Are feminism and transgender liberation ideologies used for indoctrination and social control? Not at all. Is the act of sex, and the cultural weight of sex, distinct from biological function? Quite. Could our understanding of sexuality and gender be embedded in the superstructure of capitalism? Yes, absolutely. But that does not remove the person from the whole, agency from history, or free will from determinism. Instead, we should see the science of biology as part of a long history of philosophy, history, social formations, politics, and the emergence of capitalism as a world system. Generally, what are the problems of understanding sex and gender under our historical epoch? There is a cultural habit of assigning subjective meaning into objective phenomena, which is more to do with how humans relate to ideology, economics, social formations such as class and race and gender, the state structure, the patriarchal family unit, and history. To untangle ourselves from the politicisation of individual bodies, sectioned off like discreet forms of data, as well as ideas about identity, we need to understand how culture and science are not totalizing in themselves but part of the superstructure of society. To avoid the myopia brought about by what people might call scientism, which is really just another word for a supposed omniscience, we need to realise that science is a human endeavour that is still socially mediated. People often flatten or exaggerate a biological fact, a male human is stronger on average than a female human, to inform rigid social hierarchies in fascism or capitalism. Social Darwinism is a distortion of biology and came from a complex history of trying to legitimise oppression, exploitation, racism, colonialism, and sexism in Victorian England and British Imperialism. To do this, the facts and reality of biology are made into a political caricature that reifies the social reality projected by the dominant economic class. In the past, sexuality and gender were rigidly defined and prescribed by the state and the bourgeoisie. Biology was abused for this end. The myth of a self-made man of rugged individualism and cunning was made legitimate by emphasising biological endowments and drives, natural properties and survival strategies. But once you look into biology proper, these socially foisted ideas about masculinity collapse. Genetics inform everything we do as animals, but decisions and strategies are usually probabilistic rather than flatly
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