Debunking the New Neurosexism

As Cordelia Fine documents in Delusions of Gender, researchers change their focus, technology marches on, but sexism is eternal. Its latest incarnation is what she calls “neurosexism”, sexist bias disguised in the “neuroscientific finery” of claims about neurons, brains, hormones. Fine was spurred to write her critique, she says, when she found her son’s kindergarten teacher reading a book that claimed a young boy’s brain was incapable of forging the connection between emotion and language.