it qualifies to be designated as a social construction view. Some of those who oppose sociobiology and evolutionary psychology allow the possibility that there might just be some very minor differences between the sexes. Consider, for example, Anne Fausto-Sterling’s Myths of Gender, which is devoted to rejecting the view that there are innate cognitive, affective and other psychological differences between males and females. However, she does not close off the possibility that there could be some differences. She says that if “sex differences in cognition exist at all they are quite small and the question of their possible origins remains unanswered”38 and that she remains “open to the idea that some small fraction of an already tiny sex-related difference could result from hormonal differences between male and female.”39
Another difficulty is determining what sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists take the magnitude of the biological contribution to sex differences to be. Presumably there is some disagreement between individual proponents of these views, but at least some of them may be overestimating the biological contribution. The problem arises, in part, because of a failure to distinguish two questions. The first is whether there is a particular biological basis for some attribute. On the assumption that there is, the second question concerns its extent. The focus is usually on the first question. This is quite understandable. It is the prior question, and is also a difficult enough question to answer. However, an answer to this question does not entail an answer to the second one.
Consider, for example, the purported link between aggression and androgens, particularly testosterone. Although testosterone is also found in females, it is typically present at much higher levels in males, which is why it is known as a “male hormone.” Androgens are often said to influence aggression (and other kinds of behavior) in two ways.40 During gestation it is thought to have an organizing effect on the developing brain.41 Then, later in life, during puberty and also afterwards, testosterone circulating in a person’s blood system is said to influence behavior.
In the case of circulating androgens the evidence of an effect on behavior is weaker. The administering of antiandrogens (and the resultant reduction of circulating testosterone levels) has been successful in curbing compulsive paraphilic sexual thoughts and impulsive and violent sexual behaviors. However, the drugs were not very effective in reducing non-sexual violence.42 Increasing testosterone levels in women or hypogonadal men to normal or supranormal levels has not been shown to increase aggression consistently. Lowering testosterone levels in men, by castration or antiandrogens, does not consistently decrease aggression.43
Some of those reviewing the literature have concluded that the evidence does not support a link between circulating testosterone and human aggression.44 The inability to establish this link, claim some authors,45 stands in striking contrast to the ease with which relations have been shown between testosterone and other phenomena, including sexual activity. In those few studies which do suggest connections between circulating testosterone and human aggression, the links are correlational and there is some reason to think that it is the aggressive and dominant behaviors that cause testosterone levels to rise, rather than vice versa.46
The evidence for an effect of prenatal androgen exposure on aggression in later life is stronger, even though not at all conclusive. There are clearly moral constraints on experimentally altering the androgen levels to which fetuses and infants are exposed. As a result, one of the few ways of testing the hypothesis that prenatal androgen exposure increases aggression later is by examining girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a condition causing them to be exposed to unusually high levels of androgens in utero and until diagnosis soon after birth. Some studies have indeed found CAH girls to be more aggressive than control females,47 but some found “the difference was not significant.”48 Other studies found no difference in aggression levels between CAH females and control females, even though affected females were, in other ways, found to be behaviorally similar to boys and unlike control females.49 The latter studies suggest that even if prenatal androgen exposure has other behavioral effects, the influence on aggression is not unequivocal.
This is not to deny a biological basis for human aggression. It is possible, for example, that human aggression is rooted in some biological phenomenon other than androgens. There is some evidence that human aggression has many features in common with what is called “defensive aggression” (as distinct from “hormone-dependent aggression”) in non-primate mammals and that this kind of aggression is rooted in the limbic system of the brain.50 One of the distinctive features of defensive aggression in non-primate mammals, however, is that it is quantitatively similar in males and females.51
It is also possible that there is a connection between androgens and aggression even though none has yet been demonstrated conclusively. One possible explanation for this is that the posited connection is a complex one. One obvious feature of this complexity is the interaction with environmental factors.
However, even if it is demonstrated that there is a specified biological basis for aggression, we would have answered only the first question to which I referred earlier. We would not have established anything about the extent to which aggression is attributable to the specified biological phenomenon. Discerning the approximate contribution it makes is no easy task. However, unless we recognize that this is not resolved by an answer to the first question, the temptation is to think that because one has established a biological basis, one has also demonstrated that it plays a large role in aggression.
While sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists sometimes overestimate how far differences between men and women are attributable to biology or how conclusive the evidence for a particular link is, the extreme social construction view faces the following challenge: if one rejects a dualist separation of mind and brain and accepts that the mind is the product of the brain, it is wildly implausible to think that while every other part of the body is influenced by biology, our psychological features are not. Of course, it does not follow from this that one’s sex does make a difference. However, it would be surprising if every psychological attribute were distributed equally between males and females. It would be especially surprising, given that there are behavioral differences between the sexes in other species. To think that there are none in humans would be to posit a massive evolutionary discontinuity between our species and others.52 But acknowledging this leaves open the question which attributes are unequally distributed and how unequally.
What, if any, implications are there?
One reason why there is so much disagreement about the origin of differences between the sexes is that the scientific questions are often examined with an eye to the hypothesized moral and social implications of finding or refuting innate psychological differences between males and females.
The assumption is often made that to the extent that differences between the sexes are socially constructed they are alterable whereas to the extent the differences are innate they cannot be changed. Put another way, many people assume that whereas social constructionism facilitates liberal or revolutionary views, evolutionary psychology has conservative or reactionary implications. According to this reasoning, if the traits of males and females are attributable to socialization, we can decide to socialize children differently in future. By contrast, if the differences are biological then there is no point trying to change what cannot be changed.
The assumption that these conclusions follow from the respective views about the origin of sex differences is mistaken and there are certainly people who accept evolutionary explanations of human traits but who draw conclusions associated with the political left rather than right.53 There are many reasons why such a position is coherent.
First, biology may sometimes be more malleable than society. For example, in some societies a woman equipped with oral contraceptives that act biologically to suppress her fertility will be more successful using these pills to limit her fecundity than she would be if she were to attempt to alter social expectations that women produce as many children as possible.
Second, as we have already seen, just as biology can influence society so society can exert an influence on biology. For example, social factors can affect levels of nutrition and exercise, which can impact on physical characteristics such as height, neurological and muscular development, age of the onset of puberty and so forth. Insofar as nutrition and opportunities for exercise are distributed on the basis of a person’s sex, biological differences between the sexes will be increased or decreased even if not eliminated.
Third, even if it were the case that biological differences were unalterable, we would need to be careful about the extent to which the differences between the sexes were biological. After all, there is good reason to think that innate differences would be amplified by society. The amplification mechanism could be this: people perceive modest differences between the sexes. As a result they come to have certain expectations of males and others of females. Males and females are pressured to conform to those expectations. This magnifies the differences between the sexes, thereby entrenching the expectations that further amplify the differences.
It is very unlikely that the differences we see between the sexes are fully attributable to biology. As evidence for this, consider the great variation in the magnitude of sex differences across different societies. Consider, for example, the fact that we are biologically very similar to our human ancestors tens of thousands of years ago. However, the traits of the average man and average woman then and now — including those traits that would once have been thought natural — differ considerably. Or consider differences between contemporary women and men of Afghanistan in comparison with the differences between the female and male American soldiers interacting with them. If one knew only the female role of Afghan women and how they differed from Afghan men, one might well think the female soldiers from America a biological impossibility. Or consider what Adam Jones has said about female participation in the Rwandan genocide:
If women anywhere can participate in genocide on such a scale, and with such evidence enthusiasm and savagery, then it seems a valid prima facie assumption that they are capable of such participation everywhere. The search then becomes one not for some essential “difference” in women’s approach to war and peace, but for the range of cultural and policy mechanisms that either allow or, more frequently, inhibit the expression of women’s aggressive and genocidal potential.54
Fourth, whatever natural psychological and behavioral differences there are between men and women, these are only statistical. They are tendencies. We cannot say, for example, that all men are more aggressive than all women. Thus, one important question concerns how some attribute is distributed across males and females. Put another way, how much overlap is there between the distribution curves? Moreover, it might be argued that we should, as far as possible, treat people as individuals rather than as members of a group to which they belong. Thus if a particular job has a height requirement,55 one should, as far as possible, seek individuals of the right height rather than use a person’s sex as a proxy for determining his or her height.
Finally, whether or not biological and social factors are malleable does not tell us anything about whether they are desirable and thus about whether they should be altered if this becomes possible in the future. Some desirable form of government might be socially constructed but not something we should seek to change. Other things, like horrible congenital diseases, might be biologically unalterable but nonetheless something we would seek to be able to alter or to avoid. As I noted earlier, we cannot infer from the fact that things are a certain way that that is the way they should be. This is true irrespective of whether the claims are about biology or about society. Both biological and social matters might be either desirable or undesirable, good or bad, worthy of changing or preserving (if we are able to do so).
