What do you say to someone who doesn't believe in feminism because "men and womens brains are wired differently"?

[LittleWhiteWolf]

I can't get my head around it. The friend in question is intelligent and educated and not stupid at all, yet spouts this as the reason why feminism, why equality doesn't work. Where she sees scientific and historical evidence to support this, I just see opinions. Apparently because men are the typical hunter gatherers and women the nuturers, we should just accept that. I'm just getting so sad listening to this.

Anyone got any tips one what one says to someone so mired in this belief???

The problem I have with all this is that I am a person who gets told on quizzes that I have a "male brain". I like maths and have a mathematical/scientific degree and am studying for another one with the OU. I am interested in looking at how things work, cogs whizzing around and steam engines and bridges and things. I enjoy watching science fiction programs and playing MMORPGs. I would rather paint a door than bathe my children (the example from last night was genuinely what we were doing).

So what does that mean? If you believe that men and women are "wired" fundamentally differently, then that means that my brain is wrong. It means that I am not mentally, emotionally female as my brain is not the right one for my body. But I am small and blonde and used to be told I was pretty. I have had two babies and breastfed them both. I am female, honest guv.

But the "men are like this and women are like that and it's natural and innate and a fundamental difference in how the brain works leaves no room for diversity. And lots of women feel like I do, and enjoy the things I do. There are loads of us. If society didn't push women in one direction and men in another maybe it would be 50/50. I don't know. But I do know that I am female and my brain is not only quite normal, but quite normal for a woman.

(So ner)

I would be happy with a proposition of eg

There are 4 (or however many) brain "types" and types A and C are more commonly found in men and brain types B and D in women.

That could be taken further - maybe it would be found that people from Asia were predominantly B type and people from Africa predominantly A type. And that could lead on to an idea that it is natural for people from Asia to (say) excel at sciences and people from Africa were naturally inclined to work in caring professions. Would people feel comfortable about that? If you are not comfortable with that (I am assuming you won't be), why do they feel comfortable about classifying men and women in this way?

Yes indeed SQ. I have been sceptical about all of this sort of thing since I read Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus at university and realised that, based on our ways of looking at things and coping with the world, I seemed to be a man and my then boyfriend was a girl.

I'd prefer to see human nature presented as a continuum of intellectual/emotional characteristics, with a note that statistically there are more men at one end and women at the other, but that there are many more differences within sexes than between sexes.

I think we are wired differently.Men like to spend their time building roads and houses and bridges and drilling for oil.I'm much happier spending my time posting thing on here!

oooer that sounds a bit complex Mooncup, can we not just say girls like pink and men like football and leave it at that?

I think we can all accept that there are physiological differences between people of different sexes, ethnicities, ages, abilities, etc., and also significant differences within each "group" put together because of their similarities (e.g. women, children under 5, South Asian, etc.)

The problem comes when society assigns meaning to those differences that is not inherently there, when it determines that people like "this" are "normal" and people who aren't are "not normal." It goes further when the social, economic and political "value" of people is determined by their difference. Some groups of people are recognised with higher levels of power and privilege while others are marginalised and disempowered just based on their difference, not their capabilities.

[hmmm] because there are no male orientated chatsites lolly!

yy Kritiq.
It actually shouldn't matter really whether differences exist or not. It's the hierarchy of difference (perceived or real, universal or not, that matters)

While I'm on MN my DH never goes out and builds a house or drills for oil

At the moment he is playing a computer game.

mine watches the soaps, I hate them.
but I've had a good rummage down both pants and he's definitely the male and I'm the female

Well exactly. Why should a person with white skin be held in more esteem than a person with brown skin if say, we don't in the same way value people with blue eyes more than green eyes, or with inny belly buttons over outy ones.

