Wired for Compassion

We all know how much I adore pop-science articles that brainwash our anti-science population with talk of brain wiring. (I even blogged about it on my very first day as a blogger.) Volumes of actual science have been published disproving the sexist claims of these brainless brain wirers. Still, they keep publishing their rubbish and ignoramuses keep eating it right up because it fits in so neatly with their expectations of clear-cut gender differences.

Here is one of the most recent examples of such a piece. It tries to convince us that vaginas are more compassionate than penises, even though the bearers of said vaginas and penises disagree:

Mercadillo and his colleagues describe an experiment featuring 12 women and 12 men. As the participants viewed a series of 100 photographs, their brains were scanned using fMRI technology. Every second image was one that evoked compassion (according to previous research). Examples included sad human faces, war scenes and depictions of famine. “No gender differences were observed in the frequency of reported compassionate experiences,” the researchers report. However, what was happening in the participants’ brain told a different story. As the compassion-evoking photos were viewed, activity was observed in two areas of the brain — the thalamus and the putamen, part of the basal ganglia — in women but not in men.

 I'm not going to provide a detailed analysis of why this so-called study conducted on an extremely representative sample of 24 people in a scientifically backwards and profoundly sexist country is idiotic. Echidne's Blog has done this beautifully already. I just want to call your attention to how both genders are degraded in the concluding lines of this fascinating piece of journalistic stupidity:

So ladies: When the men in your life seem insensitive to suffering, try not to respond with scorn. The problem, it seems, is one of brain circuitry. It shouldn’t be hard to take pity on them; after all, you have an enormous capacity for compassion.

Men are presented as not entirely human here. They have to be pitied and condescended to by women who do have the capacity of experiencing the full range of human emotions. At the same time, just like centuries ago, women are still being exhorted to be understanding and forgiving with men. Five hundred years ago, we were supposed to do that because it was our God-given duty. Today, we are still expected to condescend to men because we are told that this is how our brains work. Some things don't ever seem to change.

Favorite Female Characters, Anybody?

It is a commonplace in literary criticism that female readers tend to identify with male characters because female characters are so unattractive as to make any identification with them impossible. Finding a female character who is not one-dimensional, pathetic, silly, weepy, boring, and/or sexless is next to impossible even for a very well-read person. Honestly, I can't think of any such female characters.

Except, of course, Jane Eyre. Charlotte Bronte's fiercely feminist novel has a protagonist who is complex, conflicted, and strong. She is neither a perfect little Madonna who never speaks above a whisper and sacrifices herself with a beatific smile for everybody else, nor a sinner always ready to repent and debase herself in payment for her sins in the last pages of the novel. Jane Eyre feels insulted by the suggestion that her husband should keep her. She relies only on money that is her own. She doesn't marry her love interest until his is completely broken down and dependent on her for even the most basic things.

So this is pretty much the only attractive female character I can think of at this moment. Am I forgetting anybody? Any suggestions?

Gender Stereotypes and the Mystery Genre: From Christie to Rendell

In the mystery genre, no one can compare with the amazing British authors Agatha Christie and Ruth Rendell. The first of these authors created the genre* while the second one took it to incredible heights in a number of extremely well-crafted novels. Compared with the psychological and literary sophistication of Rendell's work, Christie's novels seem primitive. The language is simple, the characters are one-dimensional, and the plots are quite similar.

One thing, however, is shared by the two queens of the detective genre. Both Christie and Rendell know extremely well how to manipulate the gender stereotypes of their times to create a mystery their readers will not be able to solve. Take, for example, Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger and Ruth Rendell's A Fatal Inversion**. In The Moving Finger, Christie attempts to prevent the readers from guessing the identity of the criminal by relying on their misogynistic vision of what constitutes "male" and "female" kinds of crime. This particular gender stereotype has lost its currency completely in the decades that elapsed since the novel was published. As a result, The Moving Finger is one of the lesser known of Christie's novels. A modern-day reader will have no trouble guessing what really happened since the gender stereotype is the only thing standing between the reader and the realization of the criminal's identity.

Ruth Rendell's A Fatal Inversion is one of this prolific author's best mysteries***. Vulnerability is the topic she explores in this novel in a stunningly successful way. Her characters are vulnerable to all kinds of things: sexual obsession, insanity, the desire to fit in at all costs, fear of rejection, the desire to fit in, alcoholism. The question of which one of them will prove to be the only truly resilient one remains unanswered until the stunning ending of the book. However, if it were not for our deeply-ingrained gender stereotypes, that ending would not surprise us in the least.

Hopefully, the gender stereotypes that Rendell based her novel on will pass into oblivion one day, just like the ones that informed Christie's outdated mystery I have discussed here****.

* Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle created the genre of the police procedural, not the mystery novel as such. Christie's Hercule Poirot makes vicious fun of Sherlock Holmsian type of characters. Rendell has written quite a few police procedurals (her Inspector Wexford series), which I consider to be vastly inferior to her mystery novels.

** The novel was published under Rendell's nom de plume Barbara Vine.

*** A Fatal Inversion, The Bridesmaid and Thirteen Steps Down are Rendell's best novels, in my opinion. If I weren't wary of making this list too long, I would add The Chimney Sweeper's Boy and No Night Is Too Long to the list of her best work. If you like the mystery genre but still have not read anything by Rendell, what are you waiting for? She is absolutely the best. 

**** I have tried to discuss the plots of these novels as little as possible here to avoid spoiling the pleasure of their future readers.

Another Annoying Gender Stereotype

I don't even know who should be more offended by this, men or women:

“Professor” Sheridan Simove has produced a 200 page book entitled “What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex”. The work has sold out online on Amazon following heavy promotion in student unions across Britain. The £4.69 item, which was intended as a novelty gift, is being used by students as a notebook.

Of course, gender stereotypes make the world seem more comprehensible, so people don't mind being insulted as long as the hope of reducing humanity to a facile set of stereotypes is offered to them.