Deboleena Roy

Neuroscience and Feminist Theory: A New Directions Essay

At the root of the resistance to sex-influences research, especially regarding

the human brain, is a deeply ingrained, implicit, false assumption that if men
and women are equal, then men and women must be the same. This is false.
The truth is that of course men and women are equal ðall human beings are
equalÞ, but this does not mean that they are, on average, the same. 2 1 3 5
10 2 5, but these expressions are not the same. And in fact, if two groups
really are different on average in some respect, but they are being treated the
same, then they are not being treated equally on average.
—Larry Cahill, “Equal ≠ the Same” ð2014, 15Þ

A t the intersection of feminism and neuroscience today, we can find

invigorating research programs that span multiple approaches to both
feminist inquiry and neuroscience research. As recent anthologies
ðBluhm, Jacobson, and Maibom 2012; Schmitz and Höppner 2014aÞ
indicate, feminists trained in the humanities, social sciences, biology, and
neurosciences ðor a combination of these fieldsÞ have accumulated a critical
mass of expertise and scholarship that actively interrogates, while simul-
taneously contributing to, research in the neurosciences, such as cognitive
science and psychology,1 neurolinguistics ðKaiser et al. 2007, 2009Þ,
neurophysiology ðVidal 2005Þ, and neuroendocrinology ðRoy and Bel-
sham 2002; Einstein 2012; van Anders 2013Þ. Feminist scholars have also
added to critical discussions of emerging neurocultures.2 In particular they
have commented on the current era of the neuroscientific turn ðSchmitz

I would like to acknowledge members of the NeuroGenderings Network for providing a

feminist home to think about all things related to the brain ðand moreÞ. Special thanks to
Anelis Kaiser and Isabelle Dussauge for bringing together this dedicated community of fem-
inist neuroscientists and feminist science studies scholars in Uppsala, Sweden, in 2010, and for
the inspiring work and collaborations that have followed. Thanks also to Sigrid Schmitz,
Cynthia Kraus, Catherine Vidal, Emily Ngubia Kuria, Rebecca Jordan-Young, Cordelia Fine,
Hannah Fitsch, Christel Gumy, Kathrin Nikoleyczik, and Gina Rippon for innovative ideas,
sharp analyses, and rich friendship.
1
See Fine ð2010Þ, Joel ð2011, 2012Þ, and Rippon et al. ð2014Þ.
2
See Kraus ð2012Þ, Pitts-Taylor ð2012Þ, Roy ð2012Þ, Dussauge ð2014Þ, Kuria ð2014Þ,
and Schmitz and Höppner ð2014aÞ.

[Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2016, vol. 41, no. 3]
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 532 y Roy

and Höppner 2014bÞ wherein all human activities are believed to be gen-
erated and governed by the brain and wherein the brain has replaced entities
such as the gene as the biological arbiter of human self-knowledge ðVidal
2009Þ. Not surprisingly, many of these feminist engagements have also been
motivated by an effort to acknowledge the current use of sex/gender cat-
egories and analyses in neuroscience and have turned to nuanced critiques
of neuroscientific research and practices, both empirical and nonempirical
ðFausto-Sterling 2000; Fine 2010; Jordan-Young 2010Þ. As a neuroscientist
and a feminist, I am excited by the range and scope of scholarship coming
together under what may loosely be referred to as feminist neuroscience. Yet
in spite of these recent feminist contributions, or perhaps instigated by
them, many of my colleagues in the neurosciences voice a common concern,
as articulated by neuroscientist Larry Cahill in the quotation above, with
regard to questions of sex, gender, equality, sameness, difference, and the
brain.
The motivation behind Cahill’s paper was purportedly to take a stance
against what he believes to be a false assumption in the biomedical com-
munity, namely, that “biological sex matters little, if at all, in most areas of
medicine” ð2014, 2Þ. Cahill further suggests a key reason for this assump-
tion, namely, the “seemingly endless controversies about sex differences in
the brain generated by ‘anti-sex difference’ investigators” ð2Þ. These “anti-
sex difference investigators,” according to Cahill, are predominantly fem-
inists and neuroscientists whose recent work, not surprisingly, has in fact
been quite generative in feminist neuroscience circles. From Cahill’s ob-
servation that “of course men and women are equal ðall human beings are
equalÞ” ð15Þ, it is obvious that the stakes of sex-difference research, and its
relation to historical and biopolitical contexts, may be different for feminists
who are working in and with the neurosciences. I would argue that in the
best-case scenario, Cahill can be faulted for harboring an idealism that
dictates that since men and women, and all humans for that matter, have
already been recognized as being different but equal, there should be no
further fear of discrimination, at least not through scientific research. Why,
then, are feminists dragging their feet when it comes to exploring and
accepting sex difference research in the brain? Cahill is not the only one who
sees the potential for the neurosciences not only to expand our fair treat-
ment of all humans in biomedicine but also to move our understanding of
differences forward. I think many feminist scholars would in fact agree with
the possibility of using evidence from science, nature, and biology to broaden
our theoretical scope.3 However, it is this latter assertion—that neuroscience

See, e.g., Kirby ð1997Þ, Wilson ð1998Þ, Barad ð2007Þ, Roy ð2007, 2008Þ, Hustak and
3

Myers ð2012Þ, and Roosth and Schrader ð2012Þ.

