Differences in Equality

I am going to take umbrage with Brendan O'Neill's article in the Big Issue Festive Edition out last week.

He dislikes the fact that it has been reported that researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have claimed that they have discovered that men's brains are built for perception and action while women's brains are more adept at reasoning and intuition.  He rounds out his argument saying that this is a "classic example of 'neurosexism'" - the use of neuroscience to propagate gender stereotypes.

Well excuse me but the last time I looked I, being a women, didn't have a penis and boys don't have wombs.  We are different, both physically and hormonally, so why is it wrong to suggest that we maybe different mentally?  Why is it wrong to suggest that we might have brains that are built differently?

As for it propagating gender stereotypes - I was under the impression that women were keep out of careers like politics and writing and the sciences because we were stereotypically less able to reason.  Therefore these researchers are suggesting the very opposite of stereotypes - they have said that "women's grey matter is more adept at reasoning and intuition".  As long as I understand the rules of language properly these researchers are saying women are better at reasoning than men.  So, if we take that science to the end of language, that would suggest that men should step out of jobs that require reasoning - like, say, running the country - and leave it to those who are better at reasoning i.e. women.

The other reason I dislike Brendan's article is because it smacks of hypercritical values in science - it's O.K. to use science to work out how an autistic's brain differs from the neuro-typical but it's not O.K. to use it to work out what the neuro-typical brain is shaped for men and women is normally.  So just how are the researchers meant to understand how the autistic brain differs in the first place?

Oh and enough thing that pocks a hole in Brendan's argument is that other researchers have use brain scanning to discover that the brain of an autistic women i.e. someone like me, is closer to the brain of a neuro-typical man in some areas, where as the brain of an autistic man is different from both the brain of a neuro-typical man and the brain of a neuro-typical women.

Conclusion - autism affects the brains of men and women differently!

They have also concluded that it is possible that there are more autistic women than first diagnosed and it is a certainty that the treatments and behavioural plans that help autistic men are highly unlikely to help an autistic woman.  Therefore more research is needed to discover what help autistic women the best.

This would certainly bare out my own experience because I have observed the autistic men I know to have very little understanding that their behaviour is sometimes unacceptable, where as I know that sometimes my behaviour is sometimes unacceptable, I just don't know what mask I need to put on to make my behaviour acceptable.

So if autism affects the brains of men and women differently, doesn't that suggest that there is an underlying difference in the first place.  However, just because we have different brains doesn't mean we aren't equal.

Why can't we be equal and different?  Why can't we celebrate that we have different talents and different strengths?  Why can't we use our different talents and strengths to help each other out?

Surely that is what equality is all about because if God wanted us to be all the same he would have made us as cans of beans!