Sexism, not science

I posted my electronic records essay this morning - thank the gods - and so have finally gotten around to writing about The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages by Deborah Cameron, as promised many moons ago.  It was very kindly sent to me by Oxford University Press before Christmas and has been rattling round my brain ever since I finished it.  It probably comes as no surprise that a book exposing the erroneous claims about gender difference in popular science and self-help manuals went down well with me.

But let's begin with an excerpt from a different book, The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain by Simon Baron-Cohen:

People with the female brain make the most wonderful counsellors, primary school teachers, nurses, carers, therapists, social workers, mediators, group facilitators or personnel staff... People with the male brain make the most wonderful scientists, engineers, mechanics, technicians, musicians, architects, electricians, plumbers, taxonomists, catalogists, bankers, toolmakers, programmers or even lawyers.

If you had to make a guess as to when said book was written, what would you venture? I was shocked to discover that it was published, by an imprint of a major publishing house, as recently as 2003.  Deborah Cameron is shocked too.  She is taken back to her school days when 'the aptitude tests we had to take before being interviewed by a careers advisor were printed on pink or blue paper. In those days we called this sexism, not science.' 

As she points out Baron-Cohen's book is not just a postcard from the nutty fringe. On the contrary, it is just one of a raft of popular science and sociology books that tout a fundamental, biological difference in the way that men and women think and communicate. (A prize for the worst titled goes to Why Men Don't Iron: The Fascinating and Unalterable Differences between Men and Women by Anne and Bill Moir.)  The rich old granddaddy of the genre is, of course, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray.  This book, which has sold millions of copies world-wide, mines a deep seam of sexism in Western culture (directed against both men and women), and taps into popular wisdoms about what men and women are and ever shall be.  It, and all its descendents, suggests that the gender status quo - that men are competitive, creative and emotionally obtuse, while women are co-operative, empathic and caring - is native to human nature and should order our lives and relationships. 

Deborah Cameron is particularly interested in the intimation that men and women 'speak different languages', leading to frequent miscommunication between the sexes and difficulties in heterosexual relationships.  She notes that most books about male/female difference share classic assumptions on this score, namely that:

1. Women talk more than men, because interpersonal communication means more to them.
2. Women are more verbally skilled than men.
3. Men talk about events and facts, whereas women talk about emotional and relational issues.
4. Men's use of language is direct and competitive, designed to acquire and maintain group status; women's use of language is indirect and passive, reflecting their desire to create harmony and equality in their relationships.
5. These differences lead communication breakdown between the sexes.

The Myth of Mars and Venus sets out to demonstrate why (and how) these assumptions are incorrect, why they have such currency and why they are terribly dangerous. 

The evidence for the first proposition is compelling.  Cameron reveals just how few claims about gender difference and communication are based on solid fieldwork.  For example, the much reported statistic claiming that women use 20,000 words per day in comparison to men's 7000 has no basis in fact.  It was taken from a popular science book called The Female Brain, which in turn had taken it from a self-help book, which had plucked the numbers out of thin air.  The author later admitted it was an error to include the information, and has removed it from subsequent editions, but the damage was already done. Our already firm belief that women are incouragible chatters while men only speak when necessary had been reinforced.  The insinuation that this reflected badly on women was generally implicit, if not explicit.  In fact, studies show widely variant word usage in both genders - some women talk more than others, and some men more than other men.  More importantly (and rather obviously), all people talk more or less depending on the context they're in.   No doubt everyone knows this but, as Cameron points out, the power of stereotypes is such that they can appear reasonable without any grounding evidence.   It is common knowledge that women talk all the time and yet say little of substance, isn't it?  Apparently so.

One by one Myths holds the stereotypes up to the light and knocks holes in them.  Men are more assertive speakers than women?  Not so in all cultures, nor in all contexts.  People are more assertive when they feel in a position of superior knowledge and greater power.  Since our culture still accords men more authority and respect in the public sphere it follows that they may often appear more assertive in politics, business and even academia; but those same men may be entirely passive out of their comfort zone.  Women are more co-operative speakers than men?  Well no, not really.  Again, it is the individual in context that matters.  Women can be as linguistically competitive as men, just as men are as capable of verbal negotiation.  The difference, Cameron points out, is that competitive language in women is very rarely interpreted as a positive characteristic. Similarly, co-operative behaviour in men.  Competitive women are uppity and unnatural; co-operative men are weak and immasculated.  She sites a sociological study of office behaviour in Australasia which showed how the assertiveness of female managers was often combined with a self-deprecating humour to mitigate the shock of their authority.  One woman encouraged her colleagues to nick-name her 'The Queen', a title that suggested her role was symbolic rather than functional and that the real governing/managing took place elsewhere.  

