The idea that testosterone dominates men is an outdated science.

Cordelia Fine (1975) is a British-born British psychologist and professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Melbourne (Australia). In addition, it is a fierce revelator that fights with its books some popular myths still rooted in sexual differences existing in the brains of men and women.

In 2010, Fine is made known with his book Delusions of the genre, where he coined the term "neurosexism", with which he refers to these "neuroscientific statements that reinforce gender stereotypes without scientific justification". Later, in 2014, he warned in the magazine Science the way sexism biases the way researchers view the brain.

In 2017, he published Testosterone rex, in which he argued that past and present sex roles are only conventions: evolution has made us much more alike than we think. The famous hormone that gives the title to the book is one of its targets, but not the only one. We discussed with her, taking advantage of the recent publication in Spanish of her book (Paidós, 2018).

What is that is Testosterone rex?

This is the term I invented to bring together all of these well-known beliefs about biological sex and human nature, according to which evolution has favored the fact that men are more competitive and riskier because they have improved success. of our ancestors in reproduction. As a result, according to these ideas, men's brains are driven by testosterone.

The belief that men are that kind of Testosterone rex it is based on older scientific models, which do not fit the way gender is understood in evolutionary biology, anthropology and psychology. I chose the name "rex", which means king in Latin, because men still have more power in the world than women.

In his book, he assures us that denying this old male model does not deny science. Nevertheless, we still tend to think that the differences we observe between men and women in society are natural and have an evolutionary origin. Why this reluctance to abandon the myth of Testosterone rex ?

[Ríe mucho]. I think it's a question for others, more than for me. Do you mean people or researchers?

Scientists call me more attention.

Researchers study their discipline and do not necessarily know how others have changed. The field of psychology that studies gender has ceased to conceive of the sexes as two extremes, to understand that it is impossible to classify people in a two-dimensional domain, since an individual may have both feminine and feminine characteristics. masculine.

At the same time, some people are working from a biological perspective and are still trying to connect a hormone, testosterone, to all male psychology. This only makes sense in an older model of masculinity that consists of a closed set, but that does not work when one considers all the components that one can observe in one and the same person.

You analyzed in Delusions of the genre the work of researcher Simon Baron-Cohen, who classifies brains into two types: an empathic, typical of women, and another systematic, more typical of men. In his last study make sure to confirm this theory. They did not miss any criticism. Do you think that there are two types of brains?

He is one of the leading lawyers who "thinks" and that women "feel". One of the problems that I have reported in the book and that I see in the new study is that it measures empathy and systematization of behavior with the help of ###. ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # 39 self-questionnaires with questions such as "Do I know what others feel? A good handful of studies show that in fact we judge very badly our own abilities [risas]. It is easier to do a questionnaire than to measure a behavior, but it is an incorrect method.

When they measure the systematizing nature, they do not measure the ability to understand the functioning of a system, but the interest of each participant for activities traditionally associated with men. The title of the study rarely refers to brain types when they have not been studied, but short questionnaires have been distributed. This is not to observe the brain, but to measure self-perception through stereotypes.

Even though they are questionnaires, do not the differences show that men and women think differently?

It's just that these differences were very modest. A high score in one of two brain types, empathetic or systematizing, does not mean that you are going to get a weak score in another, nor that the brain is specializing in one type or another. In fact, a person of the empathic type can defeat another person from systematization. It's complex. It reminds me of a colleague who did the test to see if he had a male or female brain. He told me that he had a very low score in both cases, so he should not have a brain [ríe].

We humans classify differences in people's behavior by sex and gender, which are dominant social categories, and are the first thing we see in a person. However, you are not tied to an average population, but to an individual: in fact, knowing a person's gender does not allow you to predict what he or she looks like.

The questionnaires are imperfect, but is it really better to look at the brain directly? I am thinking of the "fever" of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies until the data have been poorly analyzed and a dead salmon has shown different emotions depending on the picture presented.

When you study a brain, you look at an organ that has had a life. It is not programmed nor maintained unchanged, but is the product of the interaction between biology and the experiences experienced by its owner. It is clear that there are differences between brains based on their biological sex, but these differences do not accumulate to create two categories, a male brain and a female brain; not even to create a continuous spectrum of masculinity to femininity.

But, if there are differences in the brains of men and women, should they not be reflected in our behavior?

In a sense, yes, but the neural basis of behavior is so complex that even for a neuroscientist working with highly controlled animal experiments, it is difficult to establish this relationship between sexual differences in the brain and behavior.

Regardless of whether there are gender differences in the brain or how they affect behavior, one must be very careful in suggesting what they mean. It is very tempting to draw on gender stereotypes to fill this gap in our scientific knowledge.

In this sense, faced with the idea that inequalities between men and women can be explained by these differences, Testosterone rex He argues that, from the differences, men and women have evolved towards equality. Or, as he summarizes in his book, that 3 + 1 = 2 + 2.

When we see a sexual difference in biology, we tend to think that it is these things that differentiate men and women. It is more interesting to see how, in many cases, both sexes behave the same way, despite different brain sizes, chemical concentrations and hormones.

Another reason why it is difficult to connect brain and behavior is that sometimes the differences do not add up, but cancel each other out. In some bird species, the singing area of ​​males is identical to that of females, but both sing in the same way as their activity is more active. This is an example of how compensation creates similarities in behaviors.

In his book, he dismantles the "imaginary narratives" of this alpha male capable of generating hundreds of children throughout his life, which would have shaped male behavior against females, who could only have a few descendants . To what extent is he responsible for the perpetuation of these myths in such a controversial area as the psychology of evolution?

Evolutionary psychology, easy to disseminate and capture attention, allows many people to access ideas about evolution. The science that studies behavior from the point of view of evolution has many branches and what I am going to say does not apply to everyone, but the psychology of evolution is outdated. This is not up to date with current knowledge of the biology of evolution.

Its general principle is to try to understand the personal and ultimate factors that determine people's behavior. This is a very valuable scientific goal, but there are more or less rigorous ways of doing it. I leave it there [ríe].

Repeat in your book that Testosterone rex He is dying. Do not you think that the use of biology and evolution to explain the differences between the sexes is healthy?

Psychological studies show that this type of deep-rooted beliefs about gender differences is used strategically at times when status quo This is threatened. They serve the system to justify inequalities.

At the same time, I perceive a disturbing rhetoric that any criticism of investigations such as that of Baron-Cohen must be motivated by political considerations. If your opponent presumes that, then he will not bother to look at the facts and take them seriously. In fact, the critics do not focus on the fact that this type of research is done, but on the interpretations or the problems of its methodology.

In explaining the inequalities, have we gone from "the woman can not" to "the woman does not want"?

It is true that explanations of the situation have evolved. status quo. First, they said women were intellectually inferior to explain inequalities. Then it was attributed to a lack of interest. We assume that the most common traits in men are those that are needed to be good in a career, although the average differences between the sexes are actually minimal. It's forgetting that anti-discrimination laws are less than half a century old and that there is a profound cultural heritage that still influences us.

How to find a balance between the extrapolation of a salmon's brain to human behavior and the denial of our animal nature?

This is the question: where are human beings going? We have obviously evolved. Testosterone is present in many species, but hormones are more than what forces animals to behave deterministically. In reality, these substances react to the environment and adapt to it. It would be strange to observe what happens in other animals and then think that our behavior follows a fixed pattern.

In addition to having a lot of non-reproductive sex, the diversity of social, economic and social environments in which we live makes the specificity of man. We have evolved to be adaptable and flexible. We have a powerful inheritance mechanism that is culture: it's part of our evolutionary history and we need to take it seriously.