And some people think that sex equality is a lovely idea in principle, but that Testosterone Rex fiercely blocks the path to this better place. Why? Because men are from Mars and women are from Venus, a woman can’t be like a man, and boys will be boys.
But I’ve never heard anyone admit to holding the following view: Look, I agree, it’s not very fair. Nor is it decreed by nature, so we could change things a lot, if we wanted. But we’ve had sex inequality for thousands of years and I kind of like it. So how about we just keep things as they are?
Apparently we’re all for sex equality then. So what now?
We can decide it’s too much trouble, and settle for a half-changed world. Alternatively, we can continue with our polite, undemanding panel discussions about gender equality, our good intentions and gentle tinkering, and patiently wait out the fifty to one hundred or so years it’s regularly predicted to take to achieve parity in the workplace. But if neither of these options is appealing, then maybe it’s time to be less polite and more disruptive; like the first- and second-wave feminists. They weren’t always popular, it’s true. But look at what they achieved by not asking nicely.68 Words are nice, but often deeds work better.
Which of these directions we prefer is up to us: it’s a question for our values, not science. But that evolving science is showing that one time-honoured option is no longer available to us. It’s time to stop blaming Testosterone Rex, because that king is dead.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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THANK YOU TO THE MANY PROFESSIONALS WHO IN VARIOUS WAYS helped to bring this book into being. I thank in particular my wonderful and tireless agent, Barbara Lowenstein, and her team at Lowenstein Associates. I am also very grateful to everyone who assisted at Norton, most especially my editor, Amy Cherry, for her thoughtful and careful work on the manuscript, her encouragement, and her patience, and Remy Cawley for her efficient and good-natured assistance. Many thanks also to my meticulous copyeditor, Nina Hnatov. A big thank-you, too, to the wonderful team at Icon Books, most especially Kiera Jamison. I’m also immensely grateful to the many academics who gave their time and expertise so generously and willingly to comment on one or more chapters, or early guidance: Elizabeth Adkins-Regan, John Dupré, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Agustín Fuentes, Martha Hickey, Daphna Joel, Julie Nelson, Elise Payzan-LeNestour, Sari van Anders, and Bill von Hippel. I’d also like to especially thank three treasured colleagues at the University of Melbourne—Mark Elgar, Nick Haslam, and Carsten Murawski—who additionally provided moral support and obliging responses to strange book-related questions over the years of its writing, as well as substantial and invaluable feedback on the manuscript. Progress on this book was greatly assisted by a Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council, held at the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, and by the support of the Melbourne Business School, and the Centre for Ethical Leadership at Ormond College, University of Melbourne. I am also grateful for the support of the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia Research Fellowship.
Some passages in the book draw on previously published work. Chapter 3 includes material that was previously published in very similar form in Fine, C. (November, 2012). The vagina dialogues: When it comes to libido, testosterone is overrated. The Monthly. Chapter 4 includes lines that were previously published in Joel, D., & Fine, C. (December 1, 2015). It’s time to celebrate the fact that there are many ways to be male and female. The Guardian. Thank you to John van Tiggelen and Ian Sample, respectively, for engaging with this work. I am indebted to colleagues with whom I have coauthored work that contributed to some of the thinking and ideas presented in this book. Arguments in Chapter 8 were developed from Fine, C., & Duke, R. (2015). Expanding the role of gender essentialism in the single-sex-education debate: A commentary on Liben. Sex Roles, 72(9), 427–433. Chapter 8 was also strongly informed by work coauthored with Emma Rush, in Fine, C., & Rush, E. (2016). “Why does all the girls have to buy pink stuff?” The ethics and science of the gendered toy marketing debate. Journal of Business Ethics, doi:10.1007/S10551-016-3080-3. Some material in this chapter was presented as part of the third annual Alan Saunders Lecture, at the ABC Ultimo Centre, Sydney, July 7, 2015, presented by Radio National’s The Philosopher’s Zone and the Australasian Association of Philosophy.
