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Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society
“Beliefs about men and women are as old as humanity itself, but Fine’s funny, spiky book gives reason to hope that we’ve heard Testosterone rex’s last roar.” ―Annie Murphy Paul, New York Times Book Review Many people believe that, at its core, biological sex is a fundamental force in human development. According to this false-yet-familiar story, the divisions between men and women are in nature alone and not part of culture. Drawing on evolutionary science, psychology, neuroscience, endocrinology, and philosophy, Testosterone Rex disproves this ingrained myth and calls for a more equal society based on both sexes’ full human potential.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 24, 2017
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10215 people want to read
About the author
Cordelia Fine
10 books477 followersCordelia Fine is a prize winning author and academic. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Scientific American, and Times Literary supplement. Cordelia won the Royal Society Science Book Prize in 2017, and was awarded the 2018 Edinburgh Medal, which honors men and women of science who have made a significant contribution to the understanding and well-being of humanity. In 2023 she was named a 'living legend' by The Australian newspaper.
Cordelia has a PhD in Psychology from University College London and is Professor in the History & Philosophy of Science program at the University of Melbourne.
Photo credit: Peter Casamento
Cordelia has a PhD in Psychology from University College London and is Professor in the History & Philosophy of Science program at the University of Melbourne.
Photo credit: Peter Casamento
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 443 reviews
August 15, 2018
This is a book that argues against the traditionalist idea that basic biology means men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and never the twain shall meet. The different behavioural traits and social outcomes that men and women have are mostly down to social structures, Fine believes, not hormones or neurochemistry; in particular, testosterone is not some kind of magic substance that makes men stereotypically ‘masculine’, except for all the physical ways in which it definitely does. But, Fine argues, ‘potentially’, the fact that it has clear physical effects ‘may’ not mean that it's responsible for psychological effects as well.
If I sound a little cynical, it's because I went into this book hoping that it would convince me that gender differences have nothing to do with biology and that social inequities can all be removed by social means. I would love to believe this is the case, but I don't think this will be the book to put my niggling doubts to rest. So although I really enjoyed reading it – Cordelia Fine writes brilliantly, and made me laugh out loud several times – I am struggling with how good her arguments really were.
Most of the problems seemed to come under the two headings of straw-manning and begging the question. Her arguments are levelled at an imagined opponent – a supporter of the ‘testosterone rex’ hypothesis – whose gender essentialism is so extreme as to be scarcely realistic. She argues (convincingly!) that ‘there isn't a sharp line between the sexes’, but I don't think most ‘bio-essentialists’ think there is a sharp line – they think that there's a difference, with considerable overlap, between averages in the two sexes which is attributable to biological causes. This turns out to be basically what Fine thinks as well, so I was left wondering why it was all being presented as such an iconoclastic approach.
For instance, she argues that ‘neither promiscuity nor competition are necessarily the preserve’ of men only, apparently because ‘testosterone rex’ theory would predict women as faithful, uncompetitive partners. In fact, though, female ‘promiscuity’ is predicted by loads of evolutionary-biological theories – prehistoric polyandry is a central tenet of Barash's Out of Eden, for example. On the subject of status symbols, Fine likewise argues that ‘Resources and rank matter for females’ as though this is supposed to debunk anything – surely the image of women competing amongst themselves for status and ‘reproductive success’ is one of the hoariest stereotypes going?
So far so nit-picky, but things get weirder. Discussing the hypothesis that neural activity and behavioural patterns can be neatly divided into male and female, Fine concludes that
OK…so in other words, there are ‘personality traits, attitudes, interests, and behaviours’ that on average are gendered. Isn't this the exact opposite of her thesis?
It's not the only time her arguments seem to work against her conclusions. Looking into a study on financial risk-taking, which tested betting inclinations among two tribal groups in Asia, she summarises the results:
OK…so in other words, even in a matrilineal society, women are less inclined to financial risk than men? Again, this seems to say the opposite of what she wants it to say. Then later, on the subject of ‘brain sex’:
OK…so in other words, neuroscientists can tell your sex from your brain!? That's actually news to me! This was one of those times – and there were several in the book – where I somehow came away from Fine's arguments with more credence in the opposing view than I had had going in. There is something very strange going on here; it's like her tone is saying one thing, but her actual words are saying something different.
Perhaps even more problematic are those occasions where, from my point of view, it seemed that she was missing the argument altogether. The most glaring of these came early in the book when she discussed the classic Clark and Hatfield study of 1989, in which women solicited a one-night stand from male strangers and men solicited a one-night stand from female strangers on a college campus. Men turned down about a third of their offers, and women turned down 100 percent of theirs.
Fine's concern, when assessing these results, is to downplay any suggestion that the disparity comes from hormonal or biological first causes. So she makes the (I would have thought obvious) point that, far from revealing differences in libido, ‘what this study is actually primarily showing is women's lack of interest in being murdered, raped, robbed, or inflaming the interests of a potential stalker’. And…that's it. That's the full extent of her dismissal.
I read this bit almost open-mouthed. Surely the whole point is – WHY are men more likely than women to be murderers or rapists? Isn't that violence exactly the issue that a book about testosterone should be trying to grapple with? Far from killing off the biological argument, she's just kicking the can further down the road. It's frustrating, because in cultures with a lot of violence and cultures with very little violence, we see the same pattern: proportionally, across space, culture and time, ninety-nine percent of it involves men being violent to other men. Not only does this book fail to explain this, it fails even to address it.
Whether or not testosterone itself has any responsibility is an open question (I conclude, after finishing this book). Fine thinks social factors are much more important, which perhaps they are, although, again, many of the studies she cites seem to say the opposite. I must admit, living as I now do in the countryside, it's hard for me to square her approach with such practicalities as the way farmers routinely castrate cattle and pigs to control docility. If gendered behaviour like aggression and competitiveness were social constructs, this would seem to be unnecessary. (I note here that one usual objection to evo-psych theories – i.e. that animal behaviour has no bearing on human behaviour – is not open to Fine, since she herself bases many of her gender-busting arguments on the behaviour of cichlid fish and stick insects.)
The thing is, despite this litany of objections, I do agree with what Fine is saying overall, which is that social norms are hugely important in determining how men and women behave and how they ‘perform’ in society. Social structures matter, and we can make real differences in equality by challenging them. Nevertheless, if any of the observed differences in, say, workplace representation, do come down to biology, then, as she puts it, ‘equality of opportunity will never lead to equality of outcome’.
At this juncture, her response shifts to question – and perhaps not without reason – the motivations of those who insist on stressing this point.
I think she makes this point very well and it has to be taken seriously. Arguments about biological differences cannot be allowed to shade into excuses for fixable inequality or shitty behaviour. And we know that gender essentialism is bad for society – people who believe in it are more likely to enforce gender stereotypes, be lenient on sex crimes, and a raft of other depressing things. The problem is, none of that means they're wrong, and what I wanted from this book was a reason to tell these people that they are unequivocally wrong. The paragraph above is not a scientific argument at all, it's special pleading. She's basically saying, ‘we shouldn't shy away from unpalatable arguments, but this argument is unpalatable and we should shy away from it.’ It bothers me, not because I wish to ring-fence some biological gender-essentialism, but precisely the reverse – because I would love to be able to dismiss such arguments with authority. This book does not give you that authority.
What it does give you, buttressed by a lot of speculation and well-deployed sarcasm, is a nuanced version of the argument that both nature and nurture have a part to play. Perhaps this is news to some hardline bio-essentialists, but on the whole it seems – dare I say it – a little bland for someone presenting themselves as slaying the T-rex of received opinion. Far from T-rex going extinct, on the evidence of this book it's just…evolved into some kind of dispiriting bird.
Fine herself summarises her view like this: ‘the genetic and hormonal components of sex collaborate with other parts of the developmental system, including our gender constructions.’ That doesn't seem like something most people would argue with. But it doesn't seem like much of a revolutionary idea, either.
If I sound a little cynical, it's because I went into this book hoping that it would convince me that gender differences have nothing to do with biology and that social inequities can all be removed by social means. I would love to believe this is the case, but I don't think this will be the book to put my niggling doubts to rest. So although I really enjoyed reading it – Cordelia Fine writes brilliantly, and made me laugh out loud several times – I am struggling with how good her arguments really were.
Most of the problems seemed to come under the two headings of straw-manning and begging the question. Her arguments are levelled at an imagined opponent – a supporter of the ‘testosterone rex’ hypothesis – whose gender essentialism is so extreme as to be scarcely realistic. She argues (convincingly!) that ‘there isn't a sharp line between the sexes’, but I don't think most ‘bio-essentialists’ think there is a sharp line – they think that there's a difference, with considerable overlap, between averages in the two sexes which is attributable to biological causes. This turns out to be basically what Fine thinks as well, so I was left wondering why it was all being presented as such an iconoclastic approach.
For instance, she argues that ‘neither promiscuity nor competition are necessarily the preserve’ of men only, apparently because ‘testosterone rex’ theory would predict women as faithful, uncompetitive partners. In fact, though, female ‘promiscuity’ is predicted by loads of evolutionary-biological theories – prehistoric polyandry is a central tenet of Barash's Out of Eden, for example. On the subject of status symbols, Fine likewise argues that ‘Resources and rank matter for females’ as though this is supposed to debunk anything – surely the image of women competing amongst themselves for status and ‘reproductive success’ is one of the hoariest stereotypes going?
So far so nit-picky, but things get weirder. Discussing the hypothesis that neural activity and behavioural patterns can be neatly divided into male and female, Fine concludes that
differences between males and females may not “add up” in a consistent way to create two kinds of human nature; but rather, as with sex differences in the brain, create “mosaics” of personality traits, attitudes, interests, and behaviours, some more common in males than in females, others more common in females than in males.
OK…so in other words, there are ‘personality traits, attitudes, interests, and behaviours’ that on average are gendered. Isn't this the exact opposite of her thesis?
It's not the only time her arguments seem to work against her conclusions. Looking into a study on financial risk-taking, which tested betting inclinations among two tribal groups in Asia, she summarises the results:
Although in both societies the females bet less than the men, the gap was considerably smaller in the matrilineal Mosuo.
OK…so in other words, even in a matrilineal society, women are less inclined to financial risk than men? Again, this seems to say the opposite of what she wants it to say. Then later, on the subject of ‘brain sex’:
One way to think of it is like this: a neuroscientist certainly might be able to correctly guess your sex from your brain, but she wouldn't be able to guess the structure of your brain from your sex.
OK…so in other words, neuroscientists can tell your sex from your brain!? That's actually news to me! This was one of those times – and there were several in the book – where I somehow came away from Fine's arguments with more credence in the opposing view than I had had going in. There is something very strange going on here; it's like her tone is saying one thing, but her actual words are saying something different.
Perhaps even more problematic are those occasions where, from my point of view, it seemed that she was missing the argument altogether. The most glaring of these came early in the book when she discussed the classic Clark and Hatfield study of 1989, in which women solicited a one-night stand from male strangers and men solicited a one-night stand from female strangers on a college campus. Men turned down about a third of their offers, and women turned down 100 percent of theirs.
Fine's concern, when assessing these results, is to downplay any suggestion that the disparity comes from hormonal or biological first causes. So she makes the (I would have thought obvious) point that, far from revealing differences in libido, ‘what this study is actually primarily showing is women's lack of interest in being murdered, raped, robbed, or inflaming the interests of a potential stalker’. And…that's it. That's the full extent of her dismissal.
I read this bit almost open-mouthed. Surely the whole point is – WHY are men more likely than women to be murderers or rapists? Isn't that violence exactly the issue that a book about testosterone should be trying to grapple with? Far from killing off the biological argument, she's just kicking the can further down the road. It's frustrating, because in cultures with a lot of violence and cultures with very little violence, we see the same pattern: proportionally, across space, culture and time, ninety-nine percent of it involves men being violent to other men. Not only does this book fail to explain this, it fails even to address it.
Whether or not testosterone itself has any responsibility is an open question (I conclude, after finishing this book). Fine thinks social factors are much more important, which perhaps they are, although, again, many of the studies she cites seem to say the opposite. I must admit, living as I now do in the countryside, it's hard for me to square her approach with such practicalities as the way farmers routinely castrate cattle and pigs to control docility. If gendered behaviour like aggression and competitiveness were social constructs, this would seem to be unnecessary. (I note here that one usual objection to evo-psych theories – i.e. that animal behaviour has no bearing on human behaviour – is not open to Fine, since she herself bases many of her gender-busting arguments on the behaviour of cichlid fish and stick insects.)
The thing is, despite this litany of objections, I do agree with what Fine is saying overall, which is that social norms are hugely important in determining how men and women behave and how they ‘perform’ in society. Social structures matter, and we can make real differences in equality by challenging them. Nevertheless, if any of the observed differences in, say, workplace representation, do come down to biology, then, as she puts it, ‘equality of opportunity will never lead to equality of outcome’.
At this juncture, her response shifts to question – and perhaps not without reason – the motivations of those who insist on stressing this point.
I understand that attempts to identify the psychological factors that underlie sex inequalities in the workplace are well-meaning. And, of course, we shouldn't shy away from naming (supposedly) politically unpalatable causes of those inequalities. But when you consider the women who enter and persist in highly competitive and risky occupations like surgery and policing—despite the odds stacked against them by largely unfettered sex discrimination and harassment—casual scholarly suggestions that women are relatively few in number, particularly in the higher echelons, because they're less geared to compete in the workplace, start to seem almost offensive.
I think she makes this point very well and it has to be taken seriously. Arguments about biological differences cannot be allowed to shade into excuses for fixable inequality or shitty behaviour. And we know that gender essentialism is bad for society – people who believe in it are more likely to enforce gender stereotypes, be lenient on sex crimes, and a raft of other depressing things. The problem is, none of that means they're wrong, and what I wanted from this book was a reason to tell these people that they are unequivocally wrong. The paragraph above is not a scientific argument at all, it's special pleading. She's basically saying, ‘we shouldn't shy away from unpalatable arguments, but this argument is unpalatable and we should shy away from it.’ It bothers me, not because I wish to ring-fence some biological gender-essentialism, but precisely the reverse – because I would love to be able to dismiss such arguments with authority. This book does not give you that authority.
What it does give you, buttressed by a lot of speculation and well-deployed sarcasm, is a nuanced version of the argument that both nature and nurture have a part to play. Perhaps this is news to some hardline bio-essentialists, but on the whole it seems – dare I say it – a little bland for someone presenting themselves as slaying the T-rex of received opinion. Far from T-rex going extinct, on the evidence of this book it's just…evolved into some kind of dispiriting bird.
Fine herself summarises her view like this: ‘the genetic and hormonal components of sex collaborate with other parts of the developmental system, including our gender constructions.’ That doesn't seem like something most people would argue with. But it doesn't seem like much of a revolutionary idea, either.
