Feminism and natural sex differences

'The best question of all, is, why are people so keen to do this?'

To justify differential treatment of men and women?

ISNT, I understand all that you are saying and agree.

The other thing I don't understand is the purpose of all of this.

Sat it is proven beyond doubt that on average boys are better at than girls. Still some girls will still be excellent at and some boys rubbish at it. The current interpretation of these (non-conclusive) findings seems to be a stringent attempt to pigeon-hole people into gender stereotypes. The best question of all, is, why are people so keen to do this?

I've just looked online Niecie, and there is an interview with the Cordelia Fine www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm?volumeID=23&editionID=194&ArticleID=1749

The review of her book by Baron Cohen isn't available, which I'm not particularly bothered by because he is an utter arse imo.

If it's saying that boys have penises and girls have vaginas then clearly it is ludicrous to put it down to socialisation.

If it's that boys are naturally analytical, competitive and assertive while girls are naturally passive, nurturing, and into talking rather than doing, then I might have a few things to say.

depends what sex differences you/they were talking about niecie. What differences were they talking about?

WriterofDreams - is this thread inspired by the articles in The Psychologist this month with the review of the book about how gender is culturally created and biology is irrelevant and then the review by Simon Baron Cohen? Sorry, can't find my copy at the moment so I can't remember the name of the book or the author. I have read it and thought it interesting and having read your OP I was reminded of it and then again to see you are a psychologist I though you might have read it too.

I thought Baron Cohen was more convincing, mainly because to say biology has nothing to do with sex differences has to be total nonsense. I would say the same if anybody tried to say it was entirely due to sex differences by the way.

I wish I knew where I put it!

Writerofdreams - I really recommend you read Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine, a neuropsychologist (or similar can't remember the last part of her job title!). If you're interested in sex or gender differences, it really gives you something to think about!

yes yes yes ISNT & Sprogger

That's the point I was trying to make - that some people were using fMRI scans to 'prove' that spatial awareness separated men and women but in fact, it is socially constructed and has in fact created the neurological picture.

msrisotto so if the difference disappears after an hour then that backs up the idea that differences are entirely due to socialisation (boys being pointed towards things which involve spatial awareness more than girls and therefore getting practice in).

Was to earwicga been away doing some low value/low status work (tidying up)

There are unanswered questions though.

Do men's hormones fluctuate and make them behave differently at different times? At some times might they be more prone to aggressive / risk taking behaviour which would hinder their abilities?
You say that your symptoms are worse if you are stressed - how to gauge how much is down to stress and how much is down to periods?
Do in fact many humans suffer from mood swings/changes in how they feel and their abilities, but women tend to notice when it ties in with their cycle as there's such an obvious marker?
What happens when people take the experiences of some and extrapolate (which is the bit that as a feminist I get worked up about) - eg women's spacial awareness suffers when they are pre-menstrual and therefore they should not be employed as pilots. That's extreme but it's where all the "women can't drive/use machinery" stuff comes from. That due to our femaleness, we as a whole are incapable of performing certain tasks effectively, coincidentally these same tasks are the ones which have financial reward / status attached to them.

and use of the word 'natural' in reference to gender differences is disingenuous because we do not live in a vacuum and society is intrinsic in the construction of 'gender'.

You can't claim a cause & effect relationship because anti-depressants work though. They don't work for everybody so there clearly isn't a linear relationship and also, the very idea of hope being brought into someone's life is a really important factor in recovery.

My point is that depression might be a result of chemical imbalances in the brain, equally though, it might cause imbalances in the brain chemical make-up.

Other differences between males and females that were thought to be proven through brain imaging, for example spacial abilities, have been shown to have been created socially first thus influencing the development of centres in the brain. Incidentally, with like, an hours spatial awareness training, the differences between men and women disappear.

Aye ISNT - the important word is 'some'.

I am interested though as to how 'feminism' does deal with things like PMT and the menopause. I do get PMT, some months badly, and it can affect things like my mood, pain in my body, and also my spatial awareness i.e. parking. Therefore it is true that I and my abilities are likely to be slightly different at different times of the month (although I find PMT is dependent on how stressed I feel at the time and therefore is variable).

I like motherinferior's posts on this thread.

I think that there are certainly (obviously) differences on average between men and women - strength, having breasts/penises, men have deeper voices etc. I am happy to accept that things like PND can be caused by hormones and that equally an excess of testosterone can have a none-too-brilliant effect on men. (While I agree with sakura about mental health problems in people often being down to society).

What I am not happy with is the translation of these things, into ideas which support gender stereotypes, when there is no evidence for it.

EG women get periods and some suffer PMT, this is hormonal. For some women PMT results in them feeing weepy. This shows that women are driven by their hormones rather than by rationality, and they are therefore unreliable employees who are often not able to act rationally, they are therefore suited better to low skilled/low paid jobs, where the irrationality and fluctuating performance levels won't matter so much, and this is where they will be happier.

I live in Asia, which is much more feminized than the West. A good example of this is if an Asian person sees a matchstick man, or image of ambiguous sex, they assume it's female, but people from western cultures assume it's male. Femininity is much more prevalent here. MOthers let their boys' hair grow long then tie it up in bands; there isn't much difference in the bodies of men and women here- men are slim, women have no breasts and boyish hips

i note that somebody mentioned liking football further up the page: isn't football the social currency among small boys? i can recall my brother feigning interest in liverpool fc throughout his childhood, and have observed a friend's son abandoning pursuits which clearly came more naturally to him and embracing the stupid beautiful game in order to access the friends that came with it. the social policing of boys is unreal, afaics, and boys, in exactly the same way as girls, seem to be highly sensitive to it. so i really wouldn't be ascribing anything all that innate to the football fetish.

on the larger question, of course differences in bodily experience are going to affect behaviour to an extent, but i really do believe it is mainly cultural.

this other poster (SwallowedaFly) knows a thing or two about the way the brain works, and she made a post about the science of anti-depressants. I'm going to find it. I'll find the link for you, as it may be interesting.

writersofdreams, I'm not a psychologist so yes, there may be a chemical aspect to depression. I just think that we can't ever know until we are out of this capitalist/patriarchal system. THere was a thread recently on this subject. I will try to find it if you like

HopeFTBest,
Radical feminist analysis of society goes like this:

Society is patriarchal (ruled by men) and this system requires males to be masculine, and females to be feminine.
SOme societies (such as ours) believe that this system is the natural order, but the prevalence of people diverging from this norm tells us that male/masculine- female/feminine is not natural at all. It's just a made up system that benefits the dominant class (masculine men)

NOt all men benefit from patriarchy and most definitely no women.
So the men who are not typically masculine, for whatever reason are rejected by 'masculine' men and therefore society at large. Butch women also get a hard time of it.

There is a big debate as to what extent masculinity and femininity is constructed, but one thing is for sure: the idea of masculinity and femininity harms everyone, including masculine men, who often behave aggressively to prove their masculinity and often end up in jail