A new study looking at the objectification of women may, at first glance, come off as important research to highlight, but I'm also finding it extremely problematic. The Guardian reports:
Men are more likely to think of women as objects if they have looked at sexy pictures of females beforehand, psychologists said yesterday.Researchers used brain scans to show that when straight men looked at pictures of women in bikinis, areas of the brain that normally light up in anticipation of using tools, like spanners and screwdrivers, were activated.
Scans of some of the men found that a part of the brain associated with empathy for other peoples' emotions and wishes shut down after looking at the pictures.
Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, said the changes in brain activity suggest sexy images can shift the way men perceive women, turning them from people to interact with, to objects to act upon. (Emphasis mine)
If you read the whole piece, you can see that the researchers seem to have good intentions. But while they're acknowledging the oversexualization of women in American culture, suggesting that men are hardwired to objectify women is really dangerous, and for obvious reasons. Simply taking naked women out of the picture (figuratively and literally) is not going to resolve the problem, and implying that "men can't help it" will just be used to contribute to the same sexist customs and rape culture that we're fighting against.
Sure, "sexy images" of women may be one trigger that results in our objectification. But the hand behind that trigger is what should really be looked at here. It's not what's found in men's heads, but what's being ingrained into them.
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From what you have here, I don't get the impression that the study is claiming men are hard-wired to think this way. I'll have to go look at the full study later, but the chunk you pasted here actually makes it sound more like the pictures themselves are encouraging the test subjects to conceive of women more like objects or tools--which would actually support the feminist critique of this kind of imagery. Men aren't hard-wired to be jerks--they have to be trained into it. :)
What Human Bean said. The mere presence of a neural correlate to thoughts of objectification in men says little about whether this tendency is "innate" or not.
Yeah I had the same thought when I read her critique. I've read before that watching porn often alters the wiring of one's brain so that an addiction can form. Perhaps the subjects studied here have that addiction. Well, really you don't even need to watch porn to have an alteration I don't think. Just seeing scantily clad women on TV and in magazines, etc. is enough to change the "wiring" for lack of a better word (I'm obviously not a neurologist) of the brain. So you're right, the simple fact that there's a neural change from empathetic to non-empathetic isn't enough to say that the men studies were born with that way of thinking.
This study shows why a simulated rape game is a social and public health issue. It also confirms a lot of Catherine MacKinnon's theories about porn. Which is not to say that men can't make their own decisions and control their own actions. However, there is other evidence that exposure to electronic media dulls children's empathy as well. What's the difference between hard wiring and a predictable psychological response? How much control do we have of our own psyches?
How does one "confirm" pseudoscience, logical fallacies and general stupidity (which is what McKinnon's "theories" about porn consist of).
While I can only speak for myself and not other men, I have found that looking at pictures of attractive women does not shut off my empathy for others.
The final paragraph of the article certainly suggests that the effect differs from man to man, and it is not surprising that the more sexist ones were the least likely feel empathy or to understand others' emotions.
IMO, this last bit shows the power of cultural influences and training (or lack thereof).
It's very possible that culture contributes to the idea that sexy women are tools to be used and "less than" other women (virgin/whore). Sexist men may be the ones who swallow this message more readily.
It doesn't really make sense to me that just seeing women's naked body parts would make men lose empathy for women. Unless I consider the fact that they're taught from the beginning that sexy/naked women aren't fully human. Also that porn "presents" women in such a way as to be "on display" like you'd see fruit arranged in a market. Somehow porn is just different that way from plain old pictures.
One question I have is how empathy is measured in this study. Is it empathy toward men/women/children/animals?
Yeah, I don't see anything in that article about anything being hardwired, either.
I'd like to read this study to see what it actually says, but from the article, it seems like it hasn't been published yet, so what we're getting is a reporter's summary of a talk, which really doesn't seem terribly reliable as a source.
I also have a lot of questions about the study--how did they assess the sexism level of the participants? Why did they just focus on heterosexual male subjects and pictures of women in bikinis? What would happen if the participants were women? What would happen if it was feminist/fetish/bdsm/nonnormative porn? And also, doesn't it make sense that while you watch porn the parts of your brain that deal with human connection shut down? Porn (for the viewer) isn't about love, it's about getting off--I bet the same things happen for anyone who looks at porn. I would doubt its long-term consequences.
