Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference. by CORDELIA FINE. New York: W. W. Norton Comp

INVITED REVIEW ESSAY Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference. By CORDELIA FINE. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences.ByREBECCAM. JORDAN-YOUNG. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010. Letitia Meynell “…we’re only trying to find the biological roots to gender inequality, so why be fussy, right?” (Fine, 108). That the search for dimorphic cognitive, affective, and behavioral sex differences con- tinues is no doubt a source of anxiety for those who have long embraced a feminist or progressive ideal of equality for all postnatal humans, regardless of their sex/gender (or other) identities. Indeed, the prevalence of media reports and best-selling accounts of scientific findings of fundamental neurological, psychological, and behavioral sex differences, in addition to the studies themselves, may give the most ardent feminists among us occasion to suspect that there might just be something to it: Putting aside the many queer, trans, and intersexed exceptions—for which some biological explanation must also, presumably, exist—a rational consideration of the mountain of evi- dence surely suggests that our natural history really has produced two fundamentally different types of people: men and women. Or so one might suppose. Feminists strug- gling with this haunting doubt would do well to take a look at Cordelia Fine’s Delu- sions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference and Rebecca Jordan-Young’s Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences as effective remedies. These recent books join a now extensive literature by feminist aca- demics, both within and outside the biological and mind sciences, that meticulously and critically dissect empirical claims about human sex differences as they pertain to cognition, emotions, and behavior. Depressingly, though both address current as well as recent research, the heart of their criticism is familiar to feminists: much of the research on sex differences is, by ordinary scientific standards, bad science. Further- more, hopes for the future rest on proper controls for sexist bias and a successor science that adequately reflects the diversity of our (and, indeed, other) species. Hypatia vol. 28, no. 3 (Summer 2013) © by Hypatia, Inc. Invited Review Essay 685 Although they address much of the same material and draw some of the same conclusions (at least about the sciences), the two books have quite different approaches and virtues and will appeal to somewhat different audiences. Important to note is that neither author advocates abandoning the scientific study of human sex differences. Rather, both encourage the adoption of more nuanced, careful, and meth- odologically robust approaches to the subject. Neither denies average differences in the embodiment or behavior of various populations of human males and females— including, but not limited to, chromosomal differences, differences in hormonal pro- files, or differences in sexual behavior. Care, however, is required to parse such claims. Variability within female and male populations along any given measure, the interconnections and causal relations of the relevant physiological, psychological, and social systems, and the contingency of their development are complexities that any credible scientific study of sex differences must address. Fine and Jordan-Young target the inadequacies of some of the methods and practices found in recent research on sex differences. Moreover, they clearly reveal the looping effects among these methods, the results of this research, and the present (if disavowed) sexism in our society. Feminist theorists will find that, though it revisits familiar territory, Delusions of Gender is still worth reading. Eminently readable and accessible to nonacademic audiences, Fine’s book pulls diverse threads together into a clear, concise, and compelling account. She divides her book into three parts—thefirstprovidingasocialcontext, the second exploring the weaknesses of various research programs, and the third look- ing forward to how this research and related ideologies can be expected to shape our children. The first part, “‘Half-Changed World,’ Half-Changed Minds,” relates the folk and popular science of sex differences to the multiple delusions and contradic- tions that arise in a society that is convinced of its own sexual equality while still being, along almost every social measure, clearly unequal. Here Fine relies heavily on social psychology. Her sources include studies revealing the sexist decisions and actions that are consistently made by individuals who are nonetheless sincerely com- mitted to sexual equality, the role of associative memory in the production of sexist assumptions, and the role of stereotype threat in women’s underperformance and play-it-safe strategies. She then brings these tools to the home front and the work- place to show how double standards and subtle, exclusionary messages keep even the most successful women working double days, while generally relegating women to less desirable social positions. Though sobering stuff, this part does highlight the social construction and profoundly contextual nature of sex differences in cognitive and affective performance, capacities, and behavior, thus providing ample reason for thinking that those group differences that are found are consistent with a largely social explanation. In the second part, “Neurosexism,” Fine turns to the various scientific programs that attempt to offer biological explanations for sex differences. She develops a his- torical theme, begun in the previous section, showing how contemporary sexism (in science and society at large) repeats the errors and injustices of the past. Clearly, Fine favors breadth over depth here, identifying multiple types of putative sex differences and various research programs, from fetal hormone testing, preference tests in 686 Hypatia neonates, intersexed children’s play behavior, and nonhuman animal studies, to neuroimaging studies on adult humans. It is upon this latter project that Fine turns her most detailed and damning critique. Fine’s case is built from the numerous ways in which neuroimaging studies of cognitive and affective states and capacities are fraught, from the much derided reverse inferences (151–52) to shockingly small sam- ple sizes and built-in tendencies to find and report differences rather than similarities (135). In this way, Fine not only introduces her readers to neurosexism, but also to the larger problem of neurononsense (154). Fine concludes this section with disturb- ing studies that link the reading of reports of essential sex differences with a tendency “to be more confident that society treats women fairly, and to feel less certain that the gender status quo is likely to change” (185). Part III, “Recycling Gender,” narrates, through child psychology and the study of parental behavior, the ways in which children are shaped from birth to constantly present their own gender and police the gender of others. With children’s gender identity and sexual expression being molded by adults, other children, clothing, children’s programming, advertising, toys, and books, no parent in the societies of the contemporary global north can pretend to offer a nongendered upbringing for their children. Fine was inspired to write the book upon discovering “[her] son’s kindergarten teacher reading a book that claimed that his brain was incapable of forging the connection between emotion and language” (174). The take-home message—that the science of sex differences tends to essentialize social norms underlying sexual inequality and reifies them for our children’s futures—leaves one with the urge to make Delusions of Gender required reading for kindergarten teachers everywhere. Whereas Fine has written a popular science book, Jordan-Young has written a technical academic book that is fundamentally about scientific methods and their vulnerabilities to the ideologies of sex difference and, concomitantly, sexuality and sexual orientation. Jordan-Young’s book exemplifies a certain kind of science-studies project, providing an exhaustive survey of a research program (more than 300 indi- vidual studies [xii]) to uncover its history, methods, commitments, and, in this case, a variety of devastating flaws. Rather than the familiar contemporary ethnographic approach, she takes a more traditional stance, identifying herself as a scientific insider who is offering a kind of peer review of a particular research program (10–12). Unlike Fine’s polemical and political approach, Jordan-Young limits herself to an epistemo- logical analysis of the science that is consistent with uncontroversial scientific standards. Although she acknowledges the relevance of the science of sex differences in constructing larger sex/sexuality/gender norms, she does not, by and large, discuss it. Jordan-Young focuses on brain organization theory (BOT)—thetheorythatdraws together the variety of human chromosomes, hormones, brains, and genitals into a sex-dimorphic system. This theory implicitly underlies much of the research that Fine criticizes, making the two books interesting companion pieces. Proponents of BOT believe that just as humans develop sexually dimorphic genitals in utero, they also develop sexually dimorphic neurological and psychological characteristics. There are exceptions for whom genital development (intersexuals) and psychological development (intersexuals, transsexuals,

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