I’m no scientist, and my brain isn’t even functioning at 80% capacity right now (I have a case of the post-run fuzzies), but something about this headline gave a sharp tweak to my rage-o-meter:
“The Origin of Menopause: Why Do Women Outlive Fertility?“
I’m all for asking questions all the time about everything. You should see the frenzy I work myself into on a daily basis trying to figure out if I’ve just written something that’s true, mostly true, or utter bullshit. But there is such a thing as a loaded question that leads to bad conclusions, and this question strikes me as downright rotten. Posing a “why” such as this suggests that women shouldn’t outlive fertility, and indeed, the article explains that human females are different from other species, in that other mammalian females usually die soon after their egg supply is exhausted. Posing the question this way suggests that human females are a problematic outlier: what is up with women going against the Laws of Nature?!
I see you’ve pointed out that other mammals may be able to define their lives by eating, sleeping, pooping, and mating, while humans experience greater complexity of social networks, but you set the bar pretty low for exploring that possibility. You’ve asked, “So she’s no longer able to be a mother…but what is her use as a grandmother?!” like that’s the only other alternative for finding worth in female lives. Last I checked, I’ve spent exactly 0 hours in my 15 or so fertile years functioning as a babymaker or facilitator of babymaking. I suppose that’s been wasted time? Male AND female humans, we build cities and dig wells and plant crops and feed and care for each other, for as long as we’re physically able. And pregnancy can be debilitating enough to reduce one’s capacity to do all that. Why must unlimited fertility be the default position, anyway?
I’d worry I was being paranoid (it happens, mostly in the middle of the night when I mistake the tender footfalls of a raccoon or squirrel on the roof for a mad band of camo-clad ruffians rappelling down the house to bust in the windows and steal my iPod shuffle), but this is precisely the sort of article that gets picked up for inclusion in Amanda Marcotte’s excellent and ongoing collection of posts on what she delicately calls “Science for Choads.” And anyway, on paper I’m a historian of science, and dealing with the social implications of scientific claims is sort of my bag, baby. It pays to be aware.
Argumentatively yours,
Grimsaburger
I think you seriously misunderstood the point of the question, which is really an issue of evolutionary biology. The question in no way implies that women are “worthless” if they can’t have babies, not does it suggest that women “shouldn’t outlive fertility.” The fact that you read it in this way does not mean that it is at all what was suggested.
The fact is that, in an evolutionary biology sense, creatures survive because they can make new copies of themselves or improve the chances of survival of those copies. So the evolution problem that this article is pointing to is that there should be a selective disadvantage for outliving menopause, since way back in human history anyone who was not a reproductive member of a population would be using resources that were needed for reproductive purposes. It is also important to recognize that modern humanity and modern female roles may have nothing to do with this question at all.
I haven’t actually read the article but I have heard this question posed frequently in other settings, so it is quite possible that something in the article itself is somehow sexist. However, I get the impression from your post that you were immediately offended by the title of the paper itself, which I think is unwarranted.
I get that we all have different ways of doing things, but I’d rather scoop my own eyeball out and gnaw on it than have a discussion about something I haven’t read.
My rage-o-meter started ringing at the title, and then I read the article. It kept ringing until the end, where they put the one sentence that made sense, which is a reasonable challenge to all that came before.
I don’t know much about evolutionary biology, I’ll grant you. But my point here isn’t that the science being done is bad science. I’m sure the evolutionary biologists whose work is referenced in the article are lovely people, and plenty smart. My problem is with the delivery of the science, where meaning is conveyed to regular human beans like myself. Hence I directed my attention to the organ of communication. I don’t doubt there are a dozen competing theories out there about the social nature of menopause, but here it’s all about mothers and grandmothers, followed by head-scratching at why, oh why, postmenopausal females could continue to exist and even thrive in society when they serve no direct or indirect reproductive purpose.
The broader point that I hinted at, but didn’t make outright, is all about authority and the perpetuation of social patterns. Sometimes it’s the scientific authorities themselves, and sometimes it’s quasi-professional journals, and more often general news outlets that do the dirty work. These biologists are working with premodern scenarios, and are careful to specify thus in their own work, I’m sure. But the presentation here is such that premodern and modern are conflated, suggesting that, broadly speaking, (modern) women’s utility is limited by their fertility, and Nature has deemed it thus. An appeal to “nature,” where behavior in a hierarchically-organized society is concerned, is among the strongest that can be made to perpetuate the hierarchy. And correct me if I’m wrong, but women don’t figure prominently in the upper echelons of said hierarchy.
You haven’t read the article, but you’re accusing this blogger of having “misunderstood the point of the question”. Why don’t you shut your fucking yap until you’ve read the fucking article? How about that as a plan of action?
In retrospect, #3 might have been the more forthright (and appropriate?) response. Damn me and my need to explain!