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 S I G N S Spring 2016 y 533

can be used to move our understanding of difference forward—that I want

to explore more closely in this New Directions essay. In fact, I want to argue
that confronting Cahill’s “equal ≠ the same” claim has profound implica-
tions for reconfiguring how we, in the feminist and neuroscientific com-
munity, think about difference, particularly the ontological status of bio-
logical matter, materiality, and sexual difference, and that it may even
encourage new lines of flight and inquiry for feminist neuroscience.
It is of course important that feminists continue to ask epistemological
and methodological questions that interrogate the current research de-
signs, protocols, and language of neuroscientific work on sex or gender
differences in the brain. However, I do see crucial tensions surfacing from
the collision between Cahill’s claim that aspects of feminist neuroscience
can be read as being “anti-sex difference” and traditions of feminist theory
that interrogate the ontological status or origin of difference, particularly
sexual difference. More specifically, I am referring to the work of Luce
Irigaray on sexual difference, feminist theory that has taken up Jacques
Derrida’s idea of diffe´rance, and posthumanist feminist work that engages
with notions of Deleuzian multiplicity. I believe that feminist theories of
difference, as they have expanded since the 1990s in the works of Elizabeth
Grosz ð1990, 2011Þ, Judith Butler ð1993Þ, Drucilla Cornell ð1993Þ, Rosi
Braidotti ð1994, 2002Þ, Claire Colebrook ð1997, 2004Þ, and more recently
in a feminist new materialist vein by Myra J. Hird ð2004Þ, Luciana Parisi
ð2004, 2010Þ, and Jami Weinstein ð2008, 2010Þ, need to be acknowledged,
if not incorporated into our thinking in feminist neuroscience. I also want
to be clear that when I refer to sexual difference in feminist theory, I am
not attempting to obscure differences beyond sex and gender, such as race,
class, age, or disability; rather, I am suggesting that we use interrogations
of the ontological status of sexual difference as a frame for interrogating
difference itself. In order for the field to respond to questions of difference,
not only in Cahill’s and other neuroscientists’ work but also at the inter-
sections of biology and materiality in the broader scope of feminist science
studies, scholarship in feminist neuroscience must move beyond framing
the idea of difference through a feminism of equality that demands egali-
tarian treatment of the sexes.
Rather than being registered as a response to scientific investigations of
sex differences in the brain that have led to the unequal treatment of women
and other marginalized groups in the past, a great deal of work in feminist
neuroscience today, work that aims to critique how scientists conduct sex
difference research at the level of the brain, is being registered as not wanting
to consider the possibility of difference, or as “anti-sex difference” work. The
field of feminist neuroscience is perceived as having a problem with the
concept of difference itself, not with the experimental framing and investi-

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 534 y Roy

gation of difference. Is this indeed the case? Even if we concede for a moment
that women and men, and all humans for that matter, are in fact treated
equally, are feminist neuroscience scholars really invested in arguing that
male and female brains are the same? I would argue not.
However, by not articulating our conceptions of difference more care-
fully, we have helped to create a space for this misinterpretation. The ap-
pearance is that what feminists desire is a female brain that is either struc-
turally and functionally the same as the male brain or, if valid differences are
found, that these differences should be viewed through what an Irigarayan
theory of sexual difference would regard as a monadic ontology ðWeinstein
2008, 2010Þ or a logic of the Same.4 As Grosz explains, “for patriarchs,
difference is understood in terms of inequality, distinction, or opposition, a
sexual difference modeled on negative, binary, or oppositional structures
within which only one of the two terms has any autonomy; the other is
defined only by the negation of the first. Only sameness or identity can
ensure equality” ð1990, 339Þ. So even while the varied approaches to the
field of feminist neuroscience appear to be thriving, and a rich flurry of
publishing activity is doing a wonderful job of recording and promoting
these engagements, I believe a common challenge lies at the heart ðor shall I
say brain?Þ of this feminist work in neuroscience. This challenge lies in
addressing the question of difference, a problem that I believe is crucial but
has thus far been insufficiently interrogated in this nascent but quickly
developing field. A similar undertheorization of difference is evident in
several other areas of feminist science studies that engage more generally
with biology, health, medicine, and the biosciences. I want to suggest here,
however, that in the specific case of the neurosciences, if we see the devel-
opment of feminist neuroscience as an opportunity to go beyond critiques
of empirical methods or existing gendered paradigms—an opportunity to in
fact develop new feminist analyses of the brain, neurons, hormones, and
synaptic functions—it will require a more explicit and concerted effort to
work with traditions of feminist theory that have been dedicated to thinking
about questions of difference, particularly those of sexual difference.
Thinking about difference more carefully may also allow us to see current
neuroscience research on sex and gender differences in a new light and to
process these scientific findings in ways that can be of further political value
to feminism and generative for feminist theory.
Despite the variety of fields that can be said to comprise the neu-
rosciences, I am thinking specifically of applying richer treatments of the
concept of difference to biological research in neuroscience and to a triad
of terms that must invariably come together to inform a feminist neuro-

4
See Irigaray ð1985Þ, Grosz ð1990, 2011Þ, Deutscher ð2002Þ, and Huffer ð2013Þ.

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 S I G N S Spring 2016 y 535

science. These terms constitute a nomenclature of difference: “sex differ-

ences” is used to denote observations made in male, female, or intersex
brains; “sexual differentiation” is used in both reproductive physiology
and neuroendocrinology not only to describe the effects of sexual deter-
mination due to X and Y chromosomes and sex-determining genes but
also to designate the processes of masculinization or feminization of the
reproductive organs, brain, and behavior; and “sexual difference” is used
in feminist and poststructuralist theory as a metaphysical or ontological
concept. More specifically, if feminism and neuroscience are to come to-
ward each other through this shared object of knowledge that we under-
stand as the brain, we will also have to imagine how our questions regarding
sex differences, sexual differentiation, and sexual difference can become rec-
ognizable and legible to our colleagues both in the neurosciences and in
feminist studies. I would like to take the writing of this New Directions essay
as an opportunity to start reframing the question of difference as it circulates
between feminist theory and neuroscience.

