Men Are From Mars

Chaos once again broke out in the realm of academia last month after Science, a leading scientific journal, refused to publish an article that dismissed the theory of psychological equivalence between men and women. Peter A. Lawrence, a biologist and fellow of the Royal Society, authored the controversial article, arguing the hardly astonishing point that “men and women are born different.” Big mistake.

Unfortunately for science, Lawrence’s theory was rejected not because of the invalidity of his message but because of the political repercussions of his research. He runs the risk of being tarred and feathered by feminists like Nancy Hopkins ’64, a professor of biology at MIT, who accused him of “mashing together true genetic differences between men and women with old-fashioned stereotypes.”

The ideas he expressed—that perhaps men and women display fundamental differences in behavior and thought processes—were by no means faulty. Rather, he was wrong to think that the academic community would react favorably to his unconventional theory. Instead, many members of the scientific community have had collapsed into epileptic fits at the thought of a challenge to their politically correct world.

Ultimately, some force other than science motivates those who deny that men and women differ at a level deeper than the epidermis. Human fetuses develop, grow, and differentiate into boys and girls with distinct physical traits, from reproductive characteristics, to build and facial structure—and, yes, to brain function. Male and female brains are irrefutably different: in developing fetuses, higher levels of testosterone promote not only the maturation of male genitalia but also the “masculinization” of the brain, resulting in sexually-dimorphic cerebral structures that are designed to excel in certain tasks.

Human beings have spent 99 percent of their existence as hunter-gatherers, a profession for which they remain genetically adapted. The distinction between hunters and gatherers is, for the most part, a sexual one: 50,000 years ago, men single-mindedly focused on their prey in the sub-Saharan plain while women became adept at multi-tasking, gathering a variety of foods and ensuring the safety of their offspring. Our current gender-stratified social system did not emerge from a philosophical abyss; it evolved over tens of thousands of years as a function of the behavioral characteristics that allowed us to coexist and thrive as hunter-gatherers.

For these reasons, it is unsurprising to find statistical evidence that men and women reason differently. While men excel at spatial tasks and mathematical reasoning, women tend to perform better on tests of perceptual speed and mathematical calculations. This is not to say one gender is smarter than another—or that one can accurately predict the behavior or ability of individuals—but rather that sex differences correlate with differences in the means of the respective populations.

Sexual stereotypes are not the cause of sex differences; rather, in many respects, they are the result. A study in 2000 determined that children tend to play with sex-appropriate toys (i.e., boys with trucks; girls with dolls) regardless of societal or parental interference. The study’s conclusion? Sexual differences result not just from social pressure, but also from innate physical and hormonal makeup. The truth is somewhere between nature and nurture: men and women have been designed by some invisible, selective hand to tend to think and act differently, and these tendencies are hammered home by an often discriminatory society.

Nevertheless, biology is not destiny. Women are not doomed to a life of inadequate spatial reasoning skills as a function of the existence of their second X chromosome; similarly, men can learn to ask for directions, despite their competitive drive and instinctive compulsion to appear invulnerable. The truth of the “inherent” differences between men and women is that they are subtle and by no means universal. Because of the immense overlap of ability between men and women, variations between the human genders are more a matter of degree than kind.

Differences in innate behaviors and aptitudes do not make one gender superior to the other; instead, contrasts benefit both genders by equipping the two to work best together, like a lock and key. Men and women bring to the table different skills that make them able to accomplish more as a mixed gender team than alone.

Science should not have felt compelled to censor Lawrence’s article, for which there is overwhelming biological, evolutionary, and genetic evidence. When it comes to cutting-edge scientific theories, do not fault the messengers—only the suffocating cult of political correctness that is tainting the objectivity of science with foul political agendas.

Feminism has accomplished much over the years, crafting a more egalitarian society. As it stands today, however, a new and unsettling brand of reactionary feminism finds itself grasping at scientific straws, overcome by its own political agenda. Armed with its stigmatizing accusations of “bias” and “sexist,” many trigger-happy feminists are resorting to McCarthyist slander to suppress scientific discourse in the academic community.

They give feminism—and science—a bad name.

James H. O’Keefe ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Grays Hall.