When I wrote "the death of feminism" as the title for the review, I specifically meant the first Article of the Feminist Faith, as enunciated by Erica Jong and countless others: "The only differences between men and women are those which are caused by the environment. In other words, men and women are (or would be) mentally and spiritually identical if it were not for the discriminating socialization of our patriarchal civilization."

This article of faith is false. Doreen Kimura shows how many male/female differences are biological, and -- not only are they in place in the fetus at the age of four months -- they can often be observed across different mammalian species. One example is that women, when learning a new route to travel, pick up a lot more landmarks than men. One way to describe this is that men tend to navigate with some over-all directional sense, while women find their way by following landmarks. No big deal, but a very real difference -- and one which has also been observed in rats.

Books like these are invaluable, since they enable discusssion to begin anew on an entirely different level. At least we can stop kicking dead horses like "all sex differences are caused by child-rearing."

The book is full of dry scientific data, but can be profitably skimmed.

Highly recommended!