Cordelia Fine

I read Fine's Delusions of Gender a few years ago and really enjoyed it, so when I saw she had another one coming out I knew I had to order it. It is just as good as Delusions, and I would recommend it to anyone to read.
In this book Fine takes a look at testosterone and asks is it really the reason behind financial crisis, risk taking, and the differences between the sexes.
the short answer is no. The slightly longer, but still short version is that it has an important role to play but it show more is equally as important as all other hormones in the human body. For more go read the book, it is fascinating, interesting, funny and very readable. Fine has a great style. She weaves personal anecdotes in with scientific studies as well as her own speculation. She counters arguments with facts and figures, but never in a dry and boring way.
It is also a most quotable book, if you follow me on tumblr you may have noticed, if not click here for a selection and if that doesn't prompt you to think about trying this book I don't know what will.
One of my very favourite lines is Social events regulate gonadal events. I think it should be my new motto.
But apart from the writing style what she says in the book is important. She never says that there aren't differences between men and women, but she emphasizes that we cannot accurately tell what is causing those differences. From the moment we are born we are influenced by both genes and environment, and sometimes environment has a greater influence. Never mind the fact that when you average everything out there are more differences between men (or women) than between the sexes. Also, sex is a spectrum, not an either or. Stereotypes and hardline "men are like this" views do nobody any good.
People are people, and people are different to people in many many ways. And society and experience do a lot to shape people. If you think about the idea behind "privilege" for example you can see that influences how people of differing backgrounds see and act. It isn't what you were born with, it is how society around you that shapes what you were born with.
I've skimmed a few of the negative reviews on Goodreads and many of them seem to say "I don't agree with this so it is wrong" and some say that Fine wants to proclaim that there are no differences between men and women. Well, I've read the book and she makes it perfectly clear that there are differences, both in humans and in other species, what she is looking at is how innate those differences are and can they be altered? Also across the whole species are the differences really there. And in some cases she argues that, yes, they are. In others no, the variables even out across a large sample. Fine also points to numerous studies that show that just because X has been the way for so long, it doesn't mean it can't ever be altered.
Of course I came to the book on her side, so maybe I'm just agreeing with her because it supports my view of the world. I'm not a scientist and am not about to go through hundreds of studies in an attempt to prove myself wrong. However I have skimmed through some of those "men are from mars" type books, you know the sort that try to argue that all relationship differences exist because men are like this while women are like that, and in most cases I don't identify with the version of womanhood that they portray. So maybe I'm just an outlier, or maybe there is more to being a person than what is between your legs. show less

This book is not merely an excellent, smart deconstruction of crap science and crap science-y pop writing. It is also freaking hilarious.

There is, as Fine outlines in gleeful detail, a great deal of crap science about gender, and even larger piles of the popular-audience stuff, out there.

We tend to think of "the brain" as genetically programmed (or "hardwired," as though it were a computer) in an innate, stable, indeed unchangeable sort of way--and then we imagine that the setup of "the show more brain" leads in straightforward ways to the abilities and "natural" tendencies of "the mind." But actually, it seems that a brain and its functions are shaped by interpersonal and cultural context. The relationship between brain and mind is very far indeed from straightforward or well-understood. Fancy-looking brain scans don't mean what they're typically taken to mean: the "blobs" are not really accounts of our true (and truly gendered) natures, or even direct representations of "brain activity."

So that makes a lot of what Fine refers to as "neurosexism" pretty problematic. Add to that the systematic overreporting of differences (who publishes a paper saying although we weren't really looking at gender anyway, we found no difference between male and female subjects? but if the study did happen to find a difference ... well, that might get written up). And then heap on some troubling methodologies, teensy sample sizes, and truly bizarre interpretations of the data, and you get the idea.

