tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7372876601826078687.post2670494106398263389..comments2024-03-05T05:53:36.239-07:00Comments on The Masculine Heart: All in the Mind - Girls & boys . . . The battle over sex, science and your head!william harrymanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06981478282688361274noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7372876601826078687.post-71174259289364903992017-08-08T14:05:30.018-07:002017-08-08T14:05:30.018-07:00While I think that there's indeed faulty resea...While I think that there's indeed faulty research and simplistic assumptions on innateness of gendered traits, the likes of Cordelia Fine will also be nearly equivalents on the other side. She's pretty much dismissive of things like the boy or boys who had their penises accidentally mutilated and were raised as girls, or even differences in gradients of hormones in behavior and so on.<br /><br />I find kind of curious that this sort of denial is eerely similar to the politically incorrect conservative view that transexuals are just "deviants", that they just chose to deviate from gender norms "just because".<br /><br />I don't think the strong notion of a brain sexual dimorphism or hermaphroditism would be the cause for gender identity disorder, anyway. I guess it's more along the lines of a process of identification that usually "gets it right", failing at it. That in turn could drive further genderization of the brain by behavioral mimicry.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7372876601826078687.post-6595270464462806782011-09-06T08:25:09.138-07:002011-09-06T08:25:09.138-07:00Thanks for this post, Bill. These are important bo...Thanks for this post, Bill. These are important books. There is also another one by neurobiologist Donald W. Pfaff that is worth looking into:<br /><br />"Man & Woman: An Inside Story"<br />http://www.amazon.com/Man-Woman-Donald-Pfaff-PhD/dp/0195388844/<br /><br />The book description reads:<br /><br />"The saga of sex differences in brain and behavior begins with a tiny sperm swimming toward a huge egg, to contribute its tiny Y chromosome plus its copies of the other chromosomes. Genetic, anatomic and physiologic alterations in the male ensue, making his brain and behavior different in specific respects from his sister. Brain-wise, specific cell groups develop differently in males compared to females, in some cases right after birth and in other cases at puberty. But genetics and neuroanatomy do not dominate the scene. Prenatal stress, postnatal stress and lousy treatment at puberty all can affect males and females in different ways. The upshot of all these genetic and environmental factors produces small sex differences in certain abilities and huge sex differences in feelings, in pain and in suffering. Put this all together and the reader will see that biological and cultural influences on gender roles operate at so many different levels to influence behavioral mechanisms that gender role choices are flexible, reversible and non-dichotomous, especially in modern societies."<br /><br />Roy Baumeister's book is more of a polemic/essay than a scholarly work, by his own testimony, and it got a pretty negative review in the Globe and Mail by Wendy McElroy for cherrypicked data, who can hardly be said to be a radical feminist.stumblingmysticnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7372876601826078687.post-81007992143740246072010-11-14T07:31:14.040-07:002010-11-14T07:31:14.040-07:00I thought Professor Roy Baumeister's "Is ...I thought Professor Roy Baumeister's "Is There Anything Good About Men" is also an important book in this area and wanted to mention it.Wolf Pascoehttp://justaddfather.comnoreply@blogger.com