Is the Brain Gendered?: The Debate

The idea that male and female brains are ‘essentially’ different is one of the most controversial and contested in science, with potentially far-reaching consequences for the future of medicine and mental health treatment, the workplace and society as a whole.

In this debate, two leaders of their field go head-to-head to debate the evidence for and against the existence of sex differences in the mind and the brain. We sift fact from conjecture, science from nonsense, and explore the ramifications for education, employment, relationships, psychiatry, and how we identify ourselves.

It’s time to accept that brains should not be ‘sexed’, says Gina Rippon. It’s misleading to attribute any differences in behaviour, abilities, achievements, or personality to the possession of either a female brain or a male brain. And she argues that new techniques can prove it. After centuries of ingrained neurosexism, neuroscience’s cutting-edge breakthroughs should at last liberate us from outdated misunderstandings of what our brains can and cannot do.

Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen takes a different perspective. Whilst he agrees that individuals’ brains should not and cannot be ‘sexed’, he reminds us that group studies of males and females do reveal differences on average: men on average are better at analysing systems and women on average are better at empathising with people. And he marshals evidence from studies of prenatal hormones and genetics that these traits have both biological and cultural roots.

In addition, Simon Baron-Cohen doesn’t just study average sex differences for the sake of it: he does so to understand autism, a neurological condition that affects three times as many boys as girls, and which he argues is an extreme version of the typical male brain.

Simon Baron-Cohen and Gina Rippon agree on their moral perspective: they both want a society free of discrimination on the basis of gender (or ethnicity, or disability). And they agree that pseudoscience is dangerous: men are not from Mars, or women from Venus. But they disagree on two key points: whether essential differences between males and females are part of human nature; and whether or not these should be ignored.

[MsAjax]

Brain scan data show that there are differences. Why is this even being debated?

[AstroSquid]

Science is a process of finding facts, not about managing feelings by not observing or distorting truths.

[ICreatedU]

Gina Rippon's position seems to be either of two things: a) Humans are the only animal whose cerebral sexual dimorphism doesn't translate into behaviour or b) Humans are the only animal that doesn't have any cerebral sexual dimorphism. Both positions seem farfetched in my book.

Her attempt at 15:30 to show that there are no differences demonstrates precisely the opposite. Focusing on the overlap seems disingenuous. For instance, there's a 98.7% overlap between the bonobo and the human genome, should we simply discard the remaining 1.3% and claim both species are one and the same? "Overlap" doesn't mean "identity". Complex systems such as the brain or a society are extremely fine tuned, the tiniest differences can have the biggest consequences (butterfly effect), so the claim that a component like reproductive abilities has no influence whatsoever over psychology or behaviour doesn't stand to reason.

The fact that the animal kingdom displays gendered behaviour (and cerebral sexual dimorphism) without any intervention of culture is solid enough proof that said behaviour is at the very least partly biological in nature, which is all we need to demonstrate.

If gendered behaviour was exclusively social, it would be possible to raise boys like girls and vice-versa. And if it was possible to raise boys like girls/girls like boys, then socialisation would be enough to alleviate the pain of people suffering from gender dysphoria. There would be no gender dysphoria to begin with because behaviour would equal socialisation at all times since the latter causes the former according to the theory. The very fact that gender dysphoria is indeed a real thing is evidence that something else than socialisation is at play in the formation of gender identity. That something is biology.

I am team Simon Baron-Cohen. Cheers.

[kukuruyo]

I disliked that woman from just her presentation and she completely lost me when she tried to use shaming tactics to make people agree with her on feelings rather than science. She's an activist not a scientist.

[hectorestrada]

"Our differences don’t mean one sex or the other is better or smarter or more deserving. Some researchers have grappled with charges of “neuro­sexism”: falling prey to stereotypes or being too quick to interpret human sex differences as biological rather than cultural. They counter, however, that data from animal research, cross-​cultural surveys, natural experiments and brain-imaging studies demonstrate real, if not always earthshaking, brain differences, and that these differences may contribute to differences in behavior and cognition." Source: Stanford University School of Neuroscience.

[cartoune]

Mary Berry and Hans Zimmer can really make you think...

[masteranza]

Fact check #1: Alessandro Strumia did NOT say that men and women brains were different. He did not argue through neurobiology.

[cunknownname]

These comments illustrate why it is so important to have such a debate. The way of which we categorise things (such as some genetalia and behavior being classefied as female or male) affect how we structure the world, and thereby how we interact with the world. By going into looking at anything, with a perspective already established (Im looking for either X or Y or Z) you will find differences to categorise the things into X or Y and Z and thereyby having focus on differences and not similarities. We can all aggree that we are human, this is one category, by assuming there to be another essentiel category (eg. female or male) we are inherently biased in our research, and by then going to look at brain studies and such we will focus on what differs (even when the overlap fx is bigger than the difference, if we made the research to look thorugh another glass (not female male, but fx temperament regarding extraversion introversion) we could find a whole other graph with overlap and differences.

