PODCAST: Cordelia Fine pokes holes in old-fashioned ideas about testosterone and sexed brains

Despite feminists’ best efforts, many people today believe that inequality between the sexes is natural, not cultural. They will often point to the behavior, clothing, or play of girls and boys to prove this; or they will point to hormones, like testosterone, as evidence that men are inherently violent, sexually aggressive, or more adventurous than women. Cordelia Fine’s work throws a wrench into all of that. In her new book, Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds, Fine paints a far more complex picture of brains and the impacts of hormones on human beings.

Fine is a psychologist and is also the author of Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference. I spoke with her over the phone last week.

PODCAST: Cordelia Fine pokes holes in old-fashioned ideas about testosterone and sexed brains
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Meghan Murphy

Founder & Editor

Meghan Murphy is a freelance writer and journalist from Vancouver, BC. She has been podcasting and writing about feminism since 2010 and has published work in numerous national and international publications, including The Spectator, UnHerd, Quillette, the CBC, New Statesman, Vice, Al Jazeera, The Globe and Mail, and more. Meghan completed a Masters degree in the department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University in 2012 and is now exiled in Mexico with her very photogenic dog.