Analyzing My Own Assumptions

Ferraz de Almeida Junior, Jose, "Girl with a Book"  (1850-1899) via Wikipedia Commons, Creative Commons License

We can't truly asses the cultural beliefs in a text until we take a step back and analyze our own beliefs, values, and morals, as these affect the way we look at a situation, just as they affect the text and the author of the text. In this post I will address these personal cultural relevances, and slightly step out of the frame to analyze myself and my relationship with the text.

1. My own personal beliefs coincide with the culture surrounding my text, that there is a clear problem with the inequality between sexes, especially in the U.S.. I myself have not been a victim of the interdisciplinary sexism in neuroscience that is mentioned in my text (neurosexism, as Cahill refers to it), but I have experienced blanket sexism as a woman, so this lies close to my own cultural beliefs and experiences.

2. I do not share the belief that is referred to in my text as widely accepted by cultures, that studying the difference between the sexes is "sexist". Sexism I believe, is a matter of opinion, not fact, so one can not give unbiased, factual results from experimentation and just by doing so be declaring one sex better than another.

3. My text is very close to my personal culture, so there are not very many differences due to cultural separation or distance. I will say, however, that much of the background and culture involving neuroscience that is involved in my text is not very personal or relatable to me, as I don't know the subject that well.

4. My text was written only a year ago, in 2014, so not a great amount has changed in cultural values in just one year. However, I think, or hope at least, that as time progresses, over the years, the tension and inequality between genders will minimize, so it won't be as controversial or "sexist" to look at the differences between the sexes, as less people will be prone to interpret the results in a way that glorifies or exemplifies a specific sex.