{"id":31616,"date":"2017-01-10T05:00:25","date_gmt":"2017-01-10T09:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=31616"},"modified":"2017-01-09T16:16:16","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T20:16:16","slug":"evangelical-evo-psych","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/evangelical-evo-psych.html","title":{"rendered":"The Gospel Coalition Goes Full Evo-Psych"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

What even is this?\u00a0The Gospel Coalition posted an article titled, How Should We Think about Watching Women Fight Women?<\/a>\u00a0by Justin Taylor. The article is about the rise of female boxing. What\u2019s strange\u00a0is how far it veers into typical evo-psych jargon before paying lip service to creation in the end. Yep\u2014it\u2019s weird<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Pugilistic sport has long been viewed as a largely male preserve. This isn\u2019t an accident. The physical differences between men and women in strength and muscularity are exceedingly large. Even the most powerful women seldom exceed average male strength on criteria such as grip strength. As David Puts\u00a0observes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Men have about 90% greater upper-body strength, a difference of approximately three standard deviations (Abe et al., 2003; Lassek & Gaulin, 2009).<\/p>\n

The average man is stronger than 99.9% of women (Lassek & Gaulin, 2009).<\/p>\n

Men also have about 65% greater lower body strength (Lassek & Gaulin, 2009; Mayhew & Salm, 1990), over 45% higher vertical leap, and over 22% faster sprint times (Mayhew & Salm, 1990) . . .<\/p>\n

Beyond these huge differences, however, men have always had a much greater propensity toward, aptitude for, and interest in both violence and agonism [=struggle]. Across human societies, the sex differences in this area are displayed in everything from gender ratios in the committing of violent crime, to participation and interest in agonistic sport and competitive activities, to fighting in militaries.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All of this is irrelevant to the female boxing Taylor is ostensibly discussing, which is woman-on-woman and is entered voluntarily. Weirder still, the article Taylor quotes is about evolutionary psychology<\/a><\/em>, in the journal Evolution &\u00a0Human Behavior. But Taylor is an evangelical. He\u2019s a young-earth creationist. Why is he quoting evolutionary psychology? The answer is simple, I suppose\u2014because he found an article that agrees with what he wants to believe.<\/p>\n

Oh and by the way, the numbers Puts includes are off. His sprint comparison is off, likely because it\u2019s old\u2014the top women\u2019s time for a 200 meter dash is\u00a021.34 seconds while the top men\u2019s time is 19.19 seconds. I\u2019ve always been good at arithmetic\u2014I used to practice\u00a0mental math when I was bored as a teen\u2014and there is literally no way to get \u201c22% faster sprint times\u201d out of that. You can\u2019t get 22% out of the 400 meter times either\u2014the women\u2019s time is\u00a047.60 seconds and the men\u2019s time is 43.03 seconds.<\/p>\n

They physical strength measures are off too. There\u2019s no way the \u201caverage\u201d man is stronger than all but 1 in 1000 women, but that is the claim.\u00a0And actually, there\u2019s no reason you should listen to any of these stats\u2014Taylor quotes Puts, who cites Lassek & Gaulin<\/a>, who cite other, older studies\u2014citing studies that cite studies rather than citing the original studies themselves is highly slopping and hardly suggestive of good scholarship. I am not an expert in the field, but a quick google of other articles written the same time as Mayhew & Salm (one of the articles cited by Puts) have results that differ<\/a> dramatically<\/a> from Puts\u2019 claims here.<\/p>\n

What I don\u2019t understand is why this matters to Taylor. Differences in physical strength\u00a0matter very much to non-religious sexist men who use evo-psych to justify a patriarchal social order. But why should they matter to Taylor, who ostensibly believes in gender roles laid down by God, not shaped by millions of years of evolution?<\/p>\n