It should now be apparent that the nature–nurture distinction is a proxy for and less important than the distinction between traits that are less alterable and those that are more alterable. In other words, what matters is not whether a trait is the product of nature or of nurture but rather whether it can be changed. Insofar as a trait cannot be altered we ignore that fact at our peril.
This is not to say that we are unable to do anything in the face of some unalterable trait. As the famous dictum notes, power tends to corrupt (and absolute power corrupts absolutely). Let us imagine that this tendency is unalterable. It does not follow that we cannot do anything about it. One thing we can do is design institutions that acknowledge this fact and seek to minimize the damage it can do. This is one reason why democracy is preferable to dictatorship. Dictatorship indulges a dangerous tendency whereas democracy puts limits on the expression of the tendency (rather than eliminating the tendency itself). The same is true of sex differences. Failure to recognize any unalterable differences between the sexes is dangerous, but this does not mean that we can do nothing to limit undesirable traits and promote desirable ones.
While some people, as I have suggested, deny that these are indeed beliefs held about males, the evidence against this position is compelling. For example, people do express greater concern about female deaths in combat and other contexts. They do demand greater toughness from boys than from girls. Because their actions match their words, there is no reason to doubt that this is what they believe.
Once we recognize that these beliefs exist, there is a series of questions we can ask about them:
(1) To what extent, if at all, are the beliefs true?
(2) If they are true, what makes them true?
(3) Are there any moral, legal or other implications of the answers to the previous questions? If so, what are they?
All three of these questions are regularly asked, although one common mistake is to fail to distinguish each from the others. There are clearly problems with conflating these questions. If they are not differentiated, it is unlikely that the answers will be.
In what follows I shall say something about each of the questions. The aim is twofold. I wish to clarify the questions and their (purported) relevance, and I wish to go some way to answering them. I do not pretend to provide comprehensive answers to all of the questions. Among the many reasons for this is that we do not actually have all the knowledge required to answer the first two questions in full. Even outlining everything that is known would be a mammoth undertaking — and one that is not necessary for my purposes. Thus, in clarifying the first two questions and what the substance of the debate about them is, I hope to show how the way to answering the third question is thereby cleared. I shall make some general remarks about the third question in what then remains of this chapter. In the next chapter I shall show how the specific disadvantages that males suffer are the result of wrongful sex discrimination.
To what extent, if at all, are the beliefs true?
To answer this question we need to note again that some of the beliefs are normative whereas others are descriptive. These are very different kinds of beliefs and the methodology for answering them is different. Determining whether male lives are less valuable or whether boys should be tough is a different kind of project from determining whether males are more violent or more resistant to pain. For this reason, it is best to consider the two kinds of belief separately.
Consider first the normative beliefs about males. I suggest that these should be rejected. Male lives are not less valuable than female lives.29 Nor is violence against males per se more morally acceptable than violence against females. There may be cases when violence against a male is more justified than violence against a female, but there will also be cases where the reverse is true. I think we should also reject the view that boys and men should be tougher, more aggressive and violent, more assertive, less caring and nurturing and sexually more assertive and voracious than women.30 What argument can be advanced for these conclusions?
It will be remembered that my claim that there is a second sexism is opposed by two groups of people — partisan feminists on the one hand and some conservatives on the other. Although those feminists who deny that there is a second sexism are more interested in advancing the interests of females than in gender equality, most of them at least profess commitment to gender equality. For this reason, they are unlikely to object to my rejection of the normative beliefs about males. Indeed, it would be impossible for them to accept the claim that, for example, males should be more assertive than females, without also accepting the claim that females should be less assertive than males. The latter kind of claim is certainly one that they would want to reject. Even where feminists think that females should be less violent than males, this is only because they think males are too violent.
It is thus against gender-role conservatives that I need to defend my rejection of the normative beliefs. Those who accept the normative beliefs typically do so on the basis of the descriptive beliefs. For example, they might take their cue from nature, arguing that there are certain normative implications of these natural facts. For this reason, as well as others, much of my argument against the conservative endorsement of the normative beliefs will be implicit in my discussion (later in this chapter and in the next) of the descriptive beliefs and of the problem of defending discriminatory behavior against males on the basis of them.
