Deborah Soh: The End of Gender

I can't respect the arguments of anyone who uses circular logic.
Even less those who have it pointed out and carry on regardless.

Is there a council of femininity which votes on which behaviours are officially determined 'feminine'?
Because otherwise it's just a bunch of people arguing over "THIS BEHAVIOUR IS EXPECTED OF THIS SEX, BECAUSE REASONS".

It's nonsensical and circular.
And it can be so easily dismantled by logic, should anyone care to challenge their own reasoning. Or give a direct answer to a simple question.

It's the type of reasoning that suggests one shoots first in any direction and call whatever you hit 'the target'.

Define gender.
Define Masculine.
Define Feminine.
Define bimodal.
Define binary.

I'm not sure if Soh can't or won't answer these questions.

Yep, I don’t think anyone disagree that neurological sex differences In adults exist. The question is the cause. Rippon and Fine say “it’s impossible to know”. Soh and Bergen-Cohen say “but surely some of it must be in-born”.

The former is, in my opinion, the more scientifically valid stance. If you can’t know it’s invalid to claim you can.

This study from the University of Edinburgh purports to be the largest single sample study in sex differences in the brain (at least in 2018, no idea if it's been superceded in that respect).

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6041980/

It did find differences in brain structure, within sex variability and cognitive abilities. Obviously, it doesn't identify a causal explanation. While I don't dismiss the possibility that these structural differences might develop in response to environmental factors and social conditioning associated with sex, I've no idea how you would go about testing this in practice.

The CAH studies do have a confounding issue of course - Which is that Girls with this condition, well, have a condition. They are atypical Form birth and likely to have more troubles fitting in. If one already doesn’t fit in, one common response is to say “we’ll F it, I’ll do what I want” which often will be less “traditional” than a kid who has lots of friends and so does what other kids do.

It apparently can also cause precocious puberty so that could impact academics and social things as well.

as to saying some women are more masculine due to prenatal testosterone exposure - how on earth can she know? This is pure conjecture.

To be fair, these claims are based in studies of girls with a condition (sometimes called an intersex condition - it think this one? www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/congenital-adrenal-hyperplasia/symptoms-causes/syc-20355205 ) which involves higher prenatal exposure male hormones In these girls than other females. Supposedly these girls have a tendency to exhibit cross gender behavior and preferences and better scoring on spatial reasoning tasks.

I’ve read some of the papers and found them somewhat underwhelming - the size of the effect is very small and could be influenced by confirmation bias. If one was inclined to believe in “biological gender” one would probably find these are the strongest studies.

I think the infants one is based on how long babies look at things. I’m not 100% sure how we can assess supposedly gendered behavior from that. Maybe the boys have already seen more trucks Than girls have by that time. And again how TF would looking at a truck mean anything when a 24 hour old baby doesn’t know it’s ass from a hole in the wall??

Also I went to an all girls school where we were very proud that our exam results in maths were regularly higher than the local boys school. And studying science was considered perfectly normal and among my friends 2 became doctors, 1 a dentist. 1 a chemist, 1 a biochemist and 1 (me) a physicist. And in other countries there are much higher numbers of women studying science and mathematics. One third of the maths students at my uni (in the 80’s) were female. I’m not convinced by her arguments. And as to saying some women are more masculine due to prenatal testosterone exposure - how on earth can she know? This is pure conjecture.

I’ve got it on Kindle and read a few chapters. Some things I very much agree with but I’m finding the pink/blue brain stuff frustrating. There is such a strong cultural overlay that teasing out nature and nurture is not as straightforward as she makes out. For example - she says that women are naturally more drawn to people oriented jobs. But in healthcare, medicine is dominated by men (although becoming less so), nursing by women. Yet they are both jobs caring for people. The obvious answer is that medicine was the high pay/high status job, nursing less so. She glosses over the fact that computer programming was initially dominated by women who were intentionally pushed out by men as the job become more skilled and well paid. And men want high status jobs while women want work/life balance? But many men would like a better work life balance too but find it difficult to achieve. And for many women with caring responsibilities, moving round the country chasing high status jobs is not feasible.

Thing is, even if eventually high quality, large-scale replicable studies did indeed find some tiny statistical variation across large populations, such population-level variation would never bear the weight that almost all people who claim "gender is innate" attempt to make it bear.

In the UK we're only just moving on from the era when 100% of women were actually banned from certain jobs because "women aren't good at this". All women. 100% of women. Not 0.01% of women.

