The Brains of Men and Women Are 'Wired Differently' 509
Rambo Tribble writes "Research out of the University of Philadelphia concludes there are major differences in the neural pathways in the brains of men and women. Men, they say, are wired more front-to-back, women more side-to-side. 'The results establish that male brains are optimized for intrahemispheric and female brains for interhemispheric communication. The developmental trajectories of males and females separate at a young age, demonstrating wide differences during adolescence and adulthood. The observations suggest that male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes.' They propose this may explain why women have been found to be better multitaskers. Of course, this may also have ramifications for what skill and career proclivities each sex exhibits."
Social division of labor (Score:5, Funny)
And the poisonous ideologies invented to justify it, and the pervasive violence employed to enforce it. For women's liberation through socialist revolution! Abolish the family!
Re:Social division of labor (Score:5, Funny)
...and kill all the intolerant people, too!
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What the fuck indeed! My wife used to work with Professor Gur... in UPenn. This must be a very unpopular study, to result in him getting kicked of of the University of Pennsylvania, all the way to the much less known (does it even exist?) University of Philadelphia...
Oh noooos! (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't tell me! Men and women might be different!?!?!?!?!?
Re:Oh noooos! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, so can we please stop pretending that it is a travesty that few women are interested in IT?
Sure, let them do it if they're interested, but if they aren't interested they don't need to have their noses rubbed into it in high school with the expectation that the gender gap in that particular career field will close.
Re:Oh noooos! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm curious whether this difference is caused by by genetics.
Boys and girls at a young age also learn to dress differently, that doesn't mean it's genetic. Our brains are environmentally influenced to some degree; do we know how much that was found by this study is environmental vs. genetic?
Re:Oh noooos! (Score:4, Insightful)
The alternative is that it is cultural, but the thing is that this is common throughout just about every culture.
Re:Oh noooos! (Score:5, Insightful)
Having said that most people understand that "equality" was, and still is, about freedom from systematic social and legal oppression. Having grown up in the 60's I imagine it's difficult for people under 30 to understand what women were complaining about when burning their bra's in the 70's. I must confess as a young male I was strongly in favour of bra-burning, even though I had little interest in what they were saying.
The western world owes the civil rights movement a great deal, and it's a great shame that my children's generation, now in their early 30's, generally have a poor understanding of the word "equality" and virtually no idea about the price paid by women and blacks to obtain it in the mid 20th century.
Re:Oh noooos! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh noooos! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but I cannot feel anything but utterly patronized by your comment.
The reason you feel patronised by TapeCutter's comment is because he's right.
This is the cognitive dissonance caused by hearing something that disagrees with your world view... The problem is you cant seem to handle that your world view is quite wrong.
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Of course it does...it comes with having a dick and wanting to get laid.
This part of the article:
Leads me to think this.....the male perception of wanting to get laid and seeing good looking females, that brain structure leads him to coordinated action on what he must do, how to act or what to tell the potential sex pa
Re:Oh noooos! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Oh noooos! (Score:5, Insightful)
My theory is that women are far to smart to get suckered into IT.
They're interested (Score:5, Informative)
See the book "Unlocking the Clubhouse" for how high-achieving girls fascinated by computers suffer a death by a thousand cuts and switch fields despite their preference.
Re:They're interested (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, you both realize, that it could be both
There may be few women in IT because:
a) the female brain is wired differently than the male
AND
b) the women who are interested, are mocked, ostracized, and outcast
However, I don't believe we should be bending over backwards to ensure the percentages of any group in any field. We should be ensuring that all people have the same opportunities and same encouragement in all fields.
i.e. Vigorously stamp down on (b). Ignore (a). Don't care about the numbers.
