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Book Club: Inferior · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Andie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff
0:07
Speaker 1: I've never told your production of I Heart Radio. And
0:19
Speaker 1: today we are taking out a listener suggestion for our
0:22
Speaker 1: book club picks. So thanks, as always listeners for sending
0:26
Speaker 1: in your suggestions. We like it. Yes, it's the best.
0:29
Speaker 1: We were talking about Angela Sandy's book Inferior, How Science
0:33
Speaker 1: Got Women Wrong, and the new research that's rewriting the story.
0:37
Speaker 1: So already it's got me hooked. The book is laid
0:43
Speaker 1: out in chapters like a life cycle, um, conception, pregnancy, menopause,
0:47
Speaker 1: things like that. Sandy sets out to tackle all the
0:50
Speaker 1: ways that science has been used to oppress women, how
0:53
Speaker 1: these ideas have infiltrated into our society and our own
0:56
Speaker 1: brains as way to hold women back. It assesses all
1:00
Speaker 1: kinds of studies that have been used over the years
1:03
Speaker 1: to make the case that women are inferior, that have
1:06
Speaker 1: been weaponized against them, and disproves them or points out
1:12
Speaker 1: the flaw. So so Sandy comes in and takes these
1:15
Speaker 1: these studies that we've kind of all accepted and probably
1:18
Speaker 1: a lot of us have heard and internalized, and then
1:21
Speaker 1: looks at them with a scientific guy, and yes, either
1:24
Speaker 1: says no, no way, or points out why at the
1:26
Speaker 1: very least it is flawed. And this is something I'm
1:30
Speaker 1: always really hyper aware of. When we cite studies our
1:33
Speaker 1: research on this show, it gives me anxiety because I
1:35
Speaker 1: know that, under the guise of science for much of history,
1:38
Speaker 1: a lot of these studies have been weaponized against women
1:41
Speaker 1: and minorities and or dismissed or willfully misinterpreted. Santy writes
1:49
Speaker 1: that hushed uncertainty is what lies at the heart of
1:51
Speaker 1: this book is the question mark hanging over us, raising
1:54
Speaker 1: the possibility that women are destined never to achieve parity
1:57
Speaker 1: with men because their bodies and minds imply aren't capable
2:01
Speaker 1: of it. And I know this is something I've experienced,
2:05
Speaker 1: and I've talked about a lot of me kind of
2:07
Speaker 1: internalizing this idea that women aren't good at math, even
2:10
Speaker 1: though I was quite good at it. And I remember
2:14
Speaker 1: when I was in college, I heard a male student
2:18
Speaker 1: make this argument in front of a class of probably
2:22
Speaker 1: fifty people, with such confidence that biologically there was just
2:27
Speaker 1: a reason that men had more power and were better
2:32
Speaker 1: than women. And I remember like, looking around, am I
2:36
Speaker 1: am I hearing? Like this a joke? Well, I can't imagine.
2:44
Speaker 1: And he kind of said it unprompted too. I like,
2:46
Speaker 1: I don't know. We were talking about it was macro
2:49
Speaker 1: and economics class and we were talking about money, and
2:52
Speaker 1: he just felt the need to share this viewpoint. Interesting. Yes, interesting.
3:00
Speaker 1: I like guys who just and promptly says something ridiculously
3:03
Speaker 1: sexist and just move on with their life, like they
3:05
Speaker 1: just gave you a magical potion about something or magical
3:09
Speaker 1: something like a magical key to life. Yeah, like you
3:14
Speaker 1: you're too foolish or you don't have the skills or
3:18
Speaker 1: capabilities to understand how much worse you are right on
3:26
Speaker 1: the head. Don't you worry? Sit down? Well, first of all,
3:30
Speaker 1: I want to go ahead and give a shout out
3:31
Speaker 1: to the University of Georgia and the fact that there
3:33
Speaker 1: were so many studies coming from the University of Georgia
3:37
Speaker 1: that was very proud. I was like, hey, that's my school.
3:41
Speaker 1: And I also love the argue as they're making They're like,
3:44
Speaker 1: this is a ridiculous but we'll get into that more later,
3:46
Speaker 1: because I was like, yes, very proud of the studies
3:48
Speaker 1: that was coming out here. But yeah, she also writes,
3:52
Speaker 1: but women are so grossly underrepresented in modern science because
3:56
Speaker 1: for most of history they were treated as intellectual inferiors
3:59
Speaker 1: and deliberately excluded from it. It should come as no
4:03
Speaker 1: surprise then that this time scientific establishments has also painted
4:07
Speaker 1: a distorted picture of the female sex. This in turn,
4:10
Speaker 1: again has skewed how science looks and what it says
4:13
Speaker 1: even now. And by the way, disclaimer, yes, much of
4:17
Speaker 1: these studies, as cited in this book are very sis, heteronormative,
4:22
Speaker 1: and binary. Yeah, which is something we've talked about also
4:25
Speaker 1: on the show. Is a problem we run into all
4:28
Speaker 1: of the time, right, And it's kind of that same
4:30
Speaker 1: because at the very beginning of book, as we're going
4:31
Speaker 1: to talk about, they are very dismissive. I don't even
4:34
Speaker 1: study women half the time, same way with any of
4:37
Speaker 1: the marginalized communities in any way, so they are completely
4:39
Speaker 1: dismissed altogether. So unfortunately, but let's get into the what
4:46
Speaker 1: of this book, and the opening of the book, Sandy
4:48
Speaker 1: lays out where we are in terms of women in science.
4:51
Speaker 1: Units goo the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization,
4:55
Speaker 1: which keeps global figures on women in science, estimates that
4:58
Speaker 1: in just a little more than a quarter of all
5:02
Speaker 1: researchers in the world where women. Yeah, so that's a
5:05
Speaker 1: quote she starts out with. Sandy speculates on the reasons
5:08
Speaker 1: why the numbers fall out that way. Generally, men are
5:11
Speaker 1: able to put in more time into their career after
5:14
Speaker 1: child care. Um, women take more time off for child
5:17
Speaker 1: care and for taking care of the house. Sexual harassment
5:20
Speaker 1: and gender biases, a history of being left out, preferring
5:23
Speaker 1: sons to daughters, all kinds of factors that systemically work
5:26
Speaker 1: against women in the world of science, and many of
5:28
Speaker 1: them that we have discussed before on this very show,
5:31
Speaker 1: right and yeah, again a reminder, these are not always choices.
