***
I came across a gem of a blog post, All monkey ladies are prostitutes who get paid in not-currency.
As you can tell, it was written by a feminist bashing the monkeys-paying-for-sex article ([Addendum: "Do Monkeys Pay for Sex?" in Time] primarily the one in the popular media, but also the one in the journal), and is a prime example of how many feminists 'debunk' ideas they do not like: by ranting emotionally, often along only marginally relevant tangents (and barely paying attention to the argument).
In the post, she makes one minor point and then launches a long tirade against "choadery disguised as science reporting in the mainstream press", and in the process completely misunderstands the original article she was trying to 'debunk'. To boot, the bulk of her time is spent railing against anti-feminism and the alleged implications of the finding (which she barely made an attempt to show is false), not dealing with the finding itself (which, incidentally, finds more support in the journal paper than is apparent from the Time article she is slamming).
Now, it might be unfair to chide the writer for only picking on one minor point when she didn't have access to the journal article, but then if you don't have full access to an article, while you can raise doubts or queries about it, condemning it wholesale is hardly justified. This is like Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa against Salman Rushdie - without having read The Satanic Verses (and hints at parallels between much of feminism and religious fundamentalism).
Even better is how she condemns the Time article without even having fully read it. It is perfectly understandable if she is not aware of Penguin Prostitution and other cases of animal prostitution, but this what she is doing is like writing a scathing review of a play - despite having walked out halfway, and so getting your facts wrong.
To wit,
the mainstream press... uses just-so stories to explain how every vicious sexist stereotype you believe is not only not bullshit, but etched into our DNA... which is exactly what’s going on in this Time article
If Amanda Marcotte had only taken the trouble to read the rest of the Time article she was slamming so happily, she would have come across these lines:
We, more evolved primates, may be tempted to take a cynical view of these findings, but the study's author suggests a more favorable interpretation: The macaques' exchange of services simply illustrates a nifty system of cooperation that allows for successful mating...
It's easy to draw parallels between the monkeys' mating dance and our own, but Gumert warns against reading too much into primate studies like this one. The paper draws no conclusions about what these observations in monkeys mean for the human world. In fact, whether and how scientists should extrapolate from primate behavior is a fairly "big debate"
In other words, Krista Mahr (the Time writer) and Amanda Marcotte might agree about much.
But then, the Time article also concludes that the study nonetheless *might* have implications for human social interaction. Perhaps anything less than total rejection of this study earns you vigorous condemnation from the writer and her ilk.
This is the peril of letting your emotions rule you. And the irony is that since she is a female, she is paradoxically reinforcing and reaffirming the traditional stereotypes she so despises.
The constitutive paradox of feminism is one thing, but here this feminist is actively shooting herself (and feminism) in the foot, with yet more proof that the bulk of those who self-identify as feminist are cuckoo. Though, happily, while the vast majority of commenters on feminists blogs I've seen are as equally shrill (or worse) than the writer, many of the ones here are mostly level-headed, even if most of them do miss the point (like her).
This is why many who hold beliefs legitimately described as feminist maintain that they are just working for equal rights, and that with "its reluctance to identify openly as feminist, at AWARE feminism is as feminism does".
A comment I particularly liked:
"
The actual evidence points more towards monkeys like foreplay, not monkeys as whores.
Grooming is not foreplay, catgirl. (Or else, foreplay actually is sexual currency. I think the argument could be made that, for practical purposes, it’s often treated that way.) Lovers groom lovers, sure; but parents groom children and children parents, siblings groom each other, and it’s often saved and bartered for other favors and for food.
Does that still sound like foreplay? Parents are having foreplay with their children? It’s hard to argue that’s the better way of looking at it.
Primate researchers have known for decades that grooming in monkeys is a social behavior, not an economic one.
Uh, no, the exact opposite is true. Grooming is primate currency. They trade it, they barter with it, they hoard it."
