SE Academic Review 2023

66 ST EDWARD’S, OXFORD

For example: the NCBI (The National Centre for Biotechnology Information) states that sex hormones ‘can act through many cellular and molecular processes that alter structure and function of neural systems and influence behaviour’. However the Noba Project states that ‘Hormones do not cause behavioural changes’, instead they claim that ‘hormones change the probability that a particular behaviour will be emitted in the appropriate situation’. As you can see here, no answer is perfectly clear, therefore the argument of modern biology against Beauvoir is shown to be rather weak. In fact, another source from PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) argues a surprising point. They used an experiment to test whether testosterone could be affected by social factors. They state: ‘men’s higher testosterone is typically seen as an innate sex difference. However, our experiment demonstrates that gender-related social factors also matter, even for biological measures. Gender socialisation may affect testosterone by encouraging men but not women toward behaviours that increase testosterone’. Even though Beauvoir’s point originally was not that society affected the woman’s biology, she did believe that society affected the way we viewed woman and her biology. However, the fact that social factors can affect hormone levels in the human species takes sexual hierarchy to a whole new level. The societal expectations which lead to woman being placed at a disadvantage could actually lead to changes in her very biology. This supports Beauvoir’s point that biology alone cannot be the reason for patriarchal societies by expressing the view that biology itself is affected by societal ideologies; therefore something else has to be at the core of why woman is ‘the Other’. In her second chapter, Beauvoir proceeds to write about psychoanalysts such as Freud and Adler. She critiques psychoanalysts and their theories by stating that you cannot prove their theories wrong. This may seem like a good thing, theories that you cannot prove wrong must be indubitable; however, this is not always the case. In Freud’s case, every fact that you produce can be integrated into his science, for example if a man stated they did not envy their dad (in contradiction to the Oedipus complex), Freud

Though Beauvoir firmly states that biology ‘does not suffice to constitute the basis for a sexual hierarchy’, the opposite is arguable. There were many biological theories, now proven to be false, which you could argue set the foundation to woman being seen as ‘the Other’. For example people used to believe that the woman’s role in procreation was to ‘merely carry and fatten the living seed’. Aristotle believed ‘the foetus was produced by the meeting of the sperm and the menses: in this symbiosis, woman just provided passive material while the male principle is strength, activity, movement and life’. Though these ideas were formulated a long time ago, you could argue that these types of theories and beliefs were the foundations upon which sexual hierarchy was formed because they made woman appear less valuable to mankind (therefore defending the belief that biology, in this case false biological theories, does suffice as the basis for woman being ‘the Other’). However, I believe that Beauvoir was correct in saying biology alone cannot be blamed for male hegemony. The biological theories above - although they did lead to woman being viewed as having less of a biological purpose than men - were only expressed and accepted because the society at that time was patriarchal. Society has evolved the way it is separately from biology. To use an example, if we form a society where being physically strong is celebrated, woman will always fall short of this expectation when compared to man as she is at a biological disadvantage. Another argument against Beauvoir’s view can be formed when we look at modern biology and neuroscience which have been able to show with modern technology that we have a scientific reason for men and women’s differences. However, though the identification of different hormones is certain, the way they affect human behaviour and thought is still very much uncertain. This is proven by the fact that when researching this question, we constantly find sources in disagreement with each other. If the answer to how biology (in this case, hormones) affected us depending on our gender was completely clear, then why are there so many different arguments about this topic? Surely there would only be one concrete answer, or at least the majority of arguments would be pointing to one common theory.