However, there are a number of general observations that can be made now. These can all be subsumed under a more general point about the problem of deriving normative conclusions from descriptive premises. This is not to suggest that descriptive claims are not relevant to and should not inform normative conclusions, but rather that straightforward derivations of the latter from the former are notoriously problematic.
For example, explanations, such as the one mentioned earlier, of why male lives are valued less than female lives do not entail that male lives are less valuable. Perhaps it is the case that people value male lives less because fewer males than females are required to preserve the species or some smaller human grouping. However, we cannot conclude from this explanation that male lives are less valuable.
At the very least, that conclusion assumes that the preservation of the species through reproduction is desirable — something which at least some of us dispute.31 I recognize that rejecting this assumption is a minority view and so we might grant, for the sake of argument, that the continuation of humanity would be desirable. It still does not follow that male lives are less valuable. There are many circumstances in which the population is sufficiently large that many female lives could be lost without the future of humanity or a particular society being compromised. Indeed, in circumstances of overpopulation, a reduction in population growth might actually enhance humanity’s chances of survival because, for example, of the strains that increased population growth puts on the environment. It does not help to suggest at this point that the favoring of female lives evolved in circumstances in which the human population was much smaller and more precarious. This is because there is a difference between an explanation and a justification. The fact that fewer male lives are required to preserve the species when the human population is small might explain why people favor female lives, but it does not justify their doing so. A fortiori in circumstances in which we do not need a large proportion of existing females to preserve the species. In such circumstances it is even clearer that one cannot justify the greater value of female lives by the fact that in some other circumstances more females would be necessary.
In any event, the inference from a greater need for female lives to the greater value of these lives ignores the distinction between instrumental and intrinsic value. Perhaps it is the case in some circumstances that female lives are instrumentally more valuable, at least if one values the preservation of the species. It certainly does not follow that female lives are intrinsically more valuable. If, in a given society, there is an overabundance of a certain profession, then members of that profession will be instrumentally less valuable than members of some profession that is in short supply. But it does not follow that the lives of those in the more abundant profession have less intrinsic worth and may thus be sacrificed more readily.
When it comes to intrinsic value, there do not seem to be any relevant differences between the sexes to warrant the view that male lives are less valuable or that violence against males is more acceptable. Men and women have the same levels of sentience and sapience. They are as invested in their own lives. Whatever differences there might be between the sexes in perception or cognition, for example, they are certainly not sufficiently marked to say that male lives are worth less or that violence towards them is more acceptable. The idea of moral equality, it bears reminding, does not rest on the dubious claim that all people are identical in every way. Instead it is the idea that people’s interests count equally despite variation in their aptitudes and despite differences in sex, sexual orientation, race, religion, ethnicity, disability and so forth.
Those normative beliefs that concern what attributes males should have and how they should act fare no better. If some attributes are found disproportionately among males it does not follow that those males lacking these attributes (to the same extent) ought to have them. Sometimes people think otherwise because they confuse two senses of the word “normative.” In the sense I am using the term, it refers to the setting of a (moral) standard — something that ought to be met. But there is another sense, namely what is statistically normal. Thus it is normally the case that males are taller than females. Or, to take an attribute that is chosen, boys’ hair tends (at least in many societies) to be shorter than girls’ hair. We can say of a boy with long hair that he is not normal in the sense of deviating from the normal hair length for boys. But it certainly doesn’t follow that he is abnormal in some moral sense — that he is doing something wrong. Put another way, the fact that most boys have shorter hair does not make some boys’ deviation from that norm wrong or undesirable. The same can be said about deviations from whatever psychological or behavioral attributes most males may have.
Consider next the descriptive beliefs about males. Why should we be interested in whether they are true? The answer is that although we should be cautious, as I have suggested, in drawing conclusions from the purported truth of descriptive beliefs about males (and about females), the extent to which they are true or false is at least relevant. A false belief cannot be used for justificatory purposes. By contrast, true beliefs can have justificatory power. Nevertheless, there are constraints here too. A true belief might simply be irrelevant in a given justification. If it is relevant, there may be few inferences to draw, or any inferences might also require the truth of a number of other beliefs.
To determine the truth of a belief, one must first get clarity on what exactly the belief is. The beliefs about males and about the purported difference between males and females need to be clarified in a variety of ways.
