Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference

“Suppose a researcher were to tap you on the shoulder and ask you to write down what, according to cultural lore, males and females are like. Would you stare at the researcher blankly and exclaim, ‘But what can you mean? Every person is a unique, multifaceted, sometimes even contradictory individual [...] and it would be pointless and meaningless to attempt to pigeonhole such rich complexity and variability into two crude stereotypes?’ No. you’d pick up your pencil and start writing.” 

As is repeatedly demonstrated over the course of the book, our more complex ideas about personhood sit at odds with our intense cultural training. Whether or not we consciously believe in them, gender stereotypes are embedded deeply in our psyches. It’s not easy to escape them.

“[T]he boundary of the self-concept is permeable to other people’s conceptions of you (or, somewhat more accurately, your perception of their perception of you).” 

Popular notions of an unchanging self are at odds with what researchers can observe in testing conditions. The ways that we think about ourselves—and even our capacities—are astonishingly alterable by other people’s perceptions. And those perceptions are heavily conditioned by gender expectations.

“In the eighteenth century Thomas Gisborne observed with pleasure how nature had conveniently endowed the female mind with those very qualities she most needed to discharge her social duties. Now the argument plays the other way: women choose the social roles that best fit the female mind. But perhaps Gisborne was nearly right, after all. The mind, triggered by social cues, uses its female identity to endow itself with the greater sensitivity, sympathy, and compassion ascribed to it by cultural belief. Then, just as remarkably, these enhancements are gone. It’s as good as magic.”

Fine reiterates the plasticity of human behavior as prompted by identity cues—in this case, the coming and going of empathetic behavior. While cultures are often invested in providing just-so stories for “male” and “female” traits, careful studies demonstrate that such traits can be summoned and banished by context alone. A belief in “female empathy” can produce just such empathy.

“So what happens to the female mind under threat? Somewhat inconveniently, when faced with the prospect of a math test that will probe one’s mathematical strengths and weaknesses, the female mind brings out its gender identity. The stereotype that females are poor at math is now officially self-relevant, and this seems to be important.” 

Fine begins to discuss the consequences of the mind’s plasticity and responsiveness to context. Women primed with a negative stereotype about their mathematical ability will suffer performance difficulties accordingly. Stereotype becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

“As the arguments that women lack the necessary intrinsic talent to succeed in male-dominated occupations become less and less convincing, the argument that women are just less interested has grown and flourished. Yet as we’ve seen [...] interest is not impervious to outside influence […] It is remarkably easy to adjust the shine of a career path for one sex. A few words to the effect that a Y chromosome will serve in your favor, or a sprucing up of the interior design, is all that it takes to bring about surprisingly substantial changes in career interest.” 

Cultural pressure to maintain a sexist status quo will squeeze into whatever form it needs to take to survive. Here, Fine observes that as the attitude that women aren’t suited to male-dominated professions because of their innate ability has diminished, the attitude that women simply don’t like such professions has flourished. Here, social hostility comes into play: Again, the mere suggestion that a profession is “male,” or surroundings that suggest this, subliminally affects whether women feel comfortable or competent in such an environment.

“We can be prejudiced even when we don’t intend to be. Not many people would, I think, agree that women should be judged to a higher, harder, shifting standard; suggest that they be sanctioned for behavior that is acceptable in men; or think it fair that they be paid less for the same work. But when we categorize someone as male or female, as we inevitably do, gender associations are automatically activated and we perceive them through the filter of cultural beliefs and norms.” 

The pressure of culture, it seems, is often stronger than our individual beliefs. Fine argues that sexism not only appears in the form of active hostility but is deeply embedded in even well-meaning and fair-minded people. Examining the insidious origins and effects of sexist belief and behavior can give us a stronger sense of how we might catalyze societal change.

“[A] woman who was repeatedly patted on the behind by an anesthesiology attending physician wondered whether the discomfort this caused her was a sign she was being too sensitive. She deliberated whether, if she mentioned it, her colleagues would say, ‘whooa, she’s a real bitch, she’s sure uptight, she’s sure sensitive....’” 

