Gender and Our Brains

How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds

By: Gina Rippon

Narrated by: Hannah Curtis

Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

A breakthrough work in neuroscience - and an incisive corrective to a long history of damaging pseudoscience - that finally debunks the myth that there is a hardwired distinction between male and female brains.

We live in a gendered world, where we are ceaselessly bombarded by messages about sex and gender. On a daily basis, we face deeply ingrained beliefs that sex determines our skills and preferences, from toys and colors to career choice and salaries. But what does this constant gendering mean for our thoughts, decisions, and behavior? And what does it mean for our brains?

Drawing on her work as a professor of cognitive neuroimaging, Gina Rippon unpacks the stereotypes that surround us from our earliest moments and shows how these messages mold our ideas of ourselves and even shape our brains. By exploring new, cutting-edge neuroscience, Rippon urges us to move beyond a binary view of the brain and to see instead this complex organ as highly individualized, profoundly adaptable, and full of unbounded potential.

Rigorous, timely, and liberating, Gender and Our Brains has huge implications for women and men, for parents and children, and for how we identify ourselves.

©2019 Gina Rippon (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"An authoritative debunking of the notion of a gendered brain.... Ultimately, her message is that a gendered world will produce a gendered brain. The result, unfortunately, is that boys and girls are shaped with different expectations and are often driven down career different paths. Well-crafted and thoroughly documented, this is a must-read for parents, teachers, and anyone of either sex who cares for children." (Kirkus starred review)

"It’s a highly accessible book. It’s also an important one.... It has the power...to do vastly more for gender equality than any number of feminist ‘manifestos.'" (Rachel Cooke, Observer)

"One of those books that should be essential reading before anyone is allowed to be a teacher, or buy a child a present, or comment on anything on Twitter, ever again.... All systemizing brains out there owe it to themselves to read this calm and logical collection of evidence and science, and all empathizers will understand its importance." (Katy Guest, The Guardian)

Point counterpoint

Interesting book. I wish the Dr Rippon wrote more about gender reassignment surgery. I suspect she believes that if societies weren’t engaged in sex stereotyping that these surgeries would not exist. This has ramifications for those who perform these surgeries.

Anti-LGBTQI+ Ignorance (Must Read)

This text is a text to educate anyone that believes in the religious rhetoric of a human being being all male or all female based on biblical misfortune We as mammals and human beings are not all male or all female regarding our chemistry, mix of androgens, estrogens, and how our brains are wired before we are born. This is a text that the ignorant anti-LGBTQI+ legislators (and their supporters) should read. It shows anyone's ignorance and hate by not taking people as is. After reading and studying the facts through science offered in this text, it made me realize the law makers have no clue on how they are harming people with hateful legislation. I am grateful I found d this text. What should be banned in schools is the Bible. This text should be taught in every biology class in 6 - 12 grades. That way, maybe someone will not feel as if their bodies and urges to be their authentic selves will not be illegal or suppressed. That sort of oppression is what leads people to suicide. Thank you Gina Rippon for saving people's lives by offering science to help many understand our biology. -- Anshel Bomberger, Trans Masculine (He/Him/His), LGBTQI+ Advocate. Please visit: Anti-Hate (Wars) on Flipboard.

SOCIAL BRAIN

Gina Rippon develops an argument, reinforced by literature but indeterminant by science, that there is little intellectual or social difference between the sexes. Like white dominance of the western world, Rippon implies difference between the sexes has been institutionalized and biased by society. In "Gender and Our Brains", Rippon is raising the chicken and egg paradox for the origin of male and female identity. Is one born with a gender identity like a chicken or is one born as an egg with a chicken' identity determined by socialization?

Rippon implies--if sexual identity is inherent (which is neither proven or unproven by science), socialization is shown to influence sexual identities maturation and how men and women behave toward each other. Rippon argues if sexual identity is partly determined by socialization, then socialization is where equality of the sexes should and can be reinforced.

Many literary stories believe in the equality of the sexes. Rippon's fundamental point is that all humans are born equal whether male, female, or other. Her inference is that the world needs to get over discrimination and promote equal rights and opportunity for all because any natural origin of sexual identity remains a scientifically indeterminant puzzle.

Fascinating information about the human brain

This book is as relevant today is when it was written. It contains a lot of fascinating factual information about the human brain. Well worth the read (or listen in this case).

Specious and Shallow

Rippon gets many details correct and makes decent points, before completely overstepping her bounds into other subjects she is less qualified in.