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Skeletons in the Closet – Assignment 2

The nature versus nurture debate is as alive and well today in the 21^st century as it was in the 18^th century, the scientific data we have collected throughout the years, breaking down racial and gender differences, appears to have had little impact on current social theory. Schiebinger’s argument that the prestige given to science does not make the pursuit of scientific facts innocent from bias and bias is something that must be considered when examining all scientific research. Understanding human anatomy and human sex differences are an important pursuit of knowledge for the medical community, but the pursuit of knowledge is not the issue being waged. The differences noted in the skeletons of white men and white women by the scientists in the 18^th century was then used by philosophers to solidify a social hierarchy that continues to dominate most societies today.

As philosophers engaged in theories to explain masculinity and femininity the scientists used the smaller bones of white women to reemphasize the white male superiority. Although the correlations were untested on live humans, and largely ignored other races, they were used to develop social theory. Placing women frozen at an assumed lower cognitive developmental level created a morally acceptable excuse to keep higher learning opportunities out of reach for women, as well as for the primitive people they were associated with. Not only was the medical community using their information to solidify social norms they were also in pursuit of beauty norms by focusing primarily on universality in their discoveries, not nuances within genders.

The medical community’s exclusion of women and any person of color made objectivity unlikely. Once white males established themselves as the gold standard, then comparing white women to children and non-white people, they were then focused on maintaining their social status before the middle-class white women of the time defined a place for themselves. If science could conclude women to be subordinate in the state of nature, then social equality could be righteously ignored and physiology could be used to appropriate lifestyle. Schiebinger’s essay “Skeletons in the Closet” makes a compelling argument on the lack of objectivity and the individual bias of researchers and philosophers in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Due to the bias that persists today from their work, Schiebinger’s perspective remains a relevant critique of social status and the privilege of prestige.