Fine’s use of quotation grounds the studies she’s been examining in these medical students’ painful day-to-day experience. The struggle of sexist discrimination is not merely in dealing with poor treatment but in second-guessing one’s own reactions. The environment Fine documents here presents the emotional reality of this catch-22.

“My husband and I can both enthusiastically attest to the difficulties inherent in attempting an egalitarian marriage—particularly when children are involved. You have heard, no doubt, the saying that the personal is the political. Based on his own experiences within a marriage in which we struggle against convention to split things equally, my husband has developed his own, expanded version of this motto. As he would state it, ‘The school drop-off is the political, the staying home when the kids are sick is the political, the writing of the shopping list is the political, the buying of the birthday presents is the political, the arranging of the baby-sitter is the political…’ You get the idea.” 

Fine often uses personal anecdote to ground her analysis. This choice is in line with the heart of the book: We are dealing not with mere abstract science but with the stuff of day-to-day experience. 

“Higher levels of fetal testosterone are strongly correlated with having a penis. That means that a correlation between fetal-testosterone levels and later sex-typed behavior, or differences between boys and girls, could have nothing to do with fetal testosterone and everything to do with the different socialization of boys and girls.” 

Fine expresses a type of fundamental problem that repeatedly arises in the studies she’s examining. Scientists often have great difficulty designing gender-difference studies that adequately separate physiological, sociological, and environmental factors. This difficulty makes gender science—particularly gender neuroscience—a dicey field for those who seek clear and comprehensible results. Those more motivated by a foregone conclusion about gender than a desire for knowledge find ample room for their prejudices in this potential muddiness.

“At this point in the book, you may have begun to be a bit suspicious of phrases like ‘female approach to the world.’ As we discovered earlier, a person’s approach to the world can depend on what kind of social identity is in place or the social expectations that are salient [...] But that’s not to say that fetal testosterone isn’t doing something in the brain.” 

Fine will sometimes begin a chapter by raising potential objections to her argument. Chapter 10 goes on to demonstrate that notions of a brain “masculinized” by testosterone are, in fact, based on faulty studies. Her anticipation of objections along these lines helps her in constructing a methodical and watertight case. Further, it demonstrates an evenhanded curiosity of the sort that Fine seeks to advocate across the sciences.

“When you are claiming nothing less than evidence of the biological origins of a gender-stratified society, it helps to have a methodology that stands up to scrutiny. No study is perfect, of course, but this one was flawed in ways it simply need not have been, as psychologists Alison Nash and Giordana Grossi have pointed out. Some of these problems concern the sort of detail that may provoke a small yawn in the non-specialist, but a severe case of eyebrow-in-the-hairline for experts.” 

In preparing a strong critique of a study purporting to show innate gendered behavior in newborns, Fine uses a range of techniques to convey the seriousness of the study’s flaws. She takes a forceful, ironic tone; she musters the support of fellow researchers. She prepares the lay reader to approach the study with the eye of an expert scientist, readying them to consider study design in a technical way. Framing the critique she’s about to provide as the province of the trained scientist while also using a colloquial tone, Fine prepares readers both to follow along with her and to respect her expertise.

“It’s important to realize that the patches of color you see on brain scans don’t actually show brain activity. Although it may seem as though fMRI and PET enable you to see a snapshot of the brain at work (or, as popular writers Allan and Barbara Pease claim, ‘to see your brain operating live on a television screen’), this simply isn’t the case. ‘Unfortunately, these pretty pictures hide the sausage factory,’ as one neurologist put it. fMRI doesn’t measure neuronal activity directly. Instead, it uses a proxy: changes in blood oxygen levels.” 

Fine’s ambition to uphold well-designed, thoughtful science (and to root out bad) requires, paradoxically, a demystification of techniques in which the layperson might be tempted to place too much belief. The exaggerated claims of unscholarly writers and the rueful realism of an expert serve to support her brief, cogent explanation of what an fMRI really is and really shows. Fine emphasizes that the true power of science involves accepting and understanding scientific limitation.

