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Reddit mentions of Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference

Sentiment score: 23
Reddit mentions: 57

We found 57 Reddit mentions of Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference. Here are the top ones.

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference
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Found 57 comments on Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference:

u/PopcornMouse · 64 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Hint! They are all men. Men who learned to write stylish, flowing, neat letters. Beautiful script and prose. A time when both men and women (educated) were expected to have exemplary writing skills. That is not to say that there wasn't people with bad writing...but these men are not going against the cultural grain...they are with the cultural expectations of that time period. If writing styles change over time and across cultures, the how can boys be hardwired or predisposed to a certain style of writing, and vice versa, how can girls be hardwired or predisposed to a different style of writing? If there is a biologically meaningful explanation than it should transcend cultures and time.

This is a classic case of societal expectation mixed with confirmation bias. "Because it's a "well-known fact" that women have better handwriting than men, most people are more likely to ignore cases that go against that stereotype, even though they're probably more common than popularly thought." I think this argument for sex-based differences really breaks down when we examine the evidence from other cultures and other time periods.


Would a man from India have the same image of "female" writing in his mind as yours? A woman from rural China? A boy from Russia? A girl from Peru? The image in your head of what is "girls writing" is culturally derived. Other cultures will have other ideas of what constitutes a male or female writing style...or perhaps none at all (e.g. there is no gender/sex divide).


I really recommend the book Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine as an introduction this topic. "Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, Cordelia Fine debunks the myth of hardwired differences between men’s and women’s brains, unraveling the evidence behind such claims as men’s brains aren’t wired for empathy and women’s brains aren’t made to fix cars. She then goes one step further, offering a very different explanation of the dissimilarities between men’s and women’s behavior. Instead of a “male brain” and a “female brain,” Fine gives us a glimpse of plastic, mutable minds that are continuously influenced by cultural assumptions about gender."

u/w0manity · 30 pointsr/TwoXChromosomes

It ignores a large body of experimental research on the topic. The vast majority of studies he cites are not experimental, but observational. That means that the studies he cites are describing what is, not why it is. But he then makes a lot of causational claims about how it is women's biology causing them to be a lot less successful in the sciences. From a scientist, this can only represent intentionally skewing the narrative in a way that is harmful to women, under the pretense that he is "supporting" them. Either he is intentionally skewing the narrative, or he is not as good of a scientist as his degree would imply. He is not citing studies in good faith, for if he were, he would ackowledge their weakness as observational studies and refrain from claiming that they demonstrate universal biological truths.

He entirely ignores the corpus of experimental work that has been done that demonstrates existing bias. He also ignores the large body of evidence that people's career choices and career success are strongly influenced by societal expectations. All humans are affected, for instance, by stereotype threat, and it just so happens that he is perpetuating the stereotype that women cannot code as well as men -- which you now should recognize there is experimentally-backed basis to suggest that this belief being spread would actively harm the productivity of 20% of Google's workforce. Other experimental research indicates that identical resumes are rated worse and/or less likely to be hired with a woman's name than a man's name -- Even at a 5% difference, over multiple hiring and/or promotion cycles this effect would be exponential. He claims that there is scientific evidence of women being poorer leaders, but it seems that overall, women simply tend to rate themselves worse than others rate them. Is this because of biology, or is it because of stereotype threat? His every conclusion is tied to the claim that women's poor representation in the field is because of biology, but again, there is no evidence that it is biology, and honestly anyone who has experienced life in the USA has experienced our differing expectations of men and women, and differing perceptions of men and women. Scientifically, expectations affect outcomes.

I don't have the time or energy to go through every one of his points and do this, but I do want to make it clear that his entire approach was a disingenuous representation of the body of research that is available on gender differences and stereotypes, and it plays in to the "biotruth" narrative that is way-too-easily accepted by people who want to believe that feminism is irrelevant. I do suggest this read as a counterpoint to the idea that gender differences are purely biological.

Note I am not saying that there are NO biological differences -- OF COURSE there are some! But I think that it is actively harmful to our society to claim that things with a net negative socioeconomic effect on group A are caused by biological differences in group A. That should, imo, be the very last conclusion reached, after all others have been explored and rejected -- and we are still exploring the effects of social and cultural expectations.

u/NoLadyBrain · 19 pointsr/GenderCritical

Given my username this is probably not a surprise, but I speak freely about brain sex, no matter how libfem the company. I'm a scientist and I have no patience for ladybrain garbage. I've found that even the libfemmy-est of libfems can't really get offended when I say there is no ladybrain -- or at least they can't get offended aloud without betraying their internalized misogyny.

Here are a couple of book you could read about the subject to bring up and discuss: Pink Brain, Blue Brain is by Dr. Lise Eliot, a neuroscientist, and Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine.

u/MissCherryPi · 17 pointsr/TheBluePill

>societal feminazation of male traits

I don't know what that means.

I know that in general people have hormones that influence their behavior - estrogen and testosterone.

But that they also have cultural influences that influence this behavior.

For example, right now computer software coding is an overwhelmingly male dominated field. But there is nothing inherent to writing software that has to do with having a Y chromosome, a penis and testicles, facial hair, upper body strength, etc.

In fact, in the 1960's USA coding was considered a traditionally female job because you have to sit at a desk and type all day and people associated it with secretarial work (which, was done by men before it was done by women).

In Western Europe, soccer is a large part of male culture. In the United States, it's for little girls. Is one perception more "correct?"

So that there are "male traits" and "female traits" is true in that we can see patterns in human behavior - men and women are more likely to choose different majors in college, but there's no evidence that this is due to anything inherent about male or female biology.

The problem with physiological studies of the brain is twofold - first the brain is plastic. People who share common behaviors and thought patterns will share similar brain structures. For example, people who are piano players may have similar neural structures, or people who are gymnasts. One could hypothesize that these neural structures are the cause of skill at playing the piano, or that they were built up in the brain after years of study and practice. There is no way to know if differences in brain structures between men and women are "natural" or due to lived experience as their gender.

Secondly, studies that find a difference in the brains of men and women are more likely to be published than studies that find no difference. We are missing a large part of the argument.

If you think that "Men are acting in ways that are traditionally feminine," I would ask - according to what definition? In the 1700's men wore powdered wigs, tights and high heeled shoes. This clothing is traditionally feminine, no? Men at that time also took a big part in the education and raising of their children. This differed greatly from the idea of the stoic, uninvolved father of the mid 20th century, and we have seemingly swung back to the baby bjorn wearing hipster dad of 2013. In Middle Eastern cultures, heterosexual men will hold hands, hug and kiss on the mouth - something we could perceive as behavior typical of gay men. That doesn't make them gay.

To all of this I say - so what? Ideas about sexuality, about masculine and feminine change over time. You might not like how they change, and that's fine. But what you can't do is argue that they have a concrete and unchanging definition.

u/TakeTwoPlacebos · 13 pointsr/ShitRedditSays

I read a fabulous book that dovetails very nicely with this issue http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393340244/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (If you dig sociology and social psychology this book is the tits)

Tldr: Working dads aren't disadvantaged in hiring, promotions or wages while working mothers have a hell of a time with it. And even women without offspring and discriminated against for loads of subconscious crap that society feeds us.

u/noodleworm · 13 pointsr/TwoXChromosomes

I think there are lots of interesting lines of thought behind the whole topic. I am greatly frustrated by how often people fall back on 'its biological'. I'm currently reading Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine which seems to share my frustration but is reassuring that the science is not at all cut and dry in that area. That most people grossly overestimate the data on 'hard wired' differences.