Difference in the brain through feminisms of equality

The effort to find anatomical differences in the brains of females and

males has a long tradition as an explanation for observed differences
in social roles and status. The finding of a morphological sex dif-
ference in a part of the brain regulating a clearly sex-differentiated
function, such as estrous cyclicity in rats or singing in certain birds,
does not, however, warrant extrapolations to other species or to more
complex behaviors.
—Ruth Bleier ð1984, 92Þ

On July 17, 1990, George H. W. Bush signed a presidential procla-

mation that designated the 1990s as the Decade of the Brain. The purpose
of Presidential Proclamation 6158 was to raise public awareness regarding
the importance of brain research and to solicit the cooperation of scientists
and health professionals from both federal agencies and private industries
in unraveling “one of the most magnificent—and mysterious—wonders of
creation” ðBush 1990Þ. It was also meant to encourage further research
into brain-related causes of disease leading to human suffering. In line with
the times, Bush linked the “new era of discovery” and the development of
“powerful microscopes, major strides in the study of genetics, and ad-
vances in brain imaging devices” to a rhetoric of nationalism. Also in line
with the times, Bush framed the Decade of the Brain as a valuable ally in
fighting several wars: “Research may also prove valuable in our war on
drugs, as studies provide greater insight into how people become addicted

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 536 y Roy

to drugs and how drugs affect the brain. These studies may also help pro-
duce effective treatments for chemical dependency and help us to under-
stand and prevent the harm done to the preborn children of pregnant
women who abuse drugs and alcohol. Because there is a connection be-
tween the body’s nervous and immune systems, studies of the brain may
also help enhance our understanding of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syn-
drome” ðBush 1990Þ.
These narratives of nationalism and discovery, and the hope of using
brain research as a means to wage wars against drugs, AIDS, and unfit
mothers, undoubtedly contributed to the tone of many feminist engage-
ments with the brain, neuroscience, and biopolitics during this time. In
tandem with backlashes against feminism in the 1980s and 1990s, and
renewed interest in sex-difference research backed by programmatic chan-
ges at the National Institutes of Health ðNIHÞ and the National Science
Foundation ðNSFÞ in the mid-1990s, dominant neuroscience narratives,
such as the one laid out in the Decade of the Brain announcement, ushered
in a wave of neuroscience research programs whose epistemological and
methodological moorings were all too similar to those detailed in feminist
critiques of essentialism, biological determinism, and scientific sexism.5
This, then, was the context when neuroscientist Ruth Bleier posed her
thoughts about the sex-difference research being conducted on the brain at
the time. Her work, and the earlier work of biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling
ð1985, 2000Þ and neurophysiologist Lesley Rogers ð1988, 2001Þ, for
instance, questioned neuroscience research that was dedicated to the inves-
tigation of sex differences, but more specifically those studies that attempted
to link neuroendocrinological sex differences with generalizations about
sex-differentiated human behaviors. Bleier, Fausto-Sterling, and Rogers
were primarily concerned with those studies, many of which were con-
ducted using nonhuman animal models, that problematically linked hor-
monal and morphological differences in the brain ðsuch as overall brain size,
the size of the corpus callosum, or the existence of the sexually dimorphic
nucleus in the hypothalamusÞ, as well as sex differences in brain lateraliza-
tion ðthe functional specialization of the two hemispheresÞ, to complex
human behaviors such as intelligence, mathematical ability, and aggression.6
Many of the feminist engagements with neuroscience today continue in
this vein of critique and resemble what Grosz articulates as a treatment of
difference through feminisms of equality. Grosz states that “in place of the
essentialist and naturalist containment of women, feminists of equality

5
See Bleier ð1984, 1986Þ, Fausto-Sterling ð1985Þ, and Keller ð1985Þ.
6
See Bleier ð1984Þ, Fausto-Sterling ð1985, 2000Þ, and Rogers ð1988, 2001Þ.

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 S I G N S Spring 2016 y 537

