Physical Vs psychological difference between the sexes

As the brain is a part of the body, I am open minded towards this. I think we are all nervous that allowing the possibility gets us into the genderist view of pink brains and blue brains. However, crucially, there is no evidence whatsoever that those who identify as trans behave more like the opposite sex. In fact, we often see the opposite. Aggressive TWs on Twitter, vs the most "beta" males I know having no interest whatsoever in their image, "identity", extreme ideologies etc. TRAs themselves cling to the argument that it's simply a sense of being male or female, rather than a predisposition to domesticity/warfare.

I’m always pretty suspicious of SBC being held up as a source for this. In my twenties I was a research participant in some of his “systematising/empathising” “male/female brain” studies (why? The lab paid penniless grad students a small cash token to participate, so you could rack up a few extra quid by being a participant in their research studies).

The questions to establish whether you had a “male/female brain” always were just about whether you had preferred playing with dolls or Lego as a child and so on. Not only did they not take any socialisation into account, they relied on your memory twenty years later of what you remembered doing aged about three.

I was not impressed by either the research methodology, or the idea of what constituted an innate male or female trait. The study designs were all full of circular logic. Did you like playing with dolls as a child? Then you have a female brain and were therefore drawn to playing with dolls, QED. That was often the full sum of it!

SBC is primarily an autism researcher who has ended up the poster boy for a lot of ideas on sex traits, when if my experience was anything to go by, many of the studies he conducted were very reductive and did not take any account of huge amounts of prior research in the area.

I think one example would be an acknowledgement that many women actually don't want to retun to work while their children are still young. Its great that there is now shared parental leave and our maternity rights are better than many other countries. But I would like to see more proactive provision for women wishing to return to the workplace after 5, 8 or 10 years. Free courses on industry changes, staggered return to work programmes where you gradually build to full time workload, fast-track opportunities which prioritise returning mothers above graduates. The current system focuses on getting women back to work as soon as possible, but those who dont return within a year or so have then missed the boat. And I say this as someone who took two 8 month maternity leaves.

Empathising and Systemising are the obvious two.

Sorry I'm not smart enough to give citations and a full arguement but that's why I directed you to SBC. Do have a look at the debate on Youtube

So we accept that there are essential psychological differences between women and men that are significant enough to need to be addressed by society. What are these differences and what needs to change as a result? What does feminism need to do to address these essential differences in ways it hasn't to date?

ThingyBob, at the risk of repeating myself, which traits, and how have they been measured, and what was the outcome?

I never quite get why so many feminists deny what is the bloody obvious to me that there are inbuilt phycological differences between the sexes.

Sorry but I think all the arguments against are not based on science but are ideologically driven. I've read what Gina Rippon has written, at the suggestion of posters on here, and don't believe it supports there being no phycological difference between the sexes despite so many on here insisting it does.

I suggest they read The Essential Difference by Simon Baron Cohen. There's also a debate on YouTube between Gina Rippon and SBC which is worth watching.

risk appetite may be affected by testosterone. But probably sex shouldn’t be used as a proxy for risk appetite in the professions where it is relevant (eg volatile stock trading, fighter pilot, motorbike racer). It’d be much better to look at a CV and ask questions to probe or do a trial flight/race.

I think different races do have different risks of various medical/biological issues. I think you'd be on extremely dodgy ground scientifically to say any racial differences in behaviour etc were genetic particularly given how MASSIVE the social/political etc influences are and how ingrained everywhere.

I was sort of musing the same thing, but I do think that race and sex are different things, scientifically, although obviously both affected by genetics. People of different sexes are physically different in ways that people of different races aren't. Race can be mixed in a person whereas sex can't.

Therefore I think it's a valid question to ask. (I'd just appreciate if the question would be more specific!)

Would you dare ask if genetics would lead to population level differences between different races ?

Why is it ok to ask this about women ?

^ for people NOT to recognise the difference!

justgo in case it wasn't clear from my posts, i totally accept that violence is a very strongly linked to being male. I posted about how the whole of society would be completely different if males offended at the rate of females. I think the male/ violence link is a good example of a strong trait. I was hoping we could talk about any others as the argument seems to be that there are many similar sex linked traits.

And it's a very good point about population level vs individual level. I've posted loads about that in the past (different usernames) as it's really common for people to recognise the difference ("oh so you are saying all men are violent are you, well you're wrong because my dad wouldn't hurt a fly" etc).

Sorry if incoherent- phone type pad still being rubbish.

How many outliers do you have before you call the trend too weak to be useful?

The spectrum of violence and agression across both sexes means that it is impossible to predict whether an individual will be violent and agressive based simply on their sex, and therefore you could argue that there is no benefit in acknowledging any trend. However, if you look at entire prison populations the difference is stark: every male prison has more violent incidents per inmate than every female prison. I find it very useful to acknowledge this trend, and indeed dangerous not to.

And psychological differences does not mean the same thing as cognitive differences. I agree it is sexist and regressive to suggest that there is a female and male way of thinking or approaching intellectual questions. My position would be that estrogen/testosterone which are sex-based intersect with intellect, personality and interests which are not sex-based.

Obviously there are outliers, but there is still a trend.

People keep tossing this in as some sort of disclaimer, but it's incredibly important. How many outliers do you have before you call the trend too weak to be useful? Again, if it has a 95% link with sex, that's useful.
If the % of women demonstrating that trait is 55%, that's still a majority, but tells us nothing. Everyone seems reluctant to get into specifics. What would we test, how, and what would our findings tell us?