Four colleagues—Daphna Joel, Rebecca Jordan-Young, Anelis Kaiser, and Gina Rippon—have played a critical role in developing my thinking about scientific models of sexual differentiation, and how to study sex/gender in humans, in part through the following works coauthored with them: Fine, C., Jordan-Young, R., Kaiser, A., & Rippon, G. (2013). Plasticity, plasticity, plasticity… and the rigid problem of sex. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(11), 550–551; Rippon, G., Jordan-Young, R., Kaiser, A., & Fine, C. (2014). Recommendations for sex/gender neuroimaging research: Key principles and implications for research design, analysis, and interpretation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 650; Fine, C., Joel, D., Jordan-Young, R., Kaiser, A., & Rippon, G. (December 15, 2014). Why males ≠ Corvettes, females ≠ Volvos, and scientific criticism ≠ ideology. Cerebrum. These four colleagues have also been a wonderful source of intellectual and personal support throughout the writing of this book.
Last, I am indebted to Richard Francis for this book’s title. As noted in Chapter 6, Francis used the term “Testosterone Rex” in his book Why Men Won’t Ask for Directions: The Seductions of Sociobiology.
This is my third book, and it doesn’t seem to get any easier. As usual, my thanks to Russell for being such an excellent and devoted father. Many thanks, too, to my writer-friends, Simon Caterson, Monica Dux, Christine Kenneally, and Anne Manne, whose talents extend beyond writing to also knowing exactly how best to encourage other writers. I give my heartfelt thanks, as always, to my mother, Anne Fine, for her editorial and emotional assistance throughout. Finally, my deepest thanks and appreciation to C-Rex, for his infinitely patient encouragement and support, and unflagging interest and confidence in this book. It would have been enough just to have put up with me.
NOTES
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EPIGRAPH
1. TEDxEuston, April 12, 2013.
INTRODUCING TESTOSTERONE REX
1. Haslam, N., Rothschild, L., & Ernst, D. (2000). Essentialist beliefs about social categories. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 113–127. This study of Northern American students found that gender is a strongly essentialized social category, particularly with respect to being seen as being a “natural kind”—that is, being natural, fixed, invariant across time and place, and discrete (that is, with a sharply defined category boundary).
2. Dupré, J. (forthcoming). A postgenomic perspective on sex and gender. In D. L. Smith (Ed.), How biology shapes philosophy: New foundations for naturalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
3. Charles Darwin (pp. 245–255) defined sexual selection as arising from “the advantage which certain individuals have over other individuals of the same sex and species, in exclusive relation to reproduction.” Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. London: John Murray. Cited on p. 10001 of Jones, A. G., & Ratterman, N. L. (2009). Mate choice and sexual selection: What have we learned since Darwin? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(Suppl. 1), 10001–10008. Jones and Ratterman describe this as being highly similar or identical to contemporary definitions of sexual selection.
4. See, for example, Gangestad, S. W., & Thornhill, R. (1998). Menstrual cycle variation in women’s preferences for the scent of symmetrical men. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 265(1399), 927–933; Pillsworth, E. G., & Haselton, M. G. (2006). Women’s sexual strategies: The evolution of long-term bonds and extrapair sex. Annual Review of Sex Research, 17(1), 59–100.
5. Quoted in Elgot, J. (July 12, 2014). “We can’t force girls to like science,” says Glasgow University academic Dr. Gijsbert Stoet. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/20
14/07/12/girls-science_n_5580119.html on August 7, 2015.
6. Yamabiko, M. (May 9, 2015). Women in F1 a question of brawn or brain? www.crash.net. Retrieved from http://www.crash.net/f1/feature/218544/1/max-yamabiko-women-in-f1-a-question-of-brawn-or-brain.html on August 7, 2015.
7. Cahill, L. (April 1, 2014). Equal ≠ the same: Sex differences in the human brain. Cerebrum.
8. This is a point made by Daphna Joel. For example, Joel, D. (2014). Sex, gender, and brain: A problem of conceptualization. In S. Schmitz & G. Höppner (Eds.), Gendered neurocultures: Feminist and queer perspectives on current brain discourses (pp. 169–186). Austria: University of Vienna/Zaglossus.
9. Paul Irwing, quoted in Rettner, R. (January 4, 2012). Men and women’s personalities: Worlds apart, or not so different? Live Science. Retrieved from http://www.livescience.com/36066-men-women-personality-differences.html on February 10, 2016.
10. Cahill (2014), ibid.
11. As noted in Fine, C., Joel, D., Jordan-Young, R. M., Kaiser, A., & Rippon, G. (December 15, 2014). Why males ≠ Corvettes, females ≠ Volvos, and scientific criticism ≠ ideology. Cerebrum.