If a completely peer reviewed and explored piece of science proves beyond a doubt that 'men are hardwired to objectify women' then the only thing thing left to do is to work to mitigate that innate tendency.
Arguing about the merits of science is counter-productive as it's the only source of verifiable truth there is. Attacking the science because it's finding are 'dangerous' doesn't remove the danger, it just removes the only way we'll ever cope with the phenomena it's discovered.
I totally agree with this sentiment--well, except for the fact that science is inherently incapable of proving anything "beyond a doubt."
The problem here is that no peer-reviewed studies have shown anything of the sort. This is preliminary, and even if it weren't, it's miles away from saying that men are hardwired to do anything. There is nothing to say one way or the other whether this is innate or trained (and I highly suspect it is the latter anyway).
I'll definitely agree with you that science is incapable of proving things beyond a doubt, excuse my loose turn of phrase.
But the only thing anywhere near to proof is empiric science. Any other form of truth is hearsay or conjecture, and a priori worse than science which checks it's theories against reality.
If the above story hasn't been scientifically verified, then it's in the same league of rumour and conjecture as any other unchecked theory.
The idea that "men can't help it" is just a pernicious as it's opposite, that only abnormal men commit sexual crime. The investigation of the triggers that can cause anti-social behaviour should be of paramount importance.
The scientific identification of probable causes, whether the lack of or the excess of stimuli, is going to be the only way to strip the perpetrators of any excuse for actions that cause so much violence.
Even if these results can be replicated, they don't show much of anything about motivations or stimuli or anything else. All is show is that a certain segment of the brain shows activity when some of the men are shown these images. It's a long long way from seeing certain regions light up to being able to interpret what that actually means in terms of thoughts and motivations, and another long way from there to actions.
the only thing anywhere near to proof is empiric science. Any other form of truth is hearsay or conjecture, and a priori worse than science
Ahahaha. Maybe you mean "evidence" when you say "proof" or "truth" there. It seems awfully ironic to me though to assert that there is no other "form of truth" besides the empirical, and then to assert something about it as a priori. Good times.
/derail
A bit off-topic perhaps, but I have to object to your assertion that science is the only verifiable source of truth... It is not: what about common sense? About know-how (instead of know-that)? And what about experience?
Part of the feminist struggle in the 1960s and 70s had been to criticize science for its privileged status in the description and explanation of reality - which, for all its objectivity (or should I say "objectivity") has consistently excluded the experiences and common sensical notions of marginalized groups in society. Science always speaks from somewhere - which is not to say its results can't be useful or valid. But it is positioned knowledge, just as common sense, or experience, is positioned..
as for verification - verification is not, as you might know, the criterion by which (natural) scientific research is judged. Falsification is far more important in the inductive approach (which is shared by all sciences except math, logica, and philosophy).
PS i do agree with the latter part of your statement - that 'dangerous' results/findings need not be attacked but dealt with.
...yeah, this sort of scares me. In addition to naturalizing misogyny, it could also authorize a lot of paternalistic and protectionist attitudes toward women's bodies and sexuality... injunctions to cover up and hide away and the like.
I feel like there's also a question to be raised about whether viewing someone like one would view an object is in and of itself problematic outside the meaning that objectification accrues within the context of patriarchy, as something that reinforces or may reinforce a misogynistic violence and a certain set of unequal relationships of power... it sounds like the researcher makes an analytical leap between "areas of the brain that normally light up in anticipation of using tools, like spanners and screwdrivers, were activated" and "sexy images can shift the way men perceive women, turning them from people to interact with, to objects to act upon." We use tools like screwdrivers to complete very specific tasks, and I think objectifying photos often function similarly, as a tool for getting off. On a very literal way, an image, any image, is a thing, so I think that it makes sense images would activate the same part of our brain that other things activate ...but does this automatically mean that we begin to view people as things in real-life interaction??? And even if we do objectify our partners, does this inherently contribute to patriarchy or other systemic oppressions, or is there a way objectification can happen that is more consensual, and what agency, if any, can the objectified person have or not have???
These are totally real, unanswered questions for me... it's something I struggle with as a Queer male, because I feel like my mother's virulent anti-porn stance (anytime you look at a photo while you masturbate, any photo, you turn that person into a thing, which is inherently unethical) contributed to a lot of my shame around sexuality and my own sexual desire... and I feel like I struggle to reconcile what feels like my own Queer/feminist double standard that objectifying images of men are mostly OK and objectifying images of women are inherently problematic.