Difference shouldn't matter, but sadly it does. That's because there are some folks who benefit from perpetuating the idea that they are deserving of higher status and power. To do that, they have to identify other folks who aren't so deserving. Then they have to convince everyone that the difference in status, power and influence is natural, inevitable, even a "good thing," so it becomes self-perpetuating. If those who are seen to be of lower value in this scheme of things actually accept their position and rationalise it's "just how things are," you could argue that they are colluding with their own oppression.

Having said that, I can understand why some people feel if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, when injustice is so entrenched and pervasive in society. If you question or challenge the status quo, you're seen at best as a bit weird and cranky. At worst, you could be threatened or silenced. It's a bit risk to stick your neck out so while maybe it ain't noble, I can understand why many seem to accept the "that's just how things are" argument, keep their head down and hope to get through as best they can.

"that's just how things are" is also (1) a way of coping... if you feel shackled to a man who treats you like the skivvy (2) a way of avoiding dealing with it on a personal level (3) a way of avoiding dealing with the patriarchy

also if i you tell a person, just before a test, that people like them (gender, race etc.) are good/not good at a task, it influences their performance so the stereotype is self perpetuating.

like SQ i get told i have a male brain. fucking hell - how did it get there? where's my womanly brain gone to?

its utter utter utter crap. back to testing: all gender tests i have seen, the currently measured difference between the average woman and the average man is tiny compared with the range of abilities that different people have. yet in popular culture, this tiny measured difference become magnified to women are good at X, Y, Z (shit), men are good at a, b,c, (the good stuff).

its utter utter utter crap.

oh & it is unscientific crap....but most journalists are men...so how can this be so with their big powerful rational mathematical hunter male brains....

anyway i am off to look at pictures of kittens and puppies and flowers & get a bit more nurturing.

Clearly men are not from Mars and Women from Venus - it's a continuum.

I think its hugely interesting but in no way a justification fir inequality or settling for things as they are.

It's not that men-are-hunters and women-are-gatherers (...although that may be part of the story). It is that male and female bodies have quite different strategies for reproductive 'success' (quantity vs quality..) and that has been a huge factor in evolution of behaviour.

The comparison with ethnicity although seems to make sense- as racial and sexual discrimination are the same category of thing, in modern legal terms. But in biological terms they are completely different things. Human beings (and our distant ancestors) have been evolving as distinct male and female forms for millions and millions of years. The relatively differences in pigmentation, hair, body fat and muscle etc... That we call "race" came about after humans migrated out of Africa much, much later and are relatively "skin deep". It's just a different kind of thing altogether, so you have to be careful not to be misled by apparent parallels.

Anais, no, if glasses were not invented I would still have an impairment, not a disability. A society in which glasses were not invented would have to organise itself in such a way that people who had less than perfect vision were not treated equally for me to have a disability.

They would, for example, have to use blackboards in classrooms that I couldn't read (rather than just changing their equipment so that I could read it), not make street signs larger, not allow me to sit in particular parts of the cinema that made it possible for me get a clear view, organise jobs in such a way that people with perfect vision couldn't do them, even when the job could be easily modified to accommodate my impairment.

If almost everybody had less than perfect vision, society would simply be organised around them and we might cast aspersions on people with better vision. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is not king; he's just a freak with a socially irrelevant skill.

In much the same way, we don't consider people who do not have the running skills of an olympic athlete to be disabled, we simply organise society so that it accommodates people with a wide range of different levels of physical fitness.

The same applies to women and the particular physical differences they have. We could reverse the current situation and treat not being able to get pregnant and breast feed your own children as a massive disadvantage in the work place.

We could claim that men, as they can't get pregnant, don't have the insight that pregnancy hormones bring, that their brains are befuddled by their lack of wider hormonal experiences, that they can't be as intellectually skilled or responsible or hold positions of leadership because they can't get pregnant. W could claim that nursing a small baby is the ultimate in leadership experience. We could also then criticise men for spending too long at work. Why are they so slow at getting the job done? Why are they so needy that they can't fill their time outside of work. Presumably because they can't get pregnant so have no proper concept of leadership, social skills or responsibility. Presumably they can't succeed at work because they have evolved to spear gazelle which is not a useful skill in the modern workplace, bless them.