affirm women’s potential for equal intelligence, ability, and social value”
ð1990, 337Þ. However, she goes on to write, “Underlying the belief in the
need to eliminate or restructure the social constraints imposed on women
is a belief that the ‘raw materials’ of socialization are fundamentally the
same for both sexes: each has analogous biological or natural potential,
which is unequally developed because the social roles imposed on the two
sexes are unequal. If social roles could be readjusted or radically restruc-
tured, if the two sexes could be re-socialized, they could be rendered equal.
The differences between the sexes would be no more significant than the
differences between individuals” ð337–38Þ.
I would argue that these early feminist scientists were not necessarily
denying the possibility of difference and variation at the biological level or
even quite arguing that the “raw materials of socialization are funda-
mentally the same,” even though more recent work in feminist neurosci-
ence has argued for the need to encourage reflections on similarities.7 How-
ever, it does seem to be the case that their harsh criticisms of sex-difference
research were indeed motivated by a feminism of equality, or a “logic of
identification,” which is the “identification with the values, norms, goals,
and methods devised and validated by men” ðGrosz 1990, 337Þ. This earlier
feminist work in neuroscience can be seen as a response to brain research
that assumed that sex differences could be translated into sex binaries or
dualisms ðMcCarthy and Konkle 2005Þ and the related belief that these
dualisms would then be used to place women and other minorities at a
disadvantage. As they did back then, feminists who are currently engaged
with the sciences continue to confront essentialist and determinist claims
that feminine traits, which in many cultures are deemed inferior to mas-
culine traits, are rooted in women’s biology and are therefore inescapable.8
Looking at many popular modes of inquiry in neuroscience today, and
feminist responses to them, it is evident that the tone of this work has not
changed significantly.
It is along this trajectory of responding to essentialist and determinist
claims, and thereby thinking once again about difference through feminisms-
of-equality frameworks, that much of the recent work in feminist neurosci-
ence can be placed. Sharing a common concern for how studies of sex dif-
ferences in the brain are designed, conducted, and interpreted, these feminist

7
See Kaiser et al. ð2007, 2009Þ, Fine ð2014Þ, and Rippon et al. ð2014Þ.
8
Take, e.g., the actual term “sex determination” in reproductive physiology. With the
influence of the organizational and activational hypothesis in neuroendocrinology, sex deter-
mination has been extended into the idea that during a critical period in mammalian devel-
opment, a fetus carrying a Y chromosome undergoes a process of “defeminization,” while the
brain becomes “masculinized.”

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 538 y Roy

critiques can be organized into three main areas. The first includes critiques
of those neuroscientific practices that lay claim to pure objectivity, as in the
case of neuroimaging technologies.9 The second involves an interrogation
of those studies that perceive and then portray brain structures and func-
tions through simple dualistic frameworks such as sex ðread as male/femaleÞ
or gender ðread as masculine/feminineÞ.10 The third area encompasses cri-
tiques of those neuroscientific studies that raise fears of essentialist and bio-
logically determinist claims through references to hardwiring.11 Work by
psychologist Cordelia Fine ð2010Þ serves as an example of a feminism-of-
equality response to the popular use of essentializing theories in neurosci-
ence, such as those found in Simon Baron-Cohen’s empathizing-systemizing
theory and the extreme male brain theory in autism research.12
Also critical of the essentialist literature in neuroscience, Rebecca M.
Jordan-Young, in her brilliantly researched and well-written Brain Storm:
The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences ð2010Þ, examines in fine detail
the organizational and activational hypothesis in neuroendocrinology that
has contributed to seeing sex differences in the brain as hardwired. She is
critical not only of the neuroscience research that identifies behaviors as
being sex-typed in the first place but also of the work that describes these
behaviors as being permanently organized in the brain after exposure to
prenatal hormones. While not denying that steroid hormones are impor-
tant and contribute to neural development, Jordan-Young argues for
destabilizing sex as an organizing category of analysis in brain research and
urges the consideration of broader and contextualized frameworks for
understanding human development. Interestingly though, while discuss-
ing the idea of sex differences more broadly, Jordan-Young writes, “Can
we conclude, then, that there are no meaningful differences in the initial
predispositions of male and female infants, at the group level? No, because
we can’t remove children from the socialization process in order to test
this. . . . But we also can’t conclude that there are such differences, and the
evidence from brain organization research adds very little reason to suspect
that differences in initial predispositions make a meaningful contribution
9
See Beaulieu ð2000Þ, Meynell ð2012Þ, Fitsch ð2014Þ, Maibom and Bluhm ð2014Þ, and
Rippon et al. ð2014Þ.
10
See Dussauge and Kaiser ð2012Þ, Joel ð2014Þ, Rippon et al. ð2014Þ, and Vidal ð2014Þ.
11
See Fine ð2010, 2014Þ, Grossi and Fine ð2012Þ, Jordan-Young and Rumiati ð2012Þ,
and Rippon et al. ð2014Þ.
12
Baron-Cohen’s empathizing-systemizing theory is based on the conception that fe-
males are generally more empathizing than males and that males are usually better at sys-
temizing. As classic autism is thought to be characterized by difficulties in social development
ðread as the lack of empathizing behaviorÞ, as well as the presence of narrow interests and
repetitive behavior ðwhich is likened to systemizing behaviorÞ, Baron-Cohen ð2010Þ suggests
that people with autism can be conceptualized as exhibiting an “extreme male brain.”

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 S I G N S Spring 2016 y 539

to gender” ð267Þ. Among other things, I hear Jordan-Young suggesting

here that while sex differences may in fact exist in human brains and may
also be meaningful, the current influence of brain organization theory and
the impossibility of obtaining proper human control groups required for
this kind of neuroscience research leave us trapped, without the possibility
of ever approaching this difference. More specifically, while thinking about
difference itself, she asks:

Why do I place persistent emphasis on similarity? Is it because I think

ðas quite a few critics have accused feminists in general of thinkingÞ
“difference is bad” and everyone should be the same? No. I think
difference and variety are good, and my problem with the current
story of “sex in the brain” is chiefly that it underplays and mislocates
the creative sources of human difference. . . . The question ½is, what
kinds of differences should we—socially and politically—accept or
even embrace, and conversely, what kinds of skills and traits would we
prefer to encourage ðor discourageÞ in everyone. ðJordan-Young 2010,
267, 290Þ