5:35
Speaker 1: These are just what you have to do. For many
5:38
Speaker 1: of the women would say they have to do this,
5:40
Speaker 1: They would much some of them would much rather work,
5:42
Speaker 1: but they came well. And we saw that with the
5:45
Speaker 1: pandemic of women who were able to submit academic papers
5:50
Speaker 1: at the rate that men were because they were working
5:52
Speaker 1: at two am a lab, because they had to take
5:54
Speaker 1: care of children. So, yeah, not always a choice, just
5:58
Speaker 1: something that has to be done, Right, you're the one
6:01
Speaker 1: that's going to do it. Yeah, No one's going to
6:03
Speaker 1: do it, So she has to do it. Um, And
6:05
Speaker 1: there are plenty of historical examples of rules and constraints
6:08
Speaker 1: keeping women out of science. There's a lot. They all
6:11
Speaker 1: make me angry. For example, until the nineteenth century, men
6:15
Speaker 1: at Oxford and Cambridge universities were expected to be celibate
6:18
Speaker 1: and women were thought to be an unnecessary temptation. Women
6:22
Speaker 1: were denied entry to institutions and organizations for centuries. In
6:25
Speaker 1: cases where they weren't, their contributions were often overlooked or ignored. Yeah,
6:31
Speaker 1: that's I mean, that's not surprising, but it's wild to
6:33
Speaker 1: me that the excuse to keep women out of the
6:37
Speaker 1: university would be you might tempt these men. So I mean,
6:41
Speaker 1: he still happens with dress code. It's true, absolutely true.
6:45
Speaker 1: Not only that, there are scientific theories that men are
6:50
Speaker 1: responsible for evolving as into higher species, which sounds like
6:54
Speaker 1: the most like big headed, where was possible for evolving
7:01
Speaker 1: the species? And to what it is? Okay, well, I
7:03
Speaker 1: do like eventually talk about trying to be more handsome
7:06
Speaker 1: because that's not how they had to evolve, And I
7:08
Speaker 1: wanted to roll my eyes so hard. Yeah, these are
7:12
Speaker 1: filth things. If we've heard him, and yes, one of
7:15
Speaker 1: the reasons behind some of these theories is that men
7:19
Speaker 1: are males of species had to evolve because they had
7:23
Speaker 1: to impress and care for mates, and that women get
7:27
Speaker 1: menopause because men no longer find them attractive. That's a
7:31
Speaker 1: separate theory, but also a theory using science in these
7:35
Speaker 1: ways to maintain the patriarchy to justify sexism and racism. Yeah,
7:41
Speaker 1: I've never heard of that menopause one, but I wouldn't
7:44
Speaker 1: saying you say, like it puts the men and benopause
7:46
Speaker 1: like it makes them all about, it makes it a
7:48
Speaker 1: possible about man. I love that. It's so fault. I
7:52
Speaker 1: should have had menopause long time ago. Um. One example
7:57
Speaker 1: saying he gives involves Charles Darwin who wrote in a
8:01
Speaker 1: letter to a woman, I certainly think that women, though
8:04
Speaker 1: generally superior to men and moral qualities, are inferior intellectually.
8:10
Speaker 1: Charles Darwin h this was a letter that he wrote
8:14
Speaker 1: which was to a woman who was looking to improve
8:17
Speaker 1: the standing of women. So she was reaching out him
8:19
Speaker 1: like look I got these dudes or holding his back
8:21
Speaker 1: here they're saying women are inferior. Thinking that Charles Darwin
8:25
Speaker 1: would be like an ally and he's like, well, actually,
8:28
Speaker 1: he goes on to say women shouldn't try to leave
8:31
Speaker 1: the homes, or else they might hurt themselves and any
8:34
Speaker 1: potential children. That they are essentially less involved than men inferior,
8:40
Speaker 1: he wrote in the Descent of Men, the chief distinction
8:43
Speaker 1: and the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown
8:46
Speaker 1: by men attaining to a higher imminence in whatever he
8:50
Speaker 1: takes up than women can attain, whether requiring deep thought,
8:54
Speaker 1: reason or imagination, are merely the use of the senses
8:56
Speaker 1: and hands. Man has ultimately become superior to woman. That
9:01
Speaker 1: makes me want to throw things. The woman sent him
9:04
Speaker 1: a fiery response to his letter, quote, let the environment
9:08
Speaker 1: of women be similar to that of men, and with
9:10
Speaker 1: his opportunities before he be fairly judged intellectually his inferior Please,
9:17
Speaker 1: I love that so much, angry Charles Darwood like a
9:22
Speaker 1: give us the same opportunities and we'll see. And that's
9:25
Speaker 1: exactly the whole point of anyone who was held back.
9:28
Speaker 1: Give everyone that equity and same opportunity, and let's see
9:31
Speaker 1: what happens, right exactly. Others have pointed out that the
9:35
Speaker 1: theory of evolution and dismissing the innate inferiority of women
9:39
Speaker 1: due to eve the biblical Christian Eve, both in terms
9:42
Speaker 1: of sin and the fact that she was created from
9:44
Speaker 1: Adam's rib actually was huge in terms of shifting people's
9:47
Speaker 1: beliefs around women, and people really really questioned a lot
9:53
Speaker 1: of these beliefs, and specifically women, perhaps obviously, in after
9:58
Speaker 1: a year of researching, Aliza Burt Gamble published The Evolution
10:01
Speaker 1: of Woman and Inquiry into the Dogma of her Inferiority
10:05
Speaker 1: to Man. Gamble recognized the damage of using science to
10:08
Speaker 1: prove women were inferior and was determined to prove otherwise.
