Delusions of Gender

Siddhartha Golu reviewed Delusions of gender by Cordelia Fine

Review of 'Delusions of gender' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A fine book which dives deep into the prevalent social attitude of creating gender differences and how difficult it becomes to disassociate oneself from the gendered identity. The more I think about gender, more and more I become entangled into this weird loop of seeing every social thing in a different light.

Those seemingly-innocent "bro" comments between male friends, saying that the new hire in the team is a "diverse candidate", claiming "they don't have the balls to do it" as if two-round-eggs-in-a-sac somehow magically makes you superior to everyone else - all of these reinforce the gender stereotypes. Cordelia discusses at length about all the subtle cues that we don't even notice but which has a pretty significant impact on how we treat others. It's amazing how difficult it has become in today's world to not discriminate sexually, more so especially for a parent to bring up their children …

A fine book which dives deep into the prevalent social attitude of creating gender differences and how difficult it becomes to disassociate oneself from the gendered identity. The more I think about gender, more and more I become entangled into this weird loop of seeing every social thing in a different light.

Those seemingly-innocent "bro" comments between male friends, saying that the new hire in the team is a "diverse candidate", claiming "they don't have the balls to do it" as if two-round-eggs-in-a-sac somehow magically makes you superior to everyone else - all of these reinforce the gender stereotypes. Cordelia discusses at length about all the subtle cues that we don't even notice but which has a pretty significant impact on how we treat others. It's amazing how difficult it has become in today's world to not discriminate sexually, more so especially for a parent to bring up their children in a gender-neutral way.

It's all about the mindset, but this benign word is the most difficult to change. I'm not claiming myself to be immune either. I can't count how many times I've said something really stupid when discussing something with my girlfriend, and it's only when she objects on my choice of words that I pause and reflect on how wrong it was. Reading this book was one baby step towards consciously trying to change that status quo, and I'd recommend doing this to everyone else as well.

arkadione reviewed Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine

Review of 'Delusions of Gender' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

She's a real gem. The author blends wit with hard facts to explain this complicated 'science' between 'sex differences'. I laughed out loud more than once while reading this very serious, but very easy to read book.

Hope reviewed Delusions of gender by Cordelia Fine

Review of 'Delusions of gender' on 'GoodReads'

3 stars

Good to read if you have ever put stock in those WHY GIRLS VS GUYS or ever thought about gender neutral parenting failures (the most interesting and enlightening part of the book IMO). I'm giving this only 3 stars because i wAS SO BORED reading this, but that was because this is gender 101 and I was like "yeah ok duh" or "ok fine ur basic and cisexist but also this is better than nothing" like should most people read this YES it's actually really accessible and clever and funny! I definitely learned stuff, and now I have concrete evidence to point to in arguments I guess? But yeah pretty basic wrt gender theory, not queer or trans inclusive at all really.

Lavinia reviewed Delusions of gender by Cordelia Fine

Review of 'Delusions of gender' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Sex and Brains!

Is your brain male or female?

That was the title of BBC documentary in 2014. In one of the documentary interviews, Michael Mosley, a British physician claimed that “studies” have found that women are better at “empathizing and communicating”, while men are better at “systematising” which means understanding and building systems-not just computers and machinery, but abstract systems such as politics and music. Michael Mosley has been strongly influenced by the work of Professor Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge University who argued that the differences between male and female brains occur because of the higher testosterone levels in the womb. No need to say who have the highest levels.

More... Sex and Brains! | Athena
https://athenadr.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/sex-and-brains/

Bastian Greshake Tzovaras reviewed Delusions of gender by Cordelia Fine

Review of 'Delusions of gender' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

A great book debunking many of the scientific claims often made on gender differences, especially from the neuroscience/psych-crowd.

It always irks me if people want to use scientific publications to justify stuff like this. Not because I'd prefer them not to be true, but because I'm only too aware that making it through peer review isn't a good indicator about how well done the experiments were. Just ask Rosie Redfield and her successful push against the stupid arsenic life-stuff.

Many different studies are discussed in some detail and lots of flaws in those studies are shown: lack of controls and/or statistical power, multiple testing, the general problems of fMRI, alternative explanations fitting the data as well or even better etc.

Recommended for: everyone who likes to see overselling scientific claims destroyed, people who want to disarm the arguments of those who believe in inherent gender differences.