I think we also need to remember, that while kids do go to the gendered toys, kids can also be little gender police.

I bet most people here, during their childhood, had another kid tell them they could or couldn't do something based on their sex.

During an early stage of child development, kids learn rules, and try to fit the world into that. Some little kids literally think 'girls wear dresses, if I wear a dress then I am a girl' .

They just make assumptions very easily. No matter how many trucks you give them, your daughter is going to come across some girls's stereotypes, make the link (she's a girl - I'm a girl - this is how I be a girl!).

I think the most important thing is to early on teach your kids to be critical, and accepting of variation.

  • You can like princess dresses, but you can like superheroes too! Anyone who says you have to choose toys for girls is silly. You can pick either!*

    I think the most important thing though is to not segregate kids. In a gender egalitarian society, men and women need to see each others as equals and stop placing rules on the basis of gender. People who grow up without positive experiences with the opposite sex (friends, parents, siblings) often have a harder time relating to them.
u/lilactaffy · 13 pointsr/GenderCritical

Anyone who enjoyed this talk will be delighted to hear that Cordelia has a book out called Delusions of Gender, which is excellent and, redundantly, has made a lot of men very upset.

u/[deleted] · 11 pointsr/IAmA

I would respectfully suggest Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine.
http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244

u/beetjuice3 · 10 pointsr/changemyview

Pretty much all historical civilizations were sexist, since women were denied fundamental rights in them based on gender. Even if one were to agree with everything else you've written, your final conclusion/suggestion does not follow. I can't think of any significant, historical civilization that might be called non-sexist.

Biology is a fact of nature; you cannot "fight biology". That would be like fighting physics. No matter what you did, the laws of physics would still apply. What you are talking about, such as "scholarships for women only, to get them into areas of technology, engineering", and "specialized programs for boys only to help them in reading & writing" do not in any way fight biology, they leave biology just as it is. However, they do change society. Scholarships are societal creations designed to redistribute access to education, which is another societal creation. Education doesn't grow on trees; human beings artificially created the system of education. Hence, the educational system is an aspect of society, not biology.

The fact that there are some gender differences in the brain, statistically speaking, should be no big surprise. But many popularized studies tend to exaggerate or misinterpret these differences. I would suggest you read Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine, or Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences for a deeper look at these topics. Broadly, a study that shows no differences in how men and womens' brains, on average, perceive a topic won't make a good headline or blog post, so it will be unlikely to be reported compared to one that finds a difference.

Secondly, it's not clear what these differences have to do with social roles. For example, what does the fact that men have more spatial reasoning, on average, mean for social roles exactly? Since there are many intelligent and successful women in programming and engineering fields, and many men who suck in these areas, it does not follow that there is a casual relation between gender and STEM fields. On the other hand, engineering is clearly coded as a masculine profession in society, and girls may be turned away from studying engineering for fear of being seen as unfeminine. Scholarships that seek to counteract that would then be playing a positive role.

Finally, I see an assumption through your post that what is "nature" is automatically good and must be accepted by society. However, the whole point of civilization and society is go beyond nature itself to build something for ourselves, as humans. Is medicine natural? We are programmed to die from birth, yet we still use the medical system to prolong life. Since men are physically stronger than women, should men then dominate women and impose our wishes on them? No, we created a system of laws where all citizens are equal before it because we recognize the equal moral worth of each person. Freedom is the fundamental issue. Humanity as a whole, and individual people for their own lives, must have the freedom to define its own path and create its own society without being told that a certain path is required due to unnecessary extrapolations from natural facts.

u/EmmaGoldman-Sachs · 9 pointsr/SRSDiscussion

The book Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine is absolutely brilliant.

u/kris10leigh · 8 pointsr/MovieDetails

Children aren't aware of gender differences, but their caregivers are.

Cordelia Fine addressed a similar study in her book where babies were shown different toys like this, but it was later shown that the people presenting the toys to the babies were enforcing stereotypes themselves by shaking the toy they expected the baby to want more than the other.

u/schawt · 7 pointsr/psychology

If people are interested in how this kind of research tends to get stretched beyond its boundaries, check out Delusions of Gender.

u/qwertypoiuytre · 7 pointsr/feminisms

Read the newly released "Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society" by Dr. Cordelia Fine for an introduction to this topic. It's very entertaining and easy to read, and also very informative - about the last 50 pages are notes and citations of the studies she mentions that you can investigate further if you wish.

>“Goodbye, beliefs in sex differences disguised as evolutionary facts. Welcome the dragon slayer: Cordelia Fine wittily but meticulously lays bare the irrational arguments that we use to justify gender politics.”―Uta Frith, emeritus professor of cognitive development, University College London

>Many people believe that, at its core, biological sex is a fundamental, diverging force in human development. According to this overly familiar story, differences between the sexes are shaped by past evolutionary pressures?women are more cautious and parenting-focused, while men seek status to attract more mates. In each succeeding generation, sex hormones and male and female brains are thought to continue to reinforce these unbreachable distinctions, making for entrenched inequalities in modern society.

>In Testosterone Rex, psychologist Cordelia Fine wittily explains why past and present sex roles are only serving suggestions for the future, revealing a much more dynamic situation through an entertaining and well-documented exploration of the latest research that draws on evolutionary science, psychology, neuroscience, endocrinology, and philosophy. She uses stories from daily life, scientific research, and common sense to break through the din of cultural assumptions. Testosterone, for instance, is not the potent hormonal essence of masculinity; the presumed, built-in preferences of each sex, from toys to financial risk taking, are turned on their heads.

>Moving beyond the old “nature versus nurture” debates, Testosterone Rex disproves ingrained myths and calls for a more equal society based on both sexes’ full, human potential.

Her previous book "Delusions of Gender" is also quite good.

u/Lummine · 7 pointsr/AskWomen

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine. Because I like gender issues and topics.

u/hypnosifl · 6 pointsr/slatestarcodex

After coming across this interesting article in Skeptic summarizing the evidence surrounding sex differences in cognitive ability I decided to pick up a book on the same subject by the author (Diane Halpern), Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities, which I haven't read through yet but I noticed it did have the following discussion of Baron-Cohen's hypothesis:

>Numerous researchers have offered stern criticisms of the idea that female and male brains are "essentially different," especially in ways that Baron-Cohen has suggested (e.g., Eliot, 2009; Spelke & Grace, 2007). According to Baron-Cohen, it is high levels of prenatal testosterone that make the male brain good at systemizing. But males who are exposed to very high levels of testosterone while still in the womb (i.e., CAH males) are not more masculine or better at male-typical tasks than males who are exposed to normal levels of prenatal testosterone. In fact, the idea that high levels of prenatal testosterone cause autism, which might be expected from this theory, has not been supported. In addition, one prediction from this hypothesis is that autistic boys would be "hypermasculine," which is not supported with any research (Eliot, 2009). The experiment with newborns that Baron-Cohen frequently cites as evidence that girls are born with an interest in faces and boys are born with an interest in objects has been criticized on methodological grounds, including experimenter bias, small sample size, and failures to replicate (Spelke, 2005). ... In addition, numerous studies have found no sex differences in aptitude for science or mathematics in young children (Fine, 2010).

u/BetAle · 6 pointsr/GenderCritical

>I guess this is my kinda of my issue. How do you explain transwomen who date and marry ciswomen? If what you were saying is true all transwomen would be dating cismen and exclusively cismen. Right?


