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Delusions Of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, And Neurosexism Create Difference (2010)

by Cordelia Fine(Favorite Author)

4.17 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0393068382 (ISBN13: 9780393068382)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

review 1: Fine takes on most gender stereotypes known to man, er, humankind, and demolishes them with the weight of scientific evidence. Can you ask for more?The book really does throw interesting light on why women are seen to be 'wired differently'--much of this 'wiring' is just the female learning to respond to the roles society places on a 'woman'. Did you know that at the turn of the twentieth century, it was pink that was the male color (close to red, more 'strong') and blue the girly one (gentle)? I certainly didn't. This is an important book, one that talks about how we are burdening our children by overplaying the distinctions between a males and females.
review 2: A brilliant and much-needed book in a world where "Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus" is th... moree default way of thinking.Cordelia Fine has something for everyone, scientists and the general public alike. If you're a parent who has considered gender-neutral parenting and what that might entail, you'll be amused by the anecdotes of Sandra and Daryl Bem, who go through the painstaking trouble of doctoring their children's books to change the sex of the main character, delete sections that describe sex-stereotyped behavior, and are careful regarding pronoun use with characters who have ambiguous sexes. Rather than fill their kids' heads with ideas like "boys are strong" and "girls like to play house," they explain simply that boys have penises and girls have vaginas; that's it. This results in their son Jeremy going to school wearing a barrette and being called a girl because "only girls wear barrettes." When Jeremy drops his pants to proudly display his penis, another child, without missing a beat, says "Everybody has a penis; only girls wear barrettes."Fine spends much of the book dispelling popular (yet not grounded in good science) notions of innate gender differences, like the idea men are good at math and women are good at language, or that women are natural nurturers while men's lateral brains are incapable of the same feats of empathy.Importantly, she also dissects much of the neuroscience literature, which can often seem impenetrable yet (falsely) important-sounding to the lay reader. She goes through the trouble of explaining how brain scans displayed in popular media don't represent activity but rather averaged differences between groups based on statistical significance. She then demolishes popular interpretations of neuroscience experiments, including an English-speaking author who cites a Russian study that examined the brains of five dead people as evidence that female brains might contain more mirror neurons than male brains, allowing them to better intuit people's emotions. How it was determined which of these dead neurons were mirror neurons is left to the reader's imagination.In short, this is an amazing book that will challenge both your conscious and unconscious notions of gender differences for the better. A must-read for everyone. less

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