It is a trope and cliché, abet accurate ones, that the so-called “social sciences” in Academica reject objective reality and substitute “social constructs” with the clear implication that:
“[T] here are female ‘ways of knowing’ that differ from male ways of knowing, implicitly arguing, […] that women can have a ‘feeling for the organism’ that differs from the scientific behavior of males. This is a claim that men, by their very nature, are incapable of finding some truths about nature accessible to women.”
In other words, they feel that science is sexist because women can’t do science.
In simple terms, it is a question of feelz over realz.
There is, to these ignoramuses, no real reality and no true truth, but rather:
“[T]hat science is, in the end, like lit-crit, a farrago of competing claims that can’t be adjudicated. Let a thousand truths blossom! Theyre all true in their own way.”
Clearly, because science is seen as “static and unchanging”, that only the masculine point of view to celebrated as valid, thus science is declared sexist! Furthermore, it is sexist to require knowledge and skills one has learned; it is almost as if these scientists want to deny each student a chance to come up with their own truth!
In other words, a Feminist version of science explicitly embraces multiple truths and multiple realities:
” Instead of promoting the idea that knowledge is constructed by the student and dynamic, subject to change as it would in a more feminist view of knowledge, the syllabi reinforce the larger male-dominant view of knowledge as one that students acquire and use make [sic] the correct decision.”
So, basically, everyone lives in their own extant reality of the multi-verse à la some type of “Crisis on Infinite Social Studies Departments”…
Science is not a construct, but simply a way to better understanding how and by what mechanism things work. It does not assert a truth; it rejects falsehood. As such, it inherently contrary to the existents of contradictory truths.
This feminist view is one of each and everyone reinventing the wheel, with a banana-shaped wheel being equally as valid as a round one. We build knowledge not only over our own lifetimes, but over the lifetimes of the countless generations that came before us. In other words:
“And the something people bring in each episode of learning is prior knowledge they have acquired by systematically investigating and accumulating truths about the world around us. In other words, human beings learn essentially along the lines of the scientific method itself: Through exploring and testing their ideas in relation to a fixed, objective reality (as well as having our ancestors’ experiences passed down to us to save time and forestall repeat mistakes).”
Let us look, now, a bit more directly as specific examples.
So, according to feminist scholars, are all views equally valid? Of course not! Some are clearly “more equal than others” as outlined in the academic paper “Science: a masculine disorder?”:
“Science is based on the professional creation and certification of knowledge which is tied to powerful interest groups, notably the state, corporations an the scientific profession itself. Patriarchy is based on male control of dominant socical structures and the exclusion of women from positions of power through means such as direct discrimination, socialisation and the gender division of labour.
“Patriarchy within the scientific community is manifested through male control of elise positions and various exlusionary devices. The scientific method incorporates masculine features such as the objectification of nature. Scientific knowledge is masculine in its neglect of women’s experience and its adoption of paradigms built on assumptions of competition and hierarchy.
“Four model strategies are analysed for challenging masculine science and building alternatives. Each of these strategies had strengths and limitations. Between them there may be hope for denting masculine-science-as-usual.”
The denigration of boys and men is hardly new, and is oft repeated.
Though this paper was written over thirty years ago, there were plenty of women who were more than capable of working within this “masculine disorder” and even excel as demonstrating and espousing this “masculine disorder” themselves. Today, women at about, or exceeding, parity when it comes to science majors in colleges—both physical sciences and life sciences.
The authors consider science is a “social construction” because it is a “way of examining and ordering the natural world”. In other words, just one of many ways of doing so. The Patriarchy, then uses their particular method to oppress women, meaning that feminist liberation must axiomatically oppose science as it is definitionally a tool of oppression.
Science is not a spiritual understanding nor an aesthetic wonder for each and every person to find within themselves. These things are not alternatives to science, but things that exist in parallel (in a Euclidean sense of the term). It’s basis is in logic and reason; it is not about pushing a belief on reality, but deriving knowledge from reality. Objectivity, then, is seen as a subjective choice because it “enables a distancing between the scientist and the subject matter, hence the results of an experiment.”
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