Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur model. PA/Rui Vieira. All Rights Reserved.
Cordelia Fine's 2010 best-seller, Delusions of Gender, explored the science and popular thinking behind sex differences and the idea that gender is an innate and immovable force. In her new book, Testosterone Rex, Fine turns to the influence of testosterone and its impact on psychology and inequality between men and women.
It is a rare text: accessible to the non-academic reader while exhibiting rigorous research, drawing on science from evolutionary biology to behavioural studies. It’s an invigorating read that forces you to interrogate your own ideas about gender and testosterone. I found it repeatedly challenging my own assumptions.
“Delusions of Gender actually ended up as a very different book to the one I set out to write,” Fine told me. “I’d been reading a lot of popular books about sex differences in the brain while looking at the scientific studies these authors were citing as hard evidence for those differences. Initially I wanted to write a book that cleared up what science was actually telling us.”
But, she explained: “I discovered real contradictions within the studies... It was confusing, and that confusion led to me writing a book that explored the problems in the science.”
