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A review by maisoncetacea
Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine
4.0
If you've ever wanted for a witty, hilarious, super-smart psychologist to eviscerate every smug pop-psych study you've ever read on "male" and "female" brains, Cordelia Fine is the person to call. Culling research spanning decades, and casting important parallels between "research" we now completely disavow (e.g., Victorian proclamations of women lacking the physical makeup necessary for political participation), Fine has written a powerful tome that brings some much-needed skepticism to the field.
While the book may be difficult if you are used to the breathless exhilaration of most pop-psych books, Fine makes the careful examination of faulty research as vital as possible. The truth, she notes, is that behind the grand proclamations modern neuropsychologists make about sex and the brain, there is a plethora of research that is often inconclusive, carelessly performed, or hopelessly subjected to scientists' all-too-human confirmation biases.
Are women's brains less well-suited for careers in computer science, or are they simply unable to manage high performance under the weight of significant stereotype threat?
Do newborn boys naturally focus more on a mobile versus a human face, or was the methodology of the experiment flawed in presenting each stimulus separately versus together?
And how on Earth would newborn primates be able to know that a cooking pan is supposed to be a "girlish" toy, anyway?
Admittedly, I struggled to stay engaged with the book start-to-finish, because the content of such a book is not always the most exciting. Then again, I didn't much expect it to be; these studies seldom are, which may be the point. Fine seems to be equally invested in calling out the absurdity of scientists' implicit motives in their research: why are we still so invested in confirming the naturalness of female inferiority, anyway? Perhaps that is for us to answer on our own, and she certainly provides food for thought. What kinds of questions do we eclipse in looking so hard for differences that remain elusive? As Fine notes, "ironically, perhaps it is not biology that is the implacably resistant counterforce [to a gender egalitarian society], but our culturally attuned minds." This encapsulates neatly what her message in this book is, and is the best reason to read it. Recommended for anyone who seeks to demystify the "science" of gender difference, and those who wish to become better researchers of the subject.
While the book may be difficult if you are used to the breathless exhilaration of most pop-psych books, Fine makes the careful examination of faulty research as vital as possible. The truth, she notes, is that behind the grand proclamations modern neuropsychologists make about sex and the brain, there is a plethora of research that is often inconclusive, carelessly performed, or hopelessly subjected to scientists' all-too-human confirmation biases.
Are women's brains less well-suited for careers in computer science, or are they simply unable to manage high performance under the weight of significant stereotype threat?
Do newborn boys naturally focus more on a mobile versus a human face, or was the methodology of the experiment flawed in presenting each stimulus separately versus together?
And how on Earth would newborn primates be able to know that a cooking pan is supposed to be a "girlish" toy, anyway?
Admittedly, I struggled to stay engaged with the book start-to-finish, because the content of such a book is not always the most exciting. Then again, I didn't much expect it to be; these studies seldom are, which may be the point. Fine seems to be equally invested in calling out the absurdity of scientists' implicit motives in their research: why are we still so invested in confirming the naturalness of female inferiority, anyway? Perhaps that is for us to answer on our own, and she certainly provides food for thought. What kinds of questions do we eclipse in looking so hard for differences that remain elusive? As Fine notes, "ironically, perhaps it is not biology that is the implacably resistant counterforce [to a gender egalitarian society], but our culturally attuned minds." This encapsulates neatly what her message in this book is, and is the best reason to read it. Recommended for anyone who seeks to demystify the "science" of gender difference, and those who wish to become better researchers of the subject.