Contemporary neuroscience is painting a completely different picture of gender, a picture of spectrums rather than a binaries.

Great interview with cognitive neuroscientist Gina Rippon here!

Rippon has analysed the data on sex differences in the brain. She admits that she, like many others, initially sought out these differences. But she couldn’t find any beyond the negligible, and other research was also starting to question the very existence of such differences. For example, once any differences in brain size were accounted for, “well-known” sex differences in key structures disappeared.



Which is when the penny dropped: perhaps it was time to abandon the age-old search for the differences between brains from men and brains from women. Are there any significant differences based on sex alone? The answer, she says, is no. To suggest otherwise is “neurofoolishness”.

She also draws attention to the fact that the brain is “plastic”, in the sense that it changes throughout life according to use, means that any data documenting differences in abilities, personalities, interests and so on are most likely caused by upbringing.

Neural plasticity throws the nature/nurture polarity out of the lab window. “Nature is entangled with nature,” says Rippon. Added to this, “being part of a social cooperative group is one of the prime drives of our brain.”



The brain is also predictive and forward-thinking in a way we had never previously realised. Like a satnav, it follows rules, is hungry for them.



“The brain is a rule scavenger,” explains Rippon, “and it picks up its rules from the outside world. The rules will change how the brain works and how someone behaves.” The upshot of gendered rules? “The ‘gender gap’ becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”



Transgender identities

I guess some would say that if there are no typical male or female brains, transgender identities must be fake. I think not. Being transgender is not about following gender stereotypes, it is about feeling that you were meant to navigate the world as another gender. You are compelled – to a larger or smaller degree – to navigate the world as that gender, regardless of what that world says about proper masculinity or femininity. I believe most cis people feel the same.

That urge to express oneself as a specific gender may be inborn, even if the gender stereotypes are not, and even if it isn’t, it does not matter, because they kind of diversity Rippon describes leaves room for us all.



Illustration: sasha2538

Gina Rippon. Photograph: Jonathan Cherry/The Observer