March 14, 2018
I’ve enjoyed all three of the books by Fine I’ve read – but particularly Delusions of Gender, which was and is one of the best books on gender I’ve ever read. This book won an award for the best science book of 2017. I’ve so far bought it for 3 people – two of which have been my daughters.
Delusions of Gender is a book that considers how differences in male and female brains help to explain the all too obvious differences between the sexes. And it concludes that much of this brain science is grossly overstated or simply doesn’t prove any of these supposed differences at all. What that book does for the brain, this one does for hormones.
The bottom line here is that there just isn’t all that much difference between men and women. It’s annoying, I know, but there certainly isn’t nearly enough difference between us to need us to have fundamentally different brains or bodies seething (or probably bubbling over, if I’m going to keep my metaphors consistent) with pink or blue hormones.
Some of the humour in this book is a little out of place (in the sense that it isn’t all that funny) but otherwise this book is hard to put down.
And I really would prefer it if this book never needed to be written – you see, it would be great to believe that science is the kind of hypothesis testing, self-regulating, rational, show-me-the-evidence type of endeavour that it loves to claim itself to be. The problem is that when it comes to gender, science seems to ignore ‘the evidence’ and to run instead with ‘common-sense’. And common-sense says that the sexes are a bit like day and night, yin and yang, or an action movie vs a romantic comedy. The problem is that as soon as you poke the black bag of common-sense about gender with the pointy stick of empirical evidence it turns out that you can’t help noticing common-sense smells decidedly iffy.
A repeated theme here is the notion that testosterone makes men the world’s great risk takers. She spends much of the book showing that this is only true if we define male risk taking in ways that seem edger than the risks that women take – but that really, in many contexts women are equal to, if not greater risk takers, than men. And given the stats on men bashing or killing women, the crown for ‘world’s greatest risk-taker’ really doesn’t nearly so obviously go to men here. I’m not sure now if I read it in this book or not now, but as some guy said somewhere, when I go out on a date the worst that can happen is he has a boring conversation over a crap meal, whereas a bad date for a woman might involve being raped and murdered.
That is one of the things I particularly like about Fine – she presents an example that seems to utterly confirm our biases and be supported by our experience too, and then she shows how we have in fact been affected by our stereotypical visions of the roles of the sexes or by our culture’s presumptions.
When I rule the world both of her books on gender will be made compulsory reading. And not just because they help us understand how gender science is often rubbish – but also because they help us see how easy it is for otherwise intelligent people to ‘just know’ something must be right and to then fool themselves over and over again to confirm what they just know.
Delusions of Gender is a book that considers how differences in male and female brains help to explain the all too obvious differences between the sexes. And it concludes that much of this brain science is grossly overstated or simply doesn’t prove any of these supposed differences at all. What that book does for the brain, this one does for hormones.
The bottom line here is that there just isn’t all that much difference between men and women. It’s annoying, I know, but there certainly isn’t nearly enough difference between us to need us to have fundamentally different brains or bodies seething (or probably bubbling over, if I’m going to keep my metaphors consistent) with pink or blue hormones.
Some of the humour in this book is a little out of place (in the sense that it isn’t all that funny) but otherwise this book is hard to put down.
And I really would prefer it if this book never needed to be written – you see, it would be great to believe that science is the kind of hypothesis testing, self-regulating, rational, show-me-the-evidence type of endeavour that it loves to claim itself to be. The problem is that when it comes to gender, science seems to ignore ‘the evidence’ and to run instead with ‘common-sense’. And common-sense says that the sexes are a bit like day and night, yin and yang, or an action movie vs a romantic comedy. The problem is that as soon as you poke the black bag of common-sense about gender with the pointy stick of empirical evidence it turns out that you can’t help noticing common-sense smells decidedly iffy.
A repeated theme here is the notion that testosterone makes men the world’s great risk takers. She spends much of the book showing that this is only true if we define male risk taking in ways that seem edger than the risks that women take – but that really, in many contexts women are equal to, if not greater risk takers, than men. And given the stats on men bashing or killing women, the crown for ‘world’s greatest risk-taker’ really doesn’t nearly so obviously go to men here. I’m not sure now if I read it in this book or not now, but as some guy said somewhere, when I go out on a date the worst that can happen is he has a boring conversation over a crap meal, whereas a bad date for a woman might involve being raped and murdered.
That is one of the things I particularly like about Fine – she presents an example that seems to utterly confirm our biases and be supported by our experience too, and then she shows how we have in fact been affected by our stereotypical visions of the roles of the sexes or by our culture’s presumptions.
When I rule the world both of her books on gender will be made compulsory reading. And not just because they help us understand how gender science is often rubbish – but also because they help us see how easy it is for otherwise intelligent people to ‘just know’ something must be right and to then fool themselves over and over again to confirm what they just know.
March 18, 2017
This has really inspired me to stop reading popular science books by random people I find under the "feminism" tag on Goodreads. This book is not scientific & makes a lot of unprovable assertions not backed up by studies. For example, 97% of domestic abusers are male and she literally explains this by saying it's caused by the pressure of conforming to gender stereotypes. How does she know?? There's no study; that's just an opinion.
Once she cited a study showing that one time men and women did equally well on a math test. This seems obviously cherry-picky; anyone can look up statistics showing at the highest level of the math SATs boys outnumber girls 3:2; this effect is still persistent across higher-level math in different countries.
She spends a lot of time talking about how we shouldn't gender-code toys for children, but that doesn't have anything to do with how 85% of people with autism are boys, or how gay men report far more sexual partners than lesbian women, or how the vast majority of violent criminals and nearly all rapists are male, and how men have more aggression in every society measured.
I'm a bit disappointed because there were a lot of nice snippets in this book showing how sex differences in the research lab were rather small, but for me at least the point of science is to answer questions and make predictions about the world, so it's not helpful to tear down other people's research & then propose your own (unprovable) assertions. Our society has such massive sex differences & it felt like the author had no answers to that, just opinions that can't even be reasonably tested.
One cool actual fact I learned is that your chance of getting pregnant during a random act of unprotected intercourse is, on average, 3%. (She says this shows historically this practically meant sex was a care-free endeavor for women, which strikes me as ragingly insensitive to all the women who before reliable contraception had unwanted pregnancies & historically not true. Also, you shouldn't take unprotected-sex advice from this because 59% of couples who are having unprotected sex get pregnant within 3 months.)
Anyway, that fact + a resolution to avoid popular science writing makes this book worth it, I guess.
Once she cited a study showing that one time men and women did equally well on a math test. This seems obviously cherry-picky; anyone can look up statistics showing at the highest level of the math SATs boys outnumber girls 3:2; this effect is still persistent across higher-level math in different countries.
She spends a lot of time talking about how we shouldn't gender-code toys for children, but that doesn't have anything to do with how 85% of people with autism are boys, or how gay men report far more sexual partners than lesbian women, or how the vast majority of violent criminals and nearly all rapists are male, and how men have more aggression in every society measured.
I'm a bit disappointed because there were a lot of nice snippets in this book showing how sex differences in the research lab were rather small, but for me at least the point of science is to answer questions and make predictions about the world, so it's not helpful to tear down other people's research & then propose your own (unprovable) assertions. Our society has such massive sex differences & it felt like the author had no answers to that, just opinions that can't even be reasonably tested.
One cool actual fact I learned is that your chance of getting pregnant during a random act of unprotected intercourse is, on average, 3%. (She says this shows historically this practically meant sex was a care-free endeavor for women, which strikes me as ragingly insensitive to all the women who before reliable contraception had unwanted pregnancies & historically not true. Also, you shouldn't take unprotected-sex advice from this because 59% of couples who are having unprotected sex get pregnant within 3 months.)
Anyway, that fact + a resolution to avoid popular science writing makes this book worth it, I guess.
June 28, 2019
Q: ... we may be shortly waving farewell to the economics-inspired reproductive love story in which female Fertility Value meets male Resource Value, settles down, and maximizes reproductive success. (c)
A lot of interesting research on gender evolution, roles, specters, biology, marketing, risks and potential. Lehman Sisters hypothesis and risk considerations are particularly well-thought out.
Q:
A pair of testicles hanging on a key ring is bound to capture attention; to mesmerize. “That’s some key ring you have there,” people would politely comment. But what they would really mean is that in some important way your identity has been defined. Idiosyncrasies, complexities, contradictions, characteristics in common with those who don’t have genitals on a key ring—all this fades into the background. Who you are is someone with a testicle key ring. (c) That's quite an ides. Seriously, her son's a awesomely chill kid.
Q:
How could it be sexist to merely report the objective conclusions of science? In fact, are there any sexists these days? Or are there just people who recognize that our brains and natures have been shaped by evolutionary pressures responsive only to reproductive success in our ancestral past, with no concern for the future consequences for the representation of women in Formula 1 world championships, or on corporate boards? (c)
Q:
“Psychologically, men and women are almost a different species,” was the conclusion of one Manchester Business School academic. Cahill, likewise, suggests that this compounding is akin to the way that many small differences between a Volvo and a Corvette—a little difference in the brakes here, a modest dissimilarity in the pistons there, and so on—add up to very different kinds of car. Perhaps not coincidentally, one is a nice, safe family vehicle with plenty of room in the trunk for groceries; the other is designed to offer power and status. (c)
Q:
And when it comes to the workplace, many “gender diversity” consultants take it for granted that biological sex provides a useful proxy for the skill sets employees bring to organizations. To increase female representation at senior levels, they recommend that employers “harness the unique qualities of men and women.” To have mostly men in senior management positions, this argument goes, is a bit like trying to sweep a floor with nine dustpans and one brush. (c)
Q:
It’s as if the women of a harem were to casually comment to the sultan when he popped by, “Oh no, that child’s not one of yours—that’s the second footman’s daughter.… Eh? Ah, sorry. He’s not yours either, that’s the son of the chauffeur. Hang on, sultan, we’ll find your kid. Nadia… Nadia! Do you remember which of these kids is the sultan’s? Oh, yes, that’s right. That boy over there playing with his half-brother. He’s yours. Almost certainly.” (c)
Q:
Given the risks and costs of these “excess” matings (such as disease and predation risks for leaving the group, as well as the investment of time and energy that could be spent doing something else), this was behaviour that required explanation. (Hrdy suggested that it helped to leave open the father’s identity, making it less likely that the mothers’ offspring would be killed.) Since this justly famous scientific revelation, researchers have come up with all manner of ingenious suggestions as to the advantages female animals might gain from multiple mates. Since it only seems fair that women, too, should have access to evolutionarily flavoured “the-whisperings-of-my-genes-made-me-do-it” excuses for cheating on a partner, I provide a selection of these ideas here. Proposed gains of female promiscuity include genetic benefits, healthier offspring, and the opportunity to set up sperm competitions that weed out inferior specimens. It’s even been suggested that females may have sex with several males in order to sabotage the reproductive success of rivals, by depleting local sperm stocks. (c)
Q:
Among primates, for instance, low-ranking females’ ovulation may be suppressed by nearby dominant females, or they may be so harassed by other females that they spontaneously abort. (c)
Q:
price of sex for the male St. Andrew’s Cross spider is so high that he only mates once. As the University of Melbourne evolutionary biologist Mark Elgar explained to me, this is because during this very special occasion “he foolishly breaks his copulatory apparatus and the female puts him out of his embarrassment by eating him.” (No wonder they’re cross.) (c)
Q:
Other species keep costs down with self-imposed chastity. In Elgar’s lab, male stick insects (Macleay’s Spectre) are offered a mating opportunity every week. Despite apparently having nothing more demanding to do all day than resemble a stick, they only rouse themselves to take up this mating opportunity 30–40 per cent of the time. (c)
Q:
A man with a Maserati is a fascinating phenomenon, deserving of study, to be sure. But whether he is the human biological equivalent of the well-antlered stag, his spotless luxury car the counterpart of the shimmering, biologically extravagant tail of the peacock—that is another matter altogether. (c) Fun)
Q:
Some individual women have even managed to give birth to many more than this: the anonymous first wife of a Russian peasant called Feodor Vassilyev had thirty-seven pregnancies yielding sixty-nine children. (c)
Q:
As Bradley University psychologist David Schmitt explains:
Consider that one man can produce as many as 100 offspring by indiscriminately mating with 100 women in a given year, whereas a man who is monogamous will tend to have only one child with his partner during that same time period. In evolutionary currencies, this represents a strong selective pressure—and a potent adaptive problem—for men’s mating strategies to favor at least some desire for sexual variety...
Consider, Einon posits, a woman who on average has sex once a week for thirty years. Now suppose she bears a generous brood of nine children. As you can easily calculate for yourself, on average she will have sex 173 times per child. And for each of the 172 coital acts that didn’t lead to a baby, there was a partner involved, having nonreproductive sex. To explore what this means for any man trying to reach the benchmark set by Schmitt of scoring a century of infants in a year, it’s worth following Einon in breaking things down to clearly see the schedule involved.
First, the man has to find a fertile woman. For the benefit of younger readers, it may be worth pointing out that throughout most of human evolution the Tinder app was not available to facilitate this. Nor, as observed in the previous chapter, was there likely to have been a limitless supply of fertile female vessels for men to access. In historical and traditional societies, perhaps as many as 80–90 per cent of women of reproductive age at any one time would be pregnant, or temporarily infertile because they were breast-feeding, Einon suggests. Of the remaining women, some of course would already be in a relationship, making sexual relations at the very least less probable and possibly more fraught with difficulties. Let’s suppose, though, that our man manages to identify a suitable candidate from the limited supply. Next, he has to prevail in the intense competition created by all the other men who are also hoping for casual sex with a fertile woman, and successfully negotiate sex with her. Say that takes a day. In order to reach his target of one hundred women per annum, our man then has just two to three days to successfully repeat the exercise, ninety-nine more times, from an ever-decreasing pool of women. All this, mind you, while also maintaining the status and material resources he needs to remain competitive as a desirable sexual partner.
So what’s the likely reproductive return on this exhausting investment? For healthy couples, the probability of a woman becoming pregnant from a single randomly timed act of intercourse is about 3 per cent, ranging (depending on the time of the month), from a low of 0 to a high of nearly 9 per cent. On average, then, a year of competitive courtship would result in only about three of the one hundred women becoming pregnant. (Although a man could increase his chances of conception by having sex with the same woman repeatedly, this would of course disrupt his very tight schedule.) This estimate, by the way, assumes that the man, in contradiction with the principle of “indiscriminately mating,” excludes women under twenty and over forty, who have a greater number of cycles in which no egg is released. It also doesn’t take into account that some women will be chronically infertile (Einon estimates about 8 per cent), or that women who are mostly sexually abstinent have longer menstrual cycles and ovulate less frequently, making it less likely that a single coital act will result in pregnancy. We’re also kindly overlooking sperm depletion, and discreetly turning a blind eye to the possibility that another man’s sperm might reach the egg first. In these unrealistically ideal conditions, a man who sets himself the annual project of producing one hundred children from one hundred one-night stands has a chance of success of about 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000363. ...
