Anyone read this? I saw it on the Bookmarks stall at the weekend and thought I might buy it - along with a hundred other book sin there - when I'm next feeling flush. It would be nice to have some backup for my knee-jerk rejection of the "mars/venus" tosh.

She doesn't seem to be above a bit of tosh of her own, though. This bit of laziness, for example, is by her.

QUOTE:
Darwinism affirms, contra Marx, that the point is not to change it, for we cannot change our nature. It thumbs its nose at most variants of feminism, suggesting that sexual difference in its most stereotypical forms is irreducible and essential. It cocks a snook at postmodernism, a movement dedicated to destabilising all master narratives, by robustly declaring that there is, indeed, such a thing as human nature (evolutionary psychology is the study of how natural selection has shaped it).

Which puts me in an "A plague on both your houses" kind of a place, I suppose.

Then there's

QUOTE:
Finally, I am less interested in which narrative is 'true' than in why these particular stories of language are ones we seem to want to hear retold in every age. [Italics added]

I think she's not going to be my cup of tea.

Wyatt, while I can't find a review of the book on the site, Language Log has covered it extensively from a linguistic perspective, and indeed has a long history of dissecting Mars/Venus type claims from the likes of Louann Brizendine (The Female Brain).

Wyatt Earp wrote:

QUOTE:
Then there's

QUOTE:
Finally, I am less interested in which narrative is 'true' than in why these particular stories of language are ones we seem to want to hear retold in every age. [Italics added]

I think she's not going to be my cup of tea.

It's the same thing again. For me I'm exactly interested in why people wish to frame things in the way they do and how these concepts are reinforced. I mean, also, how could there ever be anything "true" to be said about something as complex as human relationships?

My sister's got a little postcard up on her living room wall that simply says: "Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it."

Which should clinch it without needing back-up from contentious books.

Lyra, I'm not sure what that can even mean, unless it's something like "Very few sweeping generalisations about human relationships hold across the board." I mean, there's a plethora of true statements about human relationships, such as that people tend to feel affection for their children (though not always), or that people tend to seek out and take pleasure in the company of non-kin associates known as "friends" (though not always), or that people tend to like being approved of (though not always).

These statements are so true of our species (with some exceptions) that we barely notice them. Yet each of them is false, or doesn't even arise, in the case of thousands of other species. That's where "human nature" comes in, I guess: what we're like, compared to other animals. When Left thinkers reject the whole notion of our species having distinctive characteristics, I can only assume that they've never looked at any other species.

There are also, surely, by the same token, any number of true yet not known statements about human relationships, or true statements that are currently controversial. Most of them will need to be hedged around with exceptions, because of our unusually plastic nature. (But note: plasticity is part of our nature, not evidence that we haven't got one.)

On the Darwinism thing: I think she

-- conflates Darwinism (which is true) with evolutionary psychology (which is rightly controversial);

-- in turn, conflates EP with its most vulgar, simplistic and tendentious manifestations.

That's lazy.

Ginger Yellow wrote:

QUOTE:
Wyatt, while I can't find a review of the book on the site, Language Log has covered it extensively from a linguistic perspective, and indeed has a long history of dissecting Mars/Venus type claims from the likes of Louann Brizendine (The Female Brain).

Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, that stuff is bollocks. The Female Brain, man--I didn't even finish it. Naked pseudoscience, without an evidentiary pot to piss in.

I've not read the Mars/Venus book, but I bet it's shite.

I think Baron-Cohen's stuff isn't shite, though--though it may still be wrong.

Oh, OK, if, 'such and such tends to happen, most of the time' is OK as a true statement, then, yeah, of course. I wasn't thinking that way.

But she's just saying that she's not so interested in making such assertions and she'd rather study the cultural implications, isn't she? Maybe I misread the quotation. Is her looking at why we want to tell ourselves certain things maybe pointless, because it's circular and there's nothing to base our need for narrative structure on except narrative structure itself?

I agree totally that the first quotation is nonsense.

Lyra wrote:

QUOTE:
Oh, OK, if, 'such and such tends to happen, most of the time' is OK as a true statement, then, yeah, of course. I wasn't thinking that way.

It has to, though, if we're using "true" in anything like a conventional sense.

And another thing! If what you mean is that nearly all sweeping generalisations about human relationships have exceptions, then (a) I agree, and (b) this means that such generalisations, interpreted as sweeping claims, are false.

Which in turn means that their contradictions are true. I mean, if it comes to it, if you (rightly) don't like the claim that, for example, all women are less interested in casual sex than all men, then surely you must (rightly) affirm the counterclaim that some women are more into casual sex than some men. And that looks awfully like a true statement about human relationships...

This is why I reckon putting "true" in scare quotes is always a bad sign. And, yeah, I think the second passage I quoted is worrying for other reasons. The trouble with saying "I don't care whether X is true, I want to know why people keep saying it" is that in principle, part of the reason people keep saying it might be that it's true. Refusing to look at that means giving an incomplete account.

Tenuous excuse for an old painting time. Venus and Mars by Botticelli in the National Gallery:

Do you actually like pictures like that, Tubby? As in, you know, find them aesthetically pleasing? Or even intellectually stimulating in anything other than a formally analytical sense?

Very much so. He's one of the painters whose work I find most beautiful, especially the languid (?) Venus.
And the little satyr (or whatever it is) trying on Mars' helmet is charming.

Botticelli was among the first to really go for pagan mythology, and I think the freshness of it shows.

But that's just an attachment to the subject matter. To me pictures like that (and the pre-Raphaelite stuff too) are hideously formal, accomplished and lifeless. It's the artistic equivalent of Level 42 or something.