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41 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Science Shows How Short-Sighted and Inaccurate Fisher Was, May 19, 2005
This review is from: The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World (Paperback)
In reference to the reviewer below who states that men are more "right-brained" thinkers, it is interesting to note that modern science is now demonstrating this is true. The May, 2005 issue of Scientific American discusses how men have a more active right-amgydala compared to women, in which men tend to be more central or integrative thinkers. Women in contrast tend to be more left-amgydala dominant, which is more concerned with finer-detailed aspects of cognitive processes. Experiments using the drug Propranolol have shown this striking differences between the sexes. This fits well with experience, where in conversation women tend to focus much more on details that seem superfluous to men who want it put into a context. For men, the "gist" is what is most important. Thus, in direct contradiction to Fisher's claim, it is men that are more the contextual, holistic thinkers.
Another interesting find is that women have a markedly higher orbitofrontal-to-amygdala ratio compared to men. The finding suggest that women on average might be able to then reign in their emotions better than men. This might very well be true, particularly when it comes to violent impulses. For other everyday encounters, however, it would seem judging at the rate of faux pas and other social effronteries committed by both sexes that neither gender seems particularly suited in reigning in less-than-desirable emotions. Given how some companies have had to actually have their human resource departments develop so-called "bully broad" programs, or anger-management for women managers, it would seem women do not have as an advantage the ability to control themselves emotionally. To be fair though, this might be more owed to the past trend of having looked the other way when a woman did something offensive because she was not a man, which normally would have gotten a man into trouble more readily.
At the end of the day, however, when all is said and done, the differences between the sexes boils down to differences between individuals. I tend to think visually. I cannot recall telephone numbers readily numerically but tend to recall them in terms of their geometric arrangement on the touchpad. You can say the number to me but it sometimes just doesn't register until I see in down on paper and have it visually in my head. I can usually control my emotions but I am admittedly an over-emotional and passionate man when it comes to certain political or social stances and I am not at all shy in expressing myself forcibly when a wrong has been done. I can also be impatient when it comes to having to listen to the women in my life having to go through a laundry-list of details to get to the point, although I've grown more tolerant of this as I've gotten older and think it can be quite charming at times.
In contrast, some of the women that have been personally involved in my life have run the gamut from proverbial "tom-boys," who've been keenly interested in mechanical workings and very visual thinkers as well, to women who've proved an amalgam of just about every trite stereotype assigned to women. In short, we deal with people-individuals-not some nebulous average such as "women" or "men" said to then represent its individual members. This point and consideration was thoroughly lost by Fisher, who clearly proves she has a very strong agenda of seeing women ridiculously superior in virtually every realm over man.
I don't fault all women for this error in thinking however; rather Fisher has proved that she is a very lef-amgydala dominant woman unable to see that holistic rich tapestry that is the human race in all its multivariate ways and capacities.
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113 of 151 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
I Am Woman (Hear Me Roar)!, July 15, 2000
This review is from: The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World (Paperback)
Reading this self-congratulatory feminist manifesto, one gets the impression the author would have us believe women of the species have just parachuted into our midst rather than being our long-time companions down here on the planet of the (male) apes. Given their complicity in all the wonders & woes through recorded time, it's only logical to attribute at least half-credit (and blame) for what humankind is and is becoming as due to their persisting and enduring influence over the eons. Yet here we find no such admissions of female culpability in the sorry state of the species. Instead, it seems to be exclusively males who have royally mucked things up so far. Yet, in the world according to Ms. Fisher, one must not despair, for all that will be changed as soon as women (the super sex) begin to come into their own. The reader is left with an uneasy impression this is all another thinly veiled sexist and virulently anti-male argument parading as social science a la Susan Faludi ("Backlash" and "Stiffed"). In all this heady prose of feminist celebration one can almost hear the faint echoes of Helen Reddy's feminist paean "I Am Woman' (Hear her roar!). Yet there is only anecdotal proof that any of what she purports is accurate or true of women in general, never mind that it will somehow ineluctably come to pass. For example, she boasts that women have "natural" talents males do not, and therefore are "better suited" biologically