Background Beliefs and Adrenal Glands

[Written for Feminist Theory.]

In Helen Longino’s book, Science as Social Knowledge, she talks about science,  the ways we should better science, and how to go about making Good Science-- that is science that follows the scientific method and is void of outside persuasions. One of the things she highlights is what she refers to as Background Beliefs/Assumptions. This term describes the things you already know. They are things that you’ve already been told, you’ve heard, and even the things you assume. They are important to science because they can influence you to acknowledge or ignore certain scientific findings. They even influence the way you go about understanding scientific findings. For example, if you see a hat sitting on the hat rack in the home you share with your roommate Nick, who is an avid hat wearer, you might assume that Nick is home. The background belief of Nick being an avid hat wearer will make your hypothesis that Nick is home, thus ignoring other hypotheses as, Nick forgot his hat today. This idea is imperative in understanding the CAH girls, the two models used to understand them, and the reason I think “tomboyism” is a patriarchal term.

The CAH girls, or Congenital Adrenocortical Hyperplasia girls, are a phenomenon because they express something coined “tomboyism.” That is, these girls would rather play outside than play with dolls; they have greater interest in public careers than in being a domestic housewife, etc. Essentially, they care little about playing mother and fitting into their societal role as a girl, which causes unrest in society and those abiding by the societal roles. On a biological level, these girls have been prenatally exposed to androgens. This causes a higher than normal androgen count and results in the adrenal gland failing to produce cortisone, which is essential to the body. CAH can cause the adrenal glands to fail to produce cortisone, which requires treatments to compensate. (118) Because these girls’ adrenal glands aren’t properly working, they have a lifetime of doctor visits and hospital visits to look forward to. The background assumption to these girls is that they are tomboys because of their androgen levels. Ehrhardt’s work on the CAH girls levels them to a chemical imbalance, the same said about those with mental disorders. It’s an excuse to work around the patriarchal norms infused within our society. Look back at our discussion on Manne with the “scientific study” claiming men cannot see dirt, therefore, women must clean for them. It is the same. Is this the only way we can reason why this set of girls prefers outdoor play, male playmates, and a future career?

Slijper offers us a different perspective. She brings forth two models of understanding, a linear hormonal model and a selectionist model. The linear hormonal model can be seen as the Androgen hormone levels causing this “tomboyism” in the girls; however, the selectionist model was created in response to the problem of consciousness. The selectionist model introduces us to the idea on page 144: “What is of central interest here is the material basis of a set of cognitive capacities: memory, learning, association, self-correction of memory, the mediation between action and experience, awareness and self-awareness.” With this idea, she is essentially saying that the experiences and memories that the CAH girls have is what causes this “tomboyism.” It is a specific response to their perceived situations. They spend a lifetime going to doctor offices, waiting to be seen by doctors, staring at poor wall art in cold rooms, and in hospitals to receive treatments. Meanwhile, their peers are spending their days in classrooms, outdoors playing, and with freetime to be children, with one another. The CAH girls feel locked away from their peers and ostracized, craving for the same lives their peers live. That is, a life outside of sterile walls, with other children, playing. This craving of being outdoors mixed with the patriarchal norms of boys being tough and dirty while girls are frilly and dainty creates the idea of “tomboyism” as presented. Are these girls acting as boys, portraying “tomboyism” or are these girls desperate to be a child and play as they should, but their desires are twisted by the norms we push upon them?

Both of the suggestions regarding the CAH girls are interesting in their own rite; however, I consider the Selectionist model more persuasive. On page 114, Longino discusses hormone levels and presumed behavior. (I.e, boys have testosterone which makes them more aggressive, outdoorsy, less nurturing, while women have more estrogen which makes them good mothers/parents, able to clean, and dainty.) She says, “One favorite type of study attempts to correlate levels of hostility and aggression and levels of circulating testosterone. Such testing on ‘normal’ personas has failed to reveal any consistent association between aggressive tendencies and testosterone levels.” This discredits the Linear hormonal model for me, not to mention the fact human beings share these hormone types in various levels despite different gender identities. There is no set amount of testosterone that a woman is allowed to have and remain a woman, which is an idea Ehrhardt seemed to be utilizing in her work: “Ehrhardt’s main focus is gender role behavior… which, she argues, is influenced by exposure perinatally to sex hormones.” (116) I find it to be considered bad science to rely on patriarchal norms to make your point and prove your hypothesis; however, Slijper carried out a study of her own that influences my opinion on which model is more credible. She did a test of gender-related issues to CAH children and a group of young children with diabetes. In this test, she found that the two groups scored no differently, which suggests that the significant common factor amongst the behavior of children has little to do with their gender but their societal experiences and their interpretation of them. (159)

In conclusion, science deserves to be questioned, extensively. Background beliefs infuse themselves in our studies whether we are aware of it or not. As for Ehrhardt, she allowed, and utilized, her background belief of gender role behavior being influenced by exposure to sex hormones to sway her work on the CAH girls. Meanwhile, Slijper was able to portray an acceptable reason as to why these girls act “tomboyish,” without ignoring their chemical imbalances and the need to receive treatments. She brought forth two models to describe the CAH girls: one to understand the biological differences within them and one utilized one to understand their behaviors and the term brought forth to describe them. “Tomboyism” is a term created to make girls feel bad about themselves for not being enough of a girl for society, when in reality, these poor children simply want to be children. They want to play with other children and remain outside after spending so much time within walls and away from other kids. I find the CAH girls as an example of how we’ve let our patriarchal norms influence the ways we do science. Longino describes on page 116, two “thorough and non-patriarchal scholars” endorsing the idea that males express more aggression which they connect with testosterone levels. The pages prior, 114, we see the quote mentioned earlier about tests failing to reveal consistent association between aggression and testosterone levels. To be classified by others, especially a woman, as “non-patriarchal” and then spew such patriarchal ideas proves that the patriarchy runs deep. My final words are derivative of a quote from Longino: to put so much pressure on behavior to make it seem neurological, allows people to treat these behavior-neurological correlations for causal claims. (160)