March 4, 2008
My Brain Is Smaller Than Your Brain. So What?
The Washington Post fell headlong into some very hot water with an opinion piece by Charlotte Allen that ran in last Sunday’s paper: “Women vs. Women: We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?” Since then, Allen, her now-infamous piece, and the paper’s editorial judgment have been roundly kicked from one end of the blogosphere to the other.
Among Allen’s most, uh, scalding suggestions: Women’s smaller brains make us worse drivers, reasoners, mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers. “The theory that women are the dumber sex—or at least the sex that gets into more car accidents—is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence,” she writes. “Men’s and women’s brains not only look different, but men’s brains are bigger than women’s (even adjusting for men’s generally bigger body size). The important proportional difference is in the parietal cortex, which is associated with space perception — critical to skills like driving. But visuospatial skills, the capacity to rotate three-dimensional objects in the mind, at which men tend to excel over women, are also related to a capacity for abstract thinking and reasoning, the grounding for mathematics, science, and philosophy.”
Science to the rescue. Jake Young, an M.D./Ph.D. candidate at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, tackles some of Allen’s claims over at the blog Pure Pedantry. First there’s his headline: “WaPo Spouts Some Hooey About Sex Differences.”
He reviews the data and finds Allen’s assessment less than persuasive. “…There is no evidence that women perform worse on spatial tasks in general,” he writes. “The data suggests that on average women perform spatial tasks differently than men (although there is a great deal of overlap in the distributions of that trait). For example, in spatial navigation, women are more likely to use landmarks than men. However, this trait does not generalize into a deficit in spatial ability relative to men, and it certainly does not generalize to a general deficit in mathematical ability.”
Oh, and Young would like to note that “the notion that brain size is correlated with intelligence or mental ability was abandoned by serious neuroscientists long ago.” Phrenology and eugenics, anyone?
Meanwhile, Kieran Hieley over at Crooked Timber offers up “an ecological interpretation” of what leads newspapers to publish “Sunday-supplement piffle like this.” If you spot other academic blogs’ takes on—or takedowns of—Allen’s piece, send ‘em in.
[FWIW—which is not much, if you ask some people—the editor of the Post’s Outlook section claims that the piece was “tongue-in-cheek.” One blogger responded: “Dear Washington Post: If you want people to understand that your b******* is ‘tongue-in-cheek,’ you should not hire a woman who has written widely as an anti-feminist. Also, you might want to check with the author to make sure she was being tongue-in-cheek.”]
(Pure Pedantry link via The Huffington Post.)
Jennifer Howard | Posted on Tuesday March 4, 2008 | Permalink
I lived my last life as a man, this current one as a woman. Having experienced both, I can tell you that being a man is like being an electric sign with half the lights burned out.
— marci Mar 4, 03:18 PM #
Now THAT was tongue-in-cheek…Right?
— Tracy G. Mar 4, 03:44 PM #
Actually, it’s a big wad of Double Bubble.
— marci Mar 4, 04:24 PM #
“The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long – and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy.”
— replicants are smarter than humans Mar 4, 05:01 PM #
I read the article and spent a lot of time writing a response directly to their “e-mail us your thoughts” address before seeing this today and realizing that the article had already been torn apart in the blogosphere. I have to agree with the “tongue-in-cheek” comment at the end of this post. I could tell that the article was written partially to get us all mad and partially as a joke. But I didn’t find the joke funny at all, rather, I found it quite oppressive. I think that many readers would not interpret it as a joke, especially given that there was so much seemingly serious “science” in there. So even if I figured it out as “tongue-in-cheek”, it still angers me that men and women out there are taking it seriously and seeing their gender stereotypes being confirmed. It just sets us so far back.
— Katherine Mar 4, 07:33 PM #
Actually, no tongue in cheek, I think the idea that female and male brains have relative strengths and weaknesses is pretty cool, and certainly gives females a good excuse for coupling with that most dangerous, lethal, and unpredictable of all animals: the male human. A fully lesbian world just wouldn’t get as much accomplished or solved.
— marci Mar 4, 08:07 PM #
As the blogosphere and posters here once again demonstrate: Satire and self deprecating humor about women is taboo. If only we were so quick to concede the hypocrisy and denounce the similar treatment of men. Clearly marci, your make it clear that is okay with you. What is good for the goose … . Ahh In Praise of Folly.
— hhgonzo Mar 5, 03:14 AM #