Good review. I am about halfway through the book. One thing I appreciate about it is that the author names the various books published in the last decade that attempt to minimize or completely discount the role testosterone plays in explaining differences between the sexes. When I read about those books when they were first published, I tried to keep an open mind, however they seemed to fly in the face of both everyday experience/ common sense and my own reading / scientific learning.
In that way, I find this book provides a helpful counterweight to what feels like a popular consensus that testosterone doesn’t explain anything about physical or behavioural differences. It’s also glaringly obvious that those books and that message are motivated by an argument that doesn’t follow from the science: that real physical and behavioural differences between sex, partially explained by our biology, can excuse, in the moral / legal sense, the actions of individuals of either sex.
I guess the interesting question is, given the science (as Carole presents it), what sorts of moral and legal conclusions can or should follow? In some areas we are comfortable excusing behaviour that is ‘caused’ by circumstances beyond our control, in other areas that’s clearly impractical or morally repulsive! But that’s where I see the real action. I think the same goes for discussions around Harden’s book - let’s take the science for what it is, but what follows from it as a matter of policy, legally, morally, etc.
Good review. I am about halfway through the book. One thing I appreciate about it is that the author names the various books published in the last decade that attempt to minimize or completely discount the role testosterone plays in explaining differences between the sexes. When I read about those books when they were first published, I tried to keep an open mind, however they seemed to fly in the face of both everyday experience/ common sense and my own reading / scientific learning.
In that way, I find this book provides a helpful counterweight to what feels like a popular consensus that testosterone doesn’t explain anything about physical or behavioural differences. It’s also glaringly obvious that those books and that message are motivated by an argument that doesn’t follow from the science: that real physical and behavioural differences between sex, partially explained by our biology, can excuse, in the moral / legal sense, the actions of individuals of either sex.
I guess the interesting question is, given the science (as Carole presents it), what sorts of moral and legal conclusions can or should follow? In some areas we are comfortable excusing behaviour that is ‘caused’ by circumstances beyond our control, in other areas that’s clearly impractical or morally repulsive! But that’s where I see the real action. I think the same goes for discussions around Harden’s book - let’s take the science for what it is, but what follows from it as a matter of policy, legally, morally, etc.