Today, we have some feminist critique of the viewpoint that men "can't help" oogling women. Inspired by the trendy article, "5 Ways Modern Men are Trained to Hate Women," and it's scathing response; "Mysogyny isn't caused by male horniness."
Even after reading this critique, which makes a great point that hey, maybe women and men don't act differently just because of biology, but because of what society teaches us, some guy still found the need to cry out (comment #265: mcguinty):
You’ll also notice that I never said the average male traits make the average male better than the average female. I just said it makes the average male different from the average female. Personally I would like to be able to have some of the average female traits: better social intelligence, better empathy, and so on. But I can’t because of my biology.
O. M. Gee.
Our response:
Dear @mcguinty. by assuming these male SOCIAL traits are biological, you just spit out a whole bunch of disabling sexism. " I would like to be able to have some of the average female traits: better social intelligence, better empathy, and so on. But I can’t because of my biology." What the hell? ANYONE can have better social intelligence and better empathy, all you have to do is make an effort and try to LEARN.
Women are told from day 1 that they must consider other's feelings in everything they do, and give up their own needs to support others. This is why women have these traits in wider abundance than men, not because it's "biological." You using biology as an excuse as to why you don't have them, is just making a lame excuse to justify your continued behavior as a selfish, offensive asshole. Biology is not an excuse to treat women badly, or act like an asshole in general. That is is the whole problem with this cracked article, and this why it DOES matter if men's different behavior is based in biology or not.
If it was really based in biology, then it could not be changed. (If that was actually true, then I think all men should be imprisoned and removed from all positions of power, since they "naturally" are inclined to hurt women.) But if macho, objectifying, tit-gazing behavior is LEARNED, then we can UNLEARN it, which would be a HUGE SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT. We need to stop blaming biology and recognize the social conditioning that is all around us.
So. Why is this so hard to understand? Because I have heard men who claim to be "progressive" blame their biology all the time. You almost might think, that they don't want to understand it..
