It's a standing joke in the Mumsnet Feminism/ Women's Rights section that we should all be receiving royalties for Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences. I must recommend it at least once a week on threads about gendering children or men being too stupid to see dirt so they, consequently, stink at housework. This, of course, is the same men who are so "visual" that they need to look at porn in order to get off. How, precisely, one can be simultaneously visual and non-visual is beyond me but that's the argument always put forward by those who believe in innate gender differences.
I'm a neuroskeptic. I don't believe in innate gender differences. I certainly don't think we can "scientifically observe" gender differences when our culture is so seeped in woman-hating that anything constructed as "female" is immediately wrong. I have no tolerance for people who claim that boys are physical and girls are emotional. Or, that boys are better at math and spatial awareness than girls because their brains are hardwired that way. All the neuroscience I see insisting on innate gender [and never sex which is what they actually mean] differences has been about supporting the status quo of women's subordination.
Cordelia Fine deconstructs all the major "research" on innate gender differences and demonstrates what unrelenting twaddle it is. She is equally snarky, funny and downright angry at the misuse and falsification of "scientific evidence" to support fallacious constructions of gender [which fail to acknowledge the historical and cultural situations in which they were created]. I can not recommend this book enough for anyone who thinks that its totally normal for boys to be violent and girls to be nurturing. This is by far one of my most favourite feminist texts, despite not being advertised as such.
This is my favourite quote from the book: The Daddy Rat
Male rats don't experience the hormonal changes that trigger maternal behaviour in female rats. They never normally participate in infant care. Yet put a baby rat in a cage with a male adult and after a few days he will be caring for the baby almost as if he were its mother. He'll pick it up, nestle it close to him as a nursing female would, keep the baby rat clear and comforted and even build a comfy nest for it. The parenting circuits are there in the male brain, even in a species in which paternal care doesn't normally exist. If a male rat, without even the aid of a William Sears baby-care manual, can be inspired to parent then I would suggest that the prospects for human fathers are pretty good. (88)
It makes me snigger every time I read it.
Some interesting Discussions on Mumsnet:
Some interesting Discussions on Mumsnet:
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