To put that number in a little context, a man’s odds of being killed by a meteorite in his lifetime is 0.000004.14.
And they say feminists are wishful thinkers.(c)
Q:
In fact, a major headache for sex researchers is that men reliably report a larger mean number of other-sex sexual partners than do women. This is logically cally impossible, since heterosexual coitus requires the presence of both a woman and a man. This impossible discrepancy seems to be mostly due to men’s inaccurate reporting, and their “greater tendency to report large, ‘round’ numbers of partners.” Once people’s tallies get to about fifteen partners, they tend to answer with “ballpark figures” ending in multiples of five (Let’s see, there was Suzy, Jenny, Malini, Ruth,… call it fifty) and the discrepancy between the mean for men and women is larger in the oldest age groups, for whom memory is presumably most blurred. (c)
Q:
A second obvious objection is that what this study is actually primarily showing is women’s lack of interest in being murdered, raped, robbed, or inflaming the interests of a potential stalker. (c)
Q:
Certainly, attitudes can shift: sometimes remarkably quickly, as I discovered once when visiting the home of a university boyfriend. His father protested strongly against me sleeping in the same bedroom as his son, given our unmarried state. His wife listened respectfully, then suggested that if this was how he felt he had better get the ladder, climb up to the attic, find the camp bed, carry it down the ladder, clean it off, mend the wobbly leg, set it up in the study, find some bed linen and make it up for me. My boyfriend’s father considered this for a moment and then concluded that, upon reflection, one did have to move with the times. (c)
Q:
Ultimately, that old tale claims that it isn’t just sexism and discrimination that sustains the glass ceiling—not completely. At the core of this inequality are the whisperings of evolution. To men, it murmurs That’s right… keep going, son. I know it may seem counter-intuitive to suggest that spending eighty hours a week in a science lab becoming increasingly pale and weedy, and possibly developing rickets, will make you more attractive to scores of young, beautiful, fertile women, but trust me on this. Instead, to women, evolution is whispering Are you sure all this hard work is worth it? Why not go home, invest more in the few kids you’ve got? Oh, and maybe brush your hair a little? It’ll make it glossier—more youthful.
But this old story is on its last legs, and it’s time to give birth to its successor. (c) Cheers!
Q:
Interestingly, even the apparent counterexample of the minority of men who purchase sex—often taken as evidence of men’s capacity and desire for purely physical sexual activity—turns out in some cases at least to be nothing of the sort. According to University of Leeds sociologist Teela Sanders, “a significant number” of men who purchase sex habitually or exclusively visit the same sex worker. This seems surprising, given the natural assumption that the purchasing of sex is the manifestation of men’s evolved desire for sexual variety, unencumbered by the restrictive relational obligations, moralities, and negotiations that sex usually entails. Why buy the same woman’s sexual services twice, in a market exchange potentially as emotionally uncomplicated and uncommitted as getting one’s car washed, or buying a bunch of bananas? (с)
Q:
recent research has established higher frequencies of “de novo” mutations (that is, those that arise for the first time in the gametes, rather than hereditary mutations) in the sperm of older men, and their contribution to genetic disease.28 Presumably, then, the younger the man, the better the state of his “good genes.” Yet despite all this, men don’t wear uncomfortable platform shoes in order to make themselves look taller, rarely hand over fistfuls of cash to pay for major surgeries to make themselves more pleasingly V-shaped, or make their chins more handsomely prominent, nor line up in large numbers to have their foreheads paralysed with Botox injections. This absence of male enthusiasm for painful and expensive physical enhancements points to the possibility that deficiencies in reproductive potential can be, and are, forgivingly overlooked when it comes to sexual attraction. (c)
Q:
These preferred characteristics do not offensively imply that the “mate value” of your wife—even if she happens to be the woman you love, the mother of your children, and the only person in the world who understands what you mean when you say someone had “‘a beard like McFie’s’ or ‘hair the same colour as that man in Hove who caught me kicking his cat’”—is less when she’s fifty than when she was twenty years younger. They are attributes that can’t be bought, injected into you, or liposuctioned out of you. And they are also traits that have little to do with tax brackets, luxury European cars, or corner offices. Rather, they correspond to factors that reduce the chances you will want to throw a plate at your partner’s head. They are dependability, emotional stability, a pleasing personality, and love. (c)
Q:
The ape that mistook itself for a peacock should also not forget that it’s human. (c)
Q:
They analysed images of more than 1,400 human brains, drawn from large data sets from four different sources. First, they identified around ten of the largest sex differences in each sample. Even this preliminary exercise challenged popular understanding in a couple of ways. First of all, contrary to the view that the brains of men and women are strikingly different, none of these differences were particularly substantial. Even for the very largest, the overlap between the sexes meant that about one in five women were more “male-like” than the average male. What’s more, each data set had a different Top Ten list. As the authors point out, this shows that sex differences in the brain aren’t simply due to sex, but depend on additional factors, the most obvious candidates being age, environment, and genetic variation. (с)
Q:
This critical difference between ourselves and other species is perhaps best illustrated by the reality TV show Wife Swap. In this long-running programme, viewers enjoy the mayhem that ensues when wives of generally very different social class, background, personality, and lifestyle swap homes, household rules, lives, husband, and children for two weeks “to discover just what it’s like to live another woman’s life.” I think I can say with low risk of the charge of anthropocentric bias that there is no other species in the animal kingdom for which this concept would work for seven seasons. Other animals are fascinating, to be sure. Many are highly flexible and adaptable. But there just aren’t that many ways to be a female baboon. (c) I KNEW there was a reason why I dislike TV.
Q:
for decades there have been indications that risk taking isn’t a one-dimensional personality trait: instead, there are “insurance-buying gamblers” and “skydiving wallflowers,” as one group of researchers put it. (c)
Q:
Columbia University’s Elke Weber and colleagues asked several hundred U.S. undergraduates how likely they would be to take risks in six different domains: gambling, financial, health, recreational, social, and ethical decisions. Again, a person’s risk-taking propensity didn’t follow any kind of consistent pattern across the different domains—that is, the person who would happily blow a week’s wages at the races was no more likely to leap from a bridge attached to a rubber cord, invest in speculative stock, ask their boss for a raise, have unprotected sex, or steal an additional TV cable connection, than was someone who’d as soon flush dollar bills down the toilet as put them on a horse. Researchers drew the same conclusion a few years later in a study that deliberately recruited people on the basis of their affinity to a particular kind of risk: like skydivers, smokers, casino gamblers, and members of stock-trading clubs. Once again, risk taking in one domain didn’t extend to others. So gamblers, say, unsurprisingly stood out as the most risk taking when it came to questions about betting. But they were no more risk taking than the other groups, including even a group of health-risk-averse gym members, when it came to questions about recreational or investment risks. ... The pure, unadulterated daredevil no doubt exists, but such individuals are statistical exceptions to the general rule that people are fascinatingly idiosyncratic and multifaceted when it comes to risk. (c)
Q:
So what makes someone eager to take risks in one domain, but reluctant in another? It turns out to be risk takers’ less negative perception of the risks and more positive perception of the benefits, Weber and colleagues found. The study of the skydivers, gamblers, smokers, and stock traders came to a similar conclusion. The risk takers in this study didn’t like risk per se any more than did the risk-averse gym members. Rather, they perceived greater benefits in their particular pocket of risk taking, and this explained why they took risks that others avoided, and took one kind of risk rather than another. (c)
Q:
Or consider a recent study of young Chinese women and men, who played a risk-taking game either privately or while being were observed by an attractive person of the other sex. ... Chinese women were every bit as risk taking as the men when unobserved. But in line with gender norms, men increased their risk taking when supposedly observed by an attractive other-sex observer, while women decreased it. (c)
Q:
Disappointingly, the wide range of reactions to this brief biography has yet to include You must be Cordelia Fine! Would you sign this copy of your book that I carry around with me? Instead, people often shoot me a startled look, and then ask whether I’d also deny that there are other basic physiological differences between the sexes. Whenever this happens, I’m always tempted to fix my interrogator in the grip of a steely gaze and pronounce briskly, “Certainly! Testes are merely a social construction,” then see how the conversation flows from there. (c)
Q:
We have stereotypes that stain every encounter, clothing, language, salaries, titles, awards, media, legislation, norms, stigma, jokes, art, religion… the list of phenomena that make up our rich, gendered cultures goes on and on.
That’s a lot of social construction to reconstruct.(c)
A lot of interesting research on gender evolution, roles, specters, biology, marketing, risks and potential. Lehman Sisters hypothesis and risk considerations are particularly well-thought out.
Q:
A pair of testicles hanging on a key ring is bound to capture attention; to mesmerize. “That’s some key ring you have there,” people would politely comment. But what they would really mean is that in some important way your identity has been defined. Idiosyncrasies, complexities, contradictions, characteristics in common with those who don’t have genitals on a key ring—all this fades into the background. Who you are is someone with a testicle key ring. (c) That's quite an ides. Seriously, her son's a awesomely chill kid.
Q:
How could it be sexist to merely report the objective conclusions of science? In fact, are there any sexists these days? Or are there just people who recognize that our brains and natures have been shaped by evolutionary pressures responsive only to reproductive success in our ancestral past, with no concern for the future consequences for the representation of women in Formula 1 world championships, or on corporate boards? (c)
Q:
“Psychologically, men and women are almost a different species,” was the conclusion of one Manchester Business School academic. Cahill, likewise, suggests that this compounding is akin to the way that many small differences between a Volvo and a Corvette—a little difference in the brakes here, a modest dissimilarity in the pistons there, and so on—add up to very different kinds of car. Perhaps not coincidentally, one is a nice, safe family vehicle with plenty of room in the trunk for groceries; the other is designed to offer power and status. (c)
Q:
And when it comes to the workplace, many “gender diversity” consultants take it for granted that biological sex provides a useful proxy for the skill sets employees bring to organizations. To increase female representation at senior levels, they recommend that employers “harness the unique qualities of men and women.” To have mostly men in senior management positions, this argument goes, is a bit like trying to sweep a floor with nine dustpans and one brush. (c)
Q:
It’s as if the women of a harem were to casually comment to the sultan when he popped by, “Oh no, that child’s not one of yours—that’s the second footman’s daughter.… Eh? Ah, sorry. He’s not yours either, that’s the son of the chauffeur. Hang on, sultan, we’ll find your kid. Nadia… Nadia! Do you remember which of these kids is the sultan’s? Oh, yes, that’s right. That boy over there playing with his half-brother. He’s yours. Almost certainly.” (c)
Q:
Given the risks and costs of these “excess” matings (such as disease and predation risks for leaving the group, as well as the investment of time and energy that could be spent doing something else), this was behaviour that required explanation. (Hrdy suggested that it helped to leave open the father’s identity, making it less likely that the mothers’ offspring would be killed.) Since this justly famous scientific revelation, researchers have come up with all manner of ingenious suggestions as to the advantages female animals might gain from multiple mates. Since it only seems fair that women, too, should have access to evolutionarily flavoured “the-whisperings-of-my-genes-made-me-do-it” excuses for cheating on a partner, I provide a selection of these ideas here. Proposed gains of female promiscuity include genetic benefits, healthier offspring, and the opportunity to set up sperm competitions that weed out inferior specimens. It’s even been suggested that females may have sex with several males in order to sabotage the reproductive success of rivals, by depleting local sperm stocks. (c)
Q:
Among primates, for instance, low-ranking females’ ovulation may be suppressed by nearby dominant females, or they may be so harassed by other females that they spontaneously abort. (c)
Q:
price of sex for the male St. Andrew’s Cross spider is so high that he only mates once. As the University of Melbourne evolutionary biologist Mark Elgar explained to me, this is because during this very special occasion “he foolishly breaks his copulatory apparatus and the female puts him out of his embarrassment by eating him.” (No wonder they’re cross.) (c)
Q:
Other species keep costs down with self-imposed chastity. In Elgar’s lab, male stick insects (Macleay’s Spectre) are offered a mating opportunity every week. Despite apparently having nothing more demanding to do all day than resemble a stick, they only rouse themselves to take up this mating opportunity 30–40 per cent of the time. (c)
Q:
A man with a Maserati is a fascinating phenomenon, deserving of study, to be sure. But whether he is the human biological equivalent of the well-antlered stag, his spotless luxury car the counterpart of the shimmering, biologically extravagant tail of the peacock—that is another matter altogether. (c) Fun)
Q:
Some individual women have even managed to give birth to many more than this: the anonymous first wife of a Russian peasant called Feodor Vassilyev had thirty-seven pregnancies yielding sixty-nine children. (c)
Q:
As Bradley University psychologist David Schmitt explains:
Consider that one man can produce as many as 100 offspring by indiscriminately mating with 100 women in a given year, whereas a man who is monogamous will tend to have only one child with his partner during that same time period. In evolutionary currencies, this represents a strong selective pressure—and a potent adaptive problem—for men’s mating strategies to favor at least some desire for sexual variety...
Consider, Einon posits, a woman who on average has sex once a week for thirty years. Now suppose she bears a generous brood of nine children. As you can easily calculate for yourself, on average she will have sex 173 times per child. And for each of the 172 coital acts that didn’t lead to a baby, there was a partner involved, having nonreproductive sex. To explore what this means for any man trying to reach the benchmark set by Schmitt of scoring a century of infants in a year, it’s worth following Einon in breaking things down to clearly see the schedule involved.
First, the man has to find a fertile woman. For the benefit of younger readers, it may be worth pointing out that throughout most of human evolution the Tinder app was not available to facilitate this. Nor, as observed in the previous chapter, was there likely to have been a limitless supply of fertile female vessels for men to access. In historical and traditional societies, perhaps as many as 80–90 per cent of women of reproductive age at any one time would be pregnant, or temporarily infertile because they were breast-feeding, Einon suggests. Of the remaining women, some of course would already be in a relationship, making sexual relations at the very least less probable and possibly more fraught with difficulties. Let’s suppose, though, that our man manages to identify a suitable candidate from the limited supply. Next, he has to prevail in the intense competition created by all the other men who are also hoping for casual sex with a fertile woman, and successfully negotiate sex with her. Say that takes a day. In order to reach his target of one hundred women per annum, our man then has just two to three days to successfully repeat the exercise, ninety-nine more times, from an ever-decreasing pool of women. All this, mind you, while also maintaining the status and material resources he needs to remain competitive as a desirable sexual partner.
