All the possible reasons for the conflict you listed suggest that the solution is to help feminists understand evolutionary psychology better, so they won’t have a knee-jerk defensive reaction against it. This could come off as a little condescending, but more importantly, it misses the other side of the issue. In order to leave itself less open to criticism, evolutionary psychology could be more rigorous, just as other “soft” sciences like medicine and nutrition could be more rigorous. This would make it harder for critics to find things to object to, increasing trust in the field over time, and would probably be a good thing in itself anyway.
So I would add to your list: 8) Concerns about lack of rigor in the field of evolutionary psychology.
Yes, also disentangling social scientists notion of what used to be called evolutionism in the social sciences, back in the 1920-1940s and what was once sociobiology applied to humans, from the actual evolutionary psychology of our time.
All the possible reasons for the conflict you listed suggest that the solution is to help feminists understand evolutionary psychology better, so they won’t have a knee-jerk defensive reaction against it. This could come off as a little condescending, but more importantly, it misses the other side of the issue. In order to leave itself less open to criticism, evolutionary psychology could be more rigorous, just as other “soft” sciences like medicine and nutrition could be more rigorous. This would make it harder for critics to find things to object to, increasing trust in the field over time, and would probably be a good thing in itself anyway.
So I would add to your list: 8) Concerns about lack of rigor in the field of evolutionary psychology.
Maybe it would also help if the evolutionary psychologists folks would understand feminism better to communicate in a way that reduces conflict.
As we are on LessWrong it would make more sense to focus here on evolutionary psychologists folks understanding feminism than the other way around.
Yes, also disentangling social scientists notion of what used to be called evolutionism in the social sciences, back in the 1920-1940s and what was once sociobiology applied to humans, from the actual evolutionary psychology of our time.