The fantastic part of the brain is that it is not hard wired. Yet we are as much what our hormones tell us as what we think. And what we think and do effects our hormones and who we are.
This is a difficult discussion to have openly and honestly. Hormonal influences don’t excuse or explain behavior, any more than we can say our thoughts are always in control what we do.
We want simple causal relationships to explain what happens or why we think or behave in a certain way.
We are just too complex to fit into an ‘if then statement’

We are programed to spread our DNA, that too has a wide range of expression but it effects all on a basic level. Male and female are both profoundly effected by estrogen, oxytocin, and testosterone.

Everything from riding a roller-coaster, buying a lottery ticket, eating a chocolate bar, watching a movie, playing a sport, talking to another, listening to music or any thought or action you can imagine changes the hormonal mix in our heads.
Much of our being and action is directly intended to mix and stir the hormonal cocktail that bathes the brain.

Words and images matter in the mix as do our actions.
words lead to war or bring peace, bring love or cause hate, offer hope or dash opportunity.

Modern society in the US is the sorcerer apprentice in exploiting hormone brain interactions, creating an unstable society in the process.

It is a wonder it works as well as it does.

I will listen, and hope your guests will tickle a little dopamine and serotonin in my brain.

“The fantastic part of the brain is that it is not hard wired. Yet we are as much what our hormones tell us as what we think. And what we think and do effects our hormones and who we are.” -Yar

This is about as on the mark as can be, thanks, Yar…should be an interesting show.

Has anyone done an double blind randomized trial gifting dolls and trucks to boys and girls and seeing who plays with what?

Maybe I should recuse myself from this debate, being post-menopausal now for about 15 years. I was told to expect a lift from the influx of non-estrogen hormones, and I can’t quite remember anymore. (I had read that men get a boost in female hormones about the same time in their lives, late middle age, making them more nurturing, more into nest-building in their later years.)
But the babyboomer females constitute quite a large part of the population, whatever we are, neither male nor female.

Let’s not forget the effects of hormones in shaping the brain’s development. There are distinct differences in the hormone mix between teen males and females.

I hope she discusses the role of hormones on behavior, particularly testosterone.

There are few things a woman may experience that I can’t understand. There are many things a woman will experience that I experience in the same way. There is something universal in humans that goes a lot deeper than gender.

I thought women inherited their empathy from something recessive in their father’s DNA. I read that in Newsweek about a decade ago.
And I read in the same place that men are less hard-wired for empathy but learn it from their mother’s.
(I had to switch off the radio for a bit; sorry if I missed that.)

But the empathy/systems-understanding split (male to female) is different from the differences I have noted in the scientific debate.
I have noted the left side seen as male (politically speaking, the reasoning side, the side that can read and got a lift from the era of writing), and the right side seen as female (visual, emotive). (But why seen that way? The matriarchal systems of pre-history gave way to patriarchy when the left brain became the dominant need in a more systematic society?)

With the differences in structure shown with MRI, I would think it’s self-evident that there are basic differences between genders. Anyone who would argue otherwise, I suspect is trying to bend fact to personal preference.

Gender neutral parenting is like treating every child the same. Each individual has their own needs and responds in their own way.
As s parent with two daughters that have very different personalities. One demanded what she wanted the other tossed her hair at less than 6 months of age and smiled to get what she wanted.
Nature or nurture? The feedback system makes it hard to tell.

To the tear study. Why didn’t they collect tears from both sexes and see if same gender tears effect the individual as those of the opposite gender.

@Rick Evans: It’s actually a good question that you ask, not for evidence of hard-wired differences but rather that role of socialization from birth. I don’t know of one using trucks vs. dolls to get at gender, but there is a landmark study from the 50s using black dolls and white dolls to show how racism has already imprinted itself on toddlers. It was repeated recently; though not in a lab context, it’s really compelling:
http://www.understandingrace.org/lived/video/index.html
(fast-forward to about 40% in)

Jeezum crow but people have a hard time thinking clearly about this.
Ann: “I tried to raise my kids gender-neutral but it didn’t work, therefore I conclude that gender differences are innate.”
Cordelia Fine: “Well it’s impossible to raise a child in a truly gender-neutral fashion.”
Ann: “Oh well I suppose it’s true that my kids’ environment wasn’t truly gender-neutral.” WHAT?? Thanks for the call, Ann, but I find myself hoping you feel a bit embarrassed.

I couldn’t discern what point the next lady was trying to make—yes, many men are unhappy when a woman to whom they are close is crying and upset—the interesting thing about this experiment was not the “men vs. women” thing, but rather the direct effect on hormone levels by pheromones in tears.