They’re heterosexual males with a sexual fetish.


Anne Lawrence


Blanchard


No. I said that they tell homosexual children (a small subset of trans) that they are the wrong sex and then sterilise them using cross-sex hormones after puberty suppression.


Then, we have transwomen telling lesbians (homosexuals) that they are bigoted for not liking penis or wanting to have sex with people that maintain or have previously maintained those organs.


There is a big hint in the word homoSEXual that would lead you to understand that sexual orientation for heteroSEXuals and homoSEXuals is based around the SEX of the person.

Telling lesbians (or gay men) that they must like people of the opposite SEX based on their “GENDER identity” is creepy and disgusting.


People are not obligated to re-evaluate their attractions because of someone else’s “identity”.


Years ago, psychologists and psychiatrists used to try and force homosexuals into liking people of the opposite sex. This is no different.


--------------------

>I think gender is a set of ideas on how someone acts and looks that is typically based on sex. That is to say that usually female people act and look in a certain way as a woman.



What.the.fuck? Act and look as a woman based on sex? That right there, straight up fucking misogyny.


What does a woman “act” like? You realise that is the antithesis of feminism. That women “act” and “look” a certain
way.


How does sex, one’s reproductive capability, have anything to do with how someone acts?



>I don't know if gender roles are innate, I really don't think they are.


Good. Because they aren’t.



>I don't know if its more real or less real. I think sex is pretty complicated in general and can't be decided by one characteristic but by using multiple different criteria simply because theres no real one defining characteristic that says you're either male or female. for this kind of stuff I typically look to places like the Olympics

Production of gametes. Bam. Simple.

Failing that? Structures for the production of gametes.

Failing that? Genetics.

Failing that? Organs.

Reproduction is real. Human biology is real.

How do you propose we classify people then? How is gender real? How does the way a person "acts" affect anything about their physiology? Things like rape shelters, bathrooms, prisons are all based around people's physiological needs.

Women can get pregnant to males, menstruate and pee sitting down. We have different cancers and different levels of medication tolerance (and alcohol tolerance) because of our physiology.

Men can impregnate and pee standing up. They do not need access to abortions or gynaecological medicine. They may need access to medicine based on their prostates and testicles. They have difference levels of tolerance to medicine and alcohol based on their physiology.

Why would you look to the Olympics? Why not ask a biologist?


>I think this would fall under gender roles again. I don't think a woman is really any one thing. Gender isn't based in your body and how it looks but rather in how you act.

Wrong. A woman is an adult female human.

How is gender then more important than a biological reality again? How is the way someone “acts” overriding this?

Am I no longer a woman because I don’t “act” like one?

The fuck?

Who governs these rules for how someone should act?

Why can't people act however they want? Just because you have certain bits doesn't mean you act any particular way.

Your physiology is just a fact of nature and your ability to produce offspring through the exchange of genetic material.

>If you mean a woman again I don't know if that's a biological reality meaning that you can definitely say that you identify with and are more comfortable with that set of gender roles.

And what of the millions (billions?) of women who aren’t happy with the gender roles place upon us? What if we’re not happy with ANY gender roles for anyone?

What is a gender role and why is it even important?

>If you mean female, I think that's more of a thing that happens as you transition rather than something you just become.

Nope. Males cannot become females. We are not gastropods or fish.

How does a male born become female? That makes absolutely no sense.

>It gets a little worrisome because this kind of thinking can lead to transwomen being excluded from places that most other females are allowed to be. Bathrooms, locker rooms, etc and I'm not sure if that's ok to do, although I'm a proponent of non-segregated bathrooms and changing rooms, I think its a little silly that we separate by sex.

WHAT?

NO! Males cannot become female.

You DO NOT produce oocytes, have menses or gestate and birth young. (Yes, I am aware that not all females can either)

Males disproportionately attack females for violence and sexual assault.

Look at the FBI or WHO statistics if you don’t believe me.

And “transwomen” maintain MALE levels of criminality which makes them just as likely as any other male person to cause us harm.

Males and females are separated because SEX is the only thing that is different between us. We can get pregnant and get “gender” bullshit because of that. We are somehow "weaker" and "less capable". We're also vulnerable because of our ability to get pregnant.

Males and females have different physiology, different medical needs.

You propose what? We separate on “gender”?

How is gender real?

IT FUCKING ISN’T. It was created by society. Biology wasn’t.

Here’s some links to transwomen violence:

One


Two

Three

Four
(This is a person who gained access to a women’s rape shelter by claiming to be a woman and then SEXUALLY assaulted women)


And I have more.

> would that teenagers are typically below the age of consent, IE below 16 and thus can't legally make a decision to have sex no matter what age the other person is.

But teenagers and children are able to consent to hormones and puberty blockers?

And yes, the brain develops as it gets older. Atrophy and damage can halt and stop the development.

So, how is "brain-age" less real than "brain-sex"? How is it any different to "negro-brains" or "jugglers-brains"?

If I scanned my brain and it had the same volume in certain parts as a medical professional does that make me a medical doctor?

>I think the only difference is the fact that there is some actual research done on the brains of transwomen vs ciswomen which shows some of the same structures not present in cismen.

Yes. We’ve all seen those.

First off, NONE of those studies have been reproduced which makes for bad science.

NONE of those studies identify why they are able to determine what a “woman’s brain looks like”

Actually, here’s a really succinct link that breaks it down

And I’m more than happy to refer you to read Sheila Jefferies new book Gender Hurts, Cordelia Fine’s Delusion of Gender and Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen


>I tend to defer to medical organizations for things like this and typically take them at their word if they say that the cause of transgenderism is due to different brain structures.

Medical organisations used to advocate for lobotomies of the mentally ill, the castration of gay men, and the “hysteria” of women.

You also can see examples of bad pharmaceutical practice in Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science

I’m not saying I agree 100% with any of the above texts. It pays to be well informed and to complete your own research.

Do not “take them at their word” about things like “brain” sex when the methodology for their premise is so unbelievable flawed.


>Does that make sense?

It didn’t make any sense, even a little.

I mean seriously? Fucking gender roles in 2014? We’ve come a long way baby from Suzie-Homemaker and Captain America.

u/mpjanning · 5 pointsr/AdviceAnimals

Well, you could take a look at Cordelia Fine's book Delusions of Gender.

Here's a quick overview of her argument.

