Sex, Gender, and Brain – a Problem of Conceptualization
Channel: Daphna Joel
Date: 2013-01-29

Prof. Daphna Joel keynote address at the international, interdisciplinary conference on sex, gender, and the brain "NeuroCultures – NeuroGenderings II" (2012) on how current psychological research reveals that sex differences in the brain are rarely dichotomous, and the same is true for sex differences in gender characteristics. In the few domains in which consistent sex-differences are found there is a considerable overlap between the distributions of the two sexes. Individuals possess a complicated array of masculine and feminine characteristics, and there is evidence that environmental factors can change the form of specific brain characteristics from the “male” form to the “female” form or vice versa. The result of these complex interactions of sex and environment is an intersex brain composed of a mosaic of male and female brain characteristics, rather than being all male or all female. The division of individuals into men and women and of brains into male brains and female brains adds little information

Chapters:
0:00 3G-Sex (Genetic-Gonadal-Genital Sex) categorization system 
2:09 Intersex 
4:50 Dichotomous system (dimorphism + matching) 
8:41 Are sex differences in the brain dimorphic and matching?
14:38 How the environment can change the brain
27:53 Brains do not have sex
32:49 Sex differences in brain pathology 
38:13 Are sex differences in gender dimorphic and matching?
47:41 Sex differences do not add up to a male and female brain or to men and women
50:07 A world with no gender (but with sex)

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