First, we are not talking about obvious physical differences between males and females — that they have different genitalia, that women have breasts and men more bodily hair, or even that men tend to be taller than women. These differences are (generally) not in dispute. Instead, we are talking about psychological and behavior differences. Henceforth, when I speak about differences between the sexes or about sex differences I refer to the psychological and behavioral rather than the anatomical or sexual.
Second, when people claim that there are differences between males and females they are not claiming that all males can neatly be distinguished from all females with regard to the property in question. Thus, if people say that men are more aggressive than women, they do not mean that all men are more aggressive than all women. The claim that there is such a sharp distinction would be no less odd than the claim that all men are taller than all women. This is not what is meant when people say that men are taller than women. Claims about sex differences are statistical claims. They are generalizations. I shall say more about this later.
Third, we should realize that terms like “aggressive,” “assertive” and “tough” are not without ambiguity. Sometimes people use these words synonymously. Other times they mean different things by them. Even when they are distinguished, how exactly we pick out the attributes they describe could influence whether or not somebody is described as having the attributes in question, or the extent to which they have them. Consider, for example, the claim that males are “tough.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, somebody or something is tough if he, she, or it is “capable of great physical endurance; strongly resisting force, injury; fatigue, etc.; not easily overcome, tired, or impaired; hardy, stout, sturdy.” There are some ways in which men are clearly less tough than females. As we saw earlier, male life expectancy is typically lower than that of females. While some of this is attributable to greater violence against males, at least some of males’ shorter life span is attributable to male biology. Males die in greater numbers at all ages, including during the fetal period,32 (usually) before they are the victims of greater violence. But the kind of physical toughness that is commonly attributed to males is different. It is that they are better able to endure pain and hardship.
Fourth, we need to be clear about the extent of the purported differences. For example, when it is said that males are more aggressive and violent than females, how much more aggressive and violent are they thought to be? Depending on the answer to this question, the claim is either true or false. Although males do account for more aggression and violence than do females, the difference is not as great as it is usually thought to be. This is borne out by some laboratory studies.33 In real life, we find that there are at least some circumstances, most notably within the family, in which women behave as aggressively and violently and sometimes even more so than men. Thus, we saw earlier that, contrary to received wisdom, wives are at least as violent towards husbands as husbands are towards wives. We also saw that mothers inflict more corporal punishment on children than do fathers. Although mothers generally spend more time with children and thus have more opportunity, parallel claims can be made about some other situations in which men cause more violence (such as war). When women have had the opportunity they have proved capable of the brutalities usually perpetrated by men. Female participation in the Rwandan genocide is one example,34 but there are many others.35 It seems, then, that people generally underestimate the amount of female aggression and violence relative to male aggression and violence. Although the differential is very likely exaggerated, it is true that males exhibit more aggression and violence than females.
In summary, I have provided a preliminary argument that the normative beliefs about males ought to be rejected. However, I have suggested that, although sometimes exaggerated, at least some of the descriptive beliefs are true. I have not provided a long argument for this latter conclusion, primarily because it is not in dispute. Most of the debate concerning beliefs about males and females, and about the differences between them, has not focused on whether the beliefs are true. Indeed, most people have assumed that there are some (average) differences between males and females. Instead the focus has been on what accounts for these differences.
What makes the beliefs true?
It is in explaining the origins of sex differences that the hoary nature–nurture question arises. Insofar as this question is understood as a dichotomous choice, it seems unhelpful — indeed a false dichotomy, for it should be clear that some traits could be a product of both nature and nurture. But instead of requiring us to reject the nature–nurture question, recognition of this might instead prompt us to interpret the question in a different way. That is to say, we might interpret it as a question about the extent to which a given trait is the product of nature and the extent to which it is a product of nurture. This form of the question recognizes that a given trait might be influenced by both biology and socialization. Even this formulation of the question might be challenged. The worry might be that it ignores the interaction between the two. However, that just gives rise to a more sophisticated form of the question — one about how nature and nurture interact to produce a particular trait. It is unclear whether this version of the question can be answered with any precision, at least at this time. Fortunately, and contrary to what some people think, we do not need to answer it in order to demonstrate that there is a second sexism (just as we do not need to answer it in order to demonstrate that there is sexism against females). Knowing the precise extent of the second sexism (like the precise extent of the more familiar sexism) may require knowledge that we do not yet have. However, it is possible to show that there is a substantial second sexism in the absence of the knowledge not yet available to us.
