The book I choose to read was Delusions of Gender How Our...

The book I choose to read was Delusions of Gender: How Our Mind, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine. There are three parts to the book: â€Å"Half-changed world†, â€Å"Half-changed minds†, Neurosexisam, and Recycling Gender. The reason I choose this book was because it dealt with gender and how in society and our mind we create the differences that are used against us. I thought that by reading it I would understand more from a psychologist’s point of view how our thought process creates what we perceive as reality, what has been placed upon gender specific things by society, and how it has affected society. In the first half of the book, â€Å"Half-changed world†, â€Å"Half-changed minds†, the author argues about how social and†¦show more content†¦Later in this section she critiques a study, which is widely cited, of the different ways babies gaze. It was a study was that was conducted when the infants were just a day and a half old. It showed that the female babies were much more likely to gaze at faces, while baby boys preferred to look at a mobile. When the study was analyzed scientists took the results as evidence of the fact that girls are more empathic than boys, who are more analytic than girls. (Fine, 112,113,114) Fine does not include any kind of research of her own but she uses this part of the book to point out the faultiness of each of the researches who use this type of study to show the divergence between boys and girls. She does, however, include information on how neurosexism is nothing new and how its roots are in the mid-19th century when the m otives behind the research were to restrict the access to higher education and the rights for women to vote. (Fine,172) In the last part of the book, Recycling Gender, Fine argues against the use of science as a justification of gender stereotypes and how that can impact our future generations in a negative way. In chapter 19 Fine talks about how â€Å"Anyone with ears can hear how adults constantly label gender with words: he, she, man, woman, boy, girl, and so on. And we do this even when we dont have to.† (Fine,210) This is how a child learns to sort themselves into a gender category. Categories are already in place before the child