10:12
Speaker 1: She criticized many of Darwin's assertions directly, pointing out the
10:16
Speaker 1: inconsistencies and hypocrisies, and argued that the very qualities he
10:19
Speaker 1: attributed to women that he called lesser like cooperation and altruism,
10:24
Speaker 1: must have contributed to humanity survival as a whole. She
10:28
Speaker 1: argued that women had been systemically suppressed by men, which
10:32
Speaker 1: made them appear inferior. She pointed out examples of powerful
10:36
Speaker 1: women in other cultures that Darwin gave no attention to,
10:40
Speaker 1: and while her work left an impact in political and
10:42
Speaker 1: activist spaces, scientists were for the most part unimpressed, didn't
10:47
Speaker 1: didn't want to hear it, didn't want to hear it.
10:49
Speaker 1: I love the story so much because she like took
10:51
Speaker 1: a whole year of her life and dedicated it just
10:54
Speaker 1: to this. She was ready already. Um, and we do
11:01
Speaker 1: have a lot more to get into, but first we're
11:03
Speaker 1: gonna get into a quick break for word from our sponsor,
11:19
Speaker 1: and we're back. Thank you sponsored. Something else Sany digs
11:22
Speaker 1: into in this book is women's historical role of being
11:25
Speaker 1: submissive to men, relegated to the private sphere, not in
11:28
Speaker 1: public sphere where science takes place or we're even they
11:31
Speaker 1: can be seen like their contributions could be seen, right,
11:35
Speaker 1: and so just because we love it. Here's another infuriating
11:39
Speaker 1: quote from the evolutionary biologist George John Romains in seven.
11:44
Speaker 1: Quote from her abiding sense of weakness and consequent dependence,
11:49
Speaker 1: there also arises in woman that deeply rooted desire to
11:52
Speaker 1: please the opposite sex, which, beginning in the terror of
11:55
Speaker 1: a slave, has ended in a devotion of a wife.
12:03
Speaker 1: It is infuriated. Oh. Several theories around this time sought
12:08
Speaker 1: to specifically scientifically proved men were better than women. One
12:14
Speaker 1: involved a scientist repeatedly injecting himself with blood. Salman and
12:18
Speaker 1: juices obtained from crushed dog and guinea pig testicles. He
12:22
Speaker 1: claimed it helped him with mental clarity, strengthened stamina. Wow,
12:29
Speaker 1: definitely proving better than women. Okay. A later similar experiment
12:34
Speaker 1: was done with female juices. What the scientists had uncovered
12:38
Speaker 1: were sex hormones, and this was very exciting news for
12:41
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical companies in the nineteen twenties, who now could capitalize
12:45
Speaker 1: on masculinity and femininity using science. The study of hormones
12:51
Speaker 1: made people a lot of money and generated a lot
12:53
Speaker 1: of myths. For instance, it has never been definitively proven
12:57
Speaker 1: that higher levels of testasterone made people more us of
13:00
Speaker 1: and yet I bet almost all of us believe that.
13:03
Speaker 1: At one time I thought that was the case. The
13:05
Speaker 1: Olympic officials should do Yeah, yep, yeah that's true. I
13:10
Speaker 1: mean we're still talking about this stuff to this day,
13:13
Speaker 1: and yeah, we do, we do know that this is
13:15
Speaker 1: still a thing. Here's another quote. A study published in
13:18
Speaker 1: twelve psychologists Karan Moss Rescuing and a team of researchers
13:22
Speaker 1: at Yale University export the possibility of gender bias in
13:25
Speaker 1: recruitment by sending out fake job applications for a vacancy
13:28
Speaker 1: of laboratory manager. Every application was identical, except that half
13:32
Speaker 1: her given a female name and half a male name.
13:34
Speaker 1: When they were asked to comment on these potential employees,
13:36
Speaker 1: scientists rated women significantly lower incompetence and higher ability. They
13:41
Speaker 1: were also less willing to mentor them and offered far
13:44
Speaker 1: lower starting salaries. The only difference, of course, was that
13:47
Speaker 1: these applicants appeared to be female. And we talked about
13:51
Speaker 1: this where science has sort of undergone this me too moment,
13:56
Speaker 1: just like a lot of industries and um fields are,
14:00
Speaker 1: and just hearing all of the different ways that women
14:03
Speaker 1: have felt discriminated against in that world. A lot that
14:07
Speaker 1: this happened with the science filled for labs, as it
14:10
Speaker 1: did the same thing with tech. Not for a few years, la,
14:13
Speaker 1: I feel like every time something new happens, the same
14:15
Speaker 1: bs happens, and this is that, and they have to
14:18
Speaker 1: do the same damn uh tests to see if they're
14:22
Speaker 1: still happening, and you know it's still happening. Mind blowing.
14:26
Speaker 1: So the book delves into how many cultures of prize
14:29
Speaker 1: sons of her daughters too. Despite the fact that everything
14:32
Speaker 1: is equal, girls are more statistically likely to survive. Therefore,
14:37
Speaker 1: in societies where the infant mortality race don't match that,
14:41
Speaker 1: it suggests that girls are at more social risk, not
14:44
Speaker 1: given the same amount of care or resources as boys.
14:47
Speaker 1: Across almost all major causes of death, women are statistically
14:51
Speaker 1: more likely to survive. That doesn't mean women don't get sick.
