Intelligence of men and women

[Guest guest]

> (H.H. Hridayananda Maharaj in the Purport of SB 11.21.19) (Who said he was

> pro-feminist?)

>

> means having little brain substance. Physiologically, within the brain

> there are brain substance. It is found that the brain substance in man is

> found up to 64 ounce. They are very highly intellectual persons. And in

> woman the brain substance is not found more than 34 ounce. You’ll find,

> therefore, that there is no very great scientist, mathematician,

> philosopher, among women. You’ll never find because their brain substance

> cannot go.

 

Wonderful facts, that unfortunately are false. According to this quote the

weight of the female brain is almost half that of the male brain. An

austounding

non-fact. Maybe this is a typo, or maybe many in ISKCON really belive these

kind of things.

 

A very short search on the internet yielded some quotes:

 

> As we have said, brain weights among human beings vary enormously. In

> giving measurements of brain size for contemporary man,

> it is customary to use grams rather than cubic centimeters, but for

> reasons which it is not necessary to enter into here, the two forms

> of measurement in this case are virtually the same. The average for the

> adult male European is about 1375 gm. whereas the brain of

> Turgenev, the Russian novelist, weighed 2021 gm. (Ref. 10) It was exceeded

> by that of only two others so far recorded: one was

> an imbecile. Then there is the record of a laborer whose brain weighed

> 1925 gm. and a bricklayer, 1900 gm. The brain weight of

> Gambetta, the famous French statesman, was only 1294 gm., or less than the

> average European. A woman's brain is slightly smaller

> than man's, and the largest woman's brain recorded was 1742 gm. - she was

> insane. Another woman's brain of large size weighed

> 1580 gm., and she also was insane. It is some evidence of the unimportance

> of brain size that the brain of Anatole France weighed

> only 1017 gm. while the brain of Bismark weighed 1807 gm. (Ref. 11)

 

> He thus concluded that all the recorded facts indicate that neither the

> size nor the form of the brain, nor the surface of the

> hemispheres or their wrinkled pattern in general or in detail, can

> possibly furnish a reliable clue to the amount and degree of

> general or special mental qualities. So there it is. Weidenreich said:

> (Ref. 32)

>

> In the face of all these facts, it is hard to understand why people

cannot

> get rid of the idea that mere size or configuration

> of a special convolution or fissure must give a clue to the mental

> qualities in general and to those of certain individuals

> in particular.

 

You can search through internet, or thorough medical litterature, and come

to the same conclusion.

 

Brain wieght/size appears to be correlated to body size. A women have

around 10% less brain weight that a comparative male (but also wieght

around 10% less).. The quote above shows that bigger brain

does not necessarily create great philosophers and scientists. So the

question is what 10% less average brain wieght actually mean in reality.

 

Now what puzzles me is that brain size is discussed at all, in light of that

devotees know that the mental faculties are situated in the subtle body,

and not the gross. Thus maybe someone means that the weight of the

subtle brain is bigger in males. But 64 ounces is then quite a lot for a

piece

of subtle brain.

 

Average human brain weight is around 3 pounds. I don't know how that

translates to ounces.

 

So if women are to be less intelligent, please come with some better

arguments than brain weight, thank you.