NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 13919 Feminists have offered extensive critiques of brain organization theory, address-
ing methodological flaws, interpretive problems, and ideological assumptions. In
the most extensive and systematic critique, Jordan- Young (2010) conducted a
meta- analysis of all of the studies published in the first thirty years of brain orga-
nization theory. She found that sex and gender are inconsistently operationalized
and measured across studies testing the theory. There is no standardized method
of defining feminine and masculine behavior, homosexual and heterosexual
orientation, and, in ambiguous or intersex cases, even male and female. The cat-
egories mean something different from one study to the next. They seem to be
applied arbitrarily, but Jordan- Young argues that the categories reflect research-
ers’ heteronormative biases. She also describes how the studies rely on “quasi-
experiments” due to the limitations of studying brain hormones in utero. She
argues that this research should not be taken as seriously as it is because of its
lack of direct evidence and because of the inconsistent design and results across
studies (Jordan- Young 2010). Researchers commonly assume that both biological
and behavioral changes observed in animal and human studies will last beyond
the period of study and even throughout the lifespan. In other words, they as-
sume one of the very points they seek to prove — that observed differences are
inborn and fixed. Further, they use brain organization theory to explain that
differences that could be interpreted as the result of socialization (Jordan- Young
and Rumiati 2012). Jordan- Young (2010) proposes a research program that bet-
ter captures the plastic nature of the brain. Such neuroscience would focus on
“the dynamism of development — understanding processes more than perma-
nent states, development rather than ‘essences’ ” (291). This requires assuming
that physiology is iterative, so that “the current state of the organism interacts
with each [experiential] input” (286). Instead of tracing a linear causality, the
research would try to capture the ongoing feedback and exchange between all
of the factors that might be hypothesized to influence behavior, and to explore
the stability of these influences over time. Jordan- Young offers an example of
how animal studies that test the effects of prenatal hormones on sexual behavior
could recognize plasticity: “Such experiments would require testing hormones-
during- critical- periods as the first important variation in environment, and the
phenotype that results from early hormones as an interim state in the organism’s
development. Next, it would require systematically testing how early hormone
exposures affect the behavior of animals who are reared in different ways, sexu-
ally socialized in different ways, exposed to different subsequent hormone envi-
ronments, have different diet and exercise regimens, and so on” (289).
20 The research by Wood et al. has been highlighted as an example of how sex/
gender in the brain cannot be neatly attributed to the different socialization of
females and males (see Eliot 2009), but it raises as many questions as it answers.
Wood, Heitmiller, et al. compared not only the straight gyrus of the subjects
by biological sex, but also by the subjects’ gender, as measured by a standard
psychological index of masculinity and femininity addressing interests, per-