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

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

by Cordelia Fine
ISBN-10:
0393340244
ISBN-13:
9780393340242
Pub. Date:
08/08/2011
Publisher:
Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
ISBN-10:
0393340244
ISBN-13:
9780393340242
Pub. Date:
08/08/2011
Publisher:
Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference

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

by Cordelia Fine
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Overview

“[Fine’s] sharp tongue is tempered with humor. . . . Read this book and see how complex and fascinating the whole issue is.”—The New York Times

It’s the twenty-first century, and although we tried to rear unisex children—boys who play with dolls and girls who like trucks—we failed. Even though the glass ceiling is cracked, most women stay comfortably beneath it. And everywhere we hear about vitally important “hardwired” differences between male and female brains. The neuroscience that we read about in magazines, newspaper articles, books, and sometimes even scientific journals increasingly tells a tale of two brains, and the result is more often than not a validation of the status quo. Women, it seems, are just too intuitive for math; men too focused for housework.

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.

Passionately argued and unfailingly astute, Delusions of Gender provides us with a much-needed corrective to the belief that men’s and women’s brains are intrinsically different—a belief that, as Fine shows with insight and humor, all too often works to the detriment of ourselves and our society.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393340242
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 08/08/2011
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 368
Sales rank: 235,774
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Cordelia Fine, an associate professor at the University of Melbourne, is author of the much-acclaimed Delusions of Gender and A Mind of Its Own.

Table of Contents

Introduction xv

Part I "Half-Changed World," Half-Changed Minds

1 We Think, Therefore You Are 3

Why You Should Cover Your Head with a Paper Bag if You Have a Secret You Don't Want Your Wife to Find Out 14

3 "Backwards and in High Heels" 27

4 I Don't Belong Here 40

5 The Glass Workplace 54

6 XX-clusion and xxx-clusion 67

7 Gender Equality Begins (or Ends) at Home 78

8 Gender Equality 2.0? 90

Part 2 Neurosexism

9 The "Fetal Fork" 99

10 In "the Darkness of the Womb" (and the First Few Hours in the Light) 107

11 The Brain of a Boy in the Body of a Girl ... or a Monkey? 118

12 Sex and Premature Speculation 131

13 What Does It All Mean, Anyway? 141

14 Brain Scams 155

15 The "Seductive Allure" of Neuroscience 168

16 Unraveling Hardwiring 176

Part 3 Recycling Gender

17 Preconceptions and Postconceptions 189

18 Parenting with a Half-Changed Mind 197

19 "Gender Detectives" 207

20 Gender Education 214

21 The Self-Socializing Child 226

Epilogue: And S-t-r-e-t-c-h! 233

Acknowledgments 241

Author's Note 243

Notes 245

Bibliography 289

Index 329

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