Re:They're interested (Score:5, Insightful)
That book throws around statistics, but it offers self selected anecdotal evidence to cite reasons of injustice. If you start out thinking you're up against an entrenched "all boys club" and bring your own venom to the table then cause hostility through over-sensitivity, you're going to have a bad time, mkay? Did you know men and boys pick on each other as a form of bonding? Did you know little girls are even worse at the verbal bullying via hurtful spite filled comments and gossip? Visit any all-girl school and see for yourself. Given the facts about how women treat each other, I find it incredibly disingenuous to present spaces less than mostly male occupied as giving females quicker deaths by thousands of cuts -- Especially given the goddess like preferential treatment the women I know of in tech receive.
I've seen it time and again. A social justice warrior or feminist will arrive with teeth bared expecting a hostile environment of the mostly male gamedevs -- ignoring that gamedevs and players are different -- ready to strike at any perceived injustice: "Only 20% of the award winners are female?! That's sexist." Uh, yeah, 20% of the submissions were by females. Odd thing, that algebraic equality... 1 = 1; 20 == 20. However, now that accusations have been made, folks aren't going to be reacting very nicely -- least of all the females among us who see such shit stirrers as exactly that: Drama queens, deserving of the same sort of poisonous treatment they dish out.
"We need more women game devs!" [Specifically reach out to women and get more female game devs show up for the gamejam] "Oh it's so awesome you're a girl who gamedevs!" -- ARGH! It sucks that men are treating women differently than themselves. Uh, yeah, because that's what we did to decrease the rarity and the boys see girls as different than themselves. You really can't win for losing. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Now we just say: Fuck 'em. Doesn't change the fact that with equal m/f ratio among new attendees most girls quit our dev groups AFTER being welcomed and accepted into the group because the risk / reward for game making is shit -- Lots of work, little to no chance of making a popular game. The guys just happen to care less about the lack of social status or massive effort required to sate their love for developing intricate novelties than gals do. Those women that do are cherished for their different perspectives, and sought out for advice on character design realism... Because most men are best at "writing what they know" and don't have female brains. Like gamedev, IT and CS are largely thankless shite work too.
"Unlocking the Clubhouse" -- Interesting selection of careers. Why not try "Unlocking the Clubhouse" when it comes to the other thankless risky male dominated jobs, like Janitors or Coal Miners -- Oh, those are clubhouses no one wants to be in? Gee. Go fucking figure.
Re:Oh noooos! (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason why so few girls are in IT and business is neither their inability nor their lack of interest.
So, in one sentence, you substitute your own pet biases for the scientific findings of TFA, and go right back to
the fact far fewer women choose IT careers must by a fault of society.
On the basis of what scientific research do you make such a claim? We are long past the age where women
are trained from childhood to take certain jobs, accept certain careers, or forego careers. Yet women choose
not to engage in certain professions in anywhere near a ratio indicative of the composition of society.
Women, by and large, do not like IT jobs. They don't like being plumbers either. The women I have worked
with in IT were very good at their jobs, but the women on the candidate list were far sparser than the men.
I've worked FOR women in IT and I've had women work for me in IT. I've tried to recruit women and found
most simply were not interested.
Nobody steers women away from IT. They choose it. And the article explains why. Women's and men's brains are
as many have suspected, simply wired differently. And this is evident early in childhood, which causes children
to make choices, and parents to allow those choices.
You don't have to invent a "social evil" to explain away the simple and obvious preponderance of preference.
Re:Oh noooos! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't tell me! Men and women might be different!?!?!?!?!?
Reminds me of that Pop-psychology of Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus - granted that was a load of BS by an utter fraud, he did indicate men and women approach things from different angles. I wonder how cross-cultural this study is.
Re:Equality (Score:5, Insightful)
No! Men and women are EQUAL, dammit! I'm not listening, lalalalalala...!
One of the great myths of our time is that "equality" is the same as "identicality."
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Trouble is...in this day in age of political correctness, it is verboten to think that you might not treat someone equally despite the two not having identical levels of talent in an area/field due to how their brains might be differently wired by nature.
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No! Men and women are EQUAL, dammit! I'm not listening, lalalalalala...!
One of the great myths of our time is that "equality" is the same as "identicality."
Yea, well, we're talking about a culture that misuses the word "literally" so god-damn much that the dictionary people have given up fighting them, and added "Used to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong feeling" to the list of definitions.