14:55
Speaker 1: They do, and in fact, the numbers show more women
14:58
Speaker 1: do get sick and some you start just theorize, experience
15:01
Speaker 1: a lot more pain. However, this could also be because
15:04
Speaker 1: women do survive more and therefore suffering more. My theory
15:08
Speaker 1: on that was they also are more likely to go
15:10
Speaker 1: get help, and that's why it's reported that there are
15:13
Speaker 1: sick of more right. And I mean, as we've talked
15:16
Speaker 1: about a lot, a lot of times how women present
15:20
Speaker 1: an illness isn't studied or is dismissed. So I think
15:23
Speaker 1: that the fact that this is showing out even given
15:26
Speaker 1: those those things, that says a lot. That says a lot. Yeah,
15:35
Speaker 1: and this dismissal of women's pain in the medical world
15:39
Speaker 1: is starting to change, but frustratingly slowly, and recently in
15:44
Speaker 1: a doctor of reproductive health in the UK, John Gillibad
15:48
Speaker 1: told a reporter that period pain mistrel pain can be
15:51
Speaker 1: as painful as a heart attack, and that it hasn't
15:53
Speaker 1: been studied because it's not something men have to deal with,
15:56
Speaker 1: something he said. And I mean, I know a lot
15:59
Speaker 1: of us have been there or where you trying to
16:00
Speaker 1: explain it to people who haven't had the cramps are
16:03
Speaker 1: like severe cramps in here. It's like it's very big, right,
16:08
Speaker 1: I mean, And we've talked about it many times, the
16:11
Speaker 1: fact that every woman has different levels of pain, and
16:14
Speaker 1: there's this whole other concept of what can who can handle?
16:18
Speaker 1: What is kind of that irony of like, you don't
16:21
Speaker 1: know what we go through. Some women don't know what
16:23
Speaker 1: we go through either, so they're dismissive of that as well,
16:25
Speaker 1: and I want to punch them in the face. But
16:28
Speaker 1: there that bad. It's not that bad. I'm like, I
16:32
Speaker 1: will push you somewhere. I don't know where, but I
16:34
Speaker 1: will push you. But I found that quote interesting because
16:38
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, someone's acknowledge that it can be severe
16:43
Speaker 1: as severe all thank you. I U D. So women
16:47
Speaker 1: have also been left out entirely of new studies because
16:50
Speaker 1: of an opposite problem, the belief that their bodies are
16:54
Speaker 1: the same as men's and I did find that interesting
16:57
Speaker 1: the back and forth of this In scientists analyzed over
17:01
Speaker 1: three hundred papers about the evolution of the general talia
17:04
Speaker 1: published between nineteen nine, and about half looked at only males,
17:09
Speaker 1: while only eight percent looked at only females. One reporter
17:13
Speaker 1: dubbed this finding quote the case of the missing vaginas.
17:16
Speaker 1: I did like that it's cheaper to study men, and
17:19
Speaker 1: the long held belief has been that women's hormones fluctuate
17:22
Speaker 1: more and that there is a risk of pregnancy, which
17:25
Speaker 1: seems to be an excuse just straight across the board.
17:28
Speaker 1: This means that in some areas we are woefully ill
17:31
Speaker 1: informed about how drugs interact with women, and in some
17:34
Speaker 1: cases this has had disastrous consequences. And yeah, I didn't
17:38
Speaker 1: really like the fame that they talked about hard conditions
17:40
Speaker 1: because that's some of the things I didn't know until
17:43
Speaker 1: my mother ended up going to the hospital and we
17:45
Speaker 1: found out she had like a ninety percent clogged artery
17:49
Speaker 1: that was her main artery, like they called it the
17:51
Speaker 1: widow maker, And it took her going to three doctors
17:55
Speaker 1: before they figured it out. And all she had was
17:58
Speaker 1: the jaw pain and dizziness and tiredness, which is completely
18:03
Speaker 1: opposite of what I knew as a heart condition, which
18:06
Speaker 1: she talks about in this book as well. We've talked
18:08
Speaker 1: to about how girls and women may present things like
18:11
Speaker 1: autism differently or a d h D differently, which may
18:14
Speaker 1: be societal, cultural, biological, or combination of all of the above,
18:19
Speaker 1: saying that the author concludes that male and female bodies
18:22
Speaker 1: can be both similar in a lot of ways and
18:24
Speaker 1: different in others. Yeah, and I think that was a
18:27
Speaker 1: real tricky and is a real tricky saying to keep
18:32
Speaker 1: in mind, because in a lot of ways our bodies
18:36
Speaker 1: are the same, but there are differences. So it's like
18:40
Speaker 1: it's been used. It's been used both ways negatively, right,
18:45
Speaker 1: And I did love her conversation and the back and
18:47
Speaker 1: forth study about gendered uh norms versus biology, and then
18:52
Speaker 1: did go back and forth and talking about the studies
18:54
Speaker 1: that happened for young babies. Also, she talks a little
18:57
Speaker 1: bit about attachment as well. She goes into a lot
19:00
Speaker 1: and how that presents biologically and or societally. Yes, Yes,
19:05
Speaker 1: another myth that has persisted. The female brain weighs less,
19:09
Speaker 1: so therefore they're less intelligent. Sandy de tells the story
19:14
Speaker 1: of Alice Cheneworth's day. More commonly known as Helen Hamilton's Gardener,
19:19
Speaker 1: she was vocal about women's rights issues and penned works
19:22
Speaker 1: like Facts and Fictions of Life, where she passionately argued
19:25
Speaker 1: that institutions like marriage and unequal education access held women back.
19:30
Speaker 1: She also argued that when scientists say things like a
19:32
Speaker 1: woman's brain weighs less he and yes usually at this
19:36
Speaker 1: time in the late eighteen hundreds, that he she, as
19:39
Speaker 1: a woman, had no way to verify or disprove his findings.
19:44
Speaker 1: She gave a talk called sex in Brain at a
19:47
Speaker 1: woman's conference in Washington, d C. In eighty eight. She said,
19:51
Speaker 1: I finally was fear and trembling made up my mind
19:54
Speaker 1: to learn what he knew on this subject or perish
19:56
Speaker 1: in the attempt. He being a male scientist who claimed
20:00
Speaker 1: women's brains were smaller and therefore they were less intelligent.
