This week I finished:

The Male Brain, by Louann Brizendine: I heard of Brizendine’s first book The Female Brain, but the library had The Male Brain, so I got it instead.

Reading it was satisfying, learning about differences between the male brain and what I hear more about, which is our commonalities. There seems to be a mainstream outrage that claims that the male brain and body are considered normal and women’s are considered unusual, so not studied.

I grew up with my parents having female-centered works like Ms. magazine and Our Bodies Ourselves, but no equivalent for males. Men’s magazines in the 1970s meant pornography. Most of my life, focusing on gender meant “smashing the patriarchy,” so it was refreshing to learn about specifically male things that didn’t condemn us or call us toxic.

It reminded me of an ex-girlfriend who once asked me, “Do men have emotions?” She was in her 30s and had graduated from one of the top universities in the world, but she didn’t know men felt emotions. When I said we did and asked her what she thought, she told me she thought men didn’t feel emotions but just did things. It made me wonder how many other otherwise worldly, well-educated women don’t know such basic things about men. This book made me wish more past girlfriends had read it to understand men better. It makes me want to read The Female Brain more.

I recommend it.

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