“Did George Romanes never once consider whether an African Grey parrot […] might outsmart a cow [...]? Did he really not know a single weedy intellectual [...]?” 

Fine deploys humor in the service of her broader purposes. In offering this witty rejoinder to her discussion of the Victorian neuroscientist George Romanes and his theory that women’s smaller brains reflect lesser intellectual capacities, she addresses the blindness that researchers demonstrate when they wish to support a sexist belief. This personal, colloquial level of address also brings the neuroscientists of the past into conversation with the present—and introduces the idea that this kind of thinking is by no means extinct.

“As neuroimaging takes its first steps on the long journey to understanding how neuronal firing yields mental abilities, you will find no shortage of so-called experts willing to explain the educational implications of differences in boy wiring and girl wiring. The medal for the most outrageous claim must surely go to an American educational speaker […] [who] has been informing audiences that girls see the details while boys see the big picture because the ‘crockus’—a region of the brain that does not exist—is four times larger in girls than in boys.” 

Much of the “evidence” used to support ideas of brain difference in men and women is interpreted in biased or prejudiced ways, and some of it is downright false. Here, Fine presents a particularly blatant example. The mere technical sheen of “brain science” provides cover for pure invention.

“There’s something special about neuroscientific information. It sounds so unassailable, so very...well, scientific, that we privilege it over boring, old-fashioned behavioral evidence. It brings a satisfying feel to empty scientific explanations. And it seems to tell us who we really are.” 

Neuroscientific language, Fine shows, is often employed to dress up straightforward information. Scientific mystification is used as a security blanket, helping us to feel that we know more than we do and that we can justify the beliefs we already hold. Ironically, more “scientific”-seeming data can thus be less reliable.

“[G]ender stereotypes, even if perhaps only implicitly held, affect parents’ behavior toward their babies. This is hardly surprising. Implicit associations don’t, after all, remain carefully locked away in the unconscious [...] Implicit attitudes can [...] take the upper hand when it comes to our behavior when we are distracted, tired, or under pressure of time (conditions that, from personal experience, I would estimate are fulfilled about 99 percent of the time while parenting).” 

In having established the influence of implicit beliefs on social behavior and self-perception, Fine wittily suggests that those beliefs are very likely to emerge at just those moments when a child’s developing brain is most strongly influenced by them. Her personal aside here serves not only to support her point, but perhaps to alleviate the guilt a reading parent might feel about doing what is, after all, definitionally involuntary. Fine balances emphasis on the inescapability of implicit gender stereotyping with a human-scale sympathy.

“Cross-gender behavior is seen as less acceptable in boys than it is in girls: unlike the term ‘tomboy’ there is nothing positive implied by its male counterpart, the ‘sissy.’”

Fine addresses a counterpoint to the issue of women’s exclusion from male fields: the shaming of boys who wish to do “girl things.” This reveals a further wrinkle in the sexist ideology that Fine uncovers in her research: Male fields are coded as inherently powerful and desirable and female fields as shameful or lesser. Gender stereotypes restrict freedom of expression, curiosity, and personality for both boys and girls.

“If you’re ever feeling bored and aimless in a shopping mall, try this experiment. Visit ten children’s clothing stores, and each time approach a salesperson saying that you are looking for a present for a newborn. Count how many times you are asked, ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ You are likely to have a 100 percent hit rate if you try this one spare afternoon.” 

In the final section of Delusions of Gender, Fine moves from reviews of academic studies into concrete sociological examples. Here, she goes further still, suggesting an experiment for the reader to conduct. This suggestion emphasizes the on-the-ground reality of bias in the world around us, encouraging the reader to reflect on the ways in which gender assumptions are both pervasive and invisible.

“For a time, pink was preferred for boys, because it was ‘a decided and stronger’ color, a close relative to red, symbolizing ‘zeal and courage.’ Blue, being ‘more delicate and dainty’ and ‘symbolic of faith and constancy’ was reserved for girls. Only toward the middle of the twentieth century did existing practices become fixed.” 