The centrepiece of Cameron's book concerns miscommunication between the sexes, and particularly the proposition that men have difficulty understanding indirect requests.   This is the central argument of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, which states that women are too passive and indirect in their conversations with men, leading to unnecessary upset.  According to John Gray, when men fail to do things they're asked to it is because they were asked indirectly, or because requests have been framed tentatively.  For example, 'Could you empty the trash?' is merely a question gathering information, while  'Would you empty the trash? is a request.  Women shouldn't blame their menfolk for not taking out the trash in the first instance. It wasn't that they were being lazy or forgetful or unhelpful. They just didn't get it. Women have to make some allowances and communicate more clearly.  Cameron is rightly incredulous:

Gray seems to be suggesting that men hear utterances like 'could you empty the trash?' as purely hypothetical questions about their ability to perform the action mentioned. But that is a patently ridiculous claim... Human languages are not codes in which each word or expression has a single, predetermined meaning.  Rather, human communication relies on the ability of humans to put the words someone utters together with other information about the world, and on that basis infer what the speaker intended to communicate to them.

She points out that the common conception of men's linguistic comprehension is incredibly offensive - it suggests that they are incapable of using subtle cues to communicate and negotiate requests, and that they have a fundamental inability to process all but the most basic instructions. 

There is also a more sinister side to the miscommunication claim, and Cameron writes convincingly about the effect it has on convictions for rape.  If a male defendent can't understand indirect statements or cues, then it follows that the rape victim must have made her 'no' to sex absolutely and irrevocably clearly before it constitutes a crime.  Otherwise the man may have wrongly interpreted her refusals as consent.  Myths uses a seemingly straightforward Canadian case as an example.  A young woman was held down and raped in her apartment by a man she had dated earlier in the evening. The incident had begun consensually with kissing, which had progressed to touching and then to forced sex.  The defendant maintained throughout that the woman had said or done nothing that led him to think she did not want sex, despite the fact that she had repeatedly told him she was tired and pretended to fall asleep.  He said 'she said she was tired, you know, she never said 'no', 'stop', 'don't', you know, 'don't do this'.  He was subsequently acquitted.  Cameron is coruscating: You don't have to be a rocket scientist to work out that someone who feigns unconsciousness while in bed with you probably doesn't want to have sex. But nobody criticises the defendent for being so obtuse.  On the contrary, it is the victim who comes under attack from the judge.  She was asked 'Did it not occur to you that your signals were not coming over loud and clear? Did you not think to change your signals?'  Clearly the responsiblity for the rape was being assigned to her - she should have communicated better. The defendent couldn't help it. Like a five year old child, he didn't understand the meaning of 'no'.   Again, this is offensive to men, and puts women in an impossible position.  When Cameron asked the young woman why she hadn't used direct statements to communicate 'no' to her attacker, she said that she had been afraid and hadn't wanted to escalate the situation by appearing overly assertive. She was terrified of being beaten or even killed.

The Myth of Mars and Venus is an entirely necessary book, and has the added benefit of being scholarly, well-written and entertaining to read.  It clearly seperates myth and assumption about gender difference from fact and real-life experience, and demonstrates that sex stereotypes do nobody any good.  They serve neither men (who come out looking like emotionally stunted brutes) or women (who emerge under the burden of their feminine inadequacies).  People do communicate differently, but the differences are only incidentally to do with gender and are just as much to do with age, class, culture and society.  More than anything context impacts on the way we talk and signal to each other.   Many people are susceptible to the argument that if difference between men and women is real, innate and even biological, then it is inevitable, desirable and the world should be organised around it.  Perhaps this is a comforting idea in a society so recently reshaped by feminism but, as Cameron proves, it isn't right, and it isn't clever.

~~Victoria~~

Comments

[Niall]

This sounds fascinating. One question, though, and I feel a bit guilty for asking because it's tangential to the post, but: is there any more context given for Baron-Cohen's quote? As given, it sounds like he's talking about "brains associated with thought-patterns stereotypically categorised as male" and "brains associated with thought-patterns stereotypically categorised as female" without making any assertions about what proportion of "male brains" are actually found in men. I've certainly seen articles arguing that those brain-types exist but are either not coupled to physical sex at all, or at least not as coupled as popular mythology would have it. (The title of B-C's book would seem to indicate that's not actually the argument he's making, but I'm slightly wary of extrapolating from titles, since they can be chosen to be deliberately controversial ...)

