Studentersamfundet i Trondhjem

Adam = Eve? (8. mars 2008)

Skrevet av Sigbjørn Olsen, 10. april kl. 13:18 (0)

Today, on Woman's Day, the Student Society of Trondheim meet to discuss the equality of status, rights and opportunity across the sexes. How far have we come? How far can we go? How far should we go?

The sitting board of Samfundet (in spite of its posterchildlike balanced gender distribution) has thus far invited 26 male speakers, and only a measly 3(!) female speakers. So, while it might not seem too odd to invite a man and a woman as speakers for a meeting on gender equality, it is actually (statistically) quite surprising. The man of the evening is Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair, a evolutionary psychology prof from Norway Science & Tech, and the woman Lynne Segal, a professor of psychology and gender studies at Birkbeck College in London. Due to the necessity of communicating with the latter, the meeting is (mostly) being held in (broken) English.

Due to the rather (de)pressing effect of the meeting agenda, whereupon entering the Grand Hall I feel my blood circulation ceasing from abrupt disinterest, I am sorely tempted to run home and watch a Bond movie instead. Come to think about it, the challenge made to my bloodflow might also have come from the subzero temperature of the Grand Hall. It is positively freezing.

Oh well... I've got a blog to write, and must dutifully be present. Consequentially, all the students who do not have blogs to write, are not. The room isn't completely barren, though. While the meeting may have been abandoned by our regular participants, a fairly large group of researchers seem to have braved the world outside to attend.

The meeting begins. Eivind Rindal is present and sitting not too far from the lectern, yet does not approach it during "Speaker's Corner". I recall thinking it odd last time not starting the meeting with some political outburst or another. This is odder still.

Leif Kennair is still a litte singed after the recent flaming of his research through media, and starts well on the defensive. Evolutionary psychology (EP), he says, is not the enemy of feminism - it is a way to find out truths about human nature. To illustrate, some human responses may well be biological: We instinctively fear the dark, snakes, and spiders. The same does not hold for reasonably modern inventions such as alcohol, sugary foods, cars, and guns.

The minds of modern humans are a product of evolution, and therefore EP expects to find some sex differences. For example, one might expect jealousy by considering the male investment in childrearing despite paternal uncertainty and the possibility of female sexual infidelity. Naive fathers would be selected against. That there should be some behavioural differences due to gender seems fairly obvious to me, even though it seems society at large is currently in some sort of equality overdrive stupor.

Since it sometimes flies in the face of ideology, the politics of EP are often questioned, and many social scientists fear that EP has a right wing agenda. However, says Kennair, many claims of EP lacking scientific rigour are quite simply unfounded. Kennair argues that feminism needs a theory of origins, an empirical, scientic foundation that can explain cross-cultural patterns, and that accepts the reality of biological sex.

The Student Society's Internal Theatre troupe (SIT) plays a sketch. Radio theatre performed live on stage. As live as it can get, I suppose. It's all in Norwegian though. That's not to say that Lynne Segal is missing out on anything. She's not.

Our second speaker, Lynne Segal, is a fierce critic of EP, since it has been used to attack feminists. While EP and gender studies may appear to begin in the same place, saying that biology is part of the picture and culture is a part of biology, she disagrees on the method and the conclusions. She criticizes the "scientific rigour" of Kennair, and wants a open, critical approach to epistemology.

Her main itch with EP is that she feels it misappropriates Darwin to simplify the complexity of interhuman relationships. In its day Darwinism was misappropriated as race theory by British nationalists. She claims that understanding humans is too complex to be understood from single, quantifiable indicators. Despite this, research carries on in this direction.

She points at western countries, where single motherhood, same sex relations, and chosen childlessness are all on the rise. So much for evolutionary psychology for predicting human behaviour. Life is not simple, and cannot be explained through simple means. The unifiers of science mimic superstition more than they challenge it. Therefore, she says, EP is attacked by other psychologists and biologists for pseudoscientific posturing.

After a while it becomes apparent that unless she is stopped, Segal will be quite happy to continue speaking indefinitely. Øyvind asks her if she could round up. In conclusion she says that whether we like it or not, there is a political dimension to EP, and it overprivileges men (and before men, brits). She fears the privileging of the biological over the cultural.

I have to hand it to the board. All too often the invited speakers are a bunch of trite groupthinkers. Today, not only is there something reminiscing gender balance between the speakers, but both are knowledgeable, both are articulate, and neither agrees with the other in even the slighest sense. Very refreshing.

