Why "girls" will be girls?

This article was on the MSN homepage this morning.


The title being
"Why girls will be girls"
Strike one. The mere title speaks volumes.


http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13989048/site/newsweek/?GT1=8307
--Snip
Women and hormones has long been a marital minefield and the subject of innumerable off-color jokes, but Brizendine has made it her medical specialty. For 20 years, first as a medical student at Yale, then as a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, then as director of the Women's Mood and Hormone Clinic at UCSF, she's been developing what she describes as a female-centered strain of psychiatry focusing on the complex interplay between women's mental health, hard-wiring and brain chemistry. Now her first book, "The Female Brain," which she describes as a kind of owner's manual for women, is due in bookstores next month. Brizendine realizes she's going to take some heat. "I know it's not politically correct to say this," she says, "and I've been torn for years between my politics and what science is telling us. But I believe that women actually perceive the world differently than men. If women attend to those differences, they can make better decisions about how to manage their lives."

Strike two

"To write the book, Brizendine melded her rich clinical experience with thousands of research studies other neuroscientists have conducted over the past 10 years. Her conclusions will seem like common sense to some and nothing short of heresy to others: she not only discusses the biological reasons girls gravitate to dolls instead of trucks but tracks the hormonal imperatives at play when a teenage female becomes obsessed with text messaging and shopping. She describes the neurological reasons why women think about sex less than men but, in their drive to produce genetically superior babies, may be having more extramarital affairs than their frustrated husbands might imagine. She also explains how changing brain chemistry can prompt a postmenopausal woman to forgo marriage counseling and dial up a divorce lawyer instead."

Strike three.

I don't argue about brain differences. I can accept brain differences. What they mean is more to the point. Gender studies always annoy me. Later in the article:

"All of which outrages some of Brizendine's peers. Hyde, a psychology and women's studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who conducted the meta-analysis of men and women last year, says she's disgusted by scientists, writers and publishers who exploit trivial differences between the genders. Books like this "are bad for my blood pressure," she says. Dr. Nancy C. Andreasen, a psychiatrist and neuroimaging expert at the University of Iowa's medical school, says nurture plays such a huge role in human behavior that focusing on biology is next to meaningless. "Whatever measurable differences exist in the brain," says Andreasen, "are used to oppress and suppress women."

Now there's a home run.

What do you guys think?

"At first glance, Brizendine doesn't seem like the backlash type. A smallish woman with a long auburn ponytail ..."

I guess the backlash type ... is tall and muscular, with a crew-cut?

The writers were well-matched with their subject, apparently.

I'm a "smallish woman with a long auburn ponytail". I guess it's no longer just what we wear that identifies us but how "big" or "smallish" we are and how we wear our f*cking hair. (Heaven forbid it should ever come down to how/what we think or who we actually are.)

Sorry, I'm in a really pissy mood (must be the hormones :eyes: because it couldn't possibly be the sexist jerk I work with who simply refuses to to accept the fact that I'm his technical lead and blew me off this weekend leaving me to work until two am fixing a problem he was supposed to be dealing with) already this morning and did not need to see more of this garbage.

What does that make me?

and buying assortments of toys for both genders, being appalled when a girl's fire truck would get wrapped in a blankie and put to bed and a Barbie in the hands of a little boy would get held by the head while he pointed the feet at you and yelled, "BANG!"

I have no clue what's at work, but clearly the kids were trying to sex type themselves, going for the stereotype as part of their own gender identity struggle.

I also think that begins and ends in early childhood and any discussion of hormonal bases for shopping versus outdoor grilling are pure hooey. Yes, there is rigid socialization for some of us, but enough of us exist outside the stereotypes to make them useless.

And for the record, I've always hated shopping. I do enjoy tinkering with mechanical stuff.

I hated dolls, dress-up etc. (even though my mom always got me one)....I was in kindergarten when JFK was shot, so I had no outside influence to do so.

Gee, I always thought I was once a "teenage female". :shrug: Guess biologically, I wasn't after all. :eyes:

God I hate this crap. Yes, there are differences. But why are we in such a hurry to denounce individual differences so we can have a nice, neat little package in which to codify "women"?

(or statistics) ought to be able to understand that, while you can make generalizations like this on a LARGE scale, about LARGE groups, and be usually correct, any time you try to make this kind of broad-brush generalization apply to an individual, it's going to bite you in the ass. You CANNOT predict individual characteristics or behavior based on predictions/trends of GROUPS.

She has to know that. So she clearly has an agenda in "creating a strain of psychiatry" based on these conclusions. My speculation is that it's an easy way to get publicity, attention, and become an academic celebrity; anything controversial that gets you published and quoted is an academic positive, no matter how utterly unsound the science behind it may be.

And I agree with the doctor from the U. Iowa - this kind of shit would be meaningless noise, except that it is still used as rationale for oppression and suppression.

"gravitating toward text messaging and shopping". For chrissake. Blow me.

