Evolutionary psychology (EP) proposes that brain and cognitive structure, like physiological structure, has been designed by natural selection to serve survival and reproduction.
Sex and gender minorities pose a special dilemma for evolutionary psychology: we muddle what they see as clear formulas regarding reproduction and sex differentiation.
If you think about gender diversity as a value that eludes full human understanding within a scientific language, like pi in mathematics, gender diversity exposes the limitations in EP’s system of representation. Rather than appreciating and understanding the elegance and intricacy of this mysterious value of gender diversity, an evolutionary psychologist named J. Michael Bailey has suggested we essentially round pi to a nice easy-to-understand integer by saying there are two sexes and rounding off the little fractions of sex and gender minorities to make the other equations easier.
Bailey does this by claiming there are two, and only two “types” of trans women: extremely gay men and extremely paraphilic men.
This simplistic definition allows for an easy answer to the problem we pose for EP. Of course, this model is worthless given existing and upcoming reproductive technologies that bypass natural selection.
Nonetheless, Bailey insists this model is correct, since conceding it is not would open up a huge flaw in that worldview and hypothesis. In Bailey’s world, it is very important that gay/straight and male/female binaries be defended and justified.
This of course leads to fundamentally flawed results from calculations with this rounded number, but that hasn’t stopped Bailey and friends from a vigorous defense of this decision to simplify humanity to a Mendelian quadrant of XX/XY.
In the EP worldview, gay people are “a big mistake” evolutionarily (as J. Michael Bailey calls it), or perhaps more generously an evolutionary paradox: why does a trait that leads to fewer offspring persist?
I’ll have much more to say on this matter in the future, but evolutionary psychology is a very attractive field of inquiry to eugenicists and others who believe that all humans are not equal, and that many are in fact unfit or maladaptive. These people who measure human worth by a narrow definition of “intelligence” or reproductive capacity are the leading edge of the upcoming bioethical battle regarding diversity of all sorts, from genetics to gender.
Other resources:
Wikipedia entry on evolutionary psychology
Other evolutionary psychologists connected to the Bailey debate:
References
Gould, Steven Jay (June 12, 1997). Darwinian Fundamentalism. New York Review of Books http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/06/12/darwinian-fundamentalism/ https://archive.is/NPzx5 [archive]
- Letters (October 9, 1997). Steven Pinker, Werner Kalow, and Harold Kalant, reply by Stephen Jay Gould. New York Review of Books https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/10/09/evolutionary-psychology-an-exchange/
Havens, Kiera (June 13, 2013). Box of Rocks #3 — Never Change. Medium https://medium.com/@Keira_Havens/box-of-rocks-3-never-change-80b879237314