12. For example, Auster, C., & Mansbach, C. (2012). The gender marketing of toys: An analysis of color and type of toy on the Disney store website. Sex Roles, 67(7–8), 375–388; Blakemore, J., & Centers, R. (2005). Characteristics of boys’ and girls’ toys. Sex Roles, 53(9/10), 619–633.
13. Gray, J. (2012). Men are from Mars, women are from Venus: The classic guide to understanding the opposite sex. New York: HarperCollins.
14. Farrel, B., & Farrel, P. (2001). Men are like waffles—women are like spaghetti; Understanding and delighting in your differences. Eugene, OR: Harvest House.
15. Pease, A., & Pease, B. (2010). Why men want sex and women need love: Solving the mystery of attraction. London: Orion Books.
16. Pease, A., & Pease, B. (2001). Why men don’t listen and women can’t read maps: How we’re different and what to do about it. London: Orion Books.
17. Moir, A., & Moir, B. (2003). Why men don’t iron: The fascinating and unalterable differences between men and women. New York: Citadel Press/Kensington.
18. Moss, G. (2014). Why men like straight lines and women like polka dots: Gender and visual psychology. Alresford, UK: Psyche Books.
19. Shambaugh, R. (2013). Make room for her: Why companies need an integrated leadership model to achieve extraordinary results. New York: McGraw-Hill. Quoted from front flap.
20. Gray, J., & Annis, B. (2013). Work with me: The eight blind spots between men and women in business. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
21. Adams, S. (April 26, 2013). Eight blind spots between the sexes at work. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/04/26/8-blind-spots-between-the-sexes-at-work/ on April 28, 2013; Girl talk. (April 13, 2013). The Economist. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/news/business-books-quarterly/21576073-working-women-today-have-it-better-ever-few-agree-how on April 15, 2013.
22. Herbert, J. (2015). Testosterone: Sex, power, and the will to win. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Quoted on p. 194.
23. Herbert suggests that testosterone plays an important role in women in relation to sexuality, and acknowledges a relative lack of knowledge with respect to its role in females.
24. This implicit or explicit assumption is described by van Anders, S. M. (2013). Beyond masculinity: Testosterone, gender/sex, and human social behavior in a comparative context. Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, 34(3), 198–210.
25. Alexander, R. D. (1979). Darwinism and human affairs. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Quoted on p. 241.
26. Hewlett, S. (January 7, 2009). Too much testosterone on Wall Street? Harvard Business Review Blogs. Retrieved from http://blogs.hbr.org/2009/01/too-much-testosterone-on-wall/ on April 15, 2010.
27. Dupré, J. (1993). Scientism, sexism and sociobiology: One more link in the chain. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16(2), 292. Quoted on p. 292.
28. See illuminating discussion on this point in Wilson, D. S., Dietrich, E., & Clark, A. B. (2003). On the inappropriate use of the naturalistic fallacy in evolutionary psychology. Biology and Philosophy, 18(5), 669–681.
29. Wilson et al. (2003), ibid. See also Dupré, J. (2003). Darwin’s legacy: What evolution means today. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press; Kennett, J. (2011). Science and normative authority. Philosophical Explorations, 14(3), 229–235; and Meynell, L. (2008). The power and promise of developmental systems theory. Les Ateliers de L’Éthique, 3(2), 88–103.
30. Kennett (2011), ibid. Quoted on p. 229.
31. Quoted in Elgot (2014), ibid.
32. Browne, K. R. (2012). Mind which gap? The selective concern over statistical sex disparities. Florida International University Law Review, 8, 271–286. Quoted on p. 284, footnoted references that follow excluded.
33. Hoffman, M., & Yoeli, E. (Winter, 2013). The risks of avoiding a debate on gender differences. Rady Business Journal.
34. Tom Knox, quoted while Chairman of DLKW Lowe in the Marketing Society Forum. (March 7, 2014). Should all marketing to children be gender-neutral? Marketing (March 7). Retrieved from http://m.campaignlive.co.uk/article/1283685/marketing-children-gender-neutral on September 8, 2014.
35. Tony Abbott, speaking as prime minister of Australia, quoted in Dearden (December 2, 2014). Tony Abbott says campaigners against gendered toys should “let boys be boys and girls be girls.” The Independent, (December 2), Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/tony-abbott-says-campaigners-against-gendered-toys-should-let-boys-be-boys-and-girls-be-girls-9897135.html on April 27, 2015.
