Re: AUT: critiquing biological determinism/ideology of difference

[Michael Handelman <mhandelman1@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://human-nature.com/science-as-culture/dusek.html

"Claims have been made since the 1970s concerning
differences of male and female brains. One study,
which used fewer than a dozen brains of either sex and
compared brains of aged women who died of natural
causes with those of young men who died mainly in
motor accidents apparently measured numerous features
of the brain until it found one in which sex
differences appeared (the splenium). (Lacoste-Utamsing
and R. Holloway
1982, Alper 1985).

This study was publicized with headlines such as His
and Hers Brains. An earlier series of studies showed
women more able than men to process different messages
fed simultaneously into left and right ear, though
these studies made no tie with actual brain anatomy.
(Kimura 1987) Differences in scores on math aptitude
tests of boys and girls were used to infer a male math
gene. (Benbow and Stanley, 1980). The genetic
explanation was chosen because the boys and girls were
claimed to be in the same environment because they had
taken the same math classes! This theory lives on.
(Hammer and Dusek, 1995) These various claims were
popularized in a book which combined them with quotes
from Steve Goldberg on the inevitability of
patriarchy, and from Michael Levin on the lack of
competitiveness and motivation of women and the common
but now erroneous claim that there are no female chess
grand masters in a popular book Brain Sex: The Real
Differences Between Men and Women (Moir and Jessel,
1991) which was in turn made into an even worse video
marketed for secondary school classroom use.

In the 1990s, however, Functional MRI studies, which
are able to trace moment-to-moment changes in glucose
concentrations in the brain, were claimed to show
definitive differences in brain localization of men
and women thinking in a particular linguistic task
(Shaywitz, Shaywitz, and Pugh 1995). However only
about half the female subjects showed the different
localization from the males. The other half of the
females showed the same result as the males. Composite
color diagrams of a brains with all the male subjects
scanning results colored in on one and all the females
on another illustrated the article,
and this was misinterpreted in the popular press to be
a direct photographs of single male and female
subject, giving "visual proof" that men and women
think differently. "Every social explanation has been
exhausted. It is innate." (Leo, 1995).

Finally, the initially controversy of E. O. Wilson's
sociobiology had been forgotten by many. It took a bit
over a decade for the sociobiology debate to recede
from memory and many of its theses to be revived under
the banner of "evolutionary psychology."


--- Ilan Shalif <gshalif@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi People.
> It does not need big scientist to observe that male
> and female
> have brains, and that these brains differ from each
> other.
>
> It does not need a great scientist to observe many
> of the differences
> between the brains of the two genders.
>
> It is obvious that a society built by males in power
> will
> be around the abilities men are better in them.
>
> In addition, the usual measures of intelligence and
> achievements
> are according to these more relevant for males.
> (Meaning they measure "male intelligence" - not any
> neutral or common
> intelligence.)
>
> In a study I did among kids of above average
> intelligence
> using the common "intelligence test", the result
> show the same:
> At every level of the intelligence scale, there were
> twice boys than girls...
>
> A more subtle analyzes showed that the structure of
> the "intelligence"
> of boys and girls of the same level differ
> significantly.
>
> I did not submitted the results to publication in
> order that they will not
> be misused by the male chauvinists.
>
> One of the main biochemical processes responsible
> for this
> difference was pointed at in a life long study of
> the subject
> of the differences between the genders by the female
> scientist
> Macoby.
>
>
> Michael Handelman wrote:
>
> > Two recent incidents have sparked my curiosity, in
> > critiquing biological determinism and the
> > postmodernist ideology of "difference":
>
> The two concepts "determinism" and "biological
> determinism"
> can be easily abused by reactionaries, but can also
> - because of
> that abuse, be regarded in a non materialistic and
> hysterical  way
> by people who object to the abuses.
> Ilan
>
>
>
>      --- from list
> aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---


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