December 18, 2020: 1:19 pm:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kennedy
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From Wikipedia:
“ no person who has been elected to two presidential terms may be elected to a third. “
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_United_States
Thunderbird’s episode 2 Pit of Peril:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_of_Peril
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_New_York_World%27s_Fair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_(fair)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Columbian_Exposition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_Plaisance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_forward
Again:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan
Repeat:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger
More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_Plaisance
“Pit of Peril”
Summery:
An enormous cockroach was sent into the Vietnam Jungles for testing. The thing was operated by Lindon B. Johnson at the time. It fell into a fiery ditch, turned into an Ox. It was Saturday.
There were some men who had been roped into the Vietnam Cockroach Testing Center, they got burned when they saw the coughing gas that had been deployed by the cockroach. They witnessed their own US military being slaughtered by the enormous LBJ Cockroach, and reported what they saw as “Mummy’s Coughing Gas in Hell”. The men who were roped in, were brave men.
Some people came, to help get the LBJ Cockroach out of that Saturday Ox Ditch of Hell.
They grabbed it by the leg, tried to use Electro Magnets, to slide the enormous beast up the side of the land in the ditch.
There were some big lips, doing a lot of talking, the lips were in the way, so, they undermined, then blew the lips off. They were getting in the way of the land slide cockroach Oxditch raising of the beast.
Inside that Oxditch, was a burning inferno of what used to be US Military, some people had seen it there, burning, there was a Mummy just out of range, out of view, but everyone knew the Mummy was there, and those brave men who were roped into that fiery Pit of Peril, were repulsed by what they had learned about the Mummy of Coughing Gas that they Saw.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcophagus
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That’s what happened in the Thunderbird’s 2 Pit of Peril episode.
In real life, some years later, the cable did snap, all of them snapped, not just one, the electromagnets came loose. They were not able to get the LBJ Cockroach slid up the side of land in the Oxditch, so, the LBJ Cockroach simply crawled beneath some rocks at a Pyramid in a faraway place, quietly existing while others remained on the surface doing Ox Work on Saturday’s.
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Do the math.
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Richard Nixon was set-up, framed, pressured by the Mummy of Coughing Gas when he Saw it too.
2:15 pm: Friday.
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Fast Forward Some More:
Repeat:
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Online Fractal Generator:
http://usefuljs.net/fractals/
Just change the values, to change the Fractal. Small changes produce small changes, large changes, change everything.
(AKA: Bitcoin Stirling Air Money Mint)
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The Russian Mother of all Hoaxes is adjustable. Even the invisible Time Warp Components are adjustable.
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Small factoid:
1971 Southern California, the paratroopers came from the sky in tandom by the thousands. they landed, folded up their parachutes, and began to use the swords they were armed with immediately at the traffic lights, where they just stood at the cross-walk, waiting for a red light so the cars would stop. They used their swords to capture and kill the driver, and they disappeared into the San Fernando Valley. The paratrooper event had begun, was carried out, and was completed without a trace within about less than one hour.
The air-raid sirens wailed for two weeks, no help came to San Fernando Valley.
Later, there were carnivals at the shopping center parking lots. The paratroopers has already found homes, had blended in, used the carnivals as bait to lure victims of all ages. They called it “The Midway”, and if you knew that they called it “The Midway”, you could survive at the Carnival at the parking lot, by blending in with the terrorist paratroopers who had already become established by then.
The paratroopers came from above three times that I can recall, over a couple of years time, in installments.
no one believed the school students who saw the paratroopers land near the school in tandem, two per parachute, by the thousands, from a hundred airplanes within a short time.
But, that is what happened.
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IMDB.com: The Exorcist 1973:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070047/
Have you ever done exercise calisthenics?
Four Count Burpies?
Six Count Burpies?
Eight Count Burpies”
I don’t think there are ten count ones.
The Russian Mother Hoax Fractal enlists exorcise calisthenics, makes small fractal adjustment, to create exorcism, a different kind of Burpie, one done with services on Sunday Mass.
Hoax. The Father of the Hoax is Christianity. The Mother is Russian.
The two procreate. They lie together.
The Hoax, is their child.
There is no place called Russia. There are Rubes.
Some say a Rube is an unsophisticated County Bumpkin.