The nature–nurture debate about differences between males and females is usually characterized as a debate between those who think that the differences are attributable exclusively to nature, those who think that they are exclusively attributable to nurture, and those who think that they are a product of the interaction of nature and the nurture. Although these are all logically possible positions, the actual debate, is restricted to a portion of this spectrum, as I shall now explain.
The view that sex differences are the product of nature alone is not one seriously entertained by anybody. It is not hard to see why this view — biological determinism — has no serious advocates. Although there are some traits, such as eye color, that are genetically36 determined and to which the environment appears to make no contribution (or at least no contribution that is not mediated via genes), other physical traits involve some interaction with environment. One’s height, for example, is partly genetic. There is some upper limit to how tall one can grow, given one’s genes. However, environmental factors, such as one’s nutrition level especially during the developmental years, also play a part. If that is true for relatively straightforward physical traits, it seems extremely unlikely that more complex traits such as aggression and assertiveness are uninfluenced by the environment. Moreover, it is clear that all the differences we see between the sexes are not fully explicable by innate biology. It is manifestly obvious that socialization into gender roles is occurring. Even if there is a greater biological tendency towards, for example, toughness in males, this is clearly being amplified by gender role expectations that males will be tough. It would not be necessary to tell boys not to cry like girls if their natures fully determined how tough they would be. There would be no point to gender role socialization if it would occur without prompting.37
In contrast to biological determinism, there do seem to be those who hold the opposite view — or, at the very least, something extremely close to it. Such people maintain that the differences between the sexes are entirely the product of “social construction.” On this view, the traits of males and females have no biological basis. They have nothing to do with nature and are instead entirely the result of nurture. On this view masculinity and femininity are moulded by society, and nature plays no role.
The actual opponents of the social construction view are sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists. While critics of these latter views often describe them as biological determinism, that is a mischaracterization. Instead, sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists espouse the view that there are innate sex differences — tendencies — that interact with the environment to yield particular traits and behaviors. They provide an evolutionary account of sex selection, arguing that males and females have different reproductive strategies. A consequence of this is that some psychological and behavioral differentiation will occur. Some traits that are more adaptive for males are less so for females, and vice versa.
It is sometimes difficult to say for sure whether a particular view constitutes social constructionism. This is because it is unclear how extreme somebody’s position must be before it qualifies to be designated as a social construction view. Some of those who oppose sociobiology and evolutionary psychology allow the possibility that there might just be some very minor differences between the sexes. Consider, for example, Anne Fausto-Sterling’s Myths of Gender, which is devoted to rejecting the view that there are innate cognitive, affective and other psychological differences between males and females. However, she does not close off the possibility that there could be some differences. She says that if “sex differences in cognition exist at all they are quite small and the question of their possible origins remains unanswered”38 and that she remains “open to the idea that some small fraction of an already tiny sex-related difference could result from hormonal differences between male and female.”39
Another difficulty is determining what sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists take the magnitude of the biological contribution to sex differences to be. Presumably there is some disagreement between individual proponents of these views, but at least some of them may be overestimating the biological contribution. The problem arises, in part, because of a failure to distinguish two questions. The first is whether there is a particular biological basis for some attribute. On the assumption that there is, the second question concerns its extent. The focus is usually on the first question. This is quite understandable. It is the prior question, and is also a difficult enough question to answer. However, an answer to this question does not entail an answer to the second one.
Consider, for example, the purported link between aggression and androgens, particularly testosterone. Although testosterone is also found in females, it is typically present at much higher levels in males, which is why it is known as a “male hormone.” Androgens are often said to influence aggression (and other kinds of behavior) in two ways.40 During gestation it is thought to have an organizing effect on the developing brain.41 Then, later in life, during puberty and also afterwards, testosterone circulating in a person’s blood system is said to influence behavior.
