I recently had the dubious pleasure of reading Dr. Louann Brizendine's The Female Brain. This is a delightful guide to the insanities of women. Not only does Dr. Brizendine cogently reinforce every stereotype associated with women (Their periods make them crazy! Being pregnant makes them crazy! They hate sex!), she does so using neuroscience. And we, as laypeople, cannot possibly argue with neuroscience.
I think what really gets on my nerves is the way that some M.D.'s like to write books about medical stuff that supposedly interests the general public. If Albert Accountant reads this great book about brains, he can take his newfangled knowledge of the brain to parties and become a certified expert on brains, because he read a book all about brains and it was written by a doctor. So even though he's an accountant, Albert Accountant can now diagnose you with advanced multiple sclerosis, your husband/wife with epilepsy, and your hairdresser with a pituitary adenoma.
As if pandering to the layman's latent desire to boast medical expertise wasn't bad enough, Brizendine is guilty of the shameful crime that is anthropomorphizing hormones and other, non-human biological entities. Few things disgust me more than the patronizing use of human qualities to characterize molecules. Describing oxytocin as the "loving mother" of the female brain is insulting and slightly evil. I mean, if I see some hippie chick wandering around with a t-shirt that says, "I am Dopamine, loving mother", I'll know it's time for some M.D.'s to fucking get their shit together already.
But all that aside, the worst thing about this book is the fact that it over-generalizes women as neurotic, hypersensitive worry-warts who love to gab with their girlfriends and indiscriminately hate men. Regardless of whether or not this is true (and it may be true of most women), it's the same kind of militant feminist bullshit that reinforces the many negative stereotypes about women. Yes, there is stuff in our brains that makes us crazy sometimes. But you can't try to use science to make ridiculous over-generalizations. If there's one thing that I've learned in completing my degree in Neurobiology (and I sure as hell hope I've learned more than one thing), it's that neuroscience has nuances. Blanket statements don't work in this field. Yet Dr. Brizendine seems to take pleasure in merrily obliterating any nuances associated with the study of gender-specific brain functions.
The thought of millions of people reading this book and patting themselves on the back for having finally gained an understanding of the intricacies of the crazy that is Woman frankly terrifies me. It terrifies me the same way that WebMD terrifies me: by reiterating my belief that the masses will believe anything as long as it's presented by somebody with an "M.D." after his or her name. I feel certain that, if an M.D. were to post an article on WebMD about how killing people and eating their brains boosts antioxidants, the zombie apocalypse would be initiated within 4-6 hours.
I will conclude by saying that my general animosity towards women is no secret. Yet I don't think that being a woman automatically makes a person crazy. I think that being a Republican automatically makes a person crazy.