Color me not surprised.
But not literally.
Re:Equality (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. It's perfectly acceptable and scientific to posit differences, as long as you can find the goods and bads to all cancel out somehow.
Anything else can be dismissed without further thought, of course.
Re:Equality (Score:4, Insightful)
Eh? I always thought when people use the term "equality" it is about equality of opportunity regardless of gender, race, physical deficiencies, etc. not that people are actually equal as an individual, that would be an oxymoron...
Re:Equality (Score:4, Insightful)
You have been watching too much Bill O'Reilly. I say this, because he uses the same *exact* mis-representative definition of "social justice".
Social justice is not in any way shape or form about equality of outcome, it's about acknowledging that the system isn't fair (that's OK, it can't be fair in a free society), but more importantly taking measures that reflect that the system isn't fair.
Let's come up with an illustrative example:
Let's say that Bill Gates has a child and so do I. The children are the same age. One day, they both independently have two different "million dollar ideas." Bill Gates' child obviously has a clear advantage. He essentially has infinite funding and support to make it happen.
My child other hand will have to work is ASS OFF. He will have to apply for loans, appeal to investors, possibly have to make counter productive deals to make any headway. Even something as simple as filing a patent costs a small fortune (I know, I've done it). All things being equal, this is simply not fair. And that's OK. It doesn't have to be fair.
Here's where "social justice" comes in. The concept is simply saying "Hey, here's a kid whose working hard, has a good idea, let's try to find to give him a hand".
No guaranteed outcomes, not even equality of opportunity. In this example, my kid could still fail. And if he does, there is no one to blame but himself. I can live with that. No one asked for equality of opportunity, just help for those willing to work hard and earn it. This generally benefits society because my kids "million dollar idea" might be something that completely revolutionizes society. And that something may not ever see the light of day without a little support.
Th perfect *real world* example of this type of thing is JK Rowling. She lived in poverty when she was younger, needed support from the system to keep her on her feet. Now because of that support, she was able to creates works which have created more wealth than she could have dreamed. She alone is worth over 1 billion dollars. She creates new jobs and millions of dollars for thousands of people all around the world. She got kids to read *thick, non-picture books* with wonderful stories. And all of this was possible because of a small amount of "social justice" to help her out in her time of need.
Helping the less fortunate stay on there feet is not communism, it's an investment in a person and their ability to rise above their current circumstances.
There will certainly be abuses. There will be people who take and don't give back. And this should be prevented. That should be an argument for means testing, not an argument against helping those who truly need it.
I feel sorry that you are so misinformed.
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I'm no fan of fox, but if that is orly's definition, he is not far from the truth.
No, it's about ASSUMING the system isn't fair..everywhere where both the 'oppressed' and 'oppressor' classes interact, and forcing unequal policies via the state to 'right' the 'imbalance' whether it's needed or not.
The people who are deemed as 'taking without giving back' are sent to the gulag..in the context of this article, the 'gulag' is 'family' court (another newspeak misnomer), where the 'abused' wife is handed the man'
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It is equal as in, we are equal in the eyes of the law.
Re:Equality (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Equality (Score:5, Insightful)
Then women are the ones who have the privilege, not men. This is true both in the letter of the law, and the precedent set by its enforcement.
1. women get lighter sentences for crime.
2. women are assumed to be victims in 'abuse' cases whether they are or not..
3. if men call 911 because their wives are throwing knives at them, he is arrested and brought to jail. look up 'mandatory arrest.'
4. women pay less into social security yet retire sooner.
5. women don't have to sign up for the selective service in order to vote.
6. women are given access to public money (scholarships) for education just because they are women.
7. Title IX. Enough said.
8. VAWA. Enough said.
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teehee isn't misandry so funny? Apparently 'misogyny' isn't. Try making jokes about negative female stereotypes and see how quickly your posts got moderated down to -1 troll or flamebait by all the whiteknight pussybeggars around here.
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I'm starting to think "equality" is one of those words like "common sense" - the definition is subjective, and thus, bullshit.
