Sex on the Brain: The Biological Differences Between Men and Women

5 Responses to “Sex on the Brain: The Biological Differences Between Men and Women”

1. Ame Hunter says:

   April 25, 2010 at 3:39 pm

   Do you see how all these books are so similar? .. doesn’t matter if it is Venus and Mars or Brain Sex,they all have the same theme “difference” and unfortuately a controversey hungry broadcast just eats them up.,one after another.It must be that similarities,individual needs and desires aren’t fascinating enough so the theme stays stagnant and we to neauseum,find our book stores brimming with gender bias books which look as though they have all borrowed material from one another..

   Since there are so many variations in the human populace,to write gender bias books to start with seems pointless,unless the underlying reason is to make financial gain and promote an agenda of deceit and discord among men and women.
   Rating: 1 / 5
2. Anonymous says:

   April 25, 2010 at 5:50 pm

   Blum has no writing ability at all, since she has none her thoughts are very poorly expressed on a theme which will only be of relevance to feminist fundamentalists and their allies seeking a biological basis for restrictions on creative expression and individuality, whether pro-lifer Naomi Wolf or corporate welfarist’s at the New York Times seeking help in the managerial hierarchy. Dull.
   Rating: 1 / 5
3. Anonymous says:

   April 25, 2010 at 8:17 pm

   The last time I read a book about science, I was in college. But I bought this book out of curiosity, and I’m reading it, and I absolutely like it. Deborah Blum takes disparate scientific studies and makes sense of them. She is a truly gifted novelist who can make science fascinating to someone who’s not interested in science!
   Rating: 5 / 5
4. Anonymous says:

   April 25, 2010 at 10:28 pm

   In Sex on the Brain, Deborah Blum’s thesis is that women must take evolution by the horns by banding together like rhesus macaque monkey females to herd men into monagamous role-reversed relationships-male homemaker, female breadwinner–in which situation, she contends, the bottom drops out of their testosterone and they become as docile as … well, as women. And their brains, not just minds, are altered in that direction, a exchange which they hopefully pass on to their children! The immediate goal of her plot is Equality-as-Likeness, the Unisex Person, different only in reproductive ability, genitilia, and a few amusing personality characteristics. The ultimate goal, but, is to exchange the structure or functioning of men’s and women’s brains-to achieve “crossover” of the sexes. She justifies this high-flying and draconian goal as necessary to achieve equality, mainly, it would seem, nearly the house. Is such a masterplan for the human race possible? She says it is in 283 pages documenting “scientific” evidence that supposedly shows that it is not only possible but is a go in the direction that nature has been taking the human race for the past 20,000 years or so. Much of the material she selected is more than merely suspect, appearance from feminist “scholars” who admittedly like herself “have been determined to dispel the notion that females are calculated to be sexually passive.” These “scholars” run roughshod over the quoted Zihlman admonition that scientific theme matter be “approached and studied without value judgments.” But, then, so does Zihlman. Derived frequently from feminist “scholars,” her facts are questionable, to say the least. For example, perhaps there was a law in 18th Century England that allowed a spouse to hit his wife with a stab no larger than his thumb. Societies make all kinds of crazy laws-just recall all the asinine laws Reader’s Digest used to report, such as one barring giraffes from trolleys-that stem from one incident and in no way imply widespread do. She makes small attempt to be consistent. For instance: when arguing that homosexualality must be genetic, she observes how homosexual boys defy social norms that accept tomboys but frown on sissy boys; conversely, when arguing hostile to evidence that girls behave like the girls they are, she contends that social norms force them to do so even as encouraging boys to be aggressive. Right to soapy journalistic standards of the day, when the facts fall small she resorts to a sob tale. So at one top she launches into the tale of Carrie Buck, a hapless victim of sexist male doctors and legislators. More likely these men were operating on the best knowledge of their day, knowledge that only appears sexist when viewed in retrospect through the blinders of feminist ideology. Were male scholars so inclined, they may possibly probably match her sob tales at least 100 to 1 with ones in which the victims were male. More generally, Blum liberally grants equal consequence to objective research (brain differences), softcore research (anthropology, sociology, etc.), and the speculations of feminists. The reputation of a publication is of some help-some, like Modern Psychology, can be dismissed out of hand. Even in sciences with hard data and tight, productive theories, various grades of research must be distinguished. But grading publications, to say nothing of individual experiments, implies criteria and today, thanks to feminism, all criteria must be assumed corrupted. Blum tosses the term “theory” nearly as if, other than Darwin’s central thoughts, there was anything like a real theory in the social-psychological sciences. As Nobel prize-winning Herbert Simon pointed out, these so-called “theories” are but parables. Even biological research is based frequently on willy-nilly hypothesis and, sans an accepted theory, speculative conclusions. Moreover, as a rule of thumb, any scientist worthy of his calling isn’t going to generalize far from his specific findings, and certainly not with the sweeping, value-laden speculations of many of those Blum quotes. Her judgment is often laughably inane. For instance, in the last two paragraphs she says, in effect, that as men and women become Unisex Person they will the more appreciate each others differences. What? In retrospect? One is reminded of the judgment of a coed graduate student as reported by cognitive neuroscientist Steven Pinker in The Language Instinct: “language must affect plotting, because if it didn’t, we would have no reason to fight sexist usage.” Blum’s writing reveals a lack of common sense in failing to see the forest for the trees. Oh, how willing she is to accept the slight evidence that homosexualism is genetic; yet how intransigent with the evident differences between men and women. She wonders if “we” are up to a Grand Experiment. Huh? Any informed reader might wonder where she has been lo the last 40 years were it not so observably a smokescreen. Each top she makes about “crossover” (and then some) has made the Lawrence Ferlinghetti “usual unreliable” headlines and, before the ink has dried, been made the goal of a federal program. In truth, Blum is using her position as a science reporter to run interference for the feminist cause. As genetic research started to crack the glass heel of the feminist deconstruction of Western plotting and, despite the feminist’s best attempts, to defy their frantic efforts as hurt control, feminists, linked with holdouts of the ancient but still dominant social science paradign of Role Theory, started scrambling to twist genetic research to feminist advantage, to justify, post hoc, what has been going on for the last 40 years, and to couch the battle of the sexes as wife plotting hostile to spouse rather than, as it really is, government chaining and gagging real men with more laws than Lilliputians so that women can play at male games.
   Rating: 1 / 5
5. Josh says:

   April 25, 2010 at 11:46 pm

   Having read six books on this exact theme in the past week, I feel in rank is poorly presented in this one. Sometimes misleading, and sometimes even contradictory.

   I highly suggest that you read other books and/or papers on the theme before braving this one. Even then, take this read with a grain of agenda-salt.
   Rating: 1 / 5