Jordan-Young poses a crucial question here. What kinds of differences

should we embrace? Can we, as feminists, claim to value the political impact
of context, entanglement, plurality, and multiplicity but only in terms that
locate the sources of human difference in socialization processes such as
gender and cultural events that originate outside of “the body”? In order to
study the brain, must we relinquish the idea that biology can serve as a
creative source of difference? By turning to theories of epigenetics or plas-
ticity, are we drawing unevenly on the variability that has been endowed to
culture and the environment and downplaying the roles and contributions
of biological elements that produce differences in the brain? Furthermore,
can we extend our ideas of entanglement to imagine what an ontology of
sexual difference might offer us, as a creative source for understanding dif-
ferences in the brain? The “we” that I would like to specifically address here is
the feminist neuroscience community and our allies in both neuroscience
and feminist theory. To rephrase the questions above, what kinds of mean-
ings of difference should we embrace? What kind of research becomes pos-
sible when we move away from a difference of equality—or one that operates
in the logic of the same—and toward a difference of radical incommen-
surability? How are we to think about the matter and materiality of sexual
differences in the brain?
I want to be clear that while the approaches above are important and
generative in many ways, feminists working in and with the neurosciences
are now perfectly poised to diversify their treatment of difference. I also

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 540 y Roy

want to be clear that while these critiques of sex-difference research in

neuroscience may primarily be concerned with issues of equality and with
changing the social value placed on the lives and abilities of marginalized
groups, this does not necessarily mean that they are antidifference, or even
anti–sex difference as we can see in the work of Jordan-Young and others
ðJoel 2011, 2012; Rippon et al. 2014Þ. Rather, I would suggest that the
radical potential of difference has not been used or has not yet been able to
serve as a strategic mode of analysis. Take again the work of Bleier. While
Bleier expressed caution over the use of sex-difference work in animal
models to interpret complex human behaviors, she also made the fol-
lowing statement with regard to differences in biology and differences in
the brain: “Rather than biology acting to constrain and limit our poten-
tials, it is, in fact, the supreme irony that our magnificent brains, with their
nearly limitless structural and functional potentiality for learning, flexi-
bility, and choice-making, have produced cultures that constrain and limit
those potentialities” ð1984, 6–7Þ.
So variability, flexibility, and limitless potential can be located from
within biology. It is not the case that feminist biologists such as Bleier
simply believed that “it is culture or the environment that delivers differ-
ence and malleability to otherwise barren neurological matter” ðWilson
1998, 16Þ. Inspired by Cahill’s equation, I think it is important to point
out that “feminist antiessentialism ≠ the inability to consider pure differ-
ence or to support the idea of radical incommensurability,” at least within
the spheres of the biological sciences. The two approaches need not be
incompatible. The question now becomes in what directions can we move
the field of feminist neuroscience in order to think differently about the
“nearly limitless structural and functional potentiality” ðBleier 1984, 7Þ of
our brains and the role that sex differences, sexual differentiation, and
sexual difference can play as creative sources of these potentials?

Difference in the brain through feminisms of sexual difference

From the point of view of a feminism of equality, feminisms of dif-

ference seem strangely reminiscent of the position of defenders of
patriarchy: both stress women’s differences from men. However,
before too readily identifying them, it is vital to ask how this dif-
ference is conceived, and, perhaps more importantly, who it is that
defines this difference and for whom. . . . In the case of feminists of
difference, however, difference is not seen as difference from a pre-
given norm, but as pure difference, difference in itself, difference

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 S I G N S Spring 2016 y 541

with no identity. This kind of difference implies the autonomy of the

terms between which the difference may be drawn and thus their
radical incommensurability. Difference viewed as distinction implies
the pre-evaluation of one of the terms, from which the difference of
the other is drawn; pure difference refuses to privilege either term.
—Elizabeth Grosz ð1990, 339– 40Þ

On April 2, 2013, about twenty-five years after the declaration of the

Decade of the Brain, President Barack Obama announced the launch of
the $100 million BRAIN ðBrain Research through Advancing Innovative
NeurotechnologiesÞ Initiative. In addition to positioning the human brain
as an object of shared scientific curiosity whose secrets could provide cures
to diseases such as Alzheimer’s, autism, Parkinson’s, depression, traumatic
brain injuries, and posttraumatic stress disorder ðWhite House 2014Þ, in
his speech titled “The BRAIN Initiative and American Innovation,” Obama
did not shy away from presenting the brain as a shared object of specula-
tive value and venture capital. Unlike Presidential Proclamation 6158,
made in 1990, Obama’s speech highlighted the economic urgency of the
BRAIN Initiative, with bold encouragement to move forward fast, lest the
United States fall behind China, India, and Germany in producing jobs
and lucrative profits from brain-related biomedical and technological in-
novations ðObama 2013Þ. Today, the BRAIN Initiative is backed by over
$300 million in support from five federal agencies including the NIH, the
NSF, the Food and Drug Administration, Intelligence Advanced Research
Projects Activity, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Sev-
eral private foundations and companies, including the National Photonics
Initiative, GE, Google, and GlaxoSmithKline, have also committed to sup-
porting the initiative ðWhite House 2014Þ.
Among other priorities, some specific scientific goals of the NIH-led
BRAIN Initiative include creating a “parts list” to be able to “identify and
provide experimental access to the different brain cell types to determine
their roles in health and disease,” drawing “maps” that “generate circuit
diagrams that vary in resolution from synapses to the whole brain,” and
discovering “causes” that “link brain activity to behavior with precise in-
terventional tools that change neural circuit dynamics” ðNational In-
stitutes of Health 2014Þ. As feminist neuroscience scholars will no doubt
point out, as honorable as these pursuits are, it is difficult not be wary of a
brain initiative that is couched once again in a rhetoric of nationalism and
openly relies on big business, military, and pharmaceutical interests. The
reliance on colonial metaphors of discovery and maps, the application of
engineering principles and metaphors of parts and circuitry to the organic

