I think maybe an analogy for our disagreement here would be something akin to I see the Foucaultian argument trying to assert that fuel injection radically altered the automobile to the extent that gasoline was more central to the operation of the engine and/or made the fuel injected cars not cars like cars were previously. The former argument would be wrong as fuel injection decreases the amount of gasoline needed, the latter just lends itself to weird definitional circling.
But I can let it rest.
I'm sorry, I just need to make one final point, which I already stated but feel I need to repeat:
Foucault isn't making an ontological claim as to either side of the argument. He is saying that, around the 18th century, scientists, psychiatrists, and even non-professional individuals began writing about, and asking more questions about, sexuality. These writings took a far different nature than the kind of biblical writings contained in the Torah or the New Testament. He wrote the book because he wanted to know why.
Personally, I think the inherent differences in the endocrine systems facilitate most of what the person is interested in, but I don't know of any arguments against that. And that's where the discussion in these arguments eventually lead to. "Well women pick nurturing careers because that's what the media says they should!" --but I think media enables that behavior rather than change it.
Hormones and other chemicals certainly affect behavior, but the challenge comes in disassociating this behavior from our ingrained cultural values.
There was a TED talk recently that discussed how differences in body posture can alter chemical balances inside the body. For instance, making oneself larger (e.g. spreading or raising your arms, as we do when we win a race) increases testosterone in the body. Of course, there's a connection here: we often associate testosterone with situations in which we experience power, or control. It's easy to then make the leap and say that those who possess more testosterone occupy (and even should occupy) a position of power - since they exhibit more of the power hormone.
We don't need to try and alter the effects of testosterone, but we should ask why we should preserve the cultural value most closely associated with testosterone.
Some people might say that those values are attached for a reason, and even make an evolutionary argument as to the connection between hormones and cultural values; but there are two signal problems and/or fallacies in this.
a) consciousness has been shown to be an evolutionary inhibition by certain sociobiologists. In other words, consciousness has allowed us to create certain tools and have discussions about things
cool
, but it hasn't necessarily increased our intelligence or improved our survival methods beyond, for instance, the tardigrade. So, if survival is the primary motivator, then privileging certain values that accompany consciousness may not be the best decision.
b) evolution itself is not a process moving from a less preferable to a more preferable state, or to a form of organism better-suited to its environment. I know Dak doesn't agree with this; but even granting the possible influence of external stimuli on genes, these have less impact than the large-scale randomness of genetic mutation and the chance that such mutations prove to be beneficial in certain environments.
In other words, evolutionary selection is overwhelmingly random.
My resistance to post-structuralism in this specific sense is the way, for example, feminist theory uses this thought process to morph the meanings of words to fit it's own narrative and once you've done this, anything that contradicts the narrative can then be flipped, reinterpreted and integrated into the narrative because the language has become flimsy and malleable.
An example of this is the way in which feminist theory used to deny the reality of male oppression, but now instead it recognizes this reality but deflects any contradiction by simply expanding the idea of the patriarchy to yes, it hurts men too.
It's a very clever deflection and without post-structuralism creating this climate of endlessly reinterpretive language, much of this would be much harder to get away with in my opinion.
It renders the meaning of certain words that are universal in their meaning and should be unbiased in usage as obsolete and instead redefines them within the terms of the humanities and social sciences.
Sexism and racism only being true if there is power behind them (the sociological definitions to be exact) being my main issue here, specifically because government and society at large is more and more taking these new definitions seriously.
I hope that wasn't too rambling, admittedly I'm not the most eloquent guy around.
So, I have issues with a lot of this, but I don't want to get too embroiled in too many issues at once.
First things first, I'll just say - and this to me in unequivocal - that there is no such thing as a word that has universal meaning. This position is now supported by a large portion of linguists, not just poststructuralists. If you read language philosophy by Wittgenstein, or Daniel Dennett, or J.L. Austin, or Stanley Cavell, you'll find that all of them insist that the meaning of words resides in their use, not in any absolute or original meaning.
