The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World [Paperback]

In all this heady prose of feminist celebration one can almost hear the faint echoes of Helen Reddy's feminist paean "I Am Woman' (Hear her roar!). Yet there is only anecdotal proof that any of what she purports is accurate or true of women in general, never mind that it will somehow ineluctably come to pass. For example, she boasts that women have "natural" talents males do not, and therefore are "better suited" biologically to excel at a whole range of complex social tasks than are males. This isn't a carefully couched scientific argument framed in terms of recognizing much wider individual variations within the female population itself than between males and females generally. Rather, it is argued as if it were a general sex-linked intellectual trait.

Were I to argue the same thing about male math skills, natural aggression and violent tendencies, or leadership skills, I would be summarily shouted down and denounced as a reactionary sexist. Yet one finds no such recognition by the author that she is skating on the paper-thin ice of anecdotal supposition rather than on established scientific fact. Instead, she twists and turns her way through this hodge-podge of psychological, sociological, and biological data as though it were the dawning of the Age of Aquarius suddenly realized. A few sobering facts; males behave the way they do at least partially because of the way they are raised, and women are largely in control of this socialization process. Have we seen much in the way of sensitivity, wisdom, or "win-win" success displayed here? Hardly. If men are insensitive, unable to openly display their emotions, and distantly angry, women who raise them, sleep with them, and love them must share part of the blame.

Judging by the performance of women in institutions where they are in the ascendency, such as at universities and medicine, emotionally-based political correct behavior has become the rule of the day. I was recently advised by a tenured female professor at a famous liberal arts college in western Massachusetts that the female caucus in her department was told to privately counsel any potential male PhD. candidates to refrain from wasting their time applying for teaching openings. Is this not blatant sex discrimination, deliberate prejudice of the first magnitude? Evidently not, my friend explained lamely that the ladies just want more time to 'season' the new female majority position within the department. And on and on.

Furthermore, the evidence from the past indicates that omen throughout history like Cleopatra, Catherine the Great or Queen Elizabeth who have gained and wielded power have been quite as abusive in the use of that power as are men. This is not to suggest that women are any worst than men, or even the same as their male counterparts. But there is little proof that any of the giddy stuff she is supposing to be the wave of the future has any basis anywhere other than in her feminist fantasies. Thus, to suppose women are naturally superior healers, thinkers, communicators, and negotiators is just so much hot air escaping into the already supersaturated ozone layer.

Men who have worked with women find them individually to be quite as arbitrary, capricious, selfish, and petty as the men they have labored under. Women who work for women are no more eager to celebrate their feminine superiors, but rather fear the personal consequences that the social, cultural, and politically-correct agendas many of their female supervisors harbor and use to separate the working wheat from the chaff. Like "Backlash" and "Stiffed", this is a silly, superficial, and self-interested gambit to further a feminist agenda by trying to foist the intrinsically sexist notion that there are such well-defined and momentously broad-based gender differences so critical to the way we humans interact socially, economically, and politically as to portend the dawning of some hopped-up revolutionary situation. Avoid this book; it is a waste of your time, energy, and money.

As a scientist I'm prepared to listen to reasoned and complex arguments, but Fisher usually just states her conclusions about things as if she'd recently come down from the mountain with The Tablets of Truth and expects us to believe it all even though common sense and experience tells us that a lot of what she says is just plain nonsense. What "evidence" she presents is all one-sided (things are rarely that simple) and meant only to lead to a predictable point. There's no place in this book for any caveats, much less the reader who may ask "but wait, what about _____?" It's not on Fisher's radar screen. She doesn't seem to get it. (Just like a woman...) If you're looking for subtle, unexpected, and profound truths, you won't find any in this book.

... "The First Sex" is nothing but a huge embarassment. It should be a scandal that such a book came out of a mainstream publisher from someone with a position (and a PhD) at what one would have thought was a reputable institution. I suppose it's a sign that academia isn't what it once was.

I'll give it 1/2 - 1 star above the minimum because the chapters on dating/mating actually weren't terrible, not that they were all that great either.