...yeah, this sort of scares me. In addition to naturalizing misogyny, it could also authorize a lot of paternalistic and protectionist attitudes toward women's bodies and sexuality... injunctions to cover up and hide away and the like.
I feel like there's also a question to be raised about whether viewing someone like one would view an object is in and of itself problematic outside the meaning that objectification accrues within the context of patriarchy, as something that reinforces or may reinforce a misogynistic violence and a certain set of unequal relationships of power... it sounds like the researcher makes an analytical leap between "areas of the brain that normally light up in anticipation of using tools, like spanners and screwdrivers, were activated" and "sexy images can shift the way men perceive women, turning them from people to interact with, to objects to act upon." We use tools like screwdrivers to complete very specific tasks, and I think objectifying photos often function similarly, as a tool for getting off. On a very literal way, an image, any image, is a thing, so I think that it makes sense images would activate the same part of our brain that other things activate ...but does this automatically mean that we begin to view people as things in real-life interaction??? And even if we do objectify our partners, does this inherently contribute to patriarchy or other systemic oppressions, or is there a way objectification can happen that is more consensual, and what agency, if any, can the objectified person have or not have???
These are totally real, unanswered questions for me... it's something I struggle with as a Queer male, because I feel like my mother's virulent anti-porn stance (anytime you look at a photo while you masturbate, any photo, you turn that person into a thing, which is inherently unethical) contributed to a lot of my shame around sexuality and my own sexual desire... and I feel like I struggle to reconcile what feels like my own Queer/feminist double standard that objectifying images of men are mostly OK and objectifying images of women are inherently problematic.
I just wanted to say I really liked this comment. It questions a lot of things that I find fearful - doesn't put them to rest, but brings the questions back up in the air again. Thanks.
I also didn't see the claim that it was hard wired. actually, in the link at least, it speculates on causality but can't prove it.
Judging by other things that this researcher has published, and her comments in the article, it seems like the interpretation she's trying to get from this data is that seeing sexualized images of women affects how men view and interact with other women. There doesn't seem to be anything in the findings reported in that article that supports that, though. And the "treat as objects" part is highly speculative -- the brain scans can suggest, though not prove, that the men were thinking in the same way that they think while using a tool, but that's a long way from thinking of the women themselves as objects. That part of the brain could have other functions. Or the "tool" part could have been lighting up because they were thinking about how the bikini unfastens. There's nowhere near enough data here to definitively conclude anything.
Is it possible that the "tool" the men were thinking of using was their penis, and not the woman pictured?
Which would make sense, since to carry out a physical operation or movement would require the same part of the brain as is used for tools and other items.
I totally agree that this is problematic. Saying that men are "hard-wired" to be sexist does nothing but give them a "get out of jail free card" when they are.
I know other commenters have said something similar, but as a med student, I felt obliged to throw my two cents in:
MRI scans don't tell us anything about "hardwiring," as Vanessa calls it. In fact, MRI scans can be used to show the effects of conditioning. There is an interesting study that was used for my neurology course to demonstrate the effects of emotional attachment on the brain. Couples who had just gotten together, and those who had been married for a certain number of years were scanned, and their brains were compared. In that case, a certain area of the brain associated with attachment (the ventral tegmental area) lit up more strongly in the married couples. Now, no rational person would suggest that the married couples were "hardwired" to love each other more. The study demonstrated a neuronal change induced by experience. And, more than likely, that's also what this study demonstrated.
The point is that neurons have plasticity -- Conditioning actually changes the brain. And it can change again! And again!
As an neuroscientist who works with MRI, I want to emphasize Cecilia's comment.
functionalMRI shows changes in brain activity across tasks, i.e. the neural correlates of behavior. It does not imply that anything is "hardwired" (the brain is very soft, flexible, and has trillions of connections).
What the data show is that viewing certain images can lead to a bias in processing such that women are treated more like inanimate objects than people.
Simply observing this neural effect does not imply that this effect is natural or inherent to being male.
That is exactly how I read the excerpts in the study. I took it to mean that because women are constantly displayed in this way in our media and culture, that this barrage of objectification becomes how men see women, not that men are naturally wired to think that way. It makes total sense. Pavlov, anyone?
Interesting!I've never thought of the brain as hard-wired for anything. I think human brains are highly malleable.