[Victoria]

I'll let Cameron answer this first, re. the B-C quote:

'The difference between the two lists reflects what Baron-Cohen takes to be the 'essential difference' between male and female brains. The female-brain jobs make use of a capacity for empathy and communication, whereas the male ones exploit the ability to analyse complex systems. Baron-Cohen is careful to talk about 'people with the female/male brain' rather than 'men and women'. He stresses that there are men with female brains, women with male brains, and individuals of both sexes with 'balanced brains'. He refers to the major brain-types as 'male' and 'female', however, because the tendency is for males to have male brains and females to have female brains. And at many points it becomes clear that in spite of his caveats about not confusing gender with brain-sex, he himself is doing exactly that.

The passage reproduced above is a good example. Baron-Cohen classifies nursing as a female-brain, empathy-based job (although if a caring and empathetic nurse cannot measure dosages accurately and make systematic clinical observations she or he risks doing serious harm) and law as a male-brain system-analysing job (though a lawyer, however well-versed in the law, will not get far without communication and people-reading skills). These categorizations are not based on a dispassionate analysis of the demands made by the two jobs. They are based on an everyday common-sense knowledge that most nurses are women and most lawyers are men. If you read the two lists in their entirety, it is hard not to be struck by another 'essential difference': the male jobs are more varied, more creative, and better rewarded than their female counterparts.'

More generally and for myself, I think it is impossible to talk about the 'male' brain and the 'female' brain without implying that certain characteristics are inherent in men and certain characteristics are inherent in women. Why make the semantic connection if there isn't an actual confluence? Why not talk about brain type A as opposed to brain type Z instead?
Further, the words being used are very specific and limiting. The word 'male' is defined by OED as 'of, relating to, or characteristic of a man; masculine'; female as 'of, relating to, or characteristic of a woman.' To talk about a woman with a 'male' brain is, therefore, to suggest there is something unnatural about her; similarly, a man with a 'female' brain is not quite a man. These are the exceptions that prove the rule.

And is it productive to corral the multiplicity of human experience into just two major categories? I think it incredibly reductive. B-C's usage is symptomatic of our inability to think beyond our bodies, and beyond the roles our society assigns to them.

[Niall]

Thanks. In response to this:

"Why make the semantic connection if there isn't an actual confluence?"

I say: because our culture makes that semantic connection all the time, every day, and to the extent that "masculine" stands for a constellation of qualities that is not denoted by any other single term, it exists. And, obviously, unchallenged it is self-reinforcing over time. Work that investigates how different groups of human beings are identified by the terms "male" and "masculine" therefore seems to me extremely valuable. (And for what it's worth, if someone described me as having a "feminine" brain I wouldn't necessarily draw any inference about my being not-quite-a-man from it, because quite plainly I am male. But that may just be me, and I certainly agree those statements *can* be made as insults.)

[Tony Keen]

Niall, there's a difference between investigating why certain characteristics are deemed 'male' or 'masculine', and identifying different brain types which one then deems to be 'male' or 'female' on the basis of unexamined cultural assumptions that the characteristics of these brain types better fist men or women respectively. And from what Victoria says, it appears that Baron-Cohen has done the latter.

[Victoria]

This is interesting, as you use the words 'masculine' and 'feminine' above rather than 'male' and 'female'. Arguably there is a less worrying semantic difference there, since they refer to characteristics which are 'typical' of a sex, rather than determined by it. I admit the possiblity that those words could be associated with qualities divorced from biological sex, in some circumstances. It is the specific use of 'male' and 'female' with reference to brains that is intolerable to me (and to Cameron too, I think), since it suggests said qualities are innate to biological men and women.

On the other hand, I still don't think that the terms 'masculine' and 'feminine' are valid, or particularly helpful in context. Yes, they stand for a 'constellation of qualities' but these arise almost entirely out of a socially constructed gender framework. The characteristics 'typical' of males and females are different across time and cultures, and have no fixed meaning. They are ambiguous and emotionally loaded words. When we exhibit typical masculine or feminine behaviour we are mostly playing parts assigned to us, which have nothing to do with the hardwiring of our brains or our sex.

I agree that work that investigates how different groups of human beings are identified as male or masculine (or female and feminine) is valuable, but as sociology or anthropology, not as science. Cameron uses an anthropological example in 'Myths', a tribe in Papua New Guinea for whom altercation and violent speech is a feminine quality, whereas passivity and negotiation are considered masculine. These gender stereotypes are as entirely normalised in their culture as the opposite is in ours. I don't think it is useful for science to describe these tribal women as having 'male' brains just because of the characteristics they display, when there is no physiological difference to, say, the brain of the passive, subordinate Victorian housewife.

