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Ladybusiness Link Love

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


A new post coming shortly, but in the meantime read these other posts. A rather specific set of links this time, because there has been some pretty good ladybusiness writing in the last month.

Why do women try to get ahead by pulling men down?” On escalators, elevators, and running as hard as you can.

Why do men keep putting me in the girlfriend zone? A great piece playing around with the “why do girls put me in the friend zone” Nice Guy trope.


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‘We have always fought:’ Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ narrative. On writing women and realizing the many spaces they occupy, and the stereotypes that limit our awareness of this.

Evolution, sexism and racism: why definitions matter. A succinct, thoughtful post.

24 Lies People Like to Tell Women. Because you should read it.

Women are bitches. Oh, this piece is just so lovely. On the way men talk about women, and what this reveals about what they think of them.

Cultural sexism: What if Amanda Knox had been Andrew Knox? Barbara King’s great piece on the way we think about sexuality and gender.

Exclusive: meet the woman who kicked off Anonymous’s anti-rape operations. Justice for Rehtaeh.

Elaine Morgan and the Aquatic Ape. I really enjoyed this. It’s important to remember the contributions Morgan made to try and subvert some of the sexism of her time, even though aquatic ape will never be supported by evidence. Margie Profet’s hypothesis on sperm-borne pathogens driving evolution of menstrual will also never be supported, and yet the way she pushed against the “women are dirty” cultural conditioning was important for the field. Sometimes scholarly contributions are less about whether their prime mover hypothesis is right, and more about what it forces us to confront about our biases.

I am Dr. Kate Clancy, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. On top of being an academic, I am a mother, a wife, an athlete, a labor activist, a sister, and a daughter. My beautiful blog banner was made by Jacqueline Dillard. Context and variation together help us understand humans (and any other species) as complicated. But they also help to show us that biology is not immutable, that it does not define us from the moment of our birth. Rather, our environment pushes and pulls our genes into different reaction norms that help us predict behavior and physiology. But, as humans make our environments, we have the ability to change the very things that change us. We often have more control over our biology than we may think.

More by Kate Clancy