But we don't say those things because they are ridiculous. They are equally ridiculous when reversed and used against women.

haven't read whole thread so sorry if some has said this but read Cordlia Fine - Delusions of Gender - there is very little scientific evidence to support such a claim and also it is a pretty meaningless statement

Milly hmm, I get what you are saying, but what about natural things that are outside the control of society. It would be considered a disability to not be able to see a beautiful sunset and society would play little role in this.

I appreciate that in terms of functioning in the world society can lessen the impact of natural disability or increase it's impact.

I think I use the term 'disability' where you (and lots of others) use the term 'impairment'. You use the term 'disability' to mean socially disadvantaged due to an impairment. I consider poor vision to be a disability regardless of society, but don't think it need affect a person's social worth, i.e. I don't equate having a disability with low social worth.

Regarding the OP I think we agree but would maybe use different words to make our points.

I don't follow the whole I'm a woman and I'm good at typically male things argument and I don't think there are any academics who would dispute that. Those that argue that there are differences between male and female brains suggest that men are slightly -more likely- to be better at systemising (for example) and women are slightly -more likely- to be better at empathising (for example). There is overlap.

Men are more likely to have high blood pressure than women. A woman who has high blood pressure does not disprove this fact.

(stupid underline)

If the theory is that men and women have brains that are wired completely differently, that there is such a thing as a male brain and a female brain, it does mean that people who fall into the brain type of the opposite category must have their brains wired incorrectly. They are unnatural. That is the logical conclusion of the theory.

SQ - that's not the theory, or the observation in practice.

That is the theory being espoused by the woman in the OP, that we are all talking about.

And it is what a lot of people believe.

What do you say to someone who doesn't believe in feminism because "men and womens brains are wired differently"?

Read this newhumanist.org.uk/2508/kitchen-sink-drama

"It is a little disconcerting that neuroimagers are now finding that reported sex differences in brain activation haven?t been put to adequate statistical testing, or can come and go depending on how the analysis is done, or can fail to generalize to a distinct but similar task within a second group of men and women, or that the kind of analyses used to establish sex differences in brain activation can also ?discover? brain activation differences between randomly created groups."

Its hard to know what the OP's friend meant - it could be something like SQ's interpretation - men and women are hardwired completelty differently therefore men should be in the boardroom/cabinet etc.. and women in the kitchen - but I don't see how anyone who knows more than 6 people can think that 'men' and 'women''s characteristics are such neat categories. Certainly i don't think there are any scientists making claims like this.

Or it could be something more like what Bennifer and many others have said - men and women accross the populationhave tendencies to be more one way or another sytemising vs empathetic etc.. ambitious vs family orientated and this in the OP's friends opinion explains why there are more men than women in the boardroom/cabinet etc... and means nothing can be done.

This version I think does correspond with reality in that there are population level differences between men and women (overlapping bell-curves, not completely sepperate sets of characteristics with anyone who bucks that trend being 'unnatural' - whatever that means ?? )

But accepting that there are different tendencies between men and women, on average doesn't mean accepting the OP's friend's conclusion is right. Given the historic dominance of men, and the structures and attitudes that we know still stand in the way of equality isn't it more likely that some of the reason why women are underepresented amongst politicians, CEOs, nobel prize winners, engineers (...trainspotters, skateboarders, Games Workshop devotees etc...) is to do with discrimination and part of it may well be to do with the relative attractiveness of these activities (as they are currently set up) to men and to women given their hardwired tendencies.

Maybe the OP's friend thinks the way she does because she has had conversations like this, and come away with the perception that feminists think that men and women are completely alike as a group apart from the genitals, and that unless every walk of life is split 50/50 between men and women it must be a case of inequality. So she has come to the eroneous conclusion that she isn't a feminist. But i bet if you asked her if women should have the vote, have property rights, have rights over their own bodies etc... she would support that.