And this latest guy kicks the whole thing off by accusing Fine of cherry-picking data to support a predetermined conclusion? That’s quite a serious charge. Now he’s interrupting, and he seems like quite an arrogant jerkoff.

Are you having a victimhood attack David?

I would like to hear Cordelia explain the fact that boyd do SEEM to have shorter attention span and are not able to concentrate as well as girls do.

Thank you

I know plenty of boys who can sit down in school for hours. I have 3 of them (1 of them maybe a little less than the others). How about the stereotype that boys are more active and as a result cannot sit still. Then they are expected to do just that and teachers do not expect them to behave otherwise (the boys will be boys type of attitude)

The reason gender is not hard-wired even though it’s mediated by hormones is because diet, behavior and response to environmental stimuli mediate hormone axes.

It’s easy to recognize how bias shaped past science. For example, science used to deny women education or voting rights. But I’m very skeptical that bias no longer shapes science, even your guests. There are just so many claims being made in every direction. Politics always seems to lurk behind them, whether nuero-sexist or neuro-feminist. My only recourse is complete skepticism of all sides. I don’t like being manipulated by people with agendas.

It would be terrible to have no differences between men and women, but just because there is difference doesn’t mean one is better than the other. I have been to a co-ed school and a boys only school, and I cannot conclude one was absolutely better than another.

Maybe environmental changes affect male physiology more than female. I hear the complaint that boys are being expected to pay attention the way that is more syntonic (if that’s the word) to females at age 6.
Pre-industrial revolution did boys have the same rate of ADD? Or did schoolmarms tolerate disorder more? I’m thinking of the pre-WWII German school system of physical discipline. I think it’s more about the tendency to be compliant than the ability to pay attention. The same boy who can’t pay attention when you tell him to will pay attention — huge and long attention — when it’s his own intention.
So it could be innate learning to go one’s own way around age 5, whereas girls about age 5 are more into learning to adapt to the way someone else is proceeding.
Boys, rebels. Girls, accommodaters.

I’m trying to understand why it could possibly be a bad thing that men and wowen are intrinsically different. It seems to me that, for the most part, our differences are certainly there and are mostly complementary. Why is Cordelia (among others) spending so much time researching this? What important social changes is she hoping to effect with her findings? What’s the big picture goal? I think this is an interesting conversation but not that important to the betterment of our world.

Excellent discussion – but look at how it is being played out. Sacks is highly emotional about any criticism of his work – Dr Fine is forced to remain calm and rational. In Britain this is being discussed in the British Psychological Society journal and Simon Baron-Cohen,like Sachs, is defensive and petty in his response. The style of discourse reflects broader patterns of gender relations. We should be asking why the topic is so emotive – possibly something to do with how it challenges the gender status quo.

I meant “environmental” meaning toxins in the air and water, PCB’s and so on. We learn that lots of these toxins have estrogen-like aspects, which may be part of why girls are hitting puberty YEARS earlier than they did 50 years ago.
So I’m wondering what those “industrial era” environmental influences affect boys (especially since those toxins might be estrogen-like).

I was raised by a very traditional Father who would constantly tell me I wouldnt want to learn how to fix a car etc. those are boys things. Yet I loved that stuff then and I still love it now. I am now a pinsetter mechanic at a bowling alley, but I am not like a boy. I am girly, I wear make-up, and have long hair, and I absolutely LOVE animals! Yet I am a mechanic and LOVE it!
How do you explain that? I certainly wasn’t raised that way.

I wish they would stop asking her to respond to anecdotes, or, like that Sax fellow, people who call her views “predetermined” when they clearly aren’t. That isn’t how science works. You don’t have to agree with her conclusions to know that.

What about women’s proclivity toward jewelry? No matter whether it’s now or centuries ago, no matter where we live or what our financial status, I’ve noticed that we LOVE jewelry. And men, for the most part, don’t seem to be as predisposed to adorning themselves. How can that be explained?

I think Mr. Sax’s observations regarding boys’ behavior and learning-readiness in elementary and middle school are very valid and should be of great concern to us if we wish to see our public education system succeed in helping boys stay in school. Public schools have set the bar based upon girls language and cooperative skills as early as elementary school. This standard has cast boys’ behavior in a bad light. Behavior that was once accepted as normal, is now considered problematic and, sometimes, worthy of punishment. And the higher the bar is raised, the more uncomfortable and “difficult” boys may actually behave in reaction to this. This is a slippery slope. Either our teachers have to take these differences into account or offer single-sex education. Statistics show that the number of boys participating in high school and college is rapidly dropping and we need to address this or we’ll end up with a society of educational “haves and have-nots” broken down along gender lines. What kind of society would that be?

