Gender and the limits of empiricism

There is a tendency in Western culture (and it seems to be no different within "scientific" circles) to bring to bear implicit metaphysical principles. This is particularly the case with regard to gender. I had a discussion with someone recently, who stated that if we got the average man to compete against the average women in sports, we would be able to determine, from the outcome of their competition, something about their intrinsic natures. This is the kind of thinking that reaches for a metaphysical interpretation of gender, whilst to some degree already having assumed one.


What is it about "averageness" that somehow denotes truth to us? The average (median? or mean? or modal?) woman may not necessarily contain any more of a specific "feminine" essence than the women at the more extreme ends of the scale. At the same time, since "essence" is a social construct and therefore illusionary, extremes may only yield us empirical data about extremes. They do not necessarily furnish us with instrinsic meaning about the fundamental characteristics of identity.


In any case, what generally happens is that "essences" are postulated on the basis of some anticipatory projection. Next, they are looked for in the concrete realm of things and somehow the lens that focuses on "essences" is sharpened by each and every "new" empirical discovery of what had already been assumed. Notions of fundamentally different male and female essences thus become more and more fixed. Identity itself becomes a product of reified ideas, as we modify our own behaviour in order to fit more perfectly in line with our attributed "essence". Thus, essentialised thinking and behaviour are both socially constructed with a putatively empirical pretext.


It would seem that metaphysics is responsible, since it invades our thoughts even when we try to be objective. Indeed, if we were to be truly objective, we would see the world as being hard to compute and in a state of flux. So, we are inclined to use metaphysics as a way to stabilise our perceptions and to develop a comforting sense of order even in the face of its absence. At the same time, our desire to see order and our anticipating of it ultimately creates different kinds of concrete order where none had previously existed.