Maybe they’ll believe her now that she has a penis
Actually “she” is now a “he”: Ben Barres, a neurobiologist who used to be Barbara Barres and underwent a sex-change operation nine years ago.
Barres has published a highly personal critique of the Larry Summers school of essentialism, which claims that differences between the careers of male and female scientists are due to innate differences between male and female brains. You know, just writing that sentence reminds me again how appalling it is that someone can get to be the president of Harvard and be so utterly misguided and ill-informed. It’s like standing up and claiming that the reason there were so few black mathematicians in antebellum Charleston was because black brains are organized differently from white brains.
But as Barres explains, men like Summers and his little friend Steven Pinker are so thoroughly blind to their own privilege that they simply can’t credit it. Since Barres has been on both sides of the fence — first as a female scientist, now as a male — he’s uniquely positioned to address the reality of gender bias:
After he underwent a sex change nine years ago at the age of 42, Barres recalled, another scientist who was unaware of it was heard to say, “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister’s.”
As an undergraduate at MIT, Barres once solved a difficult math problem that stumped many male classmates, only to be told by a professor: “Your boyfriend must have solved it for you.”
“By far,” Barres wrote, “the main difference I have noticed is that people who don’t know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect” than when he was a woman. “I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man.”
Of course, women in the academy (and in the corporate world, for that matter) have been saying all this for some time. We know that gender bias is pervasive. Yet our observations are routinely dismissed by men (and some anti-feminist women) who claim that we are unable to accurately assess our environment. Which is rich, since it’s the reverse that is obviously true: men, particularly white men, are the ones who are blind to the social realities. They sail through life totally unaware of the enormous privilege they enjoy purely by virtue of being male. And then, having convinced themselves that they really did hit that triple, they stand up and tell women that the reason there aren’t more females in the sciences is not because of ten thousand years of patriarchy, not because the modern feminist revolution is barely 40 years old, not because of a massive and pervasive gender bias that privileges men — but because of innate differences between male and female brains.
You’d think people would be a little more careful slinging that “innate differences” stuff around, since that was the same error that earlier generations of scientists made in discussing race. And in fact that kind of thinking is disreputable now when applied to racial differences — witness the derision that greeted The Bell Curve. Yet when it comes to gender, the same old sloppy thinking still prevails. Larry Summers and Steven Pinker would probably reject being lumped in with the Charles Murrays of the world, but in fact they are making the same error: mistaking socially-mediated behavior patterns for evidence of innate qualities.
It’s rather astonishing, really, that they can do that, since in addition to the whole lessons-learned thing from racism, decades of research have demonstrated that: a) innate cognitive differences between males and females are elusive, while b) gender bias in terms of academic hiring and the granting of tenure is extremely strong. You would have to be blind to look at those two sets of data and conclude that the poorly attested cognitive factor is more important than the very robust evidence for social discrimination. Well, either blind or just a white male who doesn’t want to believe that being white and male has anything to do with your professional success.
One Response to “Maybe they’ll believe her now that she has a penis”
-
mintyfresh says:
What’s even more confusing is how women get attacked around the horn these days. If you are successful in a corporate enviorment as a woman it’s because you “learned” (very difficult mind you) how to work around your feminine “cognative” process (ie how to be direct, strategize=play to win, make decisions and move on, promote yourself and put a barrier between you and your emotions)ie..communicate like a man in order to get things done.
Although this yeilds success in the work place it certainly doesn’t endure love either with men or other women - who also resent having to “be” this way and must compete instead of collaborate - men see these women as a ball busting b@* who are unfeminine and often belittle or “harrass” them verbally or otherwise (often in frount of peers) as a form of putting them in their place. Empathising with such a partner or friend might include a little “talking” through it *live* which really all that’s needed because women are emotional creatures - even the toughies. Men try to fix and solve, women sometimes just need to vent for a few minutes and feel like someone is trying to understand them.
Women often although not showing it suffer far more stress and anxiety than men in the workplace as (they “pretend” all day) and then return home (and have to mentally shift back to fem-mode) often to “another” job - family, or working out, friendships, getting out there and trying to “have it all”. Having a good job as a gal still unfortnuetly isn’t deemed acceptable on it’s own right - nor is simply staying home and having a family these days.
If a gal doesn’t “make the switch” back to her “feminine cognative” fast enough in her private life - she get’s accused of being heartless and competitive by both men and women. Dating can be tough as small things like calling until you reach the person live although totally normal at work - is not normal at home. Ironicly, this dynamic is the ultimate catch 22 for women as you’ve sacrified your personal life to some degree, and put off having a family for your career - only to succeed and realize everyone is happier than you - and men and woman are annoyed by you.
Often friends of such women who’ve chosen to stay home or who’ve taking a smaller roll feel “projected on” and suspect they are being looked down on, despite this not being the case at all. Men also dislike you as they see you as a turbo lesbian out for their job. And, they really hate being forced to look in the mirror by a member of the opposite sex acting as they do, as it makes all their unconcious behavior rise to forefrount of their brain. Suddenly they understand that a woman could do to THEM what they’ve been doing to other women, and it’s scary and calls for an immediate take down.
Can’t we all just get along and support each other job wise and emotionally? Competing and men vs. women is so 1950’s - collaborating and figuring out how to “reshape” the system to a more realistic model benefits us all more exponentially.
July 29th, 2006 at 6:18 pm EST
