Page 247 - The Social Weapon: Darwinism

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Darwin described women as an "inferior" species, according to
his own lights, because his world view was based on natural selection.
According to this unscientific and irrational view, men are proportion-
ately more fit than women to compete in war, find a mate, and obtain
food and clothing; while women have remained at a distance from
such activities. According to this scientifically baseless deduction, nat-

ural selection exerts a stronger influence on men, so they achieved a
superior position in all spheres, and evolved further than women. As
the following pages will show, Darwin proposed these illusory deduc-
tions not on any scientific findings, but merely on the basis of evolu-
tionist preconceptions.
Many researchers have revealed that Darwin's views on natural
selection encouraged sexual discrimination. For instance, professor of

history and philosophy of science Evelleen Richards concluded that
Darwin's views of women's nature fed into his evolutionary theoriz-
ing, "thereby nourishing several generations of [so-called] scientific
sexism." 138 The evolutionist scientific writer Elaine Morgan states that
using various branches of science such as biology and ethnology,
Darwin encouraged men to think that women were "manifestly infe-
rior and irreversibly subordinant." 139