Brain Sex
SBS Television
March 21, 7.30 p.m.
Reviewed by Karen Fredericks
The differences between men's and women's brains are the ostensible subject of the three-part documentary Brain Sex, screened by SBS over the last two Sunday nights (the final instalment due this Sunday, March 21, at 7.30pm). In fact the programs have contained less science than an old episode of Star Trek, and considerably more backward views on relations between the sexes.
A child develops its "mind" in the womb, we were told by the voice-over of authority early in the first program. "That's the result of nature, not nurture. Chemistry not conditioning."
Later he underlines his point: "That we are all born equal has become a creed. But it just doesn't square with our experience. We're all so different. And it's not a difference for which we can hold society to blame." And again: "We may like to think that all babies are born equal, but new research is showing that human differences are inborn". And that's just in the first 30 minutes!
This editorialising did not merely accompany any scientific content; it overshadowed it completely. The "crude" has certainly been put back into biological determinism.
The central scientific thesis of the programs seemed to be this: that part of what determines gender, apart from chromosomal difference, is the presence of different types and levels of hormones in the womb during pregnancy. These hormones determine the development of male or female reproductive organs. If hormones affect these organs, posits the program, then surely they affect other organs, most importantly the brain.
It goes on to cite discoveries, published in the early 1990s, which seem to indicate that a microscopic region of the pre-optic area of the hypothalamus (christened by its discoverer, Roger A. Gorski, the "sexually dimorphic nucleus") is larger in male rats than in female rats. Some think there may be a similar size difference in human brains. Interesting.
The thesis is extended to a brief discussion of chromosomal and brain difference as possible "causes" of what Professor Gorski, his value-embroidered slip peeping out from under his scientific credentials, calls "abnormal homosexual behaviour".
Gorski cites (unspecified) surveys indicating a disproportionate number of homosexual men were born during World War II in Germany. He has observed, he says, that female rats produce fewer male hormones under stress. He concludes that pregnant women, in times of war, also produce fewer male hormones, thus affecting the gender development of their unborn children.
"Women, I'm sure, respond to stress just as a female rat would do", says Gorski — really gives you confidence in his methodology, doesn't it?
Brain sex difference is not a new fad, although it seems to be having a revival. Scientists have "proven" women have smaller brains than men before. The brains behind Brain Sex appear to have evolved little from those behind those early "experiments". In the days when "scientists" performed lobotomies on still-conscious women, they knew the answer to their question already: women were less than human.
In Brain Sex there is a similar, if less physically brutal, approach. "In this series we unfold clinical evidence that the brain, like the body, has a sex, and ask what this discovery may mean", says the voice-over. No sooner has he "asked" than he has answered: "Could it explain why, in spite of alleged equal opportunity, so few women make it to the top?" Surprise, surprise: science is still out to prove women inferior.
The uses of the "difference" argument were demonstrated in 1985, when Rosalind Rosenberg, a professor of women's history at Barnard College in the US, testified for the defendants, Sears department stores, in an equal pay case. She expounded her expert opinion that female employees of the company were employed in mainly low-paid jobs because "women prefer low-risk, non-
competitive positions that do not interfere with family responsibilities". Sears won the case.
Similarly, Brain Sex set out to prove that women are "different" from men: more cooperative, communicative and passive, less competitive, practical and aggressive. No information inconsistent with such a finding was so much as mentioned. The minuscule amount of scientific information buried amongst the barrage of sexist claptrap was not worth the agony of sitting through the program.