Stereotypes are often harmful, and accurate

The traditionalist, old school claim is, of course, that the stereotypical behaviors and traits we associate with men and women, for example, are in fact nature carved at its joints, manifesting our biological evolutionary heritage. While this claim has been used to pernicious ends (“letting women do x is against nature,”etc.), that in itself does not make it patently inaccurate. We are biology-in-environment systems. It is foolhardy to deny that biology constantly tugs at us, in the least leashing our potentials. The fact that women have a uterus and men produce sperm must find expression in the sexes’ respective survival and reproductive strategies, and with that the processes of their brains. If I have swift feet and you have big wings, when the hungry lion comes for us, I will run and you will fly. To predict otherwise is folly.

Often, the argument over the source of stereotyped group differences masks a fight over the politics of social change. The biology, ‘nature’ side, endorsed more often by those in power, hopes that winning the argument will enshrine the status quo as natural and justified, thus branding attempts to change it as misguided and dangerous. The social constructionist, ‘nurture’ view, appealing to the socially marginalized, embodies the hope that if stereotypes are merely social artifacts, then they can be eradicated by changing the way we are socialized, the way we speak, and the ways we interact.

And so they go at it, to neither end nor avail, in part because both approaches are rooted in the old ‘nature vs. nurture’ mode of thinking, which is all but obsolete. A better way, perhaps, is to see the biology-society relationship as integrated and reciprocally determined. Biology shapes society, and society shapes the meaning of biology.