Labour Research June 2017

Reviews

Testosterone rex


Unmaking the myths of our gendered minds

Cordelia Fine, Icon Books, 256 pages, £14.99 (hardback)

Cordelia Fine’s previous book, Delusions of gender, has been one of the biggest-selling books in the Women’s section at Bookmarks for the last few years. It has been a valuable tool for trade unionists and others in debunking the notion of a “female mind” and helping in the fight for gender equality in the workplace. 


Now Testosterone rex squashes the myth that men and women have evolved different natures resulting in and male and female brains.


Not so, says psychologist Fine, who shows that sex doesn’t create male and female natures. Instead, sex, hormones, culture and evolution work together in ways that make past and present gender dynamics only a serving suggestion for the future — not a recipe.


Testosterone rex brings together evolutionary science, psychology, neuroscience and social history to move beyond old “nature versus nurture” debates, and to explain why it’s time to unmake the tyrannical myth of Testosterone Rex.


Reviews contributed by the Bookmarks socialist bookshop. 


Order online at https://bookmarksbookshop.co.uk