20:03
Speaker 1: She worked with a scientist over fourteen months and talked
20:06
Speaker 1: to over twenty anatomists. Her results, published in Popular Science monthly,
20:11
Speaker 1: revealed the experts couldn't tell the difference between a male
20:13
Speaker 1: and female brain just by like looking at it, or
20:15
Speaker 1: holding it, or weighing it. And also that brain weight
20:20
Speaker 1: doesn't equal intelligence. She wrote, if this were true, and
20:24
Speaker 1: co elephant might outthink as all. Despite compelling results in
20:30
Speaker 1: a well written paper, she was mocked by the scientist
20:32
Speaker 1: in question. Gardner, determined and angry left her brain to
20:36
Speaker 1: science to be studied to science. After she died. The
20:39
Speaker 1: scientist that came into possession of her brain validated her,
20:43
Speaker 1: but the myth persisted. I love that the comparison was
20:47
Speaker 1: that her brain weighed more than the who was like no,
20:50
Speaker 1: this she was like after death she still had the
20:54
Speaker 1: like a brand. Yes, I hope somewhere she got to
20:59
Speaker 1: have the last lap. So there's a bunch of bunch
21:02
Speaker 1: of bunch of ground that's covered in these books, and
21:04
Speaker 1: we did want to run through some other things, but
21:07
Speaker 1: first we're gonna pause for one more quick or word
21:09
Speaker 1: from responsor and we're back. Thank you sponsored. So, yeah,
21:25
Speaker 1: this book wasn't a difficult read at all, but it
21:28
Speaker 1: is dense like it covers a lot, so we wanted
21:31
Speaker 1: to run through some terms our ideas that resonated with us,
21:34
Speaker 1: but definitely recommend it. It was it was really fascinating.
21:38
Speaker 1: It was a really fascinating read. I think that's one
21:40
Speaker 1: of those that you might need a workbook, yes, or
21:43
Speaker 1: like you have to pause and then go back and
21:45
Speaker 1: reread for a second, like let it sink in. One
21:49
Speaker 1: of the things in there that I thought was really
21:50
Speaker 1: interesting because we've all heard this hunter gatherers story, that
21:53
Speaker 1: hunter gathering idea of men want to go out and
21:56
Speaker 1: hunt and the women would stay and take care of
21:58
Speaker 1: children and they can unity and usually work in agriculture.
22:03
Speaker 1: And I really love saying the whole take on this
22:05
Speaker 1: of like, why are we, even if we were going
22:08
Speaker 1: to accept this is true, why are we dismissing the
22:11
Speaker 1: importance of the gatherer as if it's a lesser, especially
22:14
Speaker 1: because at the time, like, you're the gatherers, what's kind
22:18
Speaker 1: of sustaining you in the community. The hunting might get
22:21
Speaker 1: you some meat every now and then, right, but otherwise, Yeah,
22:26
Speaker 1: I did love Also they did talk about the fact
22:28
Speaker 1: that women did hunt, but they also came back and
22:30
Speaker 1: understanding that their role in the village was more important
22:34
Speaker 1: than men essentially, and so it couldn't be far from
22:37
Speaker 1: it overall. Of course, there was some conversation about pregnancy
22:42
Speaker 1: and motherhood and all of that in that conversation, but
22:45
Speaker 1: it was interesting that they're like that it wasn't because
22:47
Speaker 1: they couldn't. It's because they rather do this or had
22:50
Speaker 1: the again had the obligation of doing something else outside
22:55
Speaker 1: of that. But they also did it for sport. But yeah,
22:57
Speaker 1: part of the hunter gatherer part was that men could
22:59
Speaker 1: show off right once again, Yeah, get that made. But
23:06
Speaker 1: also there's discussion of the importance of like the grandmother
23:09
Speaker 1: and how they would be out hunting and they be
23:11
Speaker 1: caring children maybe while they were doing it. And I
23:14
Speaker 1: do think like, as we're talking about all of this,
23:17
Speaker 1: you can kind of hear it. You can kind of
23:19
Speaker 1: hear the problem that saying is at the heart of
23:21
Speaker 1: Sandy's book is that a lot of it is how
23:24
Speaker 1: we've interpreted these sciences are the history in that the
23:30
Speaker 1: way we frame it and the way we see it
23:32
Speaker 1: is the hunter slash the man is the superior role
23:37
Speaker 1: is of more value, And it's just like how we've
23:42
Speaker 1: interpreted it and taking it in. I did also like
23:46
Speaker 1: that she found the many studies or had talked about
23:48
Speaker 1: the studies where it talks about the fact that in
23:51
Speaker 1: these types of villages, in these types of communities, it's
23:54
Speaker 1: not so much that there is this level of men
23:56
Speaker 1: being superior as in fact, it is noted that typically
24:00
Speaker 1: in these communities which had not been painted by religious
24:05
Speaker 1: ideology as well as scientific ideology, which we're leaning very
24:11
Speaker 1: sexist obviously, that women were seen as more valuable within
24:16
Speaker 1: that community or within that village abound that interesting too. Yeah, yeah,
24:21
Speaker 1: and it is kind of if it wasn't so sad
24:24
Speaker 1: in the ways we've weaponized it against people. It is
24:26
Speaker 1: kind of funny to me that, like, it's this human
24:28
Speaker 1: nature to be like, oh, this is this gender, this
24:33
Speaker 1: sex disapperior to this one. So the hunting usually the
24:36
Speaker 1: people in power being like, see, this is proof that
24:39
Speaker 1: we should be on top because hunting is better. It's
24:42
Speaker 1: just like, why do we got to be this way? Why?
24:47
Speaker 1: Why do you why? There's also a lot of a
24:51
Speaker 1: lot of discussion around sexual behavior and a lot of
24:53
Speaker 1: things that we've talked about recently on this show, and
24:56
Speaker 1: how science has been used to back up things that
25:02
Speaker 1: mostly benefit men, like studies that I'm sure a lot
25:06
Speaker 1: of us have heard this too, like men are set
25:08
Speaker 1: up to cheat, like just in their genes, they're gonna cheat,
25:12
Speaker 1: and women are chased, and that's also in their genes.
