Testosterone Rex : Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds

Resumen del libro

'Fine does it again. The mistress of "I think you'll find it's more complicated than that" delivers a brilliant and witty riposte to the "boys will be boys" bores. Fascinating.' Caroline Criado-Perez 'In addition to being hopeful, Fine is also angry.

We should all be angry. Testosterone Rex is a debunking rumble that ought to inspire a roar.' Guardian 'A densely packed, spirited book, with an unusual combination of academic rigour and readability ...The expression "essential reading for everyone" is usually untrue as well as a cliche, but if there were a book deserving of that description this might just be it.' Antonia Macaro, Financial Times Testosterone Rex is the powerful myth that squashes hopes of sex equality by telling us that men and women have evolved different natures. Fixed in an ancestral past that rewarded competitive men and caring women, these differences are supposedly re-created in each generation by sex hormones and male and female brains.

Testosterone, so we're told, is the very essence of masculinity, and biological sex is a fundamental force in our development. Not so, says psychologist Cordelia Fine, who shows, with wit and panache, that sex doesn't create male and female natures. Instead, sex, hormones, culture and evolution work together in ways that make past and present gender dynamics only a serving suggestion for the future - not a recipe.

Testosterone Rex brings together evolutionary science, psychology, neuroscience and social history to move beyond old 'nature versus nurture' debates, and to explain why it's time to unmake the tyrannical myth of Testosterone Rex. For fans of Fine - whose Delusions of Gender 'could have far-reaching consequences as significant as The Female Eunuch' (Viv Groskop, Guardian) - and thousands of new readers, this is an upbeat, timely and important contribution to the debate about gender in society.

Biografía del autor

Cordelia Fine es profesora asociada de la Melbourne Business School en la Universidad de Melbourne. De ella se ha dicho que es una neurocientífica cognitiva con un afilado sentido del humor y un inteligente sentido de la realidad (The Times), una brillante crítica feminista de la neurociencia (Times HES) y una heroína desmontadora de mitos (CARE).