Whether or not the study suggests men are hardwired toward the objectification of women is besides the point. People can be genetically/physically predisposed toward many things, but that hardly justifies behavior based on that hardwiring.
There's a genetic predisposition toward alcoholism for example, but it hardly justifies drunk driving. Conversely, you can grow up in a household of domestic violence but it wouldn't justify beating your wife.
Unless you're actually INSANE you're responsible for your own behavior. Full stop.
Ummm... duh... how about the way men are socialized to respond to sexy pictures is what actually shows up on the brain scan? Hello?
Precisely. Just because the brain shows this, doesn't mean it's hardwired to do so. The mind is reflection of social implications. The brain is not. That's why the two are regarded separately.
I'm always skeptical of studies done like this because there is a lot of room for interpretation when it comes to brain functions. However, it would not surprise me at all to find conclusively that men relate images of sexualized women more to objects than humans. In the media beautiful, highly sexualized women are constantly on display as little more than decoration. Attractive women are simply part of the marketing landscape. How often do most people encounter gorgeous, scantily clad women in person? It's not surprising then, that the brain does not relate an image of a sexualized woman to a person behind it, particularly when that image is delivered the same way as a lot of advertising (a photograph).
I agree with other commenters that the conclusion doesn't seem to suggest that it is hard-wired. Experience can shape how our brain handles or classifies data. Anyone with access to mainstream media has repeatedly been exposed to images of sexy women who are given little to no humanity or personality.
Alright, others have pointed out how Vanessa got the interpretation of the actual experiment wrong above, so I won't retread that ground.
A more interesting addition is that current studies are showing that the brain does not perceive tools as "objects to act upon," but rather as an extension of the body.
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/6/2209.abstract
So, when these men in this study look at the picture (and remember that this is a picture of a woman in a bikini and not an actual woman in an actual bikini), the picture literally becomes part of them. While the women aren't being perceived as humans, they aren't really being perceived as objects, either.
Showing that the premotor cortex is activated does not prove that men think of women as objects. Neuroscientists only know loose correlations between areas of the brain and thoughts, because it is incredibly complex and interwoven. The premotor cortex is used for initiating all actions, not just the use of tools, so this finding could mean that the men were thinking about the physical act of sex.
This was not published, peer-reviewed research, it was a presentation at a conference, meaning it has never been replicated or judged by anyone outside of Fiske's lab.
"It's not what's found in men's heads, but what's being ingrained into them."
Yes, this. Of course, it's difficult to scientifically quantify how someone is socialized, so I can understand if this particular experiment doesn't discuss the ways those men became that way in the first place. It's not something they can measure with this kind of experiment. Ideally, this kind of scientific research would go hand-in-hand with related sociological studies. Gathering and presenting this kind of physical data while pretending there's no social context from which it arises really does just reinforce sexist norms.
People who do this type of research don't pretend there's no social context. On the contrary, they are very aware of the related sociological studies. Social neuroscience studies the neural correlates of phenomena observed by social psychologists. In turn the social psychologists are specifically targeting how the individual is influenced by others, and thus design experiments based on observed sociological phenomenon.
The experiment was designed to examine how placing sexual images of women in the work environment can lead to a situation where female employees are objectified by their male coworkers. I don't think the researchers were trying to reinforce sexist norms.
Fair enough, but sociobiologists do similar research and they often use it to excuse bad human behaviors.
Yes, I'd urge you to not be so forgiving. This study checks out, but many studies--or at least the reporting on them (which is more important to the public eye)--are incredibly forgiving whenever they find a biological explanation, or even a biological effect, and they often make the jump to innate programming and biological imperatives.
In many cases, when the news media gets wind of a study they include conclusions that are not actually present in the study. And they usually go straight for the most superficial, unexamined types of causality. So if a study is released that shows girls are inclined to have a particular behavioral response while boys have another, an article written about that data will often say "Boys naturally do xyz while girls... etc. etc." even though the study itself does not speculate on the cause of difference in behavior. The media is really, really terrible at covering scientific studies and they seem to only latch onto them when they might produce a shocking (albeit inaccurate) headline.
It's nearly impossible to avoid researcher bias and there are plenty of scientific studies that do exist to excuse bad behavior. However, a lot of the conclusions we see in the mainstream media are not a product of the studies themselves.
