Michael Eriksson
A Swede in Germany

Feminism and evolutionary perspectives

The regular visitor may have noted that I often take an evolutionary perspective—and, indeed, I consider this to be single best way of gaining an understanding into why humans behave like they do, how they should behave in order to be happy, why organisations do not work like they should, and so on.

The interesting thing: I had my first ideas in this direction as a teenager, but it was not until my mid twenties (!) that I heard of someone else having non-trivial thoughts in the same direction—this despite there being entire scientific fields (notably evolutionary psychologyw) that deal with the issue!


I have to make some reservations for Richard Dawkinsw, whose books I wolfed down in my early teens (and who very may well have been the immediate basis for the aforementioned first ideas): He (unlike e.g. Stephen Jay Gouldw, whose books I turned to next, and who was a terrible disappointment) actually thought and reasoned about evolution, and it is likely that he had something to say on the matter. Notably, however, this was outside of news and popular media; notably, I repeatedly heard Dawkins referred to in terms similar to those used about The Bell Curvew—and with the same “If it is not politically correct, then it must be written by Nazis.” message.

The reason, as far as I can tell, is that the corresponding ideas are not “kosher” enough in the eyes of the politically correct and, above all, feminists. Note that both the Swedish media and the Swedish educational system underlie a very strong feministic/PC influence. Just like in the US (cf. e.g. the crucifixion of Lawrence Summersw for stating, arguably understating, established scientific facts) those who dare to speak the scientific truth are simply shouted down, discredited as women-haters, threatened, ...

No wonder then that I saw no sign of an evolutionary approach: It leads to a very, very different world-view, very, very different explanations of behaviours, very, very different policies, ... than the naive pseudo-Marxistic model that is the basis of modern feminism. Unfortunately, its greater scientific basis, better match with the facts, greater predictive ability, whatnot, is (in their eyes) immaterial: It does not agree with their credo, and is therefore, ipso facto, wrong.