Elle Beau ❇︎
2 min readDec 7, 2022

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No - there isn't - because we don't actually know enough about the brain to have discovered any. Some people desperately want to find some, and they put forth that they have, but it's all full of holes. For one, brains are incredibly plastic and respond and grow with the inputs they are given. Since gender indoctrination begins at birth, unless you are measuring the brains of newborns, you are essentially measuring the effects of culture - what the Google search research was doing. The brains of newborns show tiny differences for which we do not have adequate science to be able to determine what they mean, but there is no evidence of different aptitudes.

And if there were, how to explain the fact that so many women seem to have "male brains" and vice versa? Read Cordelia Fine's excellent book Delusions of Gender for a thorough debunking of all the different studies that purport to find brain differences by gender.

But when we follow the trail of contemporary science we discover a surprising number of gaps, assumptions, inconsistencies, poor methodologies, and leaps of faith — as well as more than one echo of the insalubrious past. As Brown University professor of biology and gender studies Anne Fausto-Sterling has pointed out, “despite the many recent insights of brain research, this organ remains a vast unknown, a perfect medium on which to project, even unwittingly, assumptions about gender.” The sheer complexity of the brain lends itself beautifully to overinterpretation and precipitous conclusions.

Fine, Cordelia. Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference . W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

FYI, a difference in psychology by gender is not a difference in actual brains. It is again, an indication of how culture and the pressures of a highly genderized society shape thinking and prime behaviors in Western patriarchal cultures - something that is hardly a human universal.

BTW, I don't receive a difference of opinion as being attacking when the other person can support and substantiate their position - as you did. I actually would have preferred more concrete examples because it gives me something specific to speak to, but you did at least offer them, which is more than I can say for a lot of men who seem to think "I just know and you don't" is a sufficient rebuttal to something a woman has said. I'm sorry that you seem to have had some bad experiences when just trying to reasonably disagree, but I'm guessing it's because of the prevalence of the sort of man mentioned above.

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Elle Beau ❇︎
Elle Beau ❇︎

Written by Elle Beau ❇︎

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother, I'm a sinner, I'm a saint. I do not feel ashamed. I'm your hell, I'm your dream, I'm nothing in between.

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