There is a contest at the county fair every year to see who can grow the biggest Pumpkin.
Conclusion about Country Bumpkin is, they are FOOLS! The Carny’s at the Midway say the Fool’s are Rube’s.
Take the Fractal Viewer along with Mrs. Russia Christian Hoax of Lies, over to the corner of Hollywood & Vine, at about 12:01 am, any day of the week, to learn more about fools, counting, and pumpkins.
(”Speed Bump” shows up on decoder ring RADAR)
(So does Kindling and nitrous gas)
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In the Thunderbird’s episodes, have a look at the way US and other Conventional Military Personnel and Equipment is portrayed as “old tech”, or “sub standard”, or “obsolete” or other words that can be used to say that it’s all out dated, while “International Rescue” has tech that is “decades ahead of it’s time”, is so top secret that a photo of it will get you killed by a London Agent with Grill Mounted Machine Gun. It’s all secret, however, everyone seems to know to call on International Rescue when the shit goes sideways.
“Mysterious Secrets of Common Knowledge” = Church
Look at the colors of the different crafts in Pit of Peril episode. There is OD Green Army Helicopter, that one uses old tech, has rotor blades to make it fly.
There is a Red & Yellow ambulance craft. That one takes the Injured Braves away.
Traffic lights and blades are part of the message.
Injured Braves.
At a traffic light.
There are Blades on the OD Green.
Instruction from High Command at Vatican John Paul II HQ:
“Just wait at the traffic light, the cars will stop when the light turns red. When they do that, get in, use sword, take prisoner back to where they live. Interrogate prisoner, gain personal information, we will be putting the LBJ Cockroach back into service as you are doing that work. Remove prisoner, follow leads.
Lady Penelope London Agent will provide update in the next episode of Thunderbird’s Perils of Penelope as we work out the bugs in the plan.”
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This small scene from the previous Thunderbird’s episode is interesting, some models on a map table shows military target practice nearby. A plan is developing. It’s more than you see in the story lines presented, way bigger, for mature audiences.
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The timing is not right for that explanation about the colors of the crafts and the eye-witness to what I saw and lived through, and traffic lights. The episode aired in 1965. The Southern California aerial attack happened in 1971. It’s possible that I did not see that 1965 paratrooper attack, I did see the 1971 and other installments of the invasion into California.
Maybe the 1965 Pit of Peril (Valley of Death) is like the sketch of that Asian Drum Dancer in Father’s Office, where it becomes a full size statue of the sketch later on, after more art work is done in three dimensions, bases on the two-dimensional sketch.
A plan in development, one that in 1965 was more about getting LBJ back into the White House in 1968 election, with emphasis on developing a plan for the physical attack to begin afterwords.
The plan was delayed. LBJ was not re-elected.
Richard Nixon was elected, fouled up the Pope Paul Plan. He turned off the Giant Cockroach Machine at Vietnam before he left. He is the last American Hero, got screwed in the end, like they all do.
Pope found ways to make Nixon go away, like the Mertz’s, I always wanted them to just go home, let Lucy do her thing, she is entertaining.
Then, they get this Ball roling:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ford
Is not about Ford, he is only the vehicle that drives the real operative who is riding in the backseat.
This fucking guy right here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Rockefeller
That guy went in, came out, like a Double Double at the In-n-Out Burger... fast, filling, cheap & easy. Real Quick. Wolf Blitzer style, as the wire guided missal is directed into the window of the baby milk factory, Blitzer does the Play-by-Play like a football game color announcer, live, as it happened, right in front of everyone on TV.
The Pope was back on track at that time.
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Rumor:
Pope John Paul II is said to have fathered many thousands of children, one of which is Ivanka Trump. The Pope’s children are said to have been specially trained for Global Domination, and include professions of all kinds, from doctors, to guitar players, to special assassins, and everything in between. Thousands of children.
I am told that photo is a depiction of something called “The Beatitude”.
Features Paul II.
Some surfboards.
White Silk, maybe White Satin is better.
Dead Man nailed to some wood.
(fast forward, small tid-bit: Southern California Surfers are presented with Morey Boogie, and Churchill Swim Fins)
1964 is New York World’s Fair, the Unisphere is unveiled.
