Читать книгу Companion to Feminist Studies - Группа авторов - Страница 26

Differences in male and female brains have been the focus of attention since the absolute difference in brain size was noted. At first the preoccupation was with the fact that female brains are smaller and therefore, it seemed safe to conclude, less competent (Tuana 1993). But the autopsies of the brains of famous men revealed that they might well have had a brain smaller than that of the average women and it also became clear that there was no correlation between intelligence and the size of the brain (Russett 1989). In general the focus moved to the way brains function rather than their size, although recently neuroscientists have shown an interest in examining and theorizing sex differences in the size of brain structures and in absolute size. For example, Grabowska speculates that there are “compensatory mechanisms in females that enable their smaller brains to work as effectively as male brains” (2017, p. 211).

The history of the study of the brain and the nervous system is a very long one but the rise of contemporary neuroscience is seen as a feature of the early 1980s, propelled by recent advances in molecular biology and brain imaging (such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanning and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)). Neuroscience has become one of the most feted and well‐funded scientific disciplines, given considerable power and credibility within academia and in the public imagination. President George Bush declared the 1990s the Decade of the Brain in order to “enhance public awareness of the benefits to be derived from brain research.” Leaning on both evolutionary theory and research on hormones, as well as developments in the brain sciences, numerous publications since the 1980s, from both social and natural scientists, have promoted the view that the brains of men and women are different. One of the first books to gain prominence was Brain Sex by Moir and Jessel, published in 1989. They assert that,

Six or seven weeks after conception … the unborn baby “makes up its mind” and the brain begins to take on a male or female pattern. What happens at that critical stage in the darkness of the womb, will determine the structure and the organisation of the brain and that in turn will decide the very nature of the mind. (1989, p. 21)

Other books in this vein included Baron‐Cohen's The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain (2003) and The Female Brain by Brizendine (2007). Baron‐Cohen's main focus is on the idea that evolution has shaped male and female brains to think differently, so that men are sytematizers and women empathizers. Brizendine claims that “scientists have documented an astonishing array of structural, chemical, genetic, hormonal and functional brain differences between men and women” (2007, p. 27). It is this confident assertion of the scientific basis of the idea of sexed brains that has elicited criticism from feminist scientists (Fine 2010; Jordan‐Young 2010).

Currently some of the most powerful criticism comes from feminist scholars linked to the group, the Neurogenderings Network (www.neurogenderings.wordpress.org). Like Fausto‐Sterling, the members of this group are biologists and neuroscientists so they are speaking from within the fold. Their aim is to counter examples of “neurosexism” (Fine 2010) by examining the scientific claims that are being made by those promoting the idea of the sexed brain. Neurosexism can be defined as the viewpoint that there are hardwired differences in the brains of men and women that account for the gender status quo, to paraphrase Fine (2010 p. xxv).

The scholars in this group want to replace neurosexism with “neurofeminism.” As it sets out on the website:

The NeuroGenderings Network is a transdisciplinary network of “neurofeminist” scholars who aim to critically examine neuroscientific knowledge production and to develop differentiated approaches for a more gender adequate neuroscientific research. Feminist neuroscientists generally seek to elaborate the relation between gender and the brain beyond biological determinism but still engaging with the materiality of the brain.

Notably these scientists are not against brain research into sex and gender. Instead, they are asking for a better quality of research. For example, they point out that images of the brain can only reflect current brain activity and not what causes it. When a close analysis of claims about brain sex is conducted it is striking how often they are made on the basis of animal studies, studies of humans using very small samples and so called “snap‐shot studies.” Fine et al. suggest that,

Focusing only on similarities or differences is misleading. We need to develop a new framework for thinking of the relation between sex, brain and gender that better fits current knowledge and takes into account changes, overlap, variance and most of all, context.

(Fine et al. 2014, p. 1)

The work of feminist critics seems to be having some impact on the field of neuroscience. In 2017, Fine and Jordan‐Young, two early critics of what they saw as unjustified claims about male–female differences in the brain, commented in an article in The Guardian that there are “welcome signs that neuroscience is showing new openness to critiques of research into sex differences.” It remains to be seen whether the work of these critics percolates through to the media and the public.