However, given the tone of your comment, I sincerely doubt you will take any time to consider the evidence. And I suspect that there isn't anything that will change your perception. You, therefore, are part of the problem. Bitch.

u/anoxymoron · 4 pointsr/SRSUni

At the risk of further entering a debate in which I have already blundered, Cordelia Fine's excellent book Delusions of Gender discusses a number of examples of early gender socialisation including a self study done by a feminist woman on how her attitude to her unborn child changed after she discovered it was female. Fine's commitment to nurture brings up problematic issues with regards to trans* individuals experience of an internal gender dissonant with how they have been socialised, but her analyses of existing studies are worth reading.

u/Skydragon222 · 4 pointsr/AskFeminists

I once had the pleasure of hearing the feminist biologist, Marlene Zuk, speak. She was fantastic and I think you should check out her book [Sex on Six Legs] (https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Six-Legs-Lessons-Language/dp/015101373X)

Also, if you're not afraid of delving into psychology and neuroscience. I'd also recommend Cordelia Fine's [Delusions of Gender] (https://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1494261794&sr=1-1&keywords=delusions+of+gender)

u/unique-eggbeater · 4 pointsr/NonBinary

This is a recent and well-acclaimed book on the subject, although I have not read it myself.

u/Neemii · 4 pointsr/askGSM

Honestly, as convenient as it is to point to studies showing brain differences and claim its a biological difference, there are also studies that indicate there isn't much brain difference between men and women to begin with. I don't believe that being trans is determined solely by biology, even if that does turn out to be a factor for some people.

The real truth is that no one is 100% sure why some people are trans and some people who present and act almost the same way are not. There's no way to tell who will be trans and who won't.

Think about a quiet person, who is sitting on their own in a busy coffee shop. They could identify themself any number of ways - maybe they are shy and anxious and wish they could reach out to people. Maybe they are introverted and enjoy being there on their own. Maybe they are just waiting for someone. But their behaviour looks the same to an outsider regardless of their internal identity. Only they know the truth of the matter.

Gender identity is a combination of many factors. It can be related to sex, sexual orientation, or behaviour for some people, and for some people it has nothing to do with any of those things. Gender identity is the personal relationship that you have to your body (i.e. to your biology), your relationship to the way other people view your body as a gendered body (i.e. to society's ideas about your assigned gender), and your relationship to your own thoughts and feelings about gender (i.e. how you have incorporated ideas about gender from society). If you grow up and all of these things align in a positive way, you are cisgender - you feel that your internal thoughts and feelings about your gender, the way society sees your gender, and how your body looks to you all match up. If one or more of these things don't gel with you, you might be trans or you might just play around with gender.

It's really something that most people have to explore for themselves to figure out - while there are some trans people who just inherently know they are actually a different gender than people say they are from a young age, there are also many trans people who have to experiment until they find out what works best with them and then base their identity off that. There are cisgender (non-trans) people who experiment with gender presentation but still feel most comfortable identifying as the gender they were assigned at birth.

Basically, what it means when someone says they are 'male' or 'a man' means that they identify as and are a man. Just think about the immense amount of difference between cisgender men. There are feminine cisgender men, masculine cisgender men, androgynous cisgender men, cisgender stay at home dads, cisgender businessmen, every possible variation under the sun. Almost half our population is made up of cis men. What does it mean to belong to such a huge population? Well, it's dependent on what that man's culture says being a man is, and how that man relates to that, and how that man relates to himself. It's entirely determined by us, whether we are cisgender or transgender.

(edited to add links to an article about Cordelia Fine's research and the amazon page for her book, Delusions of Gender)

u/ImStillAwesome · 3 pointsr/AskReddit

There's little dispute that women are better at giving birth and men are better at growing mustaches, but almost everything else is, to a certain extent, a social construct rather than a biological truth. The notion that men are better at mathematics has to do with generations of girls being discouraged from pursuing higher education. The notion that women are better caregivers comes from generations of (almost) every career save motherhood being closed to women.

Most studies that have sought to "prove" that one gender is better than the other at whatever have been deeply flawed, and carried out by researchers more interesting in confirming their own beliefs than in gathering actual data. There are a ton of examples in this book.

It's also interesting to note that people who are stereotyped as being bad at something perform worse when reminded of those stereotypes, even indirectly. For example, female students and black students perform worse on math tests when required to fill out demographic information beforehand. Food for thought.

u/ComIntelligence · 3 pointsr/socialism

That's called "biotruths", friend, and those are fairly strongly debunked by science. A decent basis in psychology, anthropology, or any of the other social sciences will lead you to notice that nearly all differences in men and women are based in social conditions and the society they are raised in than based on physical differences or hormones. Men are not naturally prone to violence, this is based upon cultural assumptions of gender normatives which forces the penchant for violence upon the child, regardless of the personal family environment of the child.

Remember that there are far greater differences between individuals within a single gender than there are between individuals in separate genders. A good way of thinking of this is to imagine that we have put numerical differences upon the traits and men score around 1 - 85 and women score around 15 - 100. Sure, there are differences, but there's so much variety within the genders that the differences are basically irrelevant. Most people are a smattering of "masculine" and "feminine" traits.

You should engage the social sciences, friend. There's a lot of interesting and exciting data coming out of the field of gender studies!

Suggested Reading:

Hyde (2009) The Gender Similarities Hypothesis

Cordelia Fine (2011) Delusions of Gender

Peterson and Hyde (1997 - 2007) A Meta-Analytic Review of Research on Gender Differences in Sexuality

Article: There really is no difference in men and women's math abilities

Article: Transsexual differences caught on brain scan

EDIT: A good place to learn and discuss Trans issues is /r/SRSDiscussion. There's a large variety of different users on there with deep knowledge of the topic at hand. I highly suggest you post any questions you have regarding Trans issues there with them. If you think that "some kind of cis-sexism may be based in biological reality, not culture", then I'm sorry friend, but you have very little understanding of what Cissexism is and have a lot to learn about gender. Start there and read more into the topic. It's a fascinating topic. I think you'll enjoy it!

u/modalt2 · 3 pointsr/socialjustice101

I find people recommending Delusions of Gender a lot. Seems to relate more to debunking "scientific" explanations of differences between men and women, but it could be a good foundation for looking over some cultural assumptions about gender.

u/NapAfternoon · 3 pointsr/NoStupidQuestions

One of the books on your list that looks promising is Sexing The Body. While it may not provide an in depth overview of human biology it will likely provide the appropriate background information. Many other books under the gender studies umbrella do explore and explain biological sex (male, female, intersex), prominent scientific studies, and current areas of research. One book not on the list is Delusions of Gender and it is just one book to explore these issues.

At the end of the day that's a reading list to get the PhD student started. By the end of their PhD they will have ready 3-4x that many articles and books. Those of their choosing will focus in on areas of research that they are interested in. That may include basic research on human anatomy, biology, and sex.

I guess the question is what do you think is missing from these books that discuss gender and sex from a biological perspective that can only be gained from human biology textbooks?

u/sangetencre · 3 pointsr/TwoXChromosomes

I prefer science to belief. Brains are different, but it's more about the individual than the sex.

>Brain imaging techniques have simultaneously offered an increasingly detailed profiling of brain activity, giving researchers access to enormous data-sets. There has also been a discovery that our brains can actually be moulded by different experiences, including those associated with being male or female. This clearly illustrates the problem of the biological determinist approach. It also shows the need to account for variables such as education, and economic and social status when comparing brain characteristics.