British Invasion, The Beatles show up, they get into everything, like Thing One, and Thing Two, from Cat in the Hat, where some of the weirdest plumbing can be seen in a cartoon.
Meet the Beetles: Released on 7-20-1964.
That’s two 360′s for you old skaters and surfers out there.
narration version:
There are some Mandela Effect Versions that are called “With The Beatles”.
Idunno what to say about Mandella Beatles.
I cannot find a YouTube presentation of the Original Pressing being played to share right here.... you know what that means, right?
It means that Meet the Beetles is a slippery slope that when you step in all of that leaky British Oil, will only lead to the Gorge of Eternal Peril... or worse.
This seems safe enough:
Lady Bird Beetle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccinellidae
Asian Lady Bird Beetle:
Agent Lady Bird Johnson [code name Lady Bird Taylor; (Tailor) (Uniform Seamstress)]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Bird_Johnson
I think it’s possible to get from Lady Bird Johnson Taylor to Cherubs of Sistine Chapel, somehow, in the Russian Mother Hoax Fractal. I don’t know how, is not important.
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Fat Babies shows up on Decoder Ring RADAR,
Pumpkins at the fairgrounds.
(There must be a glitch in the Way-Back Machine, some kind of hold-up)
Worlds Fair, 1964 again.
Unisphere:
What could be said about that Unisphere?
The continents all have representation. All are present.
The oceans are a framework.
The world has some holes in it.
There are fountains of support.
It very, very big, judging by the size of those small people there at the bottom.
It has satellites orbiting.
Some places seem to have more detail than other places do, need to have a closer look to find out.
Looks like a nice place where it’s at, trees, blue sky, some artwork, a pond is there... the pond has some division looking areas, have to have a closer look to find out what that is.
What else?
The timing is difficult to see, but, the Unisphere exists in time.
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5:59 pm:
Can’t show you the British Ninja’s. Tumblr Throttle Warriors at Google/Centurylink are hijacking my post:
The Presidents of the United States of America: Peaches.
(Georgia Election Squad Hijack from Trump German Command Central shut down the “Post Video Button“)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvAnQqVJ3XQ
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Classic Starts Collection:
The “Last of the Mohican’s” is the same terror message as is “Oliver North”.
“More He Cans”: Canadian Gas Wielding Terror Soldiers Who Last... “bring bigger rectally holstered gas tanks and more men”.
Oliver North: “Send All of the Queen’s North.... from Canada”
This Oliver part leads back to the Giant Cockroach in Vietnam, also, at the same time, leads to Mike Pompeo at US State doing Iranian Terror Rental Service, in the future, where terror is done, with details that make Iran the handy Bad-Guy to blame for everything. While also serving as commands to send more Canadian terror soldiers to USA for Global Domination work, AKA: Slaughter the US Citizens, while SAG puts on a show, and GCHQ MI-6 SIS at Vauxhall Bridge makes Election Arrangements to support Ronald Reagan and his tribe of SAG. (R. Reagan was President of SAG before he was President of USA.)
Oliver North is a sophisticated fellow character in the Russian Mother or all Hoaxes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_North
Hmmmmm....
O-Liver.
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everything below this plimsoll is for demonstration purposes only, it’s just a example of how terror comm works, to try to help you learn to read it, see it, think about it, decipher it, get in front of it, stop the terror take-over.
6:50 pm:
Hold that thought.
Advanced Decoder Ring settings gets weird.
Apply “Olive the Above” filters.
Things can wind back at Ibuprofen Union areas.
Upside Outlet Brain Wash Conditioning Cute Face Terror Comm can happen.
Some pieces parts:
That globe Unisphere... Geo... George.... Geography... keep going...
Cans.
Peaches.
Upside Down, Capsize, Pope’s Pointy Hat, Cat in the Hat.... (it gets weird)
With conditioning from Ibuprofen Union (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, IBEW, people don‘t know which way is up.
Cans become peaches.
It’s a girl can w/peaches.
The men become women.
The can becomes a peach, it used to be the can was the ass.
now, the can is the jug.
The jug holds the nitrous gas. It’s in the can.
The boat is upside down, is capsized. It’s a girl, because of the boat.
Where did the boat come from... ?
