Is the “female brain” really so predictable?
Jemima Lewis is also not impressed by the Science Museum’s girl/boy brains exhibit.
According to the Science Museum’s interactive test of “brain sex”, I am – in common with others of the female persuasion – possessed of a “good visual memory”, but not so skilled at “seeing things in three dimensions” or “being able to imagine how things rotate”.
This verdict annoys me. What are they trying to say? That just because I happen to have a womb I must be terrible at parking? (I am terrible at parking.) Is the “female brain” really so predictable, so set in its ways, that it can be identified by an algorithm on the basis of just six questions?
Of course it is, silly. Now stop bothering the men with all those questions.
In fact, the idea of the gendered brain fits neatly with modern transgender politics. It is often wheeled out as a scientific-sounding explanation for gender dysphoria: each of us has a “brain sex”, which may or may not match our “body sex”. The now-familiar refrain “I felt like a woman trapped in a man’s body”, or vice versa, thus becomes not just a vivid simile, but a statement of biological fact. Gender is still innate, but now it resides in your grey matter rather than your genitals.
It would be considered a major transgression, at least in the “safe spaces” of the snowflake generation, to dismiss this argument as “junk science”. But it probably is. Granted, scientists have identified a few – very general – differences between male and female brains. Women seem to be somewhat better at empathising, for example, and men at systemising. But the difference is modest, and no one can be sure how much of it is due to physical structure, hormones or social conditioning.
The brain is very plastic: it can change shape depending on how it is used. MRI scans have shown that when black cab drivers do The Knowledge – the famously difficult process of learning London’s landmarks and short-cuts – they grow extra brain cells in the posterior hippocampus. Given the myriad ways in which boys and girls are treated differently from birth, it would hardly be surprising if our brains developed differently.
This doesn’t mean that gender dysphoria isn’t real, any more than it means my inability to park is merely a social construct. It means only that the human brain remains a mystery which in the end is just as likely to skewer our half-baked political theories as to prove them.
The part about cab drivers confused me for a minute, until I realized “black” modifies “cab” as opposed to “drivers” – drivers of black cabs, in other words. I wonder if I grow extra brain cells in the posterior hippocampus when I mess around with Google Earth.
The more equal the sexes are in different cultures, the less difference there is on how they score on math tests.
By the constant reiteration of what “men’s brains” are good at and what “women’s brains” are good at, I have concluded that my husband has a “woman’s brain”. But before you get all uptight about the (gasp, shock) horrifying possibility that this might be in some sense a same sex marriage, have no fear. I must have a “man’s brain”. Which might explain why he is a librarian and I am a scientist? No. I think we both have “people brains”.
One major issue I have with the idea that there can be a dichotomy between “brain sex” and “body sex” is that the brain is not isolated from the body in any meaningful sense. We’re understanding that more and more of our thoughts, feelings and mental states are, at the very least, deeply influenced by things that happen in the body as opposed to the brain – we all know about the various hormones secreted throughout the body by the endocrine system. Add to that the changes in brain chemistry that occur because of peripheral nerve stimulation and the relatively new discovery that the our actual gut bacteria may significantly influence mood and perception and the idea of a brain/body divide looks increasingly untenable.
There are, of course, disorders of body mapping which some trans people may suffer from which may well be most compassionately dealt with by surgery but that’s not the same as suggesting that a brain is somehow a different gender to the body.
As for male and female brains – at what age? There is likely to be some measurable differences in function between male brains and fertile female brains due to reproductive hormones but prior to puberty and post-menopause hormone levels of males and female are very similar.
I am always very aware that referring to “black cab drivers” online can be misunderstood if the readers are not British.
@Steamshovelmama:
I think it’s even more basic than that. I’m more whiny when I’m hungry. I’m more introspective when I’m tired. I’m more angry when I’m busy. I procrastinate more when I have something important to do.
We tend to think of some of these conditions as physical and some as mental each to various degrees but that’s not such an easy distinction to make. For example, watching someone cook on TV can make me suddenly feel hungry. Being busy can make me feel tired. Feeling tired and hungry can make me feel tireder and more hungry.
Brains are not the only places we store state. We store it in the rest of our bodies and to some extent in our behaviour, too.