Killspeak

I find myself reading about sex and gender recently, particularly whether there are cognitive differences between males and females. Both His Brain, Her Brain in the latest Scientific American and the debate between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke were provoked by comments made by the president of Harvard University earlier this year. Both the article and the debate bring-up some very interesting research concerning the biological contribution to the differences in behaviour between sexes, with dallies into the murkier socio-cultural issues of gender.

There are a number of interesting points made in the debate concerning not only the research on cognitive differences between sexes, but also the moral basis of feminism, discrimination and statistics, and the usefulness of common measurements of academic ability. I won’t summarize them here; I recommend reading the entire transcript. The article in SciAm summarizes a few studies about differences between sexes that are not necessarily related to sexual behaviour. While not as directly relevant to the topic as the debate, it does provide interesting talking-points.

I did notice that most everything written about the topic seems to restrict itself to a binary model of sex. Exceptions to the male-or-female dichotomy exist. There are various syndromes (androgenital, androgenic insensitivity, Turner’s syndrome, etc.) in which the afflicted can’t really be said to be exclusively or wholly male or female. Just as people must be aware that sex-specific tendencies are not absolute and invariant, it is important to note that sex itself is not categorical, but exists in varying degrees.

On a tangentially related note, yesterday’s webcast of a transsexual surgery was cancelled, or perhaps only delayed. The site was recommended to me by my grandmother, who, out of morbid curiosity, spent the morning examining the step-by-step diagrams describing the procedure. At the very least, I can be happy that my link suggestion was posted to Boing Boing (the geek equivalent of having a song request played on the radio).