麻豆传媒

FROM colourful paperbacks on the sexes鈥� interplanetary origins to measured academic tomes hedged about with caveats, there is certainly no shortage of books about sex differences. So what could Susan Pinker鈥檚 offering, The Sexual Paradox, hope to add to this (over) abundance of informed opinion?

On the plus side, as a clinical psychologist and journalist, she delivers a well-referenced summary of the most up-to-date psychological research and social statistics in a cheerful style. The publicity the book has received, however, derives less from its style than its message. 鈥淎re girls wired not to win?鈥� trumpeted the UK鈥檚 Sunday Times earlier this year, followed by a book extract which explained 鈥渨hy females are biologically driven to nurture their young rather than climb the corporate ladder鈥�. But like all large claims about issues affecting our everyday lives, her arguments need forensic scrutiny.

To make her case, Pinker sets up a strangely asymmetric comparison between men with male-typical psychological disorders such as Asperger鈥檚 syndrome and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and women who are 鈥渟uccessful鈥�. While the former are identifiable by a set of diagnostic criteria, the defining features of the latter seem to be intelligence, university education and middle-class lifestyles.

This odd comparison of apples with oranges left me floundering to grasp its logic. If the important factor in determining success is intelligence, shouldn鈥檛 the comparison be between low IQ men and high IQ women? If it is mental health, shouldn鈥檛 it be between men and women with and without gender-neutral pathologies?

When an a priori logic is absent, it often turns out that the comparison follows from (rather than drives) the author鈥檚 message to the reader. And so it is here: 鈥渆ven鈥� men suffering from psychopathology can succeed in the world of work, while 鈥渆ven鈥� the most privileged women retreat in disarray. There is, however, a conspicuous absence of evidence to support this assertion. What percentage of these 鈥渢roubled鈥� men succeed? What percentage of 鈥渟uccessful鈥� women leave the workplace for more fulfilling home pastures?

Pinker鈥檚 use of the term 鈥渟uccessful鈥� is itself paradoxical. Her female success stories are selected in terms of traditional male criteria: academic achievement, high salary, early promotion and corporate power. Yet Pinker seems to want to pick a fight with her own operational definition. She rejects what she calls 鈥渢he vanilla gender myth 鈥� that women are identical to men and will opt for what men have always done鈥�. So it seems illogical for her to refer to these women as successful since, based on her own argument, their 鈥渟uccess鈥� should rest in their rejection of these male criteria.

Another problematic element appears as the book gets into its stride: it becomes clear that Pinker believes that those clinical disorders experienced more frequently by men are exaggerated versions of normal, average sex differences. In this she follows psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, who dubbed autism the manifestation of an 鈥渆xtreme male brain鈥�.

She makes her case by showing that men with Asperger鈥檚 are drawn to impersonal, mechanical, rule-governed interests and argues this is also true of men as a whole. The biological source of this difference is, she says, prenatal testosterone, so men鈥檚 and women鈥檚 brains are 鈥渨ired鈥� and 鈥減rogrammed鈥� differently.

In passing 鈥� and for me revealingly 鈥� the words 鈥渨ired鈥� and 鈥減rogrammed鈥� occur often in Pinker鈥檚 book. Ironically, such words seem most popular among those who consider themselves sufficiently sophisticated to reject 鈥渟implistic鈥� genetic determinism.

Back at the fetal testosterone argument, while there is much evidence that such exposure does affect sex-typical traits, the all-important link between the continuum of normal male development and Asperger鈥檚 remains to be established.

Have men with Asperger鈥檚 really been exposed to unusually high testosterone levels? If so, why do they not also manifest the other extreme male qualities such as aggression, higher levels of competitiveness, increased sex drive? How are we to explain the fact, acknowledged by Pinker, that autistic girls are 鈥渞arely fascinated with numbers and rarely have stores of arcane knowledge鈥�? And if we take seriously the idea that sex-biased pathologies are simply the extreme ends of male and female continua, then why not argue for an 鈥渆xtreme female brain鈥� theory of anxiety, depression and anorexia?

As with any book about sex differences that carries an implicit policy agenda, there must be an enemy. Pinker seems to struggle to find one, but her sights ultimately fix on those who are 鈥渋nsisting on a 50-50 gender split in all fields鈥�.

But who are these people bent on forcing equal numbers of men and women into all jobs? Most policies over the past 20 years have been about creating opportunities for women to study male-typical subjects at university and to work in previously male-dominated fields. Giving women the chance does not mean forcing them to take it, any more than it means debarring men from these fields.

The villains of Pinker鈥檚 book go even further: to achieve gender equality in every occupation they are willing to tamper with human nature itself. 鈥淚f males are more competitive by nature, is this a problem that should be fixed? It鈥檚 tempting to see it that way if we expect men and women to be identical and to want the same things,鈥� she writes. But how many people have such expectations?

The shock value of this book 鈥� implicating biological factors in the differences between men and women 鈥� is much lower in the UK than in the US. Her brother, the psychologist Steven Pinker, many of whose books had glittering reviews in the UK, received less extravagant acclaim for The Blank Slate, in which he took to task social scientists and policy makers who argue for a tabula rasa view of the human mind.

To most Europeans this is a battle that was fought and resolved years ago. These days, who could seriously believe in an undetermined mind? Given ordinary interaction with a normal environment and barring pathology, babies acquire the ability to see depth, use language, and recognise the emotional and belief states of others without the need for direct tutoring.

And so it may be with sex differences. Europeans just do not see what is controversial about implicating biology. Though there have been arguments for gender neutrality at birth, the weight of scientific evidence against it has passed into public consciousness. The cases of children with genetic and hormonal abnormalities that disrupt the typical pattern of gender development are now the stuff of television documentaries.

Most poignant perhaps is the case of David Reimer. One of twin boys, David鈥檚 circumcision went terribly wrong leading him to be surgically reassigned and raised as a girl. But the exposure to testosterone in the womb could not be so easily reversed. She grew up a misfit, never adapted to female interests and developed severe depression by her teens.

After discovering what had happened, she elected to have surgery and return to the male sex. Tragically, he committed suicide in 2004 at just 38, a sobering reminder that sex and gender play a critical, complicated, sometimes tragic role in our lives and one which we still only barely understand.

鈥淪ex and gender play a critical, complicated role in our lives鈥�

Maybe we should call for a moratorium on popular books about sex difference. New data is pouring in all the time from endocrinologists, neuroscientists, psychologists and evolutionary researchers. Perhaps we need to pause, reflect and digest before announcing, yet again, that we have found 鈥渢he real difference between the sexes鈥�.