"Men and women are just different and have different skills and talents"

But on the other hand someone upthread mentioned horse riding, a hugely risky sport, which in the UK at least seems mostly to appeal to girls.

Risk, I think needs more examination. My (male) partner was talking to my son about a sheep with a twisted uterus, who rather than producing live lambs was carted off in the knacker wagon.
He was telling Ds what a high risk activity being pregnant and giving birth was to the majority of animals. Humans included.

Apart from the moment of wondering how many almost 4 year olds had these conversations with their dads. It made me think that for the majority of women this is a risk they will take, and probably don't need many more.

YY Whirlpool

I'm also "deficient" in the so-called feminine traits. And am in a male-dominated profession.

This "biological difference" thing winds me up so much because I'm constantly being fucking told I'm one thing or the other that I am not. So now I just tell them to fuck off. V. unladylike.

tbh I'm losing patience with to what degree things are innate or socialised. I am certain the latter has a far greater influence than most people choose to believe, and I think we could change a lot for the better in that way, but I also don't think we can ever know really to what degree they influence because it's impossible to separate out (not suggesting that anyone here thinks we could)

But really, I'm at the point where I give less and less of a shit about the arguments, because look at the huge amount of actual harm to women that stuff like violence that is supposedly innate in men does. Look at the huge amount of restrictions on women's lives and choices, and the devaluing of their activities, that goes on as a result of deeming behaviours and skills innate in one gender and not the other

What about justice, and kindness, and treating women like human beings in technicolour with different skills and needs and desires and giving them as many opportunities as men? And not doing this because it's somehow been proven scientifically that their brains and bodies can cope with it, but because it is the right thing to do

Din't finish this thought properly:

"Given that women can get a massive adreneline / doing something risky response from something as basic as walking alone down a street at night"

because society, posters from the police, tv progs etc tell us that we are at constant risk of extreme sexual violence from strangers. This isn't of course where our risk really lies, but it is heavily socialised. I have always turned my nose up at it and done whatever I liked (while paying attention to instinct about people) and still I always got twitchy when wandering around in the small hours by myself.

The point though is the way risk is identified is from a male perspective in the first place, as so much is.

Not sure how relevant this is, but I spent a lot of time in Russia in "the old days" and one thing that fascinated me was that being a doctor was not the high status profession it was in the West- because most doctors were women. The very fact that a woman did something devalued it.

I always find these conversations very interesting, not least because I am somewhat deficient in "feminine" personality traits - although not deficient in "feminine" appearance - hence realising I was a feminist as a teen the moment I heard what one was. The incongruence of how I was expected to be based on how I looked was always extremely jarring.

Anyway.

There was talk upthread about drink driving and how men are more likely to do it, and consequences, and that set me thinking about risk, and how it is often cited that men are greater "risk takers" than women. It occurs to me that the definition of risk is based in a masculine experience of the world. Given that women can get a massive adreneline / doing something risky response from something as basic as walking alone down a street at night, can we really say that women are more risk averse. Maybe women are in fact seeking and experiencing similar levels of adrenaline etc from simply different activities. As a teen, if I went off with a group of men and took some drugs and had some casual sex, the risk to me, both real and perceived (sexual violence, pregnancy through consensual sex etc) was almost certainly greater than to the men. Maybe for one of those men to get a similar experience of risk they'd have to drive a car very fast.

Does anyone get my drift on that one?

FWIW plenty of women do things like speeding, drink driving and so on. Just not in such numbers as men, or maybe they don't get caught, or maybe they drive better and don't crash, I don't know. It's that bell curve overlap again.

And this is the problem with this conversation. The "men and women are innately different" argument is not a simple "oh that's interesting" observation, it is used to oppress women all over the world and always has been. Even if there is a difference overall, in whatever (and nature/nurture?) that shouldn't limit the options or roles for individuals whose skills and personalities might lie outside the "norm". I am unconvinced though, because as noted, I do not fit the "norm" so naturally feel that "men are like this and women are like that" is rubbish. A woman who fits better, or a man, would probably feel less of an instinctual push-back on the idea.

(Just de-lurking for a moment to thank people for the tip about Cordelia Fine's book, and the Dworkin quotation!)

"Buffy what rankles is the sweeping generality of "we" as some sort of superior being are prepared to concede there still might be some humanity in some men. Gee thanks."

"We" as in women, not as in superior being. But men as a class have done so much damage to women as a class that Dworkin saying that she thinks it's possible to coexist respectfully is pretty bloody magnanimous of her.......

Yops - I'm also interested in the effect that hormones have on behaviour. It is a very complex area. I happen to have a condition known as Graves Disease (Hi, btw, to the other poster on this thread that had it too).

It's an autoimmune condition, but its (main) effect is to interfere with the bio control of the production of the hormone thyroxine. My condition is stabilised by now but at its height, I was often irritable, aggressive, anxious etc - it had a very noticeable effect on my metabolism too. It definitely altered my personality. I manage it now with drugs - and I'm a completely different person.

So, hormonal levels - determined by genetic differences do lead to personality changes

Scallops ... That's a great Dworkin quote, thanks for posting. My present favourite is

Feminism is hated because women are hated. Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defense of women hating.

The Daily Dworkin hashtag is well worth a read.

Sorry, as you were....

Buffy what rankles is the sweeping generality of "we" as some sort of superior being are prepared to concede there still might be some humanity in some men. Gee thanks.

Buffy, I don't know what to think yet. I began by wanting to understand the differences in hormones between the genders, but from the tiny bit I read, it's an incredibly complex subject. How much of a hormone you have isn't the be-all and end all, and they produce different effects in different people, and different effects in men and women. So it's too simplistic to say 'men are arseholes because of testosterone - whaddayagonnado?'

But equally, I don't know how someone can claim that all behaviours can be socialised away, if there are other underlying factors that we don't fully understand yet. I can see why feminism would want this to be the case, and I think that that is behind the Dworkin quote. But I think the quote is contradictory - surely the reason women haven't armed themselves is because they are socialised not to?

Summary - I don't know

I don’t believe rape is inevitable or natural. If I did, I would have no reason to be here. If I did, my political practice would be different than it is.

That's also a strange thing to write. What difference would it make if rape was natural? Did she believe that our hominid or early human ancestors would have had some moral inhibition against it for some reason - or killing and stealing for that matter. There are many examples of forced intercourse in animals including apes, it is well documented in Orangutans.

human behaviour is that which humans do - what on earth does 'inhuman' mean in a biological sense ? Behaviour not found amongst humans ?

*iIt is because we believe in your humanity, against all the evidence'

That's really lovely - I find it very moving actually*

Really? my reaction is that is why I have no interest in reading anything by her.

I am also really, really tired of all this neuro bollocks.

Also evo psych.

Interesting stuff. I'll knock it off for now. I am not here to antagonise. And no need to apologise, Upto. Sorry if I upset you.

Going to the park now to try to forget this.

Sorry - not having a go at you yop. It's the topic.

"What if it were used instead to say 'this is (partly) why men are violent/antisocial/twatty - what do we do about it?' Does that move the discussion on to somewhere more useful?"

I don't think so. Not if it's crouched in "biological difference" talk. What can be done about that? Castration? It's bollocks. (See what I've done there.)

Again John Stuart Mill said fucking ages ago: can we fucking stop looking at things and think that's the way nature intended and instead think a bit about fucking why. (Swear words mine. It makes me so angry.)