The Male Brain by Louann Brizendine

Random House

The publisher's description:

Dr. Louann Brizendine, the founder of the first clinic in the country to study gender differences in brain, behavior, and hormones, turns her attention to the male brain, showing how, through every phase of life, the "male reality" is fundamentally different from the female one. Exploring the latest breakthroughs in male psychology and neurology with her trademark accessibility and candor, she reveals that the male brain:

*is a lean, mean, problem-solving machine. Faced with a personal problem, a man will use his analytical brain structures, not his emotional ones, to find a solution.

*thrives under competition, instinctively plays rough and is obsessed with rank and hierarchy.

*has an area for sexual pursuit that is 2.5 times larger than the female brain, consuming him with sexual fantasies about female body parts.

*experiences such a massive increase in testosterone at puberty that he perceive others' faces to be more aggressive.


The Male Brain finally overturns the stereotypes. Impeccably researched and at the cutting edge of scientific knowledge, this is a book that every man, and especially every woman bedeviled by a man, will need to own.

It seems to me that the book confirms stereotypes [generalizations], rather than overturning them.

The author's website.

Assuming that she does not defend an egalitarian view, the biggest problem with her writing is that it is reductionistic and attributes behavior solely to the organ, the brain.



Links:
Q&A With Dr. Louann Brizendine, Author of 'The Male Brain'
Elle interview

Pink Brain, Blue Brain
Pink Brain, Blue Brain by Lise Eliot is touted as a corrective to Dr. Brizendin's books.

(Washington Post review)

The thesis seems to be that differences between male and female brains are small, and nurture is responsible for gender differences. The feminists love the book.

Sharon Begley, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: Claims of sex differences fall apart.

The belief in blue brains and pink brains has real-world consequences, which is why Eliot goes after them with such vigor (and rigor). It encourages parents to treat children in ways that make the claims come true, denying boys and girls their full potential. "Kids rise or fall according to what we believe about them," she notes. And the belief fuels the drive for single-sex schools, which is based in part on the false claim that boy brains and girl brains process sensory information and think differently.

ForaTV: Lise Eliot: Pink Brain, Blue Brain

Interview with Lise Eliot.