Something I learned recently, which further supports my argument and refutes Shlain’s, is that the suffragettes carried out mass destruction of visual art … something Shlain argues is typical of an out-of-control left hemisphere. (See also: climate activists destroying art).
Walt wrote two of the best "feminist" essays I've seen on Substack! The one about girls going through puberty too early, and a great piece telling men to stop being mean to slutty women :-)
Yes!! Annoyingly, I lost my copy of The Alphabet Vs the Goddess a couple of days ago so I'll have to go from memory here, but Shlain argues that Jesus's cult was very much a right-hemisphere-y cult, and that Jesus was very egalitarian and good to women. The early Christian cults are also speculated to have been psychedelics cults (see The Immortality Key) and would have been orally-based and very right hemisphere based. After Jesus died, and more literary-minded men wrote his story down in The New Testament, Christianity slowly became overtaken by left hemisphere-dominant men -- it had a period of being very right hemisphere-y again during the Middle Ages as literacy declined, but then began to become more left hemisphere based again around 1300 or so and then the Protestant Revolution was basically a left hemisphere revolution. So, yes, Christianity is not an inherently left-brained religion, if anything, it's the opposite, but the way its commonly expressed now is very left-brained.
The same could be said of Judaism -- more right-brained interpretations exist, e.g. "Elohim" is actually a masculine plural of a feminine noun and implies that God is plural (and one at the same time) and both masculine and feminine.
Oof sorry not my strongest writing here I'm a bit tired right now :-p hopefully you get the gist!
Hahaha, there's some pretty good evidence for it! Multiple cults though, and I'm guessing some used psychedelics and others didn't. There are also fringe theories like Jesus was into Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) and even that Jesus wasn't a real person but instead a metaphor for magic mushrooms (this last one seems wacky to me, but it exists!)
The problem that you present it that the modern managerial estate thrives off hedonism and nihilism. It sees any one who is not a simple producer-consumer as a threat to that system. Strong men, motherly women are threats to the totalitarian control of the faceless bureaucracy. You can't "fix" this society while remaining within its bounding sphere.
Rejection of the managerial bureaucracy must happen before any remedy can be made to hearth or home.
I loved Shlain's book but after putting it down had the same reaction as to DIANETICS: great world-building, but not so much with the science.
This review points out that asymmetry is a basic property of the body that we share with relatives all the way back to snails. Cilia (little waving hairs that circulate fluids) seem to be important.
There's also a good short discussion of cherry-picking of the type I attribute to Shlain.
"Handedness is inexpensive and easy to measure and thus is often included in studies as a ‘bonus factor’, even though it may have very little scientific merit for the study in question [81,82]. Any significant result leads to an additional publication, whereas nonsignificant results are often forgotten, gathering dust in the file drawers of researchers. This publication bias is known as the file drawer problem [83]."
Crikey, that was a long essay, thank you for taking the time to spell this out in detail. Getting my left and right sides confused, but can just about understand McGilchrist’s distinction between the apprehending left and comprehending right. We are all left brain people as we grasp the immediacy of the screen in front of us. In a material world, the material necessity of ‘the thing’ that demands attention keeps the focus to the left. This probably suits the feminine temperament too. The right side is the religious side, which sees the bigger picture and places all the parts of our world into a contextual order - which is, or was, a good corrective to the male temperament. McGilchrist’s point though is that we need a balance between two sides to function effectively, and we have lost this, individually and societally.
McGilchrist has at least one stray line in The Master and His Emissary where he says that if either sex is more left-brained than the other (he rejects the notion), it's women more than men. However, given he's British (thus, WEIRD), I'm not sure whether that observation applies globally -- but I can see how it applies to WEIRD populations, to those within the Hajnal Line and their descendants (possibly other populations too, but my research is a little Eurocentric so I don't really know).
I hope you didn’t write this long piece while giving birth. That would be too impressive.
I like the left/right brain division as a way of understanding different perspectives, and the need to find a balance between the two. I wonder as well whether modern life - the internet, the material, the secular - keep us focused on the here and now, that which is immediately necessary. It’s not necessarily a male/female thing although I expect Peterson would persuade us that there is a female proclivity to focuse on the crying infant to exclude all else. You may though be able to speak from experience there.