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 542 y Roy

matter of the brain, and the search for causal links between structure and
activity to complex human behaviors will no doubt also raise red flags for
feminist scholars. However, even with these critiques in mind, as a trained
neuroscientist I find this recent support for brain research to be exciting
and timely, as advancements in our knowledge about whole brain activity
through neuroimaging technologies, developments in molecular tools to
monitor the activity of individual brain cells and groups of cells within a
network, and studies of epigenetics and neuroplasticity are allowing us to
make interdisciplinary connections that were not previously possible. Ad-
vancements in neuroscience and neurotechnologies have made it possible
to move outward from what was primarily, out of necessity, reductionist
science. Novel research in the areas of neuroplasticity and systems neuro-
science can now help us to understand the organization of the brain across
multiple spatial scales. This in turn can add to our knowledge of individ-
ual neurons, neural circuits, and hormonal interactions in the brain. The
suggestion that I wish to make here is that the BRAIN Initiative, even with
its problematic commitments, also presents an opportunity for feminist
neuroscience scholars to reevaluate how we think about the brain, how we
think about sexual difference in the brain, and how we can use new re-
search in neuroscience to reconsider the meanings of difference that may
be of use in furthering our feminist politics.
To illustrate the different approaches to working with the idea of sexual
difference in biological analyses of the brain, I want to end by drawing
from the work of the philosopher Jami Weinstein ð2010Þ, who in her close
readings of Irigaray, Grosz, and Parisi has developed the concept of “the-
ory sex” in order to discuss the use of difference in the seemingly un-
bridgeable feminist projects of supporting a fundamental binary ontology
of sexual difference and promoting the view of an infinite complexity and
multiplicity of sex. Weinstein sums up very nicely the possible meanings of
sexual difference in feminist theory that I want to suggest also apply to
feminist neuroscience research on the brain: “There are four ways one could
approach the question of sexual difference. Either there is no such thing as
sexual difference, there is sexual indifference ðwhereby there is a perceived
sexual difference that amounts to a monosexual ontology of one sex and
the lack of itÞ, there is a binary ðor fixed pluralityÞ of sexual difference, or
there is an infinite multiplicity of different sexes” ð178 n. 22Þ. Even though
Weinstein is writing about sexual difference in the context of evolution-
ary biology, I would argue that thus far, the field of feminist neuroscience
has predominantly explored the first two approaches to the question of
sexual difference in the brain—that of assuming that no sexual difference
exists and that of sexual indifference. I also want to suggest that in order

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 S I G N S Spring 2016 y 543

for feminist neuroscience to think more productively about sexual differ-

ence via the fourth approach ðan infinite multiplicity of different sexes in the
brainÞ or to apply neuroplasticity and epigenetics research that would bol-
ster concepts such as complexity, contingency, and entanglement, we may
have to think our way through sexual difference via the third approach—as
a binary, or what Weinstein refers to as “an Irigarayan utopia of a static,
dualistic, fundamental ontology” ð177Þ.
Although I disagree with those who argue that by referring to sexual
difference as the fundamental ontology, Grosz ðfollowing IrigarayÞ is con-
cretizing a binary form of sex, I would agree with Weinstein that Grosz’s
emphatic “appeal to binary versions of sexual difference” can ðand shouldÞ
be read as “an elaborate seduction meant to stimulate us to re-envision
the concept of sex in accord with neomaterialist renderings of matter”
ðWeinstein 2010, 172Þ. Some theoretical considerations are needed before
we can make our way out of thinking about sexual difference as a binary
and turn to thinking about an infinite multiplicity of sexed brains. If, as
Weinstein also points out in Parisi’s work, we want to think that “sex and
sexual differences are events” and that “these events are not simply linked
to historical/epistemological contingencies determined by scientific thought
but are, above all, linked to the infinite potentialities of matter to become
and form anew as indicated by evolutionary theories” ðParisi 2010, 147Þ, in
the context of neuroscience, we may have to make our way through the
third approach to sexual difference, that of binary or fixed pluralities.
Weinstein’s first approach, the “no difference” conception of sexual
difference, is evidenced in feminist neuroscience by the common sugges-
tion that there are negligible if any sex/gender structural differences in the
brain, by the use of concepts such as “overlap” ðJoel 2011; Fine 2014;
Rippon et al. 2014Þ that question the range of statistical variation between
female and male participants and by calls for reporting null results or
similarities in brain structure and function rather than differences ðKaiser
et al. 2007, 2009; Rippon et al. 2014Þ. Sexual indifference, the second
approach to sexual difference, is also evident in the feminist neuroscience
literature. This is the idea that although sex differences are apparent and
cannot be denied, the differences amount to the same. In these cases, dif-
ferences ðin terms of structureÞ found in the “female brain” are compared
against those of the “male brain” and are then normalized ðin terms of
functionÞ. This approach is particularly apparent in feminist neuroscience
scholarship that critiques neuropsychology and in cognitive neuroscience
studies that attempt to make links between gender and differences in per-
ceived behavior. Interestingly, concepts such as mosaicism or the “intersex
brain” ðJoel 2011, 2012Þ, which could be used to open up difference to

