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    Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences
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    Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences
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    Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences
    Ebook478 pages8 hours

    Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences

    By Cordelia Fine

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    This is a vehement attack on the latest pseudo-scientific claims about the differences between the sexes - with the scientific evidence to back it up. Sex discrimination is supposedly a distant memory. Yet popular books, magazines and even scientific articles increasingly defend inequalities by citing immutable biological differences between the male and female brain. Why are there so few women in science and engineering, so few men in the laundry room? Well, they say, it's our brains. Drawing on the latest research in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and social psychology, "Delusions of Gender" rebuts these claims, showing how old myths, dressed up in new scientific finery, help perpetuate the status quo. Cordelia Fine reveals the mind's remarkable plasticity, shows the substantial influence of culture on identity, and, ultimately, exposes just how much of what we consider 'hardwired' is actually malleable. This startling, original and witty book shows the surprising extent to which boys and girls, men and women are made - and not born.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIcon Books Ltd
    Release dateFeb 1, 2005
    ISBN9781848313965
    Unavailable
    Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences

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    Reviews for Delusions of Gender

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Men aren't from Mars; women aren't from Venus. Ms. Fine's work is a witty, insightful, and healthily skeptical look at the science of gender studies. As a father of twins who'd like to do whatever possible to help both learn how to be happy, healthy, and successful in whatever they choose to do with their lives, I found this fascinating. And troubling. Troubling because the more we understand how our minds create the culture that shapes our minds, it's increasingly obvious how much work their is to do to fix the culture that warps and constrains our minds and imaginations ... Still, I highly recommend this even if it may not look like a field of interest at first glance. If nothing else, it's a primer on how to hone our bs detectors and apply critical thinking to matters of social justice. I
    • 5/5
      If you've ever had the sneaking suspicion that the idea of biologically inherent gender traits is bullshit, look no further. This is one of the most meticulously-researched books I've ever read.
    • 5/5
      I feel compelled to give this book to everyone I know and, if I have to, bribe them to read it. An incredible exposition of gender and how neurononsense can lead us to dangerous conclusions about ourselves and our positions in society. Anyone considering becoming a parent, or who already is a parent and has thought about gender-neutral parenting styles should read this. It may preserve your sanity.

      If you're examining gender and essentialism and are tempted by the biological fallback to explain seemingly inexplicable sex differences then Cordelia Fine's astute and incisive prose will help. She's also wryly amusing, which makes this book a delight to read.
    • 5/5
      This is one of the most important books I've read lately. The author approaches the science of gender with a skeptical mind, and peels back the layers of hype to see what's underneath. Well researched and well written, it should be read by all who cite Lawrence Summers as their hero, and seek to find justification for their sexism in the scientific literature. Also should be read by all feminists who have bought into the idea of "the feminine brain" - which, it appears, is possessed by slightly under half of the female population.
    • 5/5
      I would give this book extra stars if I could. All parents, prospective parents, educators, human resource professionals, in fact, every person who still reads, should read this book. As someone who is skeptical with a capital S about such notions as men are from Mars & women from Venus, women can't do math, men are more likely to be geniuses, pink & purple are for girls while blue is for boys, and that male & female brains are "hard-wired" differently, I winced, snorted (Cordelia Fine is funny!) & fumed all the way through this wonderful book. Although I could write a lengthy appendage of anecdotes, observations & go-to-wall-and-bash-head-against-it experiences with "neurononsense" & "neurosexism" (I love these terms) in my own life, I will restrict myself here to quoting from the book-jacket's summary (I have to alas! return Delusions of Gender to the library & await its publication in paperback in order to annotate & underline with abandon.): "Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, Cordelia Fine debunks the myth of hardwired differences between men's and women's brains, unraveling the evidence behind such claims as men's brains aren't wired for empathy and women's brains aren't made to fix cars. She then goes one step further, offering a very different explanation of the dissimilarities between men's and women's behavior. Instead of a "male" brain and a "female" brain, " Fine gives us a glimpse of plastic, mutable minds that are continuously influenced by cultural assumptions about gender." I was reminded throughout of Stephen Jay Gould's debunking of the notion that correlation implies, let alone proves, causation.