This is a fascinating concept. I don't know if one side of the brain is more gendered or androgynous than the other, but you make compelling points and interesting dive through history. A parallel idea connects hormones, and testosterone levels in women and men.
On one of the tangents, I recently discovered an old debate called the Hebrew-Greek mind problem. Have you heard of it? I have a book by Thorleif Boman I've barely started.
This is a really good job of categorizing the problems with Shlain's book--the right hemisphere has all the visual stuff and men are more visual, etc. (I remember thinking a few of these 20 years ago when I flipped through it, but was never this detailed or well-referenced! Great job!) But if overusing the left hemisphere causes more 'negative androgyny' ('undifferentiated' in the Bem Sex Role typology), then that would explain the increased autism and rise in misandry and misogyny (in different people of course).
His ideas seem like they come out of the New Age movement of the late 20th century--there was a whole focus on 'goddess energy', being anti-rationality, etc. It overlapped with second-wave feminism, though of course they weren't identical.
(As a personal note, I read a whole bunch of this stuff as a teenager and it did a number on my self-esteem. But that's just kind of me being silly.)
Yeah, I think Shlain was heavily influenced by 1970s feminism, to the detriment of his work. It's unfortunate, because I think without that influence, he might have recognized what I'm arguing here. The evidence in his book supports my hypothesis more than his :-p
From what I'm told the whole left-right brain thing is now thought to be overstated, and unless you have a cut corpus callosum (which they will do occasionally in case of seizures) they aren't totally separate things and talk to each other a lot. There definitely is localization of parts of the mind in parts of the brain, or you couldn't tell what part gets damaged when people have a stroke. (Well, now you can with an MRI...)
That said, if living in your head and in Virtual World makes people uncomfortable with sexuality (male or female)...that would explain a lot! I'd say it's more that the sort of abstract thinking that we value takes you away from positive sexuality (male or female)...which makes sense intuitively, if you never see horses you're not going to be good at horseback riding.
Yes ... Iain McGilchrist goes into this in his books. I definitely over-simplify things here, because it's easier to talk about the implications that way ("left-brained" vs "right-brained"). But the reality is a lot more complex.
Mathematics is itself a language. The left hemisphere focuses on words — the letter of the law — whereas the right hemisphere focuses on meanings — the spirit of the law.
Congratulations on the addition to your family. If you have time, would you describe in a little more detail the difference between high and low androgyny?
Also, next time don't include so much useful detail. I had ice cream in my lap only during the second half and still had more than I meant to 😂
Do you mean positive and negative androgyny? The difference essentially is that positive androgyny is roughly equal levels of healthy, mature masculinity and femininity whereas negative androgyny (or undifferentiated) is low masculinity and femininity, and more childlike. In a different essay, I also discussed "positive" androgyny as being high in healthy masculine and feminine traits to a roughly equal degree, whereas "negative" androgyny was being high in negative stereotypes / unhealthy masculine and feminine traits. Negative androgyny is associated with poor mental health, whereas positive androgyny is actually protective against mental health issues -- in both sexes. I have some links to articles in The Drama of the Gifted Children article.
People who are far more masculine than feminine (regardless of whether they are male or female) would be considered masculine etc.
I believe the left hemisphere dominance I'm discussing here is only associated with negative androgyny -- positive androgyny would still be very right-brained, just less sexed than is typical. People generally find positive androgyny attractive / sexy.
So if i’m thinking of examples, I have a friend who loves being a mom, does her hair and nails frequently, but is also very outspoken and assertive. Is that what you mean by positive androgyny? And a negatively androgenic person may be sort of young adolescent in their appearance (neither the hair/muscles or curves) and perhaps withdrawn/indifferent about their interactions with others?🤔
I appreciate you taking extra time to provide clarification!
Yes, that's kind of it! In this case, I'm referring a bit more to personality / cognitive style / skill-set than physical appearance, but the two tend to go hand in hand.
In this context, I'm also suggesting that someone who is positively androgynous will be very connected to their body, whereas someone who is more negatively androgynous will be more "in their head" and dissociated from their physical body.
I think it goes to the Bem Sex Role inventory--rather than just opposites, masculinity and femininity were orthogonal axes, so you could be masculine (high masculinity, low femininity), feminine (low masculinity, high femininity), androgynous (high masculinity, high femininity), or undifferentiated (low masculinity, low femininity).