I agree with the sentiment of many people here. I just think about it this way;
Human beings aren't "hardwired" to think of something the shape of a spanner/drill/hammer/computer/any other tool AS a tool. That is something that we have been taught.
Ergo, seeing women in a similar way also must be taught.
But I think that might have been Vanessa's point.
Saying that it's "in the brains of men" to objectify women is missing the point for feminists. We already know this, of course it is. It's ingrained in some women too. We need to go that step further and figure out why women can be correlated with a spanner.
Enter feminism!
Kudos to Vanessa for the apt title of the post...."New research on women's objectification ain't so simple", because after reading the Guardian article it this particular piece of research is downright wacky.
here are the final 3 paragraphs of the article:
"In the study, Fiske's team put straight men into an MRI brain scanner and showed them images of either clothed men and women, or more scantily clad men and women. When they took a memory test afterwards, the men best remembered images of bikini-clad women whose heads had been digitally removed.
The brain scans showed that when men saw the images of the women's bodies, activity increased in part of the brain called the premotor cortex, which is involved in urges to take action. The same area lights up before using power tools to do DIY. "It's as if they immediately thought to act on theses bodies," Fiske said.
In the final part of the study, Fiske asked the men to fill in a questionnaire that was used to assess how sexist they were. The brain scans showed that men who scored highest had very little activity in the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions that are involved with understanding another person's feelings and intentions. "They're reacting to these women as if they're not fully human," Fiske said."
I added the bolding. This is such poor reporting of "science" it's really unbelievable. The number of subjects used in the study isn't mentioned and infact Fiske's own website mentions nothing about the study itself, nor does the AAAS 2009 annual meeting website. Lot's of news reporting of science won't include these details, but they should atleast include a reference to the study data, apparently it's unpublished.
But even dealing with what was included in the article is enough to see that this study should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
The test subjects were shown pictures of womens bodies with the heads digitally removed and then the researchers concluded that "They're reacting to these women as if they're not fully human,"....??
So they de-humanize and objectify the female images shown to the subjects - measure the responses of the subjects - and then re-humanize them (ie "these women") when reporting their so called findings.
Agreed.
They took the time to portray women as less than human and then implied surprise that what should be the expected results occurred. One is not expected to interact with scantily clad, headless bodies of women in daily activity. It makes no sense to assume that one's reaction to images like that would be at all comparable to one's reaction to an actual living woman with whom one would normally be interacting.
It's profoundly frustrating to me that, in our multimedia and hypertext age, the news media and blogs rely on popsci articles without ever linking to the study in question. At least the abstract would offer a clearer picture and should be freely available.
For that matter, the same is true of legislation and litigation.
It's pretty frustrating not to be able to find a link to the actual research. Everything that comes up in Google seems to point back to this same Guardian article.
I'd *really* like to know how other people responded, assuming they bothered to test. Because it would make a big difference whether straight men are the only ones to light up the fMRI this way.
And maybe it's because I'm a sex blogger but I'm sort of curious if the results would have been the same if the people in the photos were fully clothed and/or completely undressed. Because that bit about tool-using parts of the brain makes me wonder if they're measuring a desire to objectify the women in the photographs or parsing out how to tie or untie the bikinis. Of course that could be worse not better -- how to get someone out of their clothes is none of our flipping business without an invitation -- but it *would* significantly alter the interpretation. Tool-manipulating brain activity would also explain why the signals were clearer when clothes were left on but heads were cropped out. (Remember that in other pop-cog-psych tests men as opposed to women first spend a lot of time assessing faces in photographs.) And not to sound fussy but I'd also really like to know whether those parts of the brain lights up only for screwdrivers and photos women in bikinis or if some more general/abstract cognition is happening in those areas. For instance intuition says the same brain areas would light up if men were instead shown demonstrations of CPR on, say, elderly people.
So. Thing is without *some* kind of information about the study we only know what the researchers think the results mean. As I've made clear it could be lots worse (could be anticipating undressing anonymous women) or more benign (could be everybody does it; could be a more generalizable activity.) But meanwhile Google already turns up 430 hits for the keywords "Susan Fiske brain scans bikini screwdriver." Chances are approximately zero that any of those 430 pages will be updated if further information turns out not to support our preconceptions about objectification.
figleaf
I think learning (experience) has a lot to do with -everything ! Depends on the individual,also. Maybe some of us are more- -evolved than others !
