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Women's Fiction
The Wonder of Girls : Understanding the Hidden Nature of Our Daughters

The Wonder of Girls : Understanding the Hidden Nature of Our Daughters

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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Is this the road to equality?
Review: While I think Mr. Gurian has some valid points, one has to ask oneself, do you believe in equality of the sexes or do you believe in selective equality ( when it is convenient, or in ones interest). I also am far from being convinced in the wisdom or even the intelligence of "society's agenda".
Do we even condone boys following their hormonal instincts let alone their reprodictve instincts? Why are girls instincts more sacred? With the population forecast to approach 12 billion by the end of the century, reproduction of each member of our society is not necessarly at the top of the survival list.
None of us get all our needs or agendas met; get used to it!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Insightful read
Review: Wow, this must be a love or hate tome. I really enjoyed it and found it refereshing that the author so often cites the hard sciences instead of reverting to mush-brained New Age feel-good philosophies that so many psychologists refer to.

Positives: Dispels some of the misguided feminist ideas that have been harmful to girls/women over the years. He treads carefully in this area, tipping his hat at times to the aspects of feminist theory that have validity (i.e. have some basis in reality and the physiological realm). Also, I think the fact that a male spoke out on the topic was very pleasant, because I never got the feeling that he had a particular agenda to push or had some stake in trying to push equality while turning a blind eye to the facts.

Negatives: I agree with another reviewer that the reader gets beat over the head with praise for the Gurian Institute. Sorry, never heard of it until now and didn't need to hear that much about it. If anything, I think he was too gentle in dismissing some of the feminist ideas. On one hand, he would dismantle certain feminist ideas with his physiological evidences, but then he would qualify his remarks by saying the feminist theories had still fulfilled an important role. Huh? That link was never very clear to me. Theory A has taught many women to believe erroneous things about their nature; however, being blinded by these falsehoods has been good for some, so that makes
it okay in the long run.

In summary, I think most readers will appreciate the intellectual honesty that went into it. If, however, you're hung up on the idea that "equality" means that we need to disregard the physical evidences for performance differences that exist in many areas between the genders, then you'll no doubt resent Gurian's findings. Gurian cites plenty of feminist authors that you can retreat to if you want to delude yourself with those notions.


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