Androgynous was obviously the best one as you had both 'female' (compassion, empathy) and 'male' strengths (courage, self-reliance), but you could be undifferentiated too--cowardly and oblivious, for example. Nerds like me are a pretty good example of an undifferentiated person, actually, combining the worst traits of both stereotypical genders. ;)
Here is feedback on a bit of the argument: the oldest alphabet seems to be the one of the Cucuteni people in Romania/Ukraine (aka Tripolye). These folks were remarkably artistic and inventive, and the culture seemed to be women-centered, on the basis of the remains. The ancient Crete was remarkably women-centered in the midst of very male-centered cultures. And they definitely had writing.
I wonder if anyone has done a deep dive into why a culture takes a misogynistic turn... without preconceptions, without pet theories, just looking at what's out there... After all, that turn has been seen in illiterate tribal cultures as well...
The Cucuteni used logograms! Not an alphabet. Very different. Logograms and cuneiform were invented multiple times by different cultures, but a phonetic alphabet was only invented once and all modern alphabets derive from it.
Shlain doesn't argue that violence against women is nonexistent before surges in alphabet literacy, just that there are spikes of systemic violence and oppression of women / the divine feminine following it. His book documents many examples.
I suspect there are two types, each associated with one of the hemispheres. What I'm looking at here -- and calling "misogyny" -- is hatred and contempt for femininity. The right hemisphere seems to be more inclined toward SEXISM, the idea that women SHOULD be feminine / ARE feminine and need to be controlled / protected "for their own good."
Scanned it, then ran it through my own experience. I grew up in the old Czechoslovakia, and am well familiar with the history. Literacy only came into play towards the end of the 18th century, after Maria Theresa issued orders to create schools for every child. Wiki says it was for 6 years, but I distinctly remember that for most kids it was more like 3 or 4. It was hard to police, and parents wanted kids out working. Anyways... by mid-19th century, the literacy was way way up there eventually reaching 100%. With it came to the fore female authors, many of them beloved to this day. Also, feminist ideas made their slight inroads (from France and England). By the end of the 19th century, Czech women were voicing their concerns like never before.
So... my own evidence says... nope.
I think we pay a price for literacy. Already ancient Greeks bemoaned it.
But male/female brains and more misogyny? I call bullshit.
Did you consult much in the way of autistic self-understanding while researching this? The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN), for example, or studies of autism by autistic scientists such as the Double Empathy Problem?
I've spoken to many people who are autistic or sub-clinically autistic, I have family members who are high in autistic traits (including a father who was diagnosed as high functioning autistic by a mental health professional), I've read through countless articles from groups such as ASAN, and spent countless hours reading social media posts from self-identified autistic activists. I have read through forums by people who were / are in relationships with autistic people, including spouses and children of autistic people. I have also read the literature on autism extensively (which includes accounts by people who have worked with 100s of autistic people), including various sides of the argument, and stretching back to the early 1900s.
The "Double Empathy Problem" has some issues, but ultimately I agree that it's incorrect when people suggest that autistic people "lack" empathy -- that is not what the literature says, and anyone who has interacted with multiple autistic people should be able to recognize that this is untrue. "Empathy" can be broadly lumped into three sub-types, and autistic people only show deficits in one of these sub-types: theory of mind skills or cognitive empathy, of which the ability to read non-verbal communication cues (e.g. facial expressions) is a component. Autistic people typically have normal to above-average emotional empathy (feeling what other people feel), and often have a very strong sense of compassionate empathy (the drive to act on behalf of others, to help). You see this in various activist movements, which often have many autistic people or sub-clinically autistic people at the forefront -- unfortunately, many of these people are acting on behalf of people and causes they do not really understand, and they are vulnerable to manipulation due to their cognitive empathy deficits and gullibility.
One of the issues with consulting autistic self-advocates is that anosognosia, or denial of deficits, is common among autistic people -- this is because anosognosia is associated with right hemisphere dysfunction and is related to "mind blindness" (low cognitive empathy). This is just one of the reasons why autistic self-advocacy often presents a very distorted view of the condition; I have noticed that many self-identified "low support needs" autistic people not only deny the cognitive empathy deficits, but have convinced themselves that they have unusually strong theory of mind skills -- when it appears that they are "mind-reading" (assuming they know what others are thinking when they don't) or projecting (attributing one’s own behaviours, emotions, characteristics, or impulses to another person or group without realizing it).