25:16
Speaker 1: But then as Sadie points out, if that's the case,
25:20
Speaker 1: if women are chased, why are males and nature so insecure,
25:23
Speaker 1: they'll be promiscuous, And she gives a lot of examples
25:25
Speaker 1: of like pigeons just really not letting the female pigeons
25:29
Speaker 1: go anyway, just all these instances, and she's like, it
25:32
Speaker 1: don't really make sense, right, They like there was a
25:36
Speaker 1: conversation about the fact that yeah, after watching mating that
25:40
Speaker 1: the male species were so insecure they would wake them up,
25:43
Speaker 1: make them uncomfortable, put them in an uncomfortable position to
25:46
Speaker 1: sleep so he could watch her like essentially and how
25:49
Speaker 1: constant that is. And they're like, why are you so
25:51
Speaker 1: in secure? A b why won't you let me be?
25:57
Speaker 1: But I also thought it was hilarious about the whole
25:59
Speaker 1: like polic of me b as I'm like, oh my god,
26:02
Speaker 1: how long do we have to talk about the fact
26:04
Speaker 1: that they continue to say men are not supposed to
26:06
Speaker 1: be a monogamous men are not supposed to be monogamous,
26:08
Speaker 1: and at the same time being like, but women have
26:10
Speaker 1: to be choosy, like why we have to be what?
26:14
Speaker 1: But apparently been aren't and they just grab anything. So
26:17
Speaker 1: there are so many things of like do you really
26:19
Speaker 1: want to be reflected as someone that has no standards
26:22
Speaker 1: like and whatsoever, Like you just don't care and you're
26:25
Speaker 1: that powerless to your payments. Right. That's something else that
26:33
Speaker 1: comes up, I think in these conversations a lot too,
26:36
Speaker 1: is that nature can be it can make us uncomfortable. Um.
26:42
Speaker 1: And one of the things Sandy talks about in here
26:45
Speaker 1: is in fantaside and maternal instincts or perhaps lack of
26:50
Speaker 1: maternal instinct and of course those are conversations that when
26:54
Speaker 1: you talk about them even in animals, but if even
26:57
Speaker 1: like applied in the humans, it makes us really really
27:00
Speaker 1: really uncomfortable because we we think that we have evolved
27:05
Speaker 1: beyond those things. But also a lot of societal things
27:10
Speaker 1: that we do, we have placed these narratives that make
27:13
Speaker 1: them sound much nicer than they are in nature. So
27:17
Speaker 1: like making love. Perhaps it's a great example. And that's
27:20
Speaker 1: not to say like that's wrong necessarily, but it can
27:23
Speaker 1: become really murky when we're discussing these scientific studies and
27:30
Speaker 1: what they mean and if they apply to us, if
27:32
Speaker 1: they do at all. But yeah, that was that was
27:36
Speaker 1: that something that's in the book as well. And there's
27:39
Speaker 1: a lot of examples from Bonnabos and chips, and one
27:43
Speaker 1: of my very favorite quotes, I believe it was a
27:45
Speaker 1: scientist that Sandy was speaking to. She she called the
27:48
Speaker 1: female bonabo's a gift to the fine feminist movements are bonnabos.
27:54
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever said it all loud anyway,
27:57
Speaker 1: type of monkey. Uh yeah. And then Sandy does talk
28:04
Speaker 1: about yes, things like menopause and and how that has
28:09
Speaker 1: become all about men as well, how patriarchy the rise
28:13
Speaker 1: of it was encoded into some of the very first laws,
28:17
Speaker 1: um stuff that we talked about, like um, female genital mutilation,
28:21
Speaker 1: particularly women's rules in that in this case virginity, the
28:26
Speaker 1: idea of virginity orgasms as we talked about also making
28:30
Speaker 1: that all about men. Right. I think it's interesting that
28:34
Speaker 1: they again it just comes back to when did this happen?
28:37
Speaker 1: And this is not necessarily that old in concept because
28:40
Speaker 1: it was introduced with all these religious ideologies and insertions
28:45
Speaker 1: to society. And again we talked about if we go
28:49
Speaker 1: back further and who is valued and what is seen
28:51
Speaker 1: as value, it's not so much about gender, it's not
28:54
Speaker 1: so much at about that, and even talking about you know,
28:56
Speaker 1: when you were talking about the chimps in infanticide, there
28:59
Speaker 1: was a lot of eugenics behind this conversation, and we
29:03
Speaker 1: need to talk about that as a bigger point of
29:05
Speaker 1: like what did they see as desirable and an offspring
29:09
Speaker 1: and the fact that the value was placed on men,
29:11
Speaker 1: but as some countries if it realized having all boys
29:14
Speaker 1: is not a great thing, right, right? And I think
29:19
Speaker 1: that's that's the heart of this book, and I think
29:23
Speaker 1: the point was very well made. But we can't get
29:25
Speaker 1: rid of these biases that we have when we do science,
29:29
Speaker 1: when we do science the science. Yeah, And that's something
29:33
Speaker 1: we've talked about with technology too, is those biases get
29:36
Speaker 1: coded into technology, which further perpetuates sexism or racism or whatever.
29:41
Speaker 1: And it can be something that you don't even realize.
29:44
Speaker 1: But that's the problem is you don't realize it, and
29:47
Speaker 1: then it becomes like something that is used to hold
29:52
Speaker 1: up these systems that are sexist and racist. Right. And
29:56
Speaker 1: you would think with things like technology, which is fairly new,
30:00
Speaker 1: they would learn from the past mistakes of oh, not
30:04
Speaker 1: everyone who's using this is going to be a white man,
30:07
Speaker 1: right in the story? Uh talking about like the facial
30:10
Speaker 1: recognition was based on white ben and white people in general,
30:14
Speaker 1: and so therefore it's not taking any person of color
30:16
Speaker 1: into their thought process of like, oh, this is work
30:18
Speaker 1: with them. No, because your technology was not geared towards
30:22
Speaker 1: that and therefore creates an automatic bias against people of color.
