Deborah Blum, Sex on the Brain: The Biological Differences Between Men
and Women. New York: Viking, 1997.
Charles Pickstone, The Divinity of Sex: The Search for Ecstasy in a
Secular Age. New York: St. Martin's, 1997.
Deborah Blum's latest book Sex on the Brain: The Biological Differences
Between Men and Women follows in the iconoclastic footsteps of her
1994 work Monkey Wars, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize. Monkey
Wars explored the reality and ethics of animal testing and animal rights
with a fairness rarely exhibited by those who have a clear political slant.
Sex on the Brain examines the no less controversial body of evidence
concerning biologically based sex differences, and does so with humor and
even handedness.
Blum, an experienced science writer, deftly sifts through studies and
theories to ask the scientific question: does gender based behavior reflect
biology rather than culture? The opening sentence of Sex on the Brain
hints at her answer, "There comes a moment in everyone's life when the
opposite sex suddenly appears to be an alien species." Here Blum flies
in the face of her own liberal upbringing in which all gender differences
were seen as being culturally imposed. After watching her own two infant
sons, she concluded, "I had been fed a line and swallowed it like a sucker."
Blum then moves from science into politics with the question: does behavior
also influence biology and, if so, can we consciously redirect biology
along more desirable lines? And should we? She cites researchers such as
Marian Diamond, the Berkeley neuroscientist who has demonstrated that the
brain can physically alter to adjust to circumstances. Given the extreme
adaptability of human beings and the fact that genes predispose people
to act rather than determine behavior, Blum speculates on whether we can
chose to alter our biology. For example, Diamond believes that a father
who spends substantial time in rearing his children actually reduces his
own testosterone level, thus 'gentling down'. In such a manner, the biological
breach between men and women might be narrowed.
The politics of redirecting biology along desirable lines resides largely
in how you define 'desirable'. Blum believes this definition should include
"a system of equality based on mutual respect." To her credit, she draws
back sharply from the Orwellian prospect of conducting a "great biological
experiment...in pursuit of a great mutual goal." Sex on the Brain
more compassionately urges that "we learn to fully appreciate and honor
what we have in common while we continue to appreciate, and, yes, honor
too, what makes us so confoundingly different."
Blum is not convincing, but proselytizing is not her purpose. The study
of biologically based gender differences is in the stumbling steps of infancy.
It is still frantically drawing together data from dozens of fields: neuroscience,
anthropology, animal psychology, paleontology, genetic research... No realm
of human study will remain untouched by its questions. Blum is attempting
to do no more than ask the right ones.
In doing so, she escapes many of the pitfalls into which other researchers
in genetics have tumbled. For example, Edward O. Wilson in his path breaking
work On Human Nature leaves little space for the functioning of
free will. Blum's approach will be far more palatable to philosophers and
psychologists who wish to leave some room for human beings to chose.
Sex on the Brain is a highly readable and fair survey of an explosive
field. Place it on the book shelf beside Myths of Gender: Biological
Theories about Women and Men by Anne Fausto-Sterling, the feminist
biologist who argues that gender differences are culture, "Male and female
babies may be born. But those gender-loaded individuals we call men and
women are produced." Both women want basically the same political outcome:
an equality of opportunity for both sexes. Fausto-Sterling presents her
goal as a question, "Do we care that the poorest segment of our population
is comprised of women and children?" I am reassured that two women with
such divergent beliefs can agree, 'we care'.
By contrast, Charles Pickstone's The Divinity of Sex: The Search
for Ecstasy in a Secular Age is neither encouraging nor fair. As an
Anglican priest, Pickstone follows in the tradition set by the original
churchman Augustine in setting down his thoughts on sex. The book annoys,
rather than informs the reader, through its unsupported statements, unrepresentative
data, and glaring bias.
Consider Pickstone's main theme: The Divinity of Sex argues that,
since the golden age of Queen Victoria, an increasingly secular society
has searched for ecstasy through sex rather than through religion. In essence,
sex has usurped the role of religion in the soul of modern man. Citing
children's stories from the like of A.A. Milne and Kenneth Graham, Pickstone
concludes that the Victorian world was "an Arcadian paradise, a world of
innocence, especially sexual innocence."
The legal scholar Richard A. Posner disagrees. In Sex and Reason,
Posner sketches a panoramic history of sex and society. The Victorian Age
made sexuality into a dark monster by driving it underground with a whip.
Children were committed to institutions for masturbating. Prostitution
rates have rarely been higher in England. Venereal disease ran wild and
occasioned the Contagious Disease Acts. Meanwhile, cheap printing presses
democratized pornography by making it available to the lower classes. Pickstone
confuses repression with innocence.
The accusation that sex has become a form of secular religion sounds
catchy. But Pickstone seems to consider any enduring fascination to be
a 'religious' one, and it is difficult to understand why he did not pick
money or sports as the secular scapegoat. But even granting his premise,
Pickstone leaves the most interesting question unasked. If sex has
replaced religion, why did this come to pass? What human need does sex
fulfill that contemporary religion does not?
Avoiding this dangerous question, Pickstone assigns blame to psychology
and technology which have usurped "the 'sacred' place of mystery and magic".
The railroad is singled out as "a potent symbol...of how God and nature
were yielding their place to technology and capital". Even coming from
a union family, I question whether the CPR is responsible for society's
spiritual void.
Pickstone is rude to both history and data, preferring to quote the
Bible or Wordsworth's poetry rather than to investigate real world attitudes
or practices. He is rude to his reader.
Works Cited:
Anne Fausto-Sterline, Myth of Gender: Biological Theories About Women
and Men. New York: Basic Books, 1994.
Richard A. Posner, Sex and Reason. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
Univ. Press, 1992.
Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
Univ. Press, 1988.
