The Female Brain

The three sections of key terms introduce the recurring terminology that is critical for the comprehension of the text. Instead of defining each term, the author describes its relevance. While Brizendine wants readers to rely on her scientific expertise, she does little to demonstrate this specialized knowledge in the text. In this section, which seems to call for technical discussion of neuroscience, the limited descriptions of brain structures and hormones are instead vague, incomplete, or misleading. Partially this is because Brizendine eschews scientific language in favor of literary techniques, such as personification, metaphor, and other figurative devices. For instance, she describes estrogen as “the queen: powerful, in control, all-consuming; sometimes all business, sometimes an aggressive seductress” (15). Rather than offering a functional description of estrogen, Brizendine substitutes a quasi-historical metaphor to enhance the feminist tone of the book. The explanation incorrectly implies that estrogen is only found in female bodies, which is untrue. Male bodies also produce estrogen, which serves a critical role in their sexual function and mental health, as does progesterone, another hormone typically associated only with women. In contrast to her anthropomorphic depiction of estrogen, Brizendine’s personifies testosterone as “fast, assertive, focused, all-consuming, masculine; forceful seducer; aggressive, unfeeling; has no time for cuddling” (15). This description, along with the fact that testosterone is typically associated with male bodies, creates an implicit bias against masculinity, just as the description of estrogen depicts a bias in favor of femininity. Just as with estrogen, in reality, testosterone is found in all humans and necessary to basic functioning. Both descriptions reinforce gender stereotypes.

The explanations of brain structures are similarly unclear and supportive of damaging stereotypes. The prefrontal cortex is unnecessarily gendered—“The queen that rules the emotions and keeps them from going wild. It puts the brakes on the amygdala. Larger in women, and matures faster in teen girls than in boys by one to two years” (14), and it adds to the misandrist tone by reinforcing the stereotype of women as controlling and anti-fun, and selectively using scientific findings to imply that maturation is a biological, rather than social, process. Many researchers now regard maturation as highly impacted by an individual’s environment. Literary techniques further support stereotypes, including the description of female brains as “cinched corsetlike into a smaller skull” (23), a reference to traditionally female restrictive undergarments, while male brains are described with terms like “primitive”—a word the connotes wildness, aggression, and a lack of responsibility for one’s actions.

This bias is presented again in the chart of various female life stages, which contains a column specifically for “What Females Have That Males Don’t” (22). The items in the last column, “Reality Changes,” are generalizations that focus on the assumed perspective of middle- to upper-class cisgender heterosexual women. For instance, Brizendine asserts that a female teenager’s biologically determined reality is: “sexual attractiveness, desperate love interests, avoidance of parents” (22), a narrow view that elides the lived experiences of most actual teens. This is one of many numerous other bio-essentialist statements in the text that are no longer widely accepted; such ideas have been replaced with the knowledge that much of human social behavior is guided by cultural influence.

The title of the introduction, “What Makes Us Women,” is intended to create a bond between the author and the reader. It also implies the intended audience—cisgender female humans. Brizendine uses the introduction to justify her research and the book, noting the tradition of sexism in the biological and medical sciences. Brizendine explicitly states her intent: “It is my hope that this book will benefit many more women and girls than I can personally reach in the clinic. It is my hope that the female brain will be seen and understood as the finely tuned and talented instrument that is actually is” (32). Along with reinforcing stereotypical distinctions between the sexes, the author’s statement also introduces an implicit ableist bias by stressing that the female brain is a “finely tuned and talented instrument” (32).

Brizendine also relies on unsupported broad generalizations, such as “Sexual thoughts float through a man’s brain many times each day on average, and through a woman’s only once a day” (28). This statement not only reinforces the stereotype that female humans have a lower libido than male peers, but also uses exclusionary language, as the author implies that gender and presumed biology are the same. The exaggeration of scientific tools, particularly the imaging technology, is another misleading element. The valorization of fMRI and PET scans creates the assumption that such scans provide accurate and in-depth knowledge of brain function, when the scans actually read secondary neurological changes, such as increased blood flow. They do not directly depict neurological function and, thus, should not be used to make direct assumptions.