So what’s the likely reproductive return on this exhausting investment? For healthy couples, the probability of a woman becoming pregnant from a single randomly timed act of intercourse is about 3 per cent, ranging (depending on the time of the month), from a low of 0 to a high of nearly 9 per cent. On average, then, a year of competitive courtship would result in only about three of the one hundred women becoming pregnant. (Although a man could increase his chances of conception by having sex with the same woman repeatedly, this would of course disrupt his very tight schedule.) This estimate, by the way, assumes that the man, in contradiction with the principle of “indiscriminately mating,” excludes women under twenty and over forty, who have a greater number of cycles in which no egg is released. It also doesn’t take into account that some women will be chronically infertile (Einon estimates about 8 per cent), or that women who are mostly sexually abstinent have longer menstrual cycles and ovulate less frequently, making it less likely that a single coital act will result in pregnancy. We’re also kindly overlooking sperm depletion, and discreetly turning a blind eye to the possibility that another man’s sperm might reach the egg first. In these unrealistically ideal conditions, a man who sets himself the annual project of producing one hundred children from one hundred one-night stands has a chance of success of about 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000363. ...
To put that number in a little context, a man’s odds of being killed by a meteorite in his lifetime is 0.000004.14.
And they say feminists are wishful thinkers.(c)
Q:
In fact, a major headache for sex researchers is that men reliably report a larger mean number of other-sex sexual partners than do women. This is logically cally impossible, since heterosexual coitus requires the presence of both a woman and a man. This impossible discrepancy seems to be mostly due to men’s inaccurate reporting, and their “greater tendency to report large, ‘round’ numbers of partners.” Once people’s tallies get to about fifteen partners, they tend to answer with “ballpark figures” ending in multiples of five (Let’s see, there was Suzy, Jenny, Malini, Ruth,… call it fifty) and the discrepancy between the mean for men and women is larger in the oldest age groups, for whom memory is presumably most blurred. (c)
Q:
A second obvious objection is that what this study is actually primarily showing is women’s lack of interest in being murdered, raped, robbed, or inflaming the interests of a potential stalker. (c)
Q:
Certainly, attitudes can shift: sometimes remarkably quickly, as I discovered once when visiting the home of a university boyfriend. His father protested strongly against me sleeping in the same bedroom as his son, given our unmarried state. His wife listened respectfully, then suggested that if this was how he felt he had better get the ladder, climb up to the attic, find the camp bed, carry it down the ladder, clean it off, mend the wobbly leg, set it up in the study, find some bed linen and make it up for me. My boyfriend’s father considered this for a moment and then concluded that, upon reflection, one did have to move with the times. (c)
Q:
Ultimately, that old tale claims that it isn’t just sexism and discrimination that sustains the glass ceiling—not completely. At the core of this inequality are the whisperings of evolution. To men, it murmurs That’s right… keep going, son. I know it may seem counter-intuitive to suggest that spending eighty hours a week in a science lab becoming increasingly pale and weedy, and possibly developing rickets, will make you more attractive to scores of young, beautiful, fertile women, but trust me on this. Instead, to women, evolution is whispering Are you sure all this hard work is worth it? Why not go home, invest more in the few kids you’ve got? Oh, and maybe brush your hair a little? It’ll make it glossier—more youthful.
But this old story is on its last legs, and it’s time to give birth to its successor. (c) Cheers!
Q:
Interestingly, even the apparent counterexample of the minority of men who purchase sex—often taken as evidence of men’s capacity and desire for purely physical sexual activity—turns out in some cases at least to be nothing of the sort. According to University of Leeds sociologist Teela Sanders, “a significant number” of men who purchase sex habitually or exclusively visit the same sex worker. This seems surprising, given the natural assumption that the purchasing of sex is the manifestation of men’s evolved desire for sexual variety, unencumbered by the restrictive relational obligations, moralities, and negotiations that sex usually entails. Why buy the same woman’s sexual services twice, in a market exchange potentially as emotionally uncomplicated and uncommitted as getting one’s car washed, or buying a bunch of bananas? (с)
Q:
recent research has established higher frequencies of “de novo” mutations (that is, those that arise for the first time in the gametes, rather than hereditary mutations) in the sperm of older men, and their contribution to genetic disease.28 Presumably, then, the younger the man, the better the state of his “good genes.” Yet despite all this, men don’t wear uncomfortable platform shoes in order to make themselves look taller, rarely hand over fistfuls of cash to pay for major surgeries to make themselves more pleasingly V-shaped, or make their chins more handsomely prominent, nor line up in large numbers to have their foreheads paralysed with Botox injections. This absence of male enthusiasm for painful and expensive physical enhancements points to the possibility that deficiencies in reproductive potential can be, and are, forgivingly overlooked when it comes to sexual attraction. (c)
Q:
These preferred characteristics do not offensively imply that the “mate value” of your wife—even if she happens to be the woman you love, the mother of your children, and the only person in the world who understands what you mean when you say someone had “‘a beard like McFie’s’ or ‘hair the same colour as that man in Hove who caught me kicking his cat’”—is less when she’s fifty than when she was twenty years younger. They are attributes that can’t be bought, injected into you, or liposuctioned out of you. And they are also traits that have little to do with tax brackets, luxury European cars, or corner offices. Rather, they correspond to factors that reduce the chances you will want to throw a plate at your partner’s head. They are dependability, emotional stability, a pleasing personality, and love. (c)
Q:
The ape that mistook itself for a peacock should also not forget that it’s human. (c)
Q:
They analysed images of more than 1,400 human brains, drawn from large data sets from four different sources. First, they identified around ten of the largest sex differences in each sample. Even this preliminary exercise challenged popular understanding in a couple of ways. First of all, contrary to the view that the brains of men and women are strikingly different, none of these differences were particularly substantial. Even for the very largest, the overlap between the sexes meant that about one in five women were more “male-like” than the average male. What’s more, each data set had a different Top Ten list. As the authors point out, this shows that sex differences in the brain aren’t simply due to sex, but depend on additional factors, the most obvious candidates being age, environment, and genetic variation. (с)
Q:
This critical difference between ourselves and other species is perhaps best illustrated by the reality TV show Wife Swap. In this long-running programme, viewers enjoy the mayhem that ensues when wives of generally very different social class, background, personality, and lifestyle swap homes, household rules, lives, husband, and children for two weeks “to discover just what it’s like to live another woman’s life.” I think I can say with low risk of the charge of anthropocentric bias that there is no other species in the animal kingdom for which this concept would work for seven seasons. Other animals are fascinating, to be sure. Many are highly flexible and adaptable. But there just aren’t that many ways to be a female baboon. (c) I KNEW there was a reason why I dislike TV.
Q:
for decades there have been indications that risk taking isn’t a one-dimensional personality trait: instead, there are “insurance-buying gamblers” and “skydiving wallflowers,” as one group of researchers put it. (c)
Q:
Columbia University’s Elke Weber and colleagues asked several hundred U.S. undergraduates how likely they would be to take risks in six different domains: gambling, financial, health, recreational, social, and ethical decisions. Again, a person’s risk-taking propensity didn’t follow any kind of consistent pattern across the different domains—that is, the person who would happily blow a week’s wages at the races was no more likely to leap from a bridge attached to a rubber cord, invest in speculative stock, ask their boss for a raise, have unprotected sex, or steal an additional TV cable connection, than was someone who’d as soon flush dollar bills down the toilet as put them on a horse. Researchers drew the same conclusion a few years later in a study that deliberately recruited people on the basis of their affinity to a particular kind of risk: like skydivers, smokers, casino gamblers, and members of stock-trading clubs. Once again, risk taking in one domain didn’t extend to others. So gamblers, say, unsurprisingly stood out as the most risk taking when it came to questions about betting. But they were no more risk taking than the other groups, including even a group of health-risk-averse gym members, when it came to questions about recreational or investment risks. ... The pure, unadulterated daredevil no doubt exists, but such individuals are statistical exceptions to the general rule that people are fascinatingly idiosyncratic and multifaceted when it comes to risk. (c)
Q:
So what makes someone eager to take risks in one domain, but reluctant in another? It turns out to be risk takers’ less negative perception of the risks and more positive perception of the benefits, Weber and colleagues found. The study of the skydivers, gamblers, smokers, and stock traders came to a similar conclusion. The risk takers in this study didn’t like risk per se any more than did the risk-averse gym members. Rather, they perceived greater benefits in their particular pocket of risk taking, and this explained why they took risks that others avoided, and took one kind of risk rather than another. (c)
Q:
Or consider a recent study of young Chinese women and men, who played a risk-taking game either privately or while being were observed by an attractive person of the other sex. ... Chinese women were every bit as risk taking as the men when unobserved. But in line with gender norms, men increased their risk taking when supposedly observed by an attractive other-sex observer, while women decreased it. (c)
Q:
Disappointingly, the wide range of reactions to this brief biography has yet to include You must be Cordelia Fine! Would you sign this copy of your book that I carry around with me? Instead, people often shoot me a startled look, and then ask whether I’d also deny that there are other basic physiological differences between the sexes. Whenever this happens, I’m always tempted to fix my interrogator in the grip of a steely gaze and pronounce briskly, “Certainly! Testes are merely a social construction,” then see how the conversation flows from there. (c)
Q:
We have stereotypes that stain every encounter, clothing, language, salaries, titles, awards, media, legislation, norms, stigma, jokes, art, religion… the list of phenomena that make up our rich, gendered cultures goes on and on.
That’s a lot of social construction to reconstruct.(c)
Read
October 30, 2020This book is a mostly a critical review of the research and meta surveys into some issue of gender such as male and female reproductive strategies, but the over arching theme is the role of testosterone. Fine takes issue with and points out empirical problems in assuming that testosterone in male bodies is the cause of social differences between men and women - in some species higher levels of testosterone are in fact the consequence of more aggressive or dominant behaviours, and not there cause as can be demonstrated through experimentation.
Fine is targeting two related ideas in this book, firstly that there is an observable physiological basis for the social differences between men and women, and secondly the habit of attributing social problems or social ideals to physical differences.
She takes us light-heartedly through a review of many studies and much research, she points out poorly designed experiments, poorly analysed data sets, cognitive biases, and other fun, not least of which are those experiments used to support claims of profound differences between men and women which where actually only carried out on Americans, and when repeated in other countries throw up very different results.
Fine's conclusion is that social differences in gender have social causes, while there are, as you may have noticed, differences between men and women, links proposed from those to behavioural differences are tenuous and tendentious - it is a field apparently still available and open to future study.
I found the book though a bit of a struggle to read, Fine's style was a bit too bright and breezy for my glum and overcast nature. For the reader who is feeling oppressed by arguments that gender based inequality in their society is natural and inevitable because of human physiology, evolution, psychology, or some combination of any of these, then this may well be worth a read.
Fine is targeting two related ideas in this book, firstly that there is an observable physiological basis for the social differences between men and women, and secondly the habit of attributing social problems or social ideals to physical differences.
She takes us light-heartedly through a review of many studies and much research, she points out poorly designed experiments, poorly analysed data sets, cognitive biases, and other fun, not least of which are those experiments used to support claims of profound differences between men and women which where actually only carried out on Americans, and when repeated in other countries throw up very different results.
Fine's conclusion is that social differences in gender have social causes, while there are, as you may have noticed, differences between men and women, links proposed from those to behavioural differences are tenuous and tendentious - it is a field apparently still available and open to future study.
I found the book though a bit of a struggle to read, Fine's style was a bit too bright and breezy for my glum and overcast nature. For the reader who is feeling oppressed by arguments that gender based inequality in their society is natural and inevitable because of human physiology, evolution, psychology, or some combination of any of these, then this may well be worth a read.
September 7, 2020
Despite all the advances made in developmental biology, as a society we still widely believe that men and women are complementary to each other. This belief is so ingrained into our society so as to give rise to popular slogans that are irrationally used as excuses for misbehaviour and sexual stereotypes: Men are from mars, women are from Venus, boys will be boys. And of course, these are explained away using the “men are biologically evolved to be aggressive, competitive masters of the household, whereas it is in women's nature to play submissive, nurturing roles” view. In Testosterone Rex Cordelia Fine questions the scientific credibility of these views. Does Testosterone really create an unbridgeable divide between men and women?
This is Testosterone Rex: that familiar, plausible, pervasive, and powerful story of sex and society. Weaving together interlinked claims about evolution, brains, hormones, and behavior, it offers a neat and compelling account of our societies’ persistent and seemingly intractable sex inequalities. Testosterone Rex can appear undefeatable. Whenever we discuss the worthy topic of sex inequalities and what to do about them, it is the giant elephant testicles in the room. What about our evolved differences, the dissimilarities between the male brain and the female brain? What about all that male testosterone?
Does Testosterone affect brain functions in cis-men leading to significantly different brain development? The popular answer is yes and the origin of this affirmation comes from a study of fruit flies carried out by Angus Bateman.
The outcome of Bateman’s six series of matchmaking was the first scientific report of greater male variation in reproductive success. For example, 21 percent of males failed to produce any offspring, compared with only 4 percent of females. Males also showed greater variation in the estimated number of mates. But it was the linking of the two findings that became the basis of explanations for why males compete and females choose: Bateman concluded that although male reproductive success increased with promiscuity, female reproductive success did not. His critically important explanation was the now familiar insight that male success in producing offspring is largely limited by the number of females he can inseminate, whereas a female gains nothing from further pairings beyond a single one (since her first mate should furnish her with plenty more sperm than she needs).
But, a recent re-analysis of the original data Bateman used revealed a discrepency between his considered data and findings. There was actually evidence within his study for female promiscuity that he seems to have ignored. Fine does not in anyway completely disregard Bateman’s works, she simply argues against the ‘foundational nature’ of its results. And I want to point out here that Fine makes exactly zero claims that are unsupported by evidence. There are numerous citations and notes (623, to be precise), evaluation of counter-evidence, and well studied examples.
Fine also challenges the traditional view that men are more prone to risk-taking behavior and therefore fare well in competitive fields like finance. Experiments of risk-taking behavior in a patriarchal community and a matrilineal tribe revealed that there are no significant differences in risk-taking behavior between the sexes. However, when these experiments were performed with white males as the subjects, they did see considerable differences between risk-taking behavior in white men and white women or even other people of color. (people, as in, including men)
Perhaps white males see less risk in the world because they create, manage, control, and benefit from so much of it. Perhaps women and non-white men see the world as more dangerous because in many ways they are more vulnerable, because they benefit less from many of its technologies and institutions, and because they have less power and control.
Aha, but there’s actually a legion of evidence for the Testosterone Rex point of view and Fine just exhibits a clear case of feminist bias, you say? Fine has answers for you! Studies show that researchers within evolutionary and developmental biology often exhibit “confirmation bias’, wherein they summarize results from previous studies in ways that are consistent with existing stereotypes. Small average differences between populations under study are presented as fundamental and important.
All right, you say, but what is Fine trying to get at? That the findings of evolutionary biology cannot be simply explained away using a single hormone as the source of all functional differences, it’s way more complicated that that. Our biological selves interact with and develop alongside our cultural environments and existing stereotypes, leading to marked differences in our behaviors.
