Page - 179 - in Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies - Conference Proceedings of the 17th STS Conference Graz 2018

Ulfig (2016: 6-11), christian philosopher Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz (2009: pos. 2009-2020; 2011) economist Günter Buchholz (2016) and biology professor Axel Meyer (2015: 4394-4400). As Buchholz states who equals postmodernism with irrationalism, the effect of everything being construction is that only arbitrariness remains (Buchholz 2016). Postmodern thinking is rejected as being relativist. In this context it is worthwhile to note that sociologist Gerhard Amendt accuses gender studies of being essentialist because according to him, Gender Studies only take the category of gender into account for the analysis of society and not class, education, ethnicity and history and because gender studies made essential differences between men and women configurating men as aggressive evildoers (Amendt 2016). So, it seems that gender studies and their theoretical foundation are interpreted quite controversially by the academics who criticize them. The critics mainly speak from two epistemological standpoints: Religious vs. positivist-biological. The critics with a Cristian foundation like religious philosophers professors Barbara Hanna Gerl- Falkovitz (2009, 2011) and Harald Seubert (2014) base their argumentation on a belief in divine creation and conclude that there are unchangeable, god-given complementary bodies, gender characteristics and gender roles. Both employ an argumentation figure which can be described as “myth equals thruth”: because in mythical and religious texts of all times and cultures, certain descriptions of gender characteristics and relations prevail, they point to the truth of gender differences. For example Gerl-Falkovitz mentions myths about female goddesses and their ambivalence of spending and taking life as reference to a mother´s womb and its frightening and soothing qualities (Gerl- Falkovitz 2009: 250-290). The background for this argumentation is C.G. Jungs theory of archetypes: in myths and narrations the psychological differences between the sexes manifest themselves, as Seubert states (Seubert 2014: 275). In contrast, Amendt, Buchholz, Kutschera and Meyer, who are arguing on the basis of a positivist standpoint, are convinced that most of human gender behaviour can be explained by evolved sex differences (Amendt 2017; Buchholz 2016; Kutschera 2016: 21-23; Meyer 2015: pos. 87) which are thus essentialized and naturalized. Only biology and other natural sciences are considered to be real sciences by them, their methods being the only acceptable ones, while the humanities according to Buchholz can never acquire the same validity (Buchholz 2016). The gender-critical scientists don´t accept that knowledge is situated, they do not seem to have received theories of knowledge production which stress that there is such a thing like paradigms (cf. Kuhn 1962), or Actor Network Theory which has shed light on the construction of knowledge through social interactions (e.g. Latour 2005). For example Kutschera rejects the notion that also in publications of biology, terms and wordings are also influenced by gender concepts (Kutschera 2016: 116-120). Reactions of the Field Among the German gender researchers, in the texts of the mentioned gender critic scientists, some are especially highlighted and deprecated as representatives of gender studies: among others, linguistics professor Lann Hornscheidt (who identifies as gender-neutral), professor Elisabeth Tuider, who together with Stefan Timmermanns has written a guidance for sexual education at schools and other institutions (Tuider & Timmermanns 2008), and sociology 179