These bans were not caused by some tiny population-level variation in aptitude! Which is frankly irrelevant to the ban.

Is this the one where the researchers knew the sex, so it could easily have been influenced by their expectations?

No the researchers did not know the sex of the child.

There's a video online of Simon Baron Cohen debating with Gina Rippon on the question of "Is the Brain Gendered?" It's a good watch as they are both so respectful of each other and they agree on many points.

*Is this the one where the researchers knew the sex, so it could easily have been influenced by their expectations?

Yep, they knew the sex, And same with the famous monkey studies “proving” that apparently little boy monkeys prefer playin with mechanical things (Toy cars)... because, what? Sex specific Affinity for vehicles evolved for no reason And was maintained for approximately 5 million years prior to the existence of vehicles?

How’s that work exactly? (Hint: it doesn’t and also Rhesus monkeys are not people).

"I do not believe for a second that Simon Baron Cohen's experiment on babies under 24 hours found anything other than confirmation bias."
Is this the one where the researchers knew the sex, so it could easily have been influenced by their expectations?

I think Cordelia Fine talked about this, and also all the "boring" studies that find no conclusive evidence of sex differences that get shoved in a drawer and never referenced.

Having said I don't believe in the gendered brain, there's probably still value in reading from people who do. No-one is 100% right on everything.

I feel no need to change your mind.

Well indeed. If the power structure is working for you, you don't need to do anything.

Those of us who have spent our lives being gaslighted and being told we can't possibly be good at the things we're good at, don't like the things that we like, and are somehow in the wrong for not behaving according to the rules for women... we do actually want to change things.

I'm happy for you that you have things you are good at and enjoy. I'm happy for you that you get the chance to enjoy them without someone coming along and telling you this isn't for the likes of you. I wouldn't want to take that away from you.

I would just like others to extend me the same courtesy, and not try to label parts of my life as somehow innately not appropriate for me because of my sex.

But why on earth are you labelling my traits as "masculine", when they belong to a woman?

I don't particularly want to articulate my points further. Debate doesn't interest me much, because I feel no need to change your mind.

In other words, it's not a zero sum game. You're not a man because you have more masculine traits; but you will almost certainly be in the minority. Deborah Soh also says she's more masculine, and that doesn't cancel out her findings that gender and sex are interrelated.

I'd like to hear you articulate your thoughts further, BertiesLanding.

In particular, for you to move beyond your sample of one.

it's scientifically impossible to show they are "natural" because a human brain outside of culture is not a human brain

Simon Baron Cohen's experiment on babies under 24 hours old did point to innate differences between the sexes.

I think, for example, that my "spot gender" (i.e., like spot weight, the one I naturally sit at without intervention) is feminine, and that there are, indeed, feminine traits and masculine traits.

Mine isn't.

Do you therefore conclude that I'm a man, or that I'm womaning wrong?

If course there are feminine and masculine traits and measurable differences in male and female performance on various tasks.

However these are demonstrably changeable by differences in training associated with sex role stereotyping and gender roles, and it’s scientifically impossible to show they are “natural” because a human brain outside of culture is not a human brain.

Indeed we see that what is considered “feminine” and “masculine” in terms for example of work is massively variable. Used to be computer programming was a woman’s calling, considered scut work by the men And thus suited for women’s lesser minds. Then by the 80s it became masculinized And thus better suited for men’s superior brains And women ought to go do more nurturing (Conveniently Right around the same time people started paying programmers well).

Get back to me once we have a truly egalitarian society as a control group to compare to. Never mind that’s not possible.

GC stance: gender is separate from sex, and there's no such thing as "pink brain" and "blue brain".

I disagree. I think, for example, that my "spot gender" (i.e., like spot weight, the one I naturally sit at without intervention) is feminine, and that there are, indeed, feminine traits and masculine traits. Anathema to many here, I know, but there you go.

She changed my mind about the GC stance.

I've not long started reading it (a few chapters in) and I'm enjoying it so far... my degree was in pysch (at the very biological end of the spectrum), so that might have something to do with why I'm enjoying looking at it from that angle.
I don't know if her take is exactly pink/blue brain, but m/f brains do have differences, certainly in volume (due to our different sizes) and hormonal exposure in utero is likely have some bearing on how we turn out... is that the mysterious 'gender essence'? I doubt it.
Will keep reading, regardless.