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 544 y Roy

the fourth definition of sexual difference—that of infinite multiplicities of

sexes—tend instead to also follow the logic of sexual indifference.13 Al-
though one would imagine that the term mosaic would be used to describe
an assemblage of multiple colors or forms, often the concept of mosaicism,
as it is used in neuroscience and by feminist neuroscientists, is interpreted
as a combination of only two types, that of “female brain areas” and “male
brain areas,” which are then said to be present in mixed patterns in the
brain of a single person ðJoel 2011, 2012; Rippon et al. 2014Þ. As Gina
Rippon and her coauthors write, “In neuroscience, the phenomenon of
brain mosaicism has been recognized for decades. That is, an individual
does not have a uniformly ‘female’ or ‘male’ brain, but the ‘male’ form ðas
statistically definedÞ in some areas and the ‘female’ form in others, and in
ways that differ across individuals. ðNor is this necessarily static, with
animal research indicating that even brief experiences such as stress
exposure can change brain characteristics from the ‘female’ to the ‘male’
form, and vice versa.Þ” ðRippon et al. 2014, 3Þ. Similarly, Daphna Joel
writes, “We can thus conclude that sex interacts with other factors to
determine the structure of the brain, and that these interactions are
complex. The result is therefore a multi-morphic, rather than a dimorphic,
brain, that is, different individuals will have different combinations of
‘male’ and ‘female’ brain characteristics. In this sense brains are neither
‘male’ nor ‘female,’ they are ‘intersex’” ð2011, 2Þ. I would argue that these
allowances of variation within a binary system of sex differences in the brain
in fact work to promote a type of sexual indifference and thereby lead us
once again to a monosexual ontology or a reproduction of the same.
I realize that suggesting that the feminist neuroscience community
should follow up on the third approach to sexual difference, namely,
acknowledging a binary ðor fixed pluralityÞ of sex differences in the brain, is
a contentious claim to make, but it is one that I think may be necessary for
“re-envision½ing the concept of sex” ðWeinstein 2010, 172Þ in neurosci-
ence. As Grosz states, “Feminists are not faced with pure and impure
options. All options are in their various ways bound by the constraints of
patriarchal power. The crucial political question is which commitments
remain, in spite of their patriarchal alignments, of use to feminists in their
political struggles? What kinds of feminist strategy do they make possible
or hinder? What are the costs of holding these commitments? And the
benefits? In other words, the decision about whether to ‘use’ essentialism
or to somehow remain beyond it ðeven if these extremes were possibleÞ is a

13
On mosaicism, see Cahill ð2006Þ, Joel ð2011, 2012Þ, and Rippon et al. ð2014Þ.

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 S I G N S Spring 2016 y 545

question of calculation, not a self-evident certainty” ð1990, 343Þ. In a

similar vein, writing at the intersection of feminist theory and psychology
and discussing the work of feminist theorist Vicky Kirby, Elizabeth Wilson
states,
It is not a return to biological determinism, but rather an expectation
that feminism should ask questions about its own political tendencies
that prompts Kirby to put her rhetorical question, “Can we remain
comfortable with the insistence that there is nothing natural about
women?” If the critique of biological determinism is now somewhat
routine, indeed, somewhat obligatory for feminism, Kirby wants to
ask what feminist-political orthodoxies are supported by such cri-
tiques. . . . What kind of narrowing or censoring of feminist projects
do these presumptions enact? What kinds of feminist projects remain
unthinkable and unable to be enacted because of these presumptive
foreclosures? ð1998, 17Þ

Wilson goes on to argue that feminist psychology is unable to consider the

biological contributions of sexual difference and sexual preference due to
the habit of dismissing these claims as “social construction, an ideological
fabrication, or a discursive ruse” ð1998, 66Þ.
Therefore, in contemplating new directions in feminist neuroscience, I
am suggesting that we connect the projects of early feminist neuroscien-
tists such as Bleier, who believed in the limitless potentialities of the brain,
to attempts to look differently at the biological contributions of sexual dif-
ference in the brain. In order to do this, and in order to develop our feminist
biological accounts of the brain, we must reconsider the ontological status
of neuromolecular matter itself. Approaching new and previously unex-
plored meanings of difference in feminist neuroscience, and making our way
through sexual difference as a fundamental ontology, is one such place to
start.

Conclusion: Reframing difference, reframing the brain

In a 2011 paper, neuroendocrinologists Margaret M. McCarthy and
Arthur P. Arnold question the dominant model of sexual differentiation in
the brain. Much like the inviting simplicity of the central dogma in genetics
ðDNA to RNA to proteinÞ, this dominant linear model of brain organi-
zation suggests that genetic sex ðXX or XYÞ dictates the differentiation of
gonads, which in turn secrete the steroids estrogen and testosterone,
which then act directly on tissues throughout the body, but particularly