    • 4/5
      A book that shouldn't have to be written. The excerpts from irritating bits of pseudo-science make one gnash one's teeth. The author is a tad sloppy and inconsistent; in one part of the book the notion that you can draw any conclusions about human brains from studies of rats is mocked, in another a rat study is used to support the author's argument. The book is occasionally rather funny. The best part is the John Stuart Mill quotation at the beginning; when Victorians wanted to talk sense they used awfully long and weighty sentences.
    • 5/5
      My goodness. Everybody should read this book. Everybody. Especially those who think they're smart enough and astute enough and have enough parenting experience to intuit everything about gender differences already. Especially them.
    • 2/5
      Don't really get sociology & psychology. This book seems to be telling me that if you pander to people's prejudices you'll reinforce them, and if you don't you won't.
    • 5/5
      Just as the title makes it sound, this book debunks many of the popular theories on the differences between men and women, girls and boys and their respective brains. The main message is that gender is social, not biological. In the end, there is an admittance that it may one day prove to be biological, but no compelling evidence currently exists that cannot be debunked and was not influenced by the researchers in some way instead. Culture drives gender roles and gender stereotypes so well that there is virtually no way to really know how soon such things start. There are some unique examples of families that have found ways around stereotypes of gender, but they are very few.

      This book is definitely recommended for anyone who writes about or is interested in gender roles and stereotypes as well as pretty much all parents. It is important to understand the genderscape as a parent because it is parents who will shape the next generation’s views on gender. It is highly informative of where these concepts come from in our children and how they are policed.

      My favorite point in the book is that children learn so much more from the way that people act than from what they say. It relays the message (in my opinion) that if you want your children to disregard traditional gender roles, you will have to do this in your home first. It also doesn’t seem to be about each gender specifically going against stereotype as much as each person in the home sharing each of the house chores evenly. If the child sees that the person who takes out the trash is whoever saw that it was full, they are less likely to associate it with a gender role. Likewise with doing the dishes. This is where it can start and it doesn’t have to stick with gender roles, this holds true for all the places where life intersects with differences.
    • 5/5
      Delusions of Gender, by Cordelia Fine, is a book that concerns itself with the central question of gender: are there really inherent behavioral differences between men and women, or are those differences all culturally constructed? As an anti-genderist, I am definitely on the “all differences are culturally constructed” side, and Fine takes that side also.The book is divided in three main parts. Part 1 concerns itself with measured behavioral differences and studies which seek to explain them. Her central concept is that of associative memory, which creates implicit associations in our brain between concepts, such as associating a gender with stereotypical concepts such as empathy or mathematics. Fine discusses a wide variety of studies which show that, whether we are aware of them or not, our implicit associations have a profound impact on what we think about ourselves and how well we perform tasks.Part 2 discusses the attempts to point to neuroscientific data that supposedly proves a neurological basis for gender. Fine exposes this “research” as being little more than a fallacy of insufficient sample. She also highlights the fact that social conditions structure the brain and create gender difference where there was none. Finally, part 3 explores the issue of how our implicit associations form in early childhood and why attempts at “gender-neutral parenting” and other individualistic solutions must necessarily fail.I have not so far read a lot of the anti-genderist literature so I can’t really compare this book to others on the subject, but this is one of the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read. Cordelia Fine combines startling insights into the construction of gender with a keen observational mind. I heavily recommend this book to anyone who has any interest in anti-genderism.
