Is There A Female Brain?

The Following article was submitted by Charles Martel:

The concept that “gender is a social construct,” that men and women differ only in their social conditioning, is the sine qua non of second-wave feminism.

It’s puzzling that “anything a man can do, a woman can do,” is so self-evidently untrue, and yet is widely accepted among Western women. I have long thought that the explanation for this may lie in brain structure. Perhaps there are important differences in the way that the brains of men and women perceive and process information. Is it possible that men and women can look at the same information and genuinely reach different conclusions, for reasons of neurochemistry?

How often have you seen women characterized in the manosphere by the words “me, me, me, me, me?” To a man, this behavior is evidence of narcissism and is not highly regarded. But perhaps this kind of female behavior is not so much a conscious choice, but more an outward expression of female brain structure. I’ll call this phenomenon the “Locus of Consciousness” and propose that the most important difference in perception resulting from differences in physical brain structure is that the female locus of consciousness is primarily internal while the male locus of consciousness awareness is primarily external.

In my opinion, a second key difference between the male and female brain lies in what I will call “Time Awareness.” I suggest that the female brain is wired to live “in the moment” to a greater extent than the male brain. The female brain discounts future consequences of current actions not out of obtuseness or stupidity, but from a genuine neurological incapacity to consider them.
OK, all of the above is speculation. So…..is there any evidence that male and female human brains are different?

Here’s the view of one typical second wave feminist.

“Newsflash: there is no “female brain” – the latest cutting edge research on sex, attraction, arousal, etc focuses on the HUMAN brain not on the male or female brain.”

Predictably, this is not true. In fact, to the male brain it is an outright lie, but is perhaps more understandable in the context of my proposed female neurological “Locus of Consciousness.” What the female writer is really saying without conscious awareness is that “it’s not in my interest to acknowledge that there are brain differences between men and women.”

There is a female brain, and it is very different to the male brain. Of course, advancing this idea has been about as career-enhancing for a neurologist as researching racial differences in IQ is for a sociologist. Ann Moir and David Jesse made this clear in their 1992 book, Brain Sex, when they wrote: “Doctors, scientists, psychologists and sociologists, working apart, have produced a body of findings which, taken together, paints a remarkably consistent picture. And the picture is one of startling sexual asymmetry. Some researchers have been frankly dismayed at what they have discovered. Some of their findings have been, if not suppressed, at least quietly shelved because of their potential social impact.”

Despite the de facto suppression of gender-based neurological research these inconvenient truths are emerging, thanks primarily to the introduction of highly sophisticated medical imaging devices. There can be no doubt about the structural and functional differences in male and female brains seen in MRI and fMRI images.

This article, by Michael McCarthy of The Independent, provides an interesting and highly politically incorrect overview of recent neurological research: “Men and women show differences in behaviour because their brains are physically distinct organs, new research suggests. Male and female brains appear to be constructed from markedly different genetic blueprints. The differences in the circuitry that wires them up and the chemicals that transmit messages inside them are so great as to point to the conclusion that there is not just one kind of human brain, but two, according to recent neurological studies.”

A quick survey of neurological research shows that:

• Men have approximately 6-1/2 times the amount of gray matter that women do, and women have nearly 10 times more white matter than men. Gray matter processes information in the brain, while white matter connects the processing centers.
• Women have about 85% of their IQ-related brain matter—both white and gray—located in the brain’s frontal lobes while men have nearly all of their IQ-related gray matter distributed equally between the frontal and parietal lobes.
• The corpus callosum, the major white matter tract connecting the two brain hemispheres is larger in women (and gay men).
• The inferior-parietal lobule, which is associated with mathematical ability, is significantly larger in men than in women, with the left side lobule larger in men and the right side lobule larger in women.
• The preoptic area of the hypothalamus is more than twice the size in men as in women. For complex reasons that I will not attempt to explain here, this is why men constantly think about sex and women don’t.
• The limbic cortex, which processes emotions, is proportionally larger in women than in men.
• The parietal cortex, which processes spatial perception, is proportionally larger in men than in women.
• The amygdala, associated with emotional memory, is proportionally larger in men than in women.
• The hippocampus, associated with short-term memory and spatial navigation, is proportionally larger in women than in men.

So, is there a female brain? Clearly, yes. There are very significant structural differences between the male and female human brain.

Of course, these structural differences alone do not offer any specific evidence for my proposed differences in locus of consciousness or time awareness. Nor do they prove that male and female cognitive ability and information processing are different. It’s entirely possible that despite these many structural differences, the male and female brain are functionally identical, just as a 140lb female firefighter and 200lb male firefighter are functionally identical.

To conclude, I offer a new way to look at The Gender War. The Gender War results not only from the competing interests of the sexes, but from real and measurable differences in conscious perception rooted in differences in male and female brain structure. We men need to understand that it is not that women will not see our point of view, it is that they cannot.