As the political commentariat is awash in hyperbole, dismissing the oft-noted truism that the progressive left and their sponsors in academia/corporate America/government are “at war with nature/reality” as hyperbole is easy.
How hyperbolic is it, though, really?
Exhibit A:
Contexts is an ostensibly, self-styled professional journal that “makes cutting-edge sociology research accessible to journalists, policymakers, sociologists, and general readers,” released recently a progressive missive masquerading as a scientific study documenting and denouncing, in one go, the “rape culture” endemic to the textbook publishing industry, specifically as it pertains to plant descriptions in biology textbooks.
Cutting-edge!
Via Contexts:
“Scientific stories about plant reproduction often draw on gender stereotypes and myth, making such myths appear natural. Based on an analysis of introductory biology textbooks, the authors demonstrate how the authors of these books cast male plants and plant parts as active heroes while portraying their female counterparts as passive, reluctant, or sometimes even deceptive…
Although we often describe plant reproduction in human terms, its biological reality in fact differs dramatically from our own…
However, popular and even scientific accounts of plant reproduction rarely depict the process in this manner. Instead, biology textbook authors describe plant reproduction through a set of habitually repeated stories that reliably draw on conventional gender stereotypes, reflecting those found in mainstream accounts of human reproduction. In doing so, they cast male plants and plant parts as active heroes—delivering, competing, accomplishing—and portray their female counterparts as passive, reluctant, or sometimes even deceptive.
When textbook authors rely on everyday narratives about women and men to explain plant sex, they make myths about gender difference appear inevitable and natural…
These patterns reflect broader systems of power and inequality that we often take for granted as normal or commonsensical. When scientists repeatedly link activity, independence, and success with masculinity, and passivity, dependence, or even failure with femininity, they communicate these gender myths to students, scientific communities, and the public.”
