Attending Dr.Grossi's lecture was pretty eye-opening for me. It was for me the continuation of a question I have had swirling around in my head for just about a year now. Last year during woman's history month there was a lecturer presenting research, done on mice, on the subject of gene expression in the brain in relation to exposure to sex- hormones (testosterone and estrogen).
In short, data was presented representing sexual behaviors in mice when within seconds of their birth, female and male mice had been injected with inverse sex hormones. What the study found was that gene expression changed when certain sex hormone was introduced in the brain. So for example, if a female mouse was injected with testosterone shortly after birth, she would exhibit male sexual behavior.
Dr. Grossi's lecture seemed to me to be a reaction against these kinds of studies, and what seems to be a more and more commonly accepted assumption about the inherent differences between Males and Females. I found her argument to be systematic, mythological, and incredibly convincing. She first challenged, linguistically, why the term "hard-wired" is problematic. How "hardwired" as a term is inaccurate and misleading. Then she went on to explain how the results, the data presented in these talks, is at often times unfounded and in-replicable. And then went on to present data which contradicted the hypothesis affirmed by "hardwired" assumptions.
Dr. Grossi's final conclusion was what I have been repeatably been told from different people with which I have been having these talks with, that being that there is a severe lack of data and research with which to validate the claim the gender differences within males and females are hardwired. She then went on to ask, if it even was an important question to answer.
Overall, I really enjoyed her research and the way she constructed her arguments. Despite it being hard to hear through her accent at times, I still found her talk leave a lasting impression.
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