#guillemets

Hi! Welcome to the fold, fellow new-roscientist (would that work?)!

In terms of recs, naturally “Delusions of Gender” and “Testosterone Rex” hit the top of my list. Whilst I haven’t read it, I’ve heard really good things about “Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong – and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story”, by Angela Saini. Whilst I don’t agree with everything Saini has ever written (yes, fMRI research has its problems, but the Salmon Study does not undermine it – learn your statistics, people), it seems to be a solid breakdown of some of the more pervasive psychology and neuroscience myths around the modern gender binary.

Pretty much all the other recs I can think of are not psychology- or neuroscience-centred, but rather more applied or anecdotal stuff. I’d suggest finding researchers who study neuroscience and gender and track down some of their review papers, or experimental work. I’d advise a strong critical stance whilst doing this; it wasn’t so long ago, after all, that people like Baron-Cohen were advocating an “extreme male brain” theory of autism, which, no.

I do, however, have also a strong corollary: avoid, like the plague, anything by Steven Pinker. His views on gender and psychology/neuroscience are bizarre, outdated, and don’t follow the evidence, and he also has a nasty habit of making shit up out of data to support his points (see: the furore around him exaggerating statistical noise in his book: The Better Angels Of Our Nature).