Delusions of Gender

Shakti

HI,
Noob here so sorry if this was posted before,
Cordelia Fine debunks some classic and
still accepted notions of gender.

http://fora.tv/2010/10/02/Cordelia_Fine_Delusions_of_Gender

Kanoe

argh have to go to work and it's an hour long, looking forward to watching when I get home, I laughed out loud in the first five minutes.

Meesared

baaaah at work and cant see it

deirdre_dub

For some reason, as a trans person, a book called "delusions of gender" sets warning bells ringing with me .

However, after a bit of research, it seems that the author is actually a supporter of the idea of a difference between "male" and "female" brains - it's just that she doesn't believe those differences are anywhere near as significant in terms of one's potential contribution to society as most people believe. That I can support.

I've sent a quick email to the author asking her if that is indeed the case. Unfortunately, I cannot watch the video right now - things to do and people to see. :rolleyes:

Meesared

deirdre_dub wrote: »

For some reason, as a trans person, a book called "delusions of gender" sets warning bells ringing with me .

However, after a bit of research, it seems that the author is actually a supporter of the idea of a difference between "male" and "female" brains - it's just that she doesn't believe those differences are anywhere near as significant in terms of one's potential contribution to society as most people believe. That I can support.

I've sent a quick email to the author asking her if that is indeed the case. Unfortunately, I cannot watch the video right now - things to do and people to see. :rolleyes:

You off to the party tonight?

Freiheit

Read it a few months ago and found it very good....what stands out is the role of prejudice, stereotype and preconceived outcomes in gender based research. Men and women are innately nowhere near as different as stereotype conditions us to be.

rainbow kirby

Saw the book in Reads this evening when I was on my way home from work... might give it a look.

Shakti

Freiheit wrote: »

what stands out is the role of prejudice, stereotype and preconceived outcomes in gender based research. Men and women are innately nowhere near as different as stereotype conditions us to be.

Yeah thats what I get out of it,

A lot of it is directed at Simon
Baron Cohen of Cambridge
University who wrote 'The extreme
male-brain theory of autism'(1.).

(1.)http://cogsci.bme.hu/~ivady/bscs/read/bc.pdf

Some transgender people initially
embraced the theory of 'Brain Sex'
as a significant contributor to gender
expression but more quickly saw it for
what it was ultimately ie.'a narrow
cis-gendered hetero-normative
reduction of human experience'.

susiebubbles

I just started reading this book and enjoying it so far. Thanks for the link!

Freiheit

Yes and that book "why men don't listen and women can't read maps" which I had found an entertaining read but uses little science to back up it's theories. Claims that brain scans are used to give legitimacy to illegitimate theories. Just reference to a brain scan provides a cloak of validity even though brain imaging and understanding of precise brain functioning she say's is in relative infancy.

Say's that the male and female brains are incredibly similar and that the only clear observable difference is that the female brain is a bit more compact. By that I mean that most men have larger brains because their bodies tend on average to be larger, on average I stres. Brains of Smaller bodies, usually women, need slightly more efficent wiring to compensate. In the same way that a smaller computer would need to be a bit more compact in wiring than a larger one. The smaller one, usually the female, may well be as smart or smarter, just like the smaller computer, but the wiring must by necessity be a little different. But this is she stresses the only observable difference and believes that most of the differences in behaviour and ability, I stress only most, are due to nuture.

Mathematical ability is a regular cited example, because women are culturaly expected to perform poorer at Maths on average they do because this expectation leads to a self fulfilling prophecy. The reverse is true for men and languages. The expectation influences the result.

Kanoe

deirdre_dub wrote: »

For some reason, as a trans person, a book called "delusions of gender" sets warning bells ringing with me .

However, after a bit of research, it seems that the author is actually a supporter of the idea of a difference between "male" and "female" brains - it's just that she doesn't believe those differences are anywhere near as significant in terms of one's potential contribution to society as most people believe. That I can support.

I've sent a quick email to the author asking her if that is indeed the case. Unfortunately, I cannot watch the video right now - things to do and people to see. :rolleyes:

there's a Q&A session at the end that might answer some of your concerns, she touches on the topic of gender reassignment at one point.