We trust our sciences to operate on a plane of objectivity and fact in a world of subjectivity and cultural ideologies, but should we? In The Age of Scientific Sexism, philosopher Mari Ruti offers a biting critique of the gender profiling tendencies of evolutionary psychology, untangling the insidious threads of various gender mythologies that have infiltrated-or perhaps even define-this faux-science. Cloaked in the guise of fact, evolutionary psychology continually brings retrograde models of sexuality into mainstream culture: it insists that men and women live in two completely different psychological, emotional, and sexual universes, and that they will consequently always be locked in a vicious battle of the sexes. Among these regressive arguments is the assumption that men's sexuality is urgent and indiscriminate, whereas women are “naturally” reluctant, reticent, and choosy-a concept constructed to justify masculine behavior, such as cheating, that women have historically found painful. On its most basic level, The Age of Scientific Sexism explores our impulse to “explain” romantic behavior through science: in the increasingly egalitarian gender landscape of our society, why are we so eager to embrace the rampant gender profiling that evolutionary psychology promotes? Perhaps these simplistic gender caricatures owe their popularity, at least in part, to our overly pragmatic society, in which we live in constant search for easy answers to complex questions. About the Author: Mari Ruti (PhD, Harvard University) was Distinguished Professor of Critical Theory and of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada. She was the author of thirteen books: Reinventing the Soul: Posthumanist Theory and Psychic Life (2006); A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living (2009); The Summons of Love (2011); The Case for Falling in Love (2011); The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within (2012); The Call of Character (2013); Between Levinas and Lacan: Self, Other, Ethics (Bloomsbury, 2015); The Age of Scientific Sexism (Bloomsbury, 2015); Feminist Film Theory and Pretty Woman (Bloomsbury, 2016); The Ethics of Opting Out: Queer Theory's Defiant Subjects (2017); Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings: The Emotional Costs of Everyday Life (2018); Distillations: Theory, Ethics, Affect (Bloomsbury, 2018); and Critical Theory Between Klein and Lacan: A Dialogue - with Amy Allen (Bloomsbury, 2019).
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