The terrorists are pirates, there is always a boat, by default, you can toss a boat into almost any terror comm.
Eddie Murphy shows up on Decoder Ring Radar, says everyone is throwing pussy at him.
Donald Trump is not far behind Eddie. Grabbing at what was tossed to Eddie.
I don’t have a conclusion for this, that is the point of the Pope’s Pointy Hat... this connection of dots could go on eternally... and all of the above (Olive the Above) serves as Fodder for communication about Vatican terror, it’s all within the chalice, the Holy Grail that is the English Language Terror Weapon.
Although that is difficult to follow, it can be followed, and that is why it works so good to advance Global George Terror... Geo, Geography, Georgia, ... Google Maps. It all leads to Sodomy, the quest for dirt, land, earth, High Ground.
Backup singer.
Back Upsing-Her.
Back Up Singer.
High Ground.
Pornhub shows up on RADAR.
“Oliver” starts to take on a twisted shape.
It’s O, and it’s Live at Jerkmate, the advertising from the nun said so.
Rewind.
Talk to SAG Graphic Artist at Electrical Engineering for High Fidelity Stereo.
(sensored)
Electrical Graphic Engineer from SAG Advertising in somewhere around 1950 needs to make Random Graphic for Reel-to-Reel tape machine, Fast Forward.
It’s Donald Trump following Eddie Murphy too close, fast forward.
“There is no pussy here, I thought you said it was live Jerkmate from Pornhub nuns”
not exactly.
no!
not that either. Trump is trying to stay busy while riding around other peoples coat tails, so, things with terror comm get a glitch sometimes, have to start over.
Melania.... after the live Pornub nun Jerkmate show, while Donny is chasing after Eddie Murphy’s leftovers. Time Warp Fast Forward applied heavy to previous rewind repeat fractal adjustment, ...
We could watch The Grinch Stole Christmas, or, Afro Whores hotel checkout scene from Rat Race, and wind up in the same place in the fractal Mother Hoax of terror comm from there.
Back to the Hotel: “White Wrap Race” (small fractal adjustment cuts Murphy’s crew out of the game. For the comm. Reality is not far behind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVtRyrOaoZA
They all have Junk in the Trunk, get refilled at the Hotel:
Start over..... Go find back up singers.
Just have to come up with a workable Russian Lie.... Record Producer Hat:
“You ladies are just exactly what we are looking for to be on our next hit single”
This part is real. Things heat up in the ocean currents when lies are told about record producing and the liars have Junk in the Trunk.
That graphic came from US Department of Energy at Twitter from Rick Perry Secretary of DoE.
Rename the chart: “Power Shift Chart” or “Shift in Power Chart”.
See on the left that the power is measured in Joules.
“Enormous Power Shift Chart”
It’s disguised with Pirate interests of ocean temperatures.
The top line tells you where the information is coming from, from the “Upper 2000″. That means 2000 years AD. It comes from Vatican High Command, appears to be a training tool for young pirates.
It covers a span of about 55 years.
First thing you see is that there is some red information, and some blue information. The Blue information is over powered by the red information in around 1996 or so.
There is a period of neutrality there. A Zero mark at the “Mean“ where blue gave way to red as time progressed.
We see there are some green information, they say that is “95% Error Margin“. Happens every ten years it looks like, means “Blue Team Fucked Up Big Time”.
95% Fucked Up. (see back up singers above)
There is “Monthly Mean, on the Down Low” (menstruation. Men turned to women, they bled. Monthly.
We see some small words “Annual Mean” happens twice, that is mentioned over top of Blue Team Information, and is below Red Team Information. Looks to me like Red Team is Mean.
There is mysterious information on the bottom right, says: “Baseline 1981 -2010″ in some foggy looking lettering there.
Here is what we need to do with that foggy mystery, it’s from the Pope, it’s Hokus Pokus, so, apply “No VA” (No US Veteran’s Administration Anymore, it’s Enormous Power on the High See’s of Temperature Reading” so, we have to push it, “no-va, won’t go, have to push it” filter is a applied to the Hokus Pokus from Pope.
Where?
It goes over to 1981... push the Zero to 1981... over to the left about 15 years or so. That makes the 2010 part go to the 1996 part, where the Zero used to be.
