Darwinism, SAD, and Anti- Feminism

Copyright 1999 by Jeffrey Stueber, all rights reserved

I have suffered at times from SAD - Seasonally Affected Disorder - perhaps because of my obsessive nature and other emotional difficulties before receiving counseling. It was because of this I was glad to find Norman Rosenthal's Seasons of the Mind (p. 46-47). People with SAD get more depressed in the winter when there are fewer daylight hours. According to doctor Rosenthal, a frequently asked question is whether certain ethnic groups are more likely to suffer from SAD than other groups. The assumed Darwinian answer is that this condition evolved as an adaptive mechanism. People in the far north would benefit if they are lethargic and inactive because they would eat less since there would be less food. In a harsh climate, people would withdraw (hibernate) during the winter. Rosenthal suggests that if this were true, people of Scandinavian origin would be more likely to suffer from SAD rather than those of African and Mediterranean descent. There is, however, no evidence there is a difference.

Rosenthal advances an explanation for the existence of SAD in women which claims women would benefit from it so they, while being lethargic, would stay home and care for the children while the men went out and hunted. Yet, there is no evidence for any such theory because those with SAD actually have a higher resting metabolic rate.

What struck me as strange when I read the text of Rosenthal's book from which this information is taken is the biased language that comes to the forefront. Atheists often complain about passages in the Bible that are anti-feminist, yet when evolutionary assumptions are made, there is a curious bigotry and even anti-feminism. Why, perhaps we might ask, did Rosenthal immediately assume women stayed home while men hunted as if that was the natural dominion of the woman?