The reliance on sociobiological examples and biological models in general is worrisome, not because biology or natural selection are irrelevant, but because the principles are poorly understood by those who casually rely on them to justify what are essentially political beliefs (and, yes, beliefs about gender are political). For example, Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives, commented about women in the military and their suitability for combat in a video course on American civilization at Reinhardt College in Georgia:
females have biological problems staying in a ditch for thirty days because they get infections, and they don’t have upper body strength. I mean, some do, but they’re relatively rare. On the other hand, men are basically little piglets, you drop them in a ditch, they roll around in it, doesn’t matter, you know. These things are very real. . . because males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes. (Romano & Welch, 1995)
Mr. Gingrich obviously had not rolled around in a battleground trench of late, and one can only guess to what he attributes his resistance to infection. More important, in one statement he both influenced directly the perception of women in the military and defined the questions that should be debated in this regard; that the dialogue should center on the suitability of women for a specific if not unlikely military task, rather than on their possible contribution to the defense of our nation. All this is directed at students enrolled in college, in search of new impressions of truth, ready to create truth for the next generation.
In another example, ABC News (Neufeld, 1995) aired a program on the reality of sex differences, Men, Women & the Sex Difference, featuring John Stossel, a special reporter for ABC News. The message of the program was that men and women are “just biologically hard-wired to be different,” and, accordingly, expectations of gender specific behaviors and attitudes should be different as well. Stossel concluded that differences do not necessarily preclude equal opportunity, going on to point out that the historical evidence clearly shows that equal opportunity did not exist for women and minorities in the context of immutable biological differentiation before the advent of political intervention. The implication of these pronouncements is that the goals of equal opportunity are political overlays, whereas inequities are largely the result of natural biology.
The themes reflected by Gingrich and Stossel are unfortunately too common in the psychological interpretation of sexuality. No one can argue that meager gender differences in attitudes and behavior exist, but there is, and should be, considerable debate over the explanations for the origins of these differences, and certainly over the resultant social and economic stratifications.
It is difficult to dispel the misconceptions about natural sexuality in our culture when the myths of human sexual behavior are constantly reinforced, often by prominent psychologists and the media elite. How can the sexual double standard of male promiscuity and female coyness be dismantled when sociobiological theories are sensationalized in popular magazines? A Time cover article (Wright, 1994) reported that the “good news from evolutionary psychology. .. [is] that human beings are designed to fall in love.. . , ” and “the bad news. . . [is] that they aren’t designed to stay there” (p. 46). The article was a veritable sociobiological textbook explanation of male promiscuity. The themes apparent in the psychological interpretation of sexuality, as we have seen, are not immune from these neatly packaged views.
One disturbing feature of these misconceptions is that the natural biology of sexual reproduction is taken as a general template or justification for a wide range of stereotypic gender role behaviors, often producing prescriptions for behavior that limit individual opportunity and choice. In addition, stereotypes ostensibly supported by biological fact often are manifested in behavior that exploits or abuses women. It is especially disturbing when these erroneous views of sexuality and gender become the basis for repressive politics. According to the deterministic model, social reform designed to alter this dominance is an arbitrary overlay to human nature that can only hope to partially contain the more essential biology.
It is important to look at each of these points because socially constructed models of biology frequently are used in a post hoc fashion to justify intrusive social and political control in people’s lives. The implementation of these political restrictions has tremendous implications for women’s (and men’s) lives. For example, the supposition of a single natural sexuality was one justification for Pope Paul Vi’s 1968 encyclical against birth control, seen by the Vatican as an unnatural act.
In another example of political applications, sodomy laws, targeting not sodomy but rather homosexuals, are justified in the public conscience because the act is unnatural and against Judeo-Christian law. Violence against homosexuals is rationalized partly on the basis that homosexuality is an offense to God, an offense because it doesn’t adhere to the one, normal sexual script established by religions. This rationalization also is apparent in the rhetoric of hate groups, where often the connections are made between God, biology, and a repressive social order. Beyond concerns for frankly political uses of biological determinism, we are concerned that these politics impact personal experience, often causing distress, loneliness, and an impoverishment of spirit.