>Psychologists have also started to show that many of the psychological traits we think of as either male or female actually exist on a spectrum. A recent studyrevisiting a number of such behavioral characteristics, showed that they typically do not fall into two neat, non-overlapping binary categories. Even men’s “superior” skills in spatial cognition—a well-established stalwart—has been shown to be diminishing over time, even disappearing. In certain cultures, the situation is actually reversed.

>And it doesn’t end there. The very concept of a “male” and “female” brain has been found to be flawed. A recently reported study showed that every brain is actually a mosaic of different patterns, some more commonly found in men’s brains and some in women’s. But none could be described as fully male or fully female.

http://www.newsweek.com/sexism-brains-female-male-neurosciences-feminism-determinism-514426

https://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244

u/glaneuse · 3 pointsr/AskFeminists

It should be noted that not every study about gender is accurate or trustworthy. According to this book on neurological studies, often the studies without any rigourous methodologies get a lot of press because they promote existing ideas about the gender binary, while studies that do not conform to our existing idea of gender will get no press whatsoever, no matter how well executed the study was. It's worth examining the methodologies behind a study before believing that it holds water! (I highly recommend the book, if studies on gender interest you! It is so engrossing and well written, good for laypeople and more scientific folks alike!)

u/mawalie · 3 pointsr/indieheads

sure! I took a women's studies course my last semester of college so I'll go ahead and use the books I read for that class as a starting point since they were a great introduction to feminist lit for me:

  • Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine (a hilarious and REALLY great read that challenges the notion that men and women are intrinsically a certain way; debunks a lot of famous studies and cites a lot more to make her point)

  • Girlfighting by Lyn Mikel Brown (challenges the whole "girls are nasty" stigma)

  • Appetites: Why Women Want by Caroline Knapp (absolutely incredible memoir that recounts the author's struggle with an eating disorder while also making SUCH smart insights about women's relationship with food, shopping, and sex amongst other desires - I can't recommend this one enough!)

  • Flirting with Danger by Lynn Phillips (also loved this one - talks about women's relationships with men and the various discourses surrounding women's sexuality as well as how women make sense of their negative sexual encounters)

    the links aren't necessarily for the least expensive versions you can find, so I'd suggest doing some digging :-)
u/AnnaLemma · 3 pointsr/femmit

This is probably more of a question for a neurologist than a psychologist, but - have you read Delusions of Gender? I found it to be pretty damned compelling but it's well outside of my field of study so I can't gauge how authoritative it is. Thoughts?

u/armrha · 3 pointsr/gaming

I don't really agree with him.

This whole 'you can't flip masculine things and feminine things' is just a social construct like 'masculine' and 'feminine' things are to begin with. I also don't think 'believability' is a relevant trait considering we're already dealing with fantasy universes. Who is to say that women aren't just as strong as men in Random Fantasy Universe #754 or whatever? I mean, they already have magic and completely impossible creatures. It doesn't seem like that big of a stretch.

The whole idea of gender as some immutable thing with factual qualities that can't be defied in any way and any attempt to do so innately repulses people pretty much just reinforces the gender norms of society, which I think we'd be way better off without anyway. Delusions of Gender, a really good book, goes into how false ideas about the immutability of gender do real damage to people.

u/mrsamsa · 3 pointsr/skeptic

I don't think there will ever be a perfect rule that can be applied across all possibilities without fail, but for me one of the major things I look for is whether the author is a respected scientist actively working in the field (or, if they're retired, had an active history in the field).

So your Gazzaniga and Brown books I wouldn't even hesitate to recommend to others, without even having read them. It helps that I've read other books by those authors and their research, but their names alone are enough for me to give them a tick. Of course that doesn't guarantee that they're good books, but if you're asking for a rule on how to judge a book before reading it, then that's probably going to result in more success than failure.

The second thing I look for is whether the author has a history of writing polemics and intentionally controversial books in order to increase sales (a sort of "clickbait" approach to books), and whether their names are associated with criticism for misrepresenting basic issues in the areas they discuss. As such, people like Gladwell and Pinker would be ruled out by this.

>I'd also love to hear /r/skeptic 's suggestions for reading specifically about learning, drive, motivation, discipline...

My personal suggestions would be:

Understanding Behaviorism - William Baum (touches a little more on rigorous academic work rather than being a purely pop work, but still has some good pop chapters).

The Science of Self-Control - Howard Rachlin

Breakdown of Will - George Ainslie

Some related books but not directly on those topics:

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks (It's a cliche suggestion but still a good book).

Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience - Sally Satel and Scott Lilienfeld (More methodological issues with neuroscience research and reporting).

Delusion of Gender - Cordelia Fine (Critical look at some of the research on gender differences).

u/berdbergs · 2 pointsr/TiADiscussion

And this study published last year in PNAS concluded that "human brains cannot be categorized into two distinct classes: male brain/female brain."

I'm not saying that the PNAS study (or any other study -- including the ones you cited) is 100% of reliable or methodologically perfect. I'm not a neuroscientist; I don't know enough about the subject to critically examine the methodology or results of any of these studies. But enough bad science has been done in this field that a psychologist wrote a whole book about it.

Nevertheless, thanks for the links. It's always interesting to read about the science behind trans issues.

u/ComradeGlad · 2 pointsr/IncelTears

Allow me to clarify on my first point: There are no behavioural differences between men and women that cannot be explained by nurture.

I'd direct you towards Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine:
https://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244

When I was far younger, I was convince by books like The Male Brain, The Female Brain, Why Gender Matters, Boys Adrift, and Girls on the Edge that sex played an enormous role in behavior and function. I am now very skeptical of that notion. You linked three articles within your earlier post; I read the meta-analysis and the abstracts of the other two and agreed with their findings for the most part: There are substantive physical differences between a male and a female brain. However, this proves little towards behavior. Two brains can have different structure yet function at the same level, accomplish the same goal.

My argument is: Just because a male and female brain have different structure, it does not follow that their functionality is different. That leads to the dangerous psuedoscientific thought that men and women must be better at different things, and thus maintain different spheres, so on and so on. It's the sort of justification scientifically backed sexism uses.

If you want to actually prove to me that the differing structure of male and female brains is a significant cause of behavioral differences, you'll have to do a bit more digging. I would posit that the reason men and women bear behavioral differences is because of the differences in their bodies, which have led to different treatment and power dynamics throughout history.

When the sex-equals-brain-function argument really gets me going is when it starts to suggest that men aren't capable of empathy, or women aren't capable of complex problem solving. That's patently untrue, and it dehumanizes each.

u/daringStumbles · 2 pointsr/booksuggestions

Delusions of Gender

I'm not sure exactly if this fits into the kind of book your are looking for. It goes into a lot of detail about expectations and how we set ourselves and each other up to act certain ways depending on gender expression. The core I guess of the book is trying to get you to think outside of the biology of gender as absolute and focus more on the cultural influence.

u/Tangurena · 2 pointsr/relationships

There are a couple of books that I think your library may have (or be able to get through interlibrary loan).

