lightreads (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lightreads) wrote2019-12-11 06:44 pm
lightreads) wrote2019-12-11 06:44 pm
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Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine
Delusions of Gender
4/5. Brisk but thorough takedown of the assorted "evidence" for a gender difference in capacity or performance or skill. Excellent and easily readable. I always somewhat maliciously enjoy books that tear apart poorly done or biased experiments. I've known too many scientists disdainful of psychology not to find that pleasurable. But more broadly, this book really goes after that idea that there must be some inherent gender differences because we're, like, woke now, and yet our girl babies still want dolls. Ha. Perhaps my favorite point of hers was one she made in passing, though, when she noted that of course men's and women's brains on average differ on certain chemical measures: they also differ in size, which has a tremendous influence on function, meaning that they would need to chemically operate differently to perform the same tasks. What a useful insight.
4/5. Brisk but thorough takedown of the assorted "evidence" for a gender difference in capacity or performance or skill. Excellent and easily readable. I always somewhat maliciously enjoy books that tear apart poorly done or biased experiments. I've known too many scientists disdainful of psychology not to find that pleasurable. But more broadly, this book really goes after that idea that there must be some inherent gender differences because we're, like, woke now, and yet our girl babies still want dolls. Ha. Perhaps my favorite point of hers was one she made in passing, though, when she noted that of course men's and women's brains on average differ on certain chemical measures: they also differ in size, which has a tremendous influence on function, meaning that they would need to chemically operate differently to perform the same tasks. What a useful insight.