[Niall]

Yes, my second comment wasn't meant to be a defence of Baron-Cohen (nor was my first), it was a response to the more general question Victoria asked.

[Niall]

Sorry, Victoria, I somehow missed your comment when I replied to Tony:

"as you use the words 'masculine' and 'feminine' above rather than 'male' and 'female'."

Do you know, I didn't even notice that I'd done that -- how telling. I agree that 'male' and 'female' are more problematic, given that they refer to biological sex.

"The characteristics 'typical' of males and females are different across time and cultures, and have no fixed meaning."

Of course, but I'm taking it as a given that what we're talking about here is attempting to understand (and, as necessary, demolish) the assumptions specific to our contemporary culture.

Given that I agree with almost everything in your comment, I'm no longer sure what we're disagreeing about! I think it's perhaps that I believe more in work that takes place within our culture to understand our constructions of "masculine" and "feminine"; I don't think the problem can be resolved purely with comparative work.

I suppose that, strictly speaking, it's also true that I would be astonished to find there are literally no physiological differences at all between the typical male brain and the typical female brain -- given the very obvious physiological differences between the sexes, and the sensitivity of the brain during development. It's just that I think those differences are probably too subtle for us to currently identify them reliably, and it's my assumption that the effect of those differences on behaviour would be swamped by the effects of culture and upbringing on behaviour; and that therefore they are essentially irrelevant to any discussion of masculine/male feminine/female.

"but as sociology or anthropology, not as science"

Sociology and anthropology aren't sciences now? ;-)

(Also: how many Victorian housewife brains do we have to carry out comparative analyses with? Serious question, that; I genuinely have no idea if there are tissue samples locked away in a vault somewhere.)

[Trent]

Victoria,

While I agree with almost everything you've written, I think it must also be said that if you don't want to be raped, male or female, you need to be forceful and assertive in declaring that. As a father of a 10-year-old girl, this issue has some importance to me. The male in the case you cite either deliberately raped his victim or is utterly clueless -- either way, it's important to resist forcefully. This has nothing to do with the victim being to blame for the crime; it has to do with not getting raped. The fact that a court may not buy passive resistance as sufficient grounds to prove rape is terrible, but I'm more concerned with preventing the rape in the first place. Said another way - if someone -- male or female -- is not forceful in resisting rape, he or she may be victimized not once but again in court. Is it fair? Of course not, but there it is. At the very least, if you are forceful there's a better chance of getting the bastard put away. And I know it's not always that simple, that fear can be hard to control, but I think our default position should be to fight back.

Can't we say that the woman in the case you cite should have been more aggressive without attaching blame? Just that we can say that anyone walking alone at night in unfamiliar territory should take precautions? Neither statement should imply that the victim is at fault, but the advice in both statements may help prevent someone from getting victimized in the first place. I want to make it very clear that I am not defending the judge in the case you cite. His lecture is more appropriately given to a group of people seeking advice on how not to be raped than it is to a victim of rape.

As far as differences between genders goes -- as I understand it, even in studies that show some very slight biological differences concerning communication or cognitive function, the variation in each gender is so great as to overwhelm everything else. In other words, whatever difference there may be is statistically insignificant. I think you are exactly right in saying power differences, class differences, role differences, etc. are the chief determinant.

[Capybara_99]

I haven't read the Baron-Cohen book, but I think it may be important to point out that he might be operating in a somewhat different context. (And I note that the quotation explictly says that "people" can have male brains, and "people" can have female brains.)

Baron-Cohen is a specialist on autism, and the autist mind is sometimes thought of, and referred to, as the "extreme male" brain. (This "extreme male" brain can be found in women as well as men, though less frequently. Autism is about 4 times more prevalent in males.) It seems to me that the distinction being drawn between the styles of brain have to do with social interaction and empathy -- yes, that reinforces sexual stereotypes, but it is also what marks one's place on the autism spectrum. This is the context in which Baron-Cohen is writing, and within that context it isn't so easy to think he is practising only sexism, and not science.

[Victoria]

Thanks for pointing out the autism connection, Capybara. Cameron doesn't explicitly mention that in 'Myths'. However, I still think the criticism against B-C stands, in that he uses the words 'male' and 'female' to define brain types. And it seems to me that to call the autistic brain the 'extreme male brain' is the epitome of this trend. First, it makes plain the connection between 'male' brains and males since, as you say, autism is 4 times more prevalant in males. Second, it suggests that while the average 'male' brain is not autistic, it is the root of characteristics associated with autism, i.e. an inability to understand emotions and indirect statements.