The Female Brain
» Gender Follies
Protect us from meta-studies (The kind of science that brought us The Bell Curve):
Why then do I enjoy talking to my friends so much?
“Connecting through talking activates the pleasure centers in a girl’s brain. We’re not talking about a small amount of pleasure. This is huge. It’s a major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of an orgasm.”
Research tip - ignore what doesn’t fit:
Brizendine’s book offers a 2 1/2-page appendix on the female brain and sexual orientation, but she doesn’t mention transgender folks.
I’d swear mine does the same thing:
Research shows that the female brain naturally releases oxytocin after a 20-second hug. The embrace bonds the huggers and triggers the brain’s trust circuits. So Brizendine advises, don’t let a guy hug you unless you plan to trust him.
I’ve known all sort of women of think about it more than once every 48 hours:
Thoughts about sex enter women’s brains once every couple of days …
Not even when I was 14:
… for men, thoughts about sex occur every minute.
Much of the research she’s trying to synthesize was conducted by sexist men guided by traditional gender assumptions. Luckily we really should know more in ten or twenty years as neuroscience and the Human Genome Project progress.
Comments
What a bunch of gobbely-gook! I just want to smack these people. They evidently found some ancient pre-Kinsey, pre-Friedan scrolls and then studied a group of 18 year old valley girls upon whom to test their hyphothesis—is all I can gather. What other explanation can there be?
Dorothy Parker, Erica Jong, Anna Quindlen and Maureen Dowd (to name but a few) might beg to differ. And they might not beg nicely, either.
Posted by: Angela St. Lawrence | August 7, 2006 4:36 PM
My main complaint with these kinds of things it that the description of “typical female” tends to be a description of my own qualities.
What evolved person doesn’t enjoy talking and touching?
Posted by: Richard | August 7, 2006 4:49 PM
Her research is “significantly based on her own clinical work at the Women’s and Teen Girls’ Mood and Hormone Clinic, which she founded at UCSF 12 years ago. It is the only psychiatric facility in the country with such a comprehensive focus.”
Doesn’t that say a lot about the validity of her work? The research group is seriously skewed (and I’m not meaning to be unkind by saying that). If you’ve a mood or hormone disorder serious enough to require psychiatric intervention, are you really representative of the average population?
Posted by: Lady Julia | August 8, 2006 12:41 AM
I have read that girls tend to use both hemispheres of their brain in unison (right & left together) where as men tend to switch between the two. This to me seems plausible.
As for free brain drugs from the act of hugging, now you’re just making me jealous.
Psychologists aren’t so far removed from voodoo shamans. Their magic spells are called text books and a lot of it is still only true if you believe it is.
Posted by: ASG | February 16, 2007 10:27 PM
“Synthesize” was a good choice of word.
Posted by: Alexandra | February 17, 2007 2:37 PM