Sharon Begley
Pink Brain, Blue Brain
Claims of sex differences fall apart.
Published Sep 3, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Sep 14, 2009
http://www.newsweek.com/id/214834?from=rss (http://www.newsweek.com/id/214834?from=rss)
Among certain parents, it is an article of faith not only that they should treat their sons and daughters alike, but also that they do. If Jack gets Lincoln Logs and Tetris, and joins the soccer team and the math club, so does Jill. Lise Eliot, a neuroscientist at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, doesn't think these parents are lying, exactly. But she would like to bring some studies to their attention.
I just saw this article. I thought it was very interesting, and brought up some interesting ideas. I think the reasoning is right on the John Money. :-\ Surely there is waaaaay more "nurture" in the developmental roles of gender than many people realize (Larry Summers, for instance), but somehow, our identity as male or female is a hardwired and inate property of the human brain.
I think these notions -- that there is such a thing as an innate, hardwired gender, and that there are no differences in brain capacity or abilities between men and women -- are completely compatible. Simply put, girls identify with other girls and women, boys with other boys and men, regardless of how the world views them, and social influences take it from there. This difference in association is greatly amplified when society views children in their correct gender. In other words, the entirety of gender stems from the human brain's ability to recognize either men or women as "like me."
Lise Eliot expresses reasonable skepticism about a lot of the studies that suggest fundamental gender differences in the brain, but she goes just one step too far.