Male and Female Brains Exist... Get Over It



A Response to the Quartz Article “The biggest myth about our brains is that they are “male” or “female”

I just stumbled across this article written some time ago (2017) the proposition that the writer Lila MacLellan is advocating for the is removal of the terms “male” and “female” brains. She begins by stating the work of Daphna Joel from Tel Aviv University. Her research shows that the brain when required can change the structure of neurons from a female state toa male state.

So great start begin by admitting that there are two types of neurons present one type primarily in males and the other primarily in females. She then goes on to state that in circumstances of stress; I.e. survival, the brain can change these neurons to the other pattern if required.

So there are two types of neurons one male and female and in extreme circumstances they can be changed. Not really disproving your claim is it?

After a brief detour to criticize James Damore of Ex-Google Memo fame. She gets back on track with work from Cordelia Fine on the nature of gendered brains. After extolling how much her compatriots and the uneducated masses enjoy and have rewarded her work (It doesn't matter how many awards she's won for peddling false information.) She states correctly that:

“Studies do often find differences between women and men in specific cognitive tasks, personality characteristics, interests and attitudes. However many of these differences are very small; and some of the differences are different in different societies (for example, in some countries boys do better on average in math, whereas in others girls do better.)”

This does not occlude male female brains or preferences. The differences stated between girls and boys in math may be due to environmental factors or societal pressures that encourage girls more than boys or vice versa. Under Educating a sex would of course skewer the results. Testing is also problematic, are you testing innate mathematical ability or learnt information? Are the methods used to teach also being controlled for in this claim? The answer is no.

Then:

“What’s more, many gender gaps can be eliminated with training, she added, a point which Rippon also made to the Guardian. With some practice playing the right sort of video game, women can boost their spatial reasoning skills to match those of boys.”

So you are training female brains to mimic male brains, i.e. the boys are innately better at spatial reasoning and are attracted to games that require it. Girls however are not interested in those games but could perform as well as boys if they chose to do so.

So why don’t they choose to?

Then onto the work of evolutionary psychologists and deconstructing the idea of boys and things girls and people by criticizing the terms defines by the experiments:

“She explains that meta-analyses of career interest surveys have shown that 80% of men are more interested in “things,” compared to the average woman. But some psychologists who have studied such surveys find them problematic because the “things” they include are often associated with men—the surveys do not try to gauge a subject’s interest in, say, taking apart and reassembling a dress.”

One statistic to debunk this: 40.2% of fashion designers are women, (Pike, 2012) the majority of fashion designers are men even when the things are not considered masculine the real world shows us that they are still made and designed primarily by men.

Daphna Joel then continues her diatribe, while admitting that hormones such as testosterone and estrogen have an effect on the structure of the brain, she says that the effect is not uniform across the whole species. Her studies show that only 8% of people show uniformly male/masculinised or female/feminized brains. Condensing this into a simple statement that is difficult to disagree with:

“The only thing you can say is that more women have more feminine than masculine characteristics, and more men have male characteristics on average than women,” says Joel.

Again proving the original point that there are male and female brain types. These work towards two opposing extremes but the traits themselves can be found in either gender. One of the most worrying things to take away from these claims is their effects on the notion of transgenderism.

Her first point about being able to change the neurons from one characteristic to the other would imply that we might be able to simply change the mind of a person with gender dysmorphia. Correct the problem psychologically rather than physically. I.E. they are suffering from a psychological condition that needs correction, and possibly can be corrected through putting them through a certain stressor. Is she really implying that transgenderism can be cured through subjecting the sufferer to psychological torture?

Her following claim of a the mosaic structure seems sound. You cannot use group preferences to correctly predict each individuals personal preferences. While this is sounds evolutionary there are certain traits which are more closely linked to the act of reproduction which I would predict equate to male and female brains far more than some of the other traits which have been examined. How essential is it to man and women to be able to do maths while reproducing?

The correlation between male and female brains will be strongest in traits that relate directly to reproduction, i.e. sexual attraction, parenting, than in traits which are essentially secondary sexual characteristics. This is obvious, all you need is to look a the prevelance of homosexualtiy which is reported at being around 5-7%. Meaning that the primary sexual characteristic of a male brain returns a 93-95% congruence. Females return an even stronger rate of around 99%.

The original article: 
<https://qz.com/1057494/the-biggest-myth-about-our-brains-is-that-theyre-male-or-female/>


Helena Pike, September 2016 <https://www.businessoffashion.com/community/voices/discussions/how-can-fashion-develop-more-women-leaders/less-female-fashion-designers-more-male-designers>

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