Taylor next begins citing evo-psych explanations of homosexuality, which frankly makes even less<\/em> sense. In fact, he quotes\u00a0from an article that argues in favor of gay rights<\/a> on the grounds of a thorough literature review, doing so\u00a0to argue that gay men \u201cexhibit many commonalities with women\u201d while lesbian women \u201cperform much more like men.\u201d Taylor then states that female boxing is \u201con a front line of the wider cultural war against gender difference\u201d despite the fact that the article he states asserts in no uncertain terms that gay and lesbian subcultures both exist around the world and have existed across historical periods. What this adds to his argument is unclear. That it tickles his evo-psych leanings is, in contrast, quite clear.<\/p>\n

In examining\u00a0why people like to watch women fight, Taylor writes:<\/p>\n

Young and attractive kicka*s women hold a great appeal for many men too. Not only are they nice to look at, they can also relieve men of some of the burdensome sense of duty to treat women differently from men, to be gentler towards them, to protect them, to accord them particular honor, to be mindful of the advantages they generally enjoy naturally over women in power and agency, and to recognize the fact that women and men have many deeper differences in personality, behavior, and interests.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Full disclosure\u2014a link to this article was sent to me by a female friend who is getting her Ph.D. in a STEM field and frequently feels alienated by exactly this rhetoric. Newsflash: People are individuals<\/em>. Some women like managing relationships. Others don\u2019t. Some women like nurturing and caregiving. Others don\u2019t. And so on and so forth. And even if there are overall differences in terms of comparing the average\u2014differences which can\u2019t be easily separated from social conditioning, if at all\u2014there is still so much variety that this stereotyping is going to leave a whole lot of people out.<\/p>\n

Also, can we talk about the \u201cparticular honor\u201d Taylor states men have traditionally given women? Women, at one point, were property. And by \u201cat one point\u201d I mean in the U.S. 200 years ago<\/em>. Among other places and times, of course. Some honor, that. So much fun, being shut out of careers and fired from our teaching jobs when we got pregnant. What an honor, being prevented from voting. How nice it was, when our husbands and\/or fathers were allowed to beat us\u2014and when we legally did not exist.<\/p>\n

Also, I call absolute bullshit on the idea that the \u201cpower and angry\u201d men \u201cenjoy\u201d over women are \u201cnatural.\u201d If they were, why would men need to put such work into preventing women from, say, boxing? Claims that gender roles are \u201cnatural\u201d are essentially always coupled with efforts to force women to abide by them.<\/p>\n

Such representations of women can play into a pornographic mindset, which celebrates sex purged of the deeper reality of sexual difference, ridding sexual relations of any genuine reckoning with the particular subjective and objective otherness of the other sex, an otherness that should excite wonder, love, responsibility, and care.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What does this even mean?! Maybe it\u2019s just me, but when I have sex I\u2019m not constantly thinking about the fact that I\u2019m a woman and my partner is a man. I\u2019m interacting him with him person to person, not gender to gender. I\u2019m reminded of Douglas Wilson\u2019s highly uncomfortable (to say the least) discussion of gendered dominance and submission<\/a> in the marriage bed. Can we not, please?<\/p>\n

In a manner similar to pornography, in celebrating women fighting, a taboo is being broken, something that may add to the frisson of the female sport for many audiences. However, this taboo is an important one, one that upholds the dignity of the sexes in their differences. As women fight and are exposed to violence for our entertainment, the male fantasy that men could justifiably treat women with the greater roughness with which they treat men is being indulged. We are dulled to our responsibilities towards women, to our need to hold back our strength for their sake, and to our duty to employ it for their well-being and in their service.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wait. Wait. WTF is this normalization of inter-personal violence? There\u2019s a whole lot of difference between fighting in the boxing ring, where both parties have entered willingly, and domestic violence, which is very clearly what is being referenced here. It\u2019s things\u00a0like this that make me scared of men<\/em>. Does violence really come so naturally to them? Is it really the first thing they think of, the\u00a0de facto\u00a0way they solve problems? But no, it isn\u2019t. I know it isn\u2019t because what Taylor is talking about here is against the law, because I am married to a wonderful man who doesn\u2019t have to fight some twisted temptation to hit me, and\u00a0because of all of the kind, nonviolent men I have known over the course of my life. It\u2019s men like Taylor who are scary, not all men.<\/p>\n