In the case of circulating androgens the evidence of an effect on behavior is weaker. The administering of antiandrogens (and the resultant reduction of circulating testosterone levels) has been successful in curbing compulsive paraphilic sexual thoughts and impulsive and violent sexual behaviors. However, the drugs were not very effective in reducing non-sexual violence.42 Increasing testosterone levels in women or hypogonadal men to normal or supranormal levels has not been shown to increase aggression consistently. Lowering testosterone levels in men, by castration or antiandrogens, does not consistently decrease aggression.43
Some of those reviewing the literature have concluded that the evidence does not support a link between circulating testosterone and human aggression.44 The inability to establish this link, claim some authors,45 stands in striking contrast to the ease with which relations have been shown between testosterone and other phenomena, including sexual activity. In those few studies which do suggest connections between circulating testosterone and human aggression, the links are correlational and there is some reason to think that it is the aggressive and dominant behaviors that cause testosterone levels to rise, rather than vice versa.46
The evidence for an effect of prenatal androgen exposure on aggression in later life is stronger, even though not at all conclusive. There are clearly moral constraints on experimentally altering the androgen levels to which fetuses and infants are exposed. As a result, one of the few ways of testing the hypothesis that prenatal androgen exposure increases aggression later is by examining girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a condition causing them to be exposed to unusually high levels of androgens in utero and until diagnosis soon after birth. Some studies have indeed found CAH girls to be more aggressive than control females,47 but some found “the difference was not significant.”48 Other studies found no difference in aggression levels between CAH females and control females, even though affected females were, in other ways, found to be behaviorally similar to boys and unlike control females.49 The latter studies suggest that even if prenatal androgen exposure has other behavioral effects, the influence on aggression is not unequivocal.
This is not to deny a biological basis for human aggression. It is possible, for example, that human aggression is rooted in some biological phenomenon other than androgens. There is some evidence that human aggression has many features in common with what is called “defensive aggression” (as distinct from “hormone-dependent aggression”) in non-primate mammals and that this kind of aggression is rooted in the limbic system of the brain.50 One of the distinctive features of defensive aggression in non-primate mammals, however, is that it is quantitatively similar in males and females.51
It is also possible that there is a connection between androgens and aggression even though none has yet been demonstrated conclusively. One possible explanation for this is that the posited connection is a complex one. One obvious feature of this complexity is the interaction with environmental factors.
However, even if it is demonstrated that there is a specified biological basis for aggression, we would have answered only the first question to which I referred earlier. We would not have established anything about the extent to which aggression is attributable to the specified biological phenomenon. Discerning the approximate contribution it makes is no easy task. However, unless we recognize that this is not resolved by an answer to the first question, the temptation is to think that because one has established a biological basis, one has also demonstrated that it plays a large role in aggression.
While sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists sometimes overestimate how far differences between men and women are attributable to biology or how conclusive the evidence for a particular link is, the extreme social construction view faces the following challenge: if one rejects a dualist separation of mind and brain and accepts that the mind is the product of the brain, it is wildly implausible to think that while every other part of the body is influenced by biology, our psychological features are not. Of course, it does not follow from this that one’s sex does make a difference. However, it would be surprising if every psychological attribute were distributed equally between males and females. It would be especially surprising, given that there are behavioral differences between the sexes in other species. To think that there are none in humans would be to posit a massive evolutionary discontinuity between our species and others.52 But acknowledging this leaves open the question which attributes are unequally distributed and how unequally.
What, if any, implications are there?
One reason why there is so much disagreement about the origin of differences between the sexes is that the scientific questions are often examined with an eye to the hypothesized moral and social implications of finding or refuting innate psychological differences between males and females.
The assumption is often made that to the extent that differences between the sexes are socially constructed they are alterable whereas to the extent the differences are innate they cannot be changed. Put another way, many people assume that whereas social constructionism facilitates liberal or revolutionary views, evolutionary psychology has conservative or reactionary implications. According to this reasoning, if the traits of males and females are attributable to socialization, we can decide to socialize children differently in future. By contrast, if the differences are biological then there is no point trying to change what cannot be changed.
The assumption that these conclusions follow from the respective views about the origin of sex differences is mistaken and there are certainly people who accept evolutionary explanations of human traits but who draw conclusions associated with the political left rather than right.53 There are many reasons why such a position is coherent.
First, biology may sometimes be more malleable than society. For example, in some societies a woman equipped with oral contraceptives that act biologically to suppress her fertility will be more successful using these pills to limit her fecundity than she would be if she were to attempt to alter social expectations that women produce as many children as possible.
Second, as we have already seen, just as biology can influence society so society can exert an influence on biology. For example, social factors can affect levels of nutrition and exercise, which can impact on physical characteristics such as height, neurological and muscular development, age of the onset of puberty and so forth. Insofar as nutrition and opportunities for exercise are distributed on the basis of a person’s sex, biological differences between the sexes will be increased or decreased even if not eliminated.
