Tag - sexism

Are Sex Roles Biologically Determined?

In the past ten years, a succession of highly publicized scientific works have purported to demonstrate that women's subordinate position in our society is due, in good part, to innate (genetic) differences between males and females, and not to external factors as claimed by the women's movement. These theories are...

Sociobiology: A Sexist Synthesis

During the 1960's—a time of great social unrest, questioning of basic American institutions, and a growing interest in socialism as an alternative—there appeared a spate of books on the theme that humans are only another species of ape. Konrad Lorenz, Robert Ardrey, Desmond Morris, Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox, as well...

Jungle Law: Stealing the Double Helix

What motivates scientists to do tedious experiments, chemical dishwashing, mathematical manipulations that often lead nowhere? An aura of intellectual romance shrouds the scientific world. It hides scientists’ daily routines from public view, and mystifies the reasons they choose the work they do. For most people, the...

Sexism at Cancer Lab

Three cancer researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC), Seattle, Washington, have lost their appointments at the culmination of a three-year fight with the administration of that Center. Their struggle exposes some of the basic flaws in the “war on cancer,” which currently spends about three...

Concerning the Infanticide, Marie Farrar

Marie Farrar, born in April, No marks, a minor, rachitic, both parents dead, Allegedly, up to now without police record, Committed infanticide, it is said, As follows: in her second month, she says, With the aid of a barmaid she did her best To get rid of her child with two douches, Allegedly painful but without...

Teaching Science for Humane Survival: Basic Skills and More

Science for Humane Survival is in its eighth consecutive year at the University of Massachusetts' Boston Campus. Controversial from the start, it continues to trigger allergic reactions from various sensitized faculty members whenever it comes up for consideration at one or another college governance meetings...

Sociobiology: The Controversy Continues

After over almost a year's reflection and review and after analyzing the reaction to the new wave of books this fall on sociobiology, particularly E.O. Wilson's On Human Nature, the Sociobiology Study group of the Boston Chapter of Science for the People has decided on a new course of action. We find there is a...

Science for the People: The Natural Birth of a Woman’s Group

The impetus for our meeting can be traced back to last Fall's Eastern Regional Conference where it was decided that people in the local chapters should take a close look at problems of "sexism, racism and elitism." The Boston chapter then held two general meetings about "Interpersonal Relations and the Class Struggle...

Women as Objects: Science and Sexual Politics

A feminist perspective would not hail new technological developments as "liberating" because it would realize that the oppression of women is not the result of biology but of the social constructs around it. In this respect, it is paradoxical that the excesses of an impersonal technology developed by males in a sexist...

Review: Complaints and Disorders – The Sexual Politics of Sickness

The authors focus separately on women of the upper and upper-middle class, and on working-class women. And they are clearer about the effects of the medical system as it applied to affluent women [probably because wealthy women were more directly affected by the medical system]. In addition, Ehrenreich and English...