And this, remember, is not an evo-psych piece on some MRA blog. No. It\u2019s on the Gospel Coalition website,\u00a0an online platform for conservative evangelical content.<\/p>\n

In Scripture, natural differences between men and women are related to more fundamental realities. In Genesis 2\u00a0and elsewhere, we see that men and women were created for different yet inescapably intertwined purposes. The physical differences in strength and the psychological differences in relation to agonism between men and women aren\u2019t accidental and unimportant contrasts, but relate to the more basic differences between the purposes for which men and women were created. The differences between male and female strengths, tendencies, interests, and aptitudes testify, to greater and lesser degrees, to these differences in creational purpose. That, from Genesis 2, the duty of guarding and, by implication, fighting falls to the man is a reality borne out through the rest of the Scriptures.<\/p>\n

The many moral questions raised by pugilistic sports in the case of men are very considerably heightened in the case of women when we appreciate the manner in which such an activity cuts against the grain of the ends for which they were created.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh look\u2014Taylor just remembered that he\u2019s writing for the Gospel Coalition.<\/p>\n

Guess what? The Bible doesn\u2019t say anything about women boxing. It also doesn\u2019t say anything about men boxing. Taylor himself suggests that there are \u201cmoral questions\u201d to discuss regarding even male boxing\u2014why not just say that boxing, as a sport, seems to go against the Christian emphasis on kindness and gentleness and leave it at that? Why go on and on about how women are weaker and men might get carried away watching two women boxing and think they can hit their wives? Why go on and on about how men are strong and violent if there\u2019s some question of whether men themselves should be boxing?<\/p>\n

In bringing evo-psych into his conversation, Justin rather left the Bible out. It\u2019s not that I care so much\u2014I\u2019m not a Christian and don\u2019t live my life according to the Bible\u2014but there\u2019s something galling\u00a0about combining the worst of secular sexism with the worst of evangelical sexism. Can we take them one at a time, please?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What even is this? The Gospel Coalition posted an article titled, How Should We Think about Watching Women Fight Women? by Justin Taylor. The article is about the rise of female boxing. What’s strange is how far it veers into typical evo-psych jargon before paying lip service to creation in the end. Yep—it’s weird. <\/p>\n

Click through to read more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":31633,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,6],"tags":[624],"class_list":["post-31616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-evangelicalism-fundamentalism","category-feminism","tag-evo-psych"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Gospel Coalition Goes Full Evo-Psych<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What's strange is how far this article veers into typical evo-psych jargon before paying lip service to the Bible in the end.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/evangelical-evo-psych.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Gospel Coalition Goes Full Evo-Psych\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What's strange is how far this article veers into typical evo-psych jargon before paying lip service to the Bible in the end.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/evangelical-evo-psych.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Love, Joy, Feminism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-01-10T09:00:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-01-09T20:16:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/166\/2017\/01\/fitness-1092757_1920.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"512\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/evangelical-evo-psych.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/evangelical-evo-psych.html\",\"name\":\"The Gospel Coalition Goes Full Evo-Psych\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-01-10T09:00:25+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-01-09T20:16:16+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2\"},\"description\":\"What's strange is how far this article veers into typical evo-psych jargon before paying lip service to the Bible in the end.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/evangelical-evo-psych.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/evangelical-evo-psych.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/evangelical-evo-psych.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Gospel Coalition Goes Full Evo-Psych\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/\",\"name\":\"Love, Joy, Feminism\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2\",\"name\":\"Libby Anne\",\"description\":\"Libby Anne grew up in a large evangelical homeschool family highly involved in the Christian Right. 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