Geek Girl Musings

My friend Mara over at Knitting Obsession posted a link to a New York Times article called "The Male Condition" by Simon Baron-Cohen, which speaks to brain scans being used to study gender differences and how it might relate to autism. Specifically, it talks about how levels of prenatal testosterone affect fetal brains. Mara wonders if she falls into the 17% of women who have a "male brain," and I'm wondering the same thing about myself. The study broke participants down into three categories based on their score on the Systemizing vs. Empathizing spectrum -- Type E were those who tested high for empathy, Type S were for those who tested high on systemizing and Type B were those who tested equally in both areas.

Like my friend, I like being female, but my interests have always leaned toward typically male interests (yes, I played with Barbies, but she stole G.I. Joe's gun and went on her own missions). Even today, I make my living designing and programming web sites. Prior to that I worked in television behind the camera. I had much more fun running cables and lugging around equipment than I ever did as on-air talent. However, like many women I have a well-developed sense of language. I have, in fact, written two novels. Though unpublished, the sheer ability to write 180,000 words coherently means an above average ability with language. So, I don't know if this ability is a mild obession with a language system (see Baron-Cohen's theory on autism and obsessions with systems), or if it's having a typical female brain with thicker connective tissue between hemispheres granting better facility with language. Or pehaps my ability to perform activities that require both sides of the brain to work together (both web design and writing involve simultaneous use of the creative and systemic thinking modes), means that I fall into the Type B category.

(On the language front, I should disclose that my grandfather spoke five languages and my father speaks two, so perhaps it's just lucky genetics.)

I do have a tendency to concentrate on one particular thing at time -- I listen to a CD and only that CD in the car until I get sick of it; I find an author that I like and read all of her novels in a row; I continually obsess about this blog. . . I don't enjoy multi-tasking, but can do it when required of me. I always chocked it up to just having a one-track mind, a simple personality quirk, but maybe it's not. Hmm. Or maybe I'm just an original.