Nobody Passes,
Delusions of Gender,
She's Not the Man I Married.

The last book is the sequel to an earlier one, and is probably one that would speak most to what you seem to be asking in this post.

When I'm having a discussion about gender, one of the visual analogies I like to do is this (motions in italics, spoken is not italics):

(take a piece of paper, like 8½ x 11 or A1)
All humans have emotions and feelings and desires and hope and longings.
start tearing the paper into smaller squares
These pieces represent the feelings, hopes, desires and emotions we all have.
there should be one pile now
Each society and culture decides which of these human things is masculine and which is feminine
split the pile into 2 piles
One pile is for humans with penises, the other for humans with vaginas.
take 1-2 pieces from each pile and put them into the other
As long as one mostly conforms to society's idea of what belongs in each pile, a little difference is acceptable.
take a lot more than 1-2, but less than half from each pile and pop it into the other pile
But when too much of you is different from what society expects, you get called sissy, fag, dyke, queer, tomboy and other bad & cruel things. Bad enough that some people will attack and beat you for being different. Long before children know what sex is, they're beating each other for being too different while denouncing the victim as a fag or lezzie. And even as adults, the violence gets called things like "hate crime" and "gay bashing" and sometimes results in death.
now take almost all of it, more than half of each pile and toss them into the other pile
And sometimes, you get so far from what society expects that you get like this. Where you are convinced that you're in the wrong body. That's usually called "gender dysphoria*.

From there, there is usually a discussion with questions and answers, and it is OK for the answers to be "I don't know" or "I don't know yet".

I don't know if your SO was victimized in school, but that can make some folks think that they're really more of the wrong sex than they really are (as in they're really "just a sissy" and not "a woman trapped in a man's body"). This is grossly over-simplified, but I think it gives an idea of what a real therapist would be needed to identify. And please don't think I'm disparaging sissies, transgendered people or anyone in between.

It is normal for you to not be attracted if your SO transitions - because attraction and sexual identity is very important; and people rarely look into where it comes from and why. It isn't reasonable to say "well, it is still the same person inside" because it is extremely common to lose attraction (and become disgusted) when your partner gains large amounts of weight. It is still the same person inside, but the package is not what we're looking for. I'm sorry. You're sorry. We're all sorry.

u/stygi · 1 pointr/TooAfraidToAsk

Did you even bother to read the articles you posted?


  1. Examination of developing brains - differences in white matter.
  2. This works slightly in your case - but only shows that there might be size differences in different areas of the brain.
  3. Again, an analysis of developing brains
  4. This is from 1991.
  5. From the abstract - "we did not find any significant difference in global WM volume between males and females."
  6. This study is on rats.
  7. "Our study demonstrates that, although
    there are sex/gender differences in the brain, human brains do not
    belong to one of two distinct categories: male brain/female brain."
  8. This really doesn't include any research but rather attempts to persuade for further investigation in brain sex research.

    Conventional research suggests that although there are small differences in some areas of the brain between males and females, these differences are not very large and there is a ton of overlap between. There is not a distinguishable "male" or "female" brain that we can definitely identify. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to say that transgender have a brain of the opposite sex. Some recent studies have shown that people with gender dysphoria may instead have disconnectivity within networks involved in body perception.

    If you want to read a great book that examines the history of brain sex studies and debunks the male/female brain hypothesis, read Cordelia Fine's book Delusions of Gender.
u/bbmm · 1 pointr/europe

>This is not necessarily true. There are plenty studies that suggest it really matters how you test/educate people, and depending on that either girls or boys perform better.

You are right and you're making and important point. Thank you. In fact I knew this and might have recalled it if it were about the US, but somehow forgot all about it when the context is Turkish. Hmm. It may be because we're not constantly fussing about why females don't do well here at least as far as well-known schools go. You know why we're not fussing.

Anyway, I found out about those -- very interesting -- studies in some of the books that got published in response to Louann Brizendine's books such as Delusions of Gender.

u/pixis-4950 · 1 pointr/doublespeakprostrate

modalt2 wrote:

I find people recommending Delusions of Gender a lot. Seems to relate more to debunking "scientific" explanations of differences between men and women, but it could be a good foundation for looking over some cultural assumptions about gender.

u/gosayhi · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

okay mister echo chamber :) . Have you then also read one of the many books that claim otherwise, like this: http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244

I'd also recommend you read the top amazon review on your link. Check for dissenting opinions before agreeing with someone in the future.

u/rodmclaughlin · 1 pointr/SargonofAkkad

I downloaded sections of Cordelia Fine's book from Amazon onto Kindle. There's no way I'm going to pay for the whole thing. The selections are enough to dismiss it, and I think Simon Baron-Cohen's response is far too tolerant.

Fine’s book starts by selecting the worst examples she can find of what sounds like sexism from recent popular science books. She quotes numerous scientific researchers out of context, and tries to amalgamate their findings with pre-Darwinian theology. For example, she deals with Simon Baron-Cohen’s “The Essential Difference” by quoting him as if he thinks all women have one type of brain, and all men have an entirely different one. In fact, he writes about the distribution of psychological traits between average members of the two sexes.

She says that Baron-Cohen’s thesis “has been described as ‘a masterpiece of condescension’”, as if feelings trump facts. She approves of Neil Levy’s disapproving summary of Baron-Cohen as follows:

> “on average, women’s intelligence is best employed in putting people at their ease, while the men get on with understanding the world and building and repairing the things we need in it” -

and says it “can’t help but bring to mind” an eighteenth-century man who believed that God put woman in her place.

Whether a scientific treatise makes a feminist feels she’s being “condescended” or “mansplained”, or whether it reminds her of an ancient text is irrelevant. What matters is whether it is falsifiable, and what attempts have been made to falsify it. Whining about it doesn’t count.

The worst part of her argument is not the denial of science, but the reversal of the political power structure. A man just got fired from the world’s most important company because his statement

> Differences in distributions of traits between men and women (and not “socially constructed oppression”) may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership.

felt painful to women in the company - following his

> “polemic against diversity efforts has left female staff “shaking in anger”"

> “a number of female staff described their disgust"

that it was

> “rigged in favour of wealthy white straight men"

and the CEO of Youtube, Susan Wojcicki, said she “felt pain”.

Like Wojcicki and the hysterical feminists who got James Damore fired, she not only confirms the idea that women are more feelings-oriented, on average, than men, she seems to conform to a sexist exaggeration of that idea.

It’s also supremely ironic that she quotes various big corporations being influenced by “sexist” science books about the differences between “male” and “female” brains. Nothing could be further from the truth.

u/adrienneleigh · 1 pointr/Fantasy

REPUTABLE research fails to show any major differences between "male brains" and "female brains". Read Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender and disabuse yourself of that bullshit. http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/

u/Crommunist · 1 pointr/OkCupid

I'm familiar with the claims made in these books - it's amazing how neatly her "findings" fit into stereotypes out of a 1950s sexist's diatribe about 'wimmins'.

