rethink our understanding of the gendered brain,

重新思考我們對性別大腦的理解、

because neuroscience can tell us much more about what our brains are for and and how the world affects our brains.

因為神經科學可以告訴我們更多關於大腦的作用以及世界如何影響我們大腦的資訊。

I think the most common myths that I've come across is that neuroscience has proved, in inverted commas, that there are clear-cut differences between the brains of men and the brains of women, and that just isn't the case.

我認為，我遇到的最常見的神話是，神經科學用倒逗號證明，男性和女性的大腦存在明顯差異，但事實並非如此。

When I talk about the pink and blue tsunami,

當我談到粉色和藍色海嘯時、

it's really a reflection of how our culture codes differences between girls and boys.

這實際上反映了我們的文化是如何區分男孩和女孩的。

So that right from the moment a child is born, when people arrive with those awful it's a girl pink, it's a boy blue cards, they are very quickly being introduced to a gendered world.

是以，從孩子出生的那一刻起，當人們拿著那些可怕的 "女孩粉色，男孩藍色 "的卡片時，他們就很快進入了一個有性別區分的世界。

The multitasking versus map reading dichotomy, where women are supposedly very good at doing lots of different things at once, and men are brilliant at map reading and any kind of spatial tasks.

多任務處理與讀圖的二分法，據說女性擅長同時做很多不同的事情，而男性則擅長讀圖和任何空間任務。

And yet when we look at the data that we have for that, we'll see that how you measure those skills makes a difference, and if we look at the brain imaging data, we'll find that really there are no clear-cut findings.

然而，當我們查看這方面的數據時，我們會發現如何衡量這些技能是有區別的，如果我們查看大腦成像數據，我們會發現確實沒有明確的結論。

Have we actually found any differences between the brains of men and the brains of women?

我們是否真的發現了男性和女性大腦之間的差異？

Answer:

請回答：

The answer is no.

答案是否定的。

On average, women's brains were 5 ounces lighter than men's.

女性的大腦平均比男性輕 5 盎司。

And the early scientists got really excited and thought, oh, that's the explanation for all the gender gaps.

早期的科學家們非常興奮，他們認為，哦，這就是所有性別差異的解釋。

But then somebody pointed out two things: first of all, if you just thought it was a size matters issue, then sperm whales and elephants have got bigger brains than men, and they're not renowned for being that much brighter.

但後來有人指出了兩點：首先，如果你認為這只是體型的問題，那麼抹香鯨和大象的大腦都比人類大，而且它們並不以聰明聞名。

If you then look at human brains, you'll see that there's a big overlap in the kind of measurements that you get, so you get a distribution of size in men's brains and a distribution of size in women's brains, but they overlap.

如果你再看看人類的大腦，你會發現在測量結果上有很大的重疊，所以你會發現男性大腦的大小分佈和女性大腦的大小分佈，但它們是重疊的。

So that you get women with big brains and and men with small brains.

這樣就會出現女大男小的現象。

If you assume that every, as I do, that every brain is different from every other brain, what you need to understand is how you arrived at the identity or the feeling that you have of of what gender you are.

如果你像我一樣認為每個人的大腦都與其他大腦不同，那麼你需要了解的是，你是如何形成自己的性別認同或感覺的。

I think one of the problems we have in the 21st century is that what I call gender bombardment is much more intense, um there's much more in the social media, um and a whole range of of marketing initiatives, which make a very clear prescriptive list of what it's like to be male or what it's like to be female.

我認為，我們在 21 世紀面臨的一個問題是，我所說的性別轟炸更加猛烈了，社交媒體上有更多的東西，嗯，還有一系列的營銷活動，這些都非常明確地規定了男性是什麼樣的，或者女性是什麼樣的。

And if somebody looks at that list and thinks, well, I'm supposedly a male, but none of the above is true of me, very often people think that there is something wrong with them.

如果有人看了這份清單後認為，我應該是男性，但上述情況在我身上都不存在，那麼很多時候，人們就會認為自己有問題。

My claim is actually we should be looking at the list a lot more carefully and saying that perhaps what we've assumed was a very clear distinction between males and females is nothing like as clear as has been claimed.

我的觀點是，實際上我們應該更仔細地研究這份名單，並指出，也許我們一直認為的男性和女性之間非常明確的區別，並不像人們所說的那樣明確。

So an understanding that every brain is different from every other brain and not necessarily just a function of the sex of the brain's owners is a really important step forward in the 21st century.

是以，認識到每個人的大腦都與其他大腦不同，而不一定僅僅是大腦主人性別的函數，是 21 世紀邁出的非常重要的一步。