I remember when studying Greek architecture etc.- that some ancient Greek statues of Venus that were found, had semen stains/traces on them.
How's that for "hard" porn !!!!
I haven't read the whole study, but just based on this post:
1) I don't think the part quoted suggested that men are hardwired to view attractive women as tools.
2) Even if it did, you can't ask scientists to suppress valid results because you don't like them. If they had actually obtained the above result through valid science, it would be something worth discussing, not censoring.
2) Agreed. There's something really rotten about accepting or rejecting scientific research based on whether you like the outcome, or its social significance. If this article had pointed to the opposite, that objectification is purely a product of environment, I bet OP would have jumped all over it and not questioned the veracity of the report's claims. Correct me if I'm wrong!
There's a tendency among the arts and humanities to manipulate and distort scientific research to support a conclusion which has already been reached; this is true on the right as it is the left, and the outcome can be deeply counter-productive, if not harmful.
Of course this is not helped by the fact that some scientists, funded by special interest groups (e.g. the tobacco companies) produce unscientific studies themselves.
Disclaimer: the following sounds harsh...but my disappointment in this piece reflects my general love of this blog and desire to be able to continue reading it, for what it's worth.
As a scientist, this is just the type of writing that has sent me running from other feminist blogs. It's awesome that y'all want to comment on what's going on in the scientific world--many "laypeople" aren't interested--but it's pretty irresponsible for someone with limited to no expertise (conflating "in the brain" with "hard-wired" is a pretty typical mistake of people who haven't been trained to think about the brain) to make wild claims about the "complicated"-ness of a study. A not on this mistake: it's not clear whether, by "hard-wired", you meant "in the brain" or "innate". Clearly, evidence that the brain is involved in a function does not prove that it's innate. And if you were surprised that the way men objectify women is "in the brain", you really have no right to criticize this research--you clearly have a tenuous, at best, understanding of neuroscience.
Furthermore, it's very misguided to complain that the results of a study are "complicated" or might give some people reason to be misogynistic. If research is conducted well, it tells us something about how the world actually is. There will always be people who seek to use science to justify their messed-up view of the world--that doesn't mean good science shouldn't be conducted, and it doesn't mean that science is "dangerous", something to be censored by non-scientists.
If you wish to criticize the piece, criticize it as potentially bad science. This will require a much stronger understanding of scientific principles and the field of neuroscience, but perhaps this blog could use a contributor with scientific expertise, anyway.
Bottom line, I'm disappointed that you printed such an irresponsible piece.
*note
sorry! :)
I gotta agree. It would be better to do something like interview a scientist about this piece and see if your understanding fits. Its very dangerous to try to suppress science just because you don't like the results (which aren't even results the study actually came up with in this case).
This.
As an aside -- I can't help but wonder about what the specific pictures they were looking at were really like. Were they very posed, airbrushed, etc, or were they snapshots of normal people on the beach? Would reactions to the two be different (my intuition is that they would be, at least slightly)?
That would definitely be a major factor - you see a picture that's airbrushed/posed/otherwise "fake," you'd probably be a lot less likely to see it as fully human. I'd like to see a study of empathetic reactions to spontaneous vs. posed pictures of people.
I'd be curious to know if the results would be any different for straight women looking at pictures of sexy *men*.
From what I can tell from the Gaurdian article, they were looking at bikini-clad women whose heads had been *cropped off*. Or at least those were the images that seemed to be activating the "powertools" region. I'd love to read the this study when it comes out, to learn what went into the choice to include images without (and presumably with) heads.
National Geographic added the following on the sexism of the men:
"...the men who scored higher as "hostile sexists"—those who view women as controlling and invaders of male space—didn't show brain activity that indicates they saw the women in bikinis as humans with thoughts and intentions.
Scientists have seen this absence of activation only once before, in a study where people were shown off-putting photographs of homeless people and drug addicts."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090216-bikinis-women-men-objects.html
This is a great example of how research gets simplified and thus frequently misinterpreted by the news or by people who read it. I attended the talk and: Although these patterns of thinking are supported by scans of brain activity, this does not at all mean that men are "hardwired" to think that way. Brain activity is not the same at all as innate "hardwiring." Fiske talked at length, both during the talk and the press conference, about the influence of culture. She also stressed that there is much variation amongst men in their brains' responses; said that education makes a big difference; etc.
So: make sure you understand the research before you start launching your critiques.