For a review of the neuroscience of gender that isn't based on one person's marketing strategy research, I highly suggest this book. It specifically addresses most of the stereotypes presented in Dr. Brenzadine's work and shows exactly how much (or, in most cases, how little) evidence there is for the claims.

u/xenomouse · 1 pointr/writing

Though, that book's intent was to demonstrate that what differences we naturally have are minor, and most of what we associate with men or with women is molded by our culture. Eliot's work actually backs up what I'm saying; it doesn't refute it.

She does pin gendered interests on neurology, but more contemporary research has shown that to be vastly overstated as well. This book has more current information on that topic, if you're interested.

FWIW, I also dislike most mobile games, and prefer MMOs, ARPGs and FPS'es. Though that is just a single data point. ;-)

u/I_like_my_cat · 1 pointr/SRSFeminism

First, with your statement about the biological gender distinctions:

>So your statement "there are only two sexes because for time beyond time, humans have said there are only two sexes", could be true with gender, but is not true with our definition on sex.

I would debunk this, but it's been done better by trans women before me, an easy-to-digest and sited example of with can be found here.

The study you refer to in particular by Simon Baron-Cohen was actually the subject of some controversy. It was strongly panned in Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender a book about the bad science behind the neuroscience of sexual dimorphism. Simon Baron Cohen responded and they had a bit of a back and forth about it in The Psychologist from which I will pull this:

>This study departed from the best standards of methodology for this kind of work in a number of ways. One concern was that, since attention is very fluid in the first days of life, it is usual to present the two stimuli simultaneously. Baron-Cohen dismisses this on the grounds that stimulus order was counter-balanced. However, the published report refers only to stimulus order being “randomized”. There was a drop-out rate of about a third, and no information is provided to reassure that stimulus order was not a confounding variable. ... inadequate measures were made to blind the experimenter (who was also the first author) to the babies’ sex, so as to avoid experimenter-expectancy effects. (For example, the mobile might have been unintentionally moved more for boys.)

As for the Trond Diseth play test: I sat through a crummy documentary which was the only place I could find any indication of his discussion of the play test, which actually ended up being quite useful in understanding the task and immediately seeing issues. The toys are in gendered colors. Regardless of a baby's understanding of language, a baby whose toys are pink is probably going to quickly develop a "pink" preference. Furthermore, I cannot find a peer-reviewed publication by Dr. Diseth that addresses the this test. Please tell me if you can find it on his list of publications. One of his papers sites an actual study of a play test with the findings you attribute to Dr. Diseth. Authors of this study? First, second, third, fourth, AND final author? All female scientists, by the way. Their study is of CAH children 1-10. Still no support for the test being appropriate for infants, or the statement Dr. Diseth made in Hjernevask (the documentary which is the place where I assume you pull this claim "one study done by a Professor Trond Diseth, found differences between what toys boys and girls choose to play with at nine months of age"). This statement made by Dr. Diseth seems to only be referenced on MRA websites… curious.

You follow with "This is before children have developed a comprehension of speech (so the cultural gender influence is still very low)." I don't know where you pull this supposition parental that influence on sex-typed toy play behavior in infants is purely verbal. Infant behavior is affected by parental interaction from birth, verbal or not. This reinforces again my theory (equally as unsupported by evidence as yours is) that IF a sex-typed toy preference exists (which there is no evidence for) there is an equally viable explanation that toy preference is caused by the gendered toys already in the infant's possession.

Are you starting to see now that you can basically make up any explanation you want with the evidence that is currently available to us?

You say these differences, which may or may not exist but for which there is no empirical evidence, come from hormonal differences in pre-natal development, but provide no direct evidence of this link between pre-natal hormones and gender role behavior. Nor does anybody else. If you would like to provide a source for this statement, I would gladly review it because whoever is currently providing your sources lacks the ability to put things in context for you as a non-scientist.

It is true that we do not have all the information empirically about gender role behavior developmental differences. This means that the evidence we do have can be and is interpreted wildly. Throughout your response, you conflate "gender role behavior" and "gender identity," (amusingly you use sex and gender interchangeably until this post where you use this as the thing that makes your opponent wrong) mis-attribute and de-contextualize "studies," and make an incredible amount of completely and entirely unsupported statements. Yet you somehow feel comfortable in claiming that you have scientific evidence that states that feminist claims are "over the top." Your claims that somehow the unsupported preference of nine-month-old infants to play with dolls or action figures are different because of prenatal hormones can be generalized to "some gender stereotypes may come from nature and should not always be labelled sexist or harmful" is over the top. You're the one being silly here.

u/totallylegitartist · 1 pointr/DotA2

You don't seem to separate what women 'want to do' from the way they're treated when they do this certain thing that they want to do, which makes it very hard to get through to you on this topic.

I would advise that you do actually watch the video, because it addresses the very 'brain differences' you are invoking and demonstrates that women have been shown to have equal potential in the case of mental competition. Invoking 'brain differences' also kind of undercuts your realist posture.

>I never said women can't compete (in Dota), I'm saying they don't.

I'm saying they don't play because of the bullshit we experience, and largely not because of lack of interest. Interest is made self-evident by these tournaments. If nothing else, try to understand that. Women's tournaments removes the primary source of bullshit, allowing us to grow as players without the focus of each pub team becoming team chatting shit to a girl. You do realize we can't even use mic most of the time without some neckbeards getting tilted? What kind of training experience is that? You need to think about the conditions that lead someone to keep playing and progress or not.

If you want to learn more about stereotype threat and see lots of the data you asked for, I suggest reading Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine.

u/plural1 · 1 pointr/videos

Also, your understanding of nueroscience and gender greatly simplifies the state of the field and assumes way more agreement about the extent to which 1) male and female brains are different, 2) biology is the sole cause of these differences. http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v8/n3/full/nn0305-253.html; http://www.germaninnovation.org/news-and-events/past-events/past-event?id=7846164d-d9c7-e211-b834-000c29e5517f; http://eldan.co.uk/2013/12/bad-neuroscience-and-gender-reading-this-will-change-your-brain/; http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244
Edit: Mores sources

u/darkpurple_ · 1 pointr/Random_Acts_Of_Amazon

It's Monday! Yay! I can't recommend TFIOS enough. I have seen that there have been people trying to get it banned recently, which is DUMB. You know it's a good book if people want it banned ;)

I would really like to have this one!!

u/CelticMara · 1 pointr/Random_Acts_Of_Amazon

You might enjoy this one as well. It's about the millions of subliminal and blatant messages we all get to conform to cultural and societal gender "norms," and ultimately how destructive that is. Told with wit, passion, and scholarship.

u/AntiBreasts · 1 pointr/transgender

I get the feeling that some people identify with gender more than others.

For many transgender people, there isn't as much of a feeling of dysphoria, so much as a feeling of improvement and wellness in their lives. Such as the case of Zinnia Jones, who, if I'm not mistaken, didn't have much of any experience with gender dysphoria, despite being transgender. And some transwomen may feel even less of a difference than her.

Just the same, I'm sure many cisgender people, don't feel particularly comfortable being male or female or any gender, while not being dysphoria, only socially alienated by their gender roles(or in this case, their bodies in relation to their gender roles, or perhaps some of the downsides of having a certain body, like periods or breasts). And it isn't simply their cisprivilege making them finding difficulty to relate to transgender people, and they don't see being cisgender as any more valid or normal than being transgender. And see themselves as individuals, rather than genders. And don't see their gender as any more a part of who they are than their ethnicity.

