Peeling Away Theories on Gender and the Brain
By KATHERINE BOUTON
Published: August 23, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/science/24scibks.html

"Delusions of Gender" takes on that tricky question, Why exactly are men from Mars and women from Venus?, and eviscerates both the neuroscientists who claim to have found the answers and the popularizers who take their findings and run with them.

The author, Cordelia Fine, who has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from University College London, is an acerbic critic, mincing no words when it comes to those she disagrees with. But her sharp tongue is tempered with humor and linguistic playfulness, as the title itself suggests. Academics like Simon Baron-Cohen and Dr. Louann Brizendine will want to come to this volume well armed. So would Norman Geschwind if he were still alive. Popular authors like John Gray ("Men are from Mars"), Michael Gurian ("What Could He Be Thinking?") and Dr. Leonard Sax ("Why Gender Matters") may want to read something else.

In 1915 the neurologist Dr. Charles L. Dana wrote in this newspaper that because a woman's upper spinal cord is smaller than a man's it affects women's "efficiency" in the evaluation of "political initiative or of judicial authority in a community's organization" — and thus compromises their ability to vote.

Gosh!  I never knew political initiative or judicial authority was affected by the upper spinal cord.  Should we measure that in politicians and judges before we vote for them?