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 546 y Roy

the brain, to induce sex differences in structure and function. McCarthy

and Arnold suggest that this serial, linear model of sexual differentiation in
the brain is too simple and put forward instead “a parallel-interactive
model” that “encompasses the roles of multiple molecular signals and
pathways that differentiate males and females, including synergistic and
compensatory interactions among pathways and an important role for the
environment” ð2011, 677Þ.
It is important to understand, however, that in suggesting a parallel-
interactive model, McCarthy and Arnold are not saying that there are not
sex differences in the brain. Nor are they saying that there is not a bio-
logically mediated ðgenetic, hormonal, and epigeneticÞ organizational or
activational process involved in the sexual differentiation of the brain.
Rather, they are arguing that male and female brains emerge out of an even
more complicated biological process than the original dominant model of
sexual differentiation would suggest. This dominant model is too limiting
in their opinion, and they claim that apart from localizing a small number
of dimorphic regions related to reproductive behavior and ovulation, for
example, the linear model has produced an “otherwise sexually mono-
morphic” view of the brain ðMcCarthy and Arnold 2011, 677Þ. According
to McCarthy and Arnold, the original model of sexual differentiation in
the brain has not differentiated male and female brains enough. Noting
that sex differences “arise in response to diverse sex-specific signals origi-
nating from inherent differences in the genome and involve cellular
mechanisms that are specific to individual tissues or brain regions” ð677Þ,
they reframe sexual differentiation in the brain by positing that “steroid-
mediated sexual differentiation of neural circuits is not limited to direct
targets of the hormone. Just as every brain cell has a genetic sex, many cell
types in specific regions are organized during development by virtue of
interactions with other cells in its milieu, so that any information coming
into that region is integrated in the context of its sex. This concept argues
against the idea that a few steroid-response neurons sit in an otherwise
sexually monomorphic brain” ð680Þ. I want to suggest that the line of
inquiry proposed by McCarthy and Arnold can be read as pursuing dif-
ference by working through sexual difference as a dualistic fundamental
ontology. Furthermore, their model of sexual differentiation in the brain
supports a biological understanding of neurological matter that does not
seek to reproduce sex-specific signals in males and females only to reduce
them to a monosexual ontology.
It is important to note that their parallel model also acknowledges that
“sex-specific effects of the environment reciprocally affect biology, some-
times profoundly, and must therefore be integrated into a realistic model

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 S I G N S Spring 2016 y 547

of sexual differentiation” ðMcCarthy and Arnold 2011, 677Þ. Even though

they endow male and female biologies with “inherent differences,” they
recognize that “environmental and biological factors likely interact in
complex ways to sculpt the female and male phenotype” ð677Þ. The impact
of the environment on shaping the brain or processes of “entanglement”
ðRippon et al. 2014, 1Þ between biological factors and social and cultural
influences will come as no surprise to those familiar with the feminist neu-
roscience literature. However, the tendency in feminist neuroscience is to
align the environment or social phenomena, such as learning a language,
driving a taxi, juggling, and socioeconomic status, with the causes of vari-
ation, resulting in a flexibility that is then incorporated into the biological.
The idea that I believe Bleier was advocating by referring to the “nearly
limitless structural and functional potentiality” ð1984, 7Þ of our brains, and
what neuroscientists such as McCarthy and Arnold are trying to make
apparent in their work, is that capacities or potentials for variation and
contingency come not just from environmental or social cues but also from
biological matter itself.
In my interpretation of their work, McCarthy and Arnold are sug-
gesting that chromosomal sex differences ðXX and XYÞ and processes of
sexual differentiation are key factors that not only lead to sex-specific
effects but also make the expression of biological variation and neuro-
plasticity possible. Take, for instance, their discussion of the Xist gene,
which is expressed on the X chromosome and is known to have sex-specific
effects in females by inactivating one X chromosome in XX non-germline
cells.14 They suggest that rather than viewing Xist as a factor “that makes
females more similar to males,” Xist should be studied for its role in sexual
differentiation and how it allows XX somatic cells to “engage in major
epigenetic machinery that is not active in XY cells” ðMcCarthy and Arnold
2011, 678Þ. In fact, research in neuroepigenetics is now suggesting that it
is not just that environmental factors such as stress or parenting change a
static genetic complement but rather that an already-dynamic neurobiol-
ogy, made so in part by sex differences and sexual differentiation, becomes
even more dynamic in the presence of epigenetic cues. Preliminary re-
search on a promoter region of the estrogen receptor alpha gene in rats
reveals developmental shifts in degrees of methylation in the preoptic area
and hypothalamus, indicating that there may be “changes in epigenetic
marks during or as a consequence of sexual differentiation” ðMcCarthy
and Nugent 2013, 1137Þ. In addition to finding changes in methylation

14
Non-germline cells ðalso referred to as somatic cellsÞ are not reproductive cells ðsuch as
eggs and spermÞ and do not participate in the production of gametes.

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 548 y Roy

patterns across the life span, the researchers noted this: “We also observed
hormonal modulation and/or sex differences in the percent methylation
of specific CpG residues in each of the genes’ promoters. What was most
striking was the transient nature of those differences, with some dis-
appearing over time and new ones emerging, suggesting a far higher
degree of dynamism than previously anticipated” ð1137Þ.15
These gestures, which acknowledge the transient nature of difference
and mark the infinite potentialities of genes, molecules, and matter in the
brain, resonate nicely with future lines of flight in feminist neuroscience.
They also suggest that an appeal to a binary ontology of sexual difference
may operate not only as an elaborate seduction but also as a necessary
question of calculation on our part. If we are to consider the equation
“equal ≠ the same,” then we must also consider the summation “feminist
politics 1 neuroscience ≠ anti-sex difference.”
Departments of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
and Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology
Emory University

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