Fine demonstrates the arbitrary nature of what we believe to be one of our most emphatically fixed gender signifiers. Evolutionary psychologists’ just-so stories about how a preference for pink in girls and blue in boys relates to some atavistic gendered behavior are shown, in this light, to be particularly inaccurate. In quoting a 1939 article from Parents magazine here, Fine drives home the point that the supposedly ingrained pink/blue distinction was in fact different within living memory.

“Imagine, for a moment, that we could tell at birth (or even before) whether a child was left-handed or right-handed. By convention, the parents of left-handed babies dress them in pink clothes, wrap them in pink blankets, and decorate their rooms with pink hues. The left-handed baby’s bottle, bibs, and pacifiers [...] are often pink or purple with motifs such as butterflies, flowers, and fairies. Parents tend to let the hair of left-handers grow long […] Right-handed babies, by contrast, are never dressed in pink; nor do they ever have pink accessories or toys. Although blue is a popular color for right-handed babies, as they get older any color, excluding pink or purple, is acceptable [...] The hair of right-handers is usually kept short and is never prettified with accessories […] ‘Come on, left-handers!’ cries out the mother of two left-handed children in the park […] At preschool, the teacher greets them with a cheery, ‘Good morning, left-handers and right-handers.’ In the supermarket, a father says proudly in response to a polite enquiry, ‘I’ve got three children altogether: one left-hander and two right-handers.’” 

In this thought experiment, Fine substitutes “girl” and “boy” with “left-hander” and “right-hander,” thus showing the ways in which the pervasive cultural split between the sexes is routinely enacted. (Notably, too, she chooses to use less-common left-handedness as the “girl” category in this experiment—even here, girl-people are the minority group.) In this light, the persistence of these distinctions is made to look absurd.

“I’ve tried labeling neutral animals and characters as female when reading to my children—it feels extremely unnatural, as you will discover if you try for yourself. (The reason is probably that we have a tendency to think of people or creatures as male unless otherwise indicated. In other words, as has been long observed, men are people, but women are women.)”

Fine frequently uses personal anecdote to develop a rapport with her reader and to make complex science read accessibly. Her use of anecdote also reveals that even she—a scientist with a strong interest in dismantling gender stereotypes—is deeply affected by gender norms and implicit bias. Coming, as it does, near the end of the book, this anecdote helps Fine develop her argument toward its final flowering: Gender bias is inescapable, yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s inalterable.

“Take a look around. The gender inequality that you see is in your mind. So are the cultural beliefs about gender that are so familiar to us all. They are in that messy tangle of mental associations that interact with the social context. Out of this interaction emerges your self-perception, your interests, your values, your behavior, even your abilities. Gender can become salient in the environment in so many ways: an imbalance of the sexes in a group, a commercial, a comment by a colleague, a query about sex on a form, perhaps also a pronoun, the sign on a restroom door, the feel of a skirt, the awareness of one’s own body. When the context activates gendered associations, that tangle serves as a barrier to nonstereotypical self-perception, concerns, emotions, sense of belonging, and behavior—and more readily allows what is traditionally expected of the sexes.” 

In having built toward the concrete, moving from analyses of hard-science study design to the tangible social results of gender stereotyping, Fine addresses the reader directly in the Epilogue. In this second-person interlude, the findings of the previous 200 pages are placed in the reader’s hands—and in their head. Fine chooses examples that meet the reader where they sit, in the very “awareness of one’s own body.” This direct address asks readers to consider their personal involvement in the issues Fine has raised, and their personal and inescapable relation to gender.

“As society slowly changes, so too do the differences between male and female selves, abilities, emotions, values, interests, hormones, and brains—because each is inextricably intimate with the social context in which it develops and functions.” 

The conclusions of Fine’s research suggest the difficulty of breaking out of sexist feedback loops—but also the possibility. Fine suggests that conscious movement toward social change can self-perpetuate in the same way that sexist stereotyping does. By creating their own, new context, women and men in non-stereotypical roles can slowly begin to create space for social change.