I wonder if "evopsych" and "the patriarchy" are some sort of mirror image words that make people from the other side stop listening whenever they get brought into the argument.
If humans having any behavior differences by gender that are not culturally constructed is a suspect viewpoint, what do you make of humans having evolved from animals that don't have culture to construct things but do have behavior differences by gender?
I could see that being the case, yeah.
I assume that those differences are slighter than one would assume, that society may necessarily point us in directions in which the evolutionary "purpose" of our traits are harmful (and so we should not privilege those evolutionary traits as inherently good or excuses for behavior which is societally harmful). I know that working from the viewpoint in which all of gendered behavior is culturally constructed will have me wrong sometimes, but the trend of history makes me think I'll be less wrong by keeping th...
I don't mean to claim that there should be a conflict.
Most likely the conflict arises because of many things, such as 1)Women having been ostracized for much of our society's existence 2)People failing at the is-ought problem, and committing the Naturalistic Fallacy 3)Lots of media articles saying unbelievably naïve evolutionary statements as scientific fact 4)Feminists as a group being defensive 5)Specially defensive when it comes to what is said to be natural. 6) General disregard by people, and politically engaged people (see The Blank Slate, by Steve Pinker) of the existence of a non Tabula Rasa nature. 7) Lack of patience of Evolutionary Psychologists to make peace and explain themselves for the things that journalists, not them, claimed. and others...
But the fact is, the conflict arose. It has only bad consequences as far as I could see, such as people fighting over each other, breaking friendships, and prejudice of great intensity on both sides.
How to avoid this conflict? Should someone write a treatise on Feminist Evolutionary Psychology? Should we get Leda Cosmides to talk about women liberation?
There are obviously no incompatibilities between reality and the moral claims of feminism. So whichever facts about evolutionary psychology are found to be true with the science's development, they should be made compatible. Compatibilism is possible.
But will the scientific community pull it off?
Related: Pinker Versus Spelke - The Science of Gender and Science
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html
David Buss and Cindy Meston - Why do Women Have Sex?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA0sqg3EHm8