For me, the only 'equality' that matters is the one posited in the US Constitution's 14th Amendment, Section 1 - the right to equality of justice.
Re:Equality (Score:4, Insightful)
Programming? (Score:3, Funny)
female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes
Ah, this must explain why most programmers are women.
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You apparently haven't used many programs.
The differences between genders... (Score:5, Insightful)
..is still dwarfed by the differences between individuals of a gender. None of these articles about statistical differences will ever justify the prejudices and social roles some people want to enforce on others to make things simpler.
Re:The differences between genders... (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. The number of human beings who are able to grasp even simple concepts is vanishingly small regardless of gender.
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Re:The differences between genders... (Score:4, Insightful)
You are missing the point. Even if what you are saying is true (which it largely is), this does not prevent the range of variance within genders from being greater than the range of variance between genders. You are talking about the meaty part of the bell curve, the parent is talking about the tails. But the fact that some people will naturally fall on the tails of the curve means that you can't use their gender to predict anything else about them (in this case, which way their brain is mostly wired).
You are right, though. Wishing for science to reinforce your prejudices has a huge failure rate.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70 [youtube.com]
And there are similar studies about homosexuality too implying it is mostly genetic as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPW4aiHpVaA [youtube.com]
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The fastest long distance running times for women wouldn't be acceptable as entry requirements for a amature men's running club.
Depends on what level ameture mens club, but ok...
In other words even the most physically tough Olympic standard women are basically average compared to men.
hahahahha! Ooookkaaaay so the average man can not only run a marathon but do it faster than 2:15:25? Or to put it another way, in the 2013 Olympics, the fastest woman (with a time of 2:23:07) would have come in at 64th place i
Re:The differences between genders... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. There's a pretty nice analysis of the study [mindhacks.com] on MindHacker. It looks like the authors of the study found what they were looking for. Whether it's meaningfully there is less certain.
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One thing one could hope for out of these studies is some kind of diagnostic to identify transgendered individuals. Right now it's a matter of "well, I feel this way and my psych says it's ok!"
I have a feeling there may be such a thing... some day. Perhaps it would be possible to make a diagnostic before adolescence, which would have ideal outcomes both for socialization as the correct mental sex (for trans men and trans women) and for skin-deep appearance (for trans women at least, trans men tend to disa
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This is not true. The differences between the sexes are greater than the average differences between individuals. Some researchers have tried to obfuscate this fact by taking differences one at a time, rather than holistically. When you do a multi-factorial analysis of differences between the sexes versus the average differences between individuals, the sexes are clearly different. This is the case for example with strength and endurance, also with personality traits.
I am perfectly happy that if, eg a woman
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Obvious, albeit boring, explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
As the article notes, the pathways being studied can change throughout life.
Presumably they change to fit the tasks the person spends most time on.
So... it seems plausible that the pathways reflect gender stereotypes because gender stereotypes created them in the first place.
Re:Obvious, albeit boring, explanation (Score:5, Informative)
No, it doesn't say they change throughout life. It says that they change when the sex hormones ramp up at adolescence. It has nothing to do with the tasks they are spending time on.
Great.... (Score:5, Insightful)
What is likely to be not cool are the coming comments about how this is just more evidence that divides in fields like STEM, management, finance, etc, are somehow the result of natural drives/talents and that women really do just want to be relegated to the low paid, low respect fields which have minimal chances for advancement, and that they are paid less because they are simply less capable.
Re:Great.... (Score:5, Interesting)
What really gets me is this part, quoted from a neuroscientist:
We know that there is no such thing as 'hard wiring' when it comes to brain connections. Connections can change throughout life, in response to experience and learning.
So the brain connections men and women develop from their experiences happen to reflect the roles we tend to nudge men and women into.
Hmmm.
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What really gets me is this part, quoted from a neuroscientist:
We know that there is no such thing as 'hard wiring' when it comes to brain connections. Connections can change throughout life, in response to experience and learning.
