Baron-Cohen, "The Essential Difference"

reinecke54, Sunday, 18.04.2004, 22:40 (vor 7963 Tagen)

Hier einige zitate aus dem buch "The Essential Difference"
von S Baron-Cohen. Einiges wird euch ziemlich bekannt vorkommen.

MARS AND VENUS

Some books on sex differences take a rather light-hearted
approach. However, although it may make amusing reading,
it is not helpful scientifically to imagine that 'men are
from Mars and women are from Venus'. For one thing, the joke
about our coming from two different planets distracts us
from the serious fact that both sexes have evolved on
the same planet and yet tend to display differences in the
way we think. We need to know why this is, and in Chapter 9
I look at the possibility that the two sexes' minds evolved
to be adapted to different niches as a result of different
evolutionary pressures. Moreover, the view that men are
from Mars and women from Venus paints the difference between
the two sexes as too extreme. The two sexes are different,
but are not so different that we cannot understand each other.

There is further reason why I think a serious book on this
topic is needed. Humour is important, and satire has its
place, but light-hearted jibing at the opposite sex can easily
spill over into sexism. For example, recently on British
television I heard the following joke by a female chat-show
presenter: 'Women are from Venus, men are dumb.' A few women
in the audience laughed. Her female co-presenter then asked,
'Do we really need men? What use are they?' To which the first
presenter replied, 'I've heard men are trainable and can make
good house pets.' In some ways, this sort of sexist abuse of
men by women is astonishing, and would never be tolerated if
the subject of the joke was a woman, or was black, Jewish or
gay.

...

THE POLITICS OF STUDYING SEX DIFFERENCES

...

Discussing sex diffences of course drops you straight into the
heart of the political correctness debate.
...
I have spent more than five years writing this book. This is
because the topic was just too politically sensitive to complete
in the 1990s. I postponed finishing this book because I was
unsure whether a discussion of psychological sex differences
could proceed dispassionately. Fortunately there are now growing
number of people, feminists included, who recognize that asking
such questions need not lead to the perpetuation of sexual
inequalities. In fact, the opposite can be true. It is by
acquiring and using knowledge responsibly that sexism can
be eliminated. ...

Sexism, it could be said, occurs when an individual man or
woman is judged to be x or y, just by virtue of their sex.
If there is any message in this book, it will be to unpack this
sexist assumption and to show just how wrong it is. Don't
assume that the better parent in a child custody case is the
mother, since it could be that the father is a wonderful
empathizer who can tune into his child's needs, while the
mother cannot. The family law courts typically assume that
the better parent will be the mother, but they are wrong to
prejudge the case.
...
At the dawn of this new millennium, the picture I saw in
the 1990s has changed substantially. Whereas old-style
feminists used to assert that there was nothing men could
do that a woman could not do equally well, today many
feminists have become rather proud that there are things
that most women can do that most men cannot do as well.

Und nun ein sprung ans ende des buches.

MISCONCEPTIONS

I would weep with disappointment if a reader took home from
this book the message that 'all men have lower empathy' or
'all women have lower systemizing skills'.
...
Some may think that the small but real differences between
men and women (on average) mean that there is never going
to be any help for relationships working well. Again, I
think this worry is overstated. In the majority of opposite-
sex couples or friendships, there is sufficiently good
communication to enable people not only to understand each
other but also to respect each other's differences. And,
after all, the age-old solution to the need for like-minded
companion has always been to have same-sex friends outside
of any primary relationship involving someone of the opposite
sex. A girls' night out, or a night with the lads, has always
been the need for most people.

Some may worry that the view of the male and female brain
offered in this book risks portraying the male brain as more
intelligent than the female brain. Systemizing sounds like
the sort of thing that might come in useful on an IQ test,
whilst empathizing may not figure in such tests at all. I
do not think this risk is real, however, because both
processes give rise to different patterns of 'intelligence'.
...
Some may worry that portraying autism as hyper-male will
trigger association of people with autism as super-macho.
Again, this would be a misconception, as machismo does not
overlap with any exactness with the dimensions of empathizing
and systemizing. Indeed, the negative connotations of being
macho, such as aggression, are far from a good characterization
of many people with autism spectrum conditions. Aggression is
determined by many factors, and reduced empathy may be just
one of them. And even then, reduced empathy does not invariably
lead to aggression. It may not even lead to this in the
majority of cases. Many people with autism spectrum conditions
are gentle, kind people, who are struggling to fit in
socially and care passionately about social justice: not the
stereotype of a macho male at all.

RESPECT

A central tenet of this book is that the male and female brain
differ from each other, but that overall one is not
better or worse than the other. Hopefully, in reading this
book, men will also experience a resurgence of pride at the
things they can do well, ...

Society at present is likely to be biased towards accepting
the extreme female brain and stigmatizes the extreme male brain.
Fortunately, the modern age of electronics, science, engineering
and gadgets means that there are more openings now for the
extreme male brain to flourish and be valued. My hope is that
stigmatizing will soon be history.