Nora Caplan-Bricker at Slate reports:

Men and women are equal—and so are the architectures of our brains, according to a new study by neuroscientist Lise Eliot of the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. According to a write-up in Wired, the study was aimed at evaluating the theory that the hippocampus is larger in women than in men; since the hippocampus is the part of the brain associated with memory and emotion, this has been proposed as an explanation for all those feelings ladies tend to have. Eliot and her team analyzed 6,000 MRI scans and found “no significant difference in hippocampal size between men and women.”

This isn’t the first study that has shown no … Read the rest

Again with this. This time at Feminist Philosophers, in a post about two posts discussing Germaine Greer.

There’s a lot wrong with it, but this one claim is especially infuriating (as well as all too familiar):

‘But I don’t get why gender identity is such a big deal’ – Sometimes, lurking in the background of these kind of criticisms of trans feminism is the suggesti[on] that we probably shouldn’t make such a fuss over gender identity. For [those] who have a relatively limited sense of or feelings toward their own gender identity, it can sometimes be hard to understand why some people think it’s so important. (Insert obligatory grumbling about ‘identity politics gone mad’.) As trans people have argued,

The comments on that post by Glosswitch are gold.

Like this one by Glosswitch:

You’re not listening. I’m saying I don’t identify with my assigned gender but this is not the same as identifying with another gender. Why is that so hard to understand? I’d have thought it was pretty fucking obvious. I have been forced into a gender I don’t identify with. So have most women who get dismissed as cis. It doesn’t mean we’re not women. If you’re fine with the cis definition – if you identify with the construct of inferiority bestowed on you at birth – then guess what? You’re really privileged, despite what you might feel about how you look. So as a privileged

In a post from April 2014, Glosswitch says most women hate their bodies. I think that’s probably putting it too strongly…but Glosswitch likes the hyperbolic vein, and I do too, so I read her point as being that this self-hatred gets underestimated. (On the other hand, where would marketing be without it?)

When women like me shrink away, no one finds it strange. When we have our thighs sucked off, our breasts inflated, our cunts trimmed, we might find it an oddity – just about – but it will be positioned as personal choice. We don’t think of it as oppression. It is privilege and narcissism that makes us do it, a silly desire to be just like the

Originally a comment by iknlast on Without having to go back.

It’s more than the media. It’s more than the messages you hear. The messages we get are all around us, often unnoticed in any real way, subtle.

My father refusing to teach me how to start the lawnmower. His paying for my brother’s college on terms that were much more generous than mine.

Being kept in the dining room on Christmas with the women while the men went into the living room and talked about interesting things. Being the last one served. Being asked to make the coffee at the meeting.

Many of the messages aren’t “girls wear nail polish” “girls wear high heels”. They are subtle; the … Read the rest