At the University of Oxford today, where Bateman’s paradigm is still taught, Gowaty’s critical studies don’t make the reading list, as they are considered to be ‘very political perspectives’. ‘Empirically minded biologists hear that dreaded F-word and assume it must mean “ideologically driven”,’ Sarah Blaffer Hrdy said to me. ‘What they overlooked of course was how masculinist many of their own assumptions were, how androcentric the theoretical foundations of their own Darwinian world view was.’