To Clint,

I am a woman and I don’t wear jewelry. Very very rarely.
Maybe, on special occasion, if that. I don’t wear earnings, only rings and necklaces and I have a handful, gathering from years of someone gifting them to me.

I don’t like bling!
Yet look at some male rappers and hip-hop artists. They got them brilliants in the their TEETH!!!

Re boys and ADHD:

As a little girl, I remember extensively acting out, misbehaving, horsing around, etc.

However, I wasn’t permitted to carry on like this because this behavior was labeled “unladylike” and not suitable for little girls.

My misbehavior was systematically corrected and controlled through physical discipline, shaming/humiliation, etc. (This was during the early-to-mid-1980s, just before Ritalin and ADD/ADHD diagnoses became wildly popular.)

I see my young male relatives exhibiting almost identical behavior now, and everybody smiles knowingly and says, “Boys will be boys.” This difference in attitude strikes me as absurd.

@nonconformist

You are absolutely correct!
I already started doing that with my son, allowing him to misbehave BECAUSE he is a boy and not making him sit and listen to the story and letting him roam around and be active.
If I had a daughter, I would most definitely be a lot harder on her to make her read and sit and pay attention and study more. I think because for generations, as we were growing up, women were considered inferior and unable to move up the social chain. So I would want to be harder on my daughter to ensure that she was extra prepared to deal with this injustice.

But I also agree with Cordelia in terms of (if I understand it correctly) not comparing men to women, boys to girls and looking at the individual child when it comes to picking an education route and determining his/her strengths.

Very good topic Tom. A lot of controversy!

I thought the Little Rascals clip was funny, and it reminded me of an incident that happened to me in first grade (I’m 55). There was a pretty blond girl in my class named Christine. I thought she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen and was completely smitten. The other boys were playing games involving “girls have cooties” and putting dog “dooke” (sp?) on sticks and chasing girls around, which I thought was infantile. Anyway, I didn’t know that Christine had felt harassed by boys and had sought help from the teacher.

I decided I needed to proclaim my love for Christine and prepared myself to approach her during recess. In earnest, I went up to her, and before I could say a word she slapped me across the face! In complete bewilderment I said, “why did you do that?” She said, “teacher said, if a boy gets fresh with you, slap him across the face!” Needless to say, I never liked that battle axe I had as a first grade teacher…she was no Miss Crabtree, I can tell you that, anyway!

As a Psych PA who treated ADD [with or without H]I feel that the distinction made by Ann is correct and that focus, or lack of it is less gender-based than on the biochemistry of each individual. Some males are more frequently diagnosed as they are more physically disruptive, but for the 8-10% of kids whose brain dopamine levels or sensitivity is low enough to interfere with attention, insight, focus… in multiple settings, [similar to kids with vision problems or dyslexias] performance [and even sleep] suffers. The lowest effective dose of appropriate medication, caffeine, etc. or brain training to correct the abnormality, can be life-changing [just as the right corrective lenses can be life-changing for those with vision problems. The hard part is customizing the modality to meet the needs of each individual -which is time-consuming [a resource often denied in favor of cost containment]. The good news is that you see immediately which modalities are working and which don’t. @ Lisa, sounds like you should be reassured you’ve done the right thing.

Viva La Difference!

Here is one quick fact that I personally find much undervalued in the every-day interactions between the sexes. I am just gonna throw it out there in the hope that I can come back and see a comment or two about this factor when I return.

It has been discovered that women who are in their fertile years are unconsciously repelled by the smell of men (this does not have to be a consciously noticeable smell by the way)but they are unconsciously attracted by a man’s odor when they are ovulating. This is a powerful effector of behavior that is explained and rationalized by the mind (which is once again the last to know) in many many ways, by both men and women, and it is an endless source of confusion that manifests itself in all kinds of bogus explanations. This may seem a trivial factor to some, that is easily dismissed, but I can only believe that is because the implications of this pervasive dynamic are not pleasant, do not square with out assumption of freewill, and have far more consequence than we would like to admit, both on a personal and social level.

Gender bias came into play and actually hindered the diagnosis of a learning disability in my son. When I discussed my concerns about his lack of interest/ ability in letters, numbers, coloring, etc. I was repeatedly told, “You can’t compare him to his sister – he is a boy, what do you expect?” Had I listened to those teachers both in preschool and kindergarten, we would not have diagnosed his dyslexia and we all would have been very frustrated.

