bioessentialism

English

Etymology

From bio- +‎ essentialism.

Noun

bioessentialism (uncountable)

1. The philosophy that biology plays a larger role in determining human psychology or development than social, economic, or environmental factors.
   • 2000, Paul Gilroy, Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond The Color Line, page 266:

     Here the ghetto-centric individualism of the poor appears to have defeated the convenient bioessentialism of the elite.

   • 2012, Christine Ferguson, Determined Spirits: Eugenics, Heredity and Racial Regeneration in Anglo-American Spiritualist Writing, 1848-1930‎^[1], page 2:

     […] this book investigates a Spiritualist ethos dedicated, not to indeterminacy, but to bioessentialism, racial and hereditary determinism, and the prenatal fixity of character.

   • 2019 March, Samantha Bedford, “Jordan Peterson: Intellectual Or Imposter?”, in On Dit, University of Adelaide, page 37:

     Peterson's bioessentialism appeals to the spurned white man, cognizant of his financial and marital insecurity - his lack of social prominence is not his own fault, but due to the perversion of nature by the principle of egalitarianism, and without the demasculinating force of feminism, he could reach his full predestined potential.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:bioessentialism.

Related terms

• bioessentialist