Are you sure your just not on your period?
To my very detriment, I had to go there. It was just too wide open. And isn’t “women going against the Laws of Nature” part of the liberal agenda anyways?
Please don’t hunt me down and kill me.
Women going against the Laws of Nature isn’t part of my liberal agenda; refusing to acknowledge the existence of Laws of Nature is. ha-HA! Take THAT!
And now I’ll be revoking your “Liberal Sympathizer” membership. You may earn it back by sending me a copy of Amanda Marcotte’s new book.
Wow. That was a violent response to my reply. I didn’t mean to be so offensive (and am a bit unsure as to how I was). I admitted to not reading it, as you quoted, and my point was, as you also quoted, that offense seemed to happen at the title, which I did not think was offensive. That was all. Then I threw out an idea that might have relieved some of that offense, if it was in the same vein as the article. In any event, why so angry?
And I must also add that, after reading the article, everything that I so ignorantly said was completely accurate.
My sincerest apologies for attempting shed some light on the subject of this post.
(a) I’m not sure I’m going to be able to explain how your comment can only be designed to insult. You essentially said, “I haven’t read the article that pissed you off, but I know you’ve misunderstood it because, after all, I have powers of intuition and reasoning superior to yours.” If that’s not what you intended, you might want to think more carefully about how you approach these sorts of situations. Or not, no skin off my nose.
(b) Though I express some agreement with PhysioProf’s response–purely for the sake of (a) and a bit of humor, I’m not angry in the least. This little brouhaha hasn’t disrupted my day at all. I’ll use my remarkable powers of restraint to only hint at the fact that every time I and my female colleagues and friends have been asked “Why are you so angry?” the intent has been to devalue and to marginalize. Surely that’s not what you’re intending as well?
(c) What you’re misunderstanding, for the second time, is that I’m NOT addressing my complaints to the content of the science. I don’t care a hoot if everything you said was “completely accurate.” I’m addressing my complaints to the presentation done by Scientific American of the science. Read it again if you must. Maybe linger over the title, which states pretty clearly, “Dear Scientific American.”
(a) I did not in any way claim that my powers of intuition are superior to yours. I simply expected, based on your response, that I knew more evolutionary biology than you. Which you agreed was true. So that certainly isn’t what I intended.
(b) I understand that you weren’t angry; that question was really for physioprof, though you’re deliberately negative interpretations of what I say seem to show some anger (I’m referring to the intuition thing here). I am also in no way intending to devalue or marginalize anyone, and can’t for the life of me even see how you can get that from what I’ve said. It is clear that you believe the writing of this article somehow does this, and this is where my disagreement lies. I happily concede that I am not as tuned in with this as you are, and that we are reading this article from extremely different angles.
(c) I do understand you have no problem with the science. I also know you don’t care if what I said was accurate; I pointed that out because of the surprising response I got since I admitted to having not reading the article.
In any event, it is also clear that we are very much talking past one another and are not having anything like a constructive conversation, so I will leave this thread at that. Any offense I created was completely unintended and unexpected, and I honestly apologize for it.
I think this is a problem of a bunch of scientist guys saying stuff about women that aren’t intended to be offensive, but it sounds that way because the guys aren’t reading what they wrote from the perspective of someone who’s been targeted for derision/mockery/marginalization by these studies in the past. It doesn’t help they are playing to certain well-known stereotypes that in which they themselves still place some credence.
For example, reading Adam’s first post:
…being on guard for misogynist undertones, I heard:
I thought it was obvious that PhysioProf just always has his “fucking” rage-O-meter pegged at 11, hence the perceived violent response.
On a totally different subject though grim, is that when I found this link about a pissed off squirrel hell bent on World domination and destroying humans, I could only think of you and T.
http://www.illwillpress.com/vault.html
World domination, eh? Then it’s settled. I’m finally buying a slingshot for doing battle with the fat bastards this summer.
Excellent post, Grims.
Don’t waste your breath on the troll.
I feel I should mention here that the theory of sacrifice “for the good of the species” has been done to death (and is so, like, 1970s anyways
). Any bachelor-level evolutionary biology class would inform you that selection for this sort of altruistic, ‘give up your resources so that other, reproducing members of the species can have them,’ type of sacrifice does not occur on the level of a whole species. The tragedy of the commons – like the collapse of a number of shared oceanwide fishing industries due to overfishing by humans – can attest to this failure. The selfishness of the individual generally trumps the “for the good of the species” hypothesis, whether that individual is female or male. Perhaps, then, your grasp of evolutionary biology is not quite as good as you’d hoped.
Also, I loved el ranchero’s response.
Thanks for that clarification, Riva. It was an argument that I thought must be way off base, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to get at it.
And who wouldn’t love El Ranchero’s response? Except, perhaps, um…some people…