    • 2/5
      Adult nonfiction; sociology/psychology. I didn't have as much time to spend with this book as I probably should have, but it appears to be a systematic debunking (or partial debunking) of all of the research that had appeared to show differences between genders. Malcolm Blackwell in Blink wrote about how black students who are asked to identify their race prior to a math test will tend to score more poorly on the test than those who didn't have to consider their ethnicity (unless the students had been watching the Olympics, in which case they did as well or better). Similarly, Cordelia Fine shows that women are susceptible to exactly this kind of behavioral change based on their perceptions of gender.
    • 4/5
      All those studies that say that women are bad at math and men are bad at relationships because their brains are hardwired that way can be very discouraging, and there are a LOT of those studies. But Cordelia Fine has looked into those studies and found flaws in them. Add into that a large number of studies that show how easy it is to jigger people’s minds into doing better or worse at tasks depending on how they are psychologically primed before hand and we can see where the author is coming from. Fine’s thesis is rather than there being any physical difference between male and female brains, the differences that we see in math scores are there because our culture expects them to be there. Even when people attempt to raise their children in a gender neutral environment, culture intervenes. On TV, in schools, in children’s books, in the clothing sold to children- everything is divided into genders, and females end up less adventuresome, more nurturing, expected to be nicer and not fight, and to focus on home and caring rather than invented and discovering. Toys for girls and boys are separated, and children who choose to play with toys for the opposite gender are disapproved of, especially boys who play with dolls or other ‘girl’ toys. Tomboys may be told to act more ladylike, but boys will get beat up by other boys. The core of her argument is that studies where test takers are primed to consider themselves members of sets other than gender yield different results than tests taken when the test takers are told things like “men traditionally do better on this test”. For instance, when a group of males and females take a test and are told before hand that people who go to certain colleges (colleges that some of the test takers go to) do better on this same test, the test takers conform to this and the males and females who belong to the colleges mentioned both do better on the test than the non-certain collegians- and the males and females in that group score the same as each other on the test under these conditions. These tests have been done numerous times by different researchers, and the results are always the same- the test takers conform to expectations set up before the test. Therefore, psychology trumps brain structure where intellectual subjects are concerned. It’s an interesting proposition, and one I think needs to be investigated more- much more. There’s a lot still to be untangled in gender studies. Intellectual abilities are jumbled in with emotional tendencies, and I definitely think they should be considered separately. She pretty much ignores the effect of hormones on emotional states except for the case of fetal testosterone. I think that while this book doesn’t settle any gender issue questions, it does cast a lot of doubt on previous studies and urges us to look at them much harder.
    • 5/5
      God damn! This book actually changed the way I see the world!! I shall do it justice with a worthy review! Just way till I get my hands on a computer!
    • 4/5
      It's a pity that I always go into books like this with a mopy teenagery disposition, expecting a slog of a read where the information leaks out of your nose as it penetrates your brain, because this turned out to be not only extremely interesting, but also immensely enjoyable. The author has a great sense of humour in approaching some out-dated (and re-enforced even today) views on the biological hardwiring of men and women.

      There's not a lot in here that shocks or surprises, but it did make me think at length about the impact social stereotyping has on gendering men and women. It reminded me of something in Vindication of the Rights of Women where Wollstencroft talked about the false education of women constructed to suppress their natural attributes in favour of teaching them to flatter the desires of men (like, I dunno, how to sew them a posh collar or su'ink). We may not have that degree of false education these days, but there's still a lot of subconscious (and intentional) prodding of girls towards girliness (and boys away from Barbie dolls).

      So, yes, it made me think about a lot of stuff to which I sadly don’t give enough consideration. What with all the baking and sewing dresses…
    • 4/5
      Good way to think about gender, lots of research to back it up, got a little long winded.
