Vagina Dentata

As if by magic, another men and women have different brains nonsense story in the Scotsman. What is even more nonsense is that its being reported as ‘news’ with ‘new research’ when it is ancient and consistently badly reported.

“For a long time it was thought that the basic architecture of the brain was the same in both sexes, with behavioural differences between men and women put down to hormones and social pressures.”

No. We have know for a long time that the ‘architecture’ of male and female brains is different because of their different biological functions. Female brains have to deal with menstruation, pregnancy and child-birth, not unreasonable to think that this may lead to variation.

I don’t have a problem with the research itself which is about male and female reactions to pain and pain treatment. What I do object to is the infantile reporting and surprise at age-old lame assumptions:

“Meanwhile, other studies have found that the hippocampus, which is involved in short-term memory and spatial navigation, is proportionally larger in women than in men, which may come as a surprise given women’s reputation as poor map-readers.”

Could it be because its bollocks?

If you want to read about SCIENCE, read the original article in the New Scientist NOT in the press.

I get annoyed by this subject because I am regularly accused of having a ‘male’ brain. Given that I am a woman, look like a woman, do not have gender dysmorphia and have all the working bits and pieces I think its fair to say I have a woman’s brain m’lord. And those things that you think are ‘male’ such as remembering things in lists, reading maps and having a fixation with ordering my CD collection might be possible within a ‘woman’s brain’ in a woman’s body despite a society that tries to assign gender roles right down to my CD collection.

Lame. Lame. Lame. And bad science.