Words are nice, but often deeds work better.
Which of these directions we prefer is up to us: it’s a question for our values, not science. But that evolving science is showing that one time-honored option is no longer available to us. It’s time to stop blaming Testosterone Rex, because that king is dead.
What I have written in this review is only a lousy summary, and Fine offers many more detailed studies and analyses in this extraordinary book. Everybody needs to read this. But if you’re a woman in STEM like me, please, please read it.
Here's a link to an article by the author that's basically an overview of this book:
Sexual dinosaurs
This is Testosterone Rex: that familiar, plausible, pervasive, and powerful story of sex and society. Weaving together interlinked claims about evolution, brains, hormones, and behavior, it offers a neat and compelling account of our societies’ persistent and seemingly intractable sex inequalities. Testosterone Rex can appear undefeatable. Whenever we discuss the worthy topic of sex inequalities and what to do about them, it is the giant elephant testicles in the room. What about our evolved differences, the dissimilarities between the male brain and the female brain? What about all that male testosterone?
Does Testosterone affect brain functions in cis-men leading to significantly different brain development? The popular answer is yes and the origin of this affirmation comes from a study of fruit flies carried out by Angus Bateman.
The outcome of Bateman’s six series of matchmaking was the first scientific report of greater male variation in reproductive success. For example, 21 percent of males failed to produce any offspring, compared with only 4 percent of females. Males also showed greater variation in the estimated number of mates. But it was the linking of the two findings that became the basis of explanations for why males compete and females choose: Bateman concluded that although male reproductive success increased with promiscuity, female reproductive success did not. His critically important explanation was the now familiar insight that male success in producing offspring is largely limited by the number of females he can inseminate, whereas a female gains nothing from further pairings beyond a single one (since her first mate should furnish her with plenty more sperm than she needs).
But, a recent re-analysis of the original data Bateman used revealed a discrepency between his considered data and findings. There was actually evidence within his study for female promiscuity that he seems to have ignored. Fine does not in anyway completely disregard Bateman’s works, she simply argues against the ‘foundational nature’ of its results. And I want to point out here that Fine makes exactly zero claims that are unsupported by evidence. There are numerous citations and notes (623, to be precise), evaluation of counter-evidence, and well studied examples.
Fine also challenges the traditional view that men are more prone to risk-taking behavior and therefore fare well in competitive fields like finance. Experiments of risk-taking behavior in a patriarchal community and a matrilineal tribe revealed that there are no significant differences in risk-taking behavior between the sexes. However, when these experiments were performed with white males as the subjects, they did see considerable differences between risk-taking behavior in white men and white women or even other people of color. (people, as in, including men)
Perhaps white males see less risk in the world because they create, manage, control, and benefit from so much of it. Perhaps women and non-white men see the world as more dangerous because in many ways they are more vulnerable, because they benefit less from many of its technologies and institutions, and because they have less power and control.
Aha, but there’s actually a legion of evidence for the Testosterone Rex point of view and Fine just exhibits a clear case of feminist bias, you say? Fine has answers for you! Studies show that researchers within evolutionary and developmental biology often exhibit “confirmation bias’, wherein they summarize results from previous studies in ways that are consistent with existing stereotypes. Small average differences between populations under study are presented as fundamental and important.
All right, you say, but what is Fine trying to get at? That the findings of evolutionary biology cannot be simply explained away using a single hormone as the source of all functional differences, it’s way more complicated that that. Our biological selves interact with and develop alongside our cultural environments and existing stereotypes, leading to marked differences in our behaviors.
Words are nice, but often deeds work better.
Which of these directions we prefer is up to us: it’s a question for our values, not science. But that evolving science is showing that one time-honored option is no longer available to us. It’s time to stop blaming Testosterone Rex, because that king is dead.
What I have written in this review is only a lousy summary, and Fine offers many more detailed studies and analyses in this extraordinary book. Everybody needs to read this. But if you’re a woman in STEM like me, please, please read it.
Here's a link to an article by the author that's basically an overview of this book:
Sexual dinosaurs
August 14, 2017
Male and Female Peacocks
As everyone knows by now human behavior is a combination of nature and nurture. However, when it comes to the differences in behaviors between the sexes, Cordelia Fine (an academic psychologist and writer) believes nature has nothing to with it. She makes her argument as to why in Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society.
In other words, she’d likely take issue with Tom Bodett’s observation that “my boys used to chew their toast into the shape of a gun and then shoot at each other”, presumably because this activity is also one she believes is widely shared by little girls.
First off, it’s worth mentioning (and I don’t think Fine would disagree) that the book is not simply an impartial review of the science, it has an ideological aim … Fine wants to further a more equal society based on both sexes’ full, human potential. This is a worthy goal and one to which I fully subscribe.
However, I do not subscribe to misrepresenting the science to do so, and Fine gets it wrong early in the book in her description of an flawed experiment performed in the 1940’s by Angus Bateman in which he examined the mating behavior of fruit flies. Bateman concluded from his work that reproductive variance is greater in males than in females. However, it was later shown that his experimental methodology was flawed. Fine concludes from this error that sexual selection (first proposed by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species and developed in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex) therefore doesn’t exist.
As an aside, this is a method of argumentation that she commonly returns to in the book. It’s akin to saying: rain doesn’t always follow thunder, therefore anyone who reaches for an umbrella before venturing outside while thunder is rumbling is a blithering idiot. It should be noted that Bateman’s experiment has subsequently been repeated properly in several other species, and the results have precisely supported Bateman’s original conclusion.
Here’s the thing. Sexual selection is a well-established biological theory with multiple lines of supporting evidence. If it did not exist, how could sexual dimorphism between men and women (or between males and females of any species) be explained (see the photo above)? Fine needs to undermine sexual selection since it’s the mechanism that undercuts the foundation upon which her argument is based. It’s possible that biologists are busily re-writing evolutionary textbooks to comport with Fine’s conclusion (overlooking her lack of credentials in the field), but I doubt such is the case.
With that out of the way, the book does have its merits. Where Fine is at her best is in demolishing the idea of rigid gender-specific character traits. The human species is highly adaptive and exhibits a broad range of behaviors to varying degrees: cooperativeness, dutifulness, obedience, goal-orientation, risk-taking, talkativeness, pragmatism etc. There is no gender-specific list that can be referred to that distinguishes behaviors exhibited by men from those exhibited by women. There is so much overlap involved in human traits that we can only speak of such characteristics statistically (and much of that statistical variance is quite modest). The U.S. is just starting to begin to acknowledge that gender behavior and gender identity are more complex than the binary form as was once thought and Fine is right to direct criticism at the ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ proponents.
There’s one exception though, and Fine is unusually silent with regards to its prevalence … aggression. I’ll let you take a blind guess as to which sex is more aggressive, but here’s a statistic: violent crime is overwhelmingly committed by just one sex (80.4 % vs. 19.6 % in the U.S.). I suppose Fine would argue that this is a culturally learned behavior … except it bears out throughout the world and throughout human history. The theory of sexual selection does an admirable job explaining why, and you can convince yourself with a web search if you’re so inclined.
As to the book itself and most importantly as far as my enjoyment was concerned, Testosterone Rex really didn’t hold my interest.
April 21, 2017
This is a much-needed review of the outdated scientific interpretations of the role of testosterone on behavior. From the earliest experiments, Fine shows how value-laden and culturally reinforcing many of these "scientific" experiments are. To sum up a wonderfully entertaining and thorough investigation of the history of sex hormone research Fine points out that the current agreed upon model is that behavior influences hormones more than hormones influence behavior. There are many studies that now show how testosterone increases when people are put in stressful situations or positions of power. And equally how testosterone decreases when people are given infants to take care of. It blows out of the water the boys-will-be-boys model where testosterone has been blamed (or praised) for making men: logical, assertive, aggressive, risk-takers and just generally better suited to high-status positions like finance, higher mathematics, and science, fighting and sports. One particularly interesting example is a testosterone test on men who had just competed in elite international athletic competitions - several of the men had levels BELOW the normal reference range. Moreover, these are TOP competing athletes. The book is extremely compelling and should be required reading for parents, teachers, politicians, religious leaders (honestly everybody) or anybody who has a role in legislating or shaping the gendered experiences of people.
February 6, 2017
This book has an agenda and the author cherry picks her data and chooses conclusions that match the way she wants the world to be. I wouldn't say the book is full of lies, but manipulating the data and omission is certainly present here. If you align yourself with her views I am sure you will enjoy this book and it will affirm your worldview, otherwise not.
January 13, 2018
Cordelia Fine has appeared somewhat controversial in a controversy-cluttered area, to the extent that I had avoided her work, notwithstanding it being in and around a topic of great interest, and it wasn't until I read something about her and this book in a kind of interview/review that I decided to test out what she had to say.
Fine's area of interest is broadly what scientific research can tell us about makes and females, as categories, inclinations and behaviours with respect to various groups of humans and other animals. Her interest isn't descriptive, but investigative and evaluative, and so we are presented with research and opinion from a number of sources, including a comment coming from the first female jockey to ride a Melbourne Cup winner, in which she labelled the horse racing industry as patriarchal, and that they had made incorrect assessments about female capacity and physical strength.
In the last week, a women's Australian Football League has been launched in which the players demonstrated a vigorous and competitive playing style and will to win, as well as a general excitement from some players interviewed beforehand that they'd been waiting all their lives for this day to come.
Naturally, Fine doesn't reference this, but this event is at the core of the discussion, examples and theme of the book, which is about the kinds of myths the public at large, people in various positions of power, and researchers of all kinds appear to take for granted, which is the role testosterone plays in the kinds of attributes I've mentioned with the women playing football, particularly including risk-taking.
The book critiques the above views by providing research and other evidence, demonstrating that some researchers prejudge their outcomes or report favourably on statistical differences that don't really say anything, research males and infer results to females (unresearched), don't take account of environment and social expectations, have limited pools of subjects (usually students) that are hardly representative, and so on.
Economics researchers come in for some stick, for some very good reasons, as their research methods appear to be tightly bound to ideology of some kind, as well as the bewildering idea (to me anyway) that you can get meaningful data from people making decisions over a dollar or two. This lack of largesse, as Fine puts it, surely has an influence on whether participants would really be invested in the task. I remember being engaged in such a "game" at a university course in 1989 (not economics) in which $5 was at stake, which left the whole exercise somewhat unrealistic for the participants, all of whom were in well-paid and permanent employment.
Fine is a particularly witty and fluent writer and explains these issues with clarity. Sometimes, a genuinely funny statement appears after a particular method is described, which makes you go back to what's been said, to really get the point.
Where she starts, of course is with notions of hard-wired male and female brains with the theme of testosterone not far behind. We discover that a demarcation point for these categories is impossible to find and that external definitions of what masculinity and femininity are used in this case, such as a scale of masculinity, something obviously socially constructed, to this personality researcher at any rate. How males and females respond to tasks, or just daily life (more fluid categories than one might think) is astutely examined and critiqued.
I must admit that this contention isn't new to me, and it's obviously more representative of what people and other beings are really like. Actually, how the latter go about things doesn't make for rigid behaviour categories. In some respects the idea presented here is that a person might be male or female (taking into account that some species change this orientation according to circumstance) but it's how they go about things, or express that orientation that's the real point, Not every male wants to be in finance or a CEO or something, some females might be so inclined
One of the things I was most startled about in this book came towards the end, when gender-based marketing strategies were discussed, in particular the pink and blue divide, which is known to be socially constructed i.e. in the past the reverse was the case as far as boys and girls were concerned. Maybe this points to a lack of research or interest in the facts. I was startled partly because I don't venture into the toy stores Fine speaks of, and that I recall contemporaries who became parents mentioning that no toy guns came into the house, that the toys they selected were gender neutral and that one of their sons liked playing with dolls. So I was presuming progress in this area; from what is recounted here, apparently not.
It also brought to mind a comment by my elderly mother a year or two ago in which she expressed her regret that she had never bought me a train set when I was a child. Friends had these things, and I could never understand their interest as once you'd gone around the track, that was that. So I explained my complete lack of interest, hoping that would assuage her guilt. But she may also be wondering what she did wrong to raise a son for whom mechanical things were of no interest. On the other hand, she did buy books for my sister and me on a kind of egalitarian basis, so who knows?
This is an excellent book that worked well for me to the book by Frans de Wall that I bought at the same time. Some people apparently think Fine is a behaviourist, but I think that's far from the case.
Fine's area of interest is broadly what scientific research can tell us about makes and females, as categories, inclinations and behaviours with respect to various groups of humans and other animals. Her interest isn't descriptive, but investigative and evaluative, and so we are presented with research and opinion from a number of sources, including a comment coming from the first female jockey to ride a Melbourne Cup winner, in which she labelled the horse racing industry as patriarchal, and that they had made incorrect assessments about female capacity and physical strength.
In the last week, a women's Australian Football League has been launched in which the players demonstrated a vigorous and competitive playing style and will to win, as well as a general excitement from some players interviewed beforehand that they'd been waiting all their lives for this day to come.
Naturally, Fine doesn't reference this, but this event is at the core of the discussion, examples and theme of the book, which is about the kinds of myths the public at large, people in various positions of power, and researchers of all kinds appear to take for granted, which is the role testosterone plays in the kinds of attributes I've mentioned with the women playing football, particularly including risk-taking.
The book critiques the above views by providing research and other evidence, demonstrating that some researchers prejudge their outcomes or report favourably on statistical differences that don't really say anything, research males and infer results to females (unresearched), don't take account of environment and social expectations, have limited pools of subjects (usually students) that are hardly representative, and so on.
Economics researchers come in for some stick, for some very good reasons, as their research methods appear to be tightly bound to ideology of some kind, as well as the bewildering idea (to me anyway) that you can get meaningful data from people making decisions over a dollar or two. This lack of largesse, as Fine puts it, surely has an influence on whether participants would really be invested in the task. I remember being engaged in such a "game" at a university course in 1989 (not economics) in which $5 was at stake, which left the whole exercise somewhat unrealistic for the participants, all of whom were in well-paid and permanent employment.
Fine is a particularly witty and fluent writer and explains these issues with clarity. Sometimes, a genuinely funny statement appears after a particular method is described, which makes you go back to what's been said, to really get the point.
Where she starts, of course is with notions of hard-wired male and female brains with the theme of testosterone not far behind. We discover that a demarcation point for these categories is impossible to find and that external definitions of what masculinity and femininity are used in this case, such as a scale of masculinity, something obviously socially constructed, to this personality researcher at any rate. How males and females respond to tasks, or just daily life (more fluid categories than one might think) is astutely examined and critiqued.