Very interesting thoughts here. Not finished reading.
Wish to say two things.
I grew up reading a lot, liked the Bible. I asked God questions, aware of around age 6.
In middle school, and especially later in college, began to ask GOD about what I was reading, and journaled prayers and ideas about it. Can this help tie left and right brains?
I had relatively poor SATS, but 580 both parts. Got mostly A’s and B’s.
Can praying, asking questions, reading, responding, help join both sides?
Jesus may have done this, trained as a Rabbi, but it seems influenced by his mother (did his dad pass before his ministry?) They both had secrets around his birth. Matthew 1-2; Luke 1-2
Jesus seems to have been more of a “renaissance man”, if I use this corrrctly, with right and left attitudes, truth and empathy. Hebrews 4:12-16
God the Father has mind qualities, the Holy Spirit is known for vision (image?) and comfort, —more female ones. Both are in Christ (for Christians). God made humans “in His image, male and female”. Genesis 1 (Not doing away with male and helpmate female sexuality. Genesis 2)
It seems hiding truth, can lead to disordered affections. (Romans 1) All need grace! Roman’s 2:4
Jesus is known as having both grace and truth, as opposed to law. John 1
For Christians, Faith is armor of L hand; The Word is sword-R hand (for neurotypical (great word!)
Does knowing GOD give us his pure and set apart, wholeness, His Spirit to unite our minds and hearts about grace and truth? Leading to justification, joy, peace. Not just logic, but heart too. Not only truth, but covering and strengthening grace? So women and men can begin to relate better, grace, instead of reject areas of ourselves, or others, and grow in truth….? Hosea 6
Something I learned recently, which further supports my argument and refutes Shlain’s, is that the suffragettes carried out mass destruction of visual art … something Shlain argues is typical of an out-of-control left hemisphere. (See also: climate activists destroying art).
hah
But then, maybe they are just spiteful mutants. :-)
Readers who like this essay may also appreciate this excellent piece from Sai Pandit!
https://saipandit.substack.com/p/the-woman-question-question
Walt wrote two of the best "feminist" essays I've seen on Substack! The one about girls going through puberty too early, and a great piece telling men to stop being mean to slutty women :-)
Yes!! Annoyingly, I lost my copy of The Alphabet Vs the Goddess a couple of days ago so I'll have to go from memory here, but Shlain argues that Jesus's cult was very much a right-hemisphere-y cult, and that Jesus was very egalitarian and good to women. The early Christian cults are also speculated to have been psychedelics cults (see The Immortality Key) and would have been orally-based and very right hemisphere based. After Jesus died, and more literary-minded men wrote his story down in The New Testament, Christianity slowly became overtaken by left hemisphere-dominant men -- it had a period of being very right hemisphere-y again during the Middle Ages as literacy declined, but then began to become more left hemisphere based again around 1300 or so and then the Protestant Revolution was basically a left hemisphere revolution. So, yes, Christianity is not an inherently left-brained religion, if anything, it's the opposite, but the way its commonly expressed now is very left-brained.
The same could be said of Judaism -- more right-brained interpretations exist, e.g. "Elohim" is actually a masculine plural of a feminine noun and implies that God is plural (and one at the same time) and both masculine and feminine.
Oof sorry not my strongest writing here I'm a bit tired right now :-p hopefully you get the gist!
Hahaha, there's some pretty good evidence for it! Multiple cults though, and I'm guessing some used psychedelics and others didn't. There are also fringe theories like Jesus was into Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) and even that Jesus wasn't a real person but instead a metaphor for magic mushrooms (this last one seems wacky to me, but it exists!)
The problem that you present it that the modern managerial estate thrives off hedonism and nihilism. It sees any one who is not a simple producer-consumer as a threat to that system. Strong men, motherly women are threats to the totalitarian control of the faceless bureaucracy. You can't "fix" this society while remaining within its bounding sphere.
Rejection of the managerial bureaucracy must happen before any remedy can be made to hearth or home.
Oof, you're not wrong.
I loved Shlain's book but after putting it down had the same reaction as to DIANETICS: great world-building, but not so much with the science.