Why?
Because the Pope said so, that’s why, also, he needs to show when the Mean Power Shift happened.
It happened the same day when Ronald Reagan became US President. That is what is important about 1981.
So, step the fuck back, make assessment:
In 1981, there were some Blue people pretty much in charge, going along doing blue things. Then, Big Red See Monster came along, has Joules, Big Fucking Balls, kills all of the US Veterans Administration Personnel. It happened in the ocean it says, so, that means the whole US Navy got screwed by the Big Red See Monster, came out of no where, while on the Blue Team (VA) it was nothing but Er. Maybe was ER, Emergency Room with 95% Fuck Up Rate of Progression over time. Part of the reason that there was so much Back Up Singers going on, looks like Time Warp Pope Hokus Pokus of 15 years is what caused the problems for Blue Team. Red Team is only showing very small amounts of 95% Error ten year intervals information, I think those are casualties. Blue Team shows many casualties, while Red Team shows only few. I think there are two kinds of people on each team being shown here, maybe Green information is commander level people on each team, while Blue and Red are the actual Team, the workers, the soldiers, whatever you need to label them.
They are all Military on the Blue Team is how it looks to me. Are all gone.
The Green information is more Hokus Pokus from the Pope. Is not very clear, might be some false reading there on the “Enormous Power Shift Chart”.
Ten means dead. Those green Error markers are Whisker Graph Style information, maybe a Wilkinson‘s Decoder is necessary to know more about Green Information of Error. A Razor. A Blade. A Shave at the Barber. Maybe is Prophet Margin.
Rick Perry: Secretary of DoE chart reading from around January 19, 2019 (1-19-2019) is the day I saved that, and did the reading at Twitter initially.
End Chart Read: 9:08 pm.
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9:15 pm: Additional:
IBEW Ibuprofen Union Power guys use special tools. For remodel work on a Power Distribution Circuit Breaker Access Box, when you need to get some wires into the box and there are no holes available to use, you need to make a hole in the box per safety regulation standards. There is only one way to do that. You need a “Green-Lee Punch“ for that.
I think the Green information every ten years could have a installation of a Beard into the Circuit Breaker Main Panel at DoE, then, the Beards get shaved, to clean up the installation, remove the burs from the edge of the hole so insulation won’t scrape off, cause short circuit. Or something like that. Green-Lee Punch also goes over to Hawaiian Punch areas of Russian Mother Hoax, 5-O is over there. The prostitutes come out to the corner in 5 inch glass heals at 5:00 pm every day right across the street from the police station on Waikiki Beach.
The Ocean Current Temperature is Tempura Shrimp, deep fried goodness at Pearl Harbor, for consideration of the chart, comes with “5-O Different Sauce” and some change. Obama is in the Chart too.
More:
There are Joules (Jewels) and Hawaii is showing up in the chart, so, Diamond Head needs to go in there. There will be some Virgins when that happens, they go into the Volcano, for the reading to be complete.
That means this also goes into the read somehow:
Thunderbird’s Pit of Peril shows up on Decoder Ring Radar.
Start Over....
0 notes
Cordelia Fine, Will Working Mothers’ Brains Explode? The Popular New Genre of Neurosexism, 1 Neuroethics 69 (2008)
Abstract
A number of recent popular books about gender differences have drawn on the neuroscientific literature to support the claim that certain psychological differences between the sexes are ‘hard-wired’. This article highlights some of the ethical implications that arise from both factual and conceptual errors propagated by such books.
Meet Sarah.
Sarah can “identify and anticipate what [her husband] is feeling—often before he is conscious of it himself.” ([4], p. 118). Like the magician who knows that you’ll pick the seven of diamonds before it’s even left the pack, Sarah can amaze her husband at whim, thanks to her lucky knack of knowing what he’s feeling before he even feels it. (Ta-DA! Is this your emotion?) Sarah is neither a fairground psychic nor the somewhat irresponsible owner of a futuristic brain wave interpreting machine. She is simply a woman who enjoys the miraculous gift of mindreading that, apparently, is bestowed on all owners of a female brain:
‘Maneuvering like an F-15, Sarah’s female brain is a high performance emotion machine—geared to tracking, moment by moment, the non-verbal signals of the innermost feelings of others.’ ([4], p.119)
Sarah is just one of the many curious characters who populate lay science books about gender. She can be found in Louann Brizendine’s book The Female Brain, one of several recent popular and influential books arguing for fundamental and ‘hard-wired’ differences in male and female psychology.