I must admit that this contention isn't new to me, and it's obviously more representative of what people and other beings are really like. Actually, how the latter go about things doesn't make for rigid behaviour categories. In some respects the idea presented here is that a person might be male or female (taking into account that some species change this orientation according to circumstance) but it's how they go about things, or express that orientation that's the real point, Not every male wants to be in finance or a CEO or something, some females might be so inclined
One of the things I was most startled about in this book came towards the end, when gender-based marketing strategies were discussed, in particular the pink and blue divide, which is known to be socially constructed i.e. in the past the reverse was the case as far as boys and girls were concerned. Maybe this points to a lack of research or interest in the facts. I was startled partly because I don't venture into the toy stores Fine speaks of, and that I recall contemporaries who became parents mentioning that no toy guns came into the house, that the toys they selected were gender neutral and that one of their sons liked playing with dolls. So I was presuming progress in this area; from what is recounted here, apparently not.
It also brought to mind a comment by my elderly mother a year or two ago in which she expressed her regret that she had never bought me a train set when I was a child. Friends had these things, and I could never understand their interest as once you'd gone around the track, that was that. So I explained my complete lack of interest, hoping that would assuage her guilt. But she may also be wondering what she did wrong to raise a son for whom mechanical things were of no interest. On the other hand, she did buy books for my sister and me on a kind of egalitarian basis, so who knows?
This is an excellent book that worked well for me to the book by Frans de Wall that I bought at the same time. Some people apparently think Fine is a behaviourist, but I think that's far from the case.
March 5, 2017
There is no science in this book.
The author fails miserably to demonstrate to the reader the scientific evidence behind her claims, one after another... Indeed, the only myths are those perpetuated by the author.
Leaving unmentioned entire bodies of scientific findings can only be a sign of two things: ignorance or purposeful propagandizing. I think the latter is more probable since I suspect that the author thinks that by burying scientific evidence (or not mentioning it) helps the cause of fighting gender discrimination and segregation. It doesn't.
The author does a decent job on reminding us of the dangers of misapplications of scientific findings into policy. But she also does a wonderful job in putting herself in the miserable position of ignoring good science.
The author fails miserably to demonstrate to the reader the scientific evidence behind her claims, one after another... Indeed, the only myths are those perpetuated by the author.
Leaving unmentioned entire bodies of scientific findings can only be a sign of two things: ignorance or purposeful propagandizing. I think the latter is more probable since I suspect that the author thinks that by burying scientific evidence (or not mentioning it) helps the cause of fighting gender discrimination and segregation. It doesn't.
The author does a decent job on reminding us of the dangers of misapplications of scientific findings into policy. But she also does a wonderful job in putting herself in the miserable position of ignoring good science.
May 27, 2017
A collection of vague attacks on human sexual dimorphism using still vaguer statistics from self-report questionnaires resulting in outlandish claims like "Men prefer to have sex with women they are emotionally attached to" and "Upbringing has an impact on sexual behavior". Take that, Patriarchy! Two stars because some of the science was good.
For future reference: If you encountered someone who started every third sentence with "As a libertarian", "as an existentialist", or "as an atheist", you would likely think they were an unbearably pretentious douchebag and extricate yourself from the conversation as soon as possible.
"As a feminist" works the same way, Ms. Fine. No double standards on this one.
For future reference: If you encountered someone who started every third sentence with "As a libertarian", "as an existentialist", or "as an atheist", you would likely think they were an unbearably pretentious douchebag and extricate yourself from the conversation as soon as possible.
"As a feminist" works the same way, Ms. Fine. No double standards on this one.
August 28, 2017
The gender issue is a hot topic at the moment, for decades we have been led to believe that ‘boys will be boys’, that pink and blue toys are entirely suitable for the appropriate sex and that men have evolved to take risks because of the extra testosterone swishing about and that the female brain is utterly different to the male brain.
Psychologist, Cordelia Fine, is having none of it.
The ‘nature versus nurture’ argument is dragged up frequently, but by using arguments from social history, psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary science, Fine takes apart all the old, entrenched evidence and goes a long way to explaining how what is between your legs doesn’t create male and female natures, but the elements that actually defines us is a complicated mix of evolution, hormones, culture and sex.
Fine is not afraid to be controversial in some of her conclusions in this book, looking at the facts and assessing the evidence; pointing out the errors is not going to endear her to some readers. She has written an interesting and enlightened take on the role that testosterone has to play in both male and female bodies, and the effects that it has. She does not hold back as she obliterates the myths and cultural norms in society that still surround the gender issue. She is not afraid to get stuck into the science and statistics and evaluate the studies that have been done. It is a really good popular science, one of the few where I have actually laughed out loud at certain points of the book. Worth reading.
Psychologist, Cordelia Fine, is having none of it.
The ‘nature versus nurture’ argument is dragged up frequently, but by using arguments from social history, psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary science, Fine takes apart all the old, entrenched evidence and goes a long way to explaining how what is between your legs doesn’t create male and female natures, but the elements that actually defines us is a complicated mix of evolution, hormones, culture and sex.
Fine is not afraid to be controversial in some of her conclusions in this book, looking at the facts and assessing the evidence; pointing out the errors is not going to endear her to some readers. She has written an interesting and enlightened take on the role that testosterone has to play in both male and female bodies, and the effects that it has. She does not hold back as she obliterates the myths and cultural norms in society that still surround the gender issue. She is not afraid to get stuck into the science and statistics and evaluate the studies that have been done. It is a really good popular science, one of the few where I have actually laughed out loud at certain points of the book. Worth reading.
May 25, 2017
I really loved Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, so I had high hopes for Cordelia Fine's follow-up, Testosterone Rex. It's a well put together argument against the idea that biological sex, and particularly testosterone, determines behaviour, but it didn't impress me nearly as much as I was expecting.
I found myself much more sceptical of Fine's presentation of the evidence here - wanting more meta-analyses or systematic reviews over neat and interesting individual studies. I've no doubt that the majority of Fine's arguments reflect the state of scientific play, but at times it felt like the argument was driving her choice of sources rather than the reverse. I also found some of Fine's stylistic choices a bit more grating than I expected - a few too many self-satisfied asides for my tastes.
Testosterone Rex is still an important contribution of course - it's readable and clear and will convincingly drives home the point that much of what people assume are 'innate' or 'natural' differences between men and women are really profoundly social. But I think it falls well short of the standards Fine set in Delusions of Gender, a book I think everyone should read.
I found myself much more sceptical of Fine's presentation of the evidence here - wanting more meta-analyses or systematic reviews over neat and interesting individual studies. I've no doubt that the majority of Fine's arguments reflect the state of scientific play, but at times it felt like the argument was driving her choice of sources rather than the reverse. I also found some of Fine's stylistic choices a bit more grating than I expected - a few too many self-satisfied asides for my tastes.
Testosterone Rex is still an important contribution of course - it's readable and clear and will convincingly drives home the point that much of what people assume are 'innate' or 'natural' differences between men and women are really profoundly social. But I think it falls well short of the standards Fine set in Delusions of Gender, a book I think everyone should read.
January 27, 2021
So, this is my second Cordelia Fine book, so I knew going into it what I was going to get: a data-driven, but utterly polemical text. It's not an even-handed weighing of the evidence, it's a feminist who knows her science, who can pick through it for the best studies to support her point of view (and knows exactly where the scientific weak spots are in the other points of view which she aims to tear down). It's not the place to go for a thorough and balanced survey of a topic, but it is a useful way to stress test an opposing point of view. Fine does not just rail against her targets, she brings a great deal of knowledge and facts with her. Just don't expect her to point out any flaws in the other side.
I'm fine (hehe) with that, as long as this is not the only book I'm ever going to read on a topic. Fine is also eminently readable, and even entertaining. One stereotype she does quite effectively demolish, is the one (not always undeserved, in other cases) of feminists having no sense of humor. Listen to her discuss an experience she had at a local school market, with her son (who by the way also sounds like a hoot):
"The woman there was selling plastic knives for kids that, according to the marketing material on display, were guaranteed to keep little fingers 100 percent safe. Having secured a two-knife deal with a family, the booth seller asked the daughter if she'd like a pink knife, and then asked her brother if he'd like a red knife or a blue one. 'I'd like a pink one too', he said. As I enjoyed the moment, surprisingly, my eldest son ambled into the scene. 'If I manage to cut off a finger with one of your knives, can I have it for free?' he asked the booth seller. In reply, the woman irritably told him to leave her alone as she had work to do. 'Yes, indeed,' I thought. 'A busy schedule buttressing the gender divide with your pointless plastic crap.' "
There has, in the last few decades, been a considerable amount of ink spilled in service of the idea that we are, as men and women, fated to think differently because men have more testosterone than women. I have always been a little suspicious of this idea; not that I don't believe testosterone has any affect, but it does seem ripe for confirmation bias. When a friend gave my 6-year old daughter and her best friend (also a girl) matching princess wands (pink and lavender), they liked them, but within five minutes had managed to break them by having a sword-fight with them. A perfect demonstration of how you can attempt to give girly presents to boys, but boys will be boys...except that these were girls. Rather, shall we say, "girly" girls as well, neither one a tomboy. But had they been boys, and the same incident happened in the same way, I'm sure it would have seemed to me proof that testosterone trumps culture.
Fine goes through a great deal of research into testosterone, and what it does and doesn't do. She also looks at quite a few studies that are alleged to demonstrate that men and women are irrevocably different, as determined by hormones (especially testosterone). For example, a famous (and I believe replicable) study wherein good-looking men and women would ask college students, complete strangers, whether or not they would be willing to go home with them and have sex. Unsurprisingly, the percentage of men who responded in the affirmative was quite a bit higher than the percentage of women. Fine (rightly, I think) points out that this is less likely to do with how much testosterone is coursing through their bloodstream, and more likely to do with their perceived likelihood of the other person being, say, a serial killer. Also, their perceived likelihood of getting to orgasm if they did go with this obviously mental person.
To her credit, she also turns a skeptical eye on the idea that, if women had been more widely represented in the highest ranks of financial firms, the 2008 Fiscal Crisis would have been averted. She believes that "Lehman Sisters" would have been fully as capable of being greedy and short-sighted. Apparently, studies in which a (usually very small) difference in greed-fueled risk-taking between the sexes is found, get widely cited. Studies which find no difference, or a difference in the opposite direction, get ignored. In this context, she explained to the reader how a "funnel plot" works, which is a clever technique I had not heard about before. Any book which, along the way towards making its main point, educates you on a new tool of considerably broader scope of application, gets an extra star from me.
I did find myself wondering whether Fine should not have addressed the other main biologically-based justification for cultural differences in gender roles. The gender roles in different cultures, in different times and places, vary considerably, from polygamy to polyandry, from wife-does-not-touch-money to let-the-wife-mind-the-books. But in no culture of which I am aware, of the hundreds that have been studied, do we NOT have culturally-defined gender roles. Given that not defining roles according to gender is the simpler scheme, the fact that apparently every single culture up to this point has chosen to do so, would suggest that there might be a reason why. Just because the gender roles of the 1950's are not appropriate for the 2020's, doesn't mean that we don't need any. I don't see any particular drive from women to give up their option (when income allows it) to stay home with children when they are very young, for example, in favor of having men do that half the time. Whatever the proper gender roles for the present and near future are, and I'm sure they're not the same as in the past, I find it equally as unlikely that they are precisely equal, given the different investment in childbirth, childcare, and all that entails.
But, really, the topic of this book is a particular fetishizing of testosterone, as an irresistible force which cannot be opposed, and which dictates that (of all the hundreds of different gender role systems that have existed in history) we must stick with the ones of industrialized economies of a generation or two back. I doubt that testosterone is as insignificant in its impact on our minds as Fine apparently believes, but regardless, she does considerable good service in pouring cold water on the many overly simplistic theories which believe Testosterone Rex to be dictating the way our society works. Plus, she's fun to read.
I'm fine (hehe) with that, as long as this is not the only book I'm ever going to read on a topic. Fine is also eminently readable, and even entertaining. One stereotype she does quite effectively demolish, is the one (not always undeserved, in other cases) of feminists having no sense of humor. Listen to her discuss an experience she had at a local school market, with her son (who by the way also sounds like a hoot):
"The woman there was selling plastic knives for kids that, according to the marketing material on display, were guaranteed to keep little fingers 100 percent safe. Having secured a two-knife deal with a family, the booth seller asked the daughter if she'd like a pink knife, and then asked her brother if he'd like a red knife or a blue one. 'I'd like a pink one too', he said. As I enjoyed the moment, surprisingly, my eldest son ambled into the scene. 'If I manage to cut off a finger with one of your knives, can I have it for free?' he asked the booth seller. In reply, the woman irritably told him to leave her alone as she had work to do. 'Yes, indeed,' I thought. 'A busy schedule buttressing the gender divide with your pointless plastic crap.' "
There has, in the last few decades, been a considerable amount of ink spilled in service of the idea that we are, as men and women, fated to think differently because men have more testosterone than women. I have always been a little suspicious of this idea; not that I don't believe testosterone has any affect, but it does seem ripe for confirmation bias. When a friend gave my 6-year old daughter and her best friend (also a girl) matching princess wands (pink and lavender), they liked them, but within five minutes had managed to break them by having a sword-fight with them. A perfect demonstration of how you can attempt to give girly presents to boys, but boys will be boys...except that these were girls. Rather, shall we say, "girly" girls as well, neither one a tomboy. But had they been boys, and the same incident happened in the same way, I'm sure it would have seemed to me proof that testosterone trumps culture.
Fine goes through a great deal of research into testosterone, and what it does and doesn't do. She also looks at quite a few studies that are alleged to demonstrate that men and women are irrevocably different, as determined by hormones (especially testosterone). For example, a famous (and I believe replicable) study wherein good-looking men and women would ask college students, complete strangers, whether or not they would be willing to go home with them and have sex. Unsurprisingly, the percentage of men who responded in the affirmative was quite a bit higher than the percentage of women. Fine (rightly, I think) points out that this is less likely to do with how much testosterone is coursing through their bloodstream, and more likely to do with their perceived likelihood of the other person being, say, a serial killer. Also, their perceived likelihood of getting to orgasm if they did go with this obviously mental person.
To her credit, she also turns a skeptical eye on the idea that, if women had been more widely represented in the highest ranks of financial firms, the 2008 Fiscal Crisis would have been averted. She believes that "Lehman Sisters" would have been fully as capable of being greedy and short-sighted. Apparently, studies in which a (usually very small) difference in greed-fueled risk-taking between the sexes is found, get widely cited. Studies which find no difference, or a difference in the opposite direction, get ignored. In this context, she explained to the reader how a "funnel plot" works, which is a clever technique I had not heard about before. Any book which, along the way towards making its main point, educates you on a new tool of considerably broader scope of application, gets an extra star from me.