This review points out that asymmetry is a basic property of the body that we share with relatives all the way back to snails. Cilia (little waving hairs that circulate fluids) seem to be important.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3969300/
There's also a good short discussion of cherry-picking of the type I attribute to Shlain.
"Handedness is inexpensive and easy to measure and thus is often included in studies as a ‘bonus factor’, even though it may have very little scientific merit for the study in question [81,82]. Any significant result leads to an additional publication, whereas nonsignificant results are often forgotten, gathering dust in the file drawers of researchers. This publication bias is known as the file drawer problem [83]."
Crikey, that was a long essay, thank you for taking the time to spell this out in detail. Getting my left and right sides confused, but can just about understand McGilchrist’s distinction between the apprehending left and comprehending right. We are all left brain people as we grasp the immediacy of the screen in front of us. In a material world, the material necessity of ‘the thing’ that demands attention keeps the focus to the left. This probably suits the feminine temperament too. The right side is the religious side, which sees the bigger picture and places all the parts of our world into a contextual order - which is, or was, a good corrective to the male temperament. McGilchrist’s point though is that we need a balance between two sides to function effectively, and we have lost this, individually and societally.
McGilchrist has at least one stray line in The Master and His Emissary where he says that if either sex is more left-brained than the other (he rejects the notion), it's women more than men. However, given he's British (thus, WEIRD), I'm not sure whether that observation applies globally -- but I can see how it applies to WEIRD populations, to those within the Hajnal Line and their descendants (possibly other populations too, but my research is a little Eurocentric so I don't really know).
I hope you didn’t write this long piece while giving birth. That would be too impressive.
I like the left/right brain division as a way of understanding different perspectives, and the need to find a balance between the two. I wonder as well whether modern life - the internet, the material, the secular - keep us focused on the here and now, that which is immediately necessary. It’s not necessarily a male/female thing although I expect Peterson would persuade us that there is a female proclivity to focuse on the crying infant to exclude all else. You may though be able to speak from experience there.
This is a fascinating concept. I don't know if one side of the brain is more gendered or androgynous than the other, but you make compelling points and interesting dive through history. A parallel idea connects hormones, and testosterone levels in women and men.
On one of the tangents, I recently discovered an old debate called the Hebrew-Greek mind problem. Have you heard of it? I have a book by Thorleif Boman I've barely started.
I'm not familiar with the Hebrew-Greek mind problem -- will have to look that up!
This is a really good job of categorizing the problems with Shlain's book--the right hemisphere has all the visual stuff and men are more visual, etc. (I remember thinking a few of these 20 years ago when I flipped through it, but was never this detailed or well-referenced! Great job!) But if overusing the left hemisphere causes more 'negative androgyny' ('undifferentiated' in the Bem Sex Role typology), then that would explain the increased autism and rise in misandry and misogyny (in different people of course).
His ideas seem like they come out of the New Age movement of the late 20th century--there was a whole focus on 'goddess energy', being anti-rationality, etc. It overlapped with second-wave feminism, though of course they weren't identical.
(As a personal note, I read a whole bunch of this stuff as a teenager and it did a number on my self-esteem. But that's just kind of me being silly.)
Yeah, I think Shlain was heavily influenced by 1970s feminism, to the detriment of his work. It's unfortunate, because I think without that influence, he might have recognized what I'm arguing here. The evidence in his book supports my hypothesis more than his :-p
From what I'm told the whole left-right brain thing is now thought to be overstated, and unless you have a cut corpus callosum (which they will do occasionally in case of seizures) they aren't totally separate things and talk to each other a lot. There definitely is localization of parts of the mind in parts of the brain, or you couldn't tell what part gets damaged when people have a stroke. (Well, now you can with an MRI...)
That said, if living in your head and in Virtual World makes people uncomfortable with sexuality (male or female)...that would explain a lot! I'd say it's more that the sort of abstract thinking that we value takes you away from positive sexuality (male or female)...which makes sense intuitively, if you never see horses you're not going to be good at horseback riding.
Yes ... Iain McGilchrist goes into this in his books. I definitely over-simplify things here, because it's easier to talk about the implications that way ("left-brained" vs "right-brained"). But the reality is a lot more complex.