“Wow. Leonard Sax is rude and egotistical. Posted by AnnH”

Rude? Sax directly and effectively refuted Fine’s position. He was not overly personal, sarcastic or mean, just argumentative.

Christine Fine’s reaction to Sax’s opening statement: “I’d like to start by saying that I am quite surprised by Leonard Sax’s sexist statement that he doesn’t draw on brain research – that he’s not promoting single sex schooling”

What basis does Fine have for calling Sax a “sexist”!? This is childish name calling, playing the “sexism” card when she is losing an argument. Cheap.

Felton, CA
I am a lesbian married to a woman who has a “male” type brain. She tries to “fix” my problems instead of listening, can’t find things in the fridge, and is more instrumental than relational. It isn’t your gender but something else.

Things I find interesting about females:

How attractive a man looks physically changes with a woman’s perception of his financial worth. (all these have been proven experimentally by the way)

How attractive a man looks physically varies with the type of car he is seen driving.

That they are unconsciously repelled by the odor of men unless they are ovulating, then they are attracted to them.

That the most important thing about a man to a woman is frequently how other woman respond to him.

That woman find a man who has a mate more attractive than the same man without a mate.

That when a group of womans’ vaginas were wired with sensors and they were shown explicit sex movies and asked to rate how arousing they found the movies, they had very little notion of what their bodies found stimulating. I was especially amused to find that several lesbians were actually most aroused by straight heterosexual sex even though they consciously said the opposite.

The above are not my opinions they are just factors I find interesting.

In many traditional societies woman and men, with the exception of mating, and eating, lead almost entirely separate lives. Perhaps this is because they are more in touch with themselves and living with someone who usually is repelled by your odor is confusing and problematic, while the reciprocal living with someone who you have an irrational distaste for most of the time is not good either.

I was curious if someone would bring up gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender (born-with-the-wrong-gender-genitals). Once into that arena, science has wider challenges indeed.
at, I have never heard about that odor of men being appealing to women only when the female is ovulating. I think women might be more horny when not in the throes of PMS, premenstrual syndrome, and pro-gestational (maternal) hormones presiding.
I think the American standard of people mostly spending time with nuclear family puts huge strain on one relationship. In societies where tasks divide among hunters who are stronger and gatherers who tend the field and the home, then it makes sense for men to have traditions of working together, as teams, and for women to spend time together, working as teams. It seems counter-evolutionary to function the way we do.
I couldn’t exactly see the pro and con of the debate on air. Maybe I’m a Buddhist (yoga-type) at heart, but I thought if they want to argue about that feel free. I’ll pick off the parts I’m interested in.
I just turned 64, and I’m wondering whether a social dynamic that kept me away from men most of my life still applies. You hear about couples doing things together, sharing vacations, going out together, things like that. As a single person, I can either go out with a man (which means I’d better find a closeted homosexual or get ready for a courtship-type situation, which I’m not really healthy enough for), or I go out with other single women. And by the way, plenty of single women are actually paired up, so the totally untethered females are almost impossible to find. Maybe now that I’m WAY past fertility, maybe the norms change. But I doubt it. Most of my life has been in female-only environments (attending said schools, working at said schools), so. The parts of sexuality that pre-exist to puberty and post-exist after midlife, well, there’s a new one.)
I hope someone picks up on the effect of estrogen-like compounds in the environment on growing boys, seeing as how even 9-year-old girls begin to have breasts with the current onslaught. I can only imagine this must interfere with male development.

There’s a certain not-uncommon sort of coastal person who will make fun to no-end of the flyover state people that believe in “intelligent design” and can’t be convinced of the proven science of evolution.

And yet this same type of person will argue to no-end that men and women have the same facilities and perspectives, despite the evidence to the contrary, despite the observation of those differences in every other mammal species. When was the last time two female buffalo got together and butted heads to compete for a male? Two female chimps? Two female dolphins? It doesn’t happen. Ever. Because it’s “hardwired” by differences in hormones and genes that take effect from the first time the original egg divides into two cells.

So many great comments, I can’t keep up with them all, especially since this week has been filled with amazing comments on various subjects, including the tragedy in Arizona. So, forgive me if I can’t remember who posted what, or at what time and day.

