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by Jeanette Winterson

Apparently, it’s all about evolution, and even though no one has been a caveman for a very long time, the brain is old-fashioned and keeps us humans in the hunter-gatherer paradigm. What we learned then is how we live now. Nature beats Nurture (if you are female). Except that the brain isn’t old-fashioned; the brain is how we live now, which means that as we subject the brain to ideas about sex and gender the brain will respond to those ideas – especially when they are profoundly reinforced by social structures, including the power of religion and the power of patriarchy. Big structures! The brain can change – it is plastic in its endeavours and responses. What makes change hard is us humans. We are still in thrall to the idea of gender essentialism. But why do we get caught up in what’s Nature or what’s Nurture? Humans are not Nature/Nurture. Humans are narrative. The stories we hear. The stories we tell. The stories we must learn to tell differently.