    • 5/5
      Are men and women innately different due to the way our comparative brains are built, or are the differences we perceive between us the result of cultural conditioning, a by-product of living within a world that sets different expectations for men and women from the moment we are born? Has science, neuroscience in particular, helped us discover the truth about our natures or has it enabled us to simply re-confirm age-old prejudices through more respectable means?Cordelia Fine, in her informative, entertaining and highly readable book Delusions of Gender, makes the case that we are not hard-wired for anything as far as gender roles go and that modern neuroscience has been used to pass along the same old prejudices our fore-fathers and fore-mothers endured.I did not enter reading Delusions of Gender on Ms. Fine's side. Prior to reading her book, I believed that we're all prisoners of our DNA in the end and that someday we would find differences in the DNA of men and women that bring about the behavioral differences we all observe. However, Ms. Fine builds such a strong case against a neurological basis for behavioral differences, that I am forced to look at my own views in a new light. Ms. Fine makes a thorough, detailed critique of the neurological research done to date as well as the more popular books supposedly based on this research. While it's often the case that a particular research study Ms. Fine critiques should be viewed with great skepticism, it's more often the case that the popular books claiming to illuminate the differences between men and women based on neuroscience are basically fiction. It's remarkable how many books like Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus, misquote, misunderstand, misinterpret or simply make things up about the studies they cite as the basis for the arguments they make. Some of this relates to things many of us have come to take for granted. The notion that women like to talk through problems while men address them in straightforward manner, is one example. Whether this notion is correct or not, Ms. Fine is able to clearly demonstrate that it has no provable basis in neuroscience. If it exists, it is most likely the product of learned behavior.This was the most striking notion I took away from Delusions of Gender, just how much behavior appears to be learned, how strongly it can affect people in testing situations and how early this learning begins. Several studies Ms. Fine looks at show how simply asking the subjects in a test to state their gender before it began can affect how they will respond to the test itself. Asking people to think of themselves as a man or a woman will cause them to respond in ways they think men or women are supposed to respond. Other studies show that very young children begin to look at the men and women around them as behavioral models possibly even before they can speak. After reading Delusions of Gender I was I'm humbly reminded that I should always view scientific claims with skepticism, especially if the evidence for them is slight. This is something I have known since the 1980's when one study proved that gay men had bigger hypothalmuses (spelling?) than straight men did which supposedly suggested a reason why gay men were gay, though it did not explain why straight men were straight. That I've taken so many statements on gender difference as fact without looking at the studies they are based on embarrasses me. I don't think it will happen anymore.Ms. Fine reminds us all that we should read the footnotes and check the studies before we quote them especially if the book we are reading is simply using science to confirm prejudices (or opinions) we already hold. If you believe it's natural for girls to like pink more than boys do, then it's very easy to agree with a book quoting a 'study' that proves this is based on new discoveries in neuroscience. Ms. Fine does the leg work for us in Delusions of Gender and finds that while girls may like pink more than boys do, this has no basis in the structure of their brains.But is Delusions of Gender a book you'll enjoy reading? I can only say that I found it fascinating. It's not a breezy read, but neither is it a highly academic book. I would say that it falls just over the line towards academic on the popular---academic continuum. It's just academic enough to lend credibility, which is right where I'd like a book like this to be.
    • 5/5
      witty, provocative, assured, convincing. A must read.
    • 5/5
      This is one of the most important books I've read lately. The author approaches the science of gender with a skeptical mind, and peels back the layers of hype to see what's underneath. Well researched and well written, it should be read by all who cite Lawrence Summers as their hero, and seek to find justification for their sexism in the scientific literature. Also should be read by all feminists who have bought into the idea of "the feminine brain" - which, it appears, is possessed by slightly under half of the female population.