Lisa, you were worried about your choice. The articulate poster, J.Ross, who is the PA-CH who responded so interestingly to my piece, said you were on the right track for your son. I wanted to tell you that I used to be friends, in late adult life, with a male sculptor. He often described to people what happened on the day that he took his first ritalin pill: his whole world changed; his whole life changed; all that amazing talent of his was finally able to be channeled correctly into his work, rather than being lost in a haze of the self-medications he used to try, which didn’t work anyway. He said it was as if the heavens opened up! In his case, ritalin WAS the right medication. Good for you and your son!

Liz, I am so glad that you are doing the mechanical work that you love so much! I’m female, and I had a good three-dimensional sense of things, but that wasn’t considered possible for girls. I could NOT understand abstract algebra (until much later), but excelled in solid geometry, while my 800-on-their-board-scores (the former “top” score) best friends fell down completely in solid geometry. I’ve told this before, but here goes again, I wanted desperately to take mechanical drawing, but because I was a girl I was not allowed to; if I were to ask one more time to do so, I was going to be expelled from my public high school. Even when I got to art school, we had a terrible and absent 3-D teacher. That was probably just one of the reasons that the other teachers never steered me to what I would have been more at home in: the sculpture department rather than the painting dept. (painting were I was once told by a surprised teacher, “you’re always trying to make things real). By then, sculpture seemed to ME, in the way of the world, to actually BE a guy thing, so, being naive and inexperienced, I didn’t know to steer myself there, and I didn’t know HOW to look at my basic “way of seeing”, which IS something I DO think teachers SHOULD be able to help a student identify.

When I finally got clay in my hands, I still didn’t get it because the class was about wheel throwing: vessels. But later, after a trip to Scandinavia where my 3-D imagination grew, THEN when I got clay in my hands again ….. off I went ….. making things real!!!!! By then, lots of females were in that field, but that had not been so when I was younger, since, at the leading end of the baby boom, there just weren’t that many of us. My main point is, few people saw “me” because they saw “girl” first. I was just a kid; my parents weren’t involved in the arts. It has been a long, decades-long struggle to figure out where my skills are, and I wind up to be someone whose “nature” is in the 3-D world. Even writing: I only learned to do it somewhat better AFTER I got involved in the arts, and, even then, the learning curve for my language use went up once again once I had a more solid involvement in the THREE-DIMENSIONAL arts; the 3-D arts that, in my age co-hort, was seen as the domain of the boys. In fact, it started on my first day of Kindergarten. I saw these REALLY big blocks, and I couldn’t wait to run over to use them! I could SEE what I could build with them!! The teacher stopped me dead in my tracks and very sweetly told me that they were for the boys, and then she introduced me to a girl I could be friends with (we DID become friends; but I was being steered toward “relationship” and away from “construction”). By the third grade I was in love with historical buildings. Can you imagine the avenues that were lost to a girl with interests like mine because I didn’t HAVE all the “building blocks” for what I was drawn to by my very nature!! (I had spent my pre-K years playing, with my brother and boy neighbors, in the woods, climbing trees every single day, making mud pies and playing with twigs and stones on the Big Rock we called Our Indian Trading Post. We buried a lot of dead birds, too, in very ceremonial structures we built to decorate the burial hole in the ground.)

I’m sure there is a parallel for all of this that applies to males. I DO believe that; it’s just that this is MY story, and I do think it is probably STILL pertinent. Forgive me that I’ve said some of it before, probably when we were discussing education.

Brett, your pieces are so interesting. On a related matter, I’ve never been able to carry a tune. But, I have a fantastic sense of rhythm. Before I got sick, including in my hips and pelvis, there wasn’t a good male dancer with a sense of rhythm whom I couldn’t follow. People from the Caribbean would ask me what “island I was from” because I could so easily give bodily expression to the poly-rhythms of Latin music. I took to a drumming circle like I’d been doing it my whole life. Yet, I’m a female. I would never have been steered toward drums when I was young, tho part of that, once again, has to do with my exact age group (early sixties).

Speaking of which, Ellen Dibble, you said that you just turned 64. You and I have noticed that we are near to one another in age, but right now, what I want to say is, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! (probably somewhat belatedly, but it sounds like it was recently!)

Thanks everyone!

To Ann:

No Ann, I don’t mind at all. Your appreciation is gold to me, so you have in fact payed me for my writing. Thanks.

To all:

Once again the majority of the posters here, as evidenced by the many comments on genetics, endocrinology, anthropology, and evolutionary psychology (and I enjoyed almost all of them) are more hip to what is going on, than the guest on the show seemed to be.

Well, for some reason that first thank-you didn’t show up, so I wrote another, and then they both did. . . .oh well. I meant them both anyhow.