Brain Sex

The Real Difference Between Men & Women

by Anne Moir & David Jessel. Published by Carol Publishing Group (New York, 1991). Available from National Vanguard Books for $20.95, postpaid.
"To maintain that [men and women] are the same in aptitude, skill, or behavior is to build a society based on a biological and scientific lie." (Moir & Jessel)




Does the opposite sex mystify you? Do you wonder why he is so uncommunicative? Are you amazed at times by her intuition? Brain Sex is a book dedicated to demystifying the differences between male and female behavior. Men and women act differently, according to authors Moir and Jessel, because our brains are structured differently.

Feminism holds that, except for obvious anatomical differences related to reproduction, men and women are essentially the same. Feminists argue that psychological differences -- differences in interests, mental abilities, or emotions -- are caused by social conditioning, not by genes. This book directly contradicts modern feminist theory, and it documents its conclusions with a myriad of scientific studies. It is ironic that "[r]ecent decades have witnessed two contradictory processes: the development of scientific research into the differences between the sexes, and the political denial that such differences exist." The evidence, however, is now "conclusive" and "incontrovertible" that men and women have different mentalities and thus perceive the world differently.

Moir and Jessel explain that the presence or absence of hormones is as important as XX or XY chromosomes in determining the sex of a fetus. Sex hormones working on the embryonic brain and nervous system cause the structure or "wiring" to develop differently in males and females. It is these sex hormones that "bear the ultimate biochemical responsibility for producing gender-related differences in interests, cognitive style, [and] gender role differences. . . ." What are these sex-based mental differences?

Men's brains are more specialized (which has advantages and disadvantages). Their abilities are those centered in the right hemisphere of the brain -- understanding spatial relationships and abstractions, seeing shapes and patterns, grasping the big picture. Women's abilities are less specific: The two spheres of the female brain are able to communicate more easily. Their strengths, however, lie in the left hemisphere -- verbal and linguistic skills; assimilating practical, concrete information; keeping track of the details. Men are the world's explorers and inventors. According to the authors, ninety-nine per cent of all patents applied for today are registered by men. Women are better at "people" skills: teaching and care-giving. Eighty-three per cent of elementary school teachers are women.

Differing abilities and the resulting sexual division of labor have a survival advantage and an evolutionary origin. Most of our race's existence has been spent in hunter-gatherer societies. Men were the hunters and protectors; women were the gatherers and nurturers. Men needed greater strength and speed to track and kill large animals. They also needed spatial abilities to be able to hurl a spear into the flank of a woolly mammoth and find their way back to camp. Women, who were pregnant or nursing most of their adult lives, needed to stay closer to camp. They could use their more acute sense of taste, touch, and smell to locate and select the best nuts and berries and then use their better coordination for rapid, repetitive fine motor tasks to gather them.

Some of the most interesting chapters of the book deal with contemporary heterosexual relationships. Men and women are attracted by their physical differences, yet our psychological differences keep us apart. One tip offered to guys: The best way to a woman's heart is through her ears, since the male voice is what many women find most seductive.

Why are men and women so different? The authors find it "hard to understand nature's plan in arranging this inherent incompatibility between the two sexes of the species. Maybe if we all felt and thought alike we would soon get bored with each other." At this point a better grounding in socio-biology would help explain the survival functions of different reproductive strategies.

The book also has a chapter dealing with sexual deviance. Apparently there is no single cause for homosexuality, and there may be two basic types: primary (congenital) and secondary (environmental). However, the more extreme forms of sexual confusion such as transsexuality, where the unfortunate individual feels "trapped in the body of the opposite sex," are certainly biological in origin. While the authors make a plea for tolerance toward sexual deviance, they admit that "intolerance may be biologically wired into our brains as a part of aggressive behavior to the outsider."

The authors give us information on psychological differences between men and women but do not tell us what these differences might mean for society, yet no one can read a book such as Brain Sex without thinking about the implications of its findings for society. Feminists might argue that even if we accept male and female physical and psychological differences as innate, there is some overlap. Some men are shorter than some women, and some women are better mathematicians than some men. Shouldn't we treat everyone as an individual? If only one women in a thousand would make a good paratrooper, shouldn't she be allowed to "be all that she can be"?

The answer to this question comes down to fundamental values. If individualism is our guiding principle, if individual rights and self-fulfillment are society's highest goals, perhaps an argument might be made for a female paratrooper. Even then one runs into all sorts of practical problems with discipline and morale and with inefficiencies (separate showers, etc.). If , however, society's goal is the advancement of a racial community, it's not difficult to see how destructive individualism, especially the feminist variant of that ideology, has been. A dysgenic birthrate among better-educated women, a weakening of the family, and the breakdown of civility are, to an extent, by-products of contemporary feminism.

A strong case can be made that a majority of women have been hurt by feminism -- the feminization of poverty and devaluing of feminine qualities come to mind. Even more important is the fact that society has been profoundly disrupted by this ideology. Now that the scientific evidence overwhelmingly points to innate mental differences between men and women, the challenge is for society to accept that men and women are both fundamentally different and equally essential.

Brain Sex is written on two levels. Since both Moir and Jessel are journalists, the book is an entertaining synthesis for the layman. There is even a Brain Sex Test at the end of chapter three to determine how masculine or feminine the mentality of the reader is. For the more serious student who wishes to check original sources, Anne Moir, who has a Ph.d. in genetics, has compiled an extensive bibliography. Unfortunately, specific citations within the text are handled in a rather awkward way.

Brain Sex will give the reader plenty of ammo to use on any radical egalitarians who may cross his path. Perhaps the greatest value of this book, however, is in documenting another instance where our intellectual and political elites have chosen to disregard or distort scientific findings which do not fit their social agenda.