    • 5/5
      Really engaging look at, among other things, how people respond to stereotypes (even being reminded that one is a woman can decrease performance on a math test, while being exposed to a competent woman can improve it), how society pervasively genders children (I remember how desperate strangers were to figure out whether my infant was a boy or a girl), and how bad neuroscience gets used to “prove” that the differences between men and women are hardwired, because we’re all egalitarians now so obviously any remaining differences are the result of genes. Sample summary dealing with the fact that self-reported data about supposedly gender-linked characteristics is unreliable: “if you want to predict people’s empathic ability you might as well save everyone’s time and get monkeys to fill out the self-report questionnaires.” She has a detailed discussion of supposed brain differences and what they might (or might not) mean for thinking. My favorite bit of that is a quote from someone else—you may have read about the idea that men’s brains are more hemispherically localized while women’s are more interconnected, supposedly making men more suited for in-depth thinking and women for putting things together. Ian Gold, a philosopher of science, says, “May as well say hairier body so fuzzier thinker. Or that human beings are capable of fixing fuses because the brain uses electricity.” In fact, as Fine points out, it’s not surprising that there are different configurations that perform the same functions in the world. The story she tells is both depressing—we’re so eager to declare victory/defeat with respect to sex differences—and inspiring—small interventions can make big differences. I need to figure out how to do more of this debiasing when I teach.
    • 5/5
      Loved it! Couldn't put it down. Engaging, funny, and chalk full of good information. Takes a hard look at some of those "hardwired gender norms". This is a must read for anyone interested in gender studies. Bring a highlighter or a notebook, your gonna need them. Theres lots of good information that your gonna want to keep track of.
    • 5/5
      READ IT.Cordelia Fine's examination of the many popular books and research studies which purport to prove that the male and female brains might as well belong to different species is simply brilliant. I gobbled this non-fiction up like it was a light lunch after a hard day's manual labor. Every page was packed with jaw-dropping information - horrifying methodological flaws, research which argues two diametrically opposed concepts, and outright deception, all designed to prove that men and women are not and cannot possibly be equal. Like, just for one small example: Fine mentions the author of a popular book on the subject, who cites research about "mirror neurons," (women have more of them, which supposedly makes them more empathetic.) The author mentions a study of therapists which indicated that the most successful therapists are those that "mirror" their clients words, gestures, and verbal patterns. Interestingly, (says the author), ALL of the successful therapists were women. Because they have more mirror neurons, and are more attuned to others, right?WRONG. Cordelia Fine looked up the study (thank you, Cordelia! That would be a big nuisance for the Average Reader) and as it turns out? ALL OF THE THERAPISTS IN THE STUDY WERE WOMEN. Yeah, that's right. They only recruited women for the study, so the study proves absolutely nothing about men vs. women. And if you think this sort of thing is an anomaly, wrong again - Fine's detailed work found this sort of thing occurring over and over again. Moreover, Fine is terrific at highlighting how the social context of everything men and women do contributes to these gender stereotypes, and at explaining how gender bias affects the neuroscientific research. This is an absolutely fantastic book - I have the urge to acquire copies for every teacher, every employer, every parent on the planet. It made me rethink more of my life that I would have believed possible. Seriously, even if you think you would disagree with it: READ IT. If nothing else, you will enjoy Fine's smooth and witty prose.
    • 4/5
      This book looks at some of the popular assumptions about hardwired gender norms and asks some timely and serious questions about them. She shows that by presenting tasks as being gender biased that it can skew the results. That western culture encourages a very rigid adherence to gender norms, that it's hard to escape them and that we are priming girls to fail at maths and science and priming boys to regard housework as tasks for girls/women. I also found it interesting how a change in name in a job application is the difference between hiring and not hiring and that a mans name on a fake CV with worse credentials than a woman can get a job, even when there's women doing the hiring!It's an interesting read and I found it a wonderful antidote to The Female Brain by Brizendine, Fine also found The Female Brain to be toxic, but she also had the resources and knowledge to be able to point out that much of the research cited in the Female Brain to be at best flawed and at worst poor science. I was disgusted to find that many of the generalisations were based on such small sample sizes (8 subjects isn't a survey, it's a start)I found it an engaging read, interesting and humourous. I laughed a few times and found myself caught up in the read, nodding regularly as well. It asks almost as many questions as it answers but it does ask one of the most important questions, why people get away with sweeping generalisations that are so flawed and why there aren't more writers like her pointing out these flaws. I would like to read more by her, I found her writing gave me a better understanding of the topic and made me think, without talking down to me.
