This comic by Anne-Charlotte Husson drawn by Thomas Mathieu retraces with great clarity the history of gender studies and the lively controversies they have triggered in France. I highly recommend it.
A few caveats:
The initial protests of conservative associations against gender studies are said to be linked to a misunderstanding of their role. False. They reacted to the tendentious interpretations that were immediately drawn from them. The case must be placed in the context of American wokism. Groups fighting against sexual and gender discrimination immediately seized on the studies in question to take them in the direction they wanted. Moreover, the comic returns further to the contradictory opinions that agitate researchers of the genre. The controversy is linked to the interpretations and not to the raw data of the studies.
Non-equivalent ontological and teleological causalities
The authors put teleological causation (the influence of culture on the content of fundamental theories) on an equal footing with ontological causation (nature influencing cultural behaviors). Error. The mind is an organization of ontological processes and not a starting point arising from nothingness. Causality is first ontological, before teleology is a retro-causality. The two directions are not equivalent.
The comic strip rightly insists on the pre-existing convictions of the researchers, already inscribed in them by the culture but to which they are blind. Why didn’t the authors apply this questioning to themselves? How are they influenced in their investigation and the way they present comics? Would they be immune to the wokist evolution of culture, of morals, of the desire to present an original approach?
For these reasons, the scientific neutrality of the comic is questionable.
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