So the brain connections men and women develop from their experiences happen to reflect the roles we tend to nudge men and women into.
Hmmm.
It can be both, and it wouldn't surprise me if genetics and environment both play a significant factor in this type of neural development. There may even be environmental feedback that amplifies the genetic tendencies. Divides in STEM etc. may be partially due to genetics as well as other factors [wikipedia.org].
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Obligatory XKCD [xkcd.com]
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Here's some insight from Walter E. Williams. You should watch the whole video but to keep things on topic, here's the part where he talks about male/female discrimination.
http://youtu.be/ENL-Jv8GVkk?t=28m52s [youtu.be]
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In any case, there is controversy whether anything other than the total number of neurons matter. What is pretty clear is that we develop an ove
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Good point. There are predictable physiological differences between genders and races and age groups. Understanding the differences is important in medicine and science and should be studied. Unfortunately the differences are also often misused as an excuse for people to mistreat each other.
But if there is a difference that is relevant to your business, is it reasonable to expect people to ignore it?
Men and women are equal (Score:2)
- The IRS
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Look, it's unreasonable to simply say "men do this, women do this" and try to justify it with (usually) an elementary-school understanding of biochemistry.
HOWEVER....
to suggest that the hormonal change which RADICALLY alters otogeny (either developing testes and the subsequent hormonal consequences, or continuing on to developing ovaries) which then results in relatively consistent changes in brain structure, sexual attraction, body chemistry, etc. along one of two tracks DON'T have any impact on brain capa
Uh... (Score:5, Insightful)
" is a huge leap to extrapolate from anatomical differences to try to explain behavioural variation between the sexes. Also, brain connections are not set and can change throughout life."
So... basically this could be 100% enculturation and there could be zero genetic differences. This is essentially the equivalent of pointing out that people who do a lot of running have strikingly different looking cells in their leg muscles than people who sit on the couch all day. Jumping to the runners being born with different leg muscles might not be the correct answer.
Cause and effect? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Thank you. Just thank you.
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Re:Cause and effect? (Score:4, Insightful)
The fight over "begging the question" was lost decades ago. The modern usage makes more sense anyway: the logical fallacy would be better off renamed "assuming the premise", which both serves as a more descriptive name and is a better translation of the Latin petitio principii.
Save your time and effort for the "literally" folks. It's wasted here.
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Jumping to conclusions (Score:2)
Tell me when they can compare what sex feels like (Score:2)
Median or Mean is not the Individual (Score:4, Informative)
The problem when discussing gender differences is that there is no stereotypical male or stereotypical female.
The difference in genetic makeup between the average male and the average female is LESS than the difference between one individual and another individual.
Trying to create more "gender ghettos" is the wrong response. Here at the UW there are many women engineers and scientists, and not in the fields old fogies think they "should" be in.
We are all individuals. How we use what we have differs, but that doesn't make it "better".
It's like a study on Mergers and Aquisitions reported today saying boards with only one female member were less likely to do a merger than boards with all male members - the problem is that mergers are usually a bad idea for shareholder value in the first place.
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> The difference in genetic makeup between the average male and the average female is LESS than the difference between one individual and another individual.
No that is a myth based on bad statistics. Sure there are outliers but the average differences between the sexes are much greater than within the sexes when you look across the whole range of eg personality dimensions.
An example: in WWII it is universally acknowledged that the German soldiers were abut 40% more effective that those from the US. That
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That's a pretty heady abuse of statistics there, are you in politics? Because comparing the statistical mean or median across two groups to the individual difference between two randomly selected individuals is just bad statistics. Yeah, it kinda makes it look like your point is supported, but it's a house of cards. Anyone who knows anything about stats will quickly dismiss you.
You simply cannot ignore that men are generally stronger than women, especially in the upper body. For an average man can you f
Um... no shit? (Score:2)
crossed wires (Score:5, Funny)
No one who is married needs to be told that men and women are wired differently.
For example, my wife seems to have a problem with my spending all my free-time playing Battlefield 4 and Need for Speed Rivals. She thinks family dinners and holiday celebrations and our anniversary should take precedence over a week of double-XP.