This is an excellent book. Read it, please. show less

I discovered Cordelia Fine with Delusions of Gender: The Real Science behind Sex Differences, a previous book in which she debunked the silly idea that there is a such a thing as a typical female brain as opposed to a typical male brain. I had loved that book so much, in fact, that I decided to read further about it all -tackling from (so far) Gina Rippon to Rebeca Jordan-Young and Daphna Joel … and, of course, Cordelia Fine again!

Make no mistake: some feminists might be tired to find the show more tiring and tired argument of women being ‘naturally’ hardwired to be lovely sweeties being nothing but nurturing and great with feelings being bashed on again and again (with all the damaging consequences such stereotypes has for women as a whole in society at large, starting by inequalities in careers and the workplace) but, as a man, I am also tired to find the same type of tiring and tired argument constantly thrown against men, whereas we are being portrayed as (hold it, hold it, hoooold it!) hardwired to be sexually promiscuous, risk taking to the point of recklessness, obsessed with social status and power/ control/ dominance, battling for alpha position in any given situation, and, above all, prone to aggressivity and violence! All these lovely traits being blamed, of course, on… testosterone (BOOHH!). Well, *sigh*.

Does testosterone really make men more into sex than women are? Does it make us more risk taking? Does it make us prone to violence?

Now, this is not to say that there are no differences between male and female (especially at the hormonal level), nor that our behaviours don’t differ. Here too is a straw man argument that has been thrown at her and her colleagues defending the view that human brains are a spectrum and cannot be neatly gendered pink/ blue, and, here too, well, *sigh*. This is to say that there are more differences between female themselves or male themselves than between females and males, and that our behaviours are more social constructs resulting from expectations imposed upon genders than innately rooted in our biology, even if the issue is not either/ or (since, due to brain plasticity, our brain is affected by its environment even more so than by its innate structure).

It’s easy and straightforward enough. Yet, by reading some reviews even in here and how misunderstood this book and stance is, I guess we won’t see true gender equality anytime soon... In the meantime, here’s another great debunking work by Cordelia Fine and which I highly recommend, whether you’re interested in biology, neuroscience, psychology, gender studies, or all the above. And, if, like me, you’re a man tired of the tiring and tired stance that we’re supposed to be reckless and gorilla-like, thumping our chests and dreaming of shagging around like Genghis Khan simply because, eh, we’re male and that’s how males are (because bollocks and testosterone) then you will absolutely love this! show less

A great debunking of the ‘male/female brain’ paradigm, according to which men and women are supposedly and ‘naturally' hardwired differently.

It deals mostly with brain science and endocrinology (well, she went on to write Testosterone Rex, another must-read for the sceptic…), yet it remains accessible, or, at least, more accessible than other reads in the same vein (I blogged about some of them here: https://www.aurelienthomas.org/post/brains-and-b-ll-cks). As always with Cordelia show more Fine, it’s also peppered with her usual sense of humour (witty, sarcastic at times, always tongue-in-cheek) which can lighten up the mood on an otherwise complex yet very important topic.

Having a sense of humour doesn’t mean being clownish, though. And indeed, don’t be fooled: the author might show that the ‘male/female brain’ view is unscientific (the vast amount of research available does not support it, the few studies lending it credence are highly controversial, and its monetising by a whole ‘men are from Mars/ women are from Venus’ industry is nothing but quackery), but, what she does above all, is to expose how it relies on gender prejudices and bias, culturally made in the first place, so as to peddle itself. This is what she calls neurosexism (she coined the term) and it has nothing hilarious about it -it feeds our underlying biases, contributes to define how we perceive each other, and, even, pops its ugly head (deliberately or not, consciously or not) from employment to policies and various cultural trends. She focuses, especially, on how women are still badly affected.

Delusions, of course, can be very potent indeed. If we care about scientific truth, though, let alone a society those shaping ought not to be rooted in a gender essentialism inherited from another era (a gender essentialism yet still prevalent all around us) then it’s about high time that we shake them away. Neurosexism? Thrash it! The bin is where such binary neuro-nonsense belongs.

Here’s a must read, for anyone concerned about gender issues. show less