to excel at a whole range of complex social tasks than are males. This isn't a carefully couched scientific argument framed in terms of recognizing much wider individual variations within the female population itself than between males and females generally. Rather, it is argued as if it were a general sex-linked intellectual trait. Were I to argue the same thing about male math skills, natural aggression and violent tendencies, or leadership skills, I would be summarily shouted down and denounced as a reactionary sexist. Yet one finds no such recognition by the author that she is skating on the paper-thin ice of anecdotal supposition rather than on established scientific fact. Instead, she twists and turns her way through this hodge-podge of psychological, sociological, and biological data as though it were the dawning of the Age of Aquarius suddenly realized. A few sobering facts; males behave the way they do at least partially because of the way they are raised, and women are largely in control of this socialization process. Have we seen much in the way of sensitivity, wisdom, or "win-win" success displayed here? Hardly. If men are insensitive, unable to openly display their emotions, and distantly angry, women who raise them, sleep with them, and love them must share part of the blame. Judging by the performance of women in institutions where they are in the ascendency, such as at universities and medicine, emotionally-based political correct behavior has become the rule of the day. I was recently advised by a tenured female professor at a famous liberal arts college in western Massachusetts that the female caucus in her department was told to privately counsel any potential male PhD. candidates to refrain from wasting their time applying for teaching openings. Is this not blatant sex discrimination, deliberate prejudice of the first magnitude? Evidently not, my friend explained lamely that the ladies just want more time to 'season' the new female majority position within the department. And on and on. Furthermore, the evidence from the past indicates that omen throughout history like Cleopatra, Catherine the Great or Queen Elizabeth who have gained and wielded power have been quite as abusive in the use of that power as are men. This is not to suggest that women are any worst than men, or even the same as their male counterparts. But there is little proof that any of the giddy stuff she is supposing to be the wave of the future has any basis anywhere other than in her feminist fantasies. Thus, to suppose women are naturally superior healers, thinkers, communicators, and negotiators is just so much hot air escaping into the already supersaturated ozone layer. Men who have worked with women find them individually to be quite as arbitrary, capricious, selfish, and petty as the men they have labored under. Women who work for women are no more eager to celebrate their feminine superiors, but rather fear the personal consequences that the social, cultural, and politically-correct agendas many of their female supervisors harbor and use to separate the working wheat from the chaff. Like "Backlash" and "Stiffed", this is a silly, superficial, and self-interested gambit to further a feminist agenda by trying to foist the intrinsically sexist notion that there are such well-defined and momentously broad-based gender differences so critical to the way we humans interact socially, economically, and politically as to portend the dawning of some hopped-up revolutionary situation. Avoid this book; it is a waste of your time, energy, and money.
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26 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
arrogant preachy major agenda, June 7, 2003
This review is from: The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World (Paperback)
Can't figure out how I pulled myself through this book without becoming ill. Fisher is preachy,arrogant,sounds like a "know it all" in her rant about how her "findings" prove women have a more well rounded,intuitive and emotional intellegence. What findings? She lives and breathes pop psychology and pop science and lives for the all mighty dollar which she knows will come her way,since America is at this time obsessed with "gender difference. In her small world,all behavior is hard wired in your brain.You brain dictates all behavior and your hormones are the master of your destiny.She overlooks the fact that we develope our brains.A girl who plays with dolls will have a very different brain structure from a girl who played with spatial enhancing toys.Let's face it,most girls are raised in an overly protective environment in which exploration is limited.Mix it with other cultural limitations on women and girls,and you will get women who are significantly different in their behavior and aspirations from men.If a woman or girl has not had these restraints placed upon her,she will have traits which most people preceive as only a male domain. Her preachy writing is very annoying.She comes across as someone who becomes insecure if she doesn't feel correct at every turn. No,this is not women's lib.There is nothing freeing about the book.It's agenda seems to be to dictate to women. To make them feel "superior" by "proving" their traits outweigh men's "gender specific traits" in every way. Women are individuals,some are spatial,some verbal.Same with men.To imply that every woman has fixed traits not only hurts women's chances in math,science and engineering, but also leaves a woman feeling she is limited by being a woman.
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