Kathleen Okruhlik: A Feminist Analysis

Written within the 20th volume of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy is an entry by a young feminist named Kathleen Okruhlik. Within this entry she postulates the idea that biological studies and sciences are under the falsification of sexism, the idea is that the male has always been the primary subject of study and too this day still maintains focus on the male over the female. She also explains as to how the biological studies focus on the male and how it mates, while the female is the ideal figure always represented for being submissive. The entire image that has been a painted over the years, all the work and research done has been under a somewhat undeniable account of sexism. The general study of the biology has been influenced from

Reading things like it’s the male’s dominance that leads to rape while the female is to remain fragile or that the male’s role is always appearing to be more important and interesting when compared to those of women. Kathleen wrote in her journal “Many feminist criticisms of primatology and sociobiology focus on the fact that male struggle, male competition, and male inventiveness are portrayed as the bases for human evolution.” (Okruhlik, pg. 24) The role of males in tool making was considered to be an early indication of the advanced intelligence in males along with other things like weapons and defending from predators. Females roles weren’t even included in the text along with the male’s roles while in reality it was proven that “Some recent work, however, has suggested that up to 80% of the subsistence diet of what used to be called hunter-gatherer societies came from female gatherers.” (Okruhlik, pg. 25) And not only that but females took a large role in the making of tools and actually thought to have invented the tools contrary to the males doing it. Even

27) This is another example as to how biology is sexist, the idea that this fact was proven to be false but still to this day would be treated in a rather demeaning way just adds to the argument. That being said while I do agree that the biological studies presented in the past and today do have an underlying sexist history, I don’t agree to the extent that many feminists claim. Biology is sexist, there is no argument about it, the past has caused our present to be male oriented while the females are represented in a “slightly” misdeeming way. I say slightly because that’s to what degree I agree biology is sexist, I do not believe that woman have been deprived to the point it is required to make a huge statement about the process. That being said this is being stated by a male who has had little feminist experiences in his life but at the same time I am not saying that to a certain