I personally don't identify as cisgender. I also don't actually identify as a transman or transwoman most of the time, either. I've always felt rather gender confused, most days I feel genderqueer or androgynous or genderfluid, but sometimes I can identify as a man, and sometimes I can identify as a woman. But I can definitely understand how she feels, especially about the breasts and hips and getting periods and having the overwhelming, horrifying feelings of social expectations weighing upon me heavily and feeling anxious. Furthermore, I don't actually know why she's cisgendered, and I'm not. I don't know where it comes from.

For other people, they may be certain they were "born that way", but I've never been certain of where either my sexuality or gender identity feelings come from. And I definitely know that social alienation with gender roles are something that I associate with both of them. I think this may help me in understanding where anti-gender-identity radical feminists are coming from, perhaps? Having any kind of gender identity to me almost feels like some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, at times. Maybe I'm agender? Maybe my gender fluctuates? I don't know.

I have noticed many radical feminists who not only think that being transgender is invalid, but also being cisgender. And that having a gender identity, cisgender, or transgender, is a social construct that would disappear if patriarchy went away. And that there would be no cisgender or transgender people if sexism went away. I can at least empathize with this, as they find being cisgender equally meaningless and undesirable and aren't singling out transgender people. And neurosexism is still a horrible and promiment cultural force to reinforce gender roles and stereotypes. And many neurosexists try to use transgender people as evidence that gender stereotypes are biological in origin.

What I don't like is when some of these radical feminists see transwomen as a patriarchal invasionary force in women's spaces. And that a vagina is required to be a feminist. No matter whether feminism will decrease instances of gender identity in all human beings or not, the fact of the matter is that many are purposely misgendering and invaliditing the very real experiences of trans-individuals of dysphoria, that isn't going to be quelled by being told a bit of "gender identity is a social construct". Transgender people know how they feel, and being told that gender identity is a social construct isn't going to change that. And the behavior of some radical feminists, rather than being anti-gender, is actually just anti-transgender. Misgendering people, and actively working against their rights. Treating transwomen with distrust and disdain. It is unjustified, cruel, bigoted, and privileged. By treating feminism as a club for people with vaginas, they're propagating separatism, essentially, and the gender roles and identity some of them supposedly seek to abolish. As well as, refusing and doing harm to fellow women, just because they were born with different genitalia. This "women-born-women" thing is horribly toxic.

Also, whether you're a cisgender or transgender radical feminist who believes that gender identity is a social construct that should be eliminated. Or are a transgender activist who is very much against this idea. Both groups can and should agree, that gender roles, absolutely must be destroyed. And are extremely harmful and toxic to all human cultures.

But misgendering and refusing people's gender identities isn't going to cause anything but harm. And some radical feminists really need to stop their toxic transphobic behavior. As well, I would like to see a lot of the animosity on both sides of this extremely sensitive biological gender debate subside. No one should tell radical feminists they need to die, and they have no need to have a gender identity if they don't want to have one. It's very clear that many radical feminists are uncomfortable with the very concept of having a gender identity. And they shouldn't be expected to have one if they don't want one. But just the same, they shouldn't forcefully push this on transgender people like many are.

A higher degree of tolerance and empathy on both sides would be very nice.

u/whils · 1 pointr/lgbt

Not really. Brain differences between the genders exist on a bell curve, and neurological gender differences observed in the brain are likely caused by psychological and cultural factors at least as much as hormones. Check out Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine sometime - she does an excellent (and trans-affirming!) job dismantling the sexist myth of "brain sex".

There's a reason the connection between the intersex community and the trans community (and LGBT community in general) has historically been kind of fraught. A lot of intersex people identify as trans, and many intersex issues overlap with trans issues (right to bodily autonomy, right to respectful and educated medical treatment, people asking invasive questions about your body/genitalia, bathroom bills and other gender policing), but it's not perfectly analogous.

I guess what I'm saying is this isn't a bad comparison but it's not really the best.

u/laraferox · 0 pointsr/changemyview

I'm not interested in getting into a debate on the internet, but if you're curious about a different perspective I highly recommend this book. The author can get a bit ranty at times, but she does an excellent job of explaining how a lot of the conclusions we draw are based on faulty logic, and she talks about a bunch of theories and studies that don't get a lot of media attention but make perfect sense to me and help explain things that otherwise seemed out of place.

u/FeministBuzz · 0 pointsr/AskFeminists

Radical feminism is an actual movement that has a history and certain parameters for ideology (the Wikipedia entry is extremely vague and does not do it justice). I'm sorry for being rude in my previous comment, but it just ticks me off when people on the internet think "radical feminism" means being feminist and angry, or feminist and extreme. Radical feminists tend to be all of those things, but simply being angry or extreme doesn't make someone a radfem. Words have meanings.

I took a look at the thread you linked. Apart from the academic jargon that means nothing in the real world (there was a lot of this), they're basically saying that although gender is socially made up/imposed, it also has real world consequences. Well, yes, every radfem in the world would agree with that. That doesn't mean that sex-reassignment surgery is the best way to go.

If a born-female wants to be masculine, she can; if a born-male wants to be feminine, he can. Why take hormones and change one's body? If you think about it, it's actually reinforcing really negative, sexist stereotypes ("I have a wee-wee but I like dresses and pink; I must be a girl because only girls can like dresses and pink").

The trans "argument" usually relies on the de-bunked idea that people are born with "male" or "female" brains. Putting aside the obvious sexism of this argument, it's actually not scientifically valid (link to an awesome feminist book on neurology that shows how our brains adapt to our environments via something called neuroplasticity, and we are not born with inherently "masculine" or "feminine" brains): http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/

And finally, yes, radfems hate the word "cis". It's an insulting world that implies women are privileged for a) being born female and b) being socialized into femininity (gender role), which is just ritualized submission.

u/r3m0t · 0 pointsr/changemyview

> men continued to out-earn their female counterparts, by about 7%, even when graduating from the same school, choosing the same major and working in the same occupation. Source

1/1.07 = 93%.

> Where do women in universities get less pasty for the same qualifications/job title? I am honestly asking, never seen this before - I would be interested to find out.

It was a hypothetical based on information like this, however you might find the data on this page or on Google.

There was more I could have clipped, but I felt bad taking the whole chapter. Maybe you should buy the book if you want to find out more. :)

> But these things are sort of slow reaching changes that stem from social attitudes that evolve over time.

I agree, and I think that we aren't even near halfway to equality in terms of how much time it will take, even though many great strides were made in the last century. Part of the reason is people assuming that the problem is already solved because they haven't looked very closely. That's why I'm so active in this thread. :)

u/username_not_on_file · -1 pointsr/Competitiveoverwatch

For anyone who is interested in an overview of what neuroscience research tells us about gender differences I recommend Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine. https://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244

u/kerpowowow · -4 pointsr/TumblrInAction

Except you are wrong. There is no scientific consensus that transsexuals have significant brain differences. There is not even any scientific consensus that men's and women's brains differ at all. See [Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender] (http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244).