Unfortunately, scientific accuracy and commonsense are often casualties in the ugly rush to cloak old-fashioned sexism in the respectable and authoritative language of neuroscience [10,19]. Mark Liberman, whose online Language Log offers wry and meticulous critiques of pseudoscientific claims about gender differences, has described some popular authors’ use of the neuroscientific literature as “shockingly careless, tendentious and even dishonest. Their over-interpretation and misinterpretation of scientific research is so extreme that it becomes a form of fabrication.” [18].
Then, too, with the buzz-phrase ‘hard-wiring’ comes an extraordinary insistence on locating social pressures in the brain. In The Female Brain, for example, the working mother learns that she is struggling against “the natural wiring of our female brains and biological reality” (p. 161). According to Brizendine, combining motherhood with career gives rise to a neurological “tug-of-war because of overloaded brain circuits” (p. 160). Career circuits and maternal circuits battle it out, leading to “increased stress, increased anxiety, and reduced brainpower for the mother’s work and her children.” (p. 112). But Brizendine promises her female readers that “understanding our innate biology empowers us to better plan our future.” (p. 159). It may startle some readers to learn that family friendly workplace policies are not the solution to reduced maternal stress and anxiety, and that fathers who do the kindergarten pick-ups, pack the lunch-boxes, stay home when the kids are sick, get up in the night when the baby wakes up, and buy the birthday presents and ring the paediatrician in their lunch hour are not the obvious solution to enhanced maternal ‘brainpower’. No, it is an appreciation of female brain wiring that will see the working mother through the hard times. (Predictably, Brizendine never even hints that the over-wired working mother consider the simplest antidote to the ill-effects of going against her ‘natural wiring’: namely, giving her partner a giant kick up the neurological backside.)
What accounts for the success and appeal of the new field of neurosexism? Most lay readers, of course, have neither the background nor the resources to question the many inaccurate and misleading claims made about gender differences in the brain. There is also recent evidence that neuroscientific explanations enjoy a special “seductive allure” [20]. People’s capacity to spot the unsatisfactory nature of circular psychological explanations is significantly reduced when impressive-sounding neuroscientific terms are introduced.
Yet surely there is more to it than this? The back cover of The Female Brain offers to explain why “a man can’t seem to spot an emotion unless someone cries or threatens bodily harm”. Were we to pick up a different sort of book that made an equally unusual sort of claim (a guide to pets, say, which promised to explain why cats can’t climb trees), we would immediately put it down and go in search of a more reliable text. Yet The Female Brain is a New York Timesbestseller, translated into twenty-one languages and featured in newspapers, magazines and TV shows around the world. What, exactly, is the draw of gender stereotypes dressed up as neuroscience? For men, perpetuation of the idea that they lack women’s hard-wired empathizing skills is a small price to pay for licence to lay claim to more valued and potentially profitable psychological advantages. According to another popular book about gender difference, The Essential Difference [1], “[t]he female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.” (p.1). As Levy [16] notes, this translates to the idea that “on average, women’s intelligence is best employed in putting people at their ease, while the men get on with understanding the world and building and repairing the things we need in it.” (pp. 319–320). Levy adds, “[t]his is no basis for equality. It is not an accident that there is no Nobel Prize for making people feel included.” (p. 323).
For women, a possible explanation of the appeal of neurosexism lies in the palliative system justification motive, “whereby people justify and rationalise the way things are, so that existing social arrangements are perceived as fair and legitimate, perhaps even natural and inevitable.” ([11], p. 119). Jost and colleagues have found that lower status groups have a remarkable capacity to rationalize what goes against their self-interests, internalize limiting stereotypes, and find legitimacy in the very inequalities that hold them back (see, for example [12]; [11]). If a frazzled mother can tell herself that her hard-wired powers of female empathy uniquely position her to intuit that the red-faced, cross-patch baby wants to get down from the highchair, then there’s no need to feel cross that she’s the only one who ever seems to notice. If she can take seriously Brizendine’s claim that it is only when the children leave home that “the mommy brain circuits are finally free to be applied to new ambitions, new thoughts, new ideas” ([4], p. 143) she may feel less resentful that the autonomy to pursue a career unhindered, a freedom still taken for granted by her partner, is now no longer extended to her.