I did find myself wondering whether Fine should not have addressed the other main biologically-based justification for cultural differences in gender roles. The gender roles in different cultures, in different times and places, vary considerably, from polygamy to polyandry, from wife-does-not-touch-money to let-the-wife-mind-the-books. But in no culture of which I am aware, of the hundreds that have been studied, do we NOT have culturally-defined gender roles. Given that not defining roles according to gender is the simpler scheme, the fact that apparently every single culture up to this point has chosen to do so, would suggest that there might be a reason why. Just because the gender roles of the 1950's are not appropriate for the 2020's, doesn't mean that we don't need any. I don't see any particular drive from women to give up their option (when income allows it) to stay home with children when they are very young, for example, in favor of having men do that half the time. Whatever the proper gender roles for the present and near future are, and I'm sure they're not the same as in the past, I find it equally as unlikely that they are precisely equal, given the different investment in childbirth, childcare, and all that entails.
But, really, the topic of this book is a particular fetishizing of testosterone, as an irresistible force which cannot be opposed, and which dictates that (of all the hundreds of different gender role systems that have existed in history) we must stick with the ones of industrialized economies of a generation or two back. I doubt that testosterone is as insignificant in its impact on our minds as Fine apparently believes, but regardless, she does considerable good service in pouring cold water on the many overly simplistic theories which believe Testosterone Rex to be dictating the way our society works. Plus, she's fun to read.
February 9, 2017
I had read Cordelia Fine's earlier book, "Delusions of Gender", a while back, enjoyed it greatly, and so I was eager to read her next book. "Testosterone Rex" did not disappoint. Fine has a delightful writing style, combining personal anecdote and a great deal of humor with clear arguments and large amounts of evidence supporting her views. This book was perhaps a drier topic, at least to me, with a great deal of biology, but I nonetheless found the book fascinating, and many of the key arguments were novel to me. Two in particular - that T levels might be a response to, rather than a cause of, certain physiological or behavioral changes, and that some gender differences might serve to make behavior similar despite reproductive biology differences, rather than the behavior being different because of those differences - really stood out. Correlation is not causation, and here are two huge causation arrows that can possibly be turned the other way. Fine is quite deft at dissecting the motivated reasoning and confirmation bias of various research efforts, something she does with humor and understanding rather than rancor. Human behavior, she frequently points out, is complex, and is not necessarily comparable to animal behavior in all ways. Fine also rightfully points out the folly of assuming that all human evolution traces only to the Stone age; much has happened since then that affects behavior. All in all, this was a wonderful book, and I recommend it.
May 1, 2018
One-by-one Cordelia Fine upends various modern myths surrounding gender stereotypes, or, to be more specific, fables surrounding testosterone as somehow being the magic bullet which justifies all sorts if illusions; men are inherently greater risk-takers, men are hard-wired for promiscuity, men thrive in stressful scenarios. Testosterone continues to be used to justify male privilege, to justify ideas surrounding toxic masculinity, whether it be the propensity for domestic violence or for male dominance in leadership roles in the finance industry. Fine is not arguing that there additional testosterone has no impact on male behaviour, or that male and female brains are exactly the same, instead her argument is that the impacts of testosterone are exaggerated and that it is societal norms and values which define gendered behaviours rather than simply human biology.
Concepts such as gender-specific toys are the rock upon which gender identities are built. Fine highlights the story of the Australian politician who linked boys toys with domestic violence; right-wing critics lampooned her links without understanding the nuances behind the argument. From a young age boys are taught that certain behaviours (aggressiveness, self-confidence, boisterousness) are masculine tendencies and therefore acceptable under the adage ‘boys will be boys’. However, it is when women seek to assert their individuality and break these stereotypes that male insecurity, which is the source of most domestic violence, crops up, as women do no fulfil the roles society places on them. Behind each Action Man toy lies a series of stereotypes which stay with children into adulthood
Fine presents a convincing argument on dispensing with gender stereotypes, or even the concept of gender, which is mainly a social construct, in order to free us, especially women, who feel the constant weight of male expectations, of male privilege which not only fail to allow them to meet their potential but prevent them from making aware it ever existed. In an ever-changing world, where concepts of gender and identity are constantly being redefined, books such as Testosterone Rex are essential in allowing us to re-consider what it means to be human.
Concepts such as gender-specific toys are the rock upon which gender identities are built. Fine highlights the story of the Australian politician who linked boys toys with domestic violence; right-wing critics lampooned her links without understanding the nuances behind the argument. From a young age boys are taught that certain behaviours (aggressiveness, self-confidence, boisterousness) are masculine tendencies and therefore acceptable under the adage ‘boys will be boys’. However, it is when women seek to assert their individuality and break these stereotypes that male insecurity, which is the source of most domestic violence, crops up, as women do no fulfil the roles society places on them. Behind each Action Man toy lies a series of stereotypes which stay with children into adulthood
Fine presents a convincing argument on dispensing with gender stereotypes, or even the concept of gender, which is mainly a social construct, in order to free us, especially women, who feel the constant weight of male expectations, of male privilege which not only fail to allow them to meet their potential but prevent them from making aware it ever existed. In an ever-changing world, where concepts of gender and identity are constantly being redefined, books such as Testosterone Rex are essential in allowing us to re-consider what it means to be human.
January 13, 2018
‘Testosterone Rex’ is a follow up to Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, both of which are excellent demolitions of sexist pseudo-scientific nonsense. The first tackled misinterpretations of neuroscience. The second deals with misinterpretations of research on hormones, specifically the oversimplification that men are risk-takers and women aren't because testosterone. Fine’s tone in both books is one of controlled sardonic rage, which I have every sympathy with. She must have dealt with a lot of mansplaining. ‘Testosterone Rex’ feels slightly briefer than her previous book, so I didn’t like it quite as much. The two hundred pages were undoubtedly very good, though. Fine captures the nuance of testosterone’s effects well. These sections particularly stood out:
I also heartily approve of Fine’s mocking economists for making the ground-breaking discovery that (GASP) people's decisions are influenced by social norms. As she puts it, ‘To a social psychologist, this is an almost comically belated revelation: a little bit as if only recently a landmark social psychology article introduced colleagues to the concept of money.’ The book wraps up with a succinct assessment of how the sexist myths of hunter-men and caregiver-women manifest in society, which is well expressed and depressing. One thing it left me thinking, though, is whether anyone has researched the effects of testosterone by surveying pre- and post-T trans men’s levels of risk-taking. Fine’s synthesis implies that such research may not have occurred due to a strong attachment to the gender binary in this field. It’s always seemed odd to me that sex differences in insects, birds, and animals are assumed to provide close analogies to humanity, despite the fact that humans are the only creatures to have the socially constructed concept of gender.
The complexity also helps to make the following problem less bewildering. How do humans achieve the feat of turning something rather large (average sex differences in circulating testosterone levels) into something rather small (average sex differences in behaviour)? No sex difference in basic behaviour comes close to the divergence between the sexes in circulating testosterone, for which there’s only 10 t0 15% overlap between women’s and men’s levels. Potentially, this puzzle is solved by the important principle we met in Chapter 4: that sex effects in the brain don’t always serve to create different behaviour. Sometimes instead, one sex effect counteracts or compensates for another, enabling similarity of behaviour, despite dissimilarity of biology. Combine this principle with the the considerable room for manoeuvre on the journey between T in the bloodstream and its action on the brain…
[...]
Not only is T neither a sufficient, nor necessary, cause of hormone-linked behaviour - sometimes it’s not even really a cause at all. Recall the purpose of hormones: to ‘adjust behaviour to circumstances and contexts’. To this end, T turns out to play ‘a key role’ in helping animals tune their social behaviour to whatever social scene they find themselves in. Although we’re used to thinking of certain kinds of behaviour as ‘testosterone fuelled’, in many cases it would make more sense to instead think of action and situations as being ‘testosterone fuelling’. Social context modulates T levels (up or down), which influences behaviour (presumably via changes in perception, motivation, and cognition), which influences social outcome, which influences T levels… and so on.
I also heartily approve of Fine’s mocking economists for making the ground-breaking discovery that (GASP) people's decisions are influenced by social norms. As she puts it, ‘To a social psychologist, this is an almost comically belated revelation: a little bit as if only recently a landmark social psychology article introduced colleagues to the concept of money.’ The book wraps up with a succinct assessment of how the sexist myths of hunter-men and caregiver-women manifest in society, which is well expressed and depressing. One thing it left me thinking, though, is whether anyone has researched the effects of testosterone by surveying pre- and post-T trans men’s levels of risk-taking. Fine’s synthesis implies that such research may not have occurred due to a strong attachment to the gender binary in this field. It’s always seemed odd to me that sex differences in insects, birds, and animals are assumed to provide close analogies to humanity, despite the fact that humans are the only creatures to have the socially constructed concept of gender.
February 19, 2017
There is some really important information in this book that, in my opinion, could have been delivered in a more relatable manner. This is a subject that is of interest to many but the language was not really inclusive. This book was clearly aimed at academics with a background in gender studies. I felt as if I were in class- and not a class in which we were all taking part in wonderful debates or discussions, but rather a class where I felt that I had to sift through jargon to really appreciate the full impact of what was being said.
September 1, 2017
It seems that books about the myth of gendered minds are somewhat like busses - wait ages for one, then two come along close together. I've already reviewed the superb Inferior by Angela Saini, so it was fascinating to be able to contrast Cordelia Fine's impressive Testosterone Rex.
This is a full-on take on the whole business of the ways that men and women aren't (and are) different. You may think that there's no need to do this in today's world. After, all, we all recognise gender equality, don't we? However, not only is it taking a long time for this to percolate through to equal pay (at the time of writing this review there's been quite a fuss about this at the BBC), it's clear that acceptance that the bias still exists is often, at best, skin deep. I was fascinated to see an online argument, started with a post by a (female) physicist on the topic, only to have a string of male scientists, who really should know better, pile in with a combination of denial, excuses, and attempts to counter studies with anecdotes, somehow forgetting that anecdotes are not data.
Even more so than with Saini's book, Fine's makes me feel sorry for evolutionary psychologists - these academics are really getting it in the neck with findings that suggest that at least some of their long-held views aren't based on fact. Part of the reason I particularly feel their pain here is that Fine is more full on than Saini: fiery, snarky and writing much more of a polemic than Saini's cool, careful and scientific approach. My suspicion is that the approach taken in Testosterone Rex might have the wider appeal, even though, for me, Saini's book has the edge.
Luckily, though, the two titles aren't really competitors. There is a strong overlap of theme, but each has a significantly different focus. Here relationships, sex and everyday life are stressed more (down to those infuriating 'girls' and 'boys' aisles in toyshops), while Inferior came particularly from the viewpoint of the influence of gender bias on education and careers, scientific careers in particular.
I found Testosterone Rex an enjoyable read (I hate the name, though in fairness, Fine does spend a lot of pages on the misunderstanding of the influence of testosterone and how, for example, trading floors are not so much testosterone-fueled as testosterone-generating). The book did sometimes feel a tad repetitive, as in the end it's a vast series of examples illustrating the same point. And, for me, there was also too much about animals. Having established early on that we are very different, even from the other primates, and that there was no point in using animal examples as 'natural' behaviour for us, there didn't seem any point continuing with the animal stories.
If you enjoy a good piece of punchy, persuasive writing, but are still to be convinced that 'boys will be boys' or that 'women are naturally less inclined to jobs requiring assertiveness or aggression' this is a must read. If you are already fully committed to equality, you will also enjoy having your beliefs reinforced. Sadly, some will still see this as political correctness gone mad. It's not - it's about getting the scientific basis right, rather than rolling out the same dated and simply incorrect arguments.
This is a full-on take on the whole business of the ways that men and women aren't (and are) different. You may think that there's no need to do this in today's world. After, all, we all recognise gender equality, don't we? However, not only is it taking a long time for this to percolate through to equal pay (at the time of writing this review there's been quite a fuss about this at the BBC), it's clear that acceptance that the bias still exists is often, at best, skin deep. I was fascinated to see an online argument, started with a post by a (female) physicist on the topic, only to have a string of male scientists, who really should know better, pile in with a combination of denial, excuses, and attempts to counter studies with anecdotes, somehow forgetting that anecdotes are not data.
Even more so than with Saini's book, Fine's makes me feel sorry for evolutionary psychologists - these academics are really getting it in the neck with findings that suggest that at least some of their long-held views aren't based on fact. Part of the reason I particularly feel their pain here is that Fine is more full on than Saini: fiery, snarky and writing much more of a polemic than Saini's cool, careful and scientific approach. My suspicion is that the approach taken in Testosterone Rex might have the wider appeal, even though, for me, Saini's book has the edge.
Luckily, though, the two titles aren't really competitors. There is a strong overlap of theme, but each has a significantly different focus. Here relationships, sex and everyday life are stressed more (down to those infuriating 'girls' and 'boys' aisles in toyshops), while Inferior came particularly from the viewpoint of the influence of gender bias on education and careers, scientific careers in particular.
I found Testosterone Rex an enjoyable read (I hate the name, though in fairness, Fine does spend a lot of pages on the misunderstanding of the influence of testosterone and how, for example, trading floors are not so much testosterone-fueled as testosterone-generating). The book did sometimes feel a tad repetitive, as in the end it's a vast series of examples illustrating the same point. And, for me, there was also too much about animals. Having established early on that we are very different, even from the other primates, and that there was no point in using animal examples as 'natural' behaviour for us, there didn't seem any point continuing with the animal stories.
If you enjoy a good piece of punchy, persuasive writing, but are still to be convinced that 'boys will be boys' or that 'women are naturally less inclined to jobs requiring assertiveness or aggression' this is a must read. If you are already fully committed to equality, you will also enjoy having your beliefs reinforced. Sadly, some will still see this as political correctness gone mad. It's not - it's about getting the scientific basis right, rather than rolling out the same dated and simply incorrect arguments.
February 7, 2017
As a new dad, I have had frequent conversations with my wife about all of the gender-neutral discussions taking place with kids toys/clothing etc. so I was delightfully intrigued to see this book come up and I gave it a read.
It is a feminist book, and already there may be men going "oh no..." but it was a very good read, no matter who you are (which I think is further to Fine's point on gender stereotypes)!
The whole book breaks down the myth that Testosterone is what fuels erratic/impulsive behavior in men, which then leads to men taking more risks, which sees men having higher rewards, being able to sleep with more women, and generally spreading the seed. Needless to say, I found a lot of comfort in the pages of the book and here is why:
- I am a straight male who works in a field that is 97% women (I am an interior designer...Not a decorator!)
- I have been very active in my son's early life, and split his care more than 50/50 with my wife for the most part (some days she does more, other days I do, but there is a balance)
- I grew up fascinated by the arts, music, literature and didn't like playing anything but dodgeball or floor hockey
- I liked playing video games where I could blow people up, and I played with toy guns with my brother religiously while we were growing up
- I love my wife dearly and made a pledge to her when we were married that she was the last person I would ever be with, and we will be together no matter the hardships and issues. I have found my one person in this world.
