In search of the ladybrain
Are men's brains different, or is it just their hormones that make them so cranky?
There is a frequently expressed view, even among those who broadly support the struggle for women’s rights, that we are in this mess because feminists say men and women are the same and interchangeable. This is nonsense. There is a big difference between believing that a woman is as capable as a man of achieving great things and believing women and men are the same.
Humans are a sexually dimorphic species, which has implications for the social roles we adopt. You would have to be a reality denier to think otherwise, and I am a materialist. This is not to say, however, as one prominent ‘feminist’ author has done, that women are destined to adopt the homemaker role, nor (paradoxically, by the same author) to do so often quite poorly.
Sex is defined by the kind of gametes each body type is intended to produce, but the specialisation of the two sexes arises from the limits on reproductive opportunities. In most dimorphic species, one sex is limited by opportunities to spread their gametes; the other by the resources required to nourish the resulting young.
The female is, in general, more committed to survival of the offspring than the male. It is not gamete production but this relative investment in the offspring that causes dimorphism. In proof of this, I offer that in seahorses, where the male carries the young, the female is larger and more competitive; in herring, where both sexes adopt a dump-and-go attitude to parenting, the species is monomorphic; and in many species of birds - robins are an obvious one - where hatching and parenting is largely shared, the differences between male and female are tiny.
Humans are not special. The evolved differences between the sexes are only those that are rendered necessary for advantage, including those created by the investment each makes in producing offspring. This rationale includes any evolved, innate differences in behaviour.
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So how might evolution affect our behaviour? I will start by addressing the big, nasty gorilla in the room: testosterone.
Testosterone is present in all vertebrate animals and results in muscle growth, sperm production, and aggression. Some animals - deer, for example - have cyclical testosterone production that leads to an annual rutting season, fights, and the obsessive need to have sex. In songbirds, male testosterone levels drop after egg laying in preparation for nurture. In humans, the hormone is present 365 days a year. Go figure.
Both men and women have testosterone in their normal endocrine systems. However, the levels in men are far higher, beginning at puberty and bringing with it spots, wet dreams and reckless stupidity. Over time, levels of testosterone fall (and generally, spots, wet dreams and reckless stupidity fall too). It acts, among other things, on the amygdala, the area of the brain associated with emotional control.
Whether the recklessness is an evolutionarily useful effect of testosterone or simply a side effect that adds entries to the Darwin Awards, its links with male aggression at least correlate. Men with lower testosterone levels are less aggressive, higher levels are reported among the prison population, and testosterone levels are higher in men when they are at their most aggressive as teens and young men; older men, and men in whom testosterone production is suppressed, (for example, for chemical castration or prostate reduction therapy) report lower levels of aggression. Variations in levels (and aggression) can occur very rapidly; as a stress hormone, testosterone is produced during fights and antagonistic events, probably creating a cycle of aggression.
The jury is out on whether this is a true biological difference, though, or only a biochemical one. Women have not, historically, often been exposed to male levels of testosterone. Time will, sadly, tell.
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An elephant can join the gorilla in the room. You have probably heard that there is a difference between male and female brains in size and structure. This has been relied on by some transactivists, who assert that the brains of trans people more closely resemble those of their target sex than their actual sex. Curiously, this alleged physical signifier is not used as a diagnostic criterion for gender dysphoria; here’s why.
Leaving aside that any brain that is part of a male body is, by definition, a male brain, there is surprisingly little good evidence that male and female brains are all that different. Female brains are generally a little smaller, have more grey matter, and might have slightly better connections between the hemispheres. But a 2021 study concluded that the differences seen among each sex were as great as the differences between the sexes. It found no universal, species-wide brain features that differ between the sexes. Our brains are somewhat dimorphic but not conclusively so. None of the differences found accounted for the behavioural differences.
In any case, there is no evidence to support the claim that the brains of trans-identifying men particularly resemble those of women. There is some evidence that the brains of homosexual people have some similarities to those of the opposite sex, but these could be explained by the fact that our brains respond to inputs and reshape themselves in a plastic way.
Ironically, therefore, our brains are probably plastic, whereas our secondary sex characteristics, despite some assertions, really are not. And no, no one has a ladybrain.
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Nonetheless, women are certainly the only ones equipped to bear offspring or feed small infants, whatever the NHS likes to pretend, and it would seem natural that they might develop some special mental abilities to do so.
Women have better colour vision than men, enabling them to tell the difference between coral, peach, and “kind of orange” and maybe helping in gathering food or spotting signs of disease; they exhibit different responses to baby cries, with women becoming more focused (the study doesn’t mention what men do, so feel free to insert your cynical interpretation here), but this is probably hormonal and doesn’t persist for life.
Women have a better sense of smell, too, to a degree which seems unlikely to be to do with food safety. The difference likely equips women better to choose a mate. Maybe nature meant women could be choosier. Maybe we weren’t evolved to be lesser. Maybe we evolved to be equal but different humans. Wash your pants, fellas.
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Finally, the evolutionary psychology approach to understanding the relative social positions of the sexes is quite seductive; it sounds “truthy”. It goes something like this. ‘Men are bred to be hunters, and are therefore more aggressive and less nurturing; women are bred to be the home-makers and gatherers, so they tend to patience, emotional involvement and collaboration.’
In evidence, it is often said that men are better at logic, better with machinery and maths, while women have – well, nothing, really, but they are very kind and love dolls. Contrary to popular belief men do not have a better sense of direction - such difference as there is has been shown to be a result of socialisation. And they simply are not better at maths or science. Women are kinder, but this is almost certainly a result of socialisation.
It might be a better argument if it was impossible to explain the actually observed differences by physical and biological processes. It would be better still if it were based on a proper understanding of human behaviour in pre-historic times.
Humanity evolved as a nomadic, hunter-gatherer species with little technology and, therefore, little role specialisation. It has been suggested that women with crying babies to feed would hinder a hunt. This is not borne out by studies of communities still engaged in hunter-gathering. Hunting is mostly for small animals, which either sex could hunt; even on longer hunts, with small populations of people chasing relatively large numbers of animals, some evidence suggests that humans hunt by attrition, wounding animals and then trailing them, rather than stalking them; first nation Americans frequently simply drove herds of large mammals over a cliff and ate as many of them as they could before they rotted. A crying baby might actually help in driving them over the edge. It would me.
Women’s behaviour is easily explained by reference to their hormones, especially in motherhood, and associated socialisation. Men, whose hormones fluctuate less, need further consideration. It is men who commit most sexual offences; women generally do not. Is this an inherited psychological disposition? Well, aside from the fact that dispositions don’t appear to be genetically coded, this is shown in a solid academic study to be most likely related to men’s socialisation and their testosterone-fuelled aggression, not an inherited wish to commit offences (which would be counterproductive in a social species). Men inherit bodies that can commit violent acts, not psyches inclined to do so.
We have evolved a complex psychology which enables us to cohabit as a social species with sexual dimorphism, but that does not mean that male and female psychology is fundamentally different. It means that we are all human.
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So where does this leave us? Are women inevitably going to be seen as lesser because their reproductive capacity renders them less able to fight, and childbearing makes them place themselves lower on the social scale? Of course not. Societies exist which are differently organised, and I wouldn’t be much of a feminist if I cleaved to the Melian dialogues, would I? The answer lies in the patriarchy, a facet of ownership created when mankind first settled. Tune in next week when I try to explain it.