    • 4/5
      All those studies that say that women are bad at math and men are bad at relationships because their brains are hardwired that way can be very discouraging, and there are a LOT of those studies. But Cordelia Fine has looked into those studies and found flaws in them. Add into that a large number of studies that show how easy it is to jigger people’s minds into doing better or worse at tasks depending on how they are psychologically primed before hand and we can see where the author is coming from. Fine’s thesis is rather than there being any physical difference between male and female brains, the differences that we see in math scores are there because our culture expects them to be there. Even when people attempt to raise their children in a gender neutral environment, culture intervenes. On TV, in schools, in children’s books, in the clothing sold to children- everything is divided into genders, and females end up less adventuresome, more nurturing, expected to be nicer and not fight, and to focus on home and caring rather than invented and discovering. Toys for girls and boys are separated, and children who choose to play with toys for the opposite gender are disapproved of, especially boys who play with dolls or other ‘girl’ toys. Tomboys may be told to act more ladylike, but boys will get beat up by other boys. The core of her argument is that studies where test takers are primed to consider themselves members of sets other than gender yield different results than tests taken when the test takers are told things like “men traditionally do better on this test”. For instance, when a group of males and females take a test and are told before hand that people who go to certain colleges (colleges that some of the test takers go to) do better on this same test, the test takers conform to this and the males and females who belong to the colleges mentioned both do better on the test than the non-certain collegians- and the males and females in that group score the same as each other on the test under these conditions. These tests have been done numerous times by different researchers, and the results are always the same- the test takers conform to expectations set up before the test. Therefore, psychology trumps brain structure where intellectual subjects are concerned. It’s an interesting proposition, and one I think needs to be investigated more- much more. There’s a lot still to be untangled in gender studies. Intellectual abilities are jumbled in with emotional tendencies, and I definitely think they should be considered separately. She pretty much ignores the effect of hormones on emotional states except for the case of fetal testosterone. I think that while this book doesn’t settle any gender issue questions, it does cast a lot of doubt on previous studies and urges us to look at them much harder.
    • 5/5
      Just when it looked like neuroscience was justifying our current worldview that innate differences are somehow “hardwired” into the brains of little boys and little girls author Cordelia Fine comes along and checks out the scientific studies. What she exposes and describes in detail are poorly designed experiments, blind leaps of faith and convoluted circular reasoning. In scientists! According to what Fine uncovered we have mutable brains, continuously influenced and changed by our cultural environment. Besides being thought provoking—it may make you rethink a lot of your beliefs—this book is both funny and well written.
    • 5/5
      This book does a really good job at shooting down all the evolutionary psychology crap that is so popular, as well as showing how ev-psych is basically a backlash against feminism. She also debunks the whole "but we tried to raise our kids in a gender-neutral environment and my daughter still likes Disney princesses so it must be in her genes!" thing by showing how near-inescapable gender socialisation is and how early it begins. It's a really easy to read book, which is always a plus for me, as I tend to get bogged down by a lot of non-fiction.My main complaint is that this is really a book about white heterosexual people. There were many times when I was reading and I thought "your argument is good, but it could be so much better if you mentioned this or that". For example, when she talks about ev-psych guys who write books about how men are just hardwired to not be able to cook a meal or take care of a baby or remember the milk at the grocery store, so it's only right that their wives should do those things instead (their ladybrains are so much better suited to it!), she rarely brought up the fact that non-heterosexual (or even non-heteronormative) couples exist or that other cultures do X differently. Like, even if there hasn't been a study on children raised by gay couples (which surely there has; there's been studies on everything!), she could at least bring up the fact that gay couples with children exist and seem to be able to take care of babies just fine (also there are single fathers). It felt like she was really missing an opportunity to make her points even better.Still, I really enjoyed this overall and highly recommend it.