Testosterone Rex

I'm not a scientist. (Said in the voice of a politician trying to evade a question to his policies.) Chances are, neither are you so we are dependent on what scientists tell us in order to understand scientific topics. Thing is, we don't read their papers, which are written for other scientists, instead relying on journalist and popularizers, or worse, pronouncements of others who rely on popularizers. In the end, there are several levels of politics operating, from the lowest level as pointed out by [a:Thomas Kuhn|14249553|Thomas Kuhn|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]Kuhn, to the distortions of marketing/capitalism and alternative truths. In other words, we are informed ultimately by our culture. In such a climate, how do we know what to believe? Some ideas seem to make sense superficially but are easily debunked. E.g. "it's those illegal immigrants that are taking our jobs". Others are more complex such as "Islam is a religion of peace" or "Sexual dimorphism through evolution has made males more comfortable with taking risks."

One particular cultural distortion which I am claiming as my own personal issue lately is the denial of our interiority. It is the attitude that our awareness, being private data and outside the domain of science is generally to be ignored in favor of the public data of brains and hormones and measurable behaviors. Now that you know my prejudice, you can see why I would be attracted to a book whose thesis is that sexist culture has distorted how we organize and theorize about gender related data and that the evolution based theory which supports the natural outcome of male dominance does not have the rational backing that is claimed for it.

Ms. Fine makes an excellent case for the set of theories she is calling Testosterone Rex doesn't have the scientific support many people have assumed. And she does so in an interesting, intelligent and entertaining style. I learned a lot from this book and had a good time doing it. I only gave her 4 stars because I sometimes got tired of reading so much technical stuff. I wanted to be entertained more.

So much research these days claims to find testosterone-this or hardwired-gender-difference-that. Risk-taking, competitiveness, ability, even childhood toy preference. Cordelia Fine somewhat exasperatedly follows up with crucial context—“the rest of the story,” if you will: yes, but this study didn’t consider corticoid levels; yes, but that other study neglected such-and-such findings; and most crucially yes, but it’s staggeringly difficult to isolate this effect from social and cultural factors. Nevertheless, she persiidentifies clever ways in which these issues have been studied, and the gist is: context matters. A lot.

Science requires reproducibility. Reproducible results are best obtained when there are a small number of variables—hard to achieve with something as richly messy as a human life. Once one compensates for the factors overlooked in much research, plus publication bias, plus just plain built-in human bias, few effects survive scrutiny. Yes, we’re different—deliciously so, in my view!—but not in any way that affects ability. Not even in the slightest bit.

Fine writes with a sardonic bite that worked well to start with but grew tiresome. I was also highly disappointed in her somewhat off-context quoting of [a:Robert Sapolsky|187|Robert M. Sapolsky|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1234040721p2/187.jpg]—a hero of mine—and her failure to acknowledge his groundbreaking work decades ago in [b:breaking down testosterone myths|20668|The Trouble with Testosterone and Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament|Robert M. Sapolsky|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1442520163s/20668.jpg|21856]. And, dear FSM, what has happened to proofreading? Much as I want to grant four stars, much as I think this is important work that needs to be read, I can only justify three. (Goodreads, could we have fractional stars please?)

On a side note, I find myself fortunate to have read this just before and just after the 2018 Women’s March where I was surrounded by thousands of strong, powerful, capable human beings of all genders and colors, many of whom are living under the culturally-imposed “oh, you just aren’t able to do these sorts of things.” All of whom categorically reject that, as does Fine and as do I and, I trust, you. #resist.

And on another side note: if you’re interested in these sorts of gender issues, I urge you to listen to this episode of the Hidden Brain podcast in which two progressive parents attempt to raise their children free of gender stereotypes and much loveliness ensues.

"Testosterone Rex” writes Cordelia Fine, an excellent writer with a sharp sense of humour, “is the myth that squashes hopes of sex equality. Testosterone Rex is the name she gives to “that familiar, plausible, pervasive and powerful story of sex and society”, which holds that inequality of the sexes is natural, not cultural.

There is a widely shared assumption that the effect of testosterone on the male brain chemistry is what makes boys the stereotypical males, and of course its absence, is what makes girls the stereotypical women. The story goes like this: 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 also abstract systems such as politics and music. Higher testosterone levels make men intrinsically competitive, goal-oriented, and sometimes socially insensitive, while lower testosterone levels provide women with the hard-wired talent for communality, collaboration, intuition and empathy. Testosterone makes men to naturally prefer higher and riskier jobs, make boys and girls prefer to play with different kind of toys. Shouldn’t then we just accept that boys and girls brains have evolved to be different?

Not so, says Cordelia Fine. In the Testosterone Rex she attempts to dismiss the biological differences between the sexes. She delves deep into science and finds that rejecting the testosterone rex view does not require the denial of evolution or differences in the evolution of sex. Fine addresses the flexibility and the dynamism of sex, the plasticity of the brain, and the gender constructions that penetrate just about every aspect and our society and form the core part of our developmental system. These gender constructions is the key to understand the complex interrelations among sex, gender, and society and they provide a potential explanation for how robust sex differences in preferences, such as toy preferences or the colour coding in toys, for example, “develop around the age that children develop a firm understanding of which side of critical social divide of gender they belong.”

Rearranging gender in the human development system it is not easy, writes Fine, it “involves the reconstruction of the social structures, values, norms, expectations, schemas, and beliefs that penetrate our minds, interactions, and institutions”, all that that influence, interact and become entangled with our biology.

If we want a society that geniously values equal opportunity for development, employment, economic scrutiny, safety, respect, regardless of sex, then we need to change our values not science. We need to be a bit more loud and disruptive. And “stop blaming Testosterone Rex, because that kind is dead.”

Fine sets out to examine an assumption, both explicit and explicit, in our culture that men are genetically predisposed to take risks because they produce more testosterone than women. She examines this assumption thoroughly and systematically. I enjoy books that challenge me and send me to other books and research, and Testosterone Rex certainly did both.

I have read a number of reviews that accuse this book of being a straw man argument and cherry-picking evidence. I found neither to be true. In fact, this is one of the strengths of this book.

Although the organizing principle of this book (men are more likely to take risks because testosterone) could be said to be a straw man argument, Fine is careful to present this point of view not by plucking it from the thin air, but by presenting a documented instance of this idea. Often, she presents and cites a number of instances.

The idea of cherry-picking seems shocking to me. Fine repeatedly presents data that doesn't entirely agree with her overall hypothesis. In some cases, she does find fault with the methodology of these studies, but in others, she modified her hypothesis based on the available data.

This is a superb example of what popular science writing should be. It presents the cutting edge of science and explains how this challenges the world we think we know.