30:27
Speaker 1: And that's the whole different conversations like this should be learned.
30:29
Speaker 1: And of course again like this came from a heteronormative
30:33
Speaker 1: CIS perspective, but this is that conversation of why intersectionality
30:37
Speaker 1: is so important and why should be brought into point
30:41
Speaker 1: from jump and what we look at as our past
30:44
Speaker 1: historical mistakes and I say ours because I'm still letting
30:48
Speaker 1: go of my internalized misogyny as well. That it has
30:52
Speaker 1: this whole narrative like this is where it comes from,
30:54
Speaker 1: this is where it went wrong. This is the chance
30:55
Speaker 1: that we have to change this because this can be
30:57
Speaker 1: applied for future things including technology, including any type of
31:02
Speaker 1: apps or any know, all of those things like it
31:05
Speaker 1: should be applied to that point. Yeah, one thing that
31:08
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting as I was reading through this,
31:11
Speaker 1: and it makes sense, but I feel like a lot
31:13
Speaker 1: of these studies she would go talk to men behind them.
31:18
Speaker 1: Sometimes women as well UM, and you know, just ask
31:22
Speaker 1: questions and it sounded like they just wanted to prove
31:24
Speaker 1: something they already believed, like I believe that male species
31:30
Speaker 1: aren't meant to be monogamous and women are, and this
31:33
Speaker 1: is how I went about proving it. And if I
31:36
Speaker 1: think that, you know, even moving away from science, we're
31:40
Speaker 1: all kind of we're all guilty of this, of picking
31:42
Speaker 1: and choosing what supports what we want to believe and
31:48
Speaker 1: ignoring what doesn't support it. And I think that that,
31:52
Speaker 1: especially when you're talking at you know, a top level systemically,
31:56
Speaker 1: UM is really problematic and it has been used to
32:03
Speaker 1: keep these systems in place and hurt and oppressed so
32:05
Speaker 1: many people. But we want to believe that science is neutral,
32:10
Speaker 1: but they have people doing it so it's not. I mean,
32:13
Speaker 1: but we look at people like Darwin, and when we
32:15
Speaker 1: look at Pickopole, like Freud who was a psycho pathologist
32:19
Speaker 1: slash neurologists, which I was like what he was, we
32:21
Speaker 1: look at how often is so incorrect? But we take
32:25
Speaker 1: the minute things that are correct and then one with
32:27
Speaker 1: it and then have the audacity to say everything they
32:30
Speaker 1: must have done it must been good, as we know
32:32
Speaker 1: Darwin destroyed a lot of species to prove himself right,
32:37
Speaker 1: Like he literally decimated species on islands that like we've
32:41
Speaker 1: never seen because of him. He essentially killed off these
32:44
Speaker 1: old turtles, like what but like he did things that
32:48
Speaker 1: seems like an atrocity. And I think a lot of
32:50
Speaker 1: people who are animal lovers like environmentalists now a degree. Now,
32:54
Speaker 1: of course it's a whole different standard and we're learning
32:57
Speaker 1: new things, but the fact of the matter is there's
32:59
Speaker 1: still putting those practices too, as if they're facts, instead
33:03
Speaker 1: of looking like like this may have not been correct,
33:05
Speaker 1: because these are the things that we're going wrong. And
33:08
Speaker 1: as if actually talks about the one paper who everybody
33:11
Speaker 1: every man was banking their papers off of and then
33:15
Speaker 1: turning out they're like no one checked it, No one
33:18
Speaker 1: actually checked it, and there was never able to recreate
33:21
Speaker 1: his experiment to actually give the same results. That's problematic,
33:25
Speaker 1: m And I think that's a great point to like questioning,
33:29
Speaker 1: you know, where did this come from, how old is it,
33:33
Speaker 1: how is the study conducted? But when you base like
33:37
Speaker 1: all these other studies off of this one study and
33:39
Speaker 1: you're just assuming it's right, And I think that's something
33:42
Speaker 1: else that's also touched on in the book is you know,
33:44
Speaker 1: there's the last women, as she makes the case in
33:46
Speaker 1: the beginning, in this world of stem. So there's that problem.
33:51
Speaker 1: But then also people are less likely to believe women
33:54
Speaker 1: or think women are credible in that world. So I
33:57
Speaker 1: think if a man comes out he's like, yeah, here's
33:59
Speaker 1: my study, and no, people are like, yeah, you must
34:01
Speaker 1: have known what he's doing, that's correct. Whereas if a
34:03
Speaker 1: woman is like, here's mine and people like no, probably
34:07
Speaker 1: you need to do all X, Y Z to prove
34:10
Speaker 1: to me that this is accurate, right, and then I'm
34:12
Speaker 1: going to claim it yes, which just compounds the problem.