Clearly, her priorities are way out of whack. Yet, somehow it seems to work. Or at least it did until I stopped showering last Tuesday and she started insisting I sleep in the basement. But the joke's on her because that's where my gaming rig is set up.
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Don't fix what isn't broken is a good reason.
Please tell me you're not in IT, because clearly you don't know what preventative maintenance is.
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Putting artificial barriers in their way by saying "women should not be engineers or do science" is the wrong message.
So... I take it you're not a fan of Affirmative Action?
Can't say I disagree with that.
FWIW, I don't think anyone is actually saying women shouldn't be engineers, just pointing out that, from a biological physiology standpoint, they aren't wired to think about problems the same way men do.
Hell, IMO that's a good reason for them to become engineers and scientists - preaching to the choir is good for the ego, but not so much for accurate, unbiased research.
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Then why was the ratio closer decades ago?
Some of the best database and analytics people I've had the honor of working with are women, and wouldn't be surprised if their gender gives them an advantage at times.
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Advantage, hers.
Re:Women in STEM (Score:4, Interesting)
"It is what it is" only because we're still getting out of the dark ages where women were being held back. I'm not saying that it will gravitate towards 50 percent and then stay there, but it will certainly change.
These studies are only trying to explain why there are differences between the sexes. This is news for nerds, stuff that matters. Personally I've always wondered exactly why I've found I could handle multiple projects much more easily than my male co-workers. Just getting a "you're a girl, duh" response is pointless. Back that up with some research and now you're cooking!
Also, this could also show why a corpus callosotomy [wikipedia.org] can be more problematic for females than males.
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I'm in two minds about having to walk around with a corpus callostomy bag.
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It's not as simple as you believe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex#Conditions [wikipedia.org]
Re:What about gays and lesbians? (Score:4, Interesting)
Gay and lesbian generally just show up as whatever cis body they are.
Re:What about gays and lesbians? (Score:5, Interesting)
Citation....desired. I really don't mean to be a dick, I am really curious to read more about this. I actually have a few tranny friends and find this pretty interesting. One of the people in their circle of friends actually found out, at somewhere around 40 years old, that desipite being outwardly born male, she actually had ovaries!
I always find this interesting because I tend to be a bit gender blind. I never really had this strong notion of basic mental differences and ability differences between men and women. As it turns out women I get along with well, including my own wife, tend to identify themselves as tomboys, but, I never really notice or think of them that way.
so it starts coming down to.... what causes these differences? The brain changes all the time based on what we do. You can find differences in brain connectivity just based on people's activities and lifestyles. So.... is it hormonal? (maybe not if the transgender thing translates to these connections), is it social? (women and men socialize in different groups that tend to do different things, and so, grow different types of connections?)
another interesting question is when and how this happens. If a transexual is more like their claimed sex than their outwardly visible one.... is that innate? or does that come from years of practice at trying to be the opposite sex?
One observation I have made is that.... well... I don't like young trannies, they annoy me. What annoys me, and this goes for both MTF and FTM is that (and I am generalizing) they tend to take on a characture of the gender they want to emulate. Some younger, less experienced FTMs tend towards being loud, overtly macho. Likewise MTFs tend towards well... acting like they learned to be a woman from watching Zsa Zsa Gabore (get off my lawn). You kinda get the idea they are overacting, faking it a bit. Its a vibe I don't get at all from older trannies who are more experienced.
This makes me think.... maybe its in fact acting out our expected social roles that changes the brain in these ways? Or maybe its a feedback loop, a bit of the chicken, a bit of the egg.