Similarly, Davis [9] has recently suggested that gender role attitudes may fall in line with life, rather than vice versa. Davis’ recent longitudinal study of gender ideology found that young adults shed their gender egalitarian beliefs once they had children, but only so long as their procreation was normatively timed, indicating that it is not the experience of having childrenper se that causes gender ideology to change [9]. Rather, there may be something special about taking on a culturally loaded adult role. Davis asks whether it is, “because there are few structures in place to support egalitarian marriages and child-rearing practices that individuals fall away from egalitarian practices and, as a reflection of their new interests, alter their belief structure to reduce cognitive dissonance?” ([9]; p. 1037). And as Cameron [5] has noted in her popular critique The myth of Mars and Venus, the effect, and also perhaps the appeal, of the idea of “timeless, natural, and inevitable” differences between the sexes is that it “stops us thinking about what social arrangements might work better than our present ones in a society that can no longer be run on the old assumptions about what men and women do.” (p. 177). Popular neurosexism permits us to sit back and relax, with its seemingly neat explanation of our social structure and personal lives. The answer, ‘Oh, it’s the brain,’ offers a tidy justification for accepting the status quo with clear conscience.
We can currently only speculate on the enervating effect of popular gender science books on male nappy-changing frequencies, or female patterns of leaving the toilet to be cleaned by someone else. However, there is evidence that accounts of gender that emphasise biological factors leave us more inclined to agree with gender stereotypes, to self-stereotype ourselves, and for our performance to fall in line with those stereotypes (e.g., [2, 7, 8]). Moreover, other research from the social psychological literature has shown that presenting cognitive or emotional tasks in ways that make them seem diagnostic of gender tends to set up a self-fulfilling prophecy (e.g., [ 3, 14, 15, 21–24]). Research such as this underlines the point that,
‘the psyche is … not a discrete entity packed in the brain. Rather, it is a structure of psychological processes that are shaped by and thus closely attuned to the culture that surrounds them … the mind cannot be understood without reference to the sociocultural environment to which it is adapted and attuned.’ ([13], p. xiii).
This important observation is one usually ignored by popular accounts of gendered ‘hard-wiring’.
Mark Liberman has suggested that “misleading appeals to the authority of ‘brain research’ have become the modern equivalent of out-of-context scriptural fragments.” [18]. Noting, along with Rivers and Barnett [19], that baseless neuroscientific ‘facts’ about gender differences are already having an impact on educational policies, for example, he argues that journalists have a real responsibility to fact-check the accuracy of neuroscientific claims. The need for journalists to take on this responsibility takes on an extra import when one considers our susceptibility to poor neuroscientific explanations, together with the way that biological accounts of gender, and the stereotypes about male versus female abilities that they promote, can measurably alter our beliefs, self-identity and abilities.
Finally, of course, let’s not forget the sheer embarrassment factor. The successful nineteenth century book, Sex in Education (subtitled Or, A Fair Chance for Girls – somewhat ironically as it turned out) argued that education was selectively perilous to girls and young women. Its author, Harvard Medical School professor Edward Clarke [6], proposed that intellectual labour sent energy rushing dangerously from ovaries to brain, threatening infertility as well as other severe medical ills. From our modern vantage point we can laugh at the crudely obvious prejudice that gave rise to this hypothesis (as biologist Richard Lewontin [17], p. 208 dryly remarked of this hypothesis, ‘Testicles, apparently, had their own sources of energy’).
Yet it seems we may have little cause for complacency. Who wants future generations to giggle in astonished outrage at our crude attempts to locate social pressures in the brain? (Here it is, Michael! I finally found the elusive human ‘maternal circuit’. See how it crowds out these circuits for career, ambition and original thought?). Nineteenth century medical opinion proposed that girls who overtax their brains might never reproduce. Twenty-first century neurosexism warns that women who reproduce risk overtaxing their brains. It is, perhaps, a little less progress than many working mothers would have hoped for.
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