Mathematics is itself a language. The left hemisphere focuses on words — the letter of the law — whereas the right hemisphere focuses on meanings — the spirit of the law.
Congratulations on the addition to your family. If you have time, would you describe in a little more detail the difference between high and low androgyny?
Also, next time don't include so much useful detail. I had ice cream in my lap only during the second half and still had more than I meant to 😂
Do you mean positive and negative androgyny? The difference essentially is that positive androgyny is roughly equal levels of healthy, mature masculinity and femininity whereas negative androgyny (or undifferentiated) is low masculinity and femininity, and more childlike. In a different essay, I also discussed "positive" androgyny as being high in healthy masculine and feminine traits to a roughly equal degree, whereas "negative" androgyny was being high in negative stereotypes / unhealthy masculine and feminine traits. Negative androgyny is associated with poor mental health, whereas positive androgyny is actually protective against mental health issues -- in both sexes. I have some links to articles in The Drama of the Gifted Children article.
People who are far more masculine than feminine (regardless of whether they are male or female) would be considered masculine etc.
I believe the left hemisphere dominance I'm discussing here is only associated with negative androgyny -- positive androgyny would still be very right-brained, just less sexed than is typical. People generally find positive androgyny attractive / sexy.
And thank you!!
Yes I did mean positive and negative :)
So if i’m thinking of examples, I have a friend who loves being a mom, does her hair and nails frequently, but is also very outspoken and assertive. Is that what you mean by positive androgyny? And a negatively androgenic person may be sort of young adolescent in their appearance (neither the hair/muscles or curves) and perhaps withdrawn/indifferent about their interactions with others?🤔
I appreciate you taking extra time to provide clarification!
Yes, that's kind of it! In this case, I'm referring a bit more to personality / cognitive style / skill-set than physical appearance, but the two tend to go hand in hand.
When I think of "positive" androgyny I think of the singer LP -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDjeBNv6ip0
In this context, I'm also suggesting that someone who is positively androgynous will be very connected to their body, whereas someone who is more negatively androgynous will be more "in their head" and dissociated from their physical body.
I think it goes to the Bem Sex Role inventory--rather than just opposites, masculinity and femininity were orthogonal axes, so you could be masculine (high masculinity, low femininity), feminine (low masculinity, high femininity), androgynous (high masculinity, high femininity), or undifferentiated (low masculinity, low femininity).
Androgynous was obviously the best one as you had both 'female' (compassion, empathy) and 'male' strengths (courage, self-reliance), but you could be undifferentiated too--cowardly and oblivious, for example. Nerds like me are a pretty good example of an undifferentiated person, actually, combining the worst traits of both stereotypical genders. ;)
Haven't had a chance to study this in detail yet.
Here is feedback on a bit of the argument: the oldest alphabet seems to be the one of the Cucuteni people in Romania/Ukraine (aka Tripolye). These folks were remarkably artistic and inventive, and the culture seemed to be women-centered, on the basis of the remains. The ancient Crete was remarkably women-centered in the midst of very male-centered cultures. And they definitely had writing.
I wonder if anyone has done a deep dive into why a culture takes a misogynistic turn... without preconceptions, without pet theories, just looking at what's out there... After all, that turn has been seen in illiterate tribal cultures as well...
The Cucuteni used logograms! Not an alphabet. Very different. Logograms and cuneiform were invented multiple times by different cultures, but a phonetic alphabet was only invented once and all modern alphabets derive from it.
Shlain doesn't argue that violence against women is nonexistent before surges in alphabet literacy, just that there are spikes of systemic violence and oppression of women / the divine feminine following it. His book documents many examples.
I suspect there are two types, each associated with one of the hemispheres. What I'm looking at here -- and calling "misogyny" -- is hatred and contempt for femininity. The right hemisphere seems to be more inclined toward SEXISM, the idea that women SHOULD be feminine / ARE feminine and need to be controlled / protected "for their own good."
Scanned it, then ran it through my own experience. I grew up in the old Czechoslovakia, and am well familiar with the history. Literacy only came into play towards the end of the 18th century, after Maria Theresa issued orders to create schools for every child. Wiki says it was for 6 years, but I distinctly remember that for most kids it was more like 3 or 4. It was hard to police, and parents wanted kids out working. Anyways... by mid-19th century, the literacy was way way up there eventually reaching 100%. With it came to the fore female authors, many of them beloved to this day. Also, feminist ideas made their slight inroads (from France and England). By the end of the 19th century, Czech women were voicing their concerns like never before.
