BUZZ
ANALYSIS: Those still possessing a sense of reality know
As academia becomes more and more immersed in theories that test the boundaries of actual truth, there are academics who are standing firm.
In the aptly titled Substack Reality’s Last Stand, Grand Valley State University Professors Robert Deaner (psychology) and Mike Lombardo (biology) address the increasingly heretical notion that biology plays a role in differences between males and females.
Deaner and Lombardo engage Brown University Professor Emerita of Biology and Gender Studies Anne Fausto-Sterling, specifically her avoidance of biology as a factor in explaining sex-based behavioral differences, in this case the simple act of throwing.
The professors refer to this avoidance as an example of “Blank Slate” thinking: “In its most extreme form [it] holds that humans possess little meaningful evolved psychological structure and that culture and socialization therefore do nearly all the work in producing behavioral differences, including differences between girls and boys and between women and men.”
Fausto-Sterling (pictured), author of the essay “The Five Sexes” and who’s suggested the percentage of “intersex” individuals in the general population may be as high a 1.7 percent (a figure challenged as being wildly inflated), recently criticized 2018 research by Deaner and Lombardo in their papers “Born to Throw” and “On the Evolution of Sex Differences in Throwing.”
The Grand Valley State profs contend Fausto-Sterling ignored their “primary evolutionary scenario” of combat among males, not hunting, and note she jumped on the bandwagon of a 2023 paper titled “The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women’s Contribution to the Hunt Across Ethnographic Contexts,” written by a trio of undergraduates and a professor … which was later challenged by 15 scholars.
Our 2018 argument did not rest on a handful of studies showing that boys throw farther and faster than girls. We reviewed evidence on throwing velocity and distance, accuracy and targeting, elite performance, training and sports experience, cross-cultural behavior, prenatal androgen exposure, shoulder and arm anatomy, and injury patterns.
Fausto-Sterling engages with only one part of that evidence: sex differences in children’s throwing.
Consider experience. Girls improve when they practice throwing. Of course they do. The important question is whether differences in experience explain most or all of the sex difference.
The evidence suggests they do not.
Findings from Deaner’s and Lombardo’s research include:
- “Among adults and youths, sex differences in elite javelin throwing—the only track-and-field event that requires overhand throwing—are far larger than those in any other event, including shot put, discus, jumps, and all running distances”
- “Studies show that practice improves females’ throwing but does not eliminate the sex difference and sometimes doesn’t even reduce it”
- “Studies show that statistically controlling for sports experience does not substantially decrease the sex difference in throwing”
- “Nine anatomical features of the pectoral girdle (shoulder) associated with throwing differ substantially between males and females, almost invariably in ways that contribute to males’ better throwing.”
“The male advantage appears across cultures, emerges early, persists even when training and experience are taken into account, and is accompanied by relevant anatomical and hormonal evidence,” the professors write in their Substack.
“No single finding proves our evolutionary hypothesis. What matters is the convergence of developmental, cross-cultural, performance, and anatomical evidence. Fausto-Sterling does not seriously grapple with that convergence.”
MORE: Doctorate flaunts credentials to lecture us: There are NOT just two sexes!