Øyvind announces another break, but suddenly four garishly dressed guys storm into the room, making quite a racket with a wild wild air guitar solo orgy. One of them is truly thrashing about on the floor. Another, on stage, is looking rather uncomfortable with it all. Apparently, there is a national air guitar contest later on.

After the break, SIT does an encore, yet again afflicting the audience with acute boredom. The exception to the rule was these two lines that seems to have slipped through the writer's funny purge:

Girl: "Am I not pretty enough for you?"
Boy: "Between your legs, you are."

During the sketch, the lights are turned down. Pretty much all the way. Presumably this is meant to create ambiance and feeling. Well, it's so dark in here, the fucking ambiance is fucking hurting my eyes. I would strongly suggest mandatory minimums for Regi, our darkness technicians in residence. Primarily for the lighting equipment, to hinder Regi in their quest for light levels below what is required for comfortable sight. However, it occurs to me that locking the technicians away in a pitch dark dungeon for a day might be more educational.

Following that ordeal, the panel debate commences. Today, not only a debate in name. It is truly remarkable. Also, Segal has a highly amusing microphone technique, which can only be described as "random wall aiming". Kennair has some microphone antics as well, where he will lift the microphone to his mouth, and wait. And so are we, in anticipation. Is he going to speak? Is he not?

Eivind Rindal is nervous about speaking English in front of a great... eh... a lot of people. Though, what he actually asked, only he knows. Leif says he's not quite sure he got that. Segal responded "I understand the question as, eh, agreeing with me."

William Throndsen attempts to be a smart ass with a Mythbusters- tale of buttons and shirts. Segal busts his mysts and his smarts. I find this amusing.

Agnes Olstad, not a student, is next up. She says it feels good being here again. As a a student politician she used to speak here, and it always brought out the worst in her. She then proceeds to attack EP for being silly, and Kennair for using a shitty questionnaire. Kennair responds that he thinks Olstads deion of his research is shitty. Martin wants to know more about the questionnaire, which is a reproduction of a study from Texas of why people have sex.

The next questioner says that results from EP can be picked up and misused to discriminate. Kennair asks us to consider levels of desire between women and men. If they are dissimilar, are we making lives of women in Norway better through telling them that they ought to be similar? He would like to know how we could repress women by the belief that they are less sexually desiring.

Segal responds: "What is crucial with human behaviour is what meaning we give it. Humans have an enormous flexibility to create the conditions under which we wish to live in. The claim of EP is that we are not made for equality. This is rubbish. We're made to make what we want. Humans aren't made to fly. Yet we fly. So evolutionary psychology is more likely to be abused in the public."

Kennair asks whether ideas ought to be brushed under the carpet if they can be misused? Abruptly, a whole lot of people leave the room. A mystery. And then five-six more questions. Segal remarks that she doesn't find EPs or biologists writing nearly enough about the political context or the misuses of knowledge. Kennair nods.

Øyvind seems to be getting gradually less patient with Segals epic answers.

Kennair is saying he is not succeeding in turning the debate towards how EP can be more useful. The way we do things can be evolutionary d, and it's stupid to close the door on that idea. He asks us to consider mandatory female representation in board rooms. If females are just a social construct, then there isn't any basis for that idea. However, if females actually exist, there are good reasons for this. If females (or males) are a social construct, then all inequality will vanish when we get the right ideas.

William Throndsen asks if there are topics researchers stear clear of? Segal says she is not afraid of Darwin, but is frustrated by people misusing Darwin. Of course there is such a thing as women. The answers for getting a better society are going to come from looking at culture, not biology.

"Ida" (anonymous by request) talks about her sex life, referring to the Texan study. The last time she had sex, she says, she was horny. In Norwegian: "Klam i hakket". She says that she expects a male, picked at random, would be more likely to have higher desire to compete than women. Does that make her prejudiced?

Kennair: No, it doesn't make you prejudiced unless you think that every individual is a representation of the group's mean. Segal: There are greater differences within women/men as a group than between the two groups. So the mean differences are problematic as a guide to what to do. Kennair: Mean differences are important because, while the average person probably doesn't exist, it helps most people from a clinical perspective. There are traits where there is great behavioural overlap, and there are those where you cannot find such overlap.

And that's that for now. All in all a rather interesting meeting. My expectations were far exceeded, and with some notable (and duly noted) exceptions had a most enjoyable time.