36. Liben, L. (2015). Probability values and human values in evaluating single-sex education. Sex Roles, 72(9–10), 401–426. Quoted on p. 415. Liben herself does not hold a gender-essentialist view, and notes that from this perspective, sex is seen as so fundamental “that other potentially important human characteristics may pale in comparison, and thus may attract relatively little attention.”
37. For example, Halsam et al. (2000), ibid.; Haslam, N., Rothschild, L., & Ernst, D. (2000). Are essentialist beliefs associated with prejudice? British Journal of Social Psychology, 41, 87–100; Rothbart, M., & Taylor, M. (1992). Category labels and social reality: Do we view social categories as natural kinds? In G. Semin & K. Fiedler (Eds.), Language, interaction and social cognition (pp. 11–36). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
38. See Griffiths, P. E. (2002). What is innateness? The Monist, 85(1), 70–85.
39. John Coates, quoted in Adams, T. (June, 19, 2011). Testosterone and high finance do not mix: So bring on the women. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/19/neuroeconomics-women-city-financial-crash on February 20, 2014.
A NOTE ABOUT TERMINOLOGY
1. The first use of the word “gender” as dissociable from biological sex is attributed to John Money, in relation to the concepts of “gender identity” and “gender role” in 1955. However, Ann Oakley’s 1972 book Sex, Gender, and Society seems to be the first publication to use the term to distinguish biological sex from cultural gender.
2. See Haig, D. (2004). The inexorable rise of gender and the decline of sex: Social change in academic titles, 1945–2001. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 33(2), 87–96. However, my impression is that in the last decade or so, psychologists who emphasize biological contributions to differences between males and females tend to use “sex,” while those who emphasize social contributions use “gender.”
3. As Haig (2004, p. 87), ibid., puts it, “The use of gender has tended to expand to encompass the biological, and a sex/gender distinction is now only fitfully observed.”
4. For example, Kaiser, A. (2012). Re-conceptualizing “sex” and “gender” in the human brain. Journal of Psychology, 220(2), 130–136.
5. In addition to the disadvantage of imprecision, the word “promiscuous” in everyday language can also be taken to imply a lack of discrimination when it comes to choice of sexual partners. S
ee Elgar, M. A., Jones, T. M., & McNamara, K. B. (2013). Promiscuous words. Frontiers in Zoology, 10(1), 66.
6. University of Minnesota behavioural ecologist and evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk has a wonderful description of the moral reactions of her students on learning that some bird mating systems aren’t as monogamous as once thought. Zuk, M. (2002). Sexual selections: What we can and can’t learn about sex from animals. Berkeley: University of California Press.
CHAPTER 1: FLIES OF FANCY
1. Extremely useful accounts, drawn on extensively here, are provided in Dewsbury, D. (2005). The Darwin-Bateman paradigm in historical context. Integrative and Comparative Biology, 45(5), 831–837; Tang-Martínez, Z. (2010). Bateman’s principles: Original experiment and modern data for and against. In M. Breed & J. Moore (Eds.), Encyclopedia of animal behavior (Vol. 1, pp. 166–176). Oxford, UK: Academic Press; Hrdy, S. B. (1986). Empathy, polyandry, and the myth of the coy female. In R. Bleier (Ed.), Feminist approaches to science (pp. 119–146). New York: Pergamon Press; Tang-Martínez, Z. (2016). Re-thinking Bateman’s principles: Challenging persistent myths of sexually-reluctant females and promiscuous males. Journal of Sex Research, 53(4–5), 532–559. Many examples drawn on in this chapter were originally cited in this critical review article.
2. Knight, J. (2002). Sexual stereotypes. Nature, 415, 254–256. Quoted on p. 254.
3. Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. London: John Murray. Quoted on p. 272.
4. Bateman, A. J. (1948). Intra-sexual selection in Drosophila. Heredity, 2(3), 349–368.
5. See Dewsbury (2005), ibid.
6. Trivers, R. L. (1972). Parental investment and sexual selection. In B. Campbell (Ed.), Sexual selection and the descent of man (pp. 136–179). Chicago: Aldine.
7. Tang-Martínez (2010), ibid. Both quotations from p. 167.
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