That's how we discover things, not "I think women are better at wiping bums because of what I've observed and I've tried really hard to imagine there weren't huge socialisation influences".

OP, so so far you have specified medical conditions and aggression as differentiated by sex. I agree.

I asked in my first post which traits you would posit as different, and how you would measure that. Do you have any other traits other than those? It looked like you were talking about being "caring" and a wider range of characteristics.

Maybes in a few hundred years when women are no longer seen as inferior due to their lady brain we can come back to this

Yeah, that's my take as well. Maybe there are innate differences but they are vastly overshadowed by the cultural inequalities. So let's focus on sorting out those cultural inequalities first.

When no woman feels she is perceived or treated in a way that reduces her agency to best use her natural abilities, whatever they are, or to make choices she wants to make for her life, simply because she is a woman; when women's choices are genuinely equal to men's without the invisible hand of culture weighting the scales; well, that's when we'll have a clear view of what, if any, innate differences there may be.

But long as individual women know, from data and their own experiences, that society's assumptions about what is "natural" for a woman are not true for them and that those assumptions are unfairly limiting what they can achieve in life, challenging those assumptions that limit women because they are women is where our focus still needs to be.

So OP, it's not that I think there cannot be differences, it's that I think that's the wrong (as in, not very useful) question right now.

it's not physical differences here, it's cognitive

It's not the effect of testosterone either

So you think there are significant albeit as yet unobserved innate differences? And you wonder that people find this hypothetical question unpleasant?

I have spent my whole life fighting to be seen as a good scientist - I am leading in my field but I had to spend years overcoming the prejudice against women

It's blatant , even men can see it - eg " you are sitting in a room with the world export , why won't you address your questions to her?"

So yes I find the very question offensive and misogynistic

Maybes in a few hundred years when women are no longer seen as inferior due to their lady brain we can come back to this

At the moment it's rather like asking if there are in fact cognitive differences between races - you would not dare ask that even hypothetically , yet women are fair game

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "innate differences at population level"? But if you are referring to the "trend differences" in men and women then I would disagree with the assertion that these are not significant.

If you look at our current battlegrounds - women's sport, spaces and prisons - it is actually the secondary characteristics and "trends" that are the most significant thing. So the problem with males in women's prisons is not primarily that males have penises (because a post-op TM with a "penis" would pose less threat than a post-op TW whose penis has been removed.) The main problem is the increased size and strength (secondary sexual characteristics), the increased aggression (testosterone) and the increased entitlement (socialisation). All of these exist on a spectrum in both men and women, which has led a number of well-meaning wokey idiots to suggest that males should be allowed into our spaces. Our entire argument that they shouldn't is based on a acknowledgement of the trend - we exclude penis-people because they are more likely to be bigger/stronger/more violent than vagina-people, not because every penis-person is bigger/stronger/more violent than every vagina-person. And if we hold that these trends are entirely due to socialisation then there will be people who try to minimise those differences and force us to accept "nicely socialised men" into our spaces.

There are plenty of people who believe in fundamental brain differences between men and women - those I have met in real life have without fail been arrogant misogynistic rather nasty people - the responses you get may be affected by conditioning in action

I do also agree with PP - it seems any innate differences ( beyond testosterone) are not significant at the population level , so therefore it would not be a difference that should be acted upon

So what is the point of mulling over a question the answer to which

1: any innate difference we know are not significant so should not change behaviours- rather we should understand why society imposed differences
2: often assumed true by the worst members of our society

@justgotosleepffs - agree mostly. Though - a larger male can be helpful in care work as there is a lot of lifting and rolling - so a complement of male and female would be ideal.

There is a lot of push for diversity in my workplace. I’m not a woke person but I think they have a good point: many teams would be stronger with both males and females for 2 reasons:1) males and females can both display both traditionally ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ traits. 2) in many occupations having a mixture of stereotypically masculine and feminine traits is usually beneficial.

To be honest, I don't have a major problem with the idea that there are general psychological differences between the sexes, and I say that as a very gender non-conforming adult.

I categoeically don't think there are male brains and female brains, or male talents and female talents. But I think hormones cast a long shadow.

You might have a male child and a female child. Both are equally intelligent with natural aptitude for Maths. Both are naturally introverted and get nervous in unfamiliar situations. But the way that those talents and characteristics interact with estrogen will be different than the way they interact with testosterone so you get some difference.

Similarly you might have two female children where one girl hs a talent for sport and the other for languages. So they will have different talents and interests but both will be impacted by the estrogen in their body, and this will mean they develop and act differently than if the estrogen were replaced with testosterone.

Add to that the fact that within both sexes there are varying levels of both estrogen and testosterone and you get the wonderful variety of humans where anyone can be anything but there tend to be trends.

My own personal observation (admittedly not at all scientific) is that women are more likely than men to want children, and more likely than men to prefer monogamous relationships. And while men and women are both equally capable of wiping someone else's bum, women seem to be better at knowing when the bums actually need wiping. Obviously there are outliers, but there is still a trend.

I think the OPs point was that we should give higher esteem to things that women are more likely to be naturally drawn to, rather than encouraging women into more traditionally male domains. So give better pay and higher esteem to early years childcare practitioners rather than encouraging them to be engineers. I don't really see a problem with this.

When I look at crappy 3rd wave feminism, I see women being led to believe that sexual equality and freedom means adopting sexual behaviors and attitudes that tend to be naturally perferred by, and advantageous to men. So this strikes me as comparable to the point the OP is making.

Hum about chimps
Is it not possible that the exposure to violence affects thier brains to increase testosterone