34:18
Speaker 1: I did like that I've never heard of the terms
34:20
Speaker 1: of neuro sexist and neurofeminist, um, but she talks about
34:24
Speaker 1: those in there, which are kind of what we're talking
34:25
Speaker 1: about in that how you approach these ideas when you're
34:29
Speaker 1: conducting these experiments, are even coming up with like ways
34:32
Speaker 1: to conduct it or what what we should be looking
34:34
Speaker 1: into that you can be you can have this kind
34:36
Speaker 1: of neuro sexist view, or you can be feminist about it,
34:39
Speaker 1: but have a neurofeminist for you. Here's another quote. Study
34:43
Speaker 1: after study has shown almost all behavioral and psychological differences
34:46
Speaker 1: between the sexes to be small or non existent. Cambridge
34:49
Speaker 1: University psychologist Melissa Hines and others have repeatedly demonstrated that
34:53
Speaker 1: boys and girls have little, if any, noticeable gaps between
34:56
Speaker 1: them when it comes to the fine motor skills, spatial visualization,
34:59
Speaker 1: mathematic stability, and verbal fluency. And then goes on to say,
35:04
Speaker 1: our brains are intersex And that was also interesting because,
35:08
Speaker 1: as we said she it can be a very tricky
35:11
Speaker 1: line of when you're doing the studies like this, and
35:15
Speaker 1: a lot of the women she interviewed, I felt not
35:17
Speaker 1: so much with the men, but a lot of the
35:18
Speaker 1: women she interviewed were like, I don't like how my
35:22
Speaker 1: study has been used, or like kind of like cautious,
35:26
Speaker 1: were anxious because we do know that it has been
35:30
Speaker 1: weaponized or misunderstood or willfully misinterpreted. So I just thought
35:34
Speaker 1: that was interesting. But as more and more women enter
35:38
Speaker 1: the scientific field, they are changing the script right. Decades
35:43
Speaker 1: of rigorous testing of girls and boys confirmed that there
35:46
Speaker 1: are a few psychological differences between the sexes, and that
35:50
Speaker 1: the differences seen are heavily shaped by surprise, culture not biology. Yes, yes,
35:58
Speaker 1: um that being said plenty of fairly recent studies are
36:00
Speaker 1: still used to prove that men are superior in language
36:03
Speaker 1: that is often very sexist, often very Western. There have
36:07
Speaker 1: been a handful of studies that quote prove that there
36:10
Speaker 1: are inherent differences and babies of different sexes, that baby
36:13
Speaker 1: girls are more empathetic and baby boys are more systematizers,
36:17
Speaker 1: um more into machines and just systems. In general, ideas
36:21
Speaker 1: like this are seductive, especially for new parents, also make
36:24
Speaker 1: a lot of money, catch a lot of attention. But yeah,
36:27
Speaker 1: it's kind of I don't know. I felt like a
36:29
Speaker 1: lot of these studies I was reading there was an
36:31
Speaker 1: air from the usually male scientists behind it of like, look,
36:34
Speaker 1: I know this is gonna make you mad, ladies, but
36:36
Speaker 1: it's science, right. Just because you don't like it, Just
36:40
Speaker 1: because it sounds sexist doesn't mean it's not true. Right.
36:44
Speaker 1: Just because it sounds sexist doesn't mean it is. Like
36:49
Speaker 1: I feel like that's an attitude we see a lot
36:51
Speaker 1: in um men who are experts in something of almost
36:58
Speaker 1: almost like I'll eat your your tears for breakfast, but
37:02
Speaker 1: I almost like reveling in causing the anger and being
37:06
Speaker 1: kind of the asshole. Yeah, who was that one professor
37:09
Speaker 1: she talked to who was like, I'm about to get
37:11
Speaker 1: fired from Rutgers because we don't agree. His paper was
37:15
Speaker 1: bus essentially. Yeah. I did find that interesting too, that
37:19
Speaker 1: it seemed like a lot of the mineral like I'm
37:21
Speaker 1: sorry you don't like it, but that don't mean it's
37:23
Speaker 1: not science. It's kind of that same attitude of yeah,
37:25
Speaker 1: but you also didn't read it. There's a lot of
37:28
Speaker 1: asterisks behind your research or that research where you're like, oh,
37:33
Speaker 1: and the specific study about the differences between the baby
37:36
Speaker 1: boys and baby girls. One of the conversations was the
37:38
Speaker 1: fact that the testers may have made uh, nonverbal cues
37:42
Speaker 1: without knowing they are making nonverbal cues because of their
37:44
Speaker 1: own prejudice of seeing which one was a baby boy
37:47
Speaker 1: and which one was a baby girl, and so they
37:49
Speaker 1: had an ununknowing bias in thinking this is how they
37:53
Speaker 1: would react. And she did say that there was all
37:55
Speaker 1: these little ASTERIXX to it, like, yes, we did get
37:57
Speaker 1: this results, but it may be the results because us
38:00
Speaker 1: actually did a head nod when I didn't mean to
38:02
Speaker 1: because it was a girl and that's how a girl's
38:04
Speaker 1: supposed to think. Type of conversation, right, Well, the fact
38:08
Speaker 1: that they were there sex was indicated at all. That's
38:12
Speaker 1: kind of like, why did you do that? If you're
38:14
Speaker 1: trying to see a difference, That doesn't really make sense
38:18
Speaker 1: in terms of getting a good set of data, right,
38:22
Speaker 1: But yeah, there was there was that and sort of
38:24
Speaker 1: this like men not used to being questioned or having
38:29
Speaker 1: to follow up. But also, yeah, you know, we've all
38:33
Speaker 1: heard women are more emotional, so if you are a
38:36
Speaker 1: woman and you have questions, then it's almost it's almost
38:40
Speaker 1: a cycle where this guy could be like, well, the
38:43
Speaker 1: science says you're more emotional, so this just makes sense.
38:45
Speaker 1: You're doing this, You're right, I'm just asking questions, right,
38:50
Speaker 1: Also like that there's always a trade off. He's like, well,
38:52
Speaker 1: as where I'm intellectual, you're more emotionally available and smarter
38:57
Speaker 1: in that way, and that like wait, there's a trade
39:01
Speaker 1: off what right? But it's clear which one? Yeah, right,
39:08
Speaker 1: So clearly a lot to unpack here, a lot to discuss.
39:11
Speaker 1: It has given me a lot to think about, for sure,
39:14
Speaker 1: because I love I love science, but it's very You've
39:18
Speaker 1: got to be clear that it is still people behind it,
39:20
Speaker 1: and people still have biases, you know, saying he's got
39:23
Speaker 1: her other book Superior, so we may have to look
39:27
Speaker 1: at that as well. Yes, and listeners, If you have
39:30
Speaker 1: any book suggestions for us, please send them our away,
39:33
Speaker 1: our emails, stuff Medium, mom stuff at I heart media
39:36
Speaker 1: dot com. You can also find us on Twitter at
39:38
Speaker 1: Months of Podcast or on Instagram. And stuff I've Never
39:40
Speaker 1: Told You. Thanks, It's always to our super producer Christina.
39:42
Speaker 1: Thank you Christina, and thanks to you for listening stuff
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