So... my own evidence says... nope.
I think we pay a price for literacy. Already ancient Greeks bemoaned it.
But male/female brains and more misogyny? I call bullshit.
Did you consult much in the way of autistic self-understanding while researching this? The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN), for example, or studies of autism by autistic scientists such as the Double Empathy Problem?
I've spoken to many people who are autistic or sub-clinically autistic, I have family members who are high in autistic traits (including a father who was diagnosed as high functioning autistic by a mental health professional), I've read through countless articles from groups such as ASAN, and spent countless hours reading social media posts from self-identified autistic activists. I have read through forums by people who were / are in relationships with autistic people, including spouses and children of autistic people. I have also read the literature on autism extensively (which includes accounts by people who have worked with 100s of autistic people), including various sides of the argument, and stretching back to the early 1900s.
The "Double Empathy Problem" has some issues, but ultimately I agree that it's incorrect when people suggest that autistic people "lack" empathy -- that is not what the literature says, and anyone who has interacted with multiple autistic people should be able to recognize that this is untrue. "Empathy" can be broadly lumped into three sub-types, and autistic people only show deficits in one of these sub-types: theory of mind skills or cognitive empathy, of which the ability to read non-verbal communication cues (e.g. facial expressions) is a component. Autistic people typically have normal to above-average emotional empathy (feeling what other people feel), and often have a very strong sense of compassionate empathy (the drive to act on behalf of others, to help). You see this in various activist movements, which often have many autistic people or sub-clinically autistic people at the forefront -- unfortunately, many of these people are acting on behalf of people and causes they do not really understand, and they are vulnerable to manipulation due to their cognitive empathy deficits and gullibility.
One of the issues with consulting autistic self-advocates is that anosognosia, or denial of deficits, is common among autistic people -- this is because anosognosia is associated with right hemisphere dysfunction and is related to "mind blindness" (low cognitive empathy). This is just one of the reasons why autistic self-advocacy often presents a very distorted view of the condition; I have noticed that many self-identified "low support needs" autistic people not only deny the cognitive empathy deficits, but have convinced themselves that they have unusually strong theory of mind skills -- when it appears that they are "mind-reading" (assuming they know what others are thinking when they don't) or projecting (attributing one’s own behaviours, emotions, characteristics, or impulses to another person or group without realizing it).
See also Hebrew-Greek ideas of Word in 1 Corinthians 1
From a Jewish-influenced Christian perspective:
Very interesting thoughts here. Not finished reading.
Wish to say two things.
I grew up reading a lot, liked the Bible. I asked God questions, aware of around age 6.
In middle school, and especially later in college, began to ask GOD about what I was reading, and journaled prayers and ideas about it. Can this help tie left and right brains?
I had relatively poor SATS, but 580 both parts. Got mostly A’s and B’s.
Can praying, asking questions, reading, responding, help join both sides?
Jesus may have done this, trained as a Rabbi, but it seems influenced by his mother (did his dad pass before his ministry?) They both had secrets around his birth. Matthew 1-2; Luke 1-2
Jesus seems to have been more of a “renaissance man”, if I use this corrrctly, with right and left attitudes, truth and empathy. Hebrews 4:12-16
God the Father has mind qualities, the Holy Spirit is known for vision (image?) and comfort, —more female ones. Both are in Christ (for Christians). God made humans “in His image, male and female”. Genesis 1 (Not doing away with male and helpmate female sexuality. Genesis 2)
It seems hiding truth, can lead to disordered affections. (Romans 1) All need grace! Roman’s 2:4
Jesus is known as having both grace and truth, as opposed to law. John 1
For Christians, Faith is armor of L hand; The Word is sword-R hand (for neurotypical (great word!)
Does knowing GOD give us his pure and set apart, wholeness, His Spirit to unite our minds and hearts about grace and truth? Leading to justification, joy, peace. Not just logic, but heart too. Not only truth, but covering and strengthening grace? So women and men can begin to relate better, grace, instead of reject areas of ourselves, or others, and grow in truth….? Hosea 6