" She describes the neurological reasons why women think about sex less than men but, in their drive to produce genetically superior babies, may be having more extramarital affairs than their frustrated husbands might imagine."

So women's sex drives are also called into question. We have sex for babies. And in a hard-wired desire for genetically superior babies we cheat on "frustrated" spouses.

That just pisses me off, I can't even comment.

"By the 1990s, though, the scientific community began to recognize that, medically, women were not just small men, and started throwing research dollars into studying gender-specific medicine. Brizendine, then a single mother with a small son, started specializing in gender-specific psychiatry, including treating women with severe PMS. "When these patients tried to talk to their own doctors or psychiatrists about how their hormones were affecting their emotions, they would get the brushoff," she says. Twelve years ago she opened her clinic, which now treats about 600 women a year with hormone-replacement therapy, psychopharmacology and cognitive behavioral therapy."

Hmm. Making a few bucks off her theories I think, although I would like to think she's doing a bit of good. PMS is very difficult for some women.

But telling women they're hard-wired into behaviors and even certain symptoms, not acknowledging patriarchy (enviromental) influence reminds me of Freud at his worst. And she's no Freud.

Women have so many horrible cultural messages about menses, hormones, menopause etc. It starts from birth on. I've always wondered how much of that negativity is demonstrated symptomatically. Personally, I change any negative "self talk" I catch myself in when any demonized state-of-being-woman come up. Perception can be everything for me. When I found out that many women, when the egg is released from the ovary, feel a "ping" or even sharp, brief pain I began to look for it. It's part of my body, and I wanted to experience it. I have only have a few years left now as I approach menopause. I search myself for pre-menopausal "symptoms" I can embrace as well. I'm not religious, but I've always liked the maiden, mother and crone archetypes. My wish is to become wiser, stonger, "better" as I approach my cronehood.
(Crone does not mean unattractive, or old, just as mother doesn't mean actual motherhood nor maiden virginity-- just a way at looking at the cycles of life I like.)

they are very strong chemicals that run around in our brains.

I have hypothesized that men have PMS 3 weeks out of the month and are 'normal' for one. Testosterone is a hormone....women have some of it, but nothing close to what men have. I think it can make these guys rather nasty. I believe that years ago studies were done on prison inmates and their testosterone levels. I would love to see studies on this.

I think it's practically criminal that the Medical Industry just started studying women in the last decade. IMHO, I think it would be better to have the Woman as the Medical/Pharmaceutical Model...if it works on us and our much more complicated system, then it certainly couldn't hurt a man...whose system is pretty simple. After all, it is women that carry on the human race...along with something as simple as a turkey baster. lol.

I've also wondered if mean men were injected with estrogen every week or so, if they would mellow out.

Why are men so violent? Why aren't women? Is it all environmental? After all men are 95% of the prison population....doesn't that say something? I think men should strive to be more womanly...I am sick of the war and its waste. Back in the '60's and '70's, some men were getting in touch with the feminine side...anti-war movement, wearing long hair, Peace, love beads....EGADS did that scare the Established War Boys! War is money....violence must be encouraged.

I know that our patriarchial system lets males be bossy, self-absorbed, and selfish....I just wonder how much of that could be from testosterone. Imagine if women ruled....empathy would be valued and strived for. Seeing both sides of an issue would be taught in school. Solving conflicts with words would be mandatory.

Everyone's hormones are different and they change over time...I am glad to see that a woman is studying this....finally! I think if we understand how our hormones work, we will need much less in pharmaceuticals...and gee, maybe that's why it hasn't been done!

I can't wait to read her book.

way in which boys are encouraged in being aggressive, crude, sports-obsessed, and anti-intellectual.

And any boy who reflects more "feminine" traits is going to be tormented by the macho types.

My 57 year old husband faced that when he was a kid in the 50's and 60's.

The problem is that while we encouraged our daughters to compete in a "man's world", we never changed the world. Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where boys and girls "compete" in a world where both feminine and masculine attributes are valued? Where masculine means all that is good and honorable in the term and that feminine traits are valued for what is good and honorable in that term as well. As it is now, boys and girls are only taught that the least honorable "masculine" traits are what "win" in this world.

in both men and women. That's the phenomenon of 'roid rage - users of anabolic steroids, some of which are synthetic testosterone - are often hyperaggressive to the point of psychosis. It's closely linked with sex drive as well.

They did experiment for a time in some prisons with administering female hormones to violent males; it did make them less violent. It also caused them to exhibit female secondary sex characteristics such as breasts, which was regarded as undesirable.

I dunno, we can only monkey with Mother Nature so much before she gets pissed off - ever see the movie Serenity? "I took the Pax and I feel great!"

Tend to become less violent as they grow older. The theory is that the aggression decreases as testosterone levels drop.

Yet we're seeing an increase in violence in young women, it appears to have a strong social factor. I don't think women will ever reach the levels of violence that young men have. As always, there is nature/nurture in every wave of behavior.