å Sunday, February 12th, 2017

According to Schiebinger, during the period of the eighteenth to nineteenth century, white men used science to define women and Black men’s place in society and the political realm. At at time where the study of anatomy and science was flourishing, many found it necessary to use this to explain why women and Black men were considered unequal to the supposedly superior white man. During this time, people of privilege would only consider someone’s argument to be valid if it was backed up with scientific evidence. Although most of the scientific evidence used was incorrect, white men used biological explanations to exclude women from the social and political realm of Europe.
Many scientists at the time used the supposed differences between the male and female skeletons to explain why women are inferior. Without the desire to find women’s place in society, the first female skeleton and the study of female anatomy would not have came out. Certain aspects of the supposed female skeleton backed up common stereotypes of women at the time; the idea that women were less intelligent because it was believed that they had smaller skulls, and the concept of the main role of women to be mothers because their pelvis was larger. These findings put women at an even lower political and social place; before this research was published, there was no scientific evidence to back up people’s stereotypes about women, but now people took this as real evidence as to why women were inferior. Many people believed that science was a set-in-stone policy, and that basically anything a scientist claimed about women’s bodies relating back to their status was correct because there was scientific “evidence”.
Another claim that excluded women from the political and social realm was that their bone structure was similar to children. This relates back to the idea that women are submissive, innocent creatures that have no place in a political arena. This and the common belief that women had a smaller skull which meant they were less intelligent led to the belief that politics were a place only for men. Men were considered intellectually superior because of their structure; their “larger” skulls and more robust bodies.
Although men were put on a pedestal because of their anatomy, this only applied to white men. The skeletal figure of man that was drawn was a white man, and Black men’s anatomy were rarely studied, and when they were they were used to exclude them just like women. A popular anatomist Soemmerring stated that the skeleton of Black people were similar to apes, which is a racist insult that is still sometimes used today. These claims allowed white people to belief that their racism and exclusion of Black people from the social and political realm were justified, just like how they treated women as well. Both are rooted in mostly incorrect science, and both were an attempt to place both women and Black people at a lower tier in society than white men.

In her essay, “Skeletons in the Closet,” Londa Schiebinger rhetorically asks why female anatomy gained traction during the eighteenth and nineteenth century in order to apply the focus of her argument on the scientific aptitudes that were unavailable to women at the time. During an era of freedom fighting and movements for equal rights (race, class) it may seem obvious that the science of women became a subject of mass inquiry by many researchers connected to the struggle for equality among genders, yet Schiebinger emphasizes the importance behind the ulterior political motivations regarding the publication of female science. Schiebinger’s response to her own question indicates that the publication of women related studies in the scientific community during this time period carried some type of bias or pseudo-scientific hypothesis, which created deeper differences further separating men from women in society both naturally and morally. The eighteenth century portrayal of gender specific skeletal structures by Marie-Geneviève Charlotte drives home this point, with the claim about skull size being proportional to intelligence showing how early steps in modern science were actually a step backwards for women. Such evidence also applied to studies of non-white people and in this way, science as a field of study was being used as a social tool to justify the divide between genders and race, and maintain the social hierarchy that favored wealthy white men. Schiebinger continues her response by explaining how medical advancements could have had a more positive effect had people abandoned “ancient authority”, or simply changed from a traditionally archaic mindset. Because this failed to happen immediately, ideas of superiority and inferiority emerged directly from the scientific world and carried out consequences in nineteenth century social standard. Thus science and society intermingled to reinforce the position of men and their desire to dominate every subject relevant to civilization.