The subheading on Gaia Vince’s article (Smashing the patriarchy: why there’s nothing natural about male supremacy, 2 November) bizarrely announces that I “argue patriarchal society is the ‘natural order’”. Not only have I never used those words or made such a claim, but more than anyone on earth I have documented (and celebrated) the opposite: that discrimination, oppression, and violence against women are in historical decline (The Better Angels of Our Nature, chapters 8 and 10; Enlightenment Now, chapter 15).
I do disagree with the 1970s-era assumption that women’s equality depends on their being biologically indistinguishable from men: fairness does not require sameness. Vince’s observations that the distribution of women’s traits overlaps with those of men’s, and that individuals should be treated according to their talents and choices rather than their gender, far from contrasting with my views, could have been taken from the pages of my 2002 book The Blank Slate.
Steven Pinker
Johnstone professor of psychology, Harvard University
