Lovely theory, too bad it's wrong.

Match.com (highlighted this weekend by Yahoo's news alerts) has a couple of articles by Laura Schaefer on "5 Tips for bonding with her" and 5 ways to understand him better" - predicated on certain findings on differences between the brain structures of men and women.

I call this theory a load of rubbish, if I want to be polite, and utter shite if I want to be a bit cruder. I shall now proceed, dear reader, to explain why.

In the intro to the "bond with her" version, Ms Schaefer writes:

Wouldn’t it be a relief to finally understand what is happening behind her pretty eyes? Why is it, for example, that the woman in your life is serene one moment, apocalyptic the next? How can she remember details about your life you don’t even recall? And what’s with her taking everything so personally? Chalk it up to female brain chemistry. Here’s how to tailor your courtship to her cortex, hippocampus, etc.

Some of the points are complementary, so there are really fewer than 10 points. I'll summarise them here:

1. Men's hippocampi are smaller than women's hippocampi. The hippocampus being associated with forming of memories, men forget things you told them like where you work while women remember lots of "first time we..." type things.
2. Women's brains have "a greater density of neurons in parts of the temporal lobe cortex, which is the area of the brain associated with language processing and comprehension." (Laura Schaefer uses Dr Larry Cahill as a source and references research by Dr. Godfrey Pearlson). This means dudes talk less while chicks just totally dig poetry; that women "choose words with such care" whereas men "don't get hints"; and that women read more into a statement such as "I'd rather watch sport" while men miss the underlying meaning when a woman says something.
3. Guys are happier bunnies than women because their brains produce more serotonin, (according to a study done at McGill University) so guys - share your happy to cheer her up; women, don't expect him to get all weepy over stuff!
4. Women's brains have a bigger percentage devoted to regulating emotions, so women know how to chill out instead of getting aggressive all the time like those violent, thuggish dudes do all the time!
5. Women use the left part of the amygdala while men use the right part, so dudes remember breakfast this morning while women remember emotional stuff that happened ages ago; men remember the key central points while women remember the fine details.

Now, I am sure some of you will already be leaping ahead after reading that and have your own stories about why it's all bollocks, but I'm going to stick to refuting it from my own experience.

Point 1: Memory formation. It is true that at times, I am somewhat forgetful, and details slip past me - but the example of "If on your first date he can’t remember where you work, even though you told him all about it when you met" given by Ms Schaefer hardly seems fair, unless you automatically assume the bias in point 5. I might very well forget that, but that's because my brain is taking in other stuff - the details mentioned in point 5! But the "first time we..." things, dates and such, I am not so bad on those, in terms of remembering what we did, said, details etc. The other example given is the famous one about dudes not noticing when a woman has her hair differently. I learned (taught myself) to spot these things (because we're told that it's important to a woman for a guy to notice it).

Point 2: Language use and "hidden meaning". True story: I used to struggle a lot with missing people's intended messages and have worked hard to be more alert to the non-verbal cues and such that people are sending out. But I am not able to distinguish between genuine hints and stuff that might be hints but aren't. A lot of the time, still, I process something and I feel like it means something but I don't know what - often, if I think I'm missing an important cue, I will ask what it meant.

SNS at the moment says I over-think everything. Often, the messages I think she's sending are, in fact, non-existent. I pick up on stuff that isn't there and either am puzzled by it, or read it as meaning something and of course, no such intention is there. Which sounds like what women are supposed to do to men!

As for language use - I love poetry, I love great prose and I love writing and composing stories, speeches, poetry, song lyrics. I am rather proud of my verbal dexterity, in fact. I will often pause because I want to pick exactly the right word for what I wish to express. Often it comes naturally, but if it doesn't I'll work at it until I get it right. SNS on the other hand again says that I over-think things when I pick up on her language use and read stuff that just isn't there. I would try not to, but this is my natural level of language engagement. Does this mean I'm really a woman!?

Point 3: Serotonin levels. I suffer from depression, guys. I had to take SSRI tablets for a year to deal with this. SSRI stands for "Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor". That's because my brain doesn't produce enough serotonin without assistance. And yet, I could be happy at times even with this problem of not having enough serotonin in my brain (funny, that - I could do it even before I had the tablets, too).

From this we can deduce that the advice is, at the very least, predicated on the dating people being neurotypical humans. Given that 1 in 3 people will be affected by mental health issues at some point in their life, the chances of dating at some point someone who is non-neurotypical in some degree seems quite high.

Point 4: Emotional control. Again, I have learned this skill. I needed to, because I was once a very violent young man and that would have led to a lot of trouble if I hadn't found a way to regulate my amygdala or whatever the fuck I'm doing when I say "okay, that's how I feel - now what do I do with it?" And it's fair to say that I have known more than a couple of women who were somewhat impulsive and ready to start a fight (at least verbally, and sometimes physically).

Point 5: Types of memory. I'm off the chart here, I haven't even learned it I just do it. Emotional stuff is what makes an impact for me, and I process things emotionally, no question about it. Friday night I went to my first fetish club night and honestly, I couldn't tell you very much about what I did, but I could give you a fairly detailed rundown of the emotional development of the whole evening with flashes of detailed pictures in my mind's eye with each significant point. My memory of what I did is keyed to how I felt about it and what I remember happening as I felt it. Again, am I actually a woman?

***

Of course, none of this goes against saying that on average the brain structure observations are true. But it's absolutely useless to assume that they will be true of all possible pairings of a man with a woman (or for that matter, a butch with a femme - btw are there different terms for gay men, or can we apply those gender terms equally? I should look that up!) And of course, the astute reader will have noticed that my refutation depended on several points where I said "I learned/taught myself to do this". What that indicates is that the human brain is a very flexible computational device and is capable of adapting beyond its base architecture to handle all manner of different procedures. In other words, the brain structure i a lot less significant than a lot of people would like us to believe; what matters is what we teach others and ourselves to do and believe about our abilities to do.

In other words, gender differences are far more down to social structures and socialisation in general, than they are to do with any underlying physiological or neurological differences between men and women.

Which, of course, my gentle readers already knew!