Biological Politics: Feminist and Anti-Feminist Perspectives a Reappraisal

Abstract

As editor of this special feature, I am pleased to offer another reappraisal of a classic text that has been influential in both contributing to and shaping debates within the field of feminism and psychology. As you will read in the following contributions, Janet Sayers’ (1982) Biological Politics is emblematic of early second wave feminist attempts to both explicate and challenge particularly contentious issues arising from the fields of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. As such, its impact is marked in different ways. Indeed, the term ‘biological politics’ embraces a range of projects, including psychological development, menstruation, reproduction, mothering, sexology, life expectancy through to domestic violence. As academic, feminist and political contemporaries of Sayers – albeit in differing areas of study – Lynda Birke and Hilary Rose provide a retrospective account of their (ongoing) involvement in politicizing science and medicine over a number of years in the UK. They remind us very clearly of the impact of Marxist theory on early second wave UK feminist theory and practice, lamenting in different ways the separation of the two. Leonore Tiefer also brings a retrospective slant to her piece where she highlights ways in which the field of sexology makes selective and biased use of biological and evolutionary theory to uphold particular conservative notions of normalcy in a range of sexuality studies. In slightly different ways to the above authors, Paula Nicolson and Jane Ussher acknowledge the direct impact of Biological Politics on their early academic development. I’m sure many readers will identify with the pleasure they describe