Peeling Away Theories on Gender and the Brain

[groovedaddy]

“Delusions of Gender” takes on that tricky question, Why exactly are men from Mars and women from Venus?, and eviscerates both the neuroscientists who claim to have found the answers and the popularizers who take their findings and run with them.

The author, Cordelia Fine, who has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from University College London, is an acerbic critic, mincing no words when it comes to those she disagrees with. But her sharp tongue is tempered with humor and linguistic playfulness, as the title itself suggests. Academics like Simon Baron-Cohen and Dr. Louann Brizendine will want to come to this volume well armed. So would Norman Geschwind if he were still alive. Popular authors like John Gray (“Men are from Mars”), Michael Gurian (“What Could He Be Thinking?”) and Dr. Leonard Sax (“Why Gender Matters”) may want to read something else.

Sometimes all it takes is their own words, as in this example from Dr. Brizendine’s 2007 book “The Female Brain”: “Maneuvering like an F-15, Sarah’s female brain is a high-performance emotion machine — geared to tracking, moment by moment, the nonverbal signals of the innermost feelings of others.” Is Sarah some kind of psychic? Dr. Fine clarifies: “She is simply a woman who enjoys the extraordinary gift of mind reading that, apparently, is bestowed on all owners of a female brain.”

Experts used to attribute gender inequality to the “delicacy of the brain fibers” in women ; then to the smaller dimensions of the female brain (the “missing five ounces,” the Victorians called it); then to the ratio of skull length to skull breadth. In 1915 the neurologist Dr. Charles L. Dana wrote in this newspaper that because a woman’s upper spinal cord is smaller than a man’s it affects women’s “efficiency” in the evaluation of “political initiative or of judicial authority in a community’s organization” — and thus compromises their ability to vote.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/science/24scibks.html?th&emc=th

[unpossibles]

1. interesting. I'm reading a book on the genome which discusses some of these things a bit

it's pretty fascinating, honestly.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

2. They used to say women couldn't think in 3-D, either.

I was taking IQ tests when I was just starting school as a tot.
This was in 1960.

I am female. I aced all the 3-D tests (just like I aced the verbal) and that messed up their theories about girls.

The 3-D tests would show a drawing of a flat piece of paper with segments and ask you which of four boxes it would look like if folded up.

Never occurred to them, I guess, that in order to sew you have to visualize flat pieces of fabric in 3D to go around a 3D body.

[AngryAmish]

3. This is total seabeyond bait

Have at it, ma'am. I think there might be something you agree with here.

[lapislzi]

6. I love it!

Round up the usual suspects (self included)

[seabeyond]

8. ah hahahaha. so much. so much. lol

you dont know how funny that is seeing this post. i was going thru so much in my mind, that i see, that this article agrees with ME on.

but thanks, too

[Warpy]

4. The problem with this stuff is that it tends to overgeneralize

Yes, the brains are structurally and functionally different, the corpus callosum tending to separate the halves of the male brain and join the halves of the female brain. There are general strengths and weaknesses associated with both.

However, the problem with trying to generalize the sexes is that so many members of both groups fall completely outside such generalizations. We lose the individual in attempting to pigeonhole everybody into one group or another. Outliers, who are present in large numbers in both groups, are tended to be treated very harshly as rigid sex role stereotypes are enforced.

[lapislzi]

5. I'm calling "foul" in the review itself....

Had the author of the book in question not been female, I wonder whether "sharp tongue" would have been used.

[supernova]

7. I can see this

I have female systemizing brain, accoring to the article. I don't go for lots of frilly girl stuff, but I do like figuring out how things work. And I do mean everything: political systems, the TV/stereo in the living room, why some people are rich, some poor.

IOW, in laymen's terms, you can't say for sure what someone's brain is like based on whether they are male or female.

[bemildred]

9. These vague statistical generalizations don't mean anything about anybody in particular. nt