Re:What about gays and lesbians? (Score:4, Interesting)
Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus [endojournals.org]
White matter microstructure in female to male transsexuals before cross-sex hormonal treatment. A diffusion tensor imaging study. [nih.gov]
It seems as though there are some differences in the brain for transgendered individuals in that areas of their brain are more similar to the gender that they think they are rather than the brain of the gender that typically corresponds with their biological sex. It also appears (at least from these studies) that hormone therapy is not responsible for those changes. There isn't anything to suggest what causes this to occur, so it could be biological or social, but I doubt it would be largely due to social causes as that would seem to imply that people could become far more intelligent simply by acting like a genius. At the same time, I don't think it's genetic (or entirely so) either as it intuitively seems as though being transgendered probably produces a less fit individual as I can't imagine having to cope with your brain telling you that you're in the wrong body for your whole life making life easier, especially if everyone else treats you as though you're insane.
Simon LeVay also published some similar research about 20 years ago that examined differences in the brains of homosexual and heterosexual men, so some of that research might also provide some insight into what might cause the observed differences.
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Tranny is usually considered to be an offensive term....
Then come up with one that's equally descriptive, equally memorable, and not offensive to anyone.
Good luck with that.
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ummm.... what?
perhaps you mean transgendered individuals but a gay man is still a man and a lesbian is still a woman. It would be interesting to look at transgendered individuals but I suspect that if the difference is caused by nurture and not nature that you would still see these effects in transgendered people because most of them do grow up in their birth gender and only transition later in life.
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>because gender and sexuality are social constructs
WTF?
There may be social constructs around gender and sexuality, but for sure no body's bits change gender when they move to a new social situation. Gender and Sexuality are physical constructs. Don't try and inject your social construct voodoo into physical reality.
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Oh, you only read the title and decided to make a funny about it. Carry on.
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Just to be pedantic: the wiring is not science; our understanding of it is. So the GP's point is that science (in general an ordered body of knowledge, in this case empirical and deduced knowledge about the physical world) comes to reflect some aspect of society present for millenia.
Which is not of course to make a moral argument, just [paraphrasing] an observation that society has been traditionally structured in a way that utilizes the biological strengths of the sexes. Which I'm sure will not be a cont
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Well, there's this [biomedcentral.com] one, but by "multitasking" one generally means "switching between multiple tasks is progress" rather than "simultaneous attention to different tasks," and the study indicates women may be better at the former.
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that should be "multiple tasks in progress"
You're over-simplifying (Score:4, Insightful)
By and large, men are physically more powerful -- by a very large margin. Over the vast majority of history, that physical power has been both a key factor in survival, making the male indispensable to the household, and consequently a means to dominate the family unit that could not be excised -- at the same time, it isn't something that depends upon superior cognitive function.
It is only (very) recently that females have become broadly able to support a household without benefit of a male presence. If women are to dominate due to any particular cognitive advantage, they've only just entered the race and it'll most likely be some time yet before we see the results, both due to cultural inertia and learning curves.
There's no telling what women may be capable of as yet in terms of exceeding male performance; they've barely had a few decades to try things on, and they're still being held back by religion, chauvinism, and the divisive backwards ride that sexual-role focused feminism took them on.
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By and large, men are physically more powerful
Maybe so, but even if they weren't, all else being equal, they'd still be the majority of the inventors/innovators/creators recorded through history, and if men had brutally repressed them, we wouldn't be sitting here with computers and the internet, would we?
It is only (very) recently that females have become broadly able to support a household without benefit of a male presence. If women are to dominate due to any particular cognitive advantage, they've only just entered the race and it'll most likely be some time yet before we see the results, both due to cultural inertia and learning curves.
Recently? All women have accomplished is the replacement of the would be man in her life with the state, separating him and/or the rest of us from our wallets to support "her body, her right, her choice" at our expense. This is not empowerment. This
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In my experience, men are far better than women at multitasking.
I'll never understand why people claim the opposite.
Because, scientifically speaking, no human is capable of true multitasking.
What we are good at is switching between tasks rapidly.
Females in my experience will do them sequentially, in an order that suits them - if they hate vacuuming that gets done last.
Males in my experience will do them concurrently. Fill the sink, put the laundry in the washer, do one rack of dishes, take out the trash, put the laundry in the dryer, vacuum, put the dry dishes away and do the rest of the dishes, fold the laundry.
Not sure if trying to be funny or misogynistic... ?