"There's a kid with a golden arm / he admits to the forest fire / he started up for the lack of something better going on"

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Bad feminism.

Although I haven't read the book (The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine), the author's credentials almost make me want to read it. Former Yale graduate and current UCSF neuropsychiatrist, one would assume she knows what she's talking about. Then I look over the book description which goes like so:

"Louann Brizendine, M.D. is a pioneering neuropsychiatrist who brings together the latest findings to show how the unique structure of the female brain determines how women think, what they value, how they communicate, and whom they’ll love. Brizendine reveals the neurological explanations behind why

• A woman uses about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000

• A woman remembers fights that a man insists never happened

• A teen girl is so obsessed with her looks and talking on the phone

• Thoughts about sex enter a woman’s brain once every couple of days but enter a man’s brain about once every minute

• A woman knows what people are feeling, while a man can’t spot an emotion unless somebody cries or threatens bodily harm

• A woman over 50 is more likely to initiate divorce than a man"

If this book is meant to introduce "groundbreaking issues" (Bookmarks Magazine), it seems a little inappropriate to justify the clichés above. I'm sure her target audience--the borderline homosexual fratboy who has not lived or the insecure girl who needs biological evidence that she is, indeed, better--may learn a thing or two about brains and women.

But overall, I'm sick of people trying to liberate women. They can already vote and own property. There's nothing in U.S. law that denies women of anything men have. Except for the draft, but would women want to be drafted? Is that not equality?

Some feminists overlook the advantages of a vagina and just advocate women's rights because it's easy. Anyone can do it. Like the Women in Black who just stand around in silent vigil wearing black, which looks more like a fashion cult than an activist group, it takes no effort.

In ancient Greece, women were denied the right to vote and own property. But they also denied sex in order to end war among the city-states. Now that's feminism I like.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the ending.

Anonymous said...

I second that. Great ending janelle, it made me laugh. This was an interestingly fun blog to read.

This book seems more like the differences between men and woman more than a real insight on the way a woman's brain works. It's way too opinionated to be scientifically correct. But I may be wrong.