Imagine if we instead of categorising humans into male or female used over 150cm height or under 150cm, (doesnt even have to be a binary system tbh, but just for the idea) we would then in each categories probaly find differences, fx those over 150cm in height would probaly deal with knee-issues more often than those under 150cm; this not because they have essentially weaker knees, but because they live in a world where their height puts more pressure on their knees and they thereby weaken more often. But if we then started to tell those over 150 to act a certain way to continue to be viewed as "correct" in their categorie, we then end up discreminating and this is the problem one has to be aware of when conforming to the idea of "brain look diff then we must be diff" (also we have to think about how diff ways of looking at brain shows structure or fucntion and we often dont see dirrect effect between structure and fuction but we practically guess based on correlations and such)

English not first language lol, but i hope you get the point; your glasses of which you see the world thorugh are inherently affected on your current idea of differences, but those glasses are given to us, and we must be critical of this to continue to create better science (and science is not only defined by the classical natural science, human og sociological are just as good; we have a tendency to think if there is no brainscan or anything its no good, but this devalues a lot of good research and ideas.

[darabumdarabum]

Some comments on here are exactly why Prof. Gina had to insist so much on how knowledge is presented

[theysayhiraeth]

Unfortunately Cohen's data can't be extricated from postnatal experience and conditioning. If anything, the theory of autism and systemizing and empathy seems to indicate the role of conditioning for non-autistic people, because autistic people might serve as a control group here. However, I do agree with other commenters about the tests and diagnosis of autism still lean toward makes and females slip through the cracks.

[Bradley_Lute]

Even if brains started out the same, they would diverge based on physiology alone. Just size differences would cause differences in psychology which would effect brain differences.

[freegaming]

just wanna add some mathematic note to male female brain vs male female identify by birth (chromosome) is as he claimed for e-s type model and i love how data speak it self: its 40 % for both side in middle which means for people which no aligment its 50 50 for both male and female but when we talk about extremes which are 40 % in s and 40 % in e other side is 20 % which is half so for s type especefically its 66% vs 33 % thats how math works and if you want to build socaity around it because it shows its not 50 50 at all and if you wanna gamble i think 66 % is ok to put ur money on it!

[rafaelalarconmedina]

Las burdas simplificaciones de Rippon son tan características de los académicos del like, de esos investigadores que están más preocupados por ser famosos extrapolando y torciendo los argumentos que en el trabajo de investigación lento y crítico. Provocar escándalo siempre es más redituable en esta sociedad de la mentira y el espectáculo. Me hubiera gustado escuchar más de sus propias investigaciones originales en vez de depender totalmente de lo que dice Baron-Cohen para tener algo que señalar. Su presentación no parece mostrar una investigación propia robusta (ciertamente nada como la de Baron-Cohen), pero lo que sí puedo corroborar es que respecto a la dimensión cultural que tanto defiende sabe muy poco, y desde una perspectiva sumamente reduccionista de buenos-malos, patriarcado opresor, etc. etc.

[Bradley_Lute]

Sad to see her attack James Demore all these years later for his Google memo. Demore was arguing against preferential hiring for women at Google due to sex differences in interests ie people vs things. He was careful to say they were on average differences. Just more proof that idealogues will attack anyone who they perceive to go against their agenda which is not about equality, but differential treatment. Demore did nothing wrong in pointing out these differences and we should not be hiring unqualified women. Rather, we should be careful to erase biases in hiring. Just because men are more thing oriented and tend to be better in spatial reasoning and numbers, doesnt mean there arent women who are just as good or even better.

[thomasblackwell]

This is hilarious she literally stops debating what they are talking about to talk about how vital it is as a society we agree with her and the social consequences if we don’t. She an activist.

[Desertphile]

My brain is gendered, so I presume other mammals' brains are gendered.

[kerrymccarpet]

Couldn't love SBC more - he always manages to argue his case with empathy to the other side. ...I wonder if the male lifespan for those who survive middle age is still shorter - due to women being selected for based on looks alone until recently... looks = health to some extent - whereas men have sometimes been selected for based on innovative capacity, which only = health of the default mode network of the brain...

[Razomir]

She drops the ball in her very opening statement. "My opponent will present studies that have found differences, and I can present studies that havent". Ok...but by the vey nature of the question, ANY difference settles the debate. It's like when trying to prove if all swans are white, one researcher shows proof of a black swan and their opponent goes "well yeah but the swans I looked at in my study are all white". I exaggerate a bit of course, but this is the point. Then she proceeds to say "Men and women's brains are more alike than they are different. Yes, homo sapiens is more alike to other great apes than we are different, especially genetically speaking based on the number of overlapping genes, but can you use that to claim we are not different? This is why critical thinking is necessary when building an argument. Also, how dishonest to conclude your opening statement by finding someone truly sexist and using that as an appeal to emotion to stir up negative reactions, but then pretending you're discussing science.

[thepastry]

The 24 hour old baby experiment: it would be interesting to follow up after 5 years or so and see if any of them are autistic. This test could be an early indicator

[ivanandreevich]

"Once you correct for differences ... differences disappear". I damn nearly choked on my tea.