- I am a total fashion snob and enjoy shopping.
What do all these things have in common? Nothing, other than to prove that, as a male, I am not defined by testosterone, and women, should not be defined by their lack of it, as it does not guide in any way who you are as a PERSON. That was the big takeaway for me from this book: we are all unique individuals, regardless of sex. Some men will have more female tendencies, while some women will have more male tendencies. The idea is that we should understand and proport a society where respecting the person over respecting the sex is paramount.
One of my favorite parts, which I will leave as a takeaway, talked about how we use the term "Testosterone Fueled Event" when in reality, based on numerous studies, when we find ourselves in a situation that may make us aggressive or angry, we release testosterone, not the other way around.
I am doing a terrible job at simplifying the incredible amount of work that went into this book, but I would highly recommend reading it, no matter your stance on the issues of gender equality or feminism. It was a witty and enjoyable read that may change your position on a few things without you even knowing it.
It is a feminist book, and already there may be men going "oh no..." but it was a very good read, no matter who you are (which I think is further to Fine's point on gender stereotypes)!
The whole book breaks down the myth that Testosterone is what fuels erratic/impulsive behavior in men, which then leads to men taking more risks, which sees men having higher rewards, being able to sleep with more women, and generally spreading the seed. Needless to say, I found a lot of comfort in the pages of the book and here is why:
- I am a straight male who works in a field that is 97% women (I am an interior designer...Not a decorator!)
- I have been very active in my son's early life, and split his care more than 50/50 with my wife for the most part (some days she does more, other days I do, but there is a balance)
- I grew up fascinated by the arts, music, literature and didn't like playing anything but dodgeball or floor hockey
- I liked playing video games where I could blow people up, and I played with toy guns with my brother religiously while we were growing up
- I love my wife dearly and made a pledge to her when we were married that she was the last person I would ever be with, and we will be together no matter the hardships and issues. I have found my one person in this world.
- I am a total fashion snob and enjoy shopping.
What do all these things have in common? Nothing, other than to prove that, as a male, I am not defined by testosterone, and women, should not be defined by their lack of it, as it does not guide in any way who you are as a PERSON. That was the big takeaway for me from this book: we are all unique individuals, regardless of sex. Some men will have more female tendencies, while some women will have more male tendencies. The idea is that we should understand and proport a society where respecting the person over respecting the sex is paramount.
One of my favorite parts, which I will leave as a takeaway, talked about how we use the term "Testosterone Fueled Event" when in reality, based on numerous studies, when we find ourselves in a situation that may make us aggressive or angry, we release testosterone, not the other way around.
I am doing a terrible job at simplifying the incredible amount of work that went into this book, but I would highly recommend reading it, no matter your stance on the issues of gender equality or feminism. It was a witty and enjoyable read that may change your position on a few things without you even knowing it.
January 10, 2018
Another attempt to tell us that gender differences--what we consider feminine or masculine characteristics--are not genetically determined, rather they are "adaptive traits" which are "socially constructed". OK, whatever...
Why does this matter? Well, if our gender differences are social constructs, then they can be manipulated--changed. And at the heart of this book is the desire to do just that. Fine believes that to address issues such as the pay gap and sexual harassment we must first fix these "gender constructions".
I'm always puzzled when I read about a scientist who thinks they can culturally manipulate what evolution has created over millions of years.
To be more specific, Fine challenges the belief that testosterone is responsible for typically masculine traits. I have two simple questions for Fine, which were not addressed in her book:
1. If testosterone does not affect aggressive behavior, why do we castrate our male animals in order to make them docile and more manageable?
2. If testosterone does not affect competitive behavior, why is it a controlled substance which athletic association routinely test for?
(If you think my review is too tedious, you do not want to read this book!)
Why does this matter? Well, if our gender differences are social constructs, then they can be manipulated--changed. And at the heart of this book is the desire to do just that. Fine believes that to address issues such as the pay gap and sexual harassment we must first fix these "gender constructions".
I'm always puzzled when I read about a scientist who thinks they can culturally manipulate what evolution has created over millions of years.
To be more specific, Fine challenges the belief that testosterone is responsible for typically masculine traits. I have two simple questions for Fine, which were not addressed in her book:
1. If testosterone does not affect aggressive behavior, why do we castrate our male animals in order to make them docile and more manageable?
2. If testosterone does not affect competitive behavior, why is it a controlled substance which athletic association routinely test for?
(If you think my review is too tedious, you do not want to read this book!)
August 10, 2024
I’m not really sure what I just read.
I’m sure there were some good points in this book but honestly it was hard to decipher them from this “inner monologue”-style of writing with no clear beginning or end to a thought. Also, I think my biggest gripe with this book is that, at times, it felt as if her arguments did the opposite of what she intended to say. And the jokes just fell flat and made her out to be someone I don’t think she is. And there was ZERO structure or order to the chapters; like I did not know what the chapter was really about until the chapter was over (were they all about risk-taking and promiscuity? Maybe, couldn’t tell you)
Overall, I don’t recommend it to anyone who knows even a little bit about sex differences and the myths surrounding the topic. Could be educational for a complete novice perhaps.
Otherwise, it was okay, I guess. Confusing for sure.
I’m sure there were some good points in this book but honestly it was hard to decipher them from this “inner monologue”-style of writing with no clear beginning or end to a thought. Also, I think my biggest gripe with this book is that, at times, it felt as if her arguments did the opposite of what she intended to say. And the jokes just fell flat and made her out to be someone I don’t think she is. And there was ZERO structure or order to the chapters; like I did not know what the chapter was really about until the chapter was over (were they all about risk-taking and promiscuity? Maybe, couldn’t tell you)
Overall, I don’t recommend it to anyone who knows even a little bit about sex differences and the myths surrounding the topic. Could be educational for a complete novice perhaps.
Otherwise, it was okay, I guess. Confusing for sure.
June 27, 2018
Fantastically informative, smart, compelling, and (most unexpectedly) funny. I really enjoyed this audiobook - the narrator was fantastic, btw. I will admit that often when I read science writing I feel like I am eating my peas. (Well, not really because I like peas and in truth they are not really healthy, but that is the expression and people think its weird when you say it is like eating really gross things like tinned sardines or flourless chocolate cake.) But this book was really a fun read, and well researched to boot. The animal behavior information was truly fascinating. My only issue is that where research does not fully support her hypothesis, Fine simply "yadda yadda yadda's" it. She finds a story where it doesn't disprove her position and says it like its truth. And it might be the truth but it also might not, and the potential evidence of difference based on testosterone might in fact have some truth to it. But for Fine the question doesn't even exist, she glosses right over it. So read it with a critical eye, but read it, good and good for you.
March 5, 2017
This book is full of bs.
July 24, 2022
A scathing attack on the mainstream science "research" which has significantly been shrouded with sexism. Yea, the cause to the global financial crisis for the "acclaimed scholars" was too much testosterone and the solution was adding female bosses to bring about care and caution( apparently they don't "take risks"). To hell with, changing the capitalistic patriarchal structure which doesn't create such a crisis in the first place.
It's fairly postmodern where humans irrespective of their genitalia are a mosaic of different socio-cultural, economic and ecological influences. I loved the part where sexuality is explored by the author as a source of pleasure, intimacy, warmth and experimentation ( beyond the evolutionary reproduction cult) and is a function of power dynamics of our society ( clearly visible in the rape culture and slut shaming of sexually expressive women)
I also appreciated that the author was inclusive in her research data. It had plenty of examples of risk taking behavior by women in lottery games in India and Latin America.
Being a fresher to science books, it was a bit challenging in parts about the anatomy of the brain, it's functioning etc.
It's fairly postmodern where humans irrespective of their genitalia are a mosaic of different socio-cultural, economic and ecological influences. I loved the part where sexuality is explored by the author as a source of pleasure, intimacy, warmth and experimentation ( beyond the evolutionary reproduction cult) and is a function of power dynamics of our society ( clearly visible in the rape culture and slut shaming of sexually expressive women)
I also appreciated that the author was inclusive in her research data. It had plenty of examples of risk taking behavior by women in lottery games in India and Latin America.
Being a fresher to science books, it was a bit challenging in parts about the anatomy of the brain, it's functioning etc.
March 14, 2017
Written by an Australian professor who challenges the idea that human sexuality is binary and fixed, I like her style of arguing, where she begins by carefully summarizing the evidence behind something, and then shows how looking at the whole story may show a different conclusion.
For decades, sociobiologists have pointed out that, biologically, females are severely limited in their total number of potential descendants — you can only become pregnant so many times — but males can have a near infinite number of progeny. Supposedly, that fact makes males more prone to promiscuity — get as many genes out there as possible — while females tend to be more concerned about protecting the (relatively) few children they can personally deliver.
Cordelina Fine repeats that argument, but then shows how in reality men have far fewer options than you’d think. In a band of hunter-gatherers, which typically number no more than 100-150 people, the women might each have — maximum — ten babies or something in their lifetimes, but that also means the women are pregnant most of the time and therefore off limits for reproduction. If you do all the math, you’ll find that men can realistically have only a few more babies than the women. In other words, don’t assume that men will evolve to be more risk-loving or more aggressive just because you assume they can theoretically have more babies; in fact, there is good evidence that women are often just as aggressive risk-takers.
Well, I was all excited about this line of reasoning. The book continues with many other examples from neuroscience and biochemistry that show how the story about women vs. men is much more complicated than we tend to blindly accept. Page after page she runs through examples that violate this supposed rule.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the author made her case. She points out exceptions to the sociobiological arguments – all interesting and worthwhile to consider –but when I think deeper I’m reminded that the most she does is show that men and women are more alike than they are different, hardly a provocative conclusion. The point remains that men and women are different in some important ways, and not all the differences are “better” for the man.
She never mentions violence, for example. It’s easy to forget that, until very recently, men were often, regularly killed, in wars, in brawls, in stupidity. Even today, men are way over-represented in jails, psychiatric wards, homelessness, and many more awful situations. A good explanation of biology can’t just complain that there aren’t enough women CEOs.
My biggest problem with her book, though, is that it ignores partnerships. A man or woman is not the fundamental unit of society. Families are. Successful families work together, without obsessing over how the credit or blame is allocated. If you’re on a team, the issue is whether everyone is better off as a whole, and relative to their alternatives.
If evolution worked strictly at the individual organism level, then the author has some interesting new ways to see the facts. But evolution doesn't care about you or me as individuals. Do gender differences make human groups _as a whole_ more productive or less so? This book tries to make the case that gender is not relevant, but I wasn't convinced.
For decades, sociobiologists have pointed out that, biologically, females are severely limited in their total number of potential descendants — you can only become pregnant so many times — but males can have a near infinite number of progeny. Supposedly, that fact makes males more prone to promiscuity — get as many genes out there as possible — while females tend to be more concerned about protecting the (relatively) few children they can personally deliver.
Cordelina Fine repeats that argument, but then shows how in reality men have far fewer options than you’d think. In a band of hunter-gatherers, which typically number no more than 100-150 people, the women might each have — maximum — ten babies or something in their lifetimes, but that also means the women are pregnant most of the time and therefore off limits for reproduction. If you do all the math, you’ll find that men can realistically have only a few more babies than the women. In other words, don’t assume that men will evolve to be more risk-loving or more aggressive just because you assume they can theoretically have more babies; in fact, there is good evidence that women are often just as aggressive risk-takers.
Well, I was all excited about this line of reasoning. The book continues with many other examples from neuroscience and biochemistry that show how the story about women vs. men is much more complicated than we tend to blindly accept. Page after page she runs through examples that violate this supposed rule.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the author made her case. She points out exceptions to the sociobiological arguments – all interesting and worthwhile to consider –but when I think deeper I’m reminded that the most she does is show that men and women are more alike than they are different, hardly a provocative conclusion. The point remains that men and women are different in some important ways, and not all the differences are “better” for the man.
She never mentions violence, for example. It’s easy to forget that, until very recently, men were often, regularly killed, in wars, in brawls, in stupidity. Even today, men are way over-represented in jails, psychiatric wards, homelessness, and many more awful situations. A good explanation of biology can’t just complain that there aren’t enough women CEOs.
My biggest problem with her book, though, is that it ignores partnerships. A man or woman is not the fundamental unit of society. Families are. Successful families work together, without obsessing over how the credit or blame is allocated. If you’re on a team, the issue is whether everyone is better off as a whole, and relative to their alternatives.
If evolution worked strictly at the individual organism level, then the author has some interesting new ways to see the facts. But evolution doesn't care about you or me as individuals. Do gender differences make human groups _as a whole_ more productive or less so? This book tries to make the case that gender is not relevant, but I wasn't convinced.
March 7, 2017
This is both a brilliant and hilarious book. I've always thought the only essential difference culturally between women and men was that men spit and women didn't. This book is a great refutation of patriarchal society and the studies (always by men) that confirmed their pre-existing biases. To me, it's incredible to what lengths rich white men will go to develop theories that back up their starting point, which is--the way we are is normative, and I'll prove it by going back and showing that during evolution, men always grunted, spit and were ferocious, and women were homemakers and knew their place.
This book is so well-researched that 40 percent of it is notes. Fine digs up amazing studies that refute most of what is laughingly called "evolutionary psychology" and refutes many male-biased interpretations of evolutionary biology. We have evolved past caveman society, but no caveman--or anyone at all (I'm talking to you, King John of England, re: 1215 at Runnymede) wants to willingly give up power once they have attained it. Thus we get such ridiculous ideas as The Divine Right of Kings and Droit du seigneur. People in power will make up any outlandish scheme or philosophy they think people will buy to assure people out of power that god just ordained the people in power to be in power.
Well, guess what? The world has changed radically since 1215 and continues to change at an increasingly rapid pace. Blacks are actually human beings! Women should be able to vote and inherit property! All humans are created equal! Democracy generally works better than monarchy. Fine is not the first to point out the emperor's new clothes, but she sure does it in the funniest way.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the truth.
This book is so well-researched that 40 percent of it is notes. Fine digs up amazing studies that refute most of what is laughingly called "evolutionary psychology" and refutes many male-biased interpretations of evolutionary biology. We have evolved past caveman society, but no caveman--or anyone at all (I'm talking to you, King John of England, re: 1215 at Runnymede) wants to willingly give up power once they have attained it. Thus we get such ridiculous ideas as The Divine Right of Kings and Droit du seigneur. People in power will make up any outlandish scheme or philosophy they think people will buy to assure people out of power that god just ordained the people in power to be in power.
Well, guess what? The world has changed radically since 1215 and continues to change at an increasingly rapid pace. Blacks are actually human beings! Women should be able to vote and inherit property! All humans are created equal! Democracy generally works better than monarchy. Fine is not the first to point out the emperor's new clothes, but she sure does it in the funniest way.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the truth.
April 12, 2017
Some interesting things, but I frequently lost patience. Straw Man Rex.
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