Previously Published Review: Delusions of Gender, Cordelia Fine

Comprehensive Literature Review Refutes Sensationalism!

Details at 11!

Oh, wait. They won't be, because providing citations and scientific stucdies which seem to indicate something as boring (and frankly, a little embarrassing) as socially-induced neurological and behavioral differences between the sexes isn't nearly exciting enough to broadcast on the newsmedia.

We'd rather use our shiny new technological advances to prove that really, we're all doing all that we can, and honestly, the fact that women have advanced as far as they have shows how GOOD we are at counteracting their natural tendencies to be weak-willed passive little vacuum-pushers who live to cook nice roasts for their alpha-male husbands to devour on their way to the den to watch the big game.

Yeesh. On the one hand, I'm really glad I read this, because it's nice to know that my niggling suspicion about "too neatly drawn" biological differences was correct, but at the same time, I'm a lot more depressed about the advances of culture and society to actually regard people as equal, regardless of the particular format of their genitals.

Some really depressing standouts:

Even if parents verbally espouse egalitarianism and racial/gender equality, their unconscious selves more easily pair sets of words such as woman/house instead of woman/job, or man/power instead of man/infant. Even worse, small children base THEIR understanding of the world (and their behavior patterns) on those unconscious preferences of the adults around them, not their consciously held beliefs. Therefore, you get Jennifer stating that her four year old son Aiden can play with dolls if he wants to, but when you ask Aiden himself, he states that his mommy would NOT want him to play with dolls. *sigh*

Women and men with identical resumes get treated quite differently when hiring, promotions, and raises are considered. Men are lauded if they are agressive and "go-getters" while an identical applicant with a female name is considered a bossy "ball-buster" or an "ice-queen" and their recompense for their work (both financially and in the sense of support and friendliness with co-workers) suffers dramatically in contrast to men. And don't even get started on the poor women with kids. If you add a fictional reference to a child on her resume, she gets it even worse than a childless identical female.

But really, it's all because of those brain differences, right? Right?

The lack of a star is simply because I thought that the time she spent establishing how much mental "hardwiring" is changed by life itself was a little lacking. As the major thrust of her argument against far-reaching inherent neurological differences (please note the use of the word far-reaching) it falls on her to establish (with as much authority as can be mustered) the amount and extent to which infant, child, teen, and ADULT brains can have their "hardwiring" altered based on experiences and patterns of behavior.

Overall a very enjoyable and necessary book. To really appreciate some of the pointed sarcasm, you may also enjoy thumbing through some of the titles she gleefully eviscerates on her jaunt through the scientific literature.