Third, even if it were the case that biological differences were unalterable, we would need to be careful about the extent to which the differences between the sexes were biological. After all, there is good reason to think that innate differences would be amplified by society. The amplification mechanism could be this: people perceive modest differences between the sexes. As a result they come to have certain expectations of males and others of females. Males and females are pressured to conform to those expectations. This magnifies the differences between the sexes, thereby entrenching the expectations that further amplify the differences.
It is very unlikely that the differences we see between the sexes are fully attributable to biology. As evidence for this, consider the great variation in the magnitude of sex differences across different societies. Consider, for example, the fact that we are biologically very similar to our human ancestors tens of thousands of years ago. However, the traits of the average man and average woman then and now — including those traits that would once have been thought natural — differ considerably. Or consider differences between contemporary women and men of Afghanistan in comparison with the differences between the female and male American soldiers interacting with them. If one knew only the female role of Afghan women and how they differed from Afghan men, one might well think the female soldiers from America a biological impossibility. Or consider what Adam Jones has said about female participation in the Rwandan genocide:
If women anywhere can participate in genocide on such a scale, and with such evidence enthusiasm and savagery, then it seems a valid prima facie assumption that they are capable of such participation everywhere. The search then becomes one not for some essential “difference” in women’s approach to war and peace, but for the range of cultural and policy mechanisms that either allow or, more frequently, inhibit the expression of women’s aggressive and genocidal potential.54
Fourth, whatever natural psychological and behavioral differences there are between men and women, these are only statistical. They are tendencies. We cannot say, for example, that all men are more aggressive than all women. Thus, one important question concerns how some attribute is distributed across males and females. Put another way, how much overlap is there between the distribution curves? Moreover, it might be argued that we should, as far as possible, treat people as individuals rather than as members of a group to which they belong. Thus if a particular job has a height requirement,55 one should, as far as possible, seek individuals of the right height rather than use a person’s sex as a proxy for determining his or her height.
Finally, whether or not biological and social factors are malleable does not tell us anything about whether they are desirable and thus about whether they should be altered if this becomes possible in the future. Some desirable form of government might be socially constructed but not something we should seek to change. Other things, like horrible congenital diseases, might be biologically unalterable but nonetheless something we would seek to be able to alter or to avoid. As I noted earlier, we cannot infer from the fact that things are a certain way that that is the way they should be. This is true irrespective of whether the claims are about biology or about society. Both biological and social matters might be either desirable or undesirable, good or bad, worthy of changing or preserving (if we are able to do so).
It should now be apparent that the nature–nurture distinction is a proxy for and less important than the distinction between traits that are less alterable and those that are more alterable. In other words, what matters is not whether a trait is the product of nature or of nurture but rather whether it can be changed. Insofar as a trait cannot be altered we ignore that fact at our peril.
This is not to say that we are unable to do anything in the face of some unalterable trait. As the famous dictum notes, power tends to corrupt (and absolute power corrupts absolutely). Let us imagine that this tendency is unalterable. It does not follow that we cannot do anything about it. One thing we can do is design institutions that acknowledge this fact and seek to minimize the damage it can do. This is one reason why democracy is preferable to dictatorship. Dictatorship indulges a dangerous tendency whereas democracy puts limits on the expression of the tendency (rather than eliminating the tendency itself). The same is true of sex differences. Failure to recognize any unalterable differences between the sexes is dangerous, but this does not mean that we can do nothing to limit undesirable traits and promote desirable ones.
Conclusion
I began this chapter by identifying a number of beliefs about males that explain why males suffer the disadvantages they do. I do not claim that this list is exhaustive, but it is both substantial and representative. The rest of the chapter was devoted to a discussion of how we should think about these beliefs. I noted that there are differences between the sexes, although the extent of these may be exaggerated. The real controversy, I suggested, lies in the origins of these differences. Some people attribute them entirely to socialization, while others think that nature plays a role. The latter is the more plausible view, but there is disagreement about just how much of a role nature plays. Competing answers to this question must be very general, however, because at this time we lack sufficient knowledge to determine with any precision what the relative roles and interactions are. That said, I have offered a general caution against hasty moral and political inferences from the fact that a trait has a biological component.
In the next chapter, I turn from these sorts of general comments to more specific ones. I do this by returning to each of the disadvantages outlined in Chapter